It’s a curious thing — a lot of well-informed Protestants will talk very much about how historical context is vital to properly understanding the Bible. This is so true, but why don’t we apply it to other things — the Nicene Creed for example? What did the original authors, in 325, as well as those who added to it in 381, mean when they said “one holy catholic and apostolic Church,” or “one baptism for the remission of sins”? We can’t go back and read it through the lens of the Reformation, because it hadn’t happened. Do to that is sloppy theology & history. We must read it through the lens of the original authors.
I don’t know the answer quite yet, but I’m going to keep searching.
Another difficulty — canon for the Bible was not closed until 1500s. How does a Protestant justify trusting the church to put together a “infallible & authoritative” collection of scripture if the church you are relying on is fallible and with no authority? How can a “lesser-than” authority define a “greater-than” authority?
Please, fellow Protestants, convince me to stay!
7 comments:
I agree. The question of authority and how to know how God wants the Bible interpreted is what led me to Orthodoxy.
Very well said. I agree with you here.
You hit on three points I mention in my book. The last point about trusting the fallible Church to discern the canon is right on. Here's the syllogism for it:
1. Certainty cannot rest on doubt. A decision cannot be more trustworthy than the deciding principle. You cannot trust the action more than the agent.
2. The Church is the agent who defined the canon.
3. You cannot have more trust in the canon than you have in the Church.
4. Protestants do not trust the Church with even moderate certain-ty.
5. Therefore Protestants cannot trust the canon with even moderate certainty.
God bless!
Hmm...good questions. I am a Christian (just a sinner who has found forgiveness through Jesus Christ, strength and encouragement from the Bible, and fellowship and instruction through a local body of believers).
Spurred on by your post, I am still looking into the context surrounding the Nicene Creed. It seems to have been a reaction to the heresy of a guy named Arius, who said that Jesus was a "creation" of God, not God's Son. (most fact-packed article I could find here: http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/definition-orthodoxy/)
As for some context surrounding the canon...
“The word ‘canon’ (kanon) comes from a Greek word that means a ‘measuring stick,’ ‘a straight edge,’’a standard of judgment,’ ‘a norm,’ ‘a rule.’
Paul wrote in Galatians 6:16: ‘Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule (kanon), even to the Israel of God.’ The “rule” here is the Gospel of Jesus Christ - the Gospel that came to fulfill the Law, not destroy it.
Per the authority of the Old Testament:
The Scriptures used at the time of Jesus are the same 39 books of the Old Testament that you and I use today. Jesus often quoted from the Old Testament canon. He used the Old Testament Scriptures to overcome temptations. He read from it in the synagogue. He quoted a verse from Psalm 22 from the cross.
Based on the clear testimony of Jesus (and His disciples), the Old Testament books were given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. NT writers refer to all but four of the Old Testament books, citing the OT as Scripture inspired by God. Certainly the canonicity of the 39 books we have in the Old Testament is beyond question.
Per the authority of the New Testament, keep in mind that even if the New Testament manuscripts we have discovered and translated(all 24,000 of them)were destroyed, we could still reconstruct the entire New Testament (except for 11 verses) from quotations in letters written by early church fathers...material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ.
(interesting note: Martin Luther included the Apocrypha in his translation of the Bible, but not as inspired books because 1)they endorsed suicide and the idea that alms-giving=salvation 2)their texts do not claim to be divinely inspired - there are no "Thus said the Lord" passages 3) Jesus, the Jews, the Apostles, and the early church did not accept them as canonical)
Because Alan says it a lot better than I could, I'm quoting most of this from http://www.wlsessays.net/files/GummCanon.pdf
I'm still muddling this out for myself, too. Thanks for posting your questions - they've triggered a lot of my own!
@Devin, thanks for laying it out so clearly!
@JCS, this is an interesting little tidbit:
"Per the authority of the New Testament, keep in mind that even if the New Testament manuscripts we have discovered and translated(all 24,000 of them)were destroyed, we could still reconstruct the entire New Testament (except for 11 verses) from quotations in letters written by early church fathers...material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ. "
The reason this caught my eyes, is because --even if we were going to reconstruct it from them, wouldn't we have to accept them as an authority, too? Does that makes sense? It's early in the morning for me, so I'm still a bit bleary!
Please continue with your investigation! If you have iTunes, there are a couple of Christian History/Church History courses available, although most from a Reformed Protestant perspective.
