A mighty fortress is our God, The whole world's never failing. Get rid of their organs, they get rid of their choirs. So you have a tiny little reformed Baptist movement in this country of about two dozen dead musicless churches. Because if you have any wavering in your confidence about the integrity of your translation of the Bible, it will suck the conviction right out of your heart. And that leads to some very interesting, heretical, and very important conclusions. Hello and welcome to another edition of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is Friday, December 5, 2014. and I'm sitting down this morning to record yet another episode of Word magazine. It's been a while. I started back in early November with part one of an analysis of a sermon, a 2012 sermon preached by John Piper titled, Neither Do I Condemn You, which is on the pericope adultery. the passage of the Woman Caught in Adultery, John 7.53-8.11, one of the most disputed texts with regard to text criticism in the New Testament. And in Part 1, we began to listen to, I think we made it through about the first 6-7 minutes of Piper's sermon, which I think is a total of about 41 minutes. And then life interrupted. In fact, one thing related, I went down to Florida, spoke at a conference there, gave three messages on the matter of the transmission of Scripture and the text of Scripture. And so those are available, can be listened to. I did one message on the text of Scripture tracing it from the Apostles, from the writing of the New Testament to the time of the Reformation when the text came into a printed form. And then I did a second message from the Enlightenment to the modern critical text showing how the modern critical text was the result of the growth of the Enlightenment and the modern historical critical method arising And then I did a final message on postmodern challenges to the text of Scripture. And so I'll refer you to those to listen to those. Another thing that interrupted was Thanksgiving. We're blessed to have my wife's family with us. Over the last seven or eight years, we've had my wife's family come up and spend Thanksgiving several days at least, almost a week with us. And so we enjoyed that, but that meant I didn't have time for doing things like the Word Magazine podcast. So at any rate, I'm back at it today again to complete part two of our review of John Piper's sermon. In part one, we focus primarily on the introduction in which Piper suggested that John 7.53-8.11 is not part of the original text of Scripture. He did so largely based on his appeal to authorities. This is the opinion of people like Bruce Metzger, of even evangelicals like D.A. Carson, Andreas Kostenberger, and others. And so Piper began with basically an appeal to authority. Then he did list six reasons that the scholars put forward and six reasons that John Piper himself would agree with, and those six reasons included The fact that the Perikope Adulteri doesn't appear in Greek manuscripts until the 5th century. Number two, that the earliest Church Fathers, in his opinion, did not cite them. Three, sort of an internal argument, the text flows well if you omit the PA. Four, no Eastern Church Father cites the passage until the 10th century, he claims. And then fifthly, he appeals to the so-called view of the PA as a floating tradition. It moves around and so therefore it couldn't have been original. And then sixth, the argument from style and vocabulary that it's unlike the rest of John. unlike any other pericope and John. So I've already responded to all six of those. I don't think really any of those arguments holds water. Each of those can be refuted. Each of those can be contradicted. And I would refer you to part one of my response and also to the blog post that I did. It changes directions now from this point. where Piper kind of, that's the extent of sort of the particular arguments that he makes, and they're pretty slight. He spends just maybe, again, we did the whole survey in seven minutes, only two or three minutes of that was the surveying of those six reasons. So he doesn't go into any significant detail, doesn't cite manuscripts or anything like that. Then in the next part of his talk, he gives something of a survey of text criticism and he basically handles a few things like the difference between uncial and minuscule and the papyrus and the lectionaries. But I'm going to skip ahead in the sermon for the sake of time to about the 20 minute, 37 second mark. where he returns to the assertion that the Pricpe Adulteri is not an original part of the Gospel of John. So we're going to begin listening at about this 20 minute, 37 second mark, and I think this is where, beyond the sort of nuts and bolts of the six previous arguments, this is where Piper gets into, I think, the theological interpretation of the significance of this as a text critical variant. And I think the conclusions that he reaches and the argument that he puts forward is interesting and I would say it's dangerous. It's theologically dangerous. I hope that I will demonstrate that as we listen to his presentation. So