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.

The Choice To Be Irreligious

Late last year, I saw Matthew Continetti link a study by Gallup showing a decline in American religiosity. I didn't comment on it at the time, because I had other posts planned.

The article just linked refers to a "17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life — from 66% in 2015 to 49% today". And you'd expect many of those 49% to be saying that religion is important to them without living like it, so the situation is even worse in that sense. I've cited many other such statistics over the years that reflect poorly on some large percentage of Americans, often a majority or large majority. See here, for example. The country is as secular and trivial as it is primarily because that's what most Americans want. Don't try to shift the blame.

So Quickly Drifting To A Different Gospel

Paul told the Galatians, "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). He expressed a similar sentiment to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:4).

If churches as early as these Pauline ones were in such danger and sometimes erred while under Paul's supervision, there's even more potential in some ways for later individuals and churches to err in that manner. My post earlier this week provides many examples of how that sort of thing happened a lot in later church history, regardless of which side of those later disputes you take. The disputes happened, and both sides (or more than two in some contexts) couldn't be right, given the nature of their claims.

I'm not suggesting that every or almost every post-apostolic source before the Reformation wasn't a Christian or anything like that. As I've argued in many previous posts and elsewhere, there was far more belief in justification through faith alone among the pre-Reformation sources than people often suggest. And I allow for the salvation of people who hold false soteriological views. People are often inconsistent, as we see with Peter and the Galatians, for example. In some ways, later individuals and groups who have contradicted Paul's soteriology have been better than the Judaizers. They've accepted the authority of the apostles, have often read documents like Paul's letters in their church services, etc. So, when Cyprian sees two sacraments (baptism and the laying on of hands) as a means of justification in John 3:5 or a medieval Roman Catholic believes that you have to obey the Pope in order to be saved, for example, I allow for the possibility or probability of their salvation. I make a judgment based on the totality of the evidence, including their access to the gospel and their affirmations of it in some places, even if they were inconsistent with it at times.

My main point here, though, is that departing from the gospel isn't as difficult as some people make it out to be. It was a prominent concern in Paul's day, and it sometimes happened even with people under the apostles' supervision. People often underestimate the soteriological inconsistencies we see in post-apostolic church history. Supposedly, none or few of the soteriological contradictions we see among the church fathers, medieval theologians, and other sources rise to the level of a false gospel. But it makes more sense to acknowledge that the soteriological errors are more significant than that and allow for the salvation of the individuals involved, despite their false soteriology.

The Practicality Of Theology And Justification In Particular

It's often suggested that matters like theology and apologetics don't have much practical value. What significance do they have in everyday life? They aren't pragmatic enough to deserve much time or attention. And the doctrine of justification is often singled out for that sort of commentary. Supposedly, arguments about justification, between Protestants and Catholics and in other contexts, don't matter much, are a waste of time, and so on.

Notice how the soteriological issues I addressed in my last post provide evidence to the contrary. For example, whether you're forgiven by God and have peace with him immediately (2 Corinthians 6:2), as soon as you come to faith, or when you're baptized six months later is significant. Similarly, the issue of the efficacy of deathbed repentance is of major importance. Much the same can be said of other soteriological issues.

Ironically, the sort of pragmatism advocated by the people I referred to in my opening paragraph is very unpragmatic. It causes a lot of significant problems in people's lives.

Evidence Below The Surface

People often say they're familiar with an issue, even to the point of being weary of hearing about it, when they're actually significantly ignorant about the subject. What they've heard a lot of is introductory information about the topic or some of the more advanced information about it without having heard about other information of a more advanced nature. Their knowledge is partial and often misleading.

For example, they've heard a lot about gospel authorship in the sense that they've heard many introductory or intermediate discussions of Papias, Irenaeus, and other sources. But there are other lines of evidence they have little or no familiarity with.

That's one of the dangers involved in addressing topics in a shallow way. You give people the impression that there's less involved, often far less, than is actually there. Christians should keep maturing in their understanding of issues and keep trying to get other people to mature. Take different approaches toward a subject on different occasions. Mention that there's more evidence involved than what you're bringing up, and direct people to resources that provide that other evidence.

Majoring On The Minors And Minoring On The Majors

Given how you behave in school, in the workplace, among relatives, on the internet, and in other contexts, how much reason do people have to think you're significantly different than the secular, trivial culture around you? You claim to object to how corrupt the culture is. Should you fit in as well as you do with the mainstream of the culture in school, among your relatives, on Twitter, on Facebook, and in other contexts?

