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Alright, well, for today's class,
the Canonization of Scripture, let's turn in our Bibles to 2
Peter 1. Kind of breaking in here where
Peter is telling us about his experience with Christ upon the
Mount of Transfiguration. But he says something very good
about the Word of God itself in this passage. So 2 Peter 1,
and I want to look at verses 20 and 21. Actually, we'll just go to verse
19. So he's saying we have something
more sure here. He's comparing what we have now
to what they experienced up on the mount. from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced
by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried
along by the Holy Spirit." So let's pray and then we will get
started. Dear God, thank you that you
have given us your word that's more sure than any experience
that we could ever have in our life. That we have a solid rock,
an objective word from your heart, Lord, and your mind, a personal
word to us that we can trust and see that it's true just on
the face of it, Lord. Your word on the face of it reveals
that it is true. So we pray that as we look at
this idea of canonization this morning, you would make us alert
and cause us to see the wonderful way in which your providence
has guided all things. We love you and thank you in
your name. Amen. Alright, so, as we approach
this idea of canon this morning, we can discern from the religious
landscape that this is a very controversial idea. Not only
do we find disagreement with the Roman Catholics on this idea
of canon, but we also find disagreement with those who would call themselves
Protestants. But I want to state up front,
however, and I'm going to try to write this on the board so
you don't forget, that I'm arguing against the liberal Christian
here in today's class. those who would call themselves
a Christian, but they're of the liberal persuasion. I'm not going to even bother
arguing a case for canon against the atheistic skeptic because
this conversation is irrelevant to them. They need categories
built in their minds first. So this class is against the
liberal Christian and their scholarship of what they would call the canon. So, let's just look at an example
of that. A guy named Walter Bauer. His
dates are 1877 to 1960. He's a German theologian, and
he would fly under the banner of a Christian, yet his understanding
of what the canon is is quite different than our own. Andreas
Kostenberger, in his book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy, reports
Bauer's thesis regarding the canon. He says this, quote, Bower
argued there was no orthodoxy or heresy within earliest Christianity,
but rather there were various Christianities, each competing
for dominance. Thus we should not evaluate early
Christian literature only on the basis of the views of the
eventual theological winners, but should consider all early
Christian writings as equally valid forms of Christianity. Well, what are we to do with
that? One might say, well, I don't have enough historical information
to even make an evaluation of Bauer's thesis. I don't know
what early Christianity said, I don't know what they believed,
I don't know the diversity in which Bauer's claiming. But is
that necessary? Is a historical bedrock of knowledge
necessary to dismiss Bauer? And I would say it's absolutely
not. What's Bauer's basic premise?
Bower's basic premise is that of pluralism. Pluralism is the idea that you
can hold mutually exclusive competing worldviews and they are all equally
valid. So Bauer promotes this type of
Christian pluralism, not a straight-up pluralism with other outside
worldviews, but a pluralism within Christianity itself. Do we have
to study history to know that that claim is false? No. It's
self-evidently false. For example, early Gnosticism
and early Christianity could not both be equally valid in
any possible world. Either matter is evil, or it's
not evil. Early Docetism and early Christianity
could not both be valid in any possible world. Either Jesus
came in the flesh or he did not. And the same thing could be said
about Modalism, Marconianism, Arianism, or any other ism regarding
the early church. It can also be said about the
canon of Scripture. If we include all of the early
writings as canon, like Bower's thesis says, then we have contradictions
that cannot be reconciled in our scriptures. Bower is not
just against the early canon, he's against truth itself. In
order for truth to be true, it must have a harmony within itself. There must be a coherence of
parts, otherwise truth ceases to be truth. In Bower's world,
Contradiction is okay, which is the equivalent of saying that
God can be God and not God. If Bauer can succeed in saying
that all the early Christian writings were true, then in the
end, none of them are true. The liberal Christian, at least
one of Bauer's flavor, is nothing more than an atheistic skeptic.
In that case, arguing Ken with him is like arguing trigonometry
with your four-year-old. He needs other categories first.
So, we are speaking about the canon against this group of people,
but what we're going to show is that they're actually not
even that group of people. They're on a different level.