Also, a good resource is EarlyChristianWritings.com. There is a tab at the top that says "Church Fathers". If you follow that, you can read those early sources for yourself to get a more full idea!
Thanks for the resources, they are bookmarked in my "To Read" folder! :) God Bless and feel free to stop by or email anytime you discover something you want to share! Its comforting to see someone else on the journey.
JCS,
You're right about the history and about the role of Arianism in establishing Nicene orthodoxy. In fact, I agree with quite a bit of what you said in your comment, but there are a few areas I wanted to probe a bit, related to why you reject the Deuterocanon (what Protestants call the Apocrypha):
(1) You suggest that one way we can know which Books are Scripture is that Jesus quotes from them. Certainly, if Jesus Himself calls something Scripture, then it is. But notably, neither Jesus nor the Apostles ever spell out which Books are and are not in the Bible. Given that, I'm troubled by the idea that mere quotation establishes inspiration, and even more troubled by the idea that anything not quoted isn't inspired. And I think you should be, too.
After all, the Book of Enoch (Jude 1:15) and the pagan philosopher Epimenides (Titus 1:12) are quoted approvingly in the New Testament, but the Book of Esther is never quoted, or mentioned, or even alluded to. So why treat Esther as inspired, and not Enoch, or Epimenides -- or the Deuterocanon?
(2) You also suggested that the Deuterocanon isn't inspired because “they praise suicide and the idea that alms-giving=salvation.” First, I think that we should base our teachings off of the Bible, rather than basing our Bible off of whether or not we agree with the teachings. After all, read Psalm 137:8-9. On face, it seems to praise something horrible, yet we both consider it inspired Scripture.
Beyond that, I think your logic would justify cutting more Books out of the Bible. 2 Maccabees 14 describes a suicide, but doesn't say that we should do what that man did. Acts 1:18 describes a suicide, too. And while Ecclesiasticus 3:30 says that "alms maketh an atonement for sins," Leviticus 5:13 says the same thing about the sacrifice of two young doves. So if these are reasons to reject the Deuterocanon, they strike me as reasons to reject Acts and Leviticus, too.
(3) It is true that the Books you're talking about don't claim to be inspired. But that's true of most Books of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. If we used this as the test, which New Testament Books would be left? In contrast, the Book of Mormon does claim to be inspired, so this doesn't seem like a good litmus test.
(4) The last way you mentioned seems the strongest: what did the early Christians say that the Bible was? They would be the most likely ones to know, after all. But here's where I think the Catholic case for Scripture is far stronger than the Protestant case.
No early Christian used the Protestant Bible. In contrast, from the very earliest Christian canons, we see some or all of the Deuterocanon called Scripture. And when we finally get local Church Councils of Hippo and Carthage in North Africa in the 300s, they listed each Book of the Catholic Bible as inspired. So when you say, "Jesus, the Jews, the Apostles, and the early church did not accept them as canonical," that's just not so.
In fact, the version of the Old Testament used by Greek-speaking (Hellenistic) Jews contained the Deuterocanon, and as I’ve said, the early Church eventually formally declared these Books inspired. Jesus and the Apostles both quoted from this Greek version of the Bible, and Acts 17:11 praises the (Greek-speaking) Jews of Berea for reading “the Scriptures.” So it seems as if Jesus, the Apostles, the Hellenistic Jews, and the early Church actually support the Catholic canon.
At the least, we could perhaps say that Jesus and the Apostles are silent on the question, and that the early Church clarifies. But if that's right, then wouldn't we have to conclude that the Catholic Church is right on which Books are Scripture, and which aren't? Or is there some other litmus test which we should be looking at instead? God bless you,
Joe
@Joe, I brought the issue up of the canon with my father in our discussion this past weekend. Or maybe he brought it up, actually. Anyways, he seemed to believe we "just have to trust" that God used a fallible body (the Church) to discover an infallible doctrine.
This frustrates me so much, because it assumes that all Christianity holds to the same canon. It's like the fact that the ancient Christians included the Deuterocanon is a dirty little secret no one likes to acknowledge. They want to think that God gave special guidance or blessing on this one issue but then took it away? Or that they really didn't have that blessing or guidance until the Reformation? :/ I'm not quite sure how a Protestant effectively rejects the Deutorocanon. Should probably look into that...
Post a Comment