#STRask - Could the Writers of Scripture Have Been Influenced by Their Fallen Nature?

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Questions about whether or not it’s reasonable to worry that some of our current doctrines were influenced by the fallen nature of the apostles, and how to defend sola Scriptura to Roman Catholics who argue that oral tradition carries as much weight as Scripture.   How much of the apostles’ fallen nature influenced their choice of words and how they communicated? Is it reasonable to worry that some of our current doctrines came from their just getting annoyed or impatient with someone and wording something too harshly? How do I defend sola Scriptura to my Roman Catholic family members in light of passages like 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and 2 Thessalonians 2:15, which seem to imply that oral tradition carries as much weight as Scripture?

Welcome to Stanter Reason's hashtag STRASK podcast with Greg Kogel and Amy Hall. And Amy Hall, the great Amy Hall. Oh, come on. I was just out of town hearing people sing your praises, so I'm glad we're working on this together, Amy. All right. Well, moving on from that. Here's a question from James. When reading the New Testament, I wonder how much of the Apostles' fallen nature influenced their choice of words and how they communicated.

Is it reasonable to worry that some of our current doctrines came from them just getting annoyed or impatient with someone and wording something too harshly? Well, I think the simple answer to that is no. If we – I'm trying to figure out the best way to answer this. certainly, I've got to back up even further, the doctrine of inspiration holds that two people, two individuals are working concursively together to accomplish an end. And that would be the writer whose temperament and personality and word choice are reflected in the writing and the Holy Spirit who is carrying that writer along, so to speak, the picture we have have in 2 peter chapter 1 is where it said med moved by the holy spirit spoke from god is

like the wind blowing through the sails of a ship just a word picture to give us some sense of what's going on concursive operation there's two things going on now you can also think and people have used this as an illustration of the two natures of christ you have the divine nature and the human nature that are fully each, fully divine and fully human, working concursively and intimately together in a non-conflicting way. And is that unusual? Yeah. Is it mysterious? Yeah. Ineffable, hard to grasp or express. Sure. But in any event, this is what seems to be communicated in the scriptures that talk about inspiration. Remember the 2nd Timothy passage, chapter 3, the most famous one,

says that all the grafei, the writings, are Theonustos, God breathed. All right. So it is acknowledging the plenary, the full and full inspiration and verbal inspiration, verbal plenary, the whole thing and all the words, that God is breathing in a sense, again, another metaphor, which entails the movement of air. You know, I just thought about that. You know, the breath moving and also the wind in the sails, you know. So there's the best attempt the writers have to help us understand how this concursive operation works.

And it's not, obviously not adequate to give us a full understanding. But nevertheless, the consequence, the end result is that the words are both, fully and completely the author's words and God's words. So when Jesus makes an argument in the Gospels about the resurrection, he makes an argument regarding a theological issue based on the tense of a verb. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose bodies are now deceased, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive, which is, it anticipates their resurrection. And so it's interesting that Jesus is turning a very important theological argument

on the, on the tense of a verb. So this gives us an understanding of how he sees the text as well. So when the question is raised, well, maybe these guys are just got a little crabby and that does seem to be case in some circumstances. There's sarcasm, there's condescension, there's hyperbole exaggeration, but Jesus did the same thing, you know. So that doesn't mean that the words are not God's words, and they kind of goofed up because God wouldn't be sarcastic or condescending or whatever people think.

In fact, we see all kinds of crazy things in Scripture where God is actually working, and anyway, he's a person, so these qualities could certainly apply. that gives us no reason to suspect that there's something amiss in the text. And that's what is the downside of this approach. Because if we think, oh, there's Paul saying in Galatians, those who want to be justified in the flesh by demonstrating their spirituality with circumcision, I think they should just mutilate themselves. And I guess the implication is you want to cut some off to show how holy you are, cut the whole thing off, you know. Well, that was kind of extreme.

