Is Scripture the Only Infallible Rule?

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Gavin Ortlund

   In the Roman Catholic system, there are dogmas like various parts of Mariology. I would include the Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Assumption of Mary. I would want to talk about the papacy and the idea of papal infallibility, where I would want to make the case that these really aren't well established in either the New Testament or the early church. Both the patristic data and the biblical data give us good reason to question whether or not these are actually apostolic. And yet they are obligatory. You see, you have to accept them if you are in that To me, that is helpful to make visible because it's the ultimate fallout of what's going to shake out with whether or not Sola Scriptura is really in the driver's seat. One of you mentioned this before, it really does become Solem Magisterium, or change the final if you want to make it an ablative or whatever you want. Where does the rubber meet the road? Who—what defines Christianity? What says this is the obligatory set of beliefs. That is where I want to highlight the consequences.

2. 01:14

   Gavin Ortlund

   Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I am here with Dr. Jordan Cooper and Dr. Michael Horton, and this is one part of a series that we're doing on our respective channels. Check out the video description for links to both of the other videos and their channels. They're doing great work. And our purpose is to respond to various criticisms of the Protestant Reformation. We believe the Reformation was a good thing, and we want to defend it and celebrate the goods of it. The focus here is on Scripture and the Protestant emphasis upon Scripture, specifically the doctrine of sola scriptura. With this one, definitions are really important. It's often misunderstood. So let's just start by warding off some of the errors. What doesn't sola scriptura mean? How can we help shepherd away from misunderstandings here?

3. 02:03

   Gavin Ortlund

   Dr. Cooper, you want to start us off?

4. 02:04

   Jordan Cooper

   Yeah, sure. So, we're talking about sola scriptura. There are just so many misrepresentations and misunderstandings of what it is that we're, we're actually talking about. So maybe I'll just start us off with maybe one kind of popular, you know, misrepresentation and then quick definition of maybe what sola scriptura is. So, you know, a misrepresentation that you often hear is that this just means kind of you alone with your Bible, right? So you believe that, uh, you just kind of begin the process of studying theology by making your mind a kind of, I don't know, tabula rasa, right? A blank slate, and you just begin reading the Bible and figure out your system of theology, and then you find a church that aligns with whatever you think the Bible means, and that's really not what sola scriptura means, so sola scriptura is really an issue of defining what is the primary authority that guides the theology and practice of the church, right? So we're talking about an issue of infallible authority, so when we say sola, we're saying there is one infallible authority that guides the church. It doesn't mean that we don't value tradition, It doesn't mean we don't value pastors or history or any of those things, but they're not infallible authorities. So there's a uniqueness in the primacy of Scripture that only Scripture is infallible by its very nature and character.

5. 03:14

   Michael Horton

   It's important too to note that it's an ablative in Latin. It's by Scripture alone. There's an assumption there that you can't just cherry-pick this out of its context, that it's related to something else, and it's related to the other soli. It's by scripture alone that we come to know the gospel of Christ alone and come to him through faith alone to the glory of God alone. Scripture is sufficient for all matters of faith and practice. That's why we call it a canon, and Rome calls it a canon too. But does the Roman Catholic Church today and since the Council of Trent, actually treat Scripture as a canon, as that ultimate rule for faith and practice. And that's what Jordan just raised.

6. 04:13

   Gavin Ortlund

   Let's distinguish our view from the Roman Catholic view. We want to be totally fair and represent their view accurately, where Scripture and tradition together constitute the Word of God, and the Magisterium of the Church is in a role of interpretation. And we want to understand that. We also want to just, not for the sake of criticizing yet, but just clarity. Where do the differences lie? I'm going to read from the Catechism here. “Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit, and Holy Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God, which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.” That's from the Catholic Catechism. So maybe we can start double-clicking on this word tradition a little bit. I think a lot of the issues boil down to here. What do we mean by tradition? And this word can shoot off in lots of different directions. Can we start to say a few things to distinguish what is our view as distinct from that that I just read?

7. 05:13

   Michael Horton

   Well, notice first of all that that quote, which I think is also from the Second Vatican Council, says that it subordinates, actually, scripture to tradition. Because at the end of the day, yes, Scripture is God-breathed, you know, inerrant, inspired, and all that, but it is transmitted by tradition. And so really it is at the end of the day tradition that is your only access to the Word of God.