I would not with swift wingèd zeal
On the world's errands go,
And labor up the heav'nly hill
With weary feet and slow.
(Thomas Gill, "Lord, In The Fullness Of My Might")

Souls Brightened By Reading

"I beg and exhort with great humility that whoever receives this little book in his hands should both read it frequently himself and instil it into others, as well as giving it to them to read and transcribe. Thus a man may receive a double reward from the Lord as a result of his own progress and that of others. I mention this fact, because many people, and perhaps pious ones, want to keep their numerous books shining and beautifully bound; they keep them locked up in chests, so that they may not read them themselves or give them to others to read. They do not know that it is of no advantage to have books and not read them because of worldly hindrances. If a book is well covered and shining but not read, it does not make the soul bright; but one which is continually read, and because of the fact that it is often unrolled is not beautiful on the outside, makes a soul beautiful within." (Caesarius of Arles, Mary Magdeleine Mueller, trans., St. Caesarius: Sermons, Volume I [1-80] [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004], Sermon 2, pp. 24-25)

The First Commandment, The Beginning Of Wisdom

Above all other relationships and priorities:

"So take diligent heed to yourselves to love the Lord your God." (Joshua 23:11)

"What do people value in life?...From analyzing people’s answers, it is clear that one source of meaning is predominant: family. In 14 of the 17 advanced economies surveyed, more mention their family as a source of meaning in their lives than any other factor….Outside of the U.S., religion is never one of the top 10 sources of meaning cited – and no more than 5% of any non-American public mention it. In the U.S., however, 15% mention religion or God as a source of meaning, making it the fifth most mentioned topic….Evangelical Protestants in the U.S. are much more likely than mainline Protestants to mention faith as a source of meaning – 34% vs. 13%, respectively." (Pew Research Center)

"He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:37)

"We love, because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

Why is the discussion starting here?

One of the most important steps you can take in evaluating the issues that come up in life is to ask what assumptions are being made at the beginning of a discussion. Is the conversation starting where it ought to? Are people beginning their reasoning with some false assumptions, in terms of a false concept of what happened in a certain historical context, false priorities, or whatever else?

For example, when critics of Christianity try to cast doubt on something like the authorship of the gospels or their genre, and they object to how few sources Christians are citing in support of their position or how late the sources are, how does the critic's position compare? How many and how late are the sources supporting his position? If there's an assumption that the skeptic shouldn't be expected to show any support for his positions among the ancient sources, is that a valid assumption?

Or when there's a controversy surrounding a Marian apparition or a paranormal case of some other type, what explanatory options are people starting with? Are they taking the relevant factors into account?

Or when an advocate of baptismal regeneration begins a discussion with a large number of exceptions in mind to the rule of baptismal regeneration that he's advocating (people who lived in the Old Testament era, people who lived during Jesus' public ministry, Cornelius, martyrs who died without being baptized, catechumens who died without being baptized, etc.), should those exceptions be granted without supporting arguments? If supporting arguments are offered, are they adequate? Even if it's popular to allow the advocate of baptismal regeneration to assume a lot of exceptions to the rule without arguing for them, should you be going along with that popular practice?

It's important to think through issues like these. Be cautious about how discussions are framed and how they proceed.

Where are the laborers?

One of the issues I've often discussed here over the years is who we should pray to. Should we pray to saints and angels or only pray to God? And I've sometimes mentioned that the issue of who we should pray to is unusually difficult to discuss, because advocates of praying to saints and angels so often behave so poorly (category confusions, the use of forgeries, poor handling of the dating of sources, etc.). You can find a discussion of some examples here.

But another problem that makes the situation even worse is how apathetic, ignorant, misinformed, and uninvolved the large majority of opponents of prayer to saints and angels are. The people on that side of the argument who even come close to handling it well are few and far between. The neglect of the issue has never made sense to me.

And there are similar circumstances in a lot of other contexts. For example, advocates of baptismal regeneration and opponents of eternal security can make highly inaccurate claims about the historical theology relevant to those doctrines, as they often do, and rarely get much of a response from the other side.

The few people who handle the issues well shouldn't be expected to do more and more. There ought to be more people doing the work.