Now, somebody might say, well, I've never heard of Bauer. So,
this discussion is irrelevant to me. But remember Francis Schaeffer's
stairwell here. Up here at the top we have theology,
or it used to be at the top, and philosophy. These are the
movers and shakers of society. And we have the sciences. And
we have high culture. And then we have pop culture
down here. Now Bauer is at the top up here. So many people haven't heard
of him. I had not heard of Bauer before
I read this book by Kossenberg. But everybody's heard of Rob Bell, right? Rob Bell in his latest book,
Love Wins, he puts forward the exact same thesis as Bauer. This is what he says, quote,
Please understand that nothing in this book hasn't been taught,
suggested, or celebrated by many before me. I haven't come up
with a radical new teaching that's any kind of departure from what's
been said an untold number of times. That's the beauty of the
historic Orthodox Christian faith. It's a deep, wide, diverse stream
that's been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering
variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences." Now Bell isn't just telling us
how we should view history like Bauer or view the canon of scripture
like Bauer. He's actually taken Bauer's thesis
as fact and is saying that every belief, every perspective is
an equally valid form of Christianity. And these beliefs are philosophically
indefensible because to say they are right would be a contradiction
in terms. They can't be right at the same
time if everybody else who disagrees with them is right also. Their
beliefs are ultimately a direct attack on the very nature of
God Himself. If they are right, God is not God. God's Word was
not something that was determined by theological winners. Rather,
God's Word or the canon determined the theological winners. Do you
guys see that? God's canon determined who the
winners were, not the other way around. So, big idea. That the canon was not determined
by subjective dogmatics, but rather discovered by its distinguishable
mark. So, big difference between these
two words, determined and discovered. That's the difference of a completely
different worldview. So, we're going to kind of be
looking at Bauer's thesis this morning, a little bit. It's going
to be weaving in and out of this idea of canonization, because
that's the situation we find ourselves in. We're arguing kind
of backwards against those who would seek to basically undermine
the whole Word of God as we know it. So, three things we're going
to be looking at. We're going to be looking at the legitimacy
of canon. We're going to be looking at
the evidence for an emerging canon in the early 2nd century,
and then we're going to be looking at the boundaries of the canon
itself. So, first of all, the legitimacy
of a canon. What is the canon? What does
canon mean? Canon simply means rule or standard.
So when we're talking about the canon of scripture, we're talking
about a fixed set of books that make up the Bible. Now, interestingly,
if you read Shelley's chapters in this last week, he points
out the origins of the Bible's name. He says this, quote, Greek-speaking
believers in the early days shifted from the early plural form, Biblia,
meaning the books, to the Bible, meaning THE book. When you hold
the Bible in your hand, the early Christian fathers saw this as
THE book. So the question is, is this idea
of canon even a legitimate idea to talk about? Remember, Bower's
thesis was that there were many Christianities, and that canon
was really a fabrication because it was determined by the majority
vote of the theological winners. For instance, listen to another
liberal Christian, remember that's who we're arguing against, James
Barr, he says on this point, quote, Jesus in his teaching
is nowhere portrayed as commanding or even sanctioning the production
of a written gospel, still less a written New Testament. The
idea of a Christian faith governed by written holy scriptures was
not an essential part of the foundational plan of Christianity."
Now that is a profound claim. Written scripture is illegitimate
because Jesus never intended it. Is that true? Barr's claim was that the written
word was not an essential part of the foundational plan of Christianity,
so let's look at the foundational plan of Christianity, namely
the Old Testament, and see what it says about the written word.
You can't speak about the written word of the Old Testament without
speaking about what we're going to call canon and the covenants.
We already looked at this last week, but when we're talking
about the canon, it's impossible to talk about that idea without
inserting covenants as well. By the way, we're not really
going to be focusing on the Old Testament this morning, the Old
Testament canon. I did a defense of that here,
I don't know, three weeks ago. So if you want to go to the website
www.thewellvoicy.com, hit Resources, hit the Doctrine of the Word
of God class, and then hit the Canon of Scripture, you can find
that. We're mainly focusing on the New Testament this morning.