8. 05:44

   Jordan Cooper

   Yeah, I think it is really important to define what you mean by tradition, as you mentioned, Gavin, because in so many of these conversations, I think a definition is kind of assumed when you're talking about tradition. And I think you see this especially when people are citing passages where, you know, Paul says something like, hold fast to the traditions. And they say, oh, look, traditions, Roman tradition. Okay, well, what do you mean? Martin Chemnitz, in his examination of the Council of Trent, identifies eight different ways that the term tradition can be used and has been used, things that it identifies. I'm not going to break all of those down here, but he says essentially there's one of these that Rome is grabbing onto. But we can't just assume when we hear the word tradition or read the word tradition, that that's what's going on. And one of the points that he makes is when Rome speaks about tradition as being authoritative, they don't mean something like the views of the church fathers, right? So it's not as if tradition is defined by you reading the church fathers and you see, okay, what percentage of the fathers said this about this doctrine and what said this about this doctrine? Well, this is the majority view. That's the tradition. It's not operating like that at all. What really is meant by tradition is what is the current teaching of the Roman Magisterium? Because what you ultimately have is it's the living magisterium that interprets not only Scripture, but the magisterium interprets its own church tradition. So it's not really even so much that tradition is an authority in terms of like looking at doctrine in the past. It's really the living magisterium that's the authority over both of those things.

9. 07:12

   Michael Horton

   That's why Calvin said to Sadoleto, we are assailed by two sects, the Pope and the Anabaptists, because they both share in common a belief in continuing office of apostle, who speaks the very word of God and receives new revelations, and therefore bury the word of God. It's basically circumventing both Scripture and tradition.

10. 07:37

    Gavin Ortlund

    Let's develop this. Let's work this through. And I want to hear both of your thoughts, because I want us to try to steelman our Catholic friends' view. They will, of course, not say that the Pope is, you know, speaking new revelations. They will not use this language. They will want to categorize, say, an ex cathedra statement from a Pope as an interpretation of the Word of God that is preserved from error and has binding authority on the conscience and so on and so forth. The exact language and terminology of that, they'll speak differently. However, I think where we will need to work through is, and let me see what you guys think about this, I'll lay out my own concern about what I think is an equivocation that happens with the word tradition. So in these New Testament passages that Jordan just mentioned, where we have an injunction to obey the word of God, whether oral or written, or to obey the traditions that were handed on to you and this kind of thing. I would just say that word is referring to something different than what today we are enjoined to believe in the name of accepting tradition from the Roman Catholic paradigm. So one basic thing is a lot of what's being referenced in these New Testament passages, like 2 Corinthians 11, help me know, there's another one, I think it's in 1 Thessalonians. These would be referring to apostolic teaching in oral form. There's a difference between a group of Christians saying, hey, the Apostle Paul told us to do X, Y, and Z three weeks ago. And so that's a tradition that we are obeying, right? That's different from me trying to sort through the immaculate conception of Mary and discover, do I really believe this is true based upon the patristic testimony and the New Testament, and coming to the conclusion, I don't believe it is. I don't think it's well attested. I don't think it is apostolic. And so the key difference here is with the same word of tradition, we have two very different things going on. One is apostolic and one appears to me to not be. So is this a valid way to develop a little bit of our concern about how this word tradition is kind of getting deployed differently?

11. 09:45

    Michael Horton

    I think so. I'm happy to submit my conscience to the traditions of the apostles that are laid down in Scripture. I don't have to observe traditions that they observed unless they're deposited in the sacred text.

12. 10:03

    Jordan Cooper

    I think I would say, you know, we're talking about the question of apostolic tradition. Like, nobody disagrees that we should follow apostolic tradition. To just bring up those texts doesn't really say anything because the question is, where do we find apostolic tradition today? That's the question. And so we have to step back and say, okay, well, where do we find apostolic tradition today? So one option, one answer is in what they wrote in scripture, and then the other is in the teaching of the living magisterium. That is what Roman Catholics are going to say. Now, even there though, if you're going to use this argument that the apostles are saying that they passed on oral traditions and those are authoritative, The question that I've often asked Roman Catholics when this comes up is, do you believe that the apostles taught traditions like the developed post-Tridentine Church? Do you believe that the apostles taught, you know, Marian devotion? Do you think they taught the treasury of merit, purgatory? You know, did they make a distinction between condign and congruous merit? You know, did the apostles teach that? And most of the time—and this has really changed because I think the Fathers of Trent would have said yes—I think today most people are going to say no, those are kind of natural developments of the kind of seed of doctrine that was planted with the apostles. Well, if you're going to acknowledge that, then I just don't think that those texts even really actually hold that much weight unless you're kind of willing to go all the way, right?