But, oh, God wouldn't say that kind of thing. But the minute you start judging that that seems harsh, and so, therefore, that was just coming from Paul and not from divine inspiration, it's very easy to start thinking of other things that might seem to you to be harsh, like, forever hell, really? Oh, come on, that's extreme. And other things like that. And so this is the turn that people often take unwittingly trying to make sense of things better. And when they take a turn like that, it begins to undermine a whole bunch of other things.

And then the words that are inspired, the Grafé, aren't the guide for divine truth, but rather our feelings become the guide as we assess which words we think are from God in which were just, you know, the casual expression of the author of the book. One thing we realize when we see something like Galatians, where Paul gets very upset, we realize the seriousness of the problem. That was an appropriate seriousness in reaction to adding something to the gospel. Who has bewitched you is what he says there in Galatians 2 or something. And he rebukes Peter to his face.

when he starts to waver on this? Yeah. So that is something that we can learn as we're looking at the reaction. If your reaction is, well, Paul is just overreacting, maybe you don't value the gospel enough. Maybe you don't see it as a serious enough problem. And what we can do is say, okay, of course, this all comes down to whether or not it's inspired.

If this is inspired, then what am I missing? What is it about this subject that's so serious that it calls for this reaction? And then we let that change the way we view the subject matter. So all of this is playing into how we understand what is being said. Can I just to add to that, I had somebody object about the Old Testament law that made breaking the Sabbath, picking up sticks as the way he had put it, because it wasn't occasion where people broke the Sabbath gathering firewood and they were executed. It's a capital crime. And he said, that's so extreme.

And I said, what rather it should be telling us is how important that particular law is to God, if that's the punishment under those circumstances for violation of that law. So it's the same recommendation you're offering, which direction are you going to go with this? Oh, that's too extreme. Or maybe we should just be thinking in a more weighty manner about the things being discussed. Right, especially in that case where God says, okay, this Sabbath is the sign of this covenant that you have with me. So if you're going to thumb your nose at it, you're thumbing your nose at the covenant and my role as ruler. And in fact, that was right at the beginning of the

giving, right after the giving of the law. You'll notice in the New Testament, right after the giving of the Holy Spirit, the same thing happens to Anonias and Safira. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. They lie to the Holy Spirit. It says you've lied to the Holy Spirit. Right. And they fall down dead. Now, that was the sign given to the believers in the new covenant. Here they are thumbing their nose at the Holy Spirit, and they are immediately put to death by God. That's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't made that connection. It was a great observation. So back to this whole thing. That's why you're the great aiming for. Here's something we have to keep in mind. First of all, if Jesus said the scripture cannot be broken.

So we should expect this inspired word because we are fallen, we should inspect that it's going to bump up against us in ways we don't like because it's there to correct us. That's something we should expect. So if there's something that seems out of place or you don't quite understand, that's to be expected. we should expect that scripture will challenge us. And you've made plenty of arguments for the inspiration of scripture. We've done that on the show. We've done it on our website at STR.org. So I encourage you to go listen to those. But ultimately, you have to decide if you're going to trust and submit to what God has revealed, despite the fact that there will be times when you don't understand it and you're going to have to work to understand it and you're going to have to change your views

to match scriptures. I can remember the moment when I realized that and I submit and I said, well, I'm going to trust that this is wisdom. And I'm going to submit to that because I'm convinced this is the word of God, even in cases where I don't quite understand. And what that causes me to do is to think more deeply about all these things. If they come up and I'm like, well, that doesn't make sense to me. Instead of just dismissing it, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and trying to

understand it. And then that ends up changing me rather than me just changing the word and throwing things out. And just to add a couple more things to the idea that maybe the Apostles' fallen nature was influencing them. One thing you can look at when it comes to doctrine, because obviously when they were just talking, Paul rebuked Peter. So it's not like everything that came out of their mouths was perfect and inspired. But when it comes to the doctrine that comes from the scripture that can't be broken, according to Jesus, you'll notice that it never goes against the Old Testament. There's nothing that is opposed to that. So you'll see a unified picture throughout the whole Bible in these doctrines. And you'll see a unified picture amongst the writers also. One thing you'll

