Truth Unites - Defending My Views on the Canon and Icons

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

In this video I respond to Suan Sonna on icons and Trent Horn on the canon of Scripture, two key issues in Roman Catholic and Protestant dialogue. Read Cyril of Jerusalem on the canon here: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310104.htm   Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

What's up everybody? Rebuttal videos. How do you feel about rebuttal videos? There's a lot of rebuttal videos of me floating around on YouTube, as you may have seen. Sometimes it's hard for me to know which ones to respond to and how to best respond. In this video, I'm going to respond briefly to two, one by Trent Horn on the canon, one by Swan Sana, on icons, venerating icons. These are two people in the Catholic tradition that I enjoy engaging with because I think they're of goodwill and one of maintain good relationship with people and interface with the best of the other side in terms of the best rigor and best sincerity and professionalism and that kind of thing. And I like both those guys. But there's a lot of rebuttal videos and sometimes it's hard to know. I mean, I kind of get,

feel a little inundated sometimes. Here's the experience I had this weekend. I'll just, I want to say one comment about the state of dialogue between Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and other Christians on YouTube right now before. This will take maybe five or six minutes. Then I'll give in brief response on both of those issues. See the timestamps if you want to skip ahead. But this part's important too, perhaps. Earlier this year, I put out a video on icons. There were a lot of rebuttals, maybe 25, something like that. And I haven't even finished watching them all yet. I try to watch them in the evenings when my kids are down. There's one or two. I haven't quite finished off yet. I've watched most of them. And then more recently, there's been some more videos on solo

scriptura response videos, debate reviews from that, from my debate with Trent about that. over the weekend on reason and theology swan sanna put out a four and a half hour rebuttal video on icons so saturday morning i drove down to pasadena to speak at the commencement ceremony for our christian college down there i'm in the drive-thru of a restaurant about to head back i see it and i don't have enough data to watch it on my it won't load because we're over our limit of data for our cell phones super annoying because i would have enjoyed watching it on the way back but I get back. I'm trying to prepare for church on Sunday. We have premarital counseling with a couple on Saturday night, Sunday's Mother's Day, so I'm trying to spend time with my family and make that

the focus, trying to watch here and there a little bit. I've gotten, I've watched the first 41 minutes of Swan's video so far. So I got almost four hours still to go. So I'm, you know, trying to think, okay, when can I watch this? What should I do? I wake up today, Monday morning, and Trent Horn has a video engaging certain parts of my response a little bit to the farmer Stucky debate. So now it's Monday. I drop the kids off at school. I get to the office. Monday's a study day for me. And I'm I've got a busy week. I've got a memorial service on Thursday. Hospital visits Wednesday. I have a book deadline in two weeks at the end of May. And so I'm saying, okay, you know, Lord, what should I do? How do I spend my precious few free hours here? One thing I'd like to observe is that, you know, this is interesting. It's

tricky. I am very grateful for the interaction. I'm grateful that people find my work worth engaging. I think we have an unprecedented opportunity historically because of YouTube and other technology where we can talk, these different Christian traditions can talk and engage with each other. It's unbelievable. It's one of the deepest honors of my life to be able to be involved in these conversations. They're so important and we need to steward this opportunity well. So I'm appreciative of the opportunity to have interfacing and interaction and people engaging my work. Sometimes at the same time, the mentality from the other side feels aggressive. This is not true of Swan or Trent, but sometimes others and certainly in the comments,

and just the general, it's pretty thick. You know, I feel it pretty clearly coming against me, this sense of, you know, it comes across like, we need to win. If Gavin has made a good point or if there's some challenge that has come up, we need to join forces and demolish it and dismantle it. And it's, you know, for example, you never see this in the opposite direction. You never see a Roman Catholic put out a video and then 10 Protestants all come out with their response and rebuttals and so forth like that.

It's just not like that. But in the other direction, it's like that. I'm trying to understand that. And in the comments, someone was saying, I'll put this up under Swans video on Michael's channel, Michael Lofton's channel, Reason and Theology. Someone said, next up, 23-minute rebuttal from Gavin. We didn't quite know how to take that, presumably faulting. me like it would be bad for me to only give a 23 minute response and Michael liked that video which

I thought was kind of odd. It's like talk about gaslighting. You're going to inundate me with videos and then criticize me for not giving lengthy responses. I actually think 23 minute videos can be fine depending on how you use that 23 minutes. I think there's a place for both more summative overview responses as well as longer line by line responses. I always try to plan out my videos very and be as succinct as possible. But a comment like that is ungenerous and unfortunate because it's like, you know, again, it's this attitude of aggressiveness that's odd at times. Another way I sense that, I mean, I get weird things.