again, let's pick it up here about the 20 minute, 37 second mark on the sermon. And by the way, I'll have the YouTube reference again. It was referenced in the previous blog post. But I'll do another blog post at jeffriddle.net. and you can get the link and listen to Piper's sermon in its entirety for yourself. But let's pick it up here. So I agree with Don Carson and the others that this story was not in the Gospel of John when he wrote it. Okay, so Piper agrees with Bruce Metzger and with V. A. Carson that John 7.53 through 8.11 is not a part of the original gospel of John. And so now the interesting question is going to be, okay, if you reject the authenticity of John 7.53 through 8.11, what is it? It's an uninspired piece of writing that is within most copies of the New Testament. Can you preach on it? These are the issues he's going to explore. all mean for you to respond, oh my, everything then is up for grabs? Or, how can I count on any text? On the contrary. Yeah, I think he anticipates. I think what is very much a significant problem with his approach, he anticipates that the people in the pew, the people of God who are listening to this, are going to be unsettled by the suggestion that a passage that is in the printed text of the New Testament, the printed text of their Bibles, that a preacher, a pastor-theologian is standing there and telling them, well, this wasn't really the original part of John. And then I think he anticipates rightly that people will be asking, well, Pastor Scholar, what other parts of the Bible are not really inspired? What other parts are printed there but really shouldn't be included? And I don't see any way in the world that this approach cannot work toward undermining a basic confidence in the authority of the Bible. This definitely undermines the reader's confidence, the hearer's confidence in the integrity of the Bible, in the sufficiency of the Scriptures. But he's going to try to deal with this, and let's see how he approaches it. You and I should be very thankful, very thankful, that in God's sovereign providence Over the centuries, these thousands and thousands of manuscripts are so abundant today that in the science of textual criticism, as they are compared one with the other, there is a high degree of certainty that we have the original wording, and where there isn't a degree of certainty, it affects no doctrine. Alright, let me pause here for a moment. There are a couple things I want to address. One is what I think is a new definition of the providential preservation of Scripture. And again, what Piper puts forward here isn't unique to him. This is something that he's picked up on from other evangelical authors, other text critics that he's read. Again, it's a new definition of providential preservation. The idea is God has preserved the great mass of Greek New Testament manuscripts. Earlier in the sermon, a part that we skipped over, he talked about the fact that the New Testament is the best attested work of antiquity. We have more handwritten copies of the New Testament or fragments of the New Testament than we do of any other work of antiquity. Most of the reliance that we have for recreating a text of other works of antiquity is based on usually a handful of manuscripts. And he notes earlier, they're usually very late manuscripts coming from the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries. But scholars are not afraid to work with those and think that they have the original text of Caesar's Gaelic Wars or Homer's Iliad or whatever. So, his point is the New Testament is well attested early on, and again, the new definition of providence is this, God has preserved this mass of these documents so that modern text critics can analyze them and determine what the original text of Scripture is. And I want to suggest to you that that is a new definition of the providential preservation of Scripture. I don't think that is at all what the framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689 had in mind in Article 1 on scripture within those confessions when they said God has kept his word pure and entire in all ages. They meant that the scriptures had been preserved as they were in the extant copies Not that they were preserved somewhere in the mass of them, and scholars can now, with a large degree of certainty, but never with complete certainty, can get back to the original text. The other irony about this, as I've written about and spoken about elsewhere, is the fact that the model that Piper and other evangelicals put forward for understanding text criticism, that it's the task of the text critic to try to discover the original autograph or get as close to the original autograph as they possibly can, that perspective is now seen as passé among modern text critics. They are no longer attempting, I mean the people who are really working in the academy in this discipline are no longer attempting or think that they can get back to the original autograph. All you have to do are read the writings of people like D.C. Parker, Bart Ehrman and others and see that they have abandoned that task altogether. As