We're going to look today at the subject of the Canon of Scripture. The subject of the Canon of Scripture is directly related to the issue of authority, for the Roman Catholic Church claims ultimate authority, as we saw last week, for itself, since it says that it was responsible for establishing the limits of the Canon. That's one of the lines of reasoning that it uses. In other words, it is the Roman Catholic Church which has authoritatively established the limits of the authority of Scripture, and therefore, by implication, the authority of the Church is greater than that of the Scriptures. And the logic is put to the Protestant Church, if you accept the limits of the canon which was authoritatively established by the Roman Catholic Church, why do you reject the ultimate authority of that church? Well, the simple reason is because the Protestant Church does not accept the premises upon which that logic rests. The Protestant Church rejects the specific claims that the Roman Catholic Church makes for itself regarding the canon in a couple of major areas. First of all, the Church of Rome did not establish the canon for the church. As far as the New Testament is concerned, the two provincial councils of Hippo and Carthage, held in North Africa in 393 AD and 397 AD respectively, merely ratified what had already generally been received in the church for many, many years. And secondly, with respect to the Old Testament, It added a number of apocryphal books which were never included in the Jewish Hebrew canon and in addition to which had historically been rejected by the general consensus of the fathers of the early church. It is also a fact that these same books continue to be rejected by the Eastern and Western churches as holding canonical status right up to the time of the Reformation. The apocryphal books were not received into the canon of the Old Testament until the Council of Trent in the 16th century in 1546. That was the first ecumenical council in the church from a Roman Catholic perspective at least to give an official authorization to those books. Now let me back up what I'm saying with basically with the facts of history relative to the New and the Old Testament. Let's look at the New Testament canon and then we'll look at the Old Testament canon. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the New Testament canon because the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches both agree on the books that are to be included in the canon of the New Testament. I only want to highlight this fact that very early in the history of the church there was a recognized canon of the New Testament, books of the New Testament, and that that canon was generally received in the church long before the councils of Hippo and Carthage at the end of the fourth century. Again, these councils did not establish the canon. They merely ratified or approved what was already the established practice of the church as a whole. We find very early after the apostolic age, that is after the writings of the apostles, after the times of the apostles, we find very early the establishing of a canon of the New Testament and that's seen from a number of different lines of evidence. First of all, there are direct allusions in the New Testament itself to apostolic writings which were regarded as being inspired and therefore authoritative scripture. Secondly, you have the writings of the apostolic fathers. Those are those individuals and some of these writings, we don't know who wrote them, but obviously they're written by individuals. These are writings which come directly after the apostolic age. Thirdly, you have the writings of heretics and the first generation or the second generation after the apostles. Then you've got the translations of scriptures of the New Testament itself and the Old Testament. And you have catalogs along with that of canonical books. Then you've got the writings of the 2nd and 3rd century fathers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria and Origen. You have the Diocletian persecution at the beginning of the 4th century. We'll see the importance of that. The Council of Laodicea passed certain canons relative to canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. And then you have the writings of the church fathers such as Athanasius and Epiphanius in the 4th century. Okay, let's just look at those points very briefly. as far as the writings of the New Testament are concerned, specific references in the New Testament itself. Peter, in 2 Peter 3.16, refers to Paul's writings as scripture. It's a very specific claim to Pauline writings, and it seems to be a corpus of books which he is referring to when he refers to Paul's writings, and he refers to them as scripture. Paul, in 1 Timothy 5.18, refers to Luke's gospel in quoting the Lord Jesus as scripture. And it's a direct quote from the book of Luke. And finally, Jude, in Jude 17 and 18, is probably referring to Peter's second epistle. It's almost a direct quote from chapter 3, verses 2 to 3. It seems to regard this as authoritative scripture. So we have in scripture itself, in the New Testament, allusions, either direct or indirect, to the writings of the apostles, which are considered to be scripture. They're either called that directly or there's an allusion to it in their writings. Then you have the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Now, the Apostolic Fathers basically is a collection of writings from anywhere from about 69 or 70 AD all the way up to about 150 AD. Those writings include the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthian Church, that's dated around 95 AD, the Epistles of Ignatius, which were written about 110 to 117 AD, the Epistle of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the Apostle John, That was written, well, we don't know when it was written exactly. I think Polycarp lived from about 70 to about 155 AD. And you have a writing called the Martyrdom of Polycarp. The Didache is probably the oldest writing we have, at least some think that it is, of the apostolic fathers. It's basically a church manual. That, they don't know exactly when it was written. They think prior to the beginning of the first century, but it's dated anywhere from 70 to 130 AD. The Epistle of Barnabas, or Pseudo-Barnabas as it's called, because they don't know that it really was Barnabas, they doubt that it was Barnabas who wrote it, but it nonetheless comes into the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, that is dated 70 to 90 AD. The Shepherd of Hermas comes out of Rome, that's somewhere between 100 and 140 AD. The Epistle to Diognetus is about 150, and then you have fragments of the writings of Papias, and he lived between 70 and 163 AD. Now, these writings provide the earliest documentation for the majority of the canonical books of the New Testament. Every single one of the books of the New Testament is quoted or alluded to in those writings, except for 3 John. They are quoted as authoritative. Many of them are allusions, and by allusions what I mean, they don't give you a chapter and a verse, but they are breathing out, if you will, the very letter of I mean, it's very clear where they are coming from. Clement, for example, quotes out of the book of Hebrews almost word for word out of the letter without saying it comes from Hebrews so-and-so. But it's nonetheless a direct allusion to the book of Hebrews. And you find that every single book of the New Testament is given some kind of authorization in those writings. And they come, if you think about where these writings come from, they come from the major centers of the ancient church, from Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, and Rome. And again, they literally breathe the New Testament. B.F. Westcott, who's one of the greatest scholars relative to the canon in his research, has said that the apostolic fathers illustrate alike the language and doctrines of the New Testament. They show that the great facts of the gospel narrative and the substance of the apostolic letters form the basis and molded the expression of the common creed. They recognize the fitness of a canon and indicate within which it must be fixed. And then he concludes