I don't even want to go into all the details of some of the weirdest stuff because I don't want that itself would be kind of prejudicial and not helpful in the dialogue because it's not representative of the other side. I'm sure there's some odd Protestants out there who aren't like most Protestants, but who just relentlessly attack Catholic apologists. But I get weird stuff. I mean, stuff in the realm of death wishes, nasty voicemails on my phone, people superimposing my face on paintings of Satan

and emailing it to people in my church. I mean, it's just weird. You just, the kind of stuff you're like, I don't know whether to laugh or pray for this person because it can't be good for their mental health to be, have that, you know. But that's not, I don't even. focus on that because that's not representative of the other side. But there is an aggressiveness on the other side that I don't understand. You know, another way I see it, so many people will say,

I'm amazed at how many people are predicting I'm going to become Catholic. It's so weird. I don't mean to be insulting toward Catholics. Sometimes people say that about Orthodox as well, that I'm going to become Orthodox. I don't mean to be insulting toward them, but I have no plans to do that. I'm very happy as a Protestant. I think I've mentioned that studying these issues has made me more convinced of Protestantism. even while it's given me more love and sympathy in certain respects for the people on the other side, but I'm more convinced of Protestantism because of studying these things, honestly, you know, I'm not saying that is a jab. That's the honest truth. And so I don't understand this mentality, but I think what happens is people assume, oh, all the sincere good people will see my side.

And so if they see someone and they think, oh, that person seems like a good person, surely they're going to join my side. And I don't think that's a helpful mentality. I think the better approach is argue for your side, argue for your position, but just recognize there's going to be intelligent people on the other side too. They'll make good points at times and we can just peacefully coexist in the meantime, you know. And I'm not planning on going anywhere. I plan to continue to focus on truth unites. I'd even love to increase my focus on truth unites and be less busy and give more attention to this in the years ahead.

I need support actually to tell you the truth to be able to do that more. So I'll talk about that sometime, but those who are willing to support me, whether Patreon or somewhere else would be really helpful. but I'd like to keep, I feel as though the Lord's given me a ministry and I'm able to meet some needs and I'd like to try to do whatever I can to help people. So, because I get so many questions. So many people are wrestling with these things. So anyway, I'm not going anywhere. So this is going to be a long term process.

So if anybody out there is thinking, oh, if we just, you know, rebut Ortland enough, then he'll go away. And it's probably some people in the comments seem to be desiring for that. That's not going to happen. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be around on YouTube and I'll always be advocating for what I believe, and that'll include Protestantism. So I'm not going to stop doing this. You know, people need to understand if their hope is if we just put enough pressure against

him, he'll back off. I'm always going to advocate for what I believe is true and noble and good, and that includes various Protestant beliefs. But so here's, at any rate, here's what I'm going to do going forward for now. In the long run, I'm just going to sort of monitor the icons discussion, Soliscriptura, and kind of see what emerges, you know, where does the discussion move? What's kind of coming to the surface over time? I will watch Swan's video. I want to make that commitment to Swan. I will watch all four and a half hours at some point. I just can't promise how soon I'll do that. But in the meantime,

see, if I don't, if I just wait and don't give any response, there's some things that I think get lost in the shuffle, and I'm concerned for the truth of these things. And so I do want to make two, brief kind of responses in the meantime. One to Trent and then on the canon and then one to Swan, just based on that first 41 minutes because there's one really determinative issue right up front that I just want to address even while I haven't finished the rest of the video yet, and I'll try to get to that at some point maybe, but I think there's something to say right out of the gate. So first, let me interact with Trent on the Deuterrele canonical books. Trent argues that the early Eastern Church didn't consider the Duderoh canonical books to be uninspired.

Let's look at these sources closer. You'll see that in many cases they come from canonical lists where the church fathers recognize the Dutero canon is controversial because the Jews rejected it. But they don't consider the Dutero canon to be uninspired in the same way that modern Protestants do. For example, John of Damascus or John Damascene from the 7th century, believed in an older theory that there could only be 22 books of the Old Testament to correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. But he still uses the Deutero canon like scripture. He quotes Second Maccabees to show God as omniscient.

He calls Wisdom 3-1 divine scripture. He also gives examples from Athanasius. Trent is right in the point that he's making here, but it's not a rebuttal of anything I said. I had actually mentioned this two-tier system that many early Christians held to, where you've got the Deutero-canonical books and a kind of second-tier status. Sometimes the way of thinking is that the first-tier canon is for dogma,

and the second-tier canon is for edification and so forth. But there's different ways we'll understand that. But Trent is right. You know, he used the phrase non-canonical scripture. That's a fascinating, interesting way to put it. So he's right that for a lot of these early Eastern fathers, the Deutero-canonical books are inspired in some sense, but they're not at the same level as the first-tier canon.

