Suppose some piece of historical evidence was discovered to cause some group of Christians to reject the gospel of John as part of the bible. That is they change the classic protestant 66 book canon and makes it a 65 book canon by removing John's gospel. The question is whether these people have a less solid foundation for their belief than a typical protestant holding to the 66 book canon of scripture. Is there something inherently less reasonable about this group?
We would still have the essentials of the gospel. Those who say Sola Scriptura is right because scripture is sufficient would have to admit the 65 book canon is still sufficient. All the major doctrines of Christianity can be built up from the remaining books. The gospel of John would still be there. It just would not longer be seen as inspired or inerrant.
Then there is the "last man standing" idea. That scripture, tradition, and apostolic succession were once trustworthy sources of truth but tradition and apostolic succession were deemed to have been corrupted over time and so now only scripture can be trusted. Well, if sources thought to be trustworthy have been rejected before. Why not now? As long as we have enough revelation we can proceed.
The New Testament canon is based on which books are apostolic in nature. But if that is based on fallible human analysis of historical data then there is no great surprise that that answer can change over time. Many protestants have left open that theoretical possibility. When that possibility is realized how can they say a bad thing has happened?
Most protestants, I think, would be strongly averse to changing the canon. I think quite rightly so. But why? What would the basis for disliking the 65 book canon? In a word, tradition. That would be the problem. That the 66 book canon has a long history of being at the very center of protestantism. Now the 66 book canon has almost no defenders prior to the reformation but most protestants don't know that. But it is very strong in all the various branches of protestant tradition. They would never assert any kind of infallibility in that tradition. Still it is unthinkable that there is an error in the very center of the Christian faith passed down through the generations.
The truth is Christianity needs tradition to know innovations like this are wrong. There are a lot of them but when you bring one up people get lost in the details of why they don't think this idea is biblical. But comparing the exegetical arguments is not the heart of why people know it is wrong. The truth is they know the faith. They know what has always been part of the essence of Christianity. It has been part of the soul of the church for as long as they can remember and as long as their father and grandfather can remember and back to the beginning. There is a sense of infallibility there that cannot say it's name.
Hi Randy,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
Now the 66 book canon has almost no defenders prior to the reformation but most protestants don't know that.
Do you have any examples off the top of your head (of someone prior to the Reformation proposing a 66 book canon that matches the Protestant canon)? I'm curious just because I don't know of any.
Peace in Christ,
Casey
Some have suggested St Jerome might have. But it is far from clear he ever did. Beyond that there is no clear example. So it may well be true that nobody before Luther propsed the 66 book canon. I just didn't want to assert that. I was simply trying to focus on the post-reformation tradition that does exist in the protestant world. That setting aside tradition in such matters really is almost inhuman.
ReplyDeleteCasey --
ReplyDeleteThere wasn't really much discussion of old testament canon until the reformation. The reason both Jerome and Luther wanted to support the Hebrew OT canon over the LXX (Greek) OT canon was they both had studied Hebrew with Jews. The branches of Judaism that still existed by the late 2nd century looked at books that only existed in Greek much more negatively. So in answer to your question... I"d say any Jew was someone prior to the reformation that supported the 66 book canon, indirectly.
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Randy --
You are actually seeing something like this experiment being carried out with the Gospel of Thomas. There have over the last generation been a 1/2 dozen liberal Protestant bibles that include Thomas among the gospels. Remember Luther himself didn't create the 66 book canon, he suggested and forwarded the idea. It was the British Bible Society that really pushed the 66 book canon as the norm. With the falloff in influence of the BBS on the English speaking world, I suspect we may very well see by 100 years out Liberal Protestant denominations officially or unofficially using bibles that have variant canons.
For Evangelicals I think they are good for the next century. The battle in liberal circles isn't far enough along.
Liberal Protestants are a different breed. They really do feel comfortable with themselves as the central interpretive authority. Even if that means they have no standing to say another group has gotten Christianity wrong. They really have no faith. They are using reason entirely.
ReplyDeleteConservative protestants are much more Catholic than they know. They really do beleive in tradition and even in infallibility. They won't admit it. They know for sure certain liberal ideas are outside of the Christian faith but they don't have anything but their subjective interpretation of the bible to base it on.