with this summary. The first hundred years of the existence of the 27 books of the New Testament revealed that virtually every one of them was quoted as authoritative and recognized as canonical by men who were themselves the younger contemporaries of the apostolic age. And what we conclude from those facts is that there was an implicit acceptance and recognition by the church at a very early stage in the canon of the New Testament and this became more explicit as the church had to battle heretics and as it went through persecution. Men did not establish in an official council early on, this is scripture and this is not scripture, but they recognized these books as authoritative scripture. It was implicit in the church. The New Catholic Encyclopedia basically affirms that when it makes this statement, It says, the canon already implicitly present in the apostolic age gradually became explicit through a number of providential factors forming and fixing it. So when you read through the apostolic fathers in these, I would recommend you read them, it's just a little volume of writings, very interesting to read, you see they just breathe scripture. And the authority, the underlying authority for everything they're teaching and saying is scripture, both Old Testament and New. Then you have the fact of heretical writers, the earliest false teachers who come one or two generations after the apostles, witness clearly to the existence and reception of canonical books. You have men like Valentinus, who is referred to constantly by Tertullian and Irenaeus. You've got Vassilades, Heracleion, Ptolemaeus. These are all Gnostics, basically. They all sought to maintain their heretical teachings from the scriptures, from canonical books. Tertullian states that Valentinus accepted the whole corpus of the New Testament canon. And he goes on to say that the way he puts it is that he says that he used the whole instrument. Tertullian's usage is when he refers to the scriptures of the New Testament, he calls them the instruments of doctrine. And he said Valentinus used the whole instrument, which means that he refers to the whole canon. He accepted the whole canon as opposed to Marcion. Marcion was another Gnostic. He said Marcion mutilated And what he meant by that is that Marcion took certain books out of the canon. Even though Valentinus, he says, accepted the whole instrument, what he did was he misrepresented it by misinterpreting it. Although he accepted it all, he said Marcion, on the other hand, mutilated it. And what we find historically is that the first catalog that we have of canonical books comes from Marcion, from the heretic. He did that about 140 AD. And basically what he did was he established his own canon of scripture in opposition to the holy scriptures of the church from which he had separated. He had been in the church of Rome. He came up with all these heretical teachings and decided that there were certain scriptures that were accepted in the church that he didn't accept because they didn't agree with his teaching. So he just excised them, started his own. He accepted the majority of the writings of Paul and part of Luke for the most part. Yes, Paul. Is Nazism one movement? They're exactly the earliest heretical movements. One movement is redeeming one thing. Just to repeat your question, is Gnosticism one movement? Is it the first heresy? It's not necessarily. It's one of the very earliest heresies. I think it's probably right up there with the Judaizers. I think the Judaizers were probably the first heresy that we see in the New Testament. Gnosticism, I think you find John writing against Gnosticism. In 1 John, you also find him writing this in the Book of John, in the Gospel of John. So it's very early, but it really flowers later. But it is multifaceted and there are many dimensions to that kind of philosophy. But what you find with Marcion is that he started his own heretical movement. He used his own standard of canon, if you will, of Scripture. But the important point to be noted from that is that Martin's critic changed him with mutilating something that had already existed. So there had to be some generally accepted standard of what constituted a canon of authoritative New Testament Scripture for him to be criticizing with changing standard. So there was some standard there of recognized books called a canon of the New Testament, which the church accepted early on. The first commentary on the New Testament comes from a Gnostic, from Heracleion, And Westcott says that the introduction of commentaries implies the strongest belief in the authenticity and authority of the New Testament Scriptures. Then you have translations and catalogs. There were two major translations of the New Testament and the Old Testament done in the second century. One is called the Peshitta, which is from Syria. It's an eastern translation. And the other is the Old Latin, which probably originated in North Africa. Then about 170 AD, you have a catalog of canonical books called the Muratorian Fragment, which originated out of Rome. The Muratorian Fragment includes all of the books of the New Testament except for Hebrews, James, 1st and 2nd Peter. And then at the end of the 2nd century, there is a catalog from the Codex Baracosio, otherwise known as the 60 books, which lists all the New Testament books except for Revelation. Now, what you have is certain parts of the church have certain questions about certain books. For example, one part of the church in the East, for example, may question the book of Revelation. The church in the West will implicitly accept Revelation. There's no problem with Revelation. The church in the West, on the other hand, would question the book of Hebrews. The church in the East has no problem with the book of Hebrews. They fully accept the book of Hebrews. They have a question about the book of Revelation. So when you put together then the Pashita, the Muratorian Fragment, the Old Latin Translation, and the Codex called the Sixty Books, you have in a combination of those the total 27 books in the New Testament canon. It is true that none of these early catalogs gives you a complete list of all the books. What you don't have though is a complete rejection of those books by anybody in the church. You simply have some books held in reserve. because they were simply not sure about either who the author was or about the authority of the writing. But generally speaking, the vast majority of the New Testament was held as authoritative very early in the church. The second and third century writers, like Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian in origin. Irenaeus, who knew Polycarp, who in turn was a disciple of the Apostle John. Irenaeus lived from about 130 to 202 AD. He quotes from 24 of the 27 books of the New Testament, and he makes over 1,800 quotations from the New Testament alone. Clement of Alexandria lived from 150 to 215. He was the head of the catechetical school at Alexandria. He cites all the New Testament books except Philemon, James, and 2 Peter, and he gives 2,400 citations from the New Testament. He, in his writings, recognizes a collection of New Testament writings which he calls the Scriptures of the Lord under the title of the Gospel and the Apostle. Under the broad heading of the gospel, it would obviously be the four gospels. The apostle would be all the epistles. So that's a collection of writings that he recognizes under that heading. Then you have Tertullian who lived from 160 to 220 approximately. He makes over 7,200 New Testament citations. He's the first one to introduce the phrase New Testament relative to the writings of the New Testament. And then Origen was the most prolific writer probably the church has ever known. He lived from 185 to 254. He was renowned in his day, probably the most brilliant man of his age, without doubt. He died in martyrdom. He succeeded Clement of Alexandria at the catechetical school in Alexandria. He makes nearly 18,000 New Testament quotations in his writings. He states that no one should use for proof of doctrine books not included among the canonized scriptures. That's his statement. So by the end of the third century, You have these writers giving