Notice Where Canon Discussions Begin

What assumptions are being made at the start of the discussion? For example, when somebody like Cameron Bertuzzi is assuming the truthfulness of Christianity, that certain individuals of past generations were Christians, what writings attributed to those individuals are genuine, etc., did he get to those conclusions by a means he's criticizing Protestants for utilizing? Cameron has made a series of canonical judgments, about canons other than the canon of scripture, before he begins his criticisms of Protestantism on canonical matters. How does he know which documents attributed to Athanasius or Augustine, for instance, are genuine and which aren't? What's the canon of Athanasius' writings or Augustine's, Jerome's, Innocent I's, and so forth? Cameron probably frequently relies on Protestant scholarship on patristic issues, much as he relies on other sources who aren't conservative Catholics on patristic issues and issues pertaining to the Bible, church history, and so on. That includes scholars who are highly antagonistic toward Christianity, like Bart Ehrman, a source Cameron recently cited on canonical issues. Ehrman not only has been a scholar in the field of New Testament textual criticism, but also has done work in related areas. His doctoral thesis was on textual issues in Didymus the Blind, a church father. So, Cameron's conclusions on matters related to the Bible, church history, the church fathers, church councils, etc. depend on fallible, probabilistic judgments derived largely from scholarship that isn't part of conservative Catholicism (moderate Catholics, liberal Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, atheists, agnostics, etc.).

When conservative Protestants are faulted for depending on sources they have significant disagreements with, keep in mind that conservative Catholics do the same. When conservative Protestants are faulted for relying on fallible, probabilistic judgments about controversial and complicated issues, keep in mind that conservative Catholics do the same. Etc.

Prepare Yourself For Canon Discussions

Over the past several days, I've been responding to Cameron Bertuzzi's recent videos about issues related to the New Testament canon. I responded to him on Facebook and on Triablogue here and here. These issues come up frequently, not just in the context of Roman Catholicism, but also in other contexts, like Bart Ehrman's recent comments in response to Wes Huff. But few people are well prepared to address these topics. That needs to change.

A good place for starting to prepare yourself for future discussions is an article I wrote in 2009 about the evidence for the acceptance of our 27-book New Testament canon before the time of Athanasius' Festal Letter 39 in 367. Read Athanasius' letter. Read the other sources involved, especially Origen's seventh homily on Joshua. Think through the issues. Prepare yourself for future discussions, and speak up. If you don't like how these things have been handled so far, and you shouldn't like it, one thing to do is to make better use of your own responsibilities and opportunities.

Difficulties With The Papacy

One of my posts last week responded to a video by Cameron Bertuzzi about how Protestants view Hebrews, including its canonicity. Catholics often bring up the subject as an example of one or more problems with Protestantism, such as how difficult it is to justify the canonicity of Hebrews from a Protestant perspective. As my earlier post mentioned, there are similar issues in Catholicism, like Catholic disagreements over which papal teachings are infallible. See here for Trent Horn's comments on the subject in a debate he had with Gavin Ortlund, for example. When something like that Catholic disagreement over papal infallibility occurs in a Protestant context, it's often suggested that the disagreement over the subject is an unacceptable form of disunity, it proves that we need an infallible source to settle things for us, it's evidence that Protestantism is a blueprint for anarchy, and so forth. One of the things we're told is that the papacy is the solution. It brings about the clarity, unity, etc. that we need. But what if the papacy is what people are having difficulty with, are disagreeing about, and so on?

Another example was unintentionally alluded to in Cameron's video that I responded to in my earlier post. He refers to how some people have thought that Hebrews was written by the third Pope.

Why think Hebrews is canonical?

Cameron Bertuzzi recently posted a video asking Protestants a few questions about Hebrews. I've addressed the questions before, but I'll summarize my answers here and provide links to some of my older material on the issues involved and more recent updates.

Neglected Evidence For The Authorship Of The Fourth Gospel

A neglected line of evidence for the fourth gospel's authorship is how closely John 19:35, 20:31, and 21:24 align with what Jesus said about the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the work of the apostles, and other issues in John 14-17. What the author of the document says in the passages I cited from John 19-21 seems to allude to Jesus' earlier comments in chapters 14-17. The implication is that the author of the fourth gospel is fulfilling what Jesus predicted. He's suggesting that he's one of the apostles Jesus was addressing in chapters 14-17.

Protestants Are Being Consistent About Canonical Issues

I recently came across a critic of Protestantism who made the common assertion that we need an infallible source to tell us what canon of scripture to follow. Apparently, we're supposed to think that fallibly applying some general principles from an infallible source in order to arrive at a canon isn't enough. This critic of Protestantism seemed to be suggesting that we need an infallible source to do something like list the canonical books for us. Supposedly, it's too difficult to discern a canon without such guidance. And so on.