13. 11:24

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that Pope Benedict said to some of the cardinals who were pushing for something like sola scriptura, there are doctrines that we have that you have to submit to that are de fide, that are found in Scripture. So there's no point in talking about sola scriptura. That was a pretty straightforward way of putting it. If you look at the way the early church fathers talked about the canon as qualitatively distinct from the tradition, even of the fathers, other church fathers, it's striking. For instance, just a few examples. Clement of Alexandria, second century, “the ecclesiastic canon is the concord and symphony of the Law and the Prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord.” And even Origen said, “when discussing difficult doctrines, if there be anyone who can discover something better and prove what he says by clear statements out of the Holy Scriptures, let his opinion be accepted in preference to mine.” Tertullian, “Scripture is the only means for refuting or validating a doctrine as regards its content.” Athanasius, “The Holy and Inspired Scriptures are fully sufficient for all things.” Cyril of Jerusalem, “For concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not even a casual statement can be delivered without the Holy Scriptures.” John Chrysostom, “Let us therefore not carry about the notions of the many, but examine the facts. Wherefore, disregard what this man and that man thinks about these things, and inquire from the Scriptures all these things. Do not even follow us because of us, but because we follow the scriptures. Regarding these things I say, I should supply even the scripture proofs for what I say, so I will not seem to rely on my own opinions, but rather prove them with scripture so the matter will remain certain and steadfast.” On and on you can go on here. Augustine, Ambrose say exactly the same thing. And then Gregory the Great in the sixth century was offended when a fellow bishop called him universal pontiff, universal pope, and said, “this is a word of proud address I have forbidden. None of my predecessors ever wished to use this profane word, but I say it confidently because whoever calls himself universal bishop or wishes to be so-called is in his self-exaltation Antichrist's precursor. For in his swaggering, he sets himself before the rest.” And yet that was exactly the title given at the Council of Reims in 1049 to the pontiff. Well, who's right, Gregory the Great or the council in the 11th century? So tradition, you know, there are all kinds of contradictions in tradition.

14. 14:36

    Gavin Ortlund

    Let's anticipate some of the pushback, which will— I think people can reasonably point out other things that these various figures said, a very high view of the church, of councils. They'll point out, you know, Cyril of Jerusalem, very strong statement about Scripture, but they'll say, oh, but look what he says over here, this kind of thing. I think we—and you tell me if you guys disagree—I think we need not affirm, and I would say I do not say, and I don't think we need to say that all of these figures are saying the exact same thing as what emerges in the 16th century. That's its own dispute, you know, in its own context. But I think the more general recognition of a primacy to Scripture, I think, is something that is pretty resounding throughout the Christian tradition. And to me, it makes sense. One reason, because of what Scripture is. If we were to step back and just say, we're explaining, let's say aliens land on planet Earth, and we're explaining what is Christianity as opposed to Islam and Buddhism and other religions. One of the things we're going to talk about is divine revelation. We believe there's a creator God who has spoken. One of those ways that he's spoken is through Holy Scripture. And we believe Scripture is the inspired speech of God. And there's so many passages we could go to to develop the language for this. I think one of the strongest is to go to Jesus himself and his ways of describing the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament. So what do we want to say about this? This is one of, to me, the building blocks that gets to sola scriptura, is just considering the nature of Scripture. Although tradition can be the word of God, depending on how you define that term, in the way it is impressed upon us, it is not the same ontological entity. It is not the word of God in the same way that Scripture is, in the way that we're enjoined to believe.

15. 16:19

    Gavin Ortlund

    I guess I could ask you both, I mean, in your own terms, what is Scripture? And how is that relevant to this conversation?