prolific allusion, direct quote from the New Testament writings almost in their entirety. And what's interesting is that by the end of the third century, virtually the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from the writings of the church fathers if you never had a Bible. In the persecution of Diocletian, that persecution was interesting because it specifically had as its purpose to destroy the Christian scriptures. We don't have the original edict that went out. We don't know what books that would have included but it was very obvious that if you're going to go after certain writings that they must have had certain writings in mind known as the Christian scriptures which would have included the New Testament writings. They sent out to destroy them. Anyone caught with them would be tortured, could be martyred. So people were going to make very certain that if a Roman soldier came to their door to inquire about scripture, they're going to make very certain that they know the difference between what am I willing to die for. In other words, if this is an apocryphal book, I'm not willing to die for an apocryphal book. So there must have been some body of writings that was recognized in that day, around the year 300, as Christian scripture, a body of canon, of scriptures that people would recognize and accept. The Council of Laodicea was held in the middle of the 4th century somewhere between 350 and 380. It passed a canon which states that in the church only the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments are to be read. Now that obviously implies an authoritative canon of the New Testament generally recognized in the church at that time. Right after this canon we have a writing from Athanasius. The first complete canon of scripture that we possess in writing where all the books are listed It's given by Athanasius in 367 AD in one of his festive letters. Now, I've given you the sheet that will, as I go through some of these church fathers, I'm not going to go into lengthy quotations from their writings. You can read their quotations that I have given to you. His is the first that lists all of the books that we recognize as the New Testament canon today. Now, that is nearly 30 years before the Council of Hippo in 393. Athanasius was not simply giving his personal opinion and he's the Bishop of Alexandria, and he was giving the official view of the church of his day. So clearly, then, the canon of Scripture was established in the church long before the councils of Hippo and Carthage. If you want to look for someone who authoritatively established the canon, and you have it in writing, it would have to be, the first one at least, it would have to be Athanasius, because from two perspectives, it was the influence of Athanasius, apparently, we believe, that got the Roman Church to finally accept the book of Hebrews as being part of the canon of the New Testament. And also, his teachings on the canon of Scripture were given dogmatic sanction by the decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Hippo and Carthage did ratify the canon of the New Testament for both the East and the West And from that time on, there was nearly unanimous consent in the church in both the East and the West as to what the extent of the New Testament canon was. But those councils of Carthage and Hippo, they did not establish the canon of Scripture. It was done before. They simply recognized or ratified what was generally accepted in the church of that day. It's a mistaken notion to think that by the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, we could say Roman Catholic because this is a Western Council that's held in North Africa, but to think that it's somehow the Roman Catholic Church by its authority that is establishing the canon of Scripture for all of the Church, that simply is not the case. Let's look at the canon of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha in particular. In any discussion of the authority of Scripture, it is necessary to address The question of the Apocrypha for the Roman Church includes the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon, while the Protestant Church rejects that view. The Council of Trent included the Apocryphal writings of Barak, Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Bel and the Dragon, in addition to the Book of Esther and 1 and 2 Maccabees into the canon of Scripture. And to support its view, the Council of Trent will go back to the councils of Hippo and Carthage, in 393 and 397 under the leadership of Augustine in which it is claimed that the church has authoritatively defined the content of canon including the Apocrypha because those councils did in fact state that the Apocrypha should be included in the canon of Scripture as far as the Old Testament was concerned. But that's a distortion of the real facts. There are three major reasons historically for rejecting the view of the Council of Trent. First of all, the Jews did not accept the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon. And the Jews were the ones who were given the authority for preserving and for receiving the oracles of God. Paul says that in Romans 3. The Jews did not receive the Apocrypha as part of their canon. Secondly, the general consensus of the early church did not include the Apocrypha writings in the canon of the Old Testament. Although some fathers did believe they were authoritative, but generally speaking, they were not accepted. And thirdly, the term canonical, as used by the church of later centuries, came to have a narrow as well as a broad meaning. There are those books which were considered to be inspired and were alone in the strict sense truly canonical. And there were other books which had ecclesiastical sanction and that they were considered profitable to be read in the church, but they were not considered to be part of Scripture in the strict sense, and they were never used for the establishing of doctrine. So you've got two basic meanings of the word canonical, and we'll see this established historically. You've got a broad view of canonicity, but within that broad view there is the more narrow view that only the inspired books are truly canonical relative to authoritatively defining doctrine. As we will see, that was the prevailing view of the Church right up to the beginning of the Reformation. What about the Jewish canon? With respect to the Jewish view of the Old Testament canon, the Hebrew canon used by the Jews of Palestine did not include the Apocrypha. All the evidence points to the fact that the Hebrew canon was comprised of the same 39 books as accepted by the Protestant Church. Jesus refers to the Scriptures as comprising the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, which was a convenient summation of the traditional list for the books which did not include the Apocrypha. Jesus and the Apostles do not quote from any of the Apocryphal books. though they quote quite prolifically from the vast majority of the Old Testament canonical books. Okay, Josephus is a witness to us of what the canon of the Old Testament or of the Hebrew Old Testament was. He was a first century Jewish historian. He tells us that the Hebrew canon consisted of 22 books which did not include the Apocrypha. The number 22 basically corresponds to the same 39 books that we hold in the Protestant canon of the Old Testament. The way they come up with the different numbers is that they combine certain books together. For example, all of the Minor Prophets, all 12 books, are considered to be just one book. And then you've got some other books that are combined together. For example, Ruth might be appended to Judges, Lamentations to Jeremiah. So we've got separate books in our scriptures that would be considered to be part of another book. So you have a less number but the same books. Sometimes in the catalogs of the writings of the fathers, you'll hear them talk about there's 24 books in the Old Testament. The majority say there are 22. But all of them, when they make these numbers, they distinguish between those books which are truly canonical, which they would consider to be the Hebrew canon, and those which are the Apocrypha. They make that