Part of what we should keep in mind when issues like those come up is that the manner in which Protestants handle those canonical issues is substantially the same as how they handle canonical issues in contexts other than scripture and how such critics of Protestantism handle canonical issues in many contexts in their lives. We all accept canons for the writings of various historical figures (Tacitus, Justin Martyr, George Washington, etc.) without any sort of infallible ruling on the subject, for example. There are ongoing disagreements among critics of Protestantism about which extrabiblical traditions are part of the Christian rule of faith and which aren't, such as which papal teachings qualify as an exercise of papal infallibility and which don't. Those non-Protestants aren't relying on an infallible list, just as they arrive at a lot of other canons in other contexts in life without any infallible list. For further discussion of topics like these, see here and here, among other posts.

Did prayer to saints and angels develop in a way comparable to the development of the canon?

When the historical evidence against a Roman Catholic belief is brought up, a common Catholic response is to compare the development of that belief to the development of the canon of scripture or Trinitarianism. Here's something I recently posted in a YouTube thread about the subject. YouTube has had a problem for years with some people's posts sometimes not appearing. Many of my posts don't appear after I submit them, and I still haven't found a way to determine which posts will go through and which won't. The one below didn't go up. Here's a link to the YouTube comment I was responding to. You can read that comment and the surrounding context if you want more information about what led up to my response below.

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.

The Early Prominence Of Luke's Gospel And Its Christmas Material

Trent Horn recently put out a video that largely reiterates some points he's made before about sola scriptura. In the process, he repeated the claim that none of the New Testament documents were "prominent" before Irenaeus wrote in the late second century. I want to respond to that claim with an example that's relevant to the current Christmas context. On the other issues brought up in his video, see my earlier responses to Trent here and here.

Go here to watch Trent citing Lee McDonald's remarks about the lack of prominence of the New Testament documents before Irenaeus. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is focus on the gospel of Luke as a counterexample. With Christmas coming up later in the week and the popularity among skeptics of denying that the earliest chapters of Luke's gospel were part of the original document, I want to discuss not only the early prominence of the gospel of Luke, but also the inclusion of our first two chapters and other Christmas material in the gospel. (For more about the Christmas material in Luke outside the earliest chapters, see this post.)

Trent Horn's Arguments About Early Recognition Of The New Testament Documents As Scripture

He recently posted a video on the subject, as an argument against sola scriptura. It came up in his debate on sola scriptura with Gavin Ortlund as well, and Gavin discussed the subject briefly in a more recent video. Here's something I posted in the comments section below that video:

The Underestimated Value Of Papias' Comments On Mark

In his Church History, Eusebius cites some comments Papias made about the gospel of Mark. Those comments are often brought up in certain contexts, like discussions of the authorship of the second gospel. But the passage has been neglected in other contexts.

It's quoted below. I suspect all of the comments in the passage are from Papias, but the closing sentence could be taken as a comment by Eusebius. And the extent to which Papias is quoting the source he refers to as "the elder" (or "the presbyter") is disputed. In the quote below, I'll use regular text for the words of Papias, italics for the words of the elder, and bold for the words of Eusebius. This assumes a more pessimistic interpretation of the passage, in which Papias only quoted a smaller rather than larger amount of what the elder said and the closing comments came from Eusebius rather than Papias. I suspect this sort of interpretation is overly pessimistic. But let's assume it for the sake of argument, since I want to point out how much valuable information can be drawn from this passage even under such a pessimistic interpretation:

Protestants Aren't The Only Ones With Complicated Canonical Issues

Cameron Bertuzzi recently retweeted some comments from Josh Rasmussen on canonical issues and referred to how "this is a good [argument] for Catholicism". Keep in mind:

- The alleged ability of Catholicism to settle canonical issues in this context only addresses a portion of Catholicism's canon. That canon involves more than scripture. And Catholics continue to disagree with one another (and with non-Catholics) about what qualifies as tradition and what doesn't, which papal teachings are infallible, and so on. There's more agreement among Protestants about the canon of scripture than there is among Catholics about the canon of their rule of faith.