So I sometimes try and pose questions like this to make a conservative protestant think. To make him realize that some things that are not in the bible really cannot be denied without denying the essence of the faith. So I was not addressing this to liberal protestants at all.
I do feel that liberal protestants are likely to stop using scripture entirely. Variant canons might be an intermediate step. They just really get all their doctrine from the wisdom of the culture. The bible has not been that important to them for a long time and it is getting less so. I suspect those denominations will die out so it matters little what they do anyway.
I"d say any Jew was someone prior to the reformation that supported the 66 book canon, indirectly.
ReplyDeleteThat is why the phrase "66 book canon" was used. The Jews, of course, don't accept the New Testament. So they would be excluded right off.
[Liberals] just really get all their doctrine from the wisdom of the culture.
ReplyDeleteWell of course my point is that everyone does this. There isn't much alternative. By the nature of liberalism vs. conservatism, Liberal Christian Protestant denominations are more comfortable with change. But conservatives adjust doctrines to cultural conditions they agree with.
We've gone over the example of redefining abortion, where Liberal Catholics are trying to defend the traditional doctrines and conservatives are trying to jettison the entire Christian theology of pregnancy for the first 1800 years in line with Protestant Victorian theology.
We've touched on the example of redefining marriage to be mainly about sex, see for example Bryan's latest article on CtC, and not mainly about legitimate heirs as another example. As I've mentioned before the entire Catholic theology about 3 classes of children: spurious, natural, legitimate with regard to their father is dropped.
You are arguing forcefully for a Catholic church that doesn't represent an entire society or even an ethnic group but rather targets a political niche strongly. I don't think you would find much support for this view among non-evangelicals until the 1970s. I'd go so far as to say, I don't think you would have seen this kind of desire in all but name for schim among Western Rite Catholics even ten years ago. That came unquestionably from America Protestant Fundamentalist views of the role of the church.
Even if that means they have no standing to say another group has gotten Christianity wrong.
Let me give you an example of Liberal Christians doing precisely that, a television commercial the UCC ran about 5 years back bouncer. As an aside they still run commercials, with the theme that "God is still speaking" attacking the whole idea of a closed cannon being the primary source of faith.
I'll hit the conservative side in the next post.
In terms of conservatives I wrote a blog post on this The Rock-paper-scissors of Apologetics. What you are depending on in this argument is the typical paedobaptist Protestant position of wanting absolutely fixed doctrine, which is a product of an authoritative church with only a semi-authoritative church. It is a schizophrenia, and one that Catholic apologetics pound on relentlessly, for good reason.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a problem however for all Conservative Protestants. The solution on this kind of question is to adopt the baptist position: Baptists reject the idea that canon comes from tradition. Rather they believe God raises up a bible for his faithful in their languages. So for example, the Wulfila, the Gothic bible, doesn't have the book of Acts yet most Baptists believe the Wulfila to have been the legitimate scriptures for that community.
In which case this whole problem in your hypothetical with John goes away. If God raised up a bible not containing John that would be the bible for that community. There is no reason to believe the current canon, is the permanent canon.
Well of course my point is that everyone does this. There isn't much alternative. By the nature of liberalism vs. conservatism, Liberal Christian Protestant denominations are more comfortable with change. But conservatives adjust doctrines to cultural conditions they agree with.
ReplyDeleteChesterton said the Catholic church is the only alternative to the degrading slavery of being a child of your age. So you agree with him except you don't see the exception in Catholicism.
We've gone over the example of redefining abortion, where Liberal Catholics are trying to defend the traditional doctrines and conservatives are trying to jettison the entire Christian theology of pregnancy for the first 1800 years in line with Protestant Victorian theology.
I don't think many liberals see a pro-abortion position as defending a traditional Christian position. They don't much care about Christian tradition. They don't make the argument that it is the traditional Christian position partly because it is a weak argument and partly because that is not the reason they are pro-abortion. It is purely an embrace of the secular mind for them. It always is.