I have another question. Yeah. Did you just say, or did
he just say, I just want to get this straight. He just said that
the written Gospels are not valid because it's not contained in
the written Gospels? Is that what he just said? No,
he said the written Gospels is... I think they probably used the
word anachronistic. It wasn't God's, it wasn't Jesus' idea
to have a written Gospel. That's us imposing our modern
theological categories backwards. But the only way we would know
that is if it's written in the written Gospels. Yeah, it's a
self-contradictory statement. Completely ridiculous. Yeah,
exactly. Alright, so, we talked about
this already a couple weeks ago about the covenants, but we need
to visit this idea again because this does prove the legitimacy
of a written text. So, remember that there are five
elements when we're talking about this idea of covenant. So, quickly,
the first one is just the name of the king, or this is the preamble. Secondly, it's the historical
prologue. Thirdly, we have the stipulations. Fourth is the sanctions. And then fifth is the administration.
And when I talk about the administration when I did the sermons on the
book of Acts, I basically kind of termed it
just in God's providence, but it's more than God's providence.
The administration is the actual written text of the covenant
itself as copies for both the greater king and the people that
he made covenant with. So this pattern right here, this
pattern is found all over the Old Testament. And as an example,
we'll go to Exodus 20, where Koxenberger points to the Ten
Commandments given at Mount Sinai as an example of these elements
happening all over the place. So he says this, quote, the core
of God's covenant with Israel had a preamble, or the name of
the great king, Exodus 20, Verse 2, I am the Lord your God. God is saying who He is and He's
establishing the covenant by declaring to His people His name. Secondly, we see a historical
prologue, Exodus 20 verse 2, part B. God says, Who brought
you out of the land of Egypt? Here, God is giving a historical
prologue of where we are at and where we have been. Thirdly,
God gives a list of stipulations, Exodus 20 verses 3 through 17,
which is you know, these are what I'm
requiring of you as my people. And then fourthly, we see a list
of blessings and cursings that follow from the people breaking
those requirements in Exodus 20 verses 5 through 12. And then
most notably here, what's most relevant to us this morning,
the two copies of this covenant in written form were deposited
in the holy place of worship, Exodus 31, 8, and Deuteronomy
10, 2. So here, basically what I'm saying
is that this idea of covenant is what established the idea
of canon. When God made a covenant with
his people, it always went down in a written text, and then it
was placed for subsequent generations to read and to understand what
God requires of them. and its written form was the
earliest canon that was formed. And this was God's idea, this
was used to govern the land. Now Barr's claim that Christianity
at its foundational level was not intended to be governed by
written scripture is demonstrably false. Remember he said the foundational
level of Christianity, Jesus never intended this to be in
written form, but this is demonstrably false if you just look at the
Old Testament. It was the basis of these scriptures, of this
covenant, that the prophets of old acted as God's prosecuting
attorneys and leveled charges against his people because they
broke the written covenant, or the Old Testament canon. and
it was these prophets who promised a new covenant from God himself. So, reasonably, we should be
able to say this, if God gave the first written canon for the
Old Testament, and then God promises a new covenant, then we should
expect that he would also provide a written canon that would govern
the new covenant. And let's examine whether or
not Jesus will prove this conclusion right. So next we see the very
testimony of Jesus himself in the New Testament. I just want
to again remind you, we're not arguing against the atheists
and skeptics, we're arguing against those who would say they are
Christian, and yet are doubting the very worldview that the Bible
puts forth. So, clearly in the New Testament, Jesus inaugurated
the New Covenant at the Last Supper, and then finished that
work three days later at his resurrection. During his life,
he gave specific instructions and authority to his apostles.
Speaking to them in John 15, 26-27, Jesus says this, But when
the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from
the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father,
He will bear witness about Me. And you also will bear witness,
because you have been with Me from the beginning." So clearly,
Jesus here is commanding them that when He leaves, they are
to bear witness about Himself. A few verses before this, in
verse 20, Jesus says this, remember the word, that I said to you,
a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted
me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they
will also keep yours." So in effect, Jesus is saying, your
word that you speak to the people that follow you carries the same
authority as my word carries. my true followers who follow
my word will follow your word also because it's the same word. So here we have Jesus saying
that the apostles will bear witness about him who is the creator
of the new covenant, the inaugurator of the new covenant, and that
the future disciples will keep their word. Now what word is
that? The sounds coming from their
vocal cords? No. The words that they wrote
down, proclaiming to the world what the New Covenant is. In
fact, this is in the inevitable conclusion of the Great Commission
before Jesus ascended to heaven in Matthew 28-19. Remember, Jesus
told them to teach everything that he ever commanded them.
