Truth Unites - How Rebuttals Go Wrong: Joe Heschmeyer and the Canon Debate

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Gavin Ortlund responds to Joe Heschmeyer about Protestant and Roman Catholic views of the biblical canon.Joe's video: https://youtu.be/xdaWAX8FsOs?si=RcJj3p551RCys0krOur original video: https://youtu.be/hwfq4r4yi6M?si=deR-g9KVFZLw-DVVTruth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Joe Heschmeyer put out a video response to me and two friends, Javier, Pardomo, and Ben from Cleave to Antiquity, talking about the biblical canon. And I'm not going to respond to the whole video, but I wanted to highlight one example of how rebuttal videos need to be listened to critically and how they can kind of go sideways. I'd like to try to maintain a positive relationship with Joe. I like Joe. I'd like to have a good relationship. He's very smart, and I feel like if we were talking in real life, we'd get along pretty well, I think. But when someone is putting out a public criticism of you and it's getting lots of views and it's misleading people and there's distortion and spin and twisting of your words and things like this and that's influencing people,

then it's appropriate to respond and point some of these things out. And this has happened before in the past the way I've put this is Joe struggles to steal man the view that he's critiquing. Let me give an example and the goal here is just to alert people to this as they interact and watch these videos and seek the truth about these important topics. I'll play this a last about two minutes, and you'll see me talking in Joe's video and then him responding and just, you know, listen and ask yourself, is this an accurate representation of what Gavin just said? So you can see this from the example of Moses's eardrums. And the philosophical appeal has to do with an infinite regress, that there are certain ways

of requiring infallibility for the discernment of an appropriation of infallibility that now push the can down the road, and you're going to need an indefinitely. infallible knowledge of that. And so what we can observe here is that every system has a cut-off point where you move from infallibility to fallibility. So there is a fallible reception of the infallible. And that can be the eardrums of Moses at the burning bush, which are fallible eardrums. But he's still hearing God, and that's an infallible voice coming from the burning bush. Or this can be the perception of the number of ex-cathedra statements within Roman Catholicism, which is a fallible knowledge that is debated,

and yet those are infallible teachings, or the number of infallible counsels for various Eastern traditions, which is fallibly discerned. Okay, there's not been an infallible teaching that is universally agreed upon about that. So according to Gavin, even if God reveals something to you directly,

that is still fallible because you don't, maybe you misheard him. And so Moses, when he hears scripture, is just as fallible as anybody else. It's an infinite regress. But if that's true, than the Ten Commandments are fallible. So consider two people, we'll call them Moses and Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson uses his best fallible wisdom, and he comes up with 12 rules for life.

He doesn't claim there anything other than a fallible list. Moses gets a list from God himself of Ten Commandments. Now, by Gavin's argument, both of these are equally fallible because Moses could have misheard. And that seems like an obvious undermining of Scripture, an obvious undermining of revelation itself, because these guys are so big on like, you can't actually have infallibility, nobody can really have infallibility. But if you really believe that, then you can't talk about the inerrancy of Scripture. Like, you can't talk about any of these things being protected from error if everything is this radically subjective thing. So in the clip that Joe had started with there, I was just making the point in response to a common criticism against Protestants

concerning a fallible reception of infallible books that we can have a fallible reception of the infallible. And I've, you know, elsewhere in the video, I talked about the Old Testament and the Jewish people receiving their scriptures like this and the early church doing so in historical episodes where God speaks and Moses is hearing God and this kind of thing. So what I've done here is so, and then Joe responded to that. So what I've done is I've just copied and pasted the transcript. from his video so we can convey his words accurately. And let's just interact with what he says here,

and I want to try to defend myself a little bit from what I think are distortions. He says, first, so according to Gavin, even if God reveals something to you directly, that is still fallible because maybe you misheard him. And so Moses, when he hears scripture, is just as fallible as anybody else. It's an infinite regress, but if that's true, then the Ten Commandments are fallible. Let me highlight three problems here. First of all, Moses hearing God at the burning bush has nothing to do with the Ten Commandments. The Burning Bush episode happens in the wilderness in Exodus 3. The reception of the Ten Commandments occurs on Mount Sinai in Exodus 20 and described in a few other chapters. These are just completely different historical events.

Secondly, the Ten Commandments are written by God, so it has nothing to do with Moses' hearing. Third, I referenced Moses' hearing the audible words from God at the burning bush, not the inspired biblical account of that event. The record of that event in Exodus chapter three is inspired scripture. And so it is itself divine speech. Exodus is a part of the scripture. And so that is not fallible, and that it being fallible would not follow from anything I said.