Chesterton said the Catholic church is the only alternative to the degrading slavery of being a child of your age. So you agree with him except you don't see the exception in Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteLets say I half agree with this and his solution. I agree you can't avoid being a creature of your culture. I also think that diversity can help give you perspective from outside your culture and is "broadening". Old books are excellent diversifies as one of Chesterton's disciples wrote. Different cultures are as well. Those things can help. Catholicism exposes one to both, and that is unavoidably broadening.
I don't think many liberals see a pro-abortion position as defending a traditional Christian position They don't much care about Christian tradition.
I said Liberal Catholics you are shifting this to Liberals in general.
For Liberals in general, groups like Planned Parenthood came out of the fight to impose Victorian norms on America. Resistance to the Comstock Act was what people like Margaret Sanger cut her teeth on. I learned this argument about Traducianism from Nancy Pelosi. Most Liberals are Liberal Protestants, and the 7 sister churches are more traditional than their Evangelical counterparts.
It is purely an embrace of the secular mind for them. It always is.
Not in this generation. If all Liberals were openly opposed to religion and secular we'd have more than one atheist in the House of Representatives.
You are arguing forcefully for a Catholic church that doesn't represent an entire society or even an ethnic group but rather targets a political niche strongly. I don't think you would find much support for this view among non-evangelicals until the 1970s. I'd go so far as to say, I don't think you would have seen this kind of desire in all but name for schim among Western Rite Catholics even ten years ago. That came unquestionably from America Protestant Fundamentalist views of the role of the church.
ReplyDeleteWho is talking about political niches and schisms? The church is about salvation. About transforming sinners into saints. the target is everyone. Schism is impossible. Groups can split from the body but the body can't divide. So your words don't make much sense.
You are right that many have worried too much how church policy is likely to be received. What we should be thinking about is how to lift up Jesus and let Jesus draw all men to Himself. The evangelicals in the 70's got that better than the Catholics. But it is a truth the Catholics are coming back to. Who cares who supported it when? What is right is right.
You seem to have strange ideas about what Baptists believe. Now there are many different kinds. I just know many that would not accept at all what you say they would accept. A bible without the book of Acts? I think a lot of Baptists would have trouble with that.
ReplyDeleteBaptists do have huge problems with the canon question. To say "God raises up a bible for his faithful" does not solve it. How do we know God raised the bible and not the Book of Mormon?
Baptists, like Calvinists, will rally around one particular teacher and/or tradition. All Christians will. Then you get the same issues as Calvinism. How do you know he is right? Why did it take so long for the true doctrine to come into history?
For Liberals in general, groups like Planned Parenthood came out of the fight to impose Victorian norms on America. Resistance to the Comstock Act was what people like Margaret Sanger cut her teeth on.
ReplyDeleteI just don't see many pro-abortion people knowing or caring about such matters. You mention Margaret Sanger's racism and you get "Margaret who?" type reactions. I thought the puritans in the US were actually more conservative than the Europeans at that point. Maybe that was more the south.
I learned this argument about Traducianism from Nancy Pelosi.
I think it was pretty much a disaster for Nancy Pelosi.
http://old.usccb.org/comm/archives/2008/08-120.shtml
Most Liberals are Liberal Protestants, and the 7 sister churches are more traditional than their Evangelical counterparts.
They are more traditional liturgically. They are not theologically. Almost be definition the liberal will embrace whatever the intellectual elite of the day are saying. If they did not you would call them conservatives. All of the 7 sister churches had more conservative groups split from them. Many of those groups self-identify as evangelical. But the main bodies went quite liberal.
Who is talking about political niches and schisms?
ReplyDeleteYou are. When you express indifference to issues various political subgroups have, they leave. When you welcome them leaving that's targeting. If they come to believe there is no possibility of redress of issues that creates schism. Churches like any institution make choices about whether they want to large or a small umbrella.
the target is everyone
Not really. The target can't be about everyone if conservative values are going to be supported and liberal ones attacked. The target can't be about everyone if the church is going to actively support the persecution of homosexuals. If you mean you would like the whole world to come to agree with your positions, that doesn't mean anything. Virtually everyone is open to universality assuming that others come to see the wisdom of their point of view. That's not what it means to be inclusive.
Schism is impossible. Groups can split from the body but the body can't divide.
