The Bible is Self-authenticating, by Michael J. Kruger

http://michaeljkruger.com/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-the-bible-is-self-authenticating/

See the link to the audio lecture and the written outline.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: "Read the text for yourself"

Peter J. Williams shows that character and variety of the resurrection accounts in Scripture and at the end says, "Read the text for yourself".  Pause the video and look up all the different texts of Scripture.

Be Careful the way you communicate the issue of the canon in the early church

Andy Stanley, Pastor of NorthPoint Community Church outside of Atlanta, Ga, said, in his recent Easter sermon, "History's Mystery", basically, "the Bible didn't exist until around 300 - 400 AD".  "for 300 years there was no Bible" and "they had no New Testament for really, 400 years".  (at the 5:56 time mark to 6:20 mark) This is a sloppy and misleading statement, because it sounds like the individual NT books didn't exist, but they all did, by 96 AD.  They were individual scrolls and early churches used them, read them, taught them, and quoted them in the first 3-4 centuries.  They only didn't have all 27 books all together under "one book cover" or "canon list".  Originally, "canon" meant "rule" or "standard" or "criterion", and later came to mean a "list of God-breathed books" or "a list of inspired books".

Whatever is "God-breathed" Scripture, is therefore "canon" or rule or standard.  2 Timothy 3:16 says "All Scripture is God-breathed . . . "  Whatever God inspired as revelation that was written down, by reason of the character of the writing being from God Himself, those were the books that were discerned as "canon"/ standard / rule.

Andy's main point, that Christianity is based on the person of Christ (and His crucifixion and resurrection), and not philosophy or ideas, is basically true, but he should have expanded and clarified with more; something like, "Christianity is primarily based on the person of Christ; but also His works and doctrines and teachings, which were written down by His apostles in God-breathed Scripture, and that includes all the 27 books of the NT, including the writings of the apostle Paul, as fulfillment of the coming of the Holy Spirit to led the apostles into all the truth." (John chapters 14, 15, 16)

Andy needs to read Michael Kruger's books and blog on the canon and NT history, as Dr. White suggests. (on the video below) 

Dr. Micheal Kruger's blog. 

The Question of Canon.

The Canon Revisited. 

The Heresy of Orthodoxy.  (with Andreas Kostenberger) 

Statements like "the Bible did not exist for the first 3 centuries", can make people in the audience vulnerable to Roman Catholic apologetic claims.  That is what happened to my friend Rod Bennett; he was not well taught in the canon issues as a Protestant, and so fell prey to that kind of argument. They claim that the church authoritatively decided and determined the canon (the list of which books are inspired/ "God-breathed").  No; rather they were determined by God the Holy Spirit to be "criterion" / "standard" / (the original meaning of "canon", as soon as they were written as individual books / scrolls.  It just took time to collect them all under one "book cover" or "canon list", so to speak.   The early church discovered, discerned, witnessed to which books were already "God -breathed" and therefore, by nature, were "canon" / criterion / standard. 

Dr. White rightly points this out in this screen flow.  If Andy means the final form of where there was unanimous agreement as to the canon list, as in Athanasius' list in 367 AD, then that is right, but the way he communicated his statement makes it seem like the individual letters / gospels did not exist in churches to guide them into the truth and doctrine and practice.  But even long before Athanasius in 367, Origen around 250 AD indicates the same 27 NT book list.  See here.

Below is a compilation of statements that I originally tweeted yesterday and today, but expanded here in this article.

The Scriptures existed and were "God-breathed" right when the ink dried, therefore "canon" when written. (R. C. Sproul, Sola Scriptura: The Protestant position on the Bible, page 82 - "For the Reformers, the Bible was canon as soon as it was written."); they were individual books, to be exact scrolls; later collected under one "book cover"/canon list.

For a Protestant to say, "the Bible did not exist until 300s or 400s AD", gives credibility to Roman Catholic apologetic claims. Andy Stanley needs to clarify his statement.

Clement of Rome, in 96 AD, wrote, "take up the epistle of Paul to the Corinthians", affirming that 1 Corinthians was written in 55 AD, and considered God-breathed Scripture by Clement.

Clement of Rome (Letter of 1 Clement) quoted and alluded to (hinted and pointed to) several of Paul's letters & at least one of the written gospels (Matthew, written sometime from 50-65 AD) - Clement writing in 96 AD, refers to these earlier writings. (Geisler and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, p. 294.)

Tertullian and Ireneus quoted from most of the NT books in 180-220 AD.  Ignatius (107-117 AD), Justin Martyr (150 AD), Polycarp (165 AD) quote from some books of the NT.   Origen (250 AD) actually lists all of the 27 books and discusses many of them. (see link above) Cyprian (250 AD), Clement of Alexandria, (215 AD),  quote from and allude to most of the books of the New Testament.  (Ignatius and Polycarp quote from and allude to some; Justin Martyr quotes and alludes to some, and seems to know all the Gospels, and uses the Logos theology of John 1:1 and 1:14 to speak of Jesus, etc.)

