Canon Clash! Evangelical star Frank Turek spars with sharp Catholic student Chase over the Bible’s origins and the Church. Jimmy Akin breaks it down with brotherly insight—praising Chase’s solid defense while giving Frank “iron sharpens iron” recommendations on John 14, Trent, the deuterocanonicals, and more. Witty, fair, and packed with surprises—you’ll never see these topics the same way again! Listen now!
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
Recently, well-known Evangelical apologist Frank Turek posted a video of a conversation he had with a Catholic student named Chase who asked him a question.
It was a very interesting exchange.
I thought Chase did very well defending the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith, though I did think that there were some ways Frank could have done better.
What were those ways?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
Introduction
Longtime listeners and viewers will know who Frank Turek is.
He’s an evangelical apologist and podcaster, and he’s a really nice guy.
He’s had me on his show before, and we’ve had very pleasant conversations.
I also responded to a claim he made about hearing the gospel at Mass way back in Episode 3 of The Jimmy Akin Podcast.
And if you use the search feature on my YouTube page, you’ll find several more videos where Frank and I have interacted.
Recently, Frank has been doing an apologetics speaking tour on college campuses, and one of the places he spoke is the University of North Florida.
During that event, he took questions from the audience, and one of the people who asked him a question was a gentleman named Chase.
Frank—or his web team—then put a clip of their interaction on his Cross Examined YouTube channel with the title “Can Christianity Exist Without the Catholic Church?”
And—this is a very little matter and off topic—but I’m really impressed with their proofreading skills, because they correctly capitalized the preposition “without”—which is seven letters long—in the title.
Many people know the general rule that you don’t capitalize prepositions in titles, but you do if they’re five or more letters long, and most people on YouTube don’t know anything about proofreading.
Like a certain other highly entertaining channel that has a video titled “What is a Christian?” where they don’t capitalize the word “is” even though it’s a verb, and verbs are always capitalized in titles.
Sorry. This is the kind of thing that leaps out at you after you’ve been working in the publishing industry for more than 30 years.
Anyway, I watched the interaction between Frank and Chase, and I was rather surprised.
One thing that surprised me is how well Chase did defending his position. He had a lot of facts at his command, and they were quite solid.
I also later spoke with Chase, and he also is a really nice guy.
But I was also surprised at how Frank did.
Proverbs 27:17
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
So I thought I’d go through the video and—in a brotherly spirit of iron sharpens iron and how one man sharpens another—suggest a few things that could help Frank up his game in the future.
“Good Evidence”
We’ll begin where Chase poses a question about how we know what books belong in the Bible.
CHASE: What good is if we can’t have a table of contents given to us by our Lord and the apostles, how can we have Christianity? Honestly, how can we have it without the Catholic Church?
FRANK: Are you talking about the Bible or the interpretation of the Bible?
CHASE: Kind of both of them. Yeah. I mean, we can just fine. The Bible’s fine. That’s a fine one. How do we know what books, especially even just the New Testament can and the Old Testament canon, we could talk about that too. But how do we know that the 27 books in it are correct? Truly not just, well, we think they’re correct because if that’s our one rule of faith, wouldn’t we need to know with absolute
FRANK: Certainty? Jesus and we have good evidence that Jesus said this in John chapter 14 and 26 said . . .
I want to stop there and say that I’m not sure what Frank is referring to here.
He says we have good evidence that Jesus said what is recorded in John 14:26.
I don’t know why he says this.
If you have faith that the Gospel of John is divinely inspired, then yes, we have good evidence that Jesus said what is in John 14:26—or at least that it is consistent with Jesus’ thought, even if it’s paraphrased.
But that’s true of every passage in John.
Here Frank seems to be saying that we have good evidence beyond the mere fact that John reports it that Jesus said this.
And that’s the kind of thing you’d expect him to say at an apologetics talk like this, where many in the audience are atheists.
But what else—beyond the fact that John reports it—could Frank be thinking of?
What makes the evidence good that Jesus said this?
Scholars have proposed various criteria that make the evidence for some statements better than others.
One of these is Multiple Attestation, where we have the same statement or thought reported by multiple independent sources.
Another is the Criterion of Embarrassment, which holds that a statement is more likely to be true if it’s an admission of something the author could find embarrassing, since people don’t like to admit embarrassing things.
