Truth Unites - A Fallible List of Infallible Books?

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Gavin Ortlund addresses whether the Protestant canon is a fallible list of infallible books. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

One of the biggest objections to Protestantism and especially our view of Scripture is about the canon of Scripture, and people love to quote R.C. Sprole's language about a fallible list of infallible books. How do we know that the right books have been included in this collection or library of books that we call the Sacred Scripture? And by what authority do we determine what the canon is? According to the Protestants, each book that is found in the Bible is an infallible book. But the historical process, undergone by the church, was a historical process that was done by a church that is not infallible. So that the collection itself is a fallible collection of infallible books. Lots of people find this language either unsatisfying or curious.

In this video, I'm going to argue for something. It might surprise some people. and that's R. C. Sproll is right. I'm going to take a lot of abuse for this. Ooh, man, that they come after me in the comments. Have you noticed this lately? It's okay. I appreciate the engagement. But let's talk about this. I think R.C. Sprole is right. I think we have, I think this is the view for the Protestant to take. And I think it's totally defensible. Fallible list of infallible books. Let me explain. I'll give two arguments. First, a logical argument, second, a historical argument. But first, let's just explain. Let's

identify where we actually disagree. Where's the nub of disagreement here? And try to sharpen and clarify where we as Protestants oppose the view of our non-Protestant friends. And I mean real friends. There's some terrific people in these other traditions, but try to explain our view. So two areas where we don't disagree. First, we don't disagree that the basis for canonization is a book's status as inspired by God. Okay. For example, the Roman Catholic position as articulated of Vatican 1 says these books the church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because she subsequently approved them by her authority, but because being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and we're as such committed to the church.

A lot of people are surprised to hear a quote like that. The Council of Trent also refers to God as the author of the canonical books. So all sides can agree that whatever else we disagree on, we agree that we are not, we as the people of God, we as the church, are not constituting scripture. We are not making, we're not conferring some kind of divine status upon them. The ultimate ground is the fact that they're inspired by God. God is the ultimate reason for their authority. They come from God. Now, from there, we're going to disagree, but it's good to get that clear. A second area where we don't disagree is that the church has been entrusted with the responsibility of discerning the canon. There's no table of contents.

in the Bible. The canon list did not fall from heaven like a bolt of lightning. The church has that job, along with other jobs, with respect to Scripture. Historically, Protestants have affirmed the church as a necessary witness unto the Word of God. They've also spoken of the church as the custodian of the Word of God, the herald of the Word of God. So the role of the church is a necessary one with respect to scripture, and it has to do not only with canonization, but protecting the scripture, preaching the scripture, translating the scripture, etc. Peter Martyr Vermeagli, divided the church's role with respect to the Word of God into three parts. Basically, to summarize, he said, preserving, preaching, and discerning. He also called the church the keeper of God's books.

Other Protestants cash out this list differently. You'll find the Dutch-reformed people 17th century coming along in this book, if you want to read a really good summary of that from Richard Mueller, and they'll give like six or seven, like a schema of six or seven responsibilities. They're just kind of flushing it out of more detail, but they all agree the church has a role as the witness unto the word of God, included as one aspect of that is canonization, and it's a necessary role without the church we have no scripture. Okay? So we have some agreement. Number one, God is the author of scripture. Number two, the church is the keeper of scripture. So it comes from him, and it is received as such by us, and recognized as such by us,

where we disagree is whether the church possesses infallibility in that role. In other words, with respect to her task unto Scripture, is the Church infallible, as the Scripture itself is? That's where the differences emerge. So in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, confession of DeSithius, you find this plain language that the witness of the church is not inferior to the scriptures because the Holy Spirit is the author of both, and therefore they are both infallible. And that is where we would depart. And we would say that the church is inferior to the scripture even while she is a necessary witness

and that she can perform her function from that status of being fallible, not infallible like scripture. Why do we say that? Two reasons. First, a logical argument. Put it like this. Simply put, try to boil this down. A necessary witness does not mean a parallel infallibility. It's the shortest way I can put that. Let me unpack that. The church can fulfill her role of discerning which books are inspired while always remaining at every nanosecond of church history under the Word of God with respect to infallibility. Logically, you don't need to be infallible to discern that which is infallible. When Moses is at the burning bush and he hears God, he doesn't need a secondary voice whispering in his ear confirming some kind of infallible reception of this voice.

