But I think everybody here has been here for a lot of these historical theology things, right? So I could probably plow ahead without much review. So I'm just going to bump ahead here. Everybody knows the definition. which aspect of it we've been discovering, the question we're trying to answer, which hopefully will narrow down this focus even more today, those two principles, self-attestation, self-authentication of scripture, Old Testament canon, harmony, the early oral proclamation, I think that was last week, I'm going to try to skip over a lot of this since everybody was here. I think Madison, you may not have been here for that one. Maybe I'll just read that. Yeah. You did listen to it? OK. So you're good to plow ahead. All right. Good deal. Judging that Sean Ryan episode there sent you, there was talk about a lot of this stuff. It was cool. Oh, sure enough. I only watched the part you told me to about the blood and stuff. Yeah. All right, so let's see, where did we get to then? All right, let me emphasize, let me emphasize this, because we didn't talk much about the bishops. So this is not quite starting the new section, because we didn't quite finish that last section. But remember I told you, let me see where to jump in here, what you had in the in that second century, in the end of the first century, a situation where there's no printing press, there's no book of books together, if you will. Not everybody could even read. Probably a lot of Christians couldn't read. They were usually lower class people at first, even still today, globally. How do you then, in that situation go about trying to obey all those biblical edicts to preserve the truth, right? What do you do when you can't just give people Bibles, like we would say today, or point them to YouTube videos or something like that? And I said the two primary ways, it seems to me, that the church tried to do that in good faith was to develop those strong creedal statements that sort of laid down the basics, the fundamental core tenets of Christianity and taught people to memorize those, almost like our, very similar to our catechism program, something like that. And we talked about that one a lot more. But the second thing I mentioned that we didn't talk much about was They vested a lot of authority in centralized regional bishops, a lot of power and authority in them. I think their intentions in that were probably good because it's a lot easier. Let me jump ahead here. It's a lot easier to to control and push out error if you have more centralized authority. That's what Rome Catholicism does today, essentially, right? They don't have to go toe-to-toe with reformed and Protestant people by exegesis and scriptural interpretation. What do they say? Our magisterium has the authority. Our magisterium says, you're wrong, be gone. You see, so like what they were, what the early church did do on a micro level with good intentions, like did blossom, that's probably, that has a positive connotation, did corrode, let's say that, did corrode into the rejection of biblical truth for the sake of church authority that we see today full blown in Western Catholicism. Let me read this. This is from Allison from that book. He says this about the church's early relationship to the bishops and the authority they vested in them and why. We're not going to like dig deeply into this, but it needs to be introduced here because I think it's going to start coming up more and more. The recipients and transmitters of this tradition, remember that's that language of the sacred tradition, the rule, the canon that Tertullius and Irenaeus, we read those quotes last week, were in particular what he called the successors of the apostles, the bishops who led the church. So the apostles were delimited to those first century men that Jesus chose, right? So he's saying those that succeeded them in hierarchical authority in the church's eyes were these bishops. This wasn't universal, but For the most part, you started to see a hierarchical ecclesiology, ecclesiastical authority structure, church authority structure develop already in the second century. Moving away from the local elder model of plurality and parity that we see in the New Testament under the authority of apostles and their evangelists to very quickly developing into that. So in any event, think about this. They, those bishops, they were the guarantee that what was believed and practiced by the churches was in accord with apostolic rule of faith. Now that works as long as the bishops themselves are biblical, right? If you invest that authority, if the Bishop of Rome, and guys, why would the Bishop of Rome in the Western church become the Pope? because Rome was the capital city. So who's gonna have the most influence, the most de facto power, if each city had one bishop for the whole city, who's gonna be the most prominent bishop? The one who's at the center of the empire, the one who's in Rome, right? It's just organic. Not biblical, nothing biblical about it, but it developed because of circumstances. the historic circumstances that they were in. These bishops, though, he says, were not considered, I would add, a source of new revelation that stood alongside of written scripture. They didn't say that, like Catholicism might say about the magisterium collectively today. They were instead faithful transmitters of the truth received from the apostles and ultimately from God himself. The danger here is twofold, threefold, really. People put too much confidence in these bishops. Like I said, as long as they were biblical in what they believed, it didn't cause any problems. When you put too much confidence in a man that's not inspired of the Holy Spirit, what's going to happen eventually? He's gonna let you know, He's gonna lead you astray, right? And it's a good lesson for us, because like I said, we have the lesser tendencies as Protestants and Baptists in particular, but we do still have tendencies like this. It's a lot of work to uphold the truth through thorough exegesis and