But none of the so-called Criteria of Authenticity apply here.
We don’t have multiple authors reporting the thought that Jesus expresses in John 14:26, so multiple attestation doesn’t apply.
And what Jesus says in John 14:26 would not have been embarrassing to John, so the criterion of embarrassment doesn’t apply.
Neither do the other criteria of authenticity.
I also checked multiple commentaries on this passage, and none of them cited any special evidence for why we can have greater confidence that Jesus said this than the other statements John reports him making.
So I don’t know what Frank is referring to here.
I suspect this may have been a slip of the tongue on Frank’s part or a bit of accidental hyperbole, which is no big deal.
But if so, then that’s something I would not say in the future.
“He Will Bring to Your Remembrance”
But back to Frank.
FRANK: . . . in John chapter 14 and 26 said “First of all, I will bring your remembrance all that I taught you and I will lead you into all truth.”
Okay, that’s actually a fusion of two different passages in John.
John 14:26
The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
John 16:13
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
First, in John 14:26, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will teach the disciples all things and bring what he has said to their remembrance.
Then, in John 16:13, Jesus says that when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
Fair enough.
And I’m not criticizing Frank here. Speakers—myself included—often mention different passages in the same breath when giving answers that they’re composing off the tops of their heads.
So what implications does Frank draw from these two passages?
FRANK: The idea here is that Jesus was going to inspire the apostles or people that the apostles knew to write down the New Testament.
Whoa! Okay, here is where Frank and I have a disagreement.
I don’t think that you can establish that from either of these passages, so let’s take another look at them.
First, let’s look at John 14:26 in context. Verses 25 to 27 say:
John 14:25-27
These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
So Jesus begins this passage by pointing backwards to the things he has spoken to you during his ministry.
He then assures them that the Holy Spirit will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance everything Jesus said.
So the disciples would have access to that material if they wanted to write the books of the New Testament, and that would be useful to them.
But Jesus doesn’t give them any command to do that. He doesn’t mention them writing any books.
In fact, he pivots to a new subject, saying, “Peace I leave with you my peace I give you.” So he moves on to start talking about peace.
And if you keep reading subsequent verses, he never mentions them writing anything there, either.
So this passage simply is not talking about the writing of the New Testament, as illustrated by the fact it never mentions the New Testament or writing at all.
So what does this passage mean?
Put yourself in the position of the disciples sitting around Jesus at the Last Supper.
They’ve been following Jesus for three years, but they haven’t always understood his teaching.
In fact, the Gospels show their understanding of his teachings being repeatedly corrected.
And now Jesus is giving a big farewell speech and saying goodbye to them.
You know, “My peace I leave with you.”
So Jesus is going away, but he’s leaving his peace.
In this circumstance, the disciples might wonder, “Will we be able to hang onto all of his teachings? Will we forget some of the Master’s precious teachings? Will we be able to teach others the way he wants us to?”
Yes, Jesus assures them. The Holy Spirit will remind you of them.
So that is what this verse is: An assurance that the disciples will remember what Jesus said.
It doesn’t say anything about them later writing them down.
And they wouldn’t envision him as giving such a command, because they didn’t expect him to be gone long.
Just forty days after Pentecost, the disciples are asking him:
Acts 1:6
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
They were expecting him to bring about the end of the world right then!
And even after the Ascension, they continued to expect the Second Coming to happen in their own lifetimes.
They thought they were the last generation.
That’s why Paul—in 1 Thessalonians 4:15—puts himself into the category of people who will still be alive at the Second Coming and says:
1 Thessalonians 4:15
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
We can also show that the disciples didn’t understand Jesus’ statement in John 14:26 as an instruction to write the New Testament because they didn’t write any of the Gospels for literally decades.
1 Thessalonians may be the very first book of the New Testament to be penned, and it wasn’t written until A.D. 50—17 years after the Crucifixion in A.D. 33.
When it comes to the Gospels—which should be the books in focus if we’re talking about things Jesus had [I have] spoken to you during his ministry—it’s even worse.
Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and most scholars date it to between A.D. 68 and 73.
I put it earlier than that. I think the evidence indicates it was written in the A.D. 50s, say around A.D. 55.
You can check out Episode 64 for more information on that.
But if Mark was written in A.D. 55, that’s 22 years after the Crucifixion, so the first Gospel wasn’t written until literally decades after Jesus gave the disciples this assurance.
