Cameron Bertuzzi's Backfiring Cannon

Cameron Bertuzzi recently put out a video about the New Testament canon. I've addressed the subject many times, such as in a lengthy 2009 series here that discusses the issues raised by Cameron. Or see here for a more recent overview that addresses some of the issues more briefly. For a listing of all of our posts under the "canonics" label, go here (keep clicking Older Posts in the bottom right to see more).

What I want to do in this post is briefly address some of the problems with Cameron's video. You can read our earlier posts for more.

At 4:13 in the video, he connects relying on the church's discernment to relying on its authority. But trusting somebody's discernment isn't the same as believing that he has authority in any relevant sense, much less the particular authority a Roman Catholic like Cameron has in mind. When we trust what Josephus tells us about Jewish history, what Tacitus tells us about Roman history, etc., it doesn't follow that we should think he's authoritative in any significant sense, much less that he has some equivalent of the sort of authority Catholics are normally focused on in these discussions. All of us rely on many fallible sources when making canonical judgments. Cameron has been relying on fallible patristic scholarship, including Protestant patristic scholars, for his knowledge of the church fathers, for example. When he and his fellow Catholics disagree with each other about the canon of infallible papal teachings, they're relying on what fallible historical sources report about the writings of Popes over the centuries, the fallible translations of papal documents produced by fallible publishers, and so on. Cameron's Catholic canon, which includes more than scripture, is discerned by him largely by means of non-Catholic sources, including some Protestants (e.g., Protestant Biblical scholarship, Philip Schaff's collection of patristic works). Cameron can trust those non-Catholic sources' discernment without thinking they have the sort of authority in question.

And why frame the discussion in terms of "the church"? The information we take into account when making historical judgments about canonical issues comes from both Christian and non-Christian sources (manuscripts from unknown sources, archeological artifacts, patristic documents, what heretical sources said about the issues involved, what was said by pagan sources, etc.). See the post here from my 2009 series mentioned earlier, for example, for a discussion of hostile corroboration of the canon. Many of the Christian sources we rely on are anonymous (New Testament manuscripts from unknown sources, the Didache, Second Clement, etc.). Even when a Christian source is known to a significant degree, like Clement of Rome or Tertullian, why think those sources were Roman Catholic? If a Protestant trusts the judgment of a consensus of modern Christians on a particular issue, that wouldn't necessarily be a matter of church authority, much less Roman Catholic authority in particular. A Protestant could defer to the judgment of his fellow Christians, or whoever else, on the ethics of cloning, the reliability of a recent archeological discovery, the latest findings of New Testament textual scholarship, or whatever other issue without the sort of implications for authority and sola scriptura that Cameron alleges.

Near the end of the video, Cameron asks how we can trust the church's judgment about the canon, yet reject its judgment on other matters. Aside from the fact that more than the judgment of ancient Christians is involved when making decisions about the canon (e.g., internal evidence within the New Testament documents, evidence from non-Christian sources), Cameron likewise disagrees with some of the beliefs that were widely held by ancient Christians, including some views that were held by a majority. See the examples discussed here (the early opposition to praying to saints and angels, the early rejection of the sinlessness of Mary, etc.).

Cameron keeps bringing up evidence for the canonicity of documents like First Clement and the Shepherd Of Hermas without saying much about the evidence against their canonicity, which creates a misleading impression. See this post from my 2009 series for a discussion of how weak the case for the canonicity of those documents is.

The canonical criterion we should be focused on is apostolicity. Cameron addresses some variations of that criterion, apostolic authorship and proximity to the apostles, but he doesn't address the most plausible form of it, apostolic authority. For further discussion of the subject, see this post from my 2009 series.

Cameron tells us that trusting the authority of the church is the oldest way of handling canonical issues. No, it isn't. Pre-Christian Jews and the earliest Christians accepted Old Testament scripture without in any relevant sense trusting the authority of the church to identify the books as scripture for them. Christians for hundreds of years accepted certain books as New Testament scripture without trusting church authority in any relevant way. The early Christians often told us how they recognized books as scripture, and it doesn't line up with what Cameron is advocating. See here.