That's covenantal language. And then Jesus says he would
be with them till the end of the age. This teaching that lasts
till the end of the age can only be done through written form. It was on the basis of this that
the New Testament canon was formed. So Barr's claim here is completely
ridiculous from the start. I do want to look at this idea,
though, of an emerging canon. Remember, part of Bauer's original
thesis was that we only have a canon because of its eventual
theological winners and he's claiming that on the basis of
the Council of Carthage in 397 AD But there's lots of things that
happened before that obviously I'm going to put revelation or
the writing of revelation somewhere around We'll call it Mid-90s,
we don't know for sure. It's pretty much the last book,
as far as I know, of the New Testament. I don't think there
was another book written later than that. So, between the Mid-90s
and 397 at the Council of Carthage, where the canon was officially
recognized as the canon of the church, between then, we have
lots of different things. In 240 AD, Origen had a list of scripture,
and guess what? He held to all 27 of the books
of the New Testament with a little footnote. Six of those books
were in a disputed category. And those were James, 2 Peter,
2 and 3 John, and Jude. I guess there's only five books.
One, two, three, four, five. Five books, sorry. Five books were disputed. That's in 240. Athanasius, in
an Easter letter in 367 AD, had a complete list of all 27 books with no footnote, no caveat,
nothing. And then, of course, the councils
themselves bore witness on the official canon. So, my question
now is, was there an emerging canon before this date, before
150 AD? Because if there was, then what
we're going to see is that Bauer's thesis is not only philosophically
indefensible, but it's also historically indefensible. Alright, so let's go to the New
Testament itself to see if there was this idea of an emerging
canon, because Scripture's going to testify to this. First of
all, 2 Peter 3, 15 through 16. Right off the bat, what we see
is Peter thought what Paul wrote was Scripture. In 2 Peter 3, 15-16, Peter says
this, and I'm going to kind of fast forward in this verse a
couple of times. Our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you
according to the wisdom given him. Down a couple lines. There
are some things in them, the writings, that are hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. Now, I don't know if you guys
caught that, but Basically, anybody who disagrees with Scripture
is ignorant and unstable, and they twist it. So, I'm not saying
that that's an apostle. As they do with the other Scriptures. So, what is Peter saying here?
Peter's saying that Paul's writings are Scripture. that it's plural,
he says scriptures. So in other words, there's a
body of writings that Paul wrote that Peter was testifying to
and he was assuming that his writers knew what he was talking
about. This letter was written somewhere between 64 and 67 AD. Next, not only did Peter think
that Paul's writings were canon, Paul also thought his own words
were scripture. In 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13,
Paul says this, And we also thank God constantly for this, that
when you received the word of God which you heard from us,
You accepted it not as the Word of men, but as what it really
is, the Word of God, which is at work in you, believers. So what's Paul saying here? He's
saying that his words are not the words of men, but the very
Word of God. You can also see he says something
similar in 1 Corinthians 14.37. This letter, where Paul thought
his own writings were scripture, was written between 49 and 51
AD. Thirdly, Paul also recognized
Luke's writings as scripture. In 1 Timothy 5, 17-18, Paul is
instructing the church about the elders. He says this, Let
the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially
those who labor in preaching and teaching." Now he's going
to give the reason why. Four, the scripture says, You shall
not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer
deserves his wages. So what is Paul saying here?