- Canons are complicated by their nature. That's not just true of scripture canons, but also of canons more broadly. People can dispute what documents were and weren't written by an ancient philosopher or a more recent individual, like Thomas Jefferson. If you broaden the canon to include all of the writings of a particular ancient school of philosophy or America's founding fathers in general, then the canonical issues will get even more complicated. How should the school of philosophy be defined? Who belongs to it and who doesn't? Who qualifies as one of America's founding fathers and who doesn't? Which documents attributed to George Washington were actually written by him? And so on. Since a canon of scripture in the Christian context involves multiple figures over a lengthy period of time (especially if you're including the Old Testament canon rather than limiting yourself to the New Testament), it involves the complexities that inherently go with a multi-author canon covering a longer rather than shorter timeframe. And there are other such factors that can make any given canon more or less complicated.

- Here's a series of posts I wrote about an Evangelical justification for the canon of scripture. We've written a lot more about the topic since then. You can find some archives of many of our relevant posts (not all of them) here and here. To summarize, the best explanation for what the relevant sources tell us about the apostles (e.g., Old Testament precedent, what Jesus said about the apostles, what the apostles said about themselves, what the other early Christian sources said about the apostles) is that they were communicating Divine revelation, including scripture. We have to make a probability judgment about whether a given document was part of that revelation, but the same is true of the alternatives (how probable it is that all of the sources supporting Jude's canonicity, for example, were wrong; the likelihood of Catholic arguments about the alleged authority of their denomination; whether it's probable that something that's claimed to be part of Catholic tradition actually is part of that tradition; etc.). It's not as though Protestants are the only ones who have a position to defend or the only ones relying on probability judgments about history. We have more evidence for the canonicity of 1 Corinthians than we have for the canonicity of Hebrews. But the evidence doesn't have to be equally good for every book, and a rejection of Hebrews has to be defended, just as an acceptance of it has to be. We've said a lot more about these and other canonical issues in the threads linked above. See my recent post here for a brief overview of how all of us (including atheists, for example) have to justify our own canons in many contexts in life and how those canonical issues are often complicated.

Evidence For The Early Dominance Of The Canonical Gospels

The canon of gospels in the New Testament is often questioned or doubted. Why include those four gospels and not others? It's sometimes even suggested that there was no majority support for elevating the canonical gospels above others until around the time when Irenaeus wrote in the late second century or the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century, for example.

How To Handle Canonical Issues

An important step in addressing objections you get from a critic is to ask how much the objection could be applied to his belief system. That can help you communicate better with that critic, help you better explain to him why his objection is problematic, or get him to abandon the objection or adjust it or his handling of it in some way, for example. The value of taking that approach is especially significant in the context of interacting with Roman Catholics, since Protestants so often interact with Catholics and since they so often raise objections to Protestantism that they should be holding against their own belief system if they were to be consistent. But you sometimes come across that sort of inconsistency with Eastern Orthodox, atheists, and other groups as well.

One of the most popular objections raised against Protestantism is its supposed inability to justify its acceptance of a canon for its rule of faith, scripture. There is no table of contents in scripture, we rely on means outside of scripture to arrive at our canon, we supposedly accept our canon because a Roman Catholic authority of some sort gave us that canon, and so on. But it's not as though Protestants are the only ones who have a canon for their rule of faith. Every rule has a canon. So, ask yourself whether the group the person you're interacting with belongs to (e.g., Catholicism) handles its own canonical issues in a way comparable to how you handle yours. Is there a table of contents within the Catholic rule of faith? No. Do Catholics arrive at their canon by means outside that canon? Yes. And so forth. In fact, since the Catholic rule is so much larger and more complicated, the process of sorting through canonical issues is more difficult for a Catholic than it is for a Protestant. There are ongoing disputes among Catholics about what qualifies as tradition and what doesn't, which papal teachings are infallible and which aren't, who's been a true Pope and who hasn't been, etc.

Similarly, when atheists and other critics of Christianity claim that the canon of scripture was decided by Constantine or the Council of Nicaea, claim that Irenaeus gave us our canon of the gospels, or some such thing, we shouldn't just respond by explaining how erroneous their historical claims are. We should also notice that they make a lot of canonical judgments themselves and often approach those canonical issues in much the same way Christians do. In discussions about politics and matters like separation of church and state, they'll accept a canon of Thomas Jefferson's writings or some portion of that canon based on whatever they've been told by whatever scholar or other source they've consulted. They'll accept what a high school teacher, college professor, television documentary, book, web site, or some other source told them about the canon of Supreme Court rulings on a particular topic, what the Court said about the issue in question, and so on. We all do this type of thing many times and in many contexts in our everyday lives. So, when a Christian accepts a Biblical canon based on trusting various authority figures (parents, pastors, denominations, a historical consensus of professing Christians, a consensus of Bible publishers, etc.), that isn't much different than what atheists and other non-Christians do in other contexts. Whether an atheist or some other critic is being inconsistent in the objection he's raising will have to be judged case by case, but the possibility that he's being inconsistent should be considered and should be considered earlier rather than later in the discussion.