16. 16:28

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, I mean, I think it's hugely relevant to this conversation. Yeah. And I think you're right to point out that when the church fathers use a phrase that might be a Protestant phrase or even a popular Roman Catholic phrase, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are meaning it in precisely the same way that we do because they're not engaged in the same debates we are, and so if you're going to say that maybe they didn't exactly mean sola scriptura in precisely the way that Luther did, they certainly didn't speak about tradition precisely the same way that Trent does either, right? So I think you got to take them in their own context, but I think the general principle that I always point out with the fathers is that there certainly is a uniqueness to Scripture, which is what you're getting at here, and that I think you do see this in the fathers that there is something about Scripture that distinguishes it from absolutely everything else, and so yes, I think the question of sola Scriptura really comes down to that question of what is the nature of Scripture, and you know, I would say that if I'm going to define what Scripture is, I mean Scripture itself defines itself for us in many ways. It is the breathed-out word of God. The men that wrote scripture spoke as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is the word that is living and active. So these kinds of references that we find to the nature of scripture itself within both the Old and the New Testament don't have a parallel in anything else. They don't have a parallel with tradition. There's just—there's nothing that indicates that kind of authority and uniqueness in its connection with the truths of God. You know, Jesus, you know, says, thy word is truth, right? He's speaking about the words of the Father, the words of God. I think the difficulty, if you're going to try to make an argument that there is a maybe ontological similarity between, say, tradition or scripture in this sense, is that, as we've been discussing, tradition is pretty amorphous. It's not easy to pin down exactly what that means. Say if you're thinking about tradition historically, not just thinking about the living magisterium, and you say that's God-breathed, it has the same kind of authority that scripture does, well then what do you do with the fact that the entire history of the church at least since the 4th century and certainly since Augustine, had a pretty unanimous consensus that capital punishment was morally justified until the mid-20th century? Like that particular issue I think is one that's really important to raise because it's such a clear departure. I'm not making a claim for the moral permissibility of that or not. I'm just making the point that there's not consistency here. So you can't do that same kind of thing with scripture, right? We have the words of scripture. They're written down. They don't change. By its very nature, it is the revelation of God. You just don't really have that in tradition. I think it's hard to make an equivalency.

17. 19:21

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, I think a good analogy is preaching. Our traditions agree here that in the words of the Second Helvetic Confession on our side, the preached word of God is the word of God. So does that mean that the pastor gets up and his sermon is as God-breathed as Scripture? No, it means the word of God is the word of God. Regardless of whether he's even regenerate. I mean, the Word of God is the Word of God. It's what norms all preaching is the Scriptures as the Word of God. But we call the preached Word of God the sacramental Word of God, the Word of God as a means of grace. And there's an analogy there with tradition, that tradition bears the Word of God. It doesn't transmit. It's not the river that carries the Holy Scriptures into it. Scripture is not a part of tradition after the death of the apostles. It is the canon. It is thereafter the rule that everybody turns back to. But there are all sorts of creeds and councils that we affirm, all the ecumenical councils, We affirm tradition. We affirm a lot of what the church fathers said, but not even Rome affirms everything that the church fathers said. Which church father? I mean, they excommunicated each other at various times. But whatever in the history of the church is proclaimed that is faithful to that canon is the word of God. I have no trouble accepting that tradition mediates the Word of God like preaching mediates the Word of God.

18. 21:13

    Gavin Ortlund

    And in our traditions, we have language for this. Even as in my Reformed tradition, we speak of the, as you were just saying, the sermon is the Word of God. And some Protestants today have fallen away from an awareness of this. And so we want to acknowledge where we've probably contributed to, you know, as Protestants, some of our own confusion here where we've fallen away from our own roots in our own traditions and so forth. But I think I want to extend this a little further about some of these examples of particular traditions that are impressed upon us by our Roman Catholic friends, for example. I think this helps highlight the relevance of sola scriptura. This is where the rubber meets the road, because a lot of times we get into debates about sola scriptura. It's very technical and theoretical, and I myself don't want to put all the emphasis upon How do you define the word God-breathed in 2 Timothy 3:16, important as that is? I want to step back and look at the big picture. Okay, aggregate all of the texts for what they're saying about the nature of Scripture. 2 Peter 1:20-21 is an important one. Again, Jesus's language for Scripture is an important one. And we say, okay, why am I being asked to believe in these other doctrines that don't have a plausible relation to apostolic teaching? And I mentioned the immaculate conception before. There's others we could point out. So to me, I want to help our viewers understand a lot of these areas are going to be where the practical fallout is for whether sola scriptura is embraced. It's, you know, I think of it like this. In the Roman Catholic system, there are dogmas like various parts of Mariology. I would include the immaculate conception and the bodily assumption of Mary. I would want to talk about the papacy and the idea of papal infallibility, where I would want to make the case that these really aren't well established in either the New Testament or the early church. Both the patristic data and the biblical data give us good reason to question whether or not these are actually apostolic, and yet they are obligatory. You see, you have to accept them if you are in that system. To me, that is helpful to make visible because it's the ultimate fallout of what's going to shake out with whether or not sola scriptura is really in the driver's seat. One of you mentioned this before, it really does become Solum Magisterium, or change the final if you want to make it an ablative or whatever you want. Where does the rubber meet the road? Who—what defines Christianity? What says this is the obligatory set of beliefs? That is where I want to highlight the consequences. Is this making sense at all? How would you push back on this? Tell me how you think about this yourself.