He's saying treat the elders like this because the scripture
says this over here. And then he gives two places
where he's giving the reason for why. The first place is in
Deuteronomy. The second place where he says,
because the laborer deserves his wages, is what Luke recorded,
as Jesus saying in Luke 10, verse 7. So Paul is saying that what
Luke wrote was scripture. And this letter was written before
his death in the mid-60s. Alright, back to Peter again
now, 2 Peter 3, 1-2. Peter recognizes here the two-fold
canon of scripture. He recognizes that both the Old
Covenant and the New Covenant are on one ground, one authority. He says this, this is now the
second letter that I'm writing you, beloved. In both of them
I'm stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that
you should remember the predictions of the Holy Prophet And, so he's
telling them, you need to remember something. You need to remember
the prediction of the Holy Prophets and the commandment of the Lord
and Savior through your Apostles. So what is Peter saying? He's
saying, you, reader, are not only bound by the Old Testament
canon by the Prophets, but you're also bound by the New Testament
Apostles who are speaking the commandments of Jesus Christ
Himself to you. He's laying out the twofold canon
that binds every believer everywhere. The Old and the New. He's saying
that the Apostles are the chief carriers of the New, which is
exactly what Jesus attested to. And then, fifthly, we see that
the Apostles' writings were commanded to be read in the churches, like
the Old Testament canon was. over and over again in the Old
Testament. The requirement is, take these words, read them to
the people, do this every year. The king, in fact, was also required
to write down his own copy of the Old Covenant. And so what
we find is, when the New Testament arrives, the apostles are writing
these letters and they're saying, you need to read these publicly,
because they're the authority over the churches. Colossians
4.16 testifies to this. Paul says at the end of his letter,
and when this letter has been read among you, have it also
read in the church of the Laodiceans and see that you also read the
letter from Laodicea. And then in 1 Thessalonians 5.27
he says, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this
letter read to all the brothers. You can also see Revelation 1.3
as another example of that. Alright, so, we're already seeing
this idea of an emerging canon before 150 AD. Again, remember,
we're not arguing against atheistic skeptics, we're arguing against
those who call themselves Christians and don't see any legitimate
reason for this idea of a canon, or they see a legitimate idea
for multiple canons. So this, if they're going to
hold to the scriptures, then they're going to recognize this
as binding. We also see testimony of the
early emergence of the canon not only from the scriptures,
but from the early apostolic fathers Clement wrote in his
letter around 96 AD Clement says this. First of all,
he calls Paul an apostle, and he calls his readers to submit
to his writings. He says this, quote, The apostles
were given the gospel by the Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus
Christ was sent forth from God. Thus, Christ came from God, and
the apostles from Christ. So implication, before the apostles
came from Christ, because the Apostles came from Christ, what
they say is God's actual word. That's Clement's testimony around
96 AD. The Didache, written around 100
AD, remember we kind of looked at that document last week, it's
a document kind of on church order and whatnot, in its writings
it calls Matthew's account the Lord's Gospel and it cites the
Lord's Prayer as authoritative and it quotes that directly from
Matthew 6, 9 through 13. We also see testimony from Ignatius. Now he wrote his letter somewhere
between 98 and 117, we're not totally sure so it's somewhere
in this time period of Ignatius. He makes numerous references
to the Apostles' writings because, of course, he wrote seven letters,
remember. He said this, that there's an absolute and unparalleled
authority of the Apostles. So the Apostles have absolute
and unparalleled authority. Well, the only way you could
say that is that what they're saying is God's words. Now the
same can be said about Polycarp's letter, the Epistle to Barnabas,
Papias, etc. The fact is that the earliest
leaders of the Church recognized or discovered the writings of the Apostles
as authoritative and binding on the Church. Alright, so I think that demonstrates
this early emergence, that it wasn't until over here when these
theological majority people said, hey, we need to get the church
in line, so let's vote on these doctrines in order to exclude
all these people. Obviously, from the very beginning, these
scriptures were seen as authoritative over the church. So what about
the boundaries? What about the boundaries of
the canon? We've proved that canon was early, we've proved the legitimacy
of the canon, we've proved that there's evidence for an emerging
canon, but that doesn't really say anything about the actual
books themselves. How do we know that the 27 books
of the New Testament that we have embody Christianity as God
intended? So we're going to look at one
more liberal Christian. I think he would call himself
a Christian. I looked at his credentials online
last night, so I know that he's a professor at some college over
religious studies. So this is Bart Ehrman, undoubtedly
a disciple of Bauer. He says this, quote... I've got
to choke this down first. Okay, he says this. But where did the New Testament
come from? What if another group had won?
What if the New Testament contained not Jesus' Sermon on the Mount,
but the Gnostic teachings of Jesus delivered to his disciples
after his resurrection? What if it contained not the
letters of Paul and Peter, but the letters of Ptolemy and Barnabas? What if it contained not the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but the Gospels of
Thomas, Philip, Mary, and Nicodemus?" Now, the principle behind this
quote has already been dealt with in the intro. Obviously,
it falls on its own sword. If Barth is right, then he's
wrong at the same time. It's pluralistic nonsense. But,
Let's go ahead and apply the test of coherence to these books
that he lists anyway. Remember, if anything is going
to stand, it must be able to cohere together, otherwise it's
a non-thing. So let's just go right in order.
