Just saying this portion of it is kind of unavoidably academic, and I don't know of a way around that except just skipping this. So I tried to incorporate as much scripture as possible in it, but here we are. We're continuing our study of historical theology, probably just for the next two weeks, then we'll take that break. to incorporate the young folks, Sean's class. I think everybody's sufficiently aware of the definition by now, so we'll skip some of that. We've been looking at the canon of scripture, and remember, this is the question we've been seeking to answer for the last several weeks at least, how's the church come to believe what belongs in the Bible and what doesn't? Two qualifiers, I'll probably mention throughout the duration of this one, that the scripture is self-attesting and that our confidence in it doesn't come from the church or anything outside of it, but from the self-authenticating character of its own message. A quote I've stolen from Sam Waldron. We've been looking at those New Testament canonical lists for a week or two. Remember, I'm skipping a bunch of this, but some review. Remember, this is from Allison in the book we've been following. He says there were two criteria that quickly emerged that the church used to try to determine what ought to be included in the canon, and that was apostolicity. Does it have an apostle for an author, or is it associated with an apostle? like Mark or Luke or something like that, who were associated with Peter and Paul. And then the second criteria they looked at was antiquity, which from their perspective meant, had the church historically, remember, which was just 150 years of antiquity for them, had it recognized these writings as part of the scripture always. Not saying that's right, but that's what they used. And remember, this qualifier, it's worth reading again. Although equipped with these criteria, the church did not set out to determine the canon of scripture, but to recognize and affirm those authoritative inspired writings that God intended for inclusion in his word. Remember, we've been reading this every time. 2 Peter 1.20. No prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And this whole thing that we've been studying is just the church's attempt to set out and try to recognize what writings had been, in fact, produced by the will of God. So last week we looked at the Muratorian Canon as the earliest one. from 170 A.D., they think. It's a fragment, remember, so we don't know everything that it contained or affirmed. Here are the things that we do know from it. This is just review. These are the things it affirmed, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul's letters, Jude, Revelation, and two books it shouldn't have, Wisdom of Solomon, Revelation of Peter. Remember, we don't Like, we don't even know who wrote this. The authorship is unknown. Muratorius, or Muratory? What's his name? I can't remember. Anywho, that guy, that's the guy who found it in 1700s, right? So he didn't come up with it, so we don't even know. So, these are missing from it. Hebrews, James, 1st, 2nd Peter, 3rd John. You'll see that kind of stuff a lot. And remember, I'm not gonna go over all that, but I'll send you this, ecumenical process, the church working together as one, or coming together with a consensus eventually, that would be a centuries-long process. And then what they were trying to do is just contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. We looked at Marcion, the first major heresy that made them start saying, hey, we've got to speak to this plainly. What's concluded in the Scripture? and what's not, right? And that's just, you know, for whatever reason, if you study church history, or if you study historical theology particularly, you see that that's just the way God tends to work providentially, as He allows falsehoods and heresies to rise and just grow in momentum, and which prods His people to double down on what's accurate and true. And that's the way the Church's dogma, meaning, you know, kind of its doctrinal assertions and formulations from Scripture, has developed for the last 2,000 years, almost always in response to error. So, it's just the way it is. I don't know why he's God, I'm not. But if you study and you'll see it, Lord willing, if we're able to continue this study after summer, you'll see that a lot. Now, here's another good example of it. So I'm trying to go somewhat chronologically. I'm trying to break it up from just pure lists and why this and not that with some stuff like this. Moving forward chronologically, this is from Allison. He says, about this time another heretical group arose called Montanism, after its founder, Montanus. It says, this movement encouraged an eager anticipation of the Lord's quick return, but here's where it's germane to this portion of our study. And Montanus, we'll probably deal with him several times if we do this study, continue it, by new by appealing to new revelations given by the Holy Spirit. See how this could be germane to it? Here's another summary of this that I had generated from AI. It's actually pretty good. Montanism, also known as the New Prophecy. So you're gonna see a lot of correlation between Montanism and the modern charismatic movement. of the last 150 years. It was kind of the charismatic movement of its time. Montanism, also known as the New