When the prophets received words from God, when Adam hears God in the garden, you don't need to be infallible to recognize God's voice for what it is. Protestants have often compared the church's role in the process of canonization to that of John the Baptist as a necessary witness unto Christ. They speak of it as a ministerial role of testimony or witness, but in that the church is no more infallible parallel to the scripture than John is divine parallel to Christ. The one testifying, though it's a necessary testimony, remains subordinate to that which receives the testimony. One Protestant theologian uses the metaphor of a candlestick and the light it upholds.

So the candlestick is necessary, but that doesn't take away from the unique status of the light. Necessity, in this case we're saying very simply, necessity of witness doesn't mean infallibility. You can do that. Now, why is that the case? Because the role is one of discernment. We are not doing anything infallible. We are receiving the infallible. We are not constituting anything.

We're not performing any infallible operations ourselves as the church in receiving and discerning scripture. So to make this very point, the Anglican theologian William Whitaker uses the metaphor of a goldsmith. He says the goldsmith, with his scales and touchstone, can distinguish gold from copper and other metals, wherein he does not make gold, but only indicates what is gold. In like manner, the church acknowledges the scripture and declares them to be divine. Put a different metaphor, J.I. Packer, more recently, says the church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. Newton did not create gravity, but recognized it. So that's the central point here. The church's role is that of recognition and discernment, not constitution. Therefore, you can be fallible and carry that out. Now, if you say no, no, no, no, no, no. To even recognize that which is infallible, you must yourself be infallible in some way or have some kind of infallible operation to do so. I think that leads to an endless regress, because now you need infallibility to receive and interpret.

the infallible teachings of your church. So now here you have the exact same problem. If you're Eastern Orthodox, you're going to have a fallible list of infallible councils and have the same kind of epistemological problem. If you're Roman Catholic, you're going to have a fallible list of ex-cathedra statements and have the same kind of problem and so forth

because there's never been an ex-catheter statement about how many ex-cathedra statements. There's never been, for the Eastern Orthodox, a council that identifies every single, here's all the infallible councils and so forth. Now suppose that doesn't convince you. you. That's the weaker argument. Ah, I should have started off with a stronger one. Oh, well. That's okay. Let's go forward. Here's the real one. Because logical, philosophical appeals are one

thing. But here's where it becomes very, I think, decisive, the historical argument. There's a way that we can know with certainty that the church does not need infallibility to discern the canon, and that is just it didn't happen that way. Infallible canon lists come way late in history toward the end of the Middle Ages, almost into the early modern era. In other words, if this is a problem for Protestants, it's a problem for most Christians throughout history, most times throughout history. Let me explain that for the New Testament, then for the Old Testament. So for the New Testament canon, this is a little bit disputed, but many scholars would agree that the exact finalization of the New Testament canon is somewhere in the 4th century.

The process leading up to that is very organic. It's very bottom up. It's very bottom up. It's It's sort of this cumulative, widespread, organic process of the people are discerning which books are part of the New Testament. In that process, the early Christians appeal to different criteria like apostolicity, widespread reception, Orthodox doctrine, et cetera. They do not appeal to any kind of independent authority they have as the church or any kind of mechanism that is infallible. The canon coming together, New Testament canon, is not the result of infallible mechanism.

It's not the result of an ex-cathedra statement from a pope, and it's not the result of an ecumenical council. It was not a top-down declaration. In the sort of organic unfolding of this process, Athanasius's 39th festal letter in 367 was a particularly significant event, the Senate of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, end of the fourth century, very significant. and there's some dispute over whether the canon lists there are adopting the same as from the Council of Rome in 382. But either way, you know, people get really hung up on that debate.

But either way, all of these are local councils. They are not infallible. Okay. So the point is very simple here. If you think you need an infallible act to determine the canon, that just isn't how it happened. the fourth century New Testament canon, the finalization of that process is the result of fallible processes. And it's very organic. I can't emphasize this point enough.