distinction. Josephus makes this statement about the writings of the Apocrypha. He says, from our deserts to our own time, a detailed record has been made But this has not been thought worthy of equal credit with the earlier records because there has not been since then the exact succession of prophets. So what he's saying is that these writings of the Apocrypha are not on the same level with the writings of the inspired scriptures. He rejects the Apocrypha as being truly canonical and inspired and he gives witness to the fact that the Hebrew canon did not include the writings of the Apocrypha as the limits of the canon, he says, were strictly set at 22 books. You also have the fact that the The first century Jew Philo, who wrote extensively on the Old Testament, never quotes from the Apocrypha. And the Council of Jamnia, which was a Jewish council held in 90 AD, did not recognize the Apocrypha. That was a strictly Jewish council. They likewise reject the Apocrypha as being part of the canon of the Old Testament in the sense that this is God-inspired scripture. Some have suggested that the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, did include the Apocrypha as part of the canon, and that there were therefore two canons. You have a looser canon, if you will, in Alexandria, where the Septuagint originated, from the Greeks, and then you have a stricter canon from the Hebrews in Palestine. But the evidence suggests otherwise, than that for the earliest copies of the Septuagint that we have, come from about the 4th century, they're all written by Christians. We don't have any of the Septuagint versions that were written back before the Christian era, so we can't say authoritatively whether the Septuagint included the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon. It's more probable that the original Septuagint did not include the Apocrypha, for the Alexandrian Jews followed the authority of the Palestinian Jews. That's their homeland. And if they eventually were included, if those writings eventually became included in the Septuagint, it was probably initially done as an appendix. It was simply held like the early church, as we'll see, held some of these writings to be not on an equal authority with Scripture, but they could be used for edification purposes. So they were included as an appendix, not to be used authoritatively for the establishment of doctrine, but simply for edification, to be read. And what happened then probably is that as the Statute of Judgment became translated, the method for translation became different. These books became included together and there was no way to distinguish between what is authoritative and what isn't. And the books just became intermixed together. This, I think, is an explanation for why some of the fathers in the early church, whose really only authoritative Bible that they used was the Septuagint, who had no Hebrew background of any kind, would not have been able to distinguish between these books which were canonical, according to the Jews, and those that should not be received as canonical, which were apocryphal. And so that they would just simply accept these books as scripture, but do so mistakenly. It's worth noting that there are only two true biblical scholars in the early church. One is Origen. The other is Jerome. Both these men were familiar with Palestine. They had gone there. Jerome actually lived there. He lived in Bethlehem. These men were real scholars. They knew the Hebrew language. Both of them rejected the Apocrypha as being part of the canonical scriptures because both of them say that the Jews do not receive the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon. Even the New Catholic Dictionary affirms the fact that the Hebrew canon did not include the Apocrypha, and that the Protestant Church follows the canon as established by Jewish authority, while the Roman Catholics have added books which were not in the original canon. The dictionary says this, for the Old Testament, Protestants follow the Jewish canon. They have only the books that are in the Hebrew Bible. Catholics have, in addition, seven deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. So even the official Roman Catholic authorities readily admit that the strict Hebrew canon did not contain the Apocrypha and that the Protestant Church is true to the original canon that were given to the Jews, the Hebrew canon. Furthermore, the majority of the Fathers in the Christian dispensation do not receive the Apocrypha as being canonical, but as comprising books which were useful, again, to be read in the Church. Athanasius, who was Bishop of Alexandria, where the Septuagint was produced, does not include the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon. Cyril of Jerusalem, who wrote in the middle of the 4th century, gives us a catalog of the Old Testament books which were canonical, and which he says were translated by the Septuagint translators, handed down, he says, to the fathers. He says they did not include the Apocrypha. And he specifies the Septuagint translators. He says that we have received these books as authoritative. He excludes the Apocrypha and he says these are the ones that were handed down to us by those who translated the Old Testament scriptures and the Septuagint. So he excludes the Apocrypha relative to the Septuagint. Okay, that brings us into a consideration of the fathers of the early church and what their views were towards these writings. The first list given us by a Christian writer is that of Melito of Sardis. His writings are preserved for us in the Church History by Eusebius. Melito tells us that he went to Palestine to ascertain the exact number of the books which comprise the Hebrew canon. He wanted to know, authoritatively, what is the Hebrew canon? You can see a lot of these men had to deal with Jews. So, if you're going to deal with Jews on the basis of... Justin Martyr had this problem in dealing with the Jews. He would appeal to the Septuagint and he said, that's not authoritative because you add books that are not authoritative. So what he's doing is he's saying, okay, what is authoritative scripture as far as the Jews are concerned? What is in the canon of the Old Testament? Well, he went to Palestine to find out the exact number of the books of the Hebrew canon. He gives the names of those books and their number is 22. It's a reaffirmation of what we're told by Josephus. Origen also states that the Hebrew canon was comprised of 22 books, and he lists them by name. We have that list again in Eusebius, but you need to notice something about Eusebius. He quotes Origen. He quotes Origen at the Book of the Twelve, but he omits the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets. That's a mistake in the writing of Eusebius. It's either his mistake or somebody transcribing it, because Origen quotes from and comments on the 12 Minor Prophets in his commentaries and he obviously believes that they were part of the Hebrew canon so that's simply a mistake. He lists the books as being numbered at 22. Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Basil the Great, Gregory and Ancianson, Hyrule of Paties, and Amphilochius all cite the canon of the Old Testament as consisting of 22 books and they omit the writings of the Apocrypha. I give you a quote from Amphilochius In the list that I gave to you, I gave you what he begins to say in an introduction. I failed to make this statement there. You've got the catalog of books given by Gregory of Nazianzus. What Amphilochius does is he goes on to give you the exact same list that Gregory has. So you might make a notation there. I failed to put that in there. It's the same list, though, that Gregory gives us. The 2nd century Syrian translation of the Scriptures, the Peshitta, also did not include the Apocrypha. The Codex Boricosio, that Codex which we said was also called the Sixty Books, also did not include the Apocrypha. And the Council of Laodicea, when it specified that only the canonical books are to be read in the churches, it does not give us a catalogue of books. Now, there's an interpolation that came later that added a catalogue of books to that canon, but that's an interpolation that came later. Most scholars believe that they did not give a catalog, but what we can assume, and I think fairly accurately, since this is an Eastern Council, it comes just right in the time period when you have Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus giving us these lists in their own writings, that it's a fairly safe assumption to say that when they say only the canonical books should be read, When they talk about the Old Testament, they specifically mean, since this is from the East and these writers are all from the East, that they specifically mean only the Hebrew canon, excluding the Apocrypha. Now, you can't say that dogmatically because it isn't there in writing, but I think by inference we could say that because we have the testimony of these other writers. Appanagius makes a distinction between the inspired scriptures and the writings of the Apocrypha. After listing the number of Old Testament books at 22 and giving a list of authorized canonical New Testament books at 27, he makes the statement, these are the fountains of salvation that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. And these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. He then goes on to make these comments about the apocryphal writings. He says, but for greater exactness, I add this also. writing a necessity that there are other books besides these not included in the canon, but appointed by the fathers to be read by those who newly join us and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the teaching of the apostles and the shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the canon. The latter may merely be read." Okay, you see how he makes that distinction? There are certain books that are canonical, there are certain books that have ecclesiastical sanctions simply to be read in the church, but you don't establish doctrine by them. The important thing to note here is that Athanasius explicitly states that the canonical scriptures alone were used for the determination of doctrine, while the books of the Apocrypha held ecclesiastical sanction for reading only and were not considered to be part of the canon. Now, this is clear testimony to the fact that there is an established canon of both the Old and the New Testaments in the church before the councils of Hippo in 393 and in Carthage in 397. After those councils in 393 and 397, you've got the writings of other men, Jerome in particular. But Rufinus is one who was in Rome, who was a friend of Jerome's. He gives us also a view of scripture and a view of the Apocrypha and other ecclesiastical writings. He also makes a distinction between canonical scriptures and the other writings which were not canonical, but were nonetheless used for edification in the church. Now, the important thing to keep in mind is he's writing at the beginning of the fifth century after these councils supposedly had defined the extent of the canon for the entire church. He is important as a witness to the exact nature of the canon of Scripture. He lived at Rome and he wrote his comments on Scripture just a few years after those canons. He states that the lift that he gives is that which the Fathers, by tradition, have handed down to the Church and that these books alone are used to confirm doctrine and deduce proofs for the faith. He divides the writings circulating in the Church of his day into three broad categories. First, there is the canon of inspired Scripture, the Old and New Testament, which he enumerates Secondly, there are what he calls ecclesiastical writings, which we read in the church, but we're not authoritative for defining of doctrine. And then he mentions the Old Testament Apocrypha in that category. And then he gets a third kind of classification of writings, which he designates by the term apocryphal, which is not to be understood as the apocryphal writings of the Old Testament. But by apocryphal, what he means are heretical writings, which should be shunned completely. They should not be accepted at all. Let me just give you his statement here. relative to the books that are canonical and those that are ecclesiastical. He says, it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers called not canonical, but ecclesiastical. That is to say, Wisdom, called Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom called the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, which last mentioned the Latins, called by the general title of ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the book of Hobbit, the book of Judith, and the books of the Maccabees. He says, all of which they would have read in the churches but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. These are the traditions which the fathers have handed down to us, which, as I have said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the church and of the faith, that they may know from what fountains of the word of God their draw must be taken. You can see he clearly makes a distinction here between the apocryphal writings of the Old Testament. They were ecclesiastical books. They were not canonical in the strict sense of being inspired and authoritative for determining doctrine. Rufinus' view is confirmed by Jerome. By the way, I think Rufinus wrote about 501 to 502, which is a number of years after that last council in Carthage at 397. Jerome specifically lists the books which he says comprise the canon of the Old Testament, and he explicitly excludes the Apocrypha He states that these writings were not found in the canon of the Hebrews, and therefore he refused to include them in his Latin translation of the Hebrew text, which became the Vulgate. His view is the same as Rufinus and Athanasius. The writings of the Apocrypha are useful, he says, for edification and for reading in the church. They are not authoritative for the establishment of the confirmation of doctrine. He clearly states that the church of his day did not grant canonical status to the writings of the Apocrypha in the sense that they're being inspired In commenting on the writings known as the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, Jerome makes these statements. As then the church reads Judith, Talbot, and the books of the Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the church. I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the dragon. Jerome wrote most of his prefaces prior to the Councils of Carthage in 397 AD. There are some who would suggest that he actually changed his mind at a later date once the Councils had established, according to the Roman Catholic view, the extent of the canon. But that doesn't put the facts. Jerome continued to write his commentaries on these Old Testament books all the way up to the point of his death, somewhere around the year 419-420, I believe, is when he died. He wrote a work called Against Rufinus. He and Rufinus became bitter enemies. He wrote that about 401 to 402. Jerome reiterates and defends the exact same views towards the Apocrypha which he had written in the prefaces to his works a number of years earlier in his work against Rufinus. He did not change his mind. Those comments come after the North African councils and therefore Jerome did not retract his former statements about his views about the Apocrypha. He considered them to be profitable to read. They were not authoritative for determining doctrine, and they were not part of the Hebrew canon. No less an authority than Gregory the Great affirms the same view. This is given one of the greatest popes in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. One of, I guess you could say, one of two popes who are truly considered to be church fathers. Only two, Leo I and Gregory the Great. really hold the status of church fathers in the Roman Catholic Church of the early years. Gregory the Great says this about 1 Maccabees, with reference to which particular we are not acting irregularly, if from the books, though not canonical, yet brought out for the edification of the church, we bring forward testimony. Thus Eliezer in the battle smote and brought down an elephant that fell under the very beast that he killed. That comes out of 1 Maccabees 6.46. Here you have a man writing at the end of the 