19. 23:57

    Michael Horton

    Well, the immaculate conception at the time of the Reformers, you could accept it or not accept it. In fact, Luther and Zwingli, correct me if I'm wrong, Jordan, believed in the immaculate conception and the perpetual virginity of Mary.

20. 24:17

    Jordan Cooper

    I don't know that Luther spoke to the immaculate conception later in life affirmatively, but he certainly did the perpetual virginity. I mean, even to the point that it has a little side note in our confessions.

21. 24:26

    Michael Horton

    Okay, well, Calvin also affirmed perpetual virginity. You are free to hold these positions, and then suddenly they are binding. What does that do to a Christian conscience, especially when you not only have—so you've got this doctrine of development, doctrinal development that Cardinal Newman—you know, we could go into all that. You can basically say, as the Vatican does say today, presbyter and bishop meant exactly the same thing in the New Testament. It was the same office. And so there really is no basis for a successor of Saint Peter in the New Testament. They say that. I mean, that is what the Vatican acknowledges. How can you say that and then have every time a pope is elected, he's the, you know, 100th, 380th or whatever pope since Saint Peter? That's, that's got to be a little disheartening. It's almost disingenuous to tell people sort of behind closed doors, well, we all know that tradition developed and emerged? Well, the way Rome typically answers this is, well, it's like a seed that grows into a flower. Yes, presbyter and episkopos meant the same thing. Yeah, and of course there weren't bishops at the beginning, and there weren't certainly popes, but it was destined to go in the direction of the papacy. That's what you have to accept if you're going to embrace the Roman Catholic view of authority, it seems to me, no?

22. 26:12

    Gavin Ortlund

    I think they would certainly not acknowledge that there is a contradiction as we perceive there to be. So I do—I would not think in disingenuous terms, in terms of putting their best spin on it. But Jordan, what do you think about this? I mean, because I think the point here that's valid is there's this sense of vast development from first century through today, and we have concerns about that.

23. 26:40

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, well, I think in some ways the growth of the development hypothesis in the 19th century was—in some ways it was adopting Protestant claims. I mean, there was actually—like, if you read, say, a Robert Bellarmine, it seems to be pretty obvious that at least in those kind of heated post-Reformation polemics, Rome was pretty committed—or maybe not everybody, but Rome by and large was pretty committed to this idea that there is an unchanging tradition, that the same dogmas taught by the apostles are what's taught by the church today. And it was really in some ways an adoption of what was the Protestant study of patrology that led Rome to kind of move toward this more development idea. I think when you're looking at the development hypothesis, there are a couple things I want to say to that. The first is as we're having this discussion here, I think it's important to acknowledge that there is a vast difference between Roman Catholic scholarship and Roman Catholic apologetics, right? And I just want to acknowledge that here because—and Gavin, I saw you did a video about this recently which I thought was very helpful to say the world of what goes on online on YouTube is not the same as what happens in the academy.

24. 27:47

    Gavin Ortlund

    Touch grass. Everyone was making fun of me for saying touch grass. I know the millennial language or the Gen Z.

25. 27:54

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. But, uh, yeah, it—so they're really two different things and they often make very different claims. So oftentimes, this is just to say, those in the academy oftentimes to some of our points that maybe those in the popular sphere kind of won't, won't do. But I think the major difficulty with the idea of development is just that it's so amorphous, it's rootless. It's—you can kind of define anything in that way. And I think that's the ultimate issue, is that it doesn't necessarily bind you to anything historically, because you can always make an argument that, you know, B is a logical outgrowth of A. The argument that I've often made is this just makes it so hard to interact with the truth claims, because it makes it really unfalsifiable, because any critique that you give can ultimately be responded to with a development hypothesis kind of answer to say, you know, they argue for a claim and I say, well, there's— the church fathers certainly didn't believe this. Well, it's because it developed later. Scripture didn't teach us. Well, it doesn't matter because it developed later. So it makes it kind of just very hard to have the honest intellectual debate. And that's what maybe frustrates me the most about it is I just want to be able to say, what's your standard, right? What's the claim you're making? Let's look at the source and let's see what it says. But it—the development hypothesis just makes it a bit frustrating in my view.