Prophecy. Again, nothing's new under the sun. What did we see last time with Marcion? Easy-believe-ism and extreme dispensationalism, meaning toss out parts of scripture is irrelevant, is what I mean by the extreme. Almost no dispensationalists today would say that. But my point is, is the ideas are fundamentally new, right? Most of the things that come up today. Certainly that's the case with Martinism. It was a movement that emerged in the second century in Asia Minor, so around the time of this Muratorian fragment. It was characterized by several fundamental distinctives. One of it, and if anybody has questions, just ask. One of its primary features was the claim This was the big one, I think. The claim to receive direct divine revelations through ecstatic prophecy. What does that mean? Ecstatic. It's not clear, right? It's not clearly spoken like, you know, like biblical prophecy. It's just like, or whatever, you know, and you're just having this ecstatic experience and that's divine revelation being given to you through this kind of mystical well, there it says, often delivered in trance-like states. So you can see a lot of similarities here. Machinists believed the second coming was near. I think a lot of people have believed the second coming was near, but look where they take it. They were expecting the new Jerusalem to descend at Papusa Phrygia, Three guesses why there? Because that's where he was from. He had two prophetesses, by the way, that were kind of his right-hand men. I can't remember their names. Maybe it's on here somewhere, but yeah, a lot of similarities. Female leadership, so many similarities. That fueled their urgency and ascetic practices. What's that, asceticism? you know, fasting, crucifying the flesh. You think the roots of the present-day charismatic movement came out of that holiness movement that was really big on asceticism. The movement prompted a stricter lifestyle on asceticism, including regular fasting, I just need to read on, and a high value placed on celibacy. Well, now that part's different, but you can see that connection in a lot of medieval Catholicism, and even today. They enforced rigorous ethics, including lengthy fasts, forbidding second marriages, discouraging first marriages, and promoting martyrdom over fleeing persecution. They advocated for a two-tiered Christianity, higher life, right? We call that the Keswick higher life movement, that today, same thing then, or very similar. They distinguished between spiritual or spirit-filled Christians and carnal Christians, the rest of us, claiming a superior baptism of the Spirit for, of course, their followers. Montanism asserted that it represented a new stage of divine revelation, superior to that, so remember, they're receiving prophecy, so they're understanding that to be the word of God. That's what they're saying. Here's a new stage of divine revelation, superior to that of Christ and the apostles, introducing what they called the age of the paraclete. What does that mean? The spirit, right? It's a Greek word for the comforter. In the English, where it talks about the Holy Spirit as the comforter, that's the Greek word, the paraclete. He actually said that they actually taught, I can't remember if it's him or the prophetesses, were the paraclete. I mean, it was very heretical. Some of this stuff you're like, well that's not heretical, it's just erroneous. Right. Thankfully, most of it. But some of it like that, like they were that age of the Spirit. While generally orthodox in most doctrinal matters, Martinism's claim of continued prophecy and a new dispensation led to its eventual condemnation by the broader Church. The movement allowed for greater participation of women in leadership roles, and emphasized the idea that the Spirit had been poured out on all believers, enabling everyone to speak and exercise their spiritual gifts. Montanus, with Prophetesses Prissa and Maximilla, claimed direct revelations from the Holy Spirit, viewing themselves as the paraclete from John 14, 26, That's a good grimace. But I mean, they were crazy. It was wild. This isn't even the half of it, best I recall. With prophecy seen as, look at this, this is big, supplementing apostolic teachings. How many heresies and heretic cults still come from that idea right there? They don't reject the apostolic teachings, it's just a supplement to it, right? Montanists rejected formal church hierarchy, so they weren't, what they say, I don't like institutional religion is the way people say it today, emphasizing the universal priesthood of believers, which we would affirm as far as that goes, right? And the Spirit's direct guidance over Episcopal authority. And you know the dangerous thing in a lot of these heretical movements is they tended to get a thing or two right and it made them look really orthodox, especially if you didn't. We have the historical advantage of having big AI-generated surveys, but a lot of people maybe who had been influenced by the Montanists, they weren't given the whole package at first. It might have been just one or two little teachings, and it's like, hey, look, the Bible says this. Here's what we're doing. And there's, you know, you're drawn into those movements with kind of the tamer doctrines and then once you get in, you know, the esoteric doctrines are revealed and it's like a frog in boiling water kind