notice between Peter, Paul, Jude, like, you'll see the same ideas over and over, where clearly they were teaching these same ideas over and over, and that's why they come up, even from different writers. So that's, that's, I'm trying to think if there was anything else here. I think that's it. It's just the unity shows that there's not some fallen person who's coming in and throwing in something out of irritation at the last second. You made a comment that, the New Testament never goes against the Old Testament or something to that effect, and I just wanted to add a clarification there, and I know you understand this. The New Testament and the Old Testament properly understood, because the Old Testament is old and the New Testament is new, and those

terms signify distinct covenants. So it is not nothing in the Old Testament has any relevance, but the Mosaic covenant, which is the Old Covenant, is for a period of time, and for a particular function, now it no longer serves. And that's why there is a new covenant that Jesus inaugurated. But it was announced by Jeremiah 31, verse 31, and following in Ezekiel. So it is a Jewish prophets that announced this. So you are going to find some things that in the New Testament economy that are reversed to details in the Old Testament economy, Jesus declares all foods clean, for example.

but that's because there's a shift into a different economy, an old covenant, Mosaic covenant economy and a new covenant economy, which is clearly identified in the text itself that it's coming and there'll be shifts. So I just want to make that. Yeah, and we have a lot written on the law and the relationship of the Christian to the law on our website again. But in terms of morality, even like the way that morality, the way that morality is, plays out might be different or the punishments might be different. Those sorts of things might

be different because we're talking about God giving a constitution to a nation versus a covenant with individuals in the body of Christ rather than a political nation. So there are going to be differences, yes. But you're not going to find suddenly some brand new thing is immoral or moral that never was before. Now, when it comes to like the foods they're eating, it's immoral. to break the laws that God's given, but as Jesus points out, it's not in itself. It's not inherent. Right, right. So, yeah, so this is a perfect example.

When you come across these things that don't seem to fit, you have to think more carefully about what's involved and what has changed, but God and his overall morality has not changed. And you'll see this wonderful unified story throughout. I remember seeing just a little clip on YouTube of a British. challenger and a forum in England of a Christian and hammering away about these things about the cloth and the seafood and the two fibers mixed together and all these things. And he didn't even get a lot of them right, but he's clamoring away. And then this is a way to justify homosexuality, which we're going to the Bible in the Old

Testament, Leviticus, and screeching about. And it just occurred to me, as Colombo style, I'd want to ask that person, why do you think that is? why do you think there are those prohibitions the Old Testament, not the new? Because this requires that you understand the whole reason behind it. And my basic rule, and this almost never gets followed, nor is it practicable, really. You can't criticize something you don't understand. And folks are criticizing Christianity in the Old Testament and the Hebrew law all the time,

and they don't understand it. They're cherry-picking little pieces of it that seems to be contradictory. When you read the passages, and even in, and I can think of a number of different occasions, New Testament and Old Testament, they think they found these glaring contradictions, like between the genealogy in Matthew and the genealogy in Luke, you know, they see these don't match up at all. I said, oh, my goodness, for 2,000 years, nobody's ever seen that. Oh, no, of course they've seen, and they know exactly what's going on there. It's not a contradiction. But see, this is where a lot of people go. They don't have a deep understanding of how these more complicated theological structures

fit together in Scripture, and so then they go on the attack because they're not interested in understanding, they're interested in attacking and making it look foolish. And so just to sum up, I would say make a commitment to submit to what is revealed in the Bible. It's not always going to feel right because we're fallen people. We're living in a fallen world. But you will not be disappointed. If you want God's wisdom and you want to be renewed, if you want to renew your mind and not be conform to this world, sometimes that will be painful and sometimes it takes a lot of searching. But if you come at it from the attitude that, okay, I know that these words are inspired, that God is real, that Jesus died on the cross. I know God is good, that he loves, he's proved all that on the cross. So how do I make sense of this? And you start from that point, then you are open to hearing what people have to say, and you take the time and you increase your trust, and that only increases over time.