First of all, Ptolemy's epistle to Flora. That's the first letter
that he says, why couldn't that have been scripture? Well, that
epistle taught that there were multiple deities. Not only does
this violate logic, but it violates what's taught in the Old Testament
as well. So, off the list. That's all
you need to know. Off the list. Next, the Epistle to Barnabas.
Now, I liked the Epistle to Barnabas. I thought it was a good read.
However, it taught that there was a species of spotted hyenas
that could change its sex. This is error. So, if it's error,
then it's not divine. So, you can cross that one off
the list. Next, the Gospel of Thomas. I wish there was girls
in here. Oh, there is. Okay, great, this
is perfect. The Gospel of Thomas records
Jesus as saying this, quote, for every woman who makes herself
male will enter the kingdom of heaven. Unquote. I don't think
I need to comment on that one. That one is easy. The Gospel
of Philip, also no comment necessary. It says, it taught that the Holy
Spirit was a woman. So none of these books... Now...
That's right, gosh, I didn't think about that. All of these books, remember,
so Bart's talking about the New Testament, he's saying, why can't
this be the New Testament? Well, Mr. Ehrman, if it is, then
you have to throw out everything, including the old. The Gospel
of Mary, next, his next book on the list. It has Mary telling
the disciples that Jesus gave her a vision, quote, describing
a Gnostic view of the Aeon. Unquote. Now just one thing regarding
that, if Gnosticism is true, then Jesus is a liar. So if the
Gospel of Mary is true, Jesus is a liar, he's not God, we're
all going to hell. Next, the Gospel of Nicodemus gives two
things. It gives an account, it gives
a fictional account of Jesus, of course it doesn't call it
fictional, it gives a fanciful account, rather, of Jesus' activities
while he's in hell. And it also gives this story
when Jesus walks in to the praetorium to be questioned before Pilate,
that the Roman standards, I don't know if he means up on the wall
or like the Roman standards on the shields, the images, they
bow down and start worshipping Jesus. So, it sounds something
more like Harry Potter than the scriptures. So, all of these
fail the coherence test. Every single one of these violate
sound reason and the Old Testament scriptures themselves. Now the
same thing could be said, and this is the one part I'm going
to talk about, the Apocrypha, the same thing could be said
about the Catholics' Apocrypha. Besides the fact that these books
were not recognized until the 16th century, and this was done
in order to counteract the Reformation, these books contain the doctrines
of purgatory, indulgences, and justification by works. And in
my opinion, it's pointless to debate the Catholics over the
idea of canon until you settle the question of authority first.
They need categories built first before you go to argue canon.
It's not saying you can't do it, it's just, kind of argue
in circles. So, the Catholics believe the
Church created the canon, and this is where they are similar
to Bauer and others. They're not liberal, they don't
deny supernaturalism, they don't deny God's providence, but they
believe, just kind of in a different sense, that it was the church
that determined what the canon was. So, it's easy to see how
books are disqualified, but what about recognizing the true books
as canon? So here's the last section, which
I'm just going to call the Distinguishable Mark and the Operation of the
Holy Spirit. So remember, that our big idea
is that the canon was not determined by subjective dogmatics, but
rather discovered by its distinguishable mark. In the early church, almost
all of the New Testament that we have was recognized immediately,
either because it was written directly by an apostle or it
was recognized within the apostolic circle. Other books like Hebrews,
James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude were contested by some,
not by all, for a while, but in the end, their distinguishable
mark became evident to all. Now, I actually think that's
helpful. I don't think that those early
Christians, I can't say this for sure, but I don't think those
early Christians were dishonoring the word. I think they were trying
to lift it up because they didn't want to say, yeah, this is God's
word and lead people astray. So they were waiting until this
mark just was really resounding as something that was inarguable.