of thing. So very serious, you know, very serious stuff. But the point being for our study, this is another reason why, the scripture alone has to have the ultimate and final say-so on all matters of faith and practice, right? Which is one of the creeds of the Reformation. Allison says the church responded to, no, this is not Allison, this is FF Bruce, FF Bruce. No, this is Allison, sorry. The church responded to this emphasis on revelation outside of the Bible by underscoring the closed canon of scripture. All right, so just want you to see like we saw with Marcion, like when these early heresies rose up and got big enough to where it started to look like it was actually going to infect and affect the church at large, right, it kind of forced people who were just, you know, living their lives and trying to be faithful and teach and preach and conduct service and whatever else, you know, be charitable. Charity was a big thing back then. Kind of forced them to say, hey, we got to take time. We got to take time to address this. We got to take time to to recognize some criteria for canonicity and say, here's why the canon's closed, and here's why then those, you know, those heretical teachings that are outside of it, particularly those new revelations, they are not from God, they're from the evil one. So, is that making sense so far? All right, let's go, any questions? on Martinism or its contribution to the recognition of the canon, New Testament canon, no. Okay, we'll go back to a list. This guy was interesting. Some people call him origin, some Oregon, and they get mighty snooty about which way you say it. I don't care which way you say it, I've heard People that teach lectures on it say it both ways, so I don't even know. I know the Greek is origines. Maybe that would have been the way it was actually written. So I guess that would be the softer gene. I tend to call him Oregon, just because I've heard that one more, I guess. But Oregon, origin of Alexandria, he was a very prolific and influential church father. You can see the dates there, 185 to 254. And he was probably most known for his allegorical approach to interpreting scripture. And let me just say, the man was brilliant, but he was also deeply flawed in some ways, which like I said before, I think God in his providence, especially those early church fathers that were so close to the apostles and to the canonical writings, I think God in his providence let them have some really big blunders and screw ups, so we would, not confuse them with the writings of the apostles. But they say Eusebius, which was an early church historian, he writes a lot about Oregon and he said he was like a child prodigy in the church and everything. I think his father was a pastor and he was just a just a genius, prodigious kid who later became a church leader and that sort of thing, did a lot of writing, but that over-allegorizing certainly made him make some very significant errors. But he wasn't one that would be like Montanus or Marcion, He led a movement that taught heresy or anything like that. It would just be like some of y'all might say about me or something. He's orthodox, but he's got some stuff wrong. It's that kind of thing. I hope you think I'm orthodox or get rid of me one. So here's his list from, you can see there, a little bit later than the Muratorian. fragment. He considered these to be canonical. Pretty good list for the early time. Acts, Paul, James, Jude, question mark, we'll talk about the question marks in a little while, maybe. First Peter, second Peter, question mark. First John, Jude, question mark, Revelation. He called these, this is different, he called these books the disputed writings. He didn't say they were not canonical. He just wrote and said some churches somewhere disputed whether these were canonical or not. What, it's not on there. It was, sorry, it was Hebrews, second Peter, question mark, and second and third John. So you're seeing a lot of similarities. And I told you about two weeks ago, theologians classify these two groups as the 20 and the seven. The 20 books were never disputed, basically, by any Orthodox church that we are aware of. They're called the homo legumina. Remember that big homo, logos, right? The same words. The antilegomena would be those other seven books. I don't know that that matters. Anywho, that would be part of his antilegomena list. Anywho, this is from F.F. Bruce. He's talking about explaining origins. Oregon here, says he distinguished the undisputed or acknowledged books of the New Testament from those who were disputed or doubtful. Says the undisputed books were the four Gospels and Acts, we read all that. He says he does not appear to mention the number of Pauline epistles, you'll see why I included this, but shows by his references to them throughout his works that he knew all 13. if Hebrews is to be included. And a lot of people in the early church thought that Paul wrote Hebrews. As a matter of form, he allowed the Alexandrian tradition in regarding Hebrews as Pauline, but he recognized that the writer had a better Greek style than Paul. So that's much like the debate about 2 Peter and 1 Peter. 