That's just an attempt to use words an unprincipled way, redefinition of the obvious. Fine call it "schism from" rather than schism that doesn't change anything. The Reformation was a division of the body. It left Christiandom, divided into rival religious camps that each control hundreds of millions of people. Same with the early Orthodox schism. In the USA among white Catholics the disaffection has gotten to the point of massive out conversion into schismatic organizations. In Latin America schismatic Pentecostal churches are thriving to the extent that within our lifetimes Pentecostalism is likely to be the dominant form of Christianity worldwide.
That's schism.
You are right that many have worried too much how church policy is likely to be received. What we should be thinking about is how to lift up Jesus and let Jesus draw all men to Himself. The evangelicals in the 70's got that better than the Catholics. But it is a truth the Catholics are coming back to. Who cares who supported it when?
Because you were arguing that approach wasn't just drawing wisdom from society. For Catholics in the last generation, taking inspiration from what right wing Protestants are doing is trusting in the wisdom of society and not tradition. Your paragraph above is you making precisely the argument you accuse Liberals of, taking a good idea from society and changing your group's thinking based on their approach. Which was my point.
You are. When you express indifference to issues various political subgroups have, they leave. When you welcome them leaving that's targeting
ReplyDeleteI am not indifferent to anyone's issues. I certainly don't welcome anyone leaving. It is a question of how one arrives at truth. Catholicism is a religion. It is not a political party. So we don't find something that will please the largest number of people. We pursue the truth of God as revealed by Jesus and clarified by His church. That does not change based on my opinion or anyone else's. It is not a political act. You can analyze it in political ways and you might be right. It is just not motivated that way. At least not when it is done right.
Churches like any institution make choices about whether they want to large or a small umbrella.
Any churchman that thinks this way should not be taken seriously. He does not understand church at all. I know many have fallen into this trap. Churches always must be about eternal truths. If they lose sight of that then they are just wasting people's time.
The target can't be about everyone if conservative values are going to be supported and liberal ones attacked.
We just don't do this. Catholicism has as much in common with liberalism as it does with conservatism. That is using those terms politically rather than theologically.
The target can't be about everyone if the church is going to actively support the persecution of homosexuals.
We don't persecute anyone. We believe sex is ordered towards procreation and that sodomy is a distortion of sex. the question is whether or not that is true. Who might feel persecuted by that assertion need to be a secondary concern. Still an important concern but not as important as truth.
For Catholics in the last generation, taking inspiration from what right wing Protestants are doing is trusting in the wisdom of society and not tradition.
You are missing the point again. Tradition is actually on the side of a truth first, evangelism second approach. Catholics were just not following their own tradition for a time. On some points protestants were following it better.
We can fix old errors. We sometimes fix them by reviving old truth like in this case. Sometimes we fix them by allowing for development of doctrine. For example on the Church's relations with the Jews. Antisemitism was a very old error. Just being old does not make it part of sacred tradition. So we can take the good from society. But much of what society says is good is not actually good. In fact it is often something that has been tried and failed before.
Catholicism is a religion. It is not a political party.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The proper political analogy to Catholicism would be something like "Western Democracies", a political ideology not a political party. On the other hand the Conservative Bishops like Cardinal Dolan in the United States are a political faction within the church. His battles Carol Keehan about who speaks authoritatively on the matter of Catholic healthcare is a political battle for control.
So we don't find something that will please the largest number of people. We pursue the truth of God as revealed by Jesus and clarified by His church.
The people we are discussing are the vatican authorities and the Bishops. They are the ones doing the "clarifying". They have to make the choices between alternatives. They have to resolve "apparent conflicts" between one aspect of the deposit of faith and another. They are the ones that recently had to decide after centuries that Jesus didn't really reveal the doctrine creation and instead was actually preaching traducianism.
We don't persecute anyone. We believe sex is ordered towards procreation and that sodomy is a distortion of sex. the question is whether or not that is true.
No its not. By and large that it is not the question at all, no one cares much what the Catholic church believes is the order of sexuality. The question is the church actively engaging in activities designed to use state pressure to make the lives of gay people worse. Support for expulsion from the military, bans on adoption, bans on teaching, bans on receiving partnership benefits, no protection against employment discrimination, etc... If it were not for churches using state power to coerce people to their religious views, this whole argument would be far far less heated.