It's all throughout. It's not just a sudden process. It's something that actually begins within the New Testament. And if you want a good book about kind of just that, what that process is like, read Michael Kruger. He's written a couple things on this that are great. He's pointing out from the beginning, within the New Testament, you have 2. Peter 316, 1 Timothy 518, you have a recognition of Paul's writings and the Gospel of Luke as scripture. In the second and third century, you've got books, you've got basically the core

New Testament already functioning with equal authority to the Old Testament. In the main, Christians are citing books like the four gospels, Romans, First Corinthians, etc. as fully authoritative prior to the final outcome. Okay? The dispute is only about the fuzzy edges. Now, that doesn't mean that that final outcome resolving the fuzzy edges is unimportant. But it simply means that Christians are not waiting around for an infallible act of the church to quote and wield and obey scripture as scripture.

And then when the clarity about the edges does come, it is not the result of an infallible act. whether by counsel or any other act that would be regarded as infallible. So, in other words, this language of fallible list of infallible books applies to all churches for most of their history, for the vast majority of their history. And that's not because sometimes people say, oh, well, that's just because there was no dispute about it. Not so. There was a lot of dispute about it.

It was pretty fiercely contested. I mean, especially with the Old Testament, you've got people, and I've talked about this elsewhere, you've got famous cardinals. like Cardinal Cajitan and others, you know, up to the 1530s, basically agreeing with Luther about the Old Testament books. So yes, it was disputed. And yet, nonetheless, there was not an infallible canon for the majority of the church's history. If it's a problem for Protestants, it's a problem for Thomas Aquinas, it's a problem for the church fathers, et cetera. Okay, what about for the Old Testament? The same thing is true. The Old Testament canon, what we call

the Old Testament was not the result of an exercise of infallibility among the Jewish people. The Jewish people did not have a sort of ongoing teaching office that could function infallibly, and yet they were able to recognize and receive what we call the Old Testament scriptures. There's some debate about, well, there's a lot, not some, there's a lot of debate about when the canon for the Jewish people was closed. but it seems that there was a core, Old Testament canon, in mainstream Jewish tradition by the first century. That's not to say there's no disputes. You've got disputes about some of these fringe books like Esther, Ecclesiastes, and certainly you have different groups that have, you have

various outlier groups that have a different canon, like the Samaritans, for example. But there seems to be a mainstream view among first century Jews. And you can see this, for example, in Josephus. He's writing at the end of the first century, he refers to a 22 book collection of divine Hebrew books corresponding to the 39 books of the Old Testament, and he seems to see this as a closed canon. Did I say that right? 22 books, I'll explain this in a second, corresponding to a Protestant Old Testament, the 39 books of the Old Testament. I talk fast.

Sometimes, if I get it wrong, hopefully I clarified there. Now, okay, so let's work this through Josephus, and then we'll be done, or almost done. This is a famous passage, and it's gotten a lot of dispute. I'll put it up here, and we'll make three observations. First, in what I have emboldened, you can see that he references 22 books. Now, that corresponds to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and probably corresponds to the early canon list in the Christian East, which I've discussed in a lot of other videos.

You have 5 plus 13 plus 4. You have this tripartite structure. There is some dispute about which books, how he's counting to get to that exact number. because there's multiple books included as one, like the 12 minor prophets are reckoned as one book. A lot of people think lamentations is included within Jeremiah and so forth. Nonetheless, it's clear this is the shorter Old Testament canon. All right. Second observation, you can observe in what I have underlined that he gives a chronology for this,

starting with the five books of Moses and then ending with Artaxer the first king of Persia. This is a fifth century king. he's mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah and also probably in Esther, though by a different name. So Josephus is looking back on this collection of books about a half millennium after its conclusion, and he's saying that the Jewish history of books after the post-exylic books like Esther, quote, hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, end quote. Third, in what I highlighted here, you can see that Josephus appears to try, treat the canon as closed and fixed for some time.