1 Peter's Greek is very different than 2 Peter. And so, you know, some in the early church said, well, they both can't be written by Paul. But, of course, the issue is, and Paul says it in the prologue to the first letter, he was there with a scribe. So it would appear, or not Paul, Peter. So it would appear that Peter had a scribe write 1 Peter, so it's grammatically more proper and that sort of thing, where his cornbread, corn-pone fisherman self wrote 2 Peter in his own hand, so that's why you see the discrepancy, but it's his words in any event. Similar thing there. just want everybody to hear these things, you know, and be aware of these things. So somebody who's skeptical or critical of the Gospels or the Scripture, you know, doesn't throw this at you and you've never heard it or dealt with it or know the answers to it. Let's see. the thoughts of the epistle, he found admirable, Hebrews, not inferior to those of Paul's acknowledged letters. It says perhaps the thoughts were Paul's while the language was due to one of his disciples like Clement or Luke, etc. And he said, Orden says, who really wrote the epistle? God only knows. And that's what we still say today, isn't it, about Hebrews? God only knows. It's self-authenticating based on the character of its message. Since, however, Oregon knew that some churches did not accept Hebrews, he classified it as disputed. Also disputed, we read before, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, and Jude. It says, Oregon is the earliest Christian writer actually to mention 2 Peter. It does not appear to have been known much before his day. The earliest manuscript to contain its text, along with the text of 1 Peter and Jude, is P72, which was probably copied in Oregon's lifetime. That's really, really old though from our perspective. Really, really old manuscript to go back to the 2nd century. Very, very old. Let's see. The uncertainty, I think these are important things to know. And we'll just, when we get through his, which is not much more, we'll just stop because of the time. He says the uncertainty which he mentions with regard to 2 and 3 John was probably due to their brevity. In other words, they were very short. We call them the little Johns for a reason, right? Which led to their being easily overlooked, though notice the parenthetical thought, their internal evidence makes it clear that they come from the same circle, if not from the same individual author as the fourth gospel and first John. That was from Bruce. He says there are several quotations from the reputed epistle of James. in Oregon's works. In some of his works, which survive only in the Latin translation, the brother of the epistle is called the apostle and the Lord's brother, talking about James. So we see why he's got the question marks, because he's not making this assessment himself. He's saying, here's what the churches Here's an assessment of the position of the Holy Catholic Little C. Church is on these things. Most of them accept these books, but some don't for these reasons. And he's just saying here's why in his writings. As for the Epistle of Jude, Oregon says in his commentary, on Matthew that it was the work of the Lord's brother of that name, mentioned in Matthew 13, 45. He says, look, it has but few lines, but is filled with the words of heavenly grace. Sounds like he's recognizing that that's divinely inspired, right? Even though he puts a question mark, or we put a question mark beside it, because he's recognizing it's not part of that, those 20 homo-leguminoid books. He says, this probably turned the balance in its favor in Origen's eyes. Elsewhere in the same commentary, however, he indicates that it was not universally acknowledged. And then he summarizes, Origen thus mentions all 27 books of our New Testament. 21, he says, are acknowledged, and six are doubtful. So it's the, to consider like the the geographical distances between these various people that write these things and the time periods. To us, it's all way back in 100 million years ago from our perspective. But to them, they might be 100 years apart. Well, what would be 100 years apart? 1925. We don't feel connected to 1925, do we? You see what I'm saying? So to have all this a homogeneity in their context. It really does speak volumes, I think. So I'll be true to my word and stop Lord willing. Because we're going to have to stop this for Sean's class coming in here, I'm going to try next week to push through Eusebius' canon and then just skip ahead to the Athanasian. canon, which is kind of the gold standard. Those are the seminal ones. So Eusebius early fourth century, Athanasius later in the fourth century. If I remember correctly, the Athanasian canon was like the first one that listed exactly the 66 books that we recognize today as canonical. in that form. So yeah, any questions? We'll try to push through that and get that so that when we come back we can just start with, you know, we'll be out of the development of the canon and we can start with theology proper, you know, the nature of God, that sort of thing. So hopefully we can push through that. No questions? Other than can we go? Andrew, you want to dismiss us in prayer, bro? Sure. Thanks. Heavenly Father, thank you for tonight. Thank you for giving me the word. And thank you for hearing our prayers for all the holy people who have not heard of us. We ask and pray that you will bless us this week and watch over us and watch over our members of our church. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Appreciate everybody coming.