"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest." (Matthew 9:37-38)

"Here am I. Send me!" (Isaiah 6:8)

Carrying On The Work Of Others

In some of my posts over the years (like here and here), I've written about the importance of thinking beyond our generation. We're often too focused on our contemporaries, pleasing them, following their (often false) lead, adopting their false priorities, trivial mindset, and other bad characteristics. We give some attention to future generations, such as when we're thinking about our children and grandchildren, and there's often talk about things like how we expect technology or the economy to develop in the future. Past generations are probably the most neglected in some ways.

You Have To Move From Theory To Fact

Critics of religion and the paranormal are often overly focused on hypotheticals. Too much time in the abstract, too little time in the concrete. They claim a certain prior improbability for miracles, go on and on about how unreliable human memory supposedly is, the problem of bias, the potential for hallucinations, how an overactive imagination often misleads people, etc. That sort of consideration is valid up to a point. But there's also a point where it becomes suspicious, if the facts involved in a particular situation aren't being addressed adequately.

The Benefits Of Studying The Resurrection

"For he who has learnt to study innumerable [truths] concerning the resurrection, how should he fear death? How should he shudder any more?" (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews 4:6)

It's often suggested that religion doesn't have much practical value. It doesn't come in contact with everyday life enough, it's too abstract, what it addresses has too little significance, concerns like food and money are more interesting, etc. The degree to which people hold such views varies, but even many professing Christians believe such things to some extent. You can see it in their time management, for example, in that they spend an inordinately large amount of their time on secular and trivial activities, just like the surrounding culture.

But Easter provides some examples, among many others, of how wrong that sort of mindset is. Nothing is as pragmatic as God, and the issues most closely associated with him, often referred to as "religion", are important accordingly. Death is a major illustration of that fact. If you can't find practicality in overcoming death, something's wrong with you. If you care about yourself, you should care about your death. If you care about your family, you should care about their death. And so on. We can go on to think of other subjects along the same lines. Just as we want to plan for a business trip we're making or an upcoming vacation, how much more should we want to learn about the afterlife and plan for it? We should keep such issues in mind as we think about the Easter season and religious topics more broadly.

The Growth Of The Evidence For Christianity

It's sometimes suggested that the arguments for Christianity haven't developed much. There's not a lot being offered beyond the repetition of certain philosophical arguments for God's existence, historical arguments for prophecy fulfillment, historical arguments for Jesus' resurrection, and so forth.

Even if that were the case, that sort of evidence would be sufficient. And much of that older evidence often gets overlooked or underestimated (e.g., the evidence for certain Old Testament miracles, the evidence for apostolic miracles).

There's been more of an increase in the evidence for Christianity than is typically suggested. We've addressed a lot of examples in other posts: apparitions of Jesus, name statistics in the Biblical documents, the evidence for the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus, modern healings, etc. Think of all of the developments in archeology over the years, for example. Old lines of argument often have new applications. I've written about modern examples of prophecy fulfillment, for instance. The work done in contexts like intelligent design and the paranormal isn't applicable only to Christianity, but it furthers the case for Christianity as far as it goes. And there are frequent advances in those fields.

Since our culture is so secular and trivial, issues like the ones I'm citing in this post don't get discussed much. And even among Christians, few people (as a percentage) bring these things up or attempt to persuade others about them. Those aren't problems with the state of the evidence, though. They're problems with how the state of the evidence is being handled.

Love Has Its Wounds

"Perhaps my preaching last Sunday was somewhat unpleasant because I visited many of you harshly with the severity of the teaching authority and took up not what would flatter a number of you but what would make you sad. Truly, this is of no concern to me, for I rejoice in the knowledge that the disciple's sadness is the master's joy. For the hearer profits when the preacher proclaims what is harsh, and salvation is begotten for a person when the sadness of correction is pressed upon him. As the blessed Apostle says: 'What is sadness according to God brings about a lasting salvation.' [2 Corinthians 7:10] Justifiably, therefore, do I rejoice, since I bring about salvation when I reprove. Although my son is grieved on account of the roughness of my speech, nonetheless I am made happy because I know that he profits by the grief. The holy Apostle says: 'But who is the son whom his father does not beat?' [Hebrews 12:7] For a father does not always kiss his son but also sometimes chastises him. When one who is loved is chastised, therefore, a pious act is exercised in his regard, for love has its wounds as well, which are all the sweeter for the harshness of their infliction. For a religious chastisement is sweeter than easy forgiveness, which is why the prophet says: 'Sweeter are the wounds of a friend than the freely offered kisses of an enemy.' [Proverbs 27:6]" (Maximus of Turin, Sermon 80:1, Boniface Ramsey, trans., The Sermons Of St. Maximus Of Turin [Mahwah, New Jersey: Newman Press, 1989], 192)

The Sin Of Simplicity

Proverbs warns about being simple-minded. "How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?" (1:22) The simple should become wise rather than remaining simple (Psalm 19:7).