I've said in other places, modern evangelical text critics like Dan Wallace and would-be text critics like James White are using 20th century ideas in a 21st century world. Modern text critics are no longer attempting to get back to the original text, and at any rate we've got a complete redefinition of the Providential Preservation Scripture. The second thing that he says is, in the end though, No cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith are affected, and as I've said elsewhere, this goes all the way back to the writings of the German pietist, Bengel. In the 18th century, evangelicals who have said we can use modern text-critical methods, we can discuss these variants, but no cardinal doctrine of Scripture is affected, and as I've said, probably over and over again, probably some who've listened to these presentations, to the point of odd nauseam, is text criticism is not an atheological pursuit. The text of Scripture is important and it touches on doctrine. It touches on the doctrine of the canon of Scripture. It touches on the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. It touches on the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture. And so if you ask whether or not John 7.53-8.11 was part of the text of the Bible? Was it part of John's Gospel originally? That is a theological question, and if you argue that it was not part of Scripture, that it is uninspired, that is a huge theological issue, as Piper himself is going to acknowledge as he goes further into the sermon. So let's please retire this argument that you can do text criticism apart from theological presuppositions and theological repercussions. Let's be honest about it going forward. Now, the question is, what should I do with it, the story? That's the background I intended to give you. That's the lecture on textual criticism, and I'm done with it. Okay, now he's, this is 22 minutes into the sermon of a 41-minute sermon, so he's saying the first 22 minutes here have been teaching about the text of Scripture. He's given his ideas about why we should accept the modern critical text, including its exclusion of John 7.53 through 8.11. Now he's asking, I think it's a great question, I appreciate him for asking this, now He's saying, can I preach this text? That's what he's going to get down to. So let's listen to the unique way that he approaches this question. Almost. The reason I say almost is because, very interestingly, both Don Carson and Bruce Metzger think this event really happened just the way the story says. Now here's the thing that Piper is going to do, again based on his authorities of Metzger and D.A. Carson. He's going to argue that although John 7.53, 8-11 is not a part of the Gospel of John and therefore it must be then an uninspired writing, an uninspired piece of writing. Although it's not part of the Gospel of John, it is actually true. and by that I assume he means that it is historically true that this event a woman taken in adultery who was brought to Jesus by a group of religious leaders and Jesus was asked his opinion about what to do with the woman and Jesus said let he who is without sin cast the first stone and her accusers melted away and Jesus offered forgiveness to the woman and also the challenge to go and send no more. Piper's going to say, although it's not scriptural, it's not inspired, it's not part of the Word of God, it is, I guess we could call it, an extra-biblical and an extra-canonical true event from the life of Jesus, so it's an accurate story of something that Jesus actually said and did, even though it's not in the Bible. And I think if you're listening to me, you may begin to understand why I'm troubled by this, as we're going to talk about in a few moments. What are the limits to this? Who gets to decide this exactly? But let's listen, let's let him make the case for this approach. Just wasn't part of John's gospel. So here's what Carson says. There is little reason for doubting that the event here described occurred. Whoa, really? Metzger writes, the account has all the earmarks of historical veracity? Well, perhaps. I would like to think so. Who doesn't love this story? Kind of a gut punch tonight to hear me say it doesn't belong in the Bible. That's a downer. Again, I think Piper well anticipates the reaction of the people of God, the person in the pew, to this teaching. It comes as a gut punch to Christians, to the faithful flock of God, to hear that this passage is supposedly not part of the Bible. It's a downer. His little statement there, at some point I hope maybe I can extract that if I ever need to add another soundbite to the introduction to these word magazines that deal with text criticism, that would be an awesome soundbite to include. It's like a gut punch. That would be a downer. So, again, he intuitively recognizes that the people of God, this is going to be upsetting for them. It's going to be a downer for them. to have their pastor stand in the pulpit and tell them that part of the text in the printed page of their Bible is actually an uninspired insertion that somehow is also historically