Tradition is actually on the side of a truth first, evangelism second approach. Catholics were just not following their own tradition for a time.
ReplyDeleteThat's an arbitrary definition of tradition. It turns tradition into whatever you want it to be. I'm going to use an objective definition: whatever Catholics were doing is the Catholic tradition.
For example on the Church's relations with the Jews. Antisemitism was a very old error. Just being old does not make it part of sacred tradition
Anti-Semitism the belief that Jews are genetically defective so that baptism is not fully effectual in making them part of European civilization, I'd say was mostly opposed by the Western Rite Catholic church. Yes there were Catholics who believed in the Aryan Christ, but it I wouldn't consider this part of mainstream Catholicism. Particularly if you consider the personal anti-Semitism of Pius IX and Pius XII, the fact that they didn't really do very much I think indicates how inhospitable Catholicism was to a racial religion.
If you replace "antisemitism" with being "anti-judaic" then I'd say of course it was part of the tradition. And this is a good example to work because we are both opposed to it so there isn't any disagreement about the actual policy. The bible itself screams anti-judaic theology:
Hebrews: Judaism is the burned out dead husk of a formerly valid religion
John: Jews are used as the symbol for those who knowingly reject the wisdom of God / light.
Paul: Judaism as an ethnic covenant has passed and via. rebirth in Jesus gentiles are entitled to the promises of Old Testament.
Replacement theology was part of Catholic theology precisely because it was a consistent teaching of the church. Pius IX felt justified in using state power in Italy to persecute his Jewish population because of tradition not in spite of it. After WWII the Catholic complicity in the Holocaust was a major source of embarrassment. So the teaching changed a little but the emphasis changed a lot. The tradition was, and still is, anti-Judaic.
So I disagree but like I said this is a good example. So I'd like to know how this isn't the tradition.
I think it was pretty much a disaster for Nancy Pelosi.
ReplyDeletehttp://old.usccb.org/comm/archives/2008/08-120.shtml
I don't see that as being a disaster for Nancy Pelosi, why because the church hierarchy disagrees with her? She acknowledged this disagreement in the original statement.
The USCCB are to put it bluntly, lying. The definition of abortion changed. Their implication that the definition of abortion was consistent with the one in the middle ages is simply false, and provably false. One just has to read the very passages she points to in speeches on this topic. As for "uninformed" I have yet to hear any matter of factual knowledge we possess today that was not present in the middle ages that substantially changes the theories of that time.
I thought the puritans in the US were actually more conservative than the Europeans at that point. Maybe that was more the south.
The puritans were 17th century. The conservative resurgence we are talking about started in the 1870s. The Puritan churches are what became the Liberal churches in America. The Southern churches that existed in the 17th century mostly died off, and the membership shifted to Baptist churches.
[The seven sister churches] are more traditional liturgically. They are not theologically [more conservative than evangelical churches]
You are doing proof by assertion. Prove it. Show me any 17th century Christians who believe what modern evangelicals believe about say about individual salvation. Where do I find these 17th century Christians who believe that one is saved via. an emotional event called "being born again"? Where do I find the 17th century Christians who believe the parish system should be abolished and churches should engage in targeting by ideology or culture?
Or lets even take your example. Where do I find 17th century churches that consider liturgy to be secondary to a church's identity? Where do I find any Christians before the 18th century in all of Christian history, all the heretics and schismatic faiths included that don't consider the Eucharist the central rite?
Evangelical Christianity is as much of a 19th century religion as is Liberal Protestantism. They were both born as a response to Protestant denominations that no longer had any hope of commanding a majority of the population and so instead needed to recreate themselves. Neither one of them is traditional theologically because Christianity, since the 3rd century has not faced the sort of diversity that exists today.
A bible without the book of Acts? I think a lot of Baptists would have trouble with that.
Do you want me to post a bunch of links of major baptists talking about the Wulfila Bible? It is central to the whole theology of Baptists that non-Catholic Christianity existed. Let me just give you an example Jack Chick's website specifically refers to the Wulfilia as the bible in 350 CE. He lists the order: Greek -> Old Latin -> Gothic (Wulfilia) -> ... which is standard Baptist doctrine.