But that doesn't go against anything I said. You know, one of my concerns in these rebuttal videos is distortion where the original point is lost so that it comes across to people who just watch that video like it's a rebuttal, but it's actually just making a separate point. I was responding to George Farmer's comments, which give the impression that there were 12 centuries of one view of the canon that the church decided, and then the Protestants came along and took books out of the Bible. And I was trying to show that's way off.

There's a lot of diversity about the canon in the early and medieval church, as I pointed out all the way up to the very decades prior to the Council of Trent, including among heavy-hitting Catholic cardinals and scholars, not just one or two of them. And then at the Council of Trent, it's very controversial whether to remove that distinction between first and second-tier canon, which they do with anathema. So Trends right in the general point he's making, but it's irrelevant to the point that I was making, which is you don't have just one canon for 12 centuries and then the Protestants coming along to take books out of the Bible.

So that's the main thing. Now, let's do talk a little more about what Trent says about the Deutero-canonical books in the early Christian East, because my concern is that Trent's comments could give people the impression of too small of a distinction between the first tier and the second-tier canon. For example, Trent says that Cyril of Jerusalem's prohibition against the Deutero-canonical books was just because they were controversial. So Cyril wanted those who were new to the faith to avoid the Deutero-canonical books. The fact that he said that doesn't mean that Cyril believe that they were uninspired because he does not equate them with the apocrypha. Instead, he gives advice to catechumans who are new to the faith to stick to the books that have the least amount of controversy behind them, or the proto-concored.

canonical books of scripture. But let's look at what Cyril's rationale for this prohibition was. Cyril writes of these, that is of the divine scriptures, read the two and 20 books, but have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings. Study earnestly, these only, which we read openly in the church. Far wiser and more pious than yourself were the apostles and the bishops of old time, the presidents of the church who handed down these books. Being therefore a child of the church, trench not upon its statutes. And of the Old Testament, as we have said, study the two and 20 books, which, if you are desirous of learning, strive to remember by name as I recite them, and then he goes through and lists the canon that I had mentioned in my last video. The canon list is very similar to a Protestant canon.

You just have a few differences like Baruch enfolded into the book of Jeremiah, stuff like that. Outside of that, he does seem to use the word apocrypha for that which is outside of those books, those that specific list. Furthermore, the rationale for Cyril for forbidding the Catecumans to read the apocryphal books is not that they're just controversial or something like that. Rather, it's that the 22 books that he mentions are those that are quote read openly in the church or that we read openly in the church. And the rationale for that is that is the canon handed down from the apostles. You get the sense of, I mean, the tone of this passage is, kind of a dire warning, you know. He's saying, you're a child of the church. Don't, you know,

he said, don't trench upon the statutes of the church. It's like he's warning people. Don't deviate from this canon. So this is just one example of where, okay, don't, we can't come along and act like, oh, well, he quoted these other Deutero canonical books in other places. So therefore, they're the same ontological entity as scripture. Note, Cyril clearly has a very strict distinction between these books and all that is outside of those 22 books. This is just one example of the complexity of the history, and why, because Cyril's view is representative of the East there as it goes forward for a while. What is unfortunate is how many people have just bought into these popular talking points

about Protestants removing books from the Bible. That's very simplistic. It's not true. This is why I made that video. It's because I want people who, you know, people who are watching this debate between Ali Beth Stuckey and George Farmer, unfortunately, they're not really going to get the accurate picture here. They're not going to get what Cyril actually taught. So because people a lot of times will question me and triangulate me, I'm going to put a link to Cyril's lecture so you can go read

it for yourself, and I encourage you to do so. All right, let me talk about Swan's video just a little bit. The major point of the first 41 minutes of his video was about whether Nicaeatou allows for doctrinal development. And then after that he was getting into the sources of Nicaea II, and then I'm guessing that he's going to work through a bunch of the church fathers and make a case for a development. I think that's a, I'm not persuaded of it, but I think it's a noble effort of how to defend the other side. But let me explain why I disagree, and I'll say this, to the extent that the claim is going to be made that the early Christians were only against the pagan use of images rather than cultic use of images as such.