proclamation, contending for the faith because you've learned the Bible and you can use the Bible to defend it. It's a whole lot easier to say, here's what's true, that person has the authority. If they say you're wrong, you're wrong. See that? But it should just show us that We need to be careful about too much pragmatism when it comes to the faith. That's what that was. That was a pragmatic approach. I don't blame him too much, but that seems to be what it was. Let's read this from Tertullian. Remember, he was 155 to 220. But even in a discussion from the Scriptures, he says, i.e. a polemical comparison by the editors, should not turn out, even if that should not turn out in such a way as to place both sides on a par, the natural order of things will require that this point should be first proposed. What point? This one. with whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong. So in other words, if you can read through all that, you know, even 2,000 year old language translated into English doesn't flow like native English speaking would, right? What's he saying? He says even if, you know, you got two people and they're arguing about a point of doctrine and they're both essentially saying the Bible says this, right? He said, well, where do you go from there, right? He says, you have to, you have to, he says, the natural order of things will require that this point should first be proposed in that situation. What? Essentially, which one lines up with the creed or the bishop, right? With whom lies that very faith to which the scriptures belong, and from what and through whom and when and to whom has been handed down that rule by which men become Christians. See, if you read through that, he's not saying it the way I'm saying it, but that's the way it got applied, it tended to get applied. For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions." Now guys, is everything he said technically true? I mean, probably technically true, right? In other words, if the bishops are being faithful, if the creeds are faithful representation, if God the Holy Spirit has preserved that, through the church's progress of dogma, then yeah, the heretic is gonna easily be seen to be at variance with that standard, that standard as preserved in the creeds and in the teachings of the bishops. But like I've just said before, I'm just trying to stress to you that that's a really slippery slope, and we just need to beware of too much of that pragmatism when it comes to the faith. Oftentimes the easiest way is not always the best way. Even, guys, you can silence an opponent in ways that don't benefit him or the church, right? It's easy to get people to stop talking or to stop arguing. Right? But to do it in a way to where they're convinced of their wrong or in a way that doesn't scandalize the church or cause unnecessary broken relationships, just trying to contextualize it. Now, that's hard. Right? That takes a lot of diligence. That takes a lot of work. It takes heart, very committed hearts. All right, so we need to do things the biblical way. Does the Bible tell us how to address all those situations? Absolutely, right? We've been looking at that. How to handle conflict, all that stuff. The Bible's full of it. We just need to do what it says because it takes a commitment of life that is going to take more out of us than just saying, read this document. Not talking about the Bible, talking about some extra biblical document. Or go let this man arbitrate. Remember three things, we looked at this I think. First, these men were not infallible and they weren't inspired. They had significant doctrinal errors themselves. We talked about that last week. in various of these, what are called apostolic fathers, you had various shades of these very dangerous things. Baptismal regeneration, blurring the line of justification by faith, Christological subordinationism, Kiliasm, problem for some, that tendency toward sacramentalism, mystifying the ordinances, that sort of thing, hierarchical episcopacy, apostolic succession, no forgiveness of sins after baptism. I think I read over that real briefly at the end of last time. Guys, those are big unbiblical issues, right? Well, besides Kiliasm. They saw I wouldn't go into it. Most of those are big theological issues, and these sacred early church fathers that Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism sometimes points to as the validation and vindication for why they do what they do, a lot of them had elements of those things that we wouldn't even let people be church members if they believed today, right? Like if somebody taught baptismal regeneration, we'd say, I'm sorry, you can't be a member of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, that's heresy. Right? Don't sound like a big deal, but if you flush it out, it is. Not all those, definitely. the Christological heresies and stuff like that. So we just need to put it in that perspective. They were flawed men, right? They were men who contained a lot of error. They were just like us. They just had their error, as Brandon said, 1,900 years ago instead of today. And I think he said something like, something's just as wrong 1,900 years ago as it's wrong today. Their intentions to preserve the truth, a lot of them were probably good. But they just, I would say it like this, they weren't sufficiently self-aware. The development of Christian dogma would go on for centuries, centuries after they were dead and gone without their help. The Holy Spirit would be at work in his church through the proclamation of the scriptures, honing and refining Christian dogma to more and more and more accurate understandings of the scripture without their help. The point simply just, they're not our authority. And at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what they said. I'm trying to inform you of it, so you'll know, so you won't be caught off guard with it. So when you hear those things, it's not like a, a lot of people's faiths are, faith, faiths, would that be what you're saying? Are