Let me put up Joe's first words again here. You can see them in red here. He says, so according to Gavin, even if God, reveals something to you directly that is still fallible. No, that is not what I said. My point was precisely the opposite, that God's revelation remains infallible, even if it is received by fallible agents. Now, you could disagree with that and say that that's impossible, that can't happen, or something like that, but when you introduce your words by saying, so according to Gavin, and then you say, even if God reveals to you directly, it's still fallible, okay, that is not according to Gavin,

that is not my position. My position is the opposite. Let me give a different example. Just maybe it'll widen understanding and categories for people watching along here. So when God speaks to Abram in Genesis 151, God is speaking that is infallible revelation, because God is infallible. He cannot err. He's God. But Abram, excuse me, didn't need himself to be infallible to discern that this is God speaking. That's the whole point we're trying to make. Then Joe goes on to say this. So consider two people. We'll call them Moses and Jordan Peterson.

Jordan Peterson uses his best fallible wisdom, and he comes up with the 12 rules of life. For life, he doesn't claim that there are anything other than a fallible list. Moses gets a list from God himself of 10 commandments. Now, by Gavin's argument, both of these are equally fallible because Moses could have misheard. Now, this strikes me as a significant misunderstanding. Number one, again, the Ten Commandments are written by the finger of God. They have nothing to do with Moses's hearing, Moses' writing, anything like that. Number two, those commandments are bequeathed to us through an account in biblically inspired revelation.

This is part of the Bible as part of Revelation 3. So this is different from God's audible speech to figures in history. Sometimes God speaks in history to someone, but it's not all written down as a part of Scripture. And the point we're making is you can still discern, oh, that's the Lord speaking when that happens, even if you're not infallible. But the deeper problem here is the adding of this adverb equally, as though if an agent is fallible, therefore it's in the exact same position as every other fallible entity so that Moses and Jordan Peterson are somehow in the same position. And, you know, as I'm watching, I'm thinking I don't understand the thought process behind the introduction of that adverb equally here.

That is not what I said. That would not follow from what I said. And I would basically I would invite Joe to exhibit greater care when he's summarizing someone's argument, especially in a public, highly watched video, not to introduce little extensions and changes and developments that the person making the argument would never recognize. I would never say Jordan Peterson and Moses are equal in some sort of equal standing just because neither one is infallible in all their operations. So Moses can be infallible, by the way, when he's writing scripture. God can speak through Moses, but not every, Moses is not a generally infallible agent. So in this case, the reason the 10 commandments of the Bible are infallible, while Jordan Peterson's 12 rules are not infallible,

is because the 10 commandments are written by the finger of God onto the stone tablets, and then that episode is recorded for us in Holy Scripture, which is inspired by God. But either way, the fact that Moses has fallibility and is a fallible agent, way back in Exodus 3 at the audible speech of God he hears at the Burning Bush, where he's able to recognize, wow, that's God speaking. Okay, that has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. So hopefully the problem here is clear. But the reason I'm pointing this out is I think, you know, onlookers are influenced,

by this. One comment, and they can be confused, one comment even said, quote, the Moses's ear drum's argument sounds like it just throws gasoline on the fire. How can you have a doubt like that and hold to verbal plenary inspiration? And then this person goes on to talk about feeling compelled to become Catholic, even though his wife and family are opposed and so forth. So, you know, I read this and my heart really goes out to this person because I've seen a lot of these situations where in either direction, a married couple is there and the husband or wife, either way, they can be Catholic, one becomes Protestant, but the other doesn't, or vice versa, one becomes Catholic, and those are tough. That is a challenging situation to navigate. And so it's important,

if you're going to make such a significant change, it's important to do so on the basis of a clear understanding of the issues. And the point here about Moses's hearing being fallible has absolutely nothing to do with the written text of scripture as inspired by God, as though, you know, if believing Moses is fallible back at the burning bush, means that how can you have a high view of biblical inerrancy or something like that? But they're getting that from Joe's video. Here's the next part of the response that I played, where he says, and that seems like an obvious undermining of scripture,

an obvious undermining of revelation itself, because these guys are so big on, like, you can't actually have infallibility. So these guys, that's me, Ben, and Javier. Nobody can really have infallibility. This is him summarizing our view. But if you really believe that, then you can't talk about the inerrancy of Scripture. Like you can't talk about any of these things being protected from error if everything is this radically subjective thing.

So, okay, so Joe is saying this is an obvious undermining of revelation itself. And then he characterizes our position as nobody can really have infallibility. And then he uses these words, if everything is this radically subjective thing. And again, this is a distortion and sort of twisting. None of us have claimed that nobody can ever have infallibility or that everything is radically subjective or something like we believe in infallibility. We believe in biblical inspiration. God can speak through a human agent.

