Joe Heschmeyer examines Cameron Bertuzzi’s and Gavin Ortlund’s recent videos on the problem of the Biblical Canon.

Transcription:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer. And last week Cameron Bertuzzi of the Capturing Christianity YouTube channel made a video called The One Question Every Protestant Must Answer That question if you’re wondering is about how we know which books are in the Bible, particularly which books are in the New Testament.

CLIP:

The question that every Christian has to answer is this, how do we know which books belong in the New Testament? The New Testament is where we find everything from the life of Jesus to the message of salvation, but Christians haven’t always agreed on which books belonged inside of it. There wasn’t always a really neat list of 27 New Testament books. Some books we now consider essential were heavily disputed while other writings were cherished and even read in church, but ultimately were left out.

Joe:

So after all, while virtually all Christians agree on the 27 books that make up the New Testament, some of those books were controversial. Books like James Hebrews second, Peter Second and Third John Book of Revelation and made it in. These are someone called the Antilegomena or spoken against books and then other books. So think of things like the Diday, the Epistle of Barnabas. First Clement Shepherd of Hermes were beloved early Christian writings that some Christians thought belonged in the Bible and that ultimately didn’t make it in. So to be clear, we’re not talking about heretical books, we’re not talking about the gnostic gospels or anything like that. Those are the easy kind of black and white cases. We’re talking about those gray area cases where some Christians think it belongs and some Christians think that it doesn’t. In technical terms, Cameron is proposing what’s called the canon question.

How do we know the contents or the canon of the Bible? And he proposes five ways that we could try to solve this problem. I’m going to look at a few others in the course of this video, but he says, number one, we could trust the authority of the church and by this point we’re largely talking the fourth century, so I don’t think you can really deny that. The church in question here is a Catholic church, more on that later. So that way works if you trust the authority of the church, you can trust we got the New Testament right? But obviously many Protestants are reluctant to trust the authority of the fourth century church. Second, you could look to things like apostolic authorship, but the problem here is that not all of the books of the New Testament are written by an apostle. For instance, the gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke.

Third, you could look at proximity to the apostles. Maybe you don’t have to be an apostle it enough to be friends or companions or close to an apostle. But here the problem is that there are other writings like one Clement that seem proximate to an apostle Clement is addressed presuming it’s the same person he’s addressed by name by St. Paul. And then fourth, you could say, well, we want the books that are consistent with orthodoxy. But of course, two problems. One, how do you know what’s Orthodox if you’re not getting it from the Bible? And two, there are plenty of good books that are Orthodox that doesn’t make them inspired. Scripture. Fifth you could say, well, I just have faith that God guided the church. Now hopefully, as we’ve already seen, two, three and four don’t really work very well. So that leaves us with one in five.

We trust the authority of the church and ultimately we trust God’s guidance of the church and that makes total sense. As a Catholic, I was wondering how Protestants would respond to that, and I was honestly disappointed in the caliber of the response that I was seen in his comments. Now I know what you’re saying, it’s YouTube comments of course, but oftentimes he has really good comments this time there were some good ones, but a lot of people attacked him just for asking the question. I even saw people who announced that they were no longer going to support him financially and encourage other Protestants to pull funding from his exploration of Christian apologetics because he was asking questions they didn’t want him asking. Now, I’m going to pause on this point and say, I don’t normally do this, but if you are so inclined you have the means and the desire to do so. I would encourage you to go over to Patreon and go on capturing Christianity and consider becoming a member because I think he’s doing really good work and I don’t like seeing him bullied financially by people who just don’t want him asking questions about how Protestants know which books are in the Bible.

If he’s going to lose some donors, let him get some donors who encourage his intellectual inquiry and his honesty. So again, I don’t want to also s think a lot, just the negative commenters. I was really disappointed in some of the comments, but there were some really good ones as well. And I would say in particular a really good response video came from Dr. Gavin Orland. Now, I’ve critiqued Gavin multiple times on this channel for things upon which we disagree, and I’m going to do that again today, but there’s a lot in his response that I thought was really good. So his response is called How do we know the New Testament cannon? I put the accent on the wrong word. How do we know the New Testament cannon in which he takes Cameron’s question seriously. Now, I actually found myself agreeing with Gavin much more than I thought I would and in particular I agree to some of his critiques of the Catholic case or the way the Catholic case is kind of popularly made involving infallibility. And I’ll explain why in a minute. But first let’s just say, okay, remember the five ways that Cameron sort of threw out that you could explore or defend the New Testament canon like me, Gavin is going to suggest that the first and the fifth of those are the intellectually strongest. These are the ones we should be relying upon the authority of the church and God’s guidance of the church.