Yeah, and your theological coherence, too. You just need it sometimes do a deeper dive. All right, Greg, let's go to a question from Vicki. How do I defend Sola Scriptura to my Roman Catholic family members in light of passage? they cite like 1st Thessalonians 2.13 and 2.15, which seem to apply that oral tradition carries as much weight as scripture. They claim the Bible itself doesn't endorse Sola Scriptura. Oh, I'm sorry. It's just painful to hear this. It's painful to hear this. All right. So let me try to first, before I go to the texts, explain the rationale behind Sola Scriptura.

because the Sola sometimes confuses people. And what we are, what that phrase means is that the scripture alone speaks authoritatively for God. The scripture alone speaks authoritatively for God. Now, you can immediately see a benefit there, because if we want to determine what it is that God has said, wants from us, just as we were discussing earlier, you go back to the words of the text. The words of the text are third-person public. We can all come together and look at the text like we're going to do with these two verses, and we are going to at least have an objective standard by which you make our judgments.

That doesn't mean we're all going to make the same judgment, but at least there's some stable foundation from which we can make those things. theological judgments. Now, it turns out that Roman Catholicism affirms the authority of the Bible. So on that particular point, I got pushed back from Frank Beckwithan this in the past, but I think it's still sound, Frank's a former evangelical, now Roman Catholic, and a dear friend. So nothing personal there. I just, here is my point to Frank. We both agree that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. We, Catholics and Protestants, properly informed Catholics and properly informed Protestants. The Roman Catholic Church makes an additional claim.

They say that the teaching Magisterium of the church, a holy tradition, what we'll get to in a moment, and the Pope when he speaks from the chair, ex-cathra, those also have equal authority with the Bible. Okay. Now, notice that on our claim, as far as it goes, they agree with us, but the Roman Catholic Church is making an additional claim on three different authority sources. So now it is incumbent upon the Roman Catholic Church to give compelling reasons why we ought to believe that there are additional authoritative sources of revelation given to the church.

for Christian functioning, et cetera. So the burden of proof is entirely on them. It is not on us. They would have to show that there is a legitimate reason to take sacred tradition, which, I mean, just to be fair, the sacred tradition that's authoritative from God in the Roman Catholic Church changes. I was raised Catholic. And if I ate meat on Friday, that was a mortal sin.

that was enough to take me completely out of grace and send me directly to hell if I died in that state. Okay? I'm missing a Sunday service or a holy day of obligation. That was a mortal sin. They actually had time stamps on the service.

Well, with regards to the words, you hit this spot and you haven't come in yet, this doesn't count. And if you leave before this spot, it doesn't count. Okay. Those were traditions. Now, all of a sudden, you don't have to go on Sunday. You can go on Saturday, you know,

and meet on, is no longer an issue. Those traditions changed, but they have had so much weight that for the time, people were thought to be condemned to hell because of violation of those particular traditions. So this is just an observation that traditions have changed over time, right? And if these are inspired by God, one then asks, well, what is the source of authority? Does some particular group get to say their traditions are inspired by quoting a verse? that talks about traditions, and then whatever those traditions happen to be are the traditions that are binding on the Christian until they change their mind about those traditions,

and now a different set of traditions is binding. Do you see the problem there? Now we're into a whole subjective kind of area. All I'm saying is demonstrate to me a persuasive case why the range of Roman Catholic traditions that are now enforced or in play are. have the same authority as the Bible, and the teaching magistrate of the church, and the Pope speaking from the chair, which, by the way, almost has never happened. And this is a fairly recent development, too, where this was kind of added.

