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.

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.

Epiphanius' Ignorance Of An Assumption Of Mary

Cameron Bertuzzi recently hosted a three-hour video about the Assumption of Mary, with Ethan Muse, Suan Sonna, and William Albrecht as guests. And Suan posted a thirteen-minute clip from the program on his own YouTube channel, a clip criticizing Gavin Ortlund's work on the Assumption. My focus here will be on some material in the church father Epiphanius, which received a lot of attention in the original video and is the main topic of the clip Suan highlighted. I'll briefly comment on some other topics as well, but I'll mostly be discussing Epiphanius.

Was Ignatius of Antioch Roman Catholic?

He's been discussed a lot lately by various Catholics. See this recent video by Cameron Bertuzzi, for example. And Ignatius has often been cited in support of Catholicism and against Protestantism for many years. It's not just a recent development. It's been popular for a long time in Catholic circles to cite Ignatius as a major problem for Protestants, because of comments he makes about issues like the monarchical episcopate and how the eucharist is the flesh and blood of Christ.

But some Protestants believe in the monarchical episcopate and a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist. And the sort of language Ignatius uses about the eucharist is also used by him in other contexts that aren't interpreted by anybody the way advocates of a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist are interpreting his eucharistic comments. See my discussion here. And here are some other examples not discussed in that thread I just linked:

Problems With Roman Catholic Apparitions Of Mary

Fatima has been getting an unusual amount of attention lately, largely because of a recent debate on the subject between Ethan Muse and Sean Luke. The Zeitoun apparitions got a lot of attention last year. I don't know enough about Fatima to address it as much as I have Zeitoun. But I want to discuss some of the factors involved in evaluating Marian apparitions in general.

More About Zeitoun And The Resurrection

Cameron Bertuzzi just posted a video responding to Gavin Ortlund regarding the Zeitoun Marian apparitions. I want to address several of the issues involved.

What should we make of the Zeitoun Marian apparitions?

I've discussed the subject in other threads over the years, but only briefly, and the Zeitoun case has been getting a lot of attention lately. So, I want to expand upon my previous comments.

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 Keys In Matthew 18:18

See this Twitter thread from The Other Paul for some good points about Cameron Bertuzzi's recent video on alleged evidence for a papacy in Isaiah 22. We've said a lot about Isaiah 22 and the papacy over the years, and anybody who's interested can search our archives. In the remainder of this post, I want to add some points to the ones made by The Other Paul.

A Lot Of Problems With The Assumption Of Mary

Cameron Bertuzzi just interviewed Gavin Ortlund about the Assumption of Mary. It's a good overview of the number, variety, and depth of problems with the claim that Mary was bodily assumed.

Some of the comments below the video bring up comparisons to sola scriptura, rejection of baptismal regeneration, or whatever other belief Catholics or those who sympathize with them allege to be comparable to or worse than an assumption of Mary. We have posts in our archives about those issues (e.g., here). And see here regarding the false reasoning about doctrinal development that often accompanies those kinds of comments.

In the video and in the comments below it, there are occasional references to how one or more of the documents referring to an assumption of Mary date or might date prior to the fourth century. Gavin addresses the subject in the video, but I want to add some other points. The New Testament authors address various false beliefs that existed in their day. Earliness is one of the factors we take into account when evaluating something, but it isn't the only factor. Gavin gave many examples of figures Catholics (and others) consider orthodox who rejected the assumption of Mary or discussed issues significantly relevant to an assumption of Mary without mentioning that she was assumed (e.g., church fathers referring to figures who were assumed into heaven without including Mary). Even if we were to accept the earliest dating being proposed for the earliest document to mention an assumption of Mary, we'd still have to take into account that the belief is coming from such a dubious source, it seems to be reflecting a view only held by a small minority at the time, and belief in an assumption seems to be absent and sometimes even contradicted in such a larger number and variety of sources who are of a more credible nature. Arguing for an earlier date for some highly problematic heretical or apocryphal documents doesn't do much to advance the argument for an assumption of Mary. As Gavin explains in the video, the problems with the belief are of such a nature that assigning an earlier date to something like a Gnostic document mentioning the assumption wouldn't do much to improve the Catholic argument. Remember, Catholicism has dogmatized the Assumption of Mary, and the Catholic Church claims to be the one true church founded by Christ, which allegedly is infallible and has maintained all apostolic teaching throughout church history. Catholics claim Mary is God's greatest creation, superior to all angels and other humans, the mother of the church, and so on. Pope Pius XII claimed that Mary's assumption is a belief "based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times" (Munificentissimus Deus, 41). He refers to the assumption as "a matter of such great moment and of such importance" (11) and claims that the arguments for the doctrine are so good that it "seems impossible" (38) to avoid the conclusion that Mary was bodily assumed.

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.