A lot more can be said about these issues, and we've said a lot more elsewhere (e.g., in my series of posts arguing for the New Testament canon and summarizing the case for the Old Testament canon here). But I want to reinforce the point that it's important to take a critic's objections and apply them to his belief system early in a discussion. That can go a long way in helping the discussion develop well. Protestants need to get better at doing that, especially with Catholics, but also with other groups.

A Historical Argument For The New Testament Canon

My last post cited Charles Hill's Who Chose The Books Of The New Testament? (Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2022). The book makes a lot of good points (e.g., the manuscript and patristic evidence that the canonical gospels were more widely accepted and viewed more highly than the non-canonical ones in the earliest centuries of Christianity).

However, his focus when discussing canonical criteria is on the self-authenticating nature of scripture, and he doesn't provide what I consider the best argument for the canon. See here for a series I wrote in 2009 that makes a historical argument for the canon on the basis of the criterion of apostolicity. Some parts of that series are somewhat dated, and you can find more recent material in our archives (e.g., I've written substantially more about 1 Timothy 5:18 since then, like here). But the 2009 series provides the general parameters and many of the relevant details.

One of the good aspects of Hill's book is that he cites the existence of our 27-book New Testament canon in Origen more than a century before it appears in Athanasius. But Hill doesn't go into much depth when discussing the subject. See here for my article on the topic, which covers a lot of details Hill doesn't mention, some of which I haven't seen anybody else bring up. As I explain in that article, there are multiple lines of evidence that the 27-book canon predates the letter of Athanasius that's typically cited. People ought to stop citing that letter or Athanasius as an individual as the first source supporting the canon.

A Good Discussion Of First Clement

James White recently had a good discussion with Stephen Boyce about First Clement. They talk about the letter's significance with regard to Trinitarianism, the canon of scripture, justification, church government, and other subjects.

The New Testament In The Earliest Centuries

It's common to allege that the twenty-seven-book New Testament canon we have today doesn't first appear in the historical record until around the middle of the fourth century, in Athanasius. But it probably was advocated in multiple locations prior to that time, including in Origen more than a century earlier.

Even if it's recognized that the canon dates earlier than Athanasius' letter, it's commonly suggested that the process leading up to the origination and popularizing of that canon was unusually large and complicated and should motivate us to look for a source like an infallible church to adjudicate the situation for us. However, what stands out about the origins and popularizing of our New Testament canon isn't how unusually difficult the process was, but rather how unusually easy it was. See here for a further discussion of the subject.

And you can go here to find several other articles on issues related to the canon (mostly the New Testament, but also the Old).

Principles For Evaluating Development Of Doctrine

The subject of doctrinal development often comes up in discussions with Roman Catholics, but it's relevant to other contexts as well. We've written a lot about it over the years, and you can find many relevant posts in our archives. I want to outline several of the principles we should keep in mind as we think about the topic:

- Different individuals and groups make different claims about the beliefs under consideration, and they bear different burdens of proof accordingly. Catholics can't try to have the benefits of making higher claims about the alleged history of their doctrines without also paying the cost of bearing a higher burden of proof. The two go together. See the second-to-last paragraph of the post here regarding what Roman Catholicism has claimed about the history of the assumption of Mary or the opening paragraphs here regarding the papacy, for example.

Evidence For The Early Prominence Of The Gospels

I want to discuss some patristic evidence that corroborates and expands upon what I wrote earlier this week about the nature of the gospels and their role in early evangelism, missions, the planting of churches, etc. I'll start with a couple of passages in Justin Martyr that have some significance that's often overlooked.

In his Dialogue With Trypho, Justin is told by his Jewish opponent, "I am aware that your precepts in the so-called Gospel are so wonderful and so great, that I suspect no one can keep them; for I have carefully read them." (10) At that point in history, it was common for two or more gospels collectively to be referred to as "the gospel" (which is an indication of the earliness of Justin's Dialogue and the exchange with some Jewish opponents he recounts there). Trypho makes no such comment about other Christian sources, like the letters of Paul. And his comment above came after some remarks Justin made about Christianity in general, not the gospels or any other Christian writings in particular. It's significant that Trypho not only knew of the gospels and read them, but even took the initiative to mention them and didn't cite other early Christian literature in a comparable or greater way.

In his First Apology, Justin writes of Christian church services, "And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles [the gospels] or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things." (67) Again, notice that the gospels are singled out. And they're mentioned before the books of the Old Testament.

