Truth Unites - How Do We KNOW the New Testament Canon?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Cameron Bertuzi put out a video entitled A Question Every Protestant Must Answer, and the question is a really good and important one, namely how do we know which books belong in the New Testament canon? This video is not a refutation of anything that he said, just a brief and friendly proposal of an answer. I'm a Protestant, it's a good question. Here's an answer. You know, I've done some work on this, and I'm, you know, Cameron's a friend of mine, but I just, I watch a video like this. I start thinking about it. I want to put something out there, hoping it's helpful. I'm going to state this as briefly and compactly as possible for maximal, conceptual clarity, even though that'll make it more vulnerable to criticism. If you want a more detailed argument to see my other videos like this one, here I'm just aiming at just hit the main point,

Starting point is 00:00:39 okay? And the answer I'll give here has some resonance with his first and fifth options if you watched his video. And that's basically this. We can trust God's guidance of the process of canonization in the early church, even though it was a fallible process. The church's reception of the canon can be fallible and yet still trustworthy. Let me give three reasons for that. And then I'll address an objection about inconsistency. Reason number one, this is how what we call the Old Testament scriptures were received by the people of Israel. There were no infallible operations among the Jewish people to determine which books

Starting point is 00:01:14 constituted scripture. And yet, Jesus held his own Jewish contemporaries to the law, the writings, and the prophets as binding scripture. So the same question a Protestant must ask, and as we'll see, other Christians too, can be put to Jesus. You know, how can you expect these Jewish people to know which books are the correct prophets and writings and so forth? Number two, this is how the early and medieval church received the New Testament.

Starting point is 00:01:39 There were no infallible operations deciding the canon during that first 1,500 years of the church. The late 4th century councils, 1,500-ish, I'll define Florence and Trent in a second. These late 4th century councils, I just have to say this up front because everyone's going to bring up some of these. They were local councils. They were fallible. And yet, despite the absence of any infallible operations, the church came to a virtually universal agreement about the New Testament, somewhere around the 4th century or really a little earlier than that, but totally finalized around then. And that process of canonization, importantly, was organic and cumulative and gradual. This is a bottom-up process. It was not top-down. It appealed to multiple different kinds of criteria

Starting point is 00:02:24 like apostolicity, widespread reception, orthodoxy, and so forth, and it resulted from a widespread consensus, not an official proclamation, just like in the old covenant era. For Roman Catholics, the canon was not infallibly defined, really fully until the Council of Trent in the late Middle Ages. The Council of Florence in the 15th century, a little earlier, also had a canon list, but it didn't settle the matter, as can be seen from debate, from leading Roman Catholic authorities like Cardinal Cajitan affirming Jerome's shorter Old Testament canon that the Protestants agree upon as late as 1532, a decade before the Council of Trent. And then in the Eastern traditions, there are not any earlier infallible councils determining the canon that are agreed upon.

Starting point is 00:03:09 And in some of the Eastern traditions, there are not any infallible councils determining the canon up to this day. So if a fallible reception of the canon is a problem for Protestants, that's a question that other Christians, like the Oriental Orthodox, will have to face as well. It's not just, that's just something worth noting here. This isn't just for Protestants to wrestle with this. So, combining from these first two points, we can say, for the vast majority of redemptive history, the people of God received scripture through fallible means. That didn't mean for them, that the canon was not functional or trustworthy. Third argument, all Christians today should recognize that fallible processes can still be trustworthy. Because if we

Starting point is 00:03:50 widen our focus from the scripture specifically to infallible teaching more generally, all Christians have this same basic dynamic of a fallible appropriation of infallible teaching. The Eastern Orthodox have a fallible list of infallible councils. Roman Catholics have a fallible list of ex-cathedra statements from popes. Some say there have been two ex-cathedra statements, like these two. Others would add on more like these five, which are added on by some Roman Catholic historians, and others have a way huger list, including even things like canonizing a saint, being an infallible act. So this is not a criticism. It's just an observation that there's comparable disagreements.