6th century. stating that this work is apocryphal, it is not canonical, it is not to be accepted as authoritative for defining doctrine. He says this in particular, it is used for the edification of the church. The Greek church as a whole followed the leading of their fathers of earlier years, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, in rejecting the apocryphal part of the canon. Anastasius, the patriarch of Antioch in 560 AD, Leontius of Byzantium in 580 AD, both teach of the Old Testament canon, consists of 22 books. John of Damascus, who is considered to be the last church father, wrote in the middle of the 8th century, he does the same thing. He mentions two apocryphal writings, distinguishing them from the canonical scriptures, and saying that while they are virtuous and useful, they were not in his day, nor had they ever been, part of the authoritative canon. He says this, there are also the Panaratus, that is, the wisdom of Solomon and the wisdom of Jesus, which was published in Hebrew by the father of Sirach, and afterwards translated into Greek by his grandson Jesus, the son of Sirach. These are virtuous and noble, but are not counted, nor were they placed in the ark. That's his way of saying they're not canonical. Isidore Seville, who is considered the last Western church father, writing in the middle of the 7th century, he likewise states that the Old Testament canon consists of 22 books. He says that the Hebrew canon was comprised of three major categories, the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagia Grappa. And then he mentions the Apocryphal writings by name as a fourth category of books, which he says are not in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament. though he says they are received and revered by the Christian church. Now, in saying that, he is most likely following the same view that Augustine had, and we're going to look at that view in just a minute. Rufinus, Jerome, Gregory the Great, John of Damascus, Isidore Seville, these other leading Eastern fathers that we've mentioned, all of them wrote after the provincial councils of Carthage under Augustine, of Carthage and Hippo. Therefore, to say that these councils somehow authoritatively established the canon of scripture relative... ...gave a new aspect to the whole question of the canon, was ratified by 53 prelates, among whom there was not one German, not one scholar distinguished for historical learning, not one who was fitted by special study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only be determined by the voice of antiquity. how completely the decision was opposed to the spirit and letter of the original judgments of the Greek and Latin churches, how far in the doctrinal equalization of the disputed and acknowledged books of the Old Testament it was at variance with the traditional opinion of the West, how absolutely unprecedented an historical fact that the overwhelming majority opinion of the Church to the very eve of the Reformation was that expressed by Rufinus, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Jerome. There's a work that is a very old work. It was produced just after the Council of Trent in the 16th century by a man named John Colson. It's called the Scholastic History of the Canon. It's a very thorough work. He goes through major fathers, major doctors of the church, theologians of the church, all the way up to the Reformation and beyond. And he gives you the direct quotes from these men. Most of them are in Latin, unfortunately. but he does document where these writings come from. He cites some 52 major Ecclesiastical writers after the Patristic Age. After the Patristic Age, the Patristic Age ends in the 8th century with John of Damascus. From the 8th to the 16th century, he gives you 52 major Ecclesiastical writers who affirm the view of Jerome. He quotes men like Bede, Alcuin, Rabbinus Marius, Agobard of Lyons, Hugo of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Nicholas of Lara, and the Glossa Ordinaria. Now, the Glossa Ordinaria is a technical term given to a commentary that was begun in the Middle Ages. It was a commentary on the text of Scripture by the most revered doctors and lawyers in the church. These became the foundation for the canon law of the church and they had great authority in the church, immense authority. They began sometime in the 12th century. It is highly significant that when it came to commenting on the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, they prefaced their remarks with these statements. The Church permits the reading of the apocryphal books only for devotion and instruction of manners, but not for any authority that they have to conclude controversies in the faith. There are but 22 books of the Old Testament and what books soever there be besides, they ought to be put among the apocrypha. When they come to the books of the apocrypha, they where they're going to actually comment on them, they make this statement. Here begins the book of Tobit, which is not in the canon. Here begins the book of Judith, which is not in the canon. Here begins the book of Wisdom, of Ecclesiasticus, of 1st and 2nd Maccabees, which is not in the canon. So they're going to make comments on the books. They have ecclesiastical sanction to be read, but they are not in the canon. They are not authoritative in the sense of being used for the establishing of doctrine. Cardinal Ximenes was Archbishop of Toledo in Spain in the early 16th century. In the preface of his edition of the Bible, which he edited, which was published by the authority and consent of Leo X, to whom the work was dedicated, he states that the Old Testament Apocrypha was not part of the canon of Scripture. And he added that the Church did not receive those books for confirming the authority of any fundamental points in religion, but merely permitted them to be read for the edification of the people. Now, most people who have some familiarity with the history of the Reformation and with Luther have some familiarity with Cardinal Cajetan. Cardinal Cajetan was one of Luther's great opponents, his Roman Catholic opponent, along with Eck. Cardinal Cajetan, in his commentary on all the authentic historical books of the Old Testament, which I believe he finished about 1535, and which was dedicated to Pope Clement VII, fully supports Jerome's teaching of separating the apocryphal from the Hebrew canon." Now keep in mind, this man is immersed in the controversies of the Reformation. Listen to his comments relative to the views of the Church. He is one of the preeminent theologians in the Church of this day. He's on the front lines for the Roman Catholic Church, authoritatively defending the Roman Catholic Church, theologically. This is what he has to say, number one, about the canon of scripture, about the Apocrypha, and then he interprets for us the view of Augustine and the councils of Carthage and Hippo. He says this, here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest, that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, are counted by Saint Jerome out of the canonical books and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galliatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldst find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words, as well as of councils as of doctors, are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the Epistle to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, These books and any other like books in the canon of the Bible are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful as being received and authorized in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says and what is written in the Provincial Council of Carthage. This is how one of the principal authorities of the Roman Catholic Church understood the writings of the Apocrypha, how he understood the authority of the Provincial Councils of Carthage and Hippo, and how he understood the view of Augustine, and how he understood the term canonical. He expresses the fact that that term had two meanings. A very broad meaning, which would include the Apocrypha, not as inspired but as part of what you would call broad canonical authority, Ecclesiastical books that could be read in the church, but the stricter canon, that canon where you could establish doctrine, that canon was to be held strictly to the Hebrew canon, which was 22 books of the Old Testament. So these examples clearly demonstrate that the councils of Hippo and Carthage did not establish the canon of the scriptures for the church for their decrees on the Old Testament both before as well as after the councils were not accepted in the church. Right up to the time of the Reformation, the clear testimony of the authorities and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole affirmed the view of Jerome, which historically prevailed throughout the Church, throughout the history of the Church, right up to the time of the Council of Trent. It was not until the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century, particularly in 1546, that the Roman Catholic Church officially approved the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon. That did not take place at Hippo and Carthage. It couldn't take place at Hippo and Carthage because Hippo and Carthage were provincial councils. They were not ecumenical councils. They did not have authority to establish the canon for the church as a whole. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, again, affirms the truth of those statements. It says this, St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter, he judged, were circulated by the church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative scripture. The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries. For example, John of Damascus, Gregory the Great, Wallifred, Nicholas of Lyra, and Tostado continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. And then it says this, This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament canon that this had not been done previously as apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent. Now that's an authoritative Roman Catholic source affirming the fact that it was not until the 16th century that the Roman Catholic Church established the canon of the Old Testament. Now I do take issue with the use of their words, doubt and uncertainty. I think we can see from the quotes that we've been given and that we've gone over that there was absolutely no doubt or uncertainty about the matter at all. Cardinal Cachetan has no doubt or uncertainty in his mind. He's expressing himself very clearly. And all of these other writers have done exactly the same thing. The Glossa Ordinaria doesn't give us any room for doubt as to what the prevailing view of the Church is in the Middle Ages. When they come to comment on these apocryphal books, they say explicitly these are not part of the canon, and they give us a definition of what they mean. They're ecclesiastical books. They're not to be used for the establishing of doctrine. They're not inspired scripture. But at least they're honest enough to give an accurate picture of when the Old Testament canon was truly and authoritatively determined by the Roman Catholic Church. Roman apologists will often try to argue that the Sixth Ecumenical Council gave dogmatic sanction to the decrees of the Council of Carthage and thereby endorsed the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament canon. because they do accept, authoritatively, Carthage as a council. What they don't tell you is that that same council, which is an ecumenical council from a Roman Catholic view, an infallible council from a Roman Catholic view, also gives dogmatic sanction to the writings of Athanasius and Prolochius and Basil, all of whom in those very writings, as we have seen in the quotes that I gave you, reject the Apocrypha as being part of the canon of the Old Testament. The Sixth Ecumenical Council was not endorsing the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament, but was giving sanction to a very broad understanding of the term canonical as used in the Church, to include both the inspired scriptures as well as the ecclesiastical books which could be read in the Church and were useful for edification, but not for defining issues of doctrine. Now that again is the view that Cardinal Tanchagin gives us in his writings, and we're going to look at that in more detail in just a minute. I believe that's the the correct way to view what the Sixth Ecumenical Council is doing. Otherwise, you are left from a Roman Catholic perspective with an infallible council affirming in a dogmatic sense contradictory positions. If you accept Carthage and have the view that Carthage has established the canon of the Old Testament, including the Apocrypha, And then you have also the sanction given, the dogmatic sanction given to the writings of Amphilochius, of Basil and Athanasius, who rejected the Apocrypha. Then you're on the horns of a dilemma here. I think it's safer to say that probably what they're doing is that they have the view that many in the church held to, the word canonical has a broad meaning, to include all of these books, those that were sanctioned to be read, those that were inspired, and that they were not making the distinctions here. saying that this has inspired Scripture relative to the Apocrypha. Here is something to contemplate. The Protestant Church is continually charged with introducing dogmas such as Sola Scriptura, which the Roman Church claims come very late in the history of the Church. For Sola Scriptura is the 16th century, according to their claim that this never was taught in the Church prior to the 16th century and the Reformation, that this is all innovation, that it's a rejection of the authority of the Church and of what the early Church has always taught. And we're going to prove next week that that assertion is false. But the truth of the matter is, it is an undeniable historical fact affirmed by the New Catholic Encyclopedia that it is the Roman Catholic Church which has introduced dogmas which are very late in the history of the Church. For this ruling on the canon comes in the middle of the 16th century and is contradictory to the testimony of the Jews, to the canon of Scripture, to the general patristic witness of the Church, and to the overall consensus of the Church right up to the time of the Reformation. And I just simply ask the question, what right do we have, be it Protestant Church, Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, I don't care what church, in the New Testament dispensation to change the canon that was handed down to the Jews who were given, committed with the oracles of God. The New Catholic Encyclopedia readily admits that the apocryphal books were not in the Hebrew canon. That's a very serious thing to ponder. Let's look for a moment at the use of the word canonical in the history of the church. Historically, the word canon came to have two meanings, as I've said. One a very broad meaning, the other narrow. The books that were considered inspired and authoritative for the establishing of doctrine held what they call a proto-canonical status. The apocryphal or ecclesiastical books, on the other hand, while not authoritative in defining doctrine, were nonetheless valuable for the purpose of edification. They held a secondary or what they call a deuterocanonical status. It's in that way, I believe, that the Church historically has generally understood Augustine and the Council of Carthage. Augustine, in his writings, lists the apocrypha as part of the general canon. However, he also clearly affirms the fact that the Apocryphal was not accepted by the Jews as part of the canon of the Old Testament. He says this in a number of different writings. It's clear from his statements that he makes in some of these other writings that he held to the broad interpretation of the word canon that we've mentioned above. He says this, he says, during the same time also those things which were done, which are written in the book of Judith, which indeed the Jews are said not to have received into the canon of scripture. He says, and the reckoning of their dates is found not in the holy scriptures which are called canonical but in others among which are also the book of Maccabees. These are held as canonical not by the Jews but by the church on account of the extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs. The Jews do not have this scripture, he says in another writing, which is called Maccabees, as they do the law and the prophets to which the Lord bears testimony as to his witnesses. But it is received by the church, not without advantage, if it be read and heard soberly, especially for the sake of the history of the Maccabees, who suffered so much from the hand of persecutors for the sake of the law of God." Now, he states that the Jews did not hold the apocryphal books to be canonical, but that the church does in a broad sense that these writings hold forth a good example and inspire to perseverance in the faith. In other words, they're useful for edification, for motivation and perseverance. The actual canon, which is Canon 36 of the Council of Hippo in 393, which listed the canonical writings was given primarily to set apart the books which were authoritatively sanctioned to be read in the churches. This included both the canonical scriptures as well as the ecclesiastical books which were used for edification and came under the general heading of canonical in the sense that they were all sanctioned by the church. Now, I believe this should be the correct interpretation of what the Councils of Hippo and Carthage were doing and of what Augustine means, because when you read Jerome and Rufinus after these councils, they're making these distinctions. And as the church goes on in its history, this is the almost universal opinion that is expressed in the church all the way up to the eve of the Reformation. Not the eve of it, all the way through it. I mean, Carl McAdams is writing in 1535, but right up to the time of the Council of Trent. One author makes this statement. He says, there is good reason to believe that by canonical books, both Augustine and these councils intended, not the canon in its strict sense as limited to those books which are inspired and divinely authoritative, but in a more lax and wider sense as including along with these other books, which though not inspired, were sanctioned and commended by the church as profitable and edifying religious books and suitable for private perusal and for public reading in the churches. But even if we were to conclude that Augustine and the councils under his influence held that the apocryphal books were indeed inspired and were to be part of the canon, we have to conclude that these are just men and they're fallible and that they have erred in so doing this. These are not infallible people. They've erred in their judgments. Because number one, they're a provincial council, which means they only have limited authority to the province in which they are meeting. They don't have universal authority in the church. They did not speak for the church as a whole, and that's evidenced by the fact of the opinion of Jerome and of the judgment of the church almost universally since those councils were held. The vast weight of historical evidence falls on the side of excluding the apocrypha from the category of canonical scripture. Thus, we have to conclude that the decrees of the Council of Trent relative to the true canon of Scripture have been given with brazen disregard of the Jewish and patristic historical evidence as well as to the overall historical consensus of the Church prior to that Council. The scholar B.F. Westcott makes these comments on the decrees of Trent. He's done exhaustive research on the whole history of the canon. This is his conclusion. This fatal decree in which the Council gave a new aspect to the whole question of the canon, was ratified by 53 crelits, among whom there was not one German, not one scholar distinguished for historical learning, not one who was fitted by special study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only be determined by the voice of antiquity. How completely the decision was opposed to the spirit and letter of the original judgments of the Greek and Latin churches How far in the doctrinal equalization of the disputed and acknowledged books of the Old Testament it was at variance with the traditional opinion of the West, how absolutely unprecedented was the conversion of an ecclesiastical usage into an article of belief, will be seen from the evidence which has already been adduced." What he's saying is that in the light of history, these men have made dogmatic statements. binding men and women in the Roman Catholic Church to beliefs about books which they say are now Scripture which were never held to be that way in the church prior to that time. Now in addition to these historical reasons for rejecting the Apocrypha as being inspired and therefore not truly canonical, there are also heresies, inconsistencies, and historical inaccuracies in the writings themselves which prove just from the internal evidence of the writings themselves that these are not Scripture They are not inspired, they're not given by God. Bruce Metzger, who has written a book on the Apocrypha, gives this following evaluation just of the book of Judith. He says this, one of the first questions that naturally rises regarding this book is whether it is historical. The consensus, at least among Protestant and Jewish scholars, is that the story is sheer fiction. The book teems with chronological, historical, and geographical improbabilities and downright errors. For example, Holofernes moves an immense army about 300 miles in three days. That's out of chapter 2 verse 21. The opening words of the book when taken with chapter 2 verse 1 and chapter 4 verse 2 involve the most astonishing historical nonsense for the author places Nebuchadnezzar's reign over the Assyrians, in reality he was king of Babylon, at Nineveh, which fell seven years before his ascension. At a time when the Jews had only recently returned from the captivity, and actually at this time they were suffering further deportations. Nebuchadnezzar did not make war on Media, which is stated in chapter 1 verse 7, nor capture Ecbatana, that's out of chapter 1 verse 14. The rebuilding of the temple from chapter 4, 13 is dated by a glaring anachronism about a century too early. Moreover, the Jewish state is represented as being under the government of a high priest and a kind of Sanhedrin which is compatible only with a post-exilic date several hundred years after the book's presumed historical setting. The canonical scriptures are God's inspired revelation to us, to man. That's the testimony of the Bible to itself, the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, and as such they, and they alone, must be authoritative in all matters relative to faith. We cannot accept the Apocrypha. We can't accept it on historical grounds. We cannot accept it just on internal grounds, on the writing itself, because of the inconsistencies that are clearly evidence there. The Apocrypha is not Scripture. I think the universal testimony of the Church overall has been, until the time of the Council of Trent, pretty much in line with that, as we see from Cardinal Tagington. Next week we will continue to examine the issue of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, the whole issue of authority, and we will look in detail at the whole concept of the relationship of Scripture and tradition in the early church. Can the Roman Catholic view of oral tradition being a vehicle of revelation and equal in authority with Scripture be validated by the teachings of the early church? Or did the early church hold to the view of Sola Scriptura? I think we will see, and I believe quite conventionally as we look at the writings of the Church Fathers, that the early Church held to the view of Sola Scriptura. Contrary to the propaganda of the Roman Catholic Church, it did not originate with the Reformation. It is not a new innovation, a new teaching relative to the general history of the Church. It's one of the premier predominant teachings of the Church from the very beginning. You could say almost all the way up through the Middle Ages that was the predominant view. The present Roman Catholic view is the one that is novel and is new. It is not the Protestant view. The Protestant view can be documented to be the view of the early church and we will do that next week.