CLIP:

And the answer I’ll give here has some resonance with his first and fifth options. If you watched his video, and that’s basically this, we can trust God’s guidance of the process of canonization in the early church even though it was a fallible process, the church’s reception of the canon can be fallible and yet still trustworthy.

Joe:

So we’re going to obviously disagree on that question of infallibility and I’ll get to why infallibility is needed. Shortly is going to be the bulk of what I talk about today, but right now, let’s just recognize we agree that if we’re going to have a New Testament, it’s going to be because we’re able to trust the authority of the church and trust God’s guidance of the church. That’s a really important point. Now in that response he made to Cameron Gavin linked to a much longer video that he did on the same topic in which he makes the point in really a stronger way. He talks about some of the early Protestant reformers, particularly those of more a reformed or Calvinist bent, and he concludes

CLIP:

They all agree the church has a role as the witness unto the word of God included as one aspect of that is canonization and it’s a necessary role. Without the church, we have no scripture.

Joe:

So that’s a pretty strong statement for a Protestant to make. Without the church we have no scripture. You cannot have the scriptures without the church. I mean, think about it. If I said that as a Catholic, I think it’s fair to say many Protestants would accuse me of elevating the church to an idolatrous level of putting the church over scripture, and that’s not what’s happening. Gavin is very clear that both Catholics and Protestants agree that God and not the church is the author of scripture and the one who makes scripture inspired. But the church nevertheless has this indispensable and irreplaceable role in telling us what is and isn’t scripture. And so without that role, you don’t have the New Testament because you don’t know which things God did and didn’t inspire. It really is that simple, but I’m thrilled to hear Gavin say it explicitly and to back the claim up with an appeal to Protestant reformers.

Now, despite this, despite believing without the church, we don’t have the Bible, despite believing that we can trust the New Testament cannon to the extent that we can trust the authority of the church and God’s guidance of the church, Gavin nevertheless believes that this process isn’t infallible. He says in the bit I quoted a moment ago, we can trust God’s guidance of the process of canonization in the early church even though it was a fallible process. Now, I don’t dispute that something could be both fallible, capable of error and still right? If you’re doing basic math, two times two is four. You can get that right even though you are capable of screening up. Try some of the harder numbers and you’ll see your capacity to get math problems wrong, but you’re still trustworthy. You’re still right even though you’re capable of error, you’re fallible, but you’re not wrong.

So I don’t have a problem with that distinction. I have a problem with a different one. How could a process be both guided by God? That’s God’s guidance of the process of canonization means God is the one in control. He’s the one leading it and also capable of error, which is what fallible means. After all, I can see how you or I doing a math problem, we could get the answer even though we’re capable of getting it wrong, but if God is the one who’s the author, ultimately he’s the one guiding history. He’s the one leading the church into the truth. How is it still fallible? Now, Gavin’s going to argue three things in defense of why he thinks that this whole process is fallible. Why it’s not an infallible process even though it’s led by God. Two of them I’m not going to address because I’ve addressed him before.

He has a philosophical argument in his longer video about epistemology in the nature of infallibility that I don’t find very persuasive. I think he even realizes it’s not super strong. He kind of acknowledges that and I’ve addressed it before in a video called the Problem of personal interpretation. He also has a claim. The Jewish people in Jesus’ day didn’t have infallibility, but they still knew which books were and weren’t in the Bible. That’s just factually untrue as I point out in multiple videos. But most recently a video called the Bible in Jesus’ Day, how different was it looking at how they were actually ongoing rabbinic debates about which books did and didn’t belong in the Bible for centuries after Jesus. But I’m going to leave those two aside. Instead, I want to focus on the third argument he makes that I think is his strongest and I think he recognizes as his strongest. It’s the idea that there was no infallible counsel or ex catheter, a papal declaration in the early church settling the question of which books didn’t didn’t belong in the Bible. So here’s the way he makes the argument in the longer video.