true. Again, let's listen to this further explanation. But neither of those judgments, even if true, give the story the sanction and the authority of Scripture. So, what I'm going to do with it is this. I'm going to preach, and I'm going to say that what we have in this text is not a basis for its truth, but a pointer Alright, let's see if I can understand this. He's saying that John 7.53-8.11 is not the basis, and you really must watch the video for many of the characteristic exaggerated gesticulations, hand motions of John Piper, puts his hands together, cups his hands together, it's not the basis for truth, but it's a pointer to the truth. And again, this is his way of presenting this idea that although it's not Scripture, it's not inspired, so it cannot be an epistemological basis for determining the truth, that it can somehow point toward the truth because it records something that Jesus actually said and did. But again, Are you opening with that a Pandora's box? We're going to get to this in a moment. What other texts in the Bible should I do that with? What other parts aren't really inspired though they might be historically true? Are there parts in there also that might be uninspired but are not historically true? And how do I determine that? Do I go read D.A. Carson and Bruce Metzger? Do I listen to John Piper to give me the answer? Do you see how this creates an incredible instability at the foundation of Christian theology, which is the Bible? It is taking the canon of Scripture, which gives stability to Christian doctrine and practice, and it's putting it on unsettled, unstable foundation. I just believe that it's highly unwise for believers to hold these types of views, for pastors to teach these types of things, or scholars to teach these types of things. Let's listen to him elaborate a bit more. I'm not going to say that what I'm about to preach to you is true because of this text. I don't think I have a warrant to do that. I preach the Word of God. I don't think this is part of it. I preach the Word of God, but I don't think this is part of it. Then why are you preaching it? If this is not part of the Word of God, this is again one of my I think an ethical problem for evangelicals who hold to the modern critical text. If you think that the ending of Mark is not part of Scripture, if you think that the Perikope Adulterite is not part of Scripture, why are you not howling and fighting tooth and nail to have it removed from the printed text of the Bible, or at the least relegated to a footnote and having a note saying some ancient manuscripts include this, but it's not really part of the Bible. If you really believe that, then you should be fighting to have those passages removed from the printed text of the Bible. Therefore, what I want to hear is, what's the point of the story? Why did the early church love this so much that they preserved it? And is it true on the basis of what we do know? That's what I want to know. So that's where we're going in the last few minutes. Maybe the early church preserved it and tenaciously held to it because it actually is part of the scripture. It is inspired. And this theory that you have of it being uninspired but somehow pointing to something that actually happened is a completely modern construct. that I don't think you can find held by any Christian pastor or theologian before the advent of the Enlightenment, the modern historical critical era, and I don't think you would have found any evangelicals even putting forward this kind of idea until the last maybe 50 years or so. I mean, the only people you can cite in the sort of evangelical tradition would be D.A. Carson. His work is relatively recent. Again, I think this is a novel approach, an untested approach, and again, I think an unwise approach. Here's what I think the point of the story is. Jesus exalts himself over the law of Moses, changes an appointed punishment in the law, reestablishes righteousness on the foundation of grace, and I don't doubt that's why this story was loved and preserved. Jesus exalted, law altered, righteousness reestablished on the foundation of grace. That's what I think this story is doing, and that's the point of the New Testament, which I'll try to show now. So, I mean, I agree with what he said. Basically, as far as picking out what the theological points and themes of the passage are, I would disagree with him in that I think that those points are inspired and that the text is inspired as part of the Word of God. And again, I think he touches on here why this passage was controversial. This passage was controversial because of these very things, because of Jesus' dealing with the law, because of Jesus' interposition of grace, rather than crushing this woman who has been caught in adultery. That was controversial. It was controversial among the early Christians, and therefore we can see a major reason why the passage may have been disputed in debates that are now lost in the mists of time past. Let's go on though, he's going to make another text point, that's why I wanted to get to this point and then we're going to skip to the