shaken when they hear what the early church fathers wrote and how some of it points to Catholicism. Guys, it doesn't matter. Error is error. The Bible is true. It doesn't matter how long the error's been around. If it doesn't align with the Word of God, it has to be rejected. So, that's the point in all that. Remember this. This is critical. Why? Because this is the Bible's position on that. Remember Ephesians 2.19, writing to Gentile Christians, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens. You are fellow citizens with the saints, the holy ones, members of the household of God. Okay, so that's the metaphor, the house of God, the place where God dwells. What's that? It's the church. We'll see that in a second. What's the church? What's the foundation of the church? Is it the apostolic fathers? The Roman magisterium? Is it Peter and the papal succession that started centuries after it was supposed to have started? Yeah, it's the word of God, right? The foundation of the apostles and prophets, New Testament, Old Testament. The origin of it all being Christ, the cornerstone. Think about that. The first thing that's laid in a foundation then was the cornerstone. Everything was squared, trued, lined up, laid off from it. Then all those other stones were laid in accordance with that, with the truing that came from the cornerstone. That's Jesus, the Word incarnate, right? So it's all about Jesus, Old Testament, New Testament, but that's the foundation, look, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit." See that? So what foundation is the Spirit of God building the Kingdom of God on the earth upon? It's the Word of God. It's the canon of Scripture, Old and New Testaments. Does that make sense to everybody? Just tired, repetitive, Melissa says. Does this text make sense how this text refutes those notions that God is building his church upon the back of the Roman magisterium? That's a living authority. See, that's a completed, laid authority, the word of God that now the church is being built upon. It's critical, critical text. Any questions about that? No. All right, we're good. Melissa told me last week, you're too repetitive on this. I know, I did ask her. I did. No, I did ask her. Yeah, she straightened me out. I just think the understanding of this is so critical. All right, so let's, we've dealt with lots of qualifiers now. Let's jump into kind of the specifics more of answering this question that we started with. How's the church come to believe what belongs in the Bible and what does not? We're gonna, this may take a few weeks, but this was really helpful to me when I was taught it. I hope it'll be helpful to you. If it's not, give me some feedback and we'll skip over it faster, but my plan is to, this will be the last kind of section of this canon part, the scripture part, but it'll be a week or two in dealing with this, especially since we're starting it with 10 minutes to go. I'll start with this kind of summary from Allison in the book. He says, a crucial question arose, which of the writings from the early church should be included in this expanding canon? Remember, in that context, expanding canon, he's not saying expanding beyond the New Testament. He's talking about the expansion beyond the Old Testament. Remember, he had made that statement that the New Testament church was aware that the revelation of God had opened again with the coming of Jesus Christ. So now they're going to say, okay, we know that's open, where does it close? And what's included within it? They're trying to recognize that. He says, consisting of both the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, and the New Testament. remember this or have never heard it, but he says, just as a footnote I thought might interest you, that Irenaeus was the first person to call the two parts of this collection the Old and New Testaments. So that's interesting. That tradition goes a really long way back. It's not inspired, but I mean obviously there's a division. by the text itself, but referring to it by the collective organizing of these writings pertain to the Old Covenant economy and these pertain to the New Covenant economy. Covenant and Testament are synonymous words. Yeah, so anyhow, I thought that was interesting. In any event, going back to it, he says, the letters of Paul, written by an apostle, clearly invested with divine authority, were easily recognized as belonging to canonical scripture. He says, but, now think about these. And this is the stuff I think it's so important that we not be blindsided with from skeptics and such. What about the anonymous letter to the Hebrews? Who wrote that? It doesn't say, well it's a speculation, but the letter doesn't say, right? Why should Mark and Luke, think about this, be placed alongside the Gospels written by the apostles Matthew and John? Matthew and John were apostles, Mark and Luke were not. All right, so why should they be included? You see some of these questions, okay? What about the letter of Barnabas and the shepherd of Hermes? Some say Hermes. Two very early writings that enjoyed widespread circulation in the early church. Very, very popular. Heavily circulated letters that some people thought were canonical. Not a lot, but some did. You'll hear about the Shepherd of Hermas probably a lot. The issue of the Canon of Scripture became, and we'll try to answer all these by the way, in time became particularly critical when false teachers and false prophets appeared. We introduced this guy last time, Madison, your French chef. Marcio, did you hear me say that? I'll always think of you now when I hear it. Read Marcio. And that wasn't even you that said that. I said that to you. Now it's stuck. Marcion, remember, he was a leader of a heretical movement whose views were obviously wrong. His quote-unquote canon rule of scripture consisted of quote, the gospel singular and the apostle, essentially saying what? A mutilated version of Luke's gospel and ten of Paul's 13 letters. He didn't even accept all of them. He just cut out