CLIP:

Now, suppose that doesn’t convince you that’s the weaker argument. Oh, I should have started off with a stronger one. Oh, well that’s okay, let’s go forward. Here’s the real one because logical philosophical appeals are one thing, but here’s where it becomes very, I think, decisive, the historical argument. There’s a way that we can know with certainty that the church does not need infallibility to discern the canon, and that is just it didn’t happen that way. Infallible canon lists come way late in history toward the end of the Middle Ages, almost into the early modern era. In other words, if this is a problem for Protestants, it’s a problem for most Christians throughout history, most times throughout history.

Joe:

Now, Catholics might object, well, what about something like the third Council of Carthage or the Council of Rome? Didn’t they play this important role in setting the cannon? Yes, but Gavin would rightly respond to you by saying those weren’t ecumenical councils, those were regional councils. They were important ones in one case because Rome and another case because Saint Augustine is there, but they’re not of themselves infallible. This is not something either Catholics or Protestants believe about regional councils.

CLIP:

There were no infallible operations deciding the cannon during that first 1500 years of the church, the late fourth century councils 1500 ish. I’ll define Florence and Trent in a second. These late fourth century councils, I just have to say this upfront because everyone’s going to bring up some of these. They were local councils, they were fallible, and yet despite the absence of any infallible operations, the church came to a virtually universal agreement about the New Testament somewhere around the fourth century or really a little earlier than that, but totally finalized around then.

Joe:

Gavin is mostly right about all of this. If you’re a Catholic and you’re presenting the case, we can know the Bible because the Pope said so in some binding infallible way or because of an ecumenical council, something like that. I just don’t think that the top down case for our knowledge of the canon of scripture is particularly strong because there isn’t a ton of top-down infallible authority being exercised on this question. So I completely agree with Gavin here except for one thing, namely that process by which God leads the Christian people from confusion and disunity on the contents of the New Testament to as he puts, as this near unanimous unity that’s not just happening by human effort. That’s an infallible, divinely inspired and led process that is still infallible even though it’s happening organically and from the bottom up rather than top down. I’d say two things.

Number one, unaided men simply don’t arrive at unity this way. You can think outside of religion on something like politics. You can think about something like the Tower of Babel. How unified were we without the assistance of divine grace? Compare Babel to Pentecost or you can think about something like the nature of Protestant denominationalism. No one Protestant group has ever been able to convince all the other Protestant groups that they’ve got all the truth and everyone should become Presbyterian Baptist, fill in the blank. People move around and there’s kind of the merry-go-round denominationally. But in contrast, we don’t see that happening where you don’t just have groups going from A to B2C on the question of the canon where, well, I think Hebrews is in this week and you’ve decided it’s out and then we switch the next week. That’s not happening at all. Rather, you have this consensus emerging in a way that doesn’t look like human effort.

It looks like the work of God and the work of God is infallible. So that leads to the second point, which is that I understand where Gavin’s coming from. Oftentimes when Catholics talk about infallibility, we talk about it in a top down sort of way. What has the Pope said? What has an ecumenical council said? And so many people, Protestant and Catholic alike frankly don’t realize that the Catholic conception of infallibility doesn’t just work in that top down sort of way. So I think you see that in Gavin’s arguments. He seems to pretty explicitly link infallibility with a top down approach and he contrasts it with what he calls an organic process within the church, even though from a Catholic perspective, the Holy Spirit can work in both of those ways.

CLIP:

The canon coming together. New Testament canon is not the result of infallible mechanisms. It’s not the result of an ex cathedral statement from a pope, and it’s not the result of an ecumenical council. It was not a top down declaration,

Joe:

But of course the Holy Spirit can inspire the church from the bottom up in the organic of the process as he puts it just as much as he can from the top down with creeds and councils and popes and the like. So instead of talking about papal infallibility, let’s talk about people infallibility. Now, some of you watching this or listening to it might be thinking that doesn’t sound very Catholic of you because you have this image of the church being super hierarchical that every decision is resolved at the Vatican or at an ecumenical council, but that’s a caricature, a caricature that frankly many Catholics are guilty of propagating. It’s not what the church claims about herself or her own authority. For instance, the Second Vatican council is quite explicit that the holy people of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office such that the entire body of the faithful anointed as they are by the holy one cannot air in matters of belief.