All the 27 NT books existed by 96 AD, they were just not collected together under 1 canon list or "book cover" yet.  

The nature of the NT documents-they were individual letters/gospels written on scrolls: the Codex form did not even exist in common usage until about 150-200 AD.  Before then, books and letters had to be individually rolled up as scrolls.  So, the form of a modern book, with a binding, flat, etc., did not even exist when the individual letters were written to different areas in the first century.  

The apostles Peter and Paul were executed by Nero around 67 AD.  This means that all their letters were written and existed before then.  The book of Hebrews also was clearly written before 70 AD, because he presents his argument based on the fact that the priests were currently offering sacrifices and the temple was still standing; but He says Christ was the final, once for all time, sacrifice.  If he was writing after 70 AD, he would have said, "And we have proof that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the sacrificial system, because God ordained the Romans to come and destroy the temple in 70 AD, thus proving that Christ is the final sacrifice.  

The Gospel according to Mark (written sometime between 48-60 AD), James, Galatians, written around 48-50 AD; these are the earliest NT documents; they existed, and churches used them and quoted from the them in the first 3 centuries.  So it is misleading to say, "The Bible did not exist until the 300s or 400s AD".    We know Galatians was written before the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 in 48-49 AD (Carson, Moo, Intro to NT, p. 464), because if Galatians was written after that, Paul would have mentioned the decisions in his letter to the Galatians to bolster his case.  The fact that he does not mention those decisions is proof that the letter to the Galatians was written sometime before the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15.

We know that Luke wrote the book of Acts shortly after his release from the 2 year in house prison because of the abrupt ending and lack of other details as to what he did after that.  ("other considerations suggest a date not long after 62 AD".  (See Carson and Moo, Intro to NT, page 300.)  This means The Gospel of Luke was written before then, in 60 or 61 AD, or before Acts early in the year of 62 AD.

Most conservative NT scholars believe the Gospel according to John, the letters of 1, 2, 3 John, and the book of Revelation were written somewhere between 80-96 AD, but some argue for a pre- 70 AD dating. That leaves the little book of Jude to be around 80 AD, and "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3) (or verse 3) may indicate it was the last book written or one of the last NT books written.

The main reason liberals date Matthew, Mark, and Luke after 70 AD, is because they don't believe in supernatural, predictive prophesy, but Jesus clearly predicted the destruction of the temple in Matthew 24:1-3 as future to Him (spoken in 30 AD before the cross), and, it indeed happened in 70 AD. It is interesting that "a generation" was generally considered "40 years". This has implications for Matthew 24:34 - "this generation will not pass away until all these things take place". Does Jesus' woes and judgment pronouncements on that generation living at that time extend from Matthew 23:36 ("all these things will come upon this generation") to Matthew 24:34 ?

As John A. T. Robinson argued, if Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been written after 70 AD, they would have surely added something like, "and this was fulfilled when Titus' armies rolled in and destroyed the temple in 70 AD." (Redating the New Testament, pages 13-30)
The 27 books of the NT and generally accepted dates by conservative students and scholars:
Galatians - 48- 49 AD
James - 48-50 AD (?)
Gospel according to Mark - 48-60 AD
Council of Jerusalem - 49 AD
1 Thessalonians - 50 AD
2 Thessalonians - 51 AD
Matthew - 50-65 AD
Luke - 60-61 AD
Acts - 62 AD
1 Corinthians - 55 AD
2 Corinthians - 56 AD
Romans - 57-58 AD
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon (60-62 AD - in Paul's first imprisonment at end of Acts.)
Paul released from prison; seeks to go to Spain. (Romans 15:20-24)
I Peter - 64 AD
I Timothy, Titus - 63-65 AD
2 Timothy - 67 AD
2 Peter - 67 AD (Dictated to a student from prison; to Jude, possibly, the half brother of Jesus, which would explain similarities of style and vocabulary.)
Apostles Paul and Peter executed by Nero. (67 AD)
Nero commits suicide - 67 AD
Hebrews - 68 AD
70 AD - Destruction of Temple
80-96 AD - Gospel of John, letters of 1, 2, 3 John, Revelation
80 AD - Jude - "the faith was once for all delivered to the saints"

So, when admitting that the Bible in its final book form or canon list was not available until either 250 AD (per Origen) or 367 AD (per Athanasius Festal Letter 39), we should make clear that the books of the NT were already written from around 48-96 AD, and that the early churches each had either one gospel (maybe 2 or 3) and one or more NT letters; that they were never without some portion of Scripture. Pastors and teachers should be careful the way they communicate the issue of the canon and the history of it in the early church.