end, but he's going to make a point related to the reference to the scribes within the passage. And again, there are really precious few concrete arguments against the authenticity of the Pericope Adultery in this message, but he does make one sort of glancing reference to one such argument, and I want to hear that and offer a response to it. So the woman is caught in adultery. Verses 4 and 5, the scribes and Pharisees, interesting little tidbit here, the word scribes never occurs anywhere else in the Gospel of John, it's always chief priests, that's the kind of thing that scholars notice. Alright, that's the thing I wanted to say, he mentions that in John 7, 53, 8, 11 there's a reference to the scribes bringing this woman to Jesus and he makes the point that the word scribes occurs only here in the Gospel of John. Now this would be the type of internal evidence argument on the basis of vocabulary and style that would be used by some to reject the Perikope Adulteri. So they would say this is an artificial, a floating tradition, it uses non-Johannine language So, the reference to the scribes here is a hapoxlegomena one-time occurrence within John. The reference to the scribes is very common, however, in the Synoptic Gospels. So this is the basis that is argued. This is a reason why some would reject it as being authentically Johannine, and therefore authentically a part of the Gospel of John. Does that argument hold water? Well, I don't think that it does. for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, John is clearly different than the Synoptic Gospels. I think most scholars today would probably hold that John knew of the Synoptic Gospels, but he intentionally did not repeat the things that he knew of, many things that he knew of from the Synoptic Gospels. Of course, Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John in their account of the passion include most of the salient points. Jesus is crucified, that he's betrayed by Judas, that Peter denied him, that he was tried before Pontius Pilate, that Joseph of Arimathea took his body and put it in a tomb. Those kind of points, there is large agreement, although each gospel account of the death of Jesus is unique. But John does not, other than the Passion, does not repeat many of the same things that we find in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the so-called Synoptic Gospels. And I think that's because he figured, I think, that his readers already knew those Gospels, and so he chooses, led by the Holy Spirit, to record things that are unique, things like the turning water into wine in John 2, or the raising of Lazarus in John 11, things that aren't paralleled in the Synoptic Gospels. And I think the fact that he makes a reference to the scribes here is not an evidence that this isn't part of the original Gospel of John, he sparingly makes use of synoptic language and synoptic details, but it doesn't mean he's ignorant of them. And let me just give you another example of this. In the Gospel of John, there is not the emphasis that you find in the synoptic Gospels on, for example, the original 12 disciples. There's not an account, a listing of the 12 disciples the way there is in Matthew and Mark and Luke and even in Acts chapter 1. However, John is clearly aware of the fact that Jesus had 12 disciples. In fact, if you look at John 6 in verses 67 and 70 and 71, there are three references to the Twelve. Let me just turn quickly to that if I can. John 6 and verse 67, Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Verse 70, Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? And John 6, 71, He spake of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve. Well, those are the only three times in John's Gospel in the span of three verses where the word duodeca, the twelve, is used. Now does that mean that this passage, John 6, verses 67-71, is a non-Johannine insertion that's been placed within the Gospel, and we can prove it's not originally from John's hand because he uses the term duodeca, and that's a term he only uses in the Synoptic Gospels. We'd say, no, clearly he's aware of the duodeca, he's aware of the twelve, But he only sparingly uses that language that is used much more often within the synoptic tradition. The same thing is true of the reference to the scribes in John 7 and 53 through 8, 11. And that's just one example. I could give multiple examples. of John's sparse usage of synoptic terms. So I just want to, again, there's very little detailed exegetical argument made by Piper. I wish there was more detailed argument because I think then maybe he and others would think through this more clearly and find out the arguments against the pericope adulteri aren't as airtight as they might seem, even if you can appeal to so-called authorities to back them up. Okay, I'm going to go forward now to the very end of the message. I'm going to skip ahead to the 31 minute and 53 second mark. And I just want to listen to a little bit of what he says at the conclusion of the sermon here on the start about the 3150 mark. And this is where he's going to make, I think, the most