The other Gospels were even later.
So that’s a pretty good sign that the disciples did not take Jesus’ words to be an instruction to go and write Gospels.
It’s a sign that they took Jesus’s statement in the obvious way—that it was just an assurance that they—his closest disciples—would be able to remember what he said and presumably teach it to others.
It would also be strange for Mark to write the very first Gospel since he wasn’t even at the Last Supper.
You’d expect that one of the disciples who was there and who unambiguously received this assurance would be the first one to write a Gospel.
Now what about the second passage Frank quoted, from John 16?
Reading that statement in context, in verses 12 and 13, Jesus says:
John 16:12-13
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will 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 Jesus does say that when the Spirit comes, he will guide the disciples into all the truth.
But what is Jesus thinking of here? There are two elements in this text that indicate Jesus is thinking of future revelations that have not yet been made.
First, Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
This suggests that he’s referring to things he has not yet said to the disciples and that will be difficult to bear.
If he were referring to things he had already said, they would have already been bearing them, and he’d just be giving them a reminder.
Thus the reference to the future—“I still have many things to say to you”—is to be taken in its natural sense of things he has not yet said.
Second, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will declare to you the things that are to come, which is an unmistakable reference to future events.
And we know from other places in the New Testament—including the book of Revelation—that there would be persecutions and difficulties ahead.
That sounds like things Jesus might have to say to the disciples that they could not now bear.
This passage is thus naturally taken as discussing a future prophetic ministry by which Jesus speaks things to the disciples that they cannot bear now, but the Spirit will speak whatever he hears from Jesus, and so he will declare to them the things that are to come.
This isn’t an instruction to go out and write books.
In the literal sense of the text, it’s a prediction of a future prophetic ministry involving Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
I’m thus sorry to say that Frank is simply mistaken about these passages.
Neither of them contains anything like an instruction to write the books of the New Testament.
That’s not to say that they don’t have anything to do with the writing of the New Testament.
As I mentioned, Jesus’ assurance that they would remember what he said would be of use if the disciples ever decided to write Gospels.
And the prophetic ministry of Christ and the Holy Spirit could play a role in something like the book of Revelation.
But the writing of such books simply is not what Jesus is talking about in these passages.
Westminster Confession of Faith 1:6
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.
And—frankly—it’s not something that someone who believes in sola scriptura would propose, since it is neither expressly set down in these scriptures nor by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from these scriptures.
What Frank has been doing here is not Exegesis or = Bringing the meaning out of the text.
It’s Eisegesis or = Forcing a meaning into the text.
So if I were Frank, I wouldn’t make this argument.
What the New Testament Contains
But let’s set that aside and see what he says next.
FRANK: And so the only question we have now is what documents were written in the first century by apostles or people that knew the apostles that would qualify as scripture? And if you look, there are nine authors of the New Testament depending upon who wrote the book of Hebrews. So you got Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, Jude, James, and then the writer of Hebrews. Okay? The only question mark is the writer of Hebrews. All of those other people were either apostles or were confirmed by apostles like Luke is confirmed by Paul. Okay? So that’s all we have from the first century.
Except, that’s not all we have from the first century. We have other Christian works from this period, too.
In addition to the books of the New Testament, we have other books that were certainly or possibly written in the first century, including:
- The Didache (“Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”)
- The Ascension of Isaiah
- 1 Clement
- 2 Clement
- The Letter of Barnabas
- The Shepherd of Hermas
- The Odes of Solomon
- The Apocalypse of Peter
And some of these books were considered to be Scripture by some in the early Church.
You can check out Episode 32 for more information on that.
Part of the reason for that was that most were regarded as fitting the criterion Frank just named—of being written either by an apostle or someone who knew the apostles and thus could be presumed to have their approval, as Mark and Luke did.
The Didache was regarded as being by the Twelve apostles as a group.
1 Clement was written by Clement of Rome, who was held to be the one mentioned Philippians 4:3 and who had been ordained and thus approved by Peter and Paul.
2 Clement was commonly regarded as written by him also.
The Letter of Barnabas was held to be written by the Apostle Barnabas, who Luke calls an apostle—together with Paul—in Acts 14:14
The Shepherd of Hermas was written by a Roman freedman named Hermas who was held to be the same one mentioned and greeted by Paul in Romans 16:14.