Eastern errancy

I'd like to respond to this comment on my blog about the inerrancy of the Scripture and harmonisation from my Eastern Orthodox friend David Bryan, and as always, to ask him please to correct any misconceptions I've incorporated about EOC. I understand whenever you have to cut this off; moving cross-country is no easy task. But I think the problem for your position is deeper than you realise, I really do.

Men wrote the thing, yes, but "men carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). Don't you believe that your church is guided by the Holy Spirit? Why can't someone turn the same objection back on your church? I mean, it's made up of MEN.
What's really funny to me is that it's your church that believes in theosis, faithful believers' partaking in the divine nature. These 4 Evangelists were, I'm sure you'd agree, much, much farther along in their being conformed to the image of Christ than you or I will ever be (until we die). Thus they would have been much closer to God, better, deeper partakers of the divine nature than you or I. And yet, here you are
1) correcting them according to your far-removed, 21st-century perspective.
-The irony here is that EO-dox are usually the ones criticising Reformed believers for looking at early writers and the Scr from a far-removed, future perspective.
2) making a powerful distinction between man and God.
-The irony here is that EO-dox are usually the ones who, from a Reformed perspective, shrinks and blurs the distinction between man and God.

All that to say, in this line of reasoning, you are acting like a liberal Protestant. That's not a good thing, but unfortunately it's not the only area in which EO-dox do so.

Maybe it's not as apparent to you for another reason. I've asked both you and Anastasios about the role that evangelism and apologetics play in the life of the semi-serious and serious EO layman, and you've told me that the former is inadequate and the latter is barely existent. Anastasios in particular let me know that he'd never heard of an EO apologist engaging, say, an atheist in public debate. I could be wrong, but I'm not at all sure you have encountered many atheists or skeptics and really talked turkey with them about stuff like this. So let me come at it from another angle.

You're talking to Joe American Skeptic. You tell him you believe that Jesus Christ instituted a church while He was walking the Earth, and entrusted it to His disciples, and His disciples spread the good news of Jesus all around the world and appointed other people to take their places when they died in the churches and to celebrate the sacraments of Christ, like baptism and the Eucharist. So, this church has come down to us through the years with successions of bishops, which is kind of like what you'd call "pastors".

You tell him you believe the Bible, that you believe what the Bible says and also what the church has always believed down through the centuries. You know, b/c the guys who were handed down the tradition of the church from the apostles and then on down through their successors, they all taught the same things.

So he wonders if it is true? For example, what would you say the sign above Christ on the Cross actually said, in its entirety? Each gospel account stated something explicitly regarding what the sign said, when in reality only one of the four was actually right, at best, and the other three (or all four) were (in some cases drastically) in error as to what the sign actually said after all, right? (He hadn't read Seth's comment, which clears up the misunderstanding.)

You'd say you're fine with one gospel saying one inscription and another saying sthg else, because men wrote the thing. Inspiration doesn't necessarily produce airtight, factual data synchronization. There's still far and away enough agreement as to the major events (Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost) that Scripture very strongly stands as a faithful witness to the Advent of Christ and the reality of His Church.

He wonders if inspiration doesn't necessarily produce factual data, how do you know that the Resurrection, for example, actually, factually happened?
You'd answer that you have the faithful witness of the church down thru the centuries. It's a lot of people.

Here's where it gets sticky. He thought that "a lot of people" is what caused the problem in the first place - multiple ppl write these varied accts of what was written above the Cross. But suddenly more people is a good thing?

So, what will you say? That you have a succession of people who heard from the teachings of the apostles themselves, no?

But hadn't the Gospel writers also heard from them? Weren't at least a couple of them eyewitnesses? Why do you rely on early church writers when the earliest ones are untrustworthy?
Or do you trust them for SPIRITUAL truth but not other kinds of truth? How do you make the distinction when the truth in question is not only spiritual in nature, such as
1) the Crucifixion
2) the Resurrection
3) the promised Parousia
4) the new Heaven and the new Earth
5) the theosis of the faithful
etc.

On what basis do you assert that those are indeed faithfully transmitted, while other things, such as the Cross inscription, were not? Is it just b/c you don't understand how the Cross inscription accts could fit together (even though Seth explained how)? Why is it better to ascribe error to a production of the Holy Spirit rather than to admit that you don't understand how it could all work together, but God knows and, while often He does make that knowledge and understanding available to humans, sometimes He just doesn't. You talk about mystery an awful lot in EOC; why do you abandon it in this arena? Where does the Bible itself distinguish between "OK, here's some spiritual truth, so this is really the real truth, for real," and "Here's some other stuff about, you know, the physical surroundings, the historical narrative. This isn't really a big deal. In fact, you could probably skip over it, b/c 21st-century archæologists will be able to totally reconstruct the whole thing WAY better than I'll be able to tell it here. So yeah, just fuggedaboudit (2 Maccabees 15:38-39)"?