26. 29:06

    Gavin Ortlund

    Doctoral development, it does, it becomes a more evasive and flexible system, harder to pin down. Now, again, I don't want to be unfair at all. You know, Newman himself did give a lot of principles to try to nail down, you know, what's a valid development versus an innovation and so forth. I would say that according to his own principles of how you make that distinction, a lot of the contemporary Roman Catholic teaching just does not measure up. I mean, when I'm reading, what did the early Church Fathers believe about Mary? There is so much testimony that she was not a sinless person without seeming awareness of controversy. I've actually been shocked at how many Church Fathers will speak of Mary as needing forgiveness for sin, and yet not seem to be aware that this might ruffle some feathers somewhere. And even into the later patristic era, or at least mid, you know, fourth century, fifth century, some major figures. The more I see about this, I'm looking at this and I'm saying, I'm having a tough time. I would feel as though I was going against reason and conscience and just what seems to me to be true to submit myself to this teaching, to accept this. I don't think it is the case that Mary was born free from all original sin. I guess I'm belaboring this point, and I want to see what you guys think again, because I feel this is what is at stake with sola scriptura.

27. 30:36

    Gavin Ortlund

    If you don't have sola scriptura, what's the alternative? Well, you have other infallible rules. Okay, so what do those other infallible rules deliver unto you and make obligatory? Well, there's specific examples, and our concern is that these aren't apostolic.

28. 30:51

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. The greatest concern of the Reformers, the magisterial Reformers, was whether it's about Mary or it's about Scripture or it's about any of these other things, the real critical issue going to the heart of it all is what does this do with Christ's sole mediation? Is it by Christ's merits alone? That's why, you know, by Scripture alone, I know Christ alone for me. And that's why it was so fundamental, so important to know where you could go for certain answers to that question. Justification by grace alone through faith alone was the doctrine that the Reformers saw all these other issues through. It was the lens through which they saw all these other issues. You're with this crowd of Mary and the saints, you are basically stripping Christ of his sole mediation and rending his garment and giving off different degrees of merit to different saints. It's all in Christ.

29. 32:05

    Gavin Ortlund

    Now, on the point of intercession, so the counterargument will be, but you and I ask for each other to intercede, for each other, and this does not detract from the sufficiency of Christ. Now, I think we want to be careful here. What I would observe to start in response to that is we're talking about the on-the-ground consequences, how this is actually playing out. I'm reading medieval prayers where people are saying, Mary, placate Jesus, save me from the wrath of your Son, this kind of thing. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't seem the same as when I ask you for, you know, to pray for me. So I think we want to work that through, and then also our view of prayer. Just to whom should we pray? What does the Scripture teach us about how prayer—just what is prayer? Who are we talking to when we pray? That's another issue we want to work through here.

30. 32:51

    Jordan Cooper

    Related to prayer to the saints, I think that you bring up what is a really essential point, and that is what does this mean for the average person on the ground? And this is a discussion I often have with Roman Catholics, because I know those who are very theologically aware, right? Often converts, say like they understand that their mediation is really through Christ, so it's not different than the mediation of Christ. He's just mediating through them, or they have all sorts of ways to incorporate Christ into what they're doing. That's their idea, right, of what's happening. I understand the theological argument that's being made, and I understand the practical argument that's being made to some degree, but then it really does come down to that question: what does this mean for the average person in the parish? Because I don't know that they're thinking through, okay, well, I'm praying to this saint and Christ is mediating with them, and it's like me asking for a friend to pray for me. I just don't think that on the ground that's actually what happens, so I've often done exactly that, which is point to medieval prayer manuals and just the language that's used, but it's not—and it's not just medieval either. I mean, I think if you look at something like Alphonsus de Liguori's The Glories of Mary, I mean, which is really a collection of sayings and prayers from throughout the Western medieval—not just medieval church. I just don't think that you can come away from those things thinking that yes, this is the same thing as asking your friend to pray for you. There's just no way that it is, so we often feel like these discussions so often are dealing with theology in the theoretical realm, but the question is what does this mean for the average person in the parish?