Similarly, Celsus and his Jewish source(s) interact with Christianity based largely on the gospels, much more than Paul's letters and other sources. As Robert Wilken wrote, "Pagan critics realized that the claims of the new movement [Christianity] rested upon a credible historical portrait of Jesus. Christian theologians in the early church, in contrast to medieval thinkers who began their investigations on the basis of what they received from authoritative tradition, were forced to defend the historical claims they made about the person of Jesus. What was said about Jesus could not be based solely on the memory of the Christian community or its own self-understanding." (The Christians As The Romans Saw Them [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], 203) Notice how much, in these examples I'm citing and elsewhere, this Christian focus on the life of Jesus involved the gospels, not just claims about him or oral tradition, for example.

The order of the New Testament, starting with the gospels, is another illustration. That ordering of the books isn't a recent development. Discussions of the New Testament canon often give a lot of attention to the Muratorian Canon as the earliest canonical list we have, from the second century. It starts with the gospels.

What's the target of sola scriptura?

i) A Catholic trope is that sola scriptura is self-contradictory. Unless you can establish the canon of Scripture from Scripture alone, sola scriptura is false. The cliche formulation is to claim that unless the Bible contains its own table of contents, sola scriptura is false. Unless Scripture itself lists the books of Scripture, sola scriptura is false. 

It's striking to see the copycat mentality among Catholic apologists in that regard. They all repeat this trope as if it's self-evidently true. 

ii) I've never seen a Catholic apologist quote a classic Reformed or Lutheran creed which says sola scriptura excludes extrabiblical evidence for the canon. I've never seen a Catholic apologist quote a major 16-17 Reformed or Lutheran theologian who said sola scriptura excludes extrabiblical evidence for the canon. What historical documentation do Catholics have that sola scriptura was ever intended to exclude extrabiblical evidence for the canon? 

iii) Perhaps, though, the objection is that while sola scriptura doesn't rule out extrabiblical evidence for the canon by design, that's a necessary implication of the principle, and Protestants are simply inconsistent in that regard. They artificially exempt the canon of Scripture from sola scriptura. 

Problem is, I've never seen a Catholic apologist present an argument for why that's a necessary implication of sola scriptura. Rather, they just assert that to be the case. 

iv) What is the target of sola scriptura? Is the target extrabiblical evidence for the canon? No. The target of sola scriptura is a particular view of church authority. Sola scriptura stands in opposition to the view that the Roman Magisterium is God's oracle on earth. That God instituted a living oracle in the Roman Magisterium.

Put another way, the target of sola scripture is a rival revelation and superior revelation. In Catholicism, the Magisterium is the functional equivalent of divine revelation. Indeed, progressive revelation, which effectively abrogates the authority of Scripture. 

Understood that way, including extrabiblical evidence to establish the canon is entirely consonant with sola scriptura. That's not an ad hoc exception to the principle. 

v) Another problem with the Catholic trope is the idea that the only alternative to exclusively internal evidence for the canon is exclusively external evidence for the canon. They think the case for the canon is completely dependent on tradition. In my experience, they never even consider the internal evidence for Scripture. And their neglect makes sense, given their Catholic outlook. After all, if the canon of Scripture is ultimate determined by ecclesiastical fiat, then evidence for the canon is superfluous–be that internal or external. 

vi) Part of the problem is a failure to distinguish between tradition and evidence. When Protestants cite "traditions" as evidence for the canon, that's not an argument from authority but an appeal to historical or testimonial evidence. They aren't citing Jewish or patristic sources because, say, Josephus or some church father is an authority-figure, but because they're a good source of information. Protestants aren't implicitly falling back on ecclesiastical authority when they include patristic testimony for the authorship of certain NT books. Authority involves the notion of the power or prerogative to obligate or compel asset or behavior. That's a different principle than evidence. 

vii) A final problem is that because Catholic apologists default to the Magisterium, they neglect to appreciate the extent of internal evidence for the canon. But it's striking to consider how interwoven the books of Scripture are. To take a few examples, the Pentateuch and Historical books are interwoven. A continuous, cross-referential history. The Prophets are interwoven with the Pentateuch and Historical books, given all the cross-references. The Synoptic Gospels are interwoven. Luke/Acts are interwoven. The Pauline Epistles are interwoven. John's Gospel and 1-3 John are interwoven. The Gospels and Epistles are interwoven with Acts, due to the same participants. So there's a huge amount of internal evidence for the canon.

I'm not claiming that internal evidence is sufficient to establish the canon. I don't think that's necessary. But the canon of Scripture is a unit in a way that Catholic apologists fail to notice.