So the broad picture here is the entire bird of proof is upon the Roman Catholic Church who adds sources of authority. This would be true, even with the LDS, and there's not a doctrinal comparison between the two, but there is a comparison in this regard. LDS believe in the Bible, but they also believe in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Covenants, the Pearler gave price. They're adding more things. Well, okay, if that's what is God's word, then they have an obligation to demonstrate. It is not our job to disprove that. It is their job to substantiate it. Other than that, we're going to stick with the authority we all agree on. And that usually

solves the problems between the groups when you think about the doctrinal differences of all these groups. Okay, just with that caveat in mind, burden of proof is on Catholicism to demonstrate. The thing that Frank said to me was, just to be fair to him, his rejoinder was, well, that means the person who has the least sources has the least burden of proof or something to that effect. And I said, yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. You bear burden of proof for your particular claims. And if you make a modest claim, it's only on that modest claim. If it turns out that your claim matches somebody else's claim, there's no burden of proof you both agree, except for when the other guy adds more things than the burden is on him entirely.

Okay, having said that, let's read her for two verses. First Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 13. For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it was, really is the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. So far, there's not much controversial about that. I'm not sure if there's an attempt to try to expand that to think, well, the Word of God is what they taught.

Yeah, well, and that's what we're reading. I'm interested in if the word, no, I guess it would be, well, there are different words for Word of Greek, but I don't know that it matter that much. the Word of God from God, okay? All right, that just says what they preach is the Word of God, and the Thessalonians understood that and accepted that without controversy. Then we go to Second Thessalonians, Chapter 2, and verse 15, So then, brethren, stand firm, and hold to the traditions which you were taught,

whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. Okay. I'm pausing because I'm trying to think where that takes us. What is significant about, see, he's saying we should obey the things that they taught, whether by written word or by word of mouth. Well, the things that they taught by word of mouth, where are those things recorded? The only place I can think of that they're recorded is in the scripture that the early Church recognizes authoritative as coming from them. Keep in mind that the canon, which

means the rule or authority, canon, that which was the rule, was in the New Testament Times first Jesus. What he said goes. And then when Jesus was gone, that authority was shifted in the upper room discourse, John 14, 15, 16, in light of the Holy Spirit that would be given to them that would bring to remembrance, Jesus said, all that he has taught, that authority was then to them. And that's how the entire church saw it. If the apostles taught it, it was God's word. This was authoritative. This is the standard. And what happens when the apostles died? Well, there are no more words coming out of their mouth. The things that was left behind were the letters that they wrote. And the letters that they wrote then, being the expression of the authority of the

apostles were viewed as the authoritative guide or canon. It wasn't some group of cardinals that all got together and determined what these books were. The vast majority of the books by the end of the first century are already accepted by everyone in virtue of their apostolic authorship, all right? So we don't have – I agree. We should do the traditions that Paul taught. In other words, here are the practices that we have, and some of them I've written about to you.

Now, this is Second Thessalonians. I mean, I imagine there's more things that he wrote that express more of the things, but whatever it is, I told you, do. Here's what you can't do, Amy. You can't see that word tradition, and then take that, Paul said the traditions follow the traditions, and the massive number of our traditions are Paul's traditions that he's talking about there. You can't just fill that in there. You can't help yourself to that word. You have to show that whatever traditions it is that you're following match Paul's teaching.

And the only way you can do that to match Paul's teaching is to look at Paul's teaching in the written word that was handed down as the authoritative God breathe the word of God. You can't just say traditions, there you go. What was one tradition, the Lord's Supper? Do we have any detail about that? Yeah. Paul writes about that. Okay, so baptism.

We have any detail? Yeah, Paul writes about that too. So if the so-called traditions here were not recorded in any detailed form so that we can even know what they were, then people can't help themselves. Nobody can. No group can help themselves to that word tradition and then act as if whatever their tradition happens to be has the same authority of Paul, based on this statement. If that's such a great point, Greg, and if the scriptures are adequate for every good work, which is what 2 Timothy 316 says, then we should understand that God gave us everything that we needed written down.