that's what the scripture is. We're not denying infallibility altogether as a category or embracing radical subjectivism or something. Our position is we're trying to protect what actually is infallible. And the rationale here, I think, is very strong. I really believe in Sola Scriptura. Sola Scripura, scripture is the only infallible rule. This is another thing at other points of the video is that there's other things also that Protestants believe about scripture like the sufficiency of scripture, but here I'm just talking about this core definition of sola scriptural. What does the sola mean there? The only is infallible rule. And the basis for our, so we're not rejecting all infallibility and embracing subjectivism. No, we're trying to keep the boundaries

at the right spot for what is actually infallible. And the basis for this is, the scripture is the speech of God, and God is infallible. So when God speaks, it's infallible. But we don't have a comparable good reason, or I would argue any good reason, to think that post-apostolic church mechanisms like certain councils, ex-catheter statements from popes, anything else like that is infallible. Those things are not the speech of God. They don't have a good track record in history. They don't have solid support in the New Testament. They're not comparable to the scripture. And, you know, going through the New Testament, where you find passages about infallibility, it's about the apostles, not post-apostolic functions of the church. So our position is we want to put

the speech of God over human councils and events and speech and deliberations and decisions and so forth because they can air. Doesn't mean they always will air. It just means they can. So they're under the scripture. Now, even if we're wrong about all of that, that's the position to interact with. I really love that. I really believe that. I think that's true. And that's the thing I hope people are wrestling with if they're deciding whether to be Protestant or not. Not the idea that we're undermining revelation itself. You know, these other things that I don't really follow where those things are coming from.

Our whole contention is that fallible reception doesn't undermine divine revelation. Joe goes on to say that our argument undermines Christianity itself, and then he's faulting us for using a two... One of the things that's recurrent is he's saying we use... a two-quo-quah argument, but this rests on a misunderstanding. Our argument is more of a reductio at absurdum or an internal critique. So let's speak to this clearly because this comes up a lot. We are not saying that here's an argument that comes against us Protestants, but we apply it to

the non-protestants also, so now we're all into trouble. Okay, that is not what we're saying. That's what we're being represented as saying. That's not what we're saying. Rather, what we're saying is, if this argument were applicable to Protestants, it would thereby be applicable to the non-Protestants as well, and that fact gives us reason to question the argument. So a totally different thing. There were some other issues in the video like I think the tripartite canon is present in Luke 2444. I think there's good scholarly backing for my position on Milito, other things like that that could be gone into. But honestly, it's kind of taxing to work through all of these things because of the nature of these rebuttals. And so the focus I wanted to make

here to try to serve and help those looking on is to just kind of highlight this one issue and encourage critical reflection of these kinds of rebuttal videos and just, you know, relentlessly ask yourself, wait a second, wait a second, is that what they actually said? And is this a good response to what they actually said? And the heart behind it all is I really believe in Sola Scriptura. And I really think that it is basically the linchpin in our differences. I don't accept at all that you have to have an infallible act of a church that, you know, this is the whole thing we're trying to say that we hope onlookers wrestling with these things, people who are seeking the truth about them will consider. But the fundamental conviction comes from the structure of Christianity as a

religion. This is a religion that God has revealed. God has spoken into history. And what we want do is keep Christianity based upon what God actually said. And a lot of these beliefs that come in way later after the period of public divine revelation has ended, like some of the Mariology, like the indulgences, like these other things that are, I think, fairly obvious to see as like late eccretions in church history, saying, no, you measure those things by what God said. That's what's at stake with Soliscriptura. Solis Sola Scriptura is at the rudder of the ship. It determines the question of just what is Christianity? What is it that you have to believe? And who has the right to tell you that? And our position is not the only thing you pay attention to, but the North Star

above at all at the top of the pyramid, the infallible part. I think that's just never going to get it wrong is what God has said, the speech of God. Human counsels can air. And the more I study church history as a Protestant, the more I'm persuaded of that. I think I, you know, I've been doing Protestant apologetics for five years, and I'm far more persuaded of that now than I was when I began. I just think if you study church history, it's the idea of ecclesial infallibility that the church, after the apostles have died, the church has a sort of guaranteed to be preserved from error in certain conditions. Number one, I think that's without any foundation in God's revelation. You don't see it in the New Testament. Where it comes up, it's about the apostles. But number two,

if you just study church history, I think it is fairly obvious that we just get it wrong. It doesn't mean the church dies, but we make mistakes. We need to be corrected by scripture. And so I care about this issue because I want people studying this topic and wondering, I want them to really consider the strength of the Protestant view. We want to put God's speech above human decisions, measure that which is human by that which is divine. I think that so absolutely true and so noble and robust and good as a way to keep Christianity from adding on all these additional elements. Like you have to believe Mary is bodily assumed?

I mean, or the Immaculate Conception, these other things, some of the most obvious glaring examples of accretions. I don't want people's consciences to be yoked to those things. I don't want that to get smuggled into what is part of obligatory Christianity. I want us to keep it on what God said, what God has revealed. the heart behind this topic. So that's why I care about this so much. This really matters. It really makes a difference. So I hope people watching along will consider these things. You know, I'm making general comments about Solo Scriptura right now. But I also want to alert

people to watch these rebuttal videos critically because there are, unfortunately, there are some distortions like this. Hopefully that makes that clear. Hopefully this video serves in the dialectic and helps those onlooking. Thanks for watching.