Now, what I want to say about this distinguishable mark is
that it is something that is visible to all Christians everywhere. Paul, in 2 Timothy 3.16, proclaimed
that the scripture was theonoustos. That's God breathed. The words
of God. The scripture is theonoustos. It's breathed out by God. The
author of Hebrews 4, chapter 4, verse 12, says this, For the
word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. So the word of God is living. It jumps out of the page and
gets right in your face. And that's its distinguishable
mark. I brought the example when I
did the can of scripture two or three weeks ago, just the
verse, my favorite verse, Psalm 34 8, O taste and see that the
Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes
refuge in Him. That scripture bears on itself a distinguishable,
unarguable mark. So that distinguishable mark,
that truth is something that all Christians are drawn to. One of the early church fathers
said this, quote, as the eye seeks light and as our body craves
food, so our mind is impressed with the supernatural desire
to know the truth of God and the causes of what we observe. So this supernatural desire is
given to us by the Holy Spirit, who leads us into all truth.
That was the promise of Jesus, that not only that His sheep
would... we would hear His... if we were His sheep, we would
hear His voice, John 10, 27, but that He would send the Holy
Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit Himself would lead us into all
truth. John 16, 13. When the Spirit
of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth, For he will
not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will
speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come."
So it was the Holy Spirit of God that led the early church
into the discovery of the canon. It wasn't them that imposed their
will in the determining of the books. It was the Holy Spirit
who caused those books to be imposed upon them. And just one
quick analogy before we end. When Christopher Columbus sailed
to America, he discovered it. He did not create it. After he
discovered it, though, there was still a lag in time before
everyone else saw it or discovered it for themselves. But is that
an argument against the existence of America? Of course not. Before Columbus set sail, did
his benefactors vote on a continent existing for him to find? Of
course not. Now these questions might seem
ridiculous, but the underlying principle that is found in this
analogy is the principle that guides the liberal Christian's
best arguments against the canon. Now that's astounding. If their
best arguments are self-evidently false, then what are they going
to run to? What argument against the canon
is left? There's simply no ground to argue
on the basis of manuscript corruption. We have simply too many texts
that can prove that to be not the case. The only ground they
have left is to argue against God himself, and that is why,
at the end of the day, this type of person is really an atheist.
This liberal Christian who argues against God's providence and
the Holy Spirit and the Word of God bearing a distinguishable
mark in all the Scriptures that say this is what Scripture is,
they're not really a Christian at all. And I'm not speaking
to the nature of their soul, I'm speaking to the nature of
their worldview. Their worldview is atheistic. That is not how a Christian who
is empowered by the Holy Spirit, based on the very promises of
Jesus, acts towards the Scriptures. All right, so we'll end there.
Any questions before we move on to the second session? Yes. So the implication of Bart Ehrman
and Bauer is that the church council, you know, it was like
a wrestling match and the stronger person prevailed and that's how
we ended up with what we have. Did they actually have the books
like Philip and Thomas and Mary and Nicodemus in front of them?
Not that they gave them serious consideration, but were they
actually considered and rejected at that council? So some of those
books that Ehrman pointed out were not. The text that we didn't talk
about was the Test of Historicity. If a book was written late or
if it wasn't clearly written by an apostle, it was thrown
out immediately. So those books weren't even at
the council. I think most of those books weren't
even at the council. And some of those books weren't even found until like
1845 or something like that. Ehrman's just kind of painting
this hypothetical what if. And he's really saying, what
if God? He's basically saying the same thing John Lennon said
in his song, Imagine. Imagine there's no God. That's what he's
basically saying at the end of the day. But there were some
books. Shelley said that Augustine held to some of the books of
the Apocrypha, which I had not heard that before. I don't think
that makes any difference. Augustine is not the authority,
the scripture is, and Augustine might have been wrong on some
things. There were some books that were at the Council, and
I think a lot of them were just the Apocrypha. I think part of
that comes from the fact that the Apocrypha was part of the
Greek Septuagint, but when they canonized the Old Testament,
they really went to the Hebrew there. you know, that was where
they got their books from. So, I don't know, I don't know
what books were thrown out. I know the Shepherd of Hermes
was thrown out at that point, but that was already way back
here said to be, you know, kind of spurious, but helpful. Yeah,
I think the bottom line where Isaiah says, the grass withers
and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever
is proof enough, because those things haven't stood forever.