Starting point is 00:04:36 If you go from the scripture and you just widen it out to infallible teaching as such, you have the exact same dynamic. Every single Christian church has this issue of fallibly receiving the infallible and therefore disagreeing on exactly where the edges of that lie. And it's not a criticism, it's a recognition of this. This is just a human phenomenon. This is just what it means to be a creature. We're not infallible. And that doesn't mean we can't trust in God's guidance. Other examples, how do you know that Christianity is true? How do you know for sure that Christianity is the true religion? Well, we would say that's a fallible judgment that we make because we're fallible, we're creatures, we're human beings. But we can still have

Starting point is 00:05:19 reasonable confidence about our faith. Or suppose that you're convinced of Christianity, how do you know which church is the true church? Maybe you're trying to decide between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox. That's a tough, that gets really nuanced. You have to work through issues like the filiocque and the papacy and other topics. You have to prayerfully consider using your fallible judgment. So the point is that if a fallible process can be trustworthy, we can trust the church's recognition of the 27 books of the New Testament canon, which are universally agreed upon by all major Christian groups alive today. But let's conclude with an objection.

Starting point is 00:05:57 Isn't it inconsistent if you accept the early church's New Testament canon, but don't accept other deliverances from the early church? For example, I'll have people bring this up with my arguments against certain aspects of Maryology like the bodily assumption of Mary. people will say, look, you reject the bodily assumption of Mary because it's from the fourth century, you say, but you accept the canon of Scripture, and it's from the fourth century, so how is that not inconsistent? But the process of canonization begins right away. In the New Testament itself, we have Peter calling Paul's writings scripture, and Paul referencing the Gospel of Luke

Starting point is 00:06:35 as Scripture, and then from right out of the gate from the earliest of times, certain books are consistently called scripture and cited and wielded as scripture, the process begins right away and is functional and it's just concluding in the fourth century, and it's not at all surprising that it would take some time to discern which books are in and which books are out. With Mary's assumption, we don't find it entering into the church in any sort of clear or widespread way until at least the fourth century, most scholars say fifth, late fifth century. After the Council of Chalcedon in 450, see this video if you want the fuller case for that. Simple point here, but I hammer at home because I, for the comments, to people who keep bringing these things up, there is a difference

Starting point is 00:07:20 between something starting in the fourth century or later and something ending in the fourth century or later. Furthermore, Mary's assumption is an alleged historical event. It's not an idea or a process of discernment that can sort of develop. So it's really surprising that you'd have a historical event transpire. Mary is assumed to heaven. The apostles witnessed this, according to most of the traditions. There it happens. And then there's zero attestation of that historical event for around 400 years, except maybe a little earlier than that in some Gnostic contexts, like the book of Mary's repose. That's really surprising. If she actually was assumed to heaven, it's really surprising that you'd have that long gap. But there's nothing surprising about the process of canonization starting

Starting point is 00:08:05 and then just rumbling on for a bit. So those are apples and oranges, very different kinds of things and different timelines. So my point is we need to reject any sort of all or nothing posture about church history. We can believe that God is guiding the church, even while we recognize the need to be discerning about particular beliefs that may arise in church history. Not every belief that arises in church history is the same. We have to take them all on a case-by-case basis. And there's nothing inconsistent with accepting the church's process of canonization while also retaining discernment about other doctrines that may be true or may be false or may be partly true and partly false. Once again, that would put us in a very similar position

Starting point is 00:08:46 to the people of God throughout the Old Covenant. More on all this in my other videos. Again, the goal is conceptual clarity, trying to push categories forward in the discussion. So summarizing, A fallible canonization process can still be trustworthy because that's how it always happened throughout the old covenant. That's how it happened in the early church and extending into the medieval era. And that's how all Christians treat the reception of infallible teaching more broadly. Hope this helps everybody.

Truth Unites - How Do We KNOW the New Testament Canon?

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