And the Apocalypse of Peter was held by many Christians to have been written by Peter himself.
So there were multiple books that were held to be written by apostles or those they approved that did not make it into the New Testament, even though they were regarded as Scripture by some orthodox early Christians for several centuries.
Thus, if I were Frank, I wouldn’t claim that the books of the New Testament are all we have from the first century and that only they meet or were regarded as meeting the criterion of apostolicity.
And I definitely wouldn’t imply that there was no dispute about these being Scripture, because there was.
Agreement on the New Testament
But let’s continue. Frank says concerning the books of the New Testament . . .
FRANK: And Roman Catholics and evangelicals all agree on that. Those are the books that should be in.
Yes. True. Catholic and Protestants—as well as Eastern Orthodox—agree on the books of the New Testament.
But there was a process by which that agreement arose. So how did that happen?
FRANK: And it’s not the church that determines what went into the Bible.
CHASE: For sure. And that’s not position is that they recognize.
FRANK: They recognize.
CHASE: Not that they grant authority to, that they recognize . . .
Again, we have agreement here. Nobody thinks that the Church invested the books of the New Testament with divine authority.
That’s something God did.
The Church merely recognized it.
But we still need to consider the process by which that happened, which was through the Church, as we’ll cover later.
A Detour on the Old Testament
However, at this point, the discussion takes a detour to look at the Old Testament canon.
FRANK: The Old Testament canon was pretty much agreed on prior to the Council of Trent.
That’s true. The Old Testament canon was pretty much agreed on prior to the Council of Trent.
But not the way Frank thinks it was.
It was pretty much agreed that it contained not only the protocanonical books that you find in a Protestant Old Testament today but also the deuterocanonical books you find in the Catholic and Orthodox canons.
There was some disagreement about a few of these books, and there were even occasional individuals who thought it should only be the protocanonicals.
But it was pretty much agreed by the large majority of people prior to the Council of Trent that it included these additional books.
An Ecumenical Council Argument
Unfortunately, Frank says the opposite, and he says something really strange here.
FRANK: Because there was never an ecumenical council that put the apocrypha in the Old Testament from the Catholic church.
Okay, we’ll deal with the ecumenical council claim soon, but first we need to notice a flaw in the reasoning.
Even if it were true that Trent was the first ecumenical council to include the deuterocanonical or apocryphal books in the Old Testament, that does not mean that there had previously been a general agreement to the contrary.
Just because an ecumenical council affirms a doctrine does not mean that, prior to the council, most people rejected the doctrine.
For example, the First Council of Nicaea taught the divinity of Christ, but you can’t infer from that that—prior to Nicaea—that most people rejected the divinity of Christ and then the council suddenly reversed this position.
That’s not how ecumenical councils work.
Ecumenical councils are not popular consensus reversers. Their job is not to reverse what people were believing right before the council.
They tend to do the opposite. They tend to reaffirm the things that were commonly believed before the council and add more authority to them.
Thus—prior to the Council of Nicaea—there was a general agreement that Jesus is God.
Then an Egyptian priest named Arius started teaching that Jesus was not God, it caused a huge controversy, and the Council of Nicaea reaffirmed that Jesus is God and added new authority to this teaching.
In the same way, there was a general agreement before the Council of Trent that the Old Testament includes the deuterocanonicals, the Protestant movement then started and began denying this, a huge controversy erupted, and the Council of Trent then reaffirmed the common understanding and added new authority to it.
I’ll show you more evidence for that soon, and as we’ll see, there was an earlier ecumenical council that included the deuterocanonicals in the canon.
But setting that aside, you simply can’t infer from Trent that the opposite opinion prevailed before Trent.
If you want to maintain that, you need to provide evidence for the position.
Augustine and Jerome
So what evidence does Frank offer?
FRANK: Go back to the 400s AD. Augustine thought the apocrypha should be in the Old Testament, but Jerome, the great translator, did not.
So Frank names two individuals from the early Church—Augustine and Jerome—and says that they were on opposite sides when it came to whether the deuterocanonicals should be considered canonical.
The situation is actually more complex than that, but again—for the sake of argument—let’s suppose that’s accurate.
We’d now have the opinions of two guys.
So what?
Two guys doesn’t tell you anythin... Read more on Catholic.com