ridiculous books and you know, I mean, the Bible's still here
and it's still standing strong. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, from my understanding,
I speak to Dodaki and the Shepherds and I think the epistle of Barnabas,
the epistle of Barnabas that we don't have a copy of anymore,
I don't think it was their decision on whether to admit it to canon,
but where its place would be in the church order, because
the apocrypha in some of those books. Nobody had a problem with
reading like the Shepard of Hermonster or the Tadake. It wasn't that
there seems to be when I talk to people it's like we have to
destroy these books or we have to keep Christians from them. And one of the things that I
notice is that it is Christianity that encouraged the reading of
things, the scripture especially, but of getting a hold of just
reading as much as you can to find out, you know, to find out
pretty much for yourself. But from my understanding it
wasn't a matter of how do we accept these things into the
canon, it was more of a matter of where is, you know, what do
we do with the Shepherd of Hermas? And if it isn't as good a quality
as scripture but by the same token do we just call it another
book or do we you know set it aside and say well we kind of
recommend kind of like C.S. Lewis's Miracles or something
you know it's a good book to read but yeah you know and that
was one understanding he said yeah if you want a good um it's
not an extensive treatment but Josh McDowell's out of the defense
emergency talks about a four-fold test for the um a criteria for
canonization. So it wasn't like they were just
voting to accept what the church had already... that was one of
the criteria, that it was universally recognized by the church. And
the books that are always put forward, whether they're Gnostic
Gospels or these Apocryphal books, they were not universally recognized
as scripture by the church. But if you don't want to believe
something, any alternative will do. And so that's what Bauer,
Ehrman, and Bob Bell, they're actually just throwing these
things out to try to cast a reasonable doubt. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Can I ask a question just about
the, just the book Hebrews? And I mean, just because from
my understanding of what I've read, that was one of the more
disputed books that at the Council Court, which did make the final
judgment. So I mean, what, how did that
decision come about? You know, I don't know. It's
an easy answer. I do know that it was early church
tradition, and in fact you can see this in some modern Bibles,
that it was thought to be written by Paul. But that fact itself
is disputed. I think at the end of the day,
just the fact that the content alone, it had, you know, like
the verse I said, O taste and see the Lord is good. Hebrews
is jam-packed full of that type of distinguishable words. I'm
all pointing to the Old Testament and to Jesus being the Messiah.
So, to answer your question, I don't know specifically. Josh,
I didn't actually answer that. It was because it appears in
Hebrews to teach that you can lose your salvation. And of course,
that would not, that cannot be possibly true at all. So... That's why it was disputed, you
mean? Yeah. They were wondering, could this even be canonized?
Because it could possibly lead, is this, is this book teaching
this? And if it is teaching this, then
it certainly is not part of Canons Not Inspired, because we know
that that's not true. So then, as they read it more
and became more familiar with the actual content of the book,
they realized, well, it's not teaching that. And then it was
accepted as inspired writ. Because it was often to their
faces for looking at that as, well, of course, you have to
make men persevere because God preserves it. So that's not teaching. There's other enlisted canons,
too. Meletus is Old Testament. I don't know if it's the New
Testament, but it's 150. Yeah, I didn't think it was the
New Testament. I think it was just old, and I think it didn't include
Esther at that point. And the Miratory ended in 200,
and then Irenaeus lists books in against heresies in 180. I didn't get up to that part
in Irenaeus, so I don't know exactly which books he accepted and did. It being read in the churches
is a powerful thing, too. There's the lectionaries that
are saved. There's a number of quotations in the church lectionaries,
which are basically their readings for public worship that include
all the different fragments. I think of every single verse
in the New Testament except, I don't know, some 20 or 30 verses
that are on record. And Hebrews has a bunch of them.
This is from the first three centuries. So yeah. OK, I have a question on these
guys coming out like that. I think that maybe it's a good
argument. and to show where this all leads.
And I was wondering if you had anything in common of mine as
far as how succinctly you could talk about where these errors
can lead and hopefully, you know, bring, persuade people to, since
they're being postmodern and pulling this out from under us,
you know. Well, I mean, if they're right, then there
is no truth at all. I think that's the – I mean,
like Kossenberger's book, he does – I love it. At that point,
the only heresy left is orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the last heresy
standing because it says that there are things that are true.
That's the tough part about convincing people of this. Can you just
look at the two characteristics, the loss of truth and the fact that the
only heresy left is orthodoxy? That's exactly where we are.
If somebody can't see that, you're not going to have a whole lot
of success. And so if you can't convince
people that that's where you're at now, you're probably not going
to convince them about some future.
The Canonization of Scripture
Series Church History I
| Sermon ID | 2912110011955 |
| Duration | 54:37 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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