So all those traditions that he spoke about are recorded for us, and we have everything adequate for, life and godliness. Presumably, I'm willing to say, well, maybe there's some things that he told them to do that didn't get recorded, and if they didn't get recorded, they are not for posterity. They might have been things that he told the Thessalonians to do and some others follow these are the practices or whatever. These are the traditions we follow, whatever, that just never got written down, and therefore they were not for posterity.

So that's a possibility, but that's out of our hands. because we don't know what they are. Right. And I will also say, saying that you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, and you accepted it not as the Word of Men, but for what it really is the Word of God, this is the message of the gospel. This, we do this today. Pastors teach people and they say follow the gospel.

They teach what the Scripture teaches and they say follow this. That doesn't mean that his own ideas are then scripture or equal. of scripture. They're only authoritative insofar as they reflect the inspired word of God and the truth of God's message. And I love what you said, Greg, about you can't, he wasn't just saying all traditions are great. That was just great. I don't even want to recapture it because I think it was very clear. Thank you. But it just, it actually adds to it because now I want to say Jesus. It isn't just that you can't take this word tradition and expand it as you. wish. Jesus actually had a problem with the traditions of the Jews. And the Jews had an authoritative

role in communicating God's word. But they got outside of it. And they would practice these, and he said, there's so many things that you do like this. What you do is you establish your tradition that is contrary to God's word and the tradition nullifies the word. And in Roman Catholic, in the Hebrew law, necromancy was a capital crime, calling on the dead. Now, Roman Catholics have a standard tradition to pray to dead people, praying to saints. And I don't see how, well, they have rationale and they build all this rationale, but when you lay that practice next to the prohibition, it's very clear that this should not be done.

So in this particular case, they have a tradition that sounds very spiritual, and it does tie in with some other doctrines that I don't think are sound, like purgatory, the way they characterize it. And then it ends up nullifying the very word that is spoken that you shouldn't do this kind of thing. And it detracts then from the person of Jesus in the process. So like I said, I know there's a rationale. I've heard the rationale. Well, here's why we do it. In other words, here's why you disobey the command, because you have a better idea in your tradition. So even if people won't necessarily agree with that example I'm giving. This is the

liability. You can't just read out of Second Thessalonian say, Paul is all four traditions, because Jesus, you've got to read Jesus, too, and say traditions can be a problem when they nullify the Word of God. Both have to be held in tension there. That's

where he was talking about the practice of Corban. But he also says, you do many things like this, where the tradition cancels out the word. And, Greg, you have, I know there's at least a couple articles on our website at STR.org. One is called God's Unbreakable Word, where you talk about inspiration. And John Noyes would help me with that. Yeah, what was the one you did?

It was a mentoring letter about, was that a similar thing about Jesus and inspiration? Am I just thinking of God's Unbreakable Word? Oh, that was actually earlier this year, and that was a mentoring letter. That was like 800 words. And I was talking about Jesus' view of inspiration, and that's what gives us a – and that was also in the larger piece, the same argument, but this one I expand it a little differently. I just don't remember the name. I don't either. But you also had one other piece. I just want to recommend right now, and it's – it was about three – characteristics. What was it? Do you remember the name of it? No, I don't remember.

This is terrible. Well, this is why people ought to get are, be sure to sign up to receive solid. I got it. Three telltale signs of Christianity gone south. Oh, I like that title. Three telling signs of Christianity and square quotes gone south. And I'm speaking here principally of like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and Christian Science and blah, blah, blah. But I also think one of the problems that I identify is,

with a group that's largely within orthodoxy, and that's the Roman Catholic Church. And that is when you multiply sources of authority, what ends up happening in practical terms, in my observation, is that the Bible ends up in the back seat. And those other forms of authority are the things that really guide to us. Which makes sense because the Bible doesn't change, but what people say can change. So if any change is going to come in, it's going to come in from somebody, some other authority that's changeable. That's right. All right. Well, we went way over time, but, you know, I could talk about the Bible forever. So what can I say? Well, thank you so much for listening. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a question, send it on X with hashtag STR Ask or go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.