astounding statement in the entire message, where he says he loves this story and it's true whether it happened or whether it belongs in this gospel or not. And that really gets to the gist of his interpretation, but let's listen to his concluding remarks here. Just a side comment. I have not watched that many John Piper sermons. I've not listened to that many John Piper sermons. I'm surprised he doesn't appear to have a Bible on the pulpit with him. He has a manuscript where apparently, maybe he's done his own translation, but he doesn't know what verse to reference. I don't know if that's his normal preaching style, not to have an open Bible. Anyway, just a curiosity. He's going to make his concluding points here. Neither do I condemn you. Go. From now on, sin no more. Neither do I condemn you. He did not say, neither do I condemn you because adultery doesn't matter. He didn't say, neither do I condemn you, so what do you do next? Does it really matter? Because there is therefore now no condemnation. That's not what he said. Well, I just realized I made a mistake. I need to go a little bit further. It's not at the 31-53 mark. Rather, it's at the 36-29 mark where he's going to make his final statements about the story being true, whether it happened or whether it did not. Here we go. I love this story. And it's true. It's a true story. Meaning the lesson in it is exactly what Jesus would want us to see. What is the difference between that and And let's say Protestant liberalism would take the Jonah story and say something like, it doesn't really matter if the Jonah story happened or not. The truth of the story is more important than the truth of the story. That would be a typical liberal type way of approaching the scriptures. We deny the historicity of all the events that are recorded in the scriptures, but we still think there is spiritual truth that can be preached. And that's not what Piper is saying, but it seems to be an evangelical variation on it. This disputed text isn't really true, but there's some truth in it that I can preach. And he's going to go on to say that even though, this is also strange, even though it's uninspired, God is still speaking in it. And I think this is a point maybe where Piper's continuationist, non-cessationist views sort of come through as well in his interpretation, although it's not elaborated upon, my sense is that's one reason why he can accept this approach to the text, which I think is a thoroughly non-reformed approach to the text of Scripture. Whether it happened, or whether it belongs in this gospel or not, so many end like this. The story points us to the entire message of the New Testament. I don't have to base the point of the story on the story and thus leave you with a wobbly foundation tonight. You shouldn't have a wobbly foundation. I really don't understand how this is going to help anyone not have a wobbly foundation. He's going to say this strengthens our foundation? For this point, God is speaking here, and this story is illustrative. It's a pointer. It's an echo. It's not the foundation of this sermon. It's an echo of the authority of the Bible, which from cover to cover is designed that Jesus come into the world to put holiness on a foundation of grace. That's the point of the Bible. Be holy, for I am holy. But don't pursue this holiness until you have heard the words, neither do I condemn you. Okay, I'm going to stop there. So again, his conclusion is John 7, 53 through 8, 11 is not part of the Scriptures. It's not inspired. It's not part of the Word of God. However, we can preach a message on what we believe to be the Bible, excluding this passage, and we can use this passage to point to those truths. Now here's, again, one of several problems with that. Okay, what are the limits to that? Let's say I read a good novel, or I read a good non-fiction book. Can I go into the pulpit and read it, and can I say, now friends, I know this is not an inspired text, I know this isn't part of the Word of God, but I believe there are some truths in this that point to the real truths that we find in the Bible. So can I preach from uninspired texts? And what are the limits to that? That would be a question. Another question it raises is this idea of the fluidity of the Bible and also these supposedly true accounts of things that Jesus said and did which are not in the Bible. Are there really ancient accounts of things that Jesus said and did that aren't in the Bible? I think that's dangerous. Again, this is actually what many liberal scholars are doing. This is what people like Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels and others are doing. They're saying there isn't early Christianity, singular, but there are early Christianities, plural, and we need to be giving as much attention to the Gnostic Gospels as we do to the canonical Gospels. And if you think I'm being excessive here, go back and read people like from the Jesus Seminar, Robert Funk and the people who printed the book The Fifth Gospel, where they said there are things in the Gospel of Thomas, there are sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical Gnostic Gospel that dates perhaps even as early as the second, third, or fourth centuries, there are things in there that Jesus actually said. There are reports of things that Jesus actually did. And I just pulled down off the shelf my copy of Bart Ehrman's translation into English of many of the apocryphal Gospels and other apocryphal writings, Gnostic writings called the Lost Scriptures, subtitled books that did not make it into the New Testament. And within that you have Ehrman's translation of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. So let's say, does this mean, if I can take John 7.52-8.11, which is not really part of the Word of God, but which was respected by early Christians. Can I do the same with the Coptic Gospel of Thomas? Can I turn to saying 114? Simon Peter said to them, let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. Can I make an argument if Robert Funk and other scholars say that they really think Jesus of Nazareth said this and it would just get to be included as part of the gospel tradition? Can I preach a sermon on this? And I can anticipate their response would be, no, you can't preach a sermon on that because it's not consistent with the rest of the things that are in the Bible. But I just chose that saying out because it's an outlandish saying. But there are other sayings in there that you might say might be compatible with other passages. Let's say I turn to, for example, a document that's called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And this was an early document. Bart Ehrman, let's see what he dates it to. He dates the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The text provides a few clues. He dates it to the first half of the second century, so he's dating it to 150 or earlier. This is a very early writing, and in chapter 16 of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, it says this, Now Joseph sent his son James, to bundle some wood and bring it to the house. The child Jesus also followed him. While James was gathering the firewood, a snake bit his hand. When he was stretched out on the ground dying, Jesus came up to him and breathed on the bite. The pain immediately stopped, the animal burst, and straightaway James was returned to health. Well, that sounds like something that Jesus might have done. It sounds like a miraculous event that's recorded in the Bible. We know that Jesus healed people, that's in the canonical Gospels. He breathed on people. He breathed on the apostles when he met them in the upper room after his resurrection. In the book of Acts, Paul is bitten by a snake and he throws it into the fire and he survives the snake bite. So, can I argue that that perhaps is a lost but authentic account from the life of Jesus? So, can I take the infancy gospel of Thomas into the pulpit and can I say, oh wait friends, this is not the basis of the truth, but it points to the truth. Can I really use any uninspired text Again, this is a dangerous problem. This removes limits, canonical limits, to the text of Scripture. It undermines the authority of Scripture, and it makes the assessment of the authority of Scripture relative to the judgment of the reader, or the judgment of the preacher, or the judgment of the theologian. So again, I think what we have here is an unwise and even dangerous undermining of the authority, the integrity, the canonicity of the Scriptures. John 7.53-8.11 is part of the Word of God. The church has acknowledged this as part of the Word of God. It appears in the majority of the manuscripts that we have of the Greek New Testament, including many ancient witnesses. The church has always recognized in this passage the voice of her shepherd, and we should not undermine the authority of this passage or come up with newfangled explanations of how it can be uninspired and yet be useful in preaching. So this completes the part two of the two-part analysis of John Piper's sermon. I hope you have found some of this at least to be helpful and look forward to doing another Word magazine in the future have some ideas problem is sitting down having the time to do the research and Having something profitable to say and just sometimes just having simply having the time sit down and do this But anyways, hope this has been helpful to you. God bless you and May the Lord lead you, guide you in understanding this truth. Your deeds, Lord, make me glad, I'll joy in what you've done. I'll break your doings, Lord, mount in your thoughts each one. Those won't be shown the foolish and extravagant truth to him unknown. Those feathers grow like leaves, ill-doers pass from day. Their dooms to be destroyed, do Lord and Sultans say. For your foes fall, see how your foes, they evil men, are scattered all. Through grace I cast my hope for fresh oil on my head. You made me see the light and hear what Father said. Life-briding calm, the righteous proselytizers, on and on and on. Prospected by the Lord, shall in God's courts be seen. When old hills fill their brooks and forests fresh and green, And loud frogs wail, How upright is the Lord, my rock, no wrong in Him!