what we put in there what he agreed with. He rejected the entire Old Testament and parts of the growing New Testament that reflected favorably upon the Old. And Allison says the early church was rightly concerned by his views and recognized that his restricted canon of scripture fostered his heretical theology. Says his canon was wrong, obviously, but what writing should be included in the true canon? All right, so here we go. That was just to kind of review that. We obviously won't make it very far, but this is critical. The church turned to defining the canon of scripture. Two criteria emerged to determine which writings to include in the canon. Now, this is not to say both of these are right. This is just to say this is what they did. The one is without question right. because the scripture puts that forward. The first is apostolicity. Does this meaning, does this writing have an apostle for its author? E.g., for example, Paul's letters, the Gospels of Matthew and John. If not, is an apostle associated with this writing? For example, Mark's Gospel. which records the accounts of the apostle Peter, right? Luke's gospel is supposed to have been received. I shouldn't say received. I don't know how to word it. It's very Pauline in a number of ways that indicated to people that, like, if you compare the accounts of the supper and that sort of thing, And we know from the book of Acts that Luke did disciple Paul at times. And so the connection is, the purported connection that was accepted and always has been, is that was under Pauline authority as an apostle, just for free there. Talk about that later. The second thing though, apostolicity and antiquity. Has the church historically recognized the voice of God speaking to His people in this writing? Now, to us, that's going to mean something different to them. Consider you're in the second or third century, and let's say you're in the second century, and all of a sudden, an epistle that nobody has ever heard of comes out and it's called the Gospel of Bartholomew. He's an apostle, one we've never heard of, except in the list, right? And they say, well, this is written by Apostle Bartholomew. You have to accept, I can't say that. I should've picked one I can say. Bart, right, Bart. Bart's an apostle of Jesus. Look, this letter says it's written by Bart. You have to accept it. And see, that happened a lot. because they recognized what apostolicity was and the authority it held. So when people wanted to pass off these works that are called pseudepigraphical works, think like a pseudonym, somebody writes in a false name. So a work of pseudepigraphy would be a writing that was attributed to a false writer, to an author who didn't actually write it. So how would they say, is this really apostolic? Well, one of the ways they would do that is to say, search what to them was antiquity, which to us would have been a blip on the screen, but they would look back in 100 years and say, Did anybody in the church recognize this as actually a writing from the Apostle Barth? So that's kind of the idea behind this antiquity. It's not completely distinct from the issue of apostolicity. It's aligned with it in some ways. The difference is what? This one is absolute. this one can err, right? You see, but again, this was just how were they trying to, how were they trying to do it? You know, and most appeared to be well-intended in their efforts, right? Most of the true Christians from this error, they were just trying to determine what really is the word of God and what is not. Let's see. Yeah, we're at a stopping point real soon. It says, he goes on, although equipped with these criteria, the church did not set out, this is so important, I can't, I've emphasized this the whole time, and I will till I die unless something changes my mind. The church did not set out to determine the canon of scripture, that's the polemic of today by those groups who think they gave us the Bible, but to recognize and affirm those authoritative inspired writings that God intended for inclusion in the Word. Is that a big difference? Yeah, that's all the difference in the whole world right there. Remember, we read this every time. No prophecy was produced by the will of man. No prophecy of scripture was produced by the will of man. So the church just set out to try to recognize which books had indeed been produced by the will of God. Men spoke from God as they were carried about by the Holy Spirit. So that's probably a good place to stop. I was hoping we could get into this first list called the Muratorian Canon. That's kind of the first part. It's a fragment, so we don't know for sure what the completed list. We don't even know whose list it was. It was just a list that was found by this Italian guy named that. What's his name? Muratori. You know, it's definitely not conclusive, but it's interesting that, you know, it got most of it right, interestingly enough, that early, but there were some issues with it. But seeing as how it's 732, I'll not jump into that yet. Any questions? These lists may seem boring at first, but the reasons behind them, to me, were fascinating. I'm kind of nerdy like that, but I thought they were great. I'll give you this summary. It's not from this list. You basically have 20, if I remember correctly, so this is going off old memory, not new, so bear with me. You have 20 books. that were basically never questioned of the New Testament, I'm saying. The theological word for it is homo legumia, just think homo, like the same, right? Everybody agreed, logos, everybody spoke the same about them. And then you only actually had seven New Testament books that were ever disputed. By anybody but heretics, right? And the reasons for those are, when you hear the reasons for them, it makes you relax a little bit about, oh, yeah, no, okay, yeah, that makes sense. It's good they're in the canon, so. Definitely not Revelation, right? Well, that might be its own animal. All right. Nothing? All right. Brandon, you want to dismiss this in prayer, bro? All right.