I'm simply, if that comes up, I'm simply happy to let my previous arguments stand and encourage people to read the actual texts themselves and make up their own minds. But depending on how he teases things out from there, I'll have to see what there may be to respond to if there's more than just that. If it's just that, I'm just happy to leave it lie. But in the meantime, let's just examine this initial claim that he makes. Does Nicaa to allow for doctrinal development on icon veneration? What Swan seems to be arguing, something like this, and I went back and watched 27 minute, 28 minute, 29 minute marker within there a couple times just to make sure I'm getting this accurate, so I think this is fair. He seems to be saying that Nicaea 2 doesn't require that the

actual practice of icon veneration is apostolic, as though the apostles themselves, for example, may have been venerating icons, but just that the theology of Nicaea, of Icon veneration is compatible with apostolic teaching. Another way he puts it at times is that all that Nicaea 2 traces back to the apostles themselves is the creation and use of sacred art. That's from 28 minutes and 40 seconds, for example. So that allows him to then argue for more development. Let me explain why I'm not persuaded. I'm going to put up the summative conclusion of Nicetia two that Swan quoted as well. This is the faith of the apostles. This is the faith of the fathers. This is the faith of the Orthodox. This is the faith that has sustained the world. Now, if I recall, and if I understand,

Swan wants to argue that the word this, in the phrase, this is the faith of the apostles, not referring to what immediately comes in the next sentence, namely kissing images. And he's saying, you know, it goes to what is before then, perhaps, or, you know, I think either from him or someone else, there was the idea of kind of maybe I'm like taking this out of context or not showing a fuller picture or something like that. Okay, this is, I don't know how to do this with my book. You can see, first of all, you've got to see. I mean, is there anything cuter than this picture that I use as a bookmark that my four-year-old

son drew of me and him hanging out. Probably not. All right. The sentence, this is the faith of the apostle, starts right there, okay? The only thing before that is the Holy counsel exclaimed, we all believe accordingly, we all hold the same, we have all signed in accord. Right before that is just all their signatures. In a second, I'll quote from the sections before the signatures to show you, there's nothing, I'm not doing anything sneaky here, but just from this paragraph alone, which I'll put back up, I think it's a very strained interpretation to divorce the first sentence from the second. When it says, this is the faith of the apostles. Immediately next, it says, believing in one God to be praised in Trinity, we kiss the

honorable images. Why do I say that? Well, two reasons. First, let's look at how the paragraph continues. May those who do not hold accordingly be anathema. May those who do not believe accordingly be driven far away from the church. We follow the ancient legislation of the Catholic Church. We observe the decrees of the fathers. We anathematize. those who either add anything or remove anything from the church, we anathematize the intrusive innovation of the accusers of Christians. We accept the sacred images. We subject those who do not believe accordingly to anathema. Then come the long stack of anathemas. Now, the words, legislation, and decrees here don't refer just to theological principles or something like that, but to practices

that are approved by the church. That's why it doesn't mention just sacred art, but a specific practice, namely kissing icons. So, you know, it's saying we follow the ancient legislation of the Catholic Church that accounts for why here and all throughout Nicaea 2, the consistent appeal against the iconoclasts is they're the intrusive innovators. We're the ones who just maintain the faith unchanged. We don't add or subtract anything. Now, the reason that I think you can't like chop up this paragraph and take the second sentence, which is about kissing icons, out of before and after, where it says, this is the faith of the apostles, and this is the, and we follow the ancient legislation of the church. It's because that takes that sentence, it disrupts the organic, logical

flow of the paragraph, the whole thread of reasoning. But also, and this is my other point, just read the rest of Nicaea too. So as I mentioned, if you go back a couple paragraphs before all the signatures. I think it's page, just to get this right, I know this is detailed, but I want to make sure that I'm being accurate here. Oh, and of course I took my book, I'm on it. Yeah, so if you go back to like pages 565 and 566, so just before, just a little earlier, listen to the reasoning here. I've got an earlier translation here, but you can still see the point. Here's what the bishop say just prior to these. So it's referencing artistic representations of Jesus, Mary, angels, and saints. and it says to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, and to the book of the

gospels, and to other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honor which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image, reveres in it the subject represented. For thus the teaching of our holy fathers, that is the tradition of the Catholic Church, which from one end of the earth to the other has received, the gospel is strengthened. Thus, we follow Paul, who spoke in Christ, and the whole divine apostolic company, and the Holy Father is holding fast to the traditions which we have received. So you see here a reference not just to a theology that's compatible with icon veneration or to sacred art,

but to specific venerative practices, namely incense and lights offered. and that is referenced as an ancient pious custom. And then following that, a few sentences, there's a reference to, in embracing this position, we are following the Apostle Paul and the whole divine apostolic company. After that, the next paragraph is, again, a condemnation of those who spurn the traditions of the church. And then it gets to that final paragraph, after all the signatures, this is the faith of the apostles. So you see, but this is not eccentric, you know, all throughout. even in their letter to the emperor and empress after the council as well, you see the same appeal.