Notice this is explicitly about infallibility, but it’s not just the Pope or ecumenical councils that’s acting in an infallible way. Here’s the whole people of God collectively that organic unfolding of doctrine. Now, that process that Gavin has described where the people of God went from disunity to near complete unity on an important topic, namely which books belong in the Bible, that’s a perfect illustration of the kind of thing Vatican II is talking about is a sign of Christian anointing at work. The catechism of the Catholic church echoes this in paragraphs 91 and 92 saying that all the faithful share an understanding and handing on revealed truth that is not just the teaching office of the church. They all the faithful have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit who instructs them and guides them into all truth. This is how you can have, for instance, Catholic laity who can point out if their bishop is saying something that’s not quite right.

Paragraph 92 says, the whole body of the faithful cannot air in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of faith called the census feet ae or sense of the faith on the part of the whole people when from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent and matters of faith and morals. So where’s this coming from? Is this just some crazy thing the catechism made up or Vatican two made up? Not at all. You can find the biblical support for this in places like one John chapter two in which St John writes that the anointing which you receive from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie just as it has taught you abide in him.

Now, to be completely clear here, John is clearly not meaning that you literally do not need Christian teaching. Obviously he’s writing them a letter after all, but he is saying that your knowledge of the faith isn’t just coming from the official teaching body of the church. The faithful don’t need every point of theology and every moral question settled by a top down sort of infallible decision or a definition by the church. If you’re wondering, should I go murder my neighbor? You don’t have to pull out the catechism or even the Bible you’d know at the level of your heart because you’ve been formed by Christ in this way. That’s the claim, and this again is not just at the level of the individual, but collectively the people of God are led in this way. We see this as well in places like John chapter 16, verse 13, in which Jesus at the last Supper promises that when the spirit of truth comes, he’ll guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

So notice it’s not that you or I individually has all the truth. It’s rather the people of God collectively the church broadly, not just in a hierarchical sense of church, but the church as the people of God has the fullness of the truth. So if the church or is being led into the phones of the truth is actually what he claims, that means that if the church has come to a consensus on a thing, we can trust it. And this is how the early Christians understood this promise very clearly. And so as a result of that, they would regularly point to the consensus of Christians as evidence that the Holy Spirit had acted in this way and that therefore that was binding even if the church hadn’t officially spoken on a matter and like an infallible top down sort of way is still possessed infallibility because of the organic consensus.

So I’m going to give you a couple examples of people who speak to this in the early church. One of them is St. John Cashin in sometime in the four twenties. He writes that the agreement of all ought then to be in itself already sufficient to compute heresy. Notice that I don’t have to persuade you by the arguments. Once you realize that everybody’s against you, you should realize you’re wrong. That’s the argument for the authority of all shows undoubted truth. Then he says that if a man endeavors to hold opinions contrary to these, we should in the first instance rather condemn his perverseness than listen to his assertions. For one who impugns the judgment of all announces beforehand his own condemnation, and a man who disturbs what has been determined by all is not even given a hearing. So if you have some new version of Christianity that doesn’t match the tradition that’s gone on for 2000 years, we don’t have to listen to it because if the Holy Spirit is leading us into all truth and you’re breaking that consensus, then either you or the Holy Spirit are wrong and the Holy Spirit’s never wrong.

So according to Cashen, the truth has once for all been established by all men. So then whatever arises contrary to it by this very fact is to be recognized at once as falsehood because it differs from the truth. Excuse me when he says when it has been. In other words, he’s not saying all doctrine is settled, but when a doctrine is settled, you can’t unsettle it. Now that Saint John Cian, but I realize not a lot of people have heard of him, more famous on this topic is St. Vincent of Lauren who wrote that in the Catholic church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold the faith which has been believed everywhere, always by all. I occasionally hear Protestants use this in a kind of distorted way to argue against Catholic doctrines. They don’t hold, but I don’t hear them actually grapple with what Vincent is actually arguing for.

He says, we can follow this rule by holding to three things, universality, antiquity and consent. What does he mean by that? By universality, we ought to confess the faith to be true to the whole church throughout the world. Confesses, and this is pretty simple. As a Catholic, I can get on a plane, go to almost any country on earth and find other believing catholics there who have the same faith, the same creed, the same catechism. That’s universality. It’s right there in the name of Catholic. That’s what the word Catholic means. Second, there’s antiquity that just as I can get on a plane, I could also get in a time machine and find out that I have the s... Read more on Catholic.com