31. 34:30

    Gavin Ortlund

    Before we finish off, let's address the number one objection to a Protestant position on Scripture, and that is, what about the canon? You have a fallible list of infallible books. How do you even tell what Scripture is? It doesn't come with a table of contents, and so on and so forth. And maybe we could just say, we don't have a lot of time left, but let's at least share with viewers where they can go to find some resources on this and start to gesture towards some of the ways Protestants can respond to this. One of the things I will point out is the historical fact that throughout the Old Covenant era, the people of God did appear to receive scriptures, discern what they were on the basis of fallible means. They did not have a sort of infallible counsel or edict from the top down declaring, okay, these five books are the books of Moses, this is the word of God, and so on and so forth. And so this more organic way of understanding that the people of God can fallibly discern the scriptures and yet recognize them for what they are seems to have historical continuity with the Old Covenant era. I also think we can just point out that you didn't have an infallible canon for the vast majority of church history. That's something that comes up way late in church history. And so this is often leveraged against Protestants as though it were uniquely a Protestant issue, rather than something that would have been a live question for the whole first millennium and after that for a good time. But what would you both like to say about this to help people who may have been knocked off balance by objections, and we want to serve them?

32. 35:56

    Michael Horton

    Josephus, the Jewish historian, says there was no council that decided the Hebrew Scriptures. We all knew what the Scriptures were—the Pentateuch, the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. We all knew. The more you read of the early church, the more you come to the same conclusion that they recognized what was scripture, and it was read publicly in church. And by the 2nd century, you have the Muratorian Fragment that tells us that only canonical scriptures were allowed to be read publicly and preached from publicly in church. So it's not like we have this long period of time, this lag time. Until you have a canon, there were differences over whether Revelation was canonical or Hebrews, 2 Peter, James. Aside from that, and, you know, let me just say, we would be—the church would be greatly impoverished if we didn't have those biblical books. But it's not like we wouldn't have the word of God without them. It's not like we wouldn't have the gospel. But thank the Lord he gave those gifts to us. The church recognized that those too were canonical. Took a little longer than the rest of them, but that's how it was received. They weren't looking to make a canon. They were receiving a canon that was already in use practically in all the churches.

33. 37:36

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah, in the second century, Christians weren't quoting the book of Romans but then saying, but I, but I don't know yet if Romans is scripture, I might need to wait till I get the edict. They quoted it confidently as scripture.

34. 37:49

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, Peter said Paul's writings were scripture.

35. 37:53

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah, yeah, but they were determining the edges of that. Jordan, what do you want to add here?

36. 37:56

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, I think it's just by the very nature of inspiration, it kind of necessitates that God is going to—if he's going to inspire books to lead the church, he's going to lead the church to know what the heck those books are. I mean, that just seems pretty, pretty logical. I mean, it would be very strange if God just inspired some books and just left them with a bunch of other books and then I'll help you guys figure it out. So I think that's important to say. I think it's part of the nature of inspiration. But then also I would say that in this, I would go back to Chemnitz's argument here that I mentioned earlier, that he distinguishes between the tradition that is which books are in the canon and the tradition that is whatever the living magisterium under the Pope says today. These are not identical. So to acknowledge one is not to acknowledge the other. They don't necessitate one another. And yeah, I think I think, Gavin, as you said talking about the Old Testament, this is the point that I've often brought up is, well, if you look at the time of the New Testament, and it's not quite so simple as to say there were just two canons. I know that, and there are Septuagints that have some different books in and out, but generally you've got the Sadducees who have this very small canon, and you have the Pharisees, right? And the Pharisees claimed that they had preserved the Word of God with their infallible traditions. Well, the New Testament assumes that the Pharisaic canon is the canon that God had inspired, and yet Jesus is still highly critical of the Pharisees' traditions. So he can both affirm that this tradition—that is, they knew what the canon was—and then reject the idea that the Pharisees had a series of then infallible declarations somehow connected to that. So if Jesus himself works on that principle with the Old Testament, it seems perfectly sensible to say that we could do the same thing with the New Testament.

37. 39:36

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah, the way Jesus's attitude toward the Old Testament is a great starting point for us on this question if we want to keep working on this. So I wish we could keep talking about this. We've got to cut it off there. However, viewers should be aware part three is to come. Check out the Justin Sinner YouTube channel, Jordan's channel, and it will be out there in due course. So keep your eyes peeled for that. Thank you both for the conversation, and we'll see everybody next time.