The same questions go for early church authors. Only, there were alot more of them! You think the 4 accts are irreconcilable, but 40 different early church authors all saying different things is a better situation? Will you retreat to "oh, well, ____ was just speaking as an individual, private theologian, and the church's reaction to it over time bore out that he was mistaken"? But when all the church fathers hold the Scr in highest regard and ascribe no error to it thru hundreds and hundreds of years and thousands of pages, somehow *you* know better, with your 21st-century wisdom and insight?

Is this where following EO tradition leads someone? Is it really that far out of the vein of EOC tradition to hold to the inerrancy of the Bible?
And of course, we must ask, if it is, how would anyone know for sure? After all, if God-breathed Scripture is errant, what hope have non-theopneustos writings from men who were *not* "carried along by the Holy Spirit"?






(cross-posted at my blog)

You can take the Catholic out of the Church...

11Like a dog that returns to his vomit
is a fool who repeats his folly.
12Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Listening to Gerry Matatics on Iron Sharpens Iron today made me laugh at one point in particular, when host Chris Arnzen asked him this question (around minute 38):

(Your mainstream Catholic friends may say): You are acting as a Prot, certainly your Gospel is not Protestant and your sacraments and so on are not Protestant, but in you standing in defiance of bishops and a Pope, you are merely relying on private interpretation and so on, if you could comment on that.

Here is Matatics' response (as I have transcribed it):

Absolutely, no, the... the argument is totally fallacious, the claim is totally false and falls to the ground. I don't depend upon my private interpretation of Scripture, tradition, or anything the Mag has taught. I rely upon what the Catholic Church herself, the pillar and foundation of the truth, as St Paul calls the church in 1 Tim 3:15, has faithfully taught down thru the years. That teaching is clear, it is capable of being understood, or there's no point in having a teaching church. And it's very clear when we look at that church's teaching, for example, that what Luther was teaching at, uh, during his "Reformation", what John Calvin was teaching, what other Protestant "Reformers" were teaching about the fact that we can be justified by faith alone, is a heresy. No one could read the documents of the Council of Trent which met, you know, in the 1500s to address the errors of Luther, and come away thinking, "Gee, I'm a little confused. Is Luther a good guy or a bad guy? Is Calvin correct or incorrect?" It's very unambiguous that what these men are teaching is a heresy that is contrary to Scripture... so that's very clear, that the Catholic Church has always condemned Protestantism... so the Protestant here, Chris, is not Gerry Matatics, it's the guy who would follow Ratzinger. Ratzinger says in his book Principles of Catholic Theology that Protestantism is not heresy. So if somebody wants to look around for who are the Catholicss who are really Protestants masquerading as Catholics, it is the followers of Vatican 2. Vatican 2 teaches a Protestantised version....I say, Vat 2 teaches that Protestants do not need to convert to Catholicism in order to enter the one true church and in order to save their eternal souls.

(emphasis and quotations his)


I love it. Here Arnzen does us the favor of reflecting back on a Romanist the same question that so many Roman apologists (and indeed, Matatics himself in the past) LOVE to pose to Protestants - "Isn't _____ just your private interpretation, though? Don't we need an infallible interpreter to inform us of the true interpretation so that we will not fall into the disunity of multiple 10s of 1000s of denominations as we've seen in Protestantism?"

Listen to Matatics' response! All he does is answer in the same way as Protestants sometimes do - no, the teaching of the church is totally sufficiently clear, it is wholly adequate to communicate the truth of God. The teachings of the Council of Trent are easily understood.

Herein lies the blasphemy implicit in this kind of question. Church Fathers, papal encyclicals, conciliar decrees, etc are clearer than Scripture. God apparently is unable or unwilling to make His revelation clear enough in the Scripture, but He gets it right or chooses to make it happen later on, in the teachings of the Church throughout history.

Such pitiful arguments have been answered over and over again, notably here and less notably here among countless other places. What I love most about this is to see the infighting among the "unified" Romanists, and a Roman apologist getting a taste of his own medicine.

Curious

David Waltz has informed us that the Scriptures are not Trinitarian.

I have two questions for our Roman Catholic friends. I don't know how to put a poll in here but I guess the combox will serve as the poll.

1) Let "the Scriptures are Trinitarian" mean that the Scriptures of OT, NT, and DC present a doctrine of God that reveals Him as a Trinity (the customary definition of "Trinity"). Do you agree with David's statement that the Scriptures do not teach thus?

2) Is it your understanding that the Roman Magisterium would agree or disagree?