They're relentlessly tying their theology of icon veneration specifically back to apostolic tradition and apostolic practice and apostolic teaching. And I think that Swan's interpretation is very problematic because he has to kind of chop up the sentences and like, you know, all the references to the ancient legislation of the church, pious ancient custom, the Apostle Paul, the faith of the Apostle, etc., those need to be sliced off from the actual content of what is put as that, namely kissing icons, burning incense, etc. So I just think Richard Price and the scholars are right in the way they summarize Nicaea 2. Richard Price is the Roman Catholic scholar who translated Nicaa 2 and whom Swan cites, one of the passages

that Swan quoted, Price says this, the fathers of Nicaea, too, would have found this whole debate bizarre, that is the debate about, is it like sixth century, early seventh century, late century, when precisely icon veneration began? Their concern was not to argue that the veneration of icons or images went back to the beginning, rather than the end of the seventh century, but that it had the support of the great church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries and went back through them to the apostles themselves. So you can see Price's view. which he says elsewhere as well, that it's, as he puts it, the veneration of images, not just a theology that's compatible with that or sacred art, more generally, that goes back to the apostles. By the way, so I'm just really firmly persuaded that I think Swan is mistaken in what Nicaea II requires.

I think if you're a Roman Catholic, the better way to try to defend veneration of icons is to say, look, Nicia II is wrong about its historical claims, but it's right about its theological claims. I think that's the only really authentic and good faith reading of Nicia II, because there's just so much in here that ties the practice back to the apostles. But I would say that response, that the history is wrong, the theology is right, that raises all kinds of other challenges. So I can understand why people don't want to go down that road either. Again, I just think the Protestant position on this is really the one we're sort of driven

to, to be honest. I think it's very strong. So, by the way, I mentioned Price. Let me just, again, I think his summary of the history is commendable for its honesty. He says, the iconoclast claim that reverence toward images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers, still less to the apostles, would be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct. The iconophile view of the history of Christian thought and devotion was virtually a denial of history. As I've said, Price's views are consistent with the general scholarly picture. He's not eccentric at all. The reason that I mentioned the scholarship is to prevent people from triangulating me because I have all kinds of people, Facebook messages, Twitter messages, emails, et cetera, you know, accusing me of trying to pull a fast

one, like my work on the icons is trying to be sneaky. I'm trying to pull things out of context and switch things around. And so referencing the scholarship is a way for me, like Price, is a way for me to prevent it becoming about me so that because people love to dismiss me and attack me and to show what I'm arguing for is just standard fare. It's just totally non-centric and typical stuff in the scholarship. And the fact is that the only reason that what I'm saying is surprising to people is because there's such a strong distance, such a huge distance between YouTube and scholarship. And people, you know, at the popular level, YouTube is more a realm of popularization, whereas scholarship is more a realm of penetration into new territory.

And people on YouTube, the viewers on YouTube oftentimes just are not aware of the state of scholarship on a question like this. So I referenced a scholarship like Price to try to protect myself from being triangulated. So that's my response to Swan. I think his reading of Nica too and what it requires is problematic for those reasons. As for the rest of his case, I haven't done him a fair shake yet by watching his full. full video and responding to the full thing. So on any other matters he may raise, I'll try to be chipping away at it over the weeks ahead as I can find time. All right, I want to reiterate that my comments about the final thought is just to reiterate this, that I'm trying to meet that

sense of weird aggressiveness that sometimes comes by offering this response. And I think it's good and helpful, hopefully for people to see that. But that's not representative of Swan or Trent. Whenever I make response videos, usually it's because I respect that person. And, you know, Swan is going to be a fantastic scholar. He's going off, he's going to be studying at Harvard. He's doing great things. God bless him. God bless him and Trent.

I'm not against them. That's not, you know, more what I'm trying to do is defend my own position from, especially the more unsavory things that I see out there. And so because people do run with their critiques to think like, oh, Gavin was demolished. Jesus had nothing to say in response. And I wanted to protect myself from that kind of thing. But God bless those two people. I like them a lot.

And I'm just explaining why I see these issues differently. All right. Thanks for watching, everybody. It is a Monday afternoon at 4.50 and I've got to be home by five to go play with my kids. So I'm out of here. And hopefully this video will come out tomorrow morning if I can edit it tonight. We'll keep talking. But this is all I got for now.

God bless everybody. Bye. Thank you.