Despite all of the advantages people in modern cultures have in intellectual contexts - higher literacy rates, more widespread formal education, better technology that includes more access to information, more political freedoms, etc. - it's common for people to not only be too simple in their thinking, but to even treat it as something virtuous and respectable. Supposedly, it's good that they're such simple people who don't learn much about a subject or mature in other ways.

Jesus told us that having more makes you responsible for more (Luke 12:48). Given the intellectual advantages we have in contexts like the United States, we should have much more to show for those advantages than we do.

Be careful not to encourage simplicity where you shouldn't. The immaturity of your children, people in your church, or people in YouTube threads, for example, should be discouraged rather than encouraged. They should be held to a higher rather than lower standard and should be expected to mature over time. That includes maturing intellectually and becoming more active in disseminating information rather than perpetually looking for other people to provide the information.

Know Why You're Here

“I have food to eat that you do not know about. . . . My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” John 4:32–34

Jesus ate obedience.

Few things are more energizing than to know why we are here and do it.

— John Piper (@JohnPiper) October 5, 2024

They Would Have Died To Pray As We Do

In addition to being grateful for prayer, we should be grateful for the types of prayer we can offer:

And when we look back, we have so much more to say than they [the pre-Christian Israelites] did, don’t we? Our past is even better than their past, because we know Jesus. They could remember what God did in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in Canaan, but we have Bethlehem and Calvary. We can pray,

Jesus, you came into our world, born in a manger.
For our sake, you were obedient to the point of death/on a cross.
You were pierced for our transgressions.
You were crushed for our iniquities.
You were wounded so that we might be healed.
You were poor so that we could become rich.
You suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.
And three days later, you rose to conquer death and give us life.

The Sons of Korah couldn’t say that yet, so they said, “You restored. You forgave. You covered.” They would have died to pray the kinds of prayers we get to pray, the prayers we pray every day — in Jesus’s name.

(Marshall Segal)

How strong is the Christian argument against polygamy?

Polygamy has been getting some attention lately in response to a pastor's announcement that he's married a second wife. Ben Shapiro recently addressed the subject on one of his programs and had Matt Fradd on to discuss it with him. Both men made a Biblical case against polygamy, but far less of a case than they should have made. Their comments about the extrabiblical evidence likewise fell well short of what could have been offered. Matt was focused on church authority and didn't say much about the church fathers and other early extrabiblical sources, where there's early and widespread evidence against polygamy. The use of Roman Catholicism's authority claims is problematic, since those claims are false and end up leading Catholicism's defenders to making unverifiable appeals to doctrinal development, what ecclesiology they think would be fitting, and so forth.

Support for polygamy has been increasing substantially in recent years. More than one out of five Americans consider it morally acceptable now, which is about a tripling of its support over the past couple of decades. See Gallup's polling results on moral issues here. And here's an article on the subject published by Gallup in 2017. Support for polygamy has gone up a few more percentage points since then.

About twenty years ago, I wrote a post discussing the evidence against polygamy in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the early extrabiblical sources. I added some other posts over the years in the comments section of that thread, including some interactions with defenders of polygamy. Matthew Schultz posted an article here in 2011 that discusses how negatively polygamy is portrayed in the Bible. My initial thread on polygamy, linked above, discussed a lot of extrabiblical sources, but didn't include Minucius Felix. Here's a later post in which I cited his comments about the Christian rejection of polygamy.

Encouragement To Keep Writing

We should be involved in both oral and written discussions with people, and both have advantages and disadvantages. I've written before about my philosophy regarding activities like evangelism and apologetics, based partly on what Paul articulates in Colossians 4:5. Christians should be making the most of whatever opportunities they have, which obviously can't be limited to contexts involving writing. But, as I mentioned in another post, it's become common for people to make derogatory, dismissive comments about the internet (as they often have about other forms of new technology and new platforms on existing technology), and a majority of the opportunities most people have on the internet involve writing.