Quote, during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them or take anything away. He says they're willing to die for these texts and so forth. Okay, so Josephus is, now there's some dispute about Josephus. This is all extremely complicated. You try to give a summary statement for the sake of a popular level YouTube video, and it's always that thing of, you know,

there's so many footnotes you've kind of feel they need to put in. But the basic point here, what I've recounted here is a common interpretation. Many scholars conclude Josephus has, and I'll put up examples of this, many scholars think Josephus does have a closed canon and a canon that actually had been closed for several centuries. Now, the question of which Old Testament canon is the correct one is not really the focus of this video. I've addressed that a little bit elsewhere. I think the Protestant case is a lot stronger than people sometimes assume,

especially once you get in and you recognize the category of second tier scripture, which is the key point. But what is relevant for this video is this simple point. Josephus has a canon without any infallible entity to give it. Okay? And he's representative of Jewish thought at that time in the mainstream. So you say, how does he do that? You know, how is he able to chronicle the Jewish history in which the periods in which

God revealed himself, the books God gave, without an infallible? mechanism. Now you might say, well, Josephus was just wrong. Okay, well, what about Jesus? Jesus also frequently referred to a tripartite Old Testament scripture, the law, the prophets, and the writings. You see that in some passages, like Luke 24, you can also see it shortened to just the law and the prophets at times. Jesus seems to be assuming a set body of writings that is commonly known. No one is asking him which prophets. It's just the prophets. He doesn't oppose. He doesn't, here to see the need to clarify that seems to be known by his hearers, which prophets. And he commends these writings. He holds the Jewish people accountable to them. He says, these are the scriptures

that are talking about me, therefore you should believe in me. And he's holding the people of his day to the authority of that scripture. Yet nowhere had there been an infallible action among the Jewish people to define the canon. So how can Jesus do that? You know, if you need an infallible mechanism to know the canon, then Jesus was actually being unfair to hold the Jewish people of his day to the scriptures. How could they know which scriptures are which? Right. So what this demonstrates is the possibility of receiving infallible revelation from God, recognizing it as such without an infallible act. So we'll sum it up, right? If you think you need to have an infallible agency of some kind to have a functional canon, how do we explain both the Jewish people and the early

church. And how does that not lead to a problem of continual regrets? So what does this all mean? Do we have a fallible list of infallible books? Yes, insofar as Moses had fallible hearing at the burning bush, insofar as the Jewish people had fallible reception of their scriptures, insofar as the early church had fallible reception of the New Testament, and insofar as every Christian church today has a fallible perception of the sum total of teaching that it regards as infallible. But we have to remember there's a distinction between infallible and inerrant. When I say two plus two equals four, I'm making a fallible statement. I don't have any sort of external mechanism preserving me from error there, but I can still have reasonable confidence that that is true. I think here's where I'll finish it.

I'm going to just close up my script and speak from my heart here because I think actually this desire for infallibility. Sometimes the heart, a human heart is searching and thirsting for some kind of existential ground. You know, I see this in Kierkegaard when he's talking about, oh, I won't go into, just finish with this point. We don't need to have infallible knowledge to have confidence and to live life. Here's a metaphor. Here's a parallel example. How do you know that Christianity is true. How do you know that it's the Trinity that is the real God? How do you know that Jesus got out of the tomb? Do you have infallible knowledge of that? Well, no. We are fallible. But can you still live your life on the basis of confidence and clarity about the truth of that? Yes. And where I want to direct

viewers of my channel, this is kind of getting off of this specific issue and now just to the pastoral here is the testimony of the Holy Spirit in your heart is where you find that. People are looking for this in all kinds of places, but it's actually quite simple. I'm not trying to solve the canon problem now. I'm trying to speak to that pastoral need of this desire for a kind of resting place. We are no longer uncertain and shaking this way and that way, and on Tuesday you feel one way, and on Wednesday you feel another. And a lot of people I know are wrestling with this. The way you get to existential certainty is the Holy Spirit and complete desperation and prayer. And that's how you know Christianity is true. You don't get to it through an infallible mechanism. If you don't need

an infallible mechanism to live your life on that basis and to give yourself to Christianity, so neither does the church corporate need something like that to receive and discern the Word of God given to them in the Holy Scriptures. All right, there's my case. R.C. Sparroll. I'm defending R.C. Sprole. That phrase, oh, man. Here's all I'll say in response, because it's been a little intense lately. If people are going to do reactions to this, that's fine. But just give an argument. Give an argument. Why? Why? Do we need—I mean, you know, show how that's a problem. Show how a fallible list of infallible books is a problem for us. But show how it wasn't a problem for the early church and show how a fallible list of ex-catheter statements or a fallible

list of counsels, depending on what church you're part of, isn't a problem for the other traditions. Because I think sometimes the language of infallible list of infallible books is assumed to be problematic, but it isn't actually demonstrated. All right, I'm ending there. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks, everybody.