The Canon of Scripture: A Presuppositional Study

The Canon of Scripture

A Presuppositional Study

Phillip Kayser

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Table of Contents

1. Debates, conundrums, and essential principles

The thesis of this book - the Bible is self-authenticating

The Reformation position

Modern Protestant approaches to canon are inadequate

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox approaches inadequate

2. Who may canonize scripture?

3. Prophetic canonization illustrated in the Old Testament

Prophetic canonization illustrated in the Pentateuch

Prophetic canonization Illustrated in the canon’s expansion

4. Prophetic canonization illustrated in the New Testament

The New Testament builds on the Old Testament, it does not replace the Old Testament

The oral tradition (deposit) given from Father to Son, from Son to apostles, and from apostles to prophets and church has exactly the same content as Scripture

How this deposit of Christ was written down in canonical books

5. Apocrypha written before Christ?

All canonical Scripture was considered to be prophetic

All prophecy ceased in 400 BC

The previous information rules out 100% of the apocrypha of Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, Coptic, and Ethiopic church

6. Closing of the canon in AD 70

OT predictions of the closing of the New Testament canon

All New Testament apocrypha and later cultic writings were written after AD 70 and therefore are not canonical

Conclusion

7. More on closing the canon in AD 70

The importance of interpreting the New Testament in light of the Old (Acts 17:11)

New Testament passages that say the same thing as Isaiah, Daniel, Zechariah, and Joel

8. Objections raised by continuationists

The claim that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament prophecy refuted

Grudem’s exegesis of Ephesians 2-3 refuted

Questions raised about the nature of prophecy in Acts 21

Questions raised on the daughters who prophesied in verse 9.

Questions raised about Agabus.

What difference does it make?

9. What about the lost books of the Bible?

Inspiration alone is not the criteria for canonicity

God promised that His Providence will preserve every word of His canon in every age

God holds us accountable to every word of Scripture

God promised to ensure faithful transmission of the text

Isolated texts should be seen as suspect

10. The church fathers doctrine of canon

The early church’s view of tradition = Sola Scriptura

The early church’s view of authority = Sola Scriptura

The early church’s view of inerrancy and infallibility = Sola Scriptura

The early church held to the sufficiency of Scripture for faith and practice

the early church’s view of canon = self-authentication (Sola Scriptura)

The majority of the church took a stand against the apocrypha

Church fathers on the connection between prophecy and canon and the definitive closing of the canon

Counter-evidence that some have raised

Appendix A - The Westminster Divines

Appendix B - Prophets Quoting Prophets As Scripture

Joshua

1 Samuel

2 Samuel

1 Kings

2 Kings

Ezra

Psalms

Proverbs

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Daniel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Habakkuk

Appendix C - The supposed problem of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah

About the author

Notes

1. Debates, conundrums, and essential principles

…To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

– Isaiah 8:20

The thesis of this book - the Bible is self-authenticating

It is the thesis of this volume that the Bible should be the axiomatic¹ starting point and ending point for all Christian doctrine,² including the doctrine of canon.³ It will seek to prove the Protestant doctrine that only God can identify His word,⁴ and that He did so through the very prophets who gave us the Scriptures. In other words, if God’s Word is the highest authority in our lives, there can be no higher authority to which we can appeal in order to prove the doctrine of canon. I will seek to prove that the Bible’s self-referential statements are sufficient to completely settle the question of canonicity and that this presuppositional approach to canonicity is the only adequate approach that will stand up against all criticism. Too many modern approaches to canonicity have unwittingly eviscerated the Bible of its ultimate authority.

The study of canon is not a neutral subject. It either flows from a faithful commitment to the Bible’s total authority or it of necessity substitutes another competing authority (such as Tradition, Councils, Pope, Koran, imam, personal opinion, etc) with disastrous consequences.

The Reformation position

The church has no authority to determine the canon

The thesis just stated has been the historic position of Protestantism.⁵ The Westminster Larger Catechism crystallizes the issue at stake when it states that the Bible is "the only rule of faith and obedience."⁶ Consistent Protestants have applied this rigid criterion to the doctrine of canon as well as textual criticism.⁷ This means that the Scriptures must be self-authenticating in some way, not determined or approved by the church. This is the fundamental difference between the Reformation Churches on the one hand and both the Roman Catholic Church⁸ and the Eastern Orthodox Church⁹ on the other hand. Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy say that the church determines the canon of Scripture and that the church has authority over Scripture. But as J.I. Packer responded,

The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. God gave us gravity, by His work of creation, and similarly He gave the New Testament canon, by inspiring the individual books that make it up.¹⁰

There can be no higher authority by which Scripture is judged or the Scripture would cease to be the highest authority.

The doctrine of canon must not contradict the doctrine of Sola Scriptura

This stance on canon is the only position that is consistent with the Reformation teaching on Sola Scriptura. The doctrine of Sola Scriptura is perhaps the most foundational doctrine of the Protestant Reformation, and as the Reformers themselves demonstrated, it was the most foundational teaching of the catholic (or universal) church of the first few centuries.¹¹ Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase that means Scripture alone, and refers to the Reformation doctrine that the Bible is the only infallible authority for any area of life and that it is a sufficient revelation to know how to fully glorify God in every area of life - including how to recognize the canon. As Scripture words it, the Christian is called not to think beyond what is written in the Bible (1 Corinthians 4:6), and this Bible gives us all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3) and is sufficient for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness and gives to us all other necessary information needed to make the man of God complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:15-17). After listing the sixty-six books of the Bible, the Westminster Confession of Faith stated the doctrine of Sola Scriptura this way:

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. (WCF I.6)

This statement claims that:

The Bible contains all the divine words needed to know how to glorify God in every area of faith and life.

That nothing beyond the Bible (whether traditions of men or claims to new revelation from God) can be used to settle doctrine or to authoritatively show how to glorify God in faith and life.

That the use of logical deduction from the Scripture is not a violation of the previous two principles (since logic itself is embedded in the Bible).

That the canon of Scripture has already been closed.

Modern Protestant approaches to canon are inadequate

Modern Protestants have often abandoned Sola Scriptura in their defence of Scripture

But while historic Protestants have held that we must not abandon Sola Scriptura while defending the canon, many modern Protestants have been at a loss on how to exegetically defend this presuppositional¹²\ approach to canonicity. The moment they begin to appeal to evidence that is outside the Bible to demonstrate that a book belongs in the Bible, they are inconsistently acting as if there is a higher standard by which that book can be judged. We Protestants believe that the 39 books of the Jewish Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are the only books that belong in the Bible. We reject the apocrypha and claim that this official list of 66 Biblical books is our completed canon.

But it is precisely at this point that Roman and Eastern Orthodox apologists insist that Protestants are inconsistent. Indeed, the modern Protestant failure to use Scripture alone to defend the canon of the Scripture is said to be the Achille’s Heel¹³ of Protestantism. I have listened to dozens of debates between Roman Catholics and Protestants and I have sadly watched the Protestant leaders go down in flames. Why? Because they abandoned the Reformation principles of Sola Scriptura in their debate on canon. When Christians appeal to an authority outside of Scripture for canon, textual criticism, hermeneutics, ethics, church polity, etc., they have already lost the battle. It is my contention that Protestants need to return to the ancient doctrine of Sola Scriptura or they will be vulnerable to the apologetics of Romanists and/or the Eastern Orthodox.

The primary purpose of this book is to show how the first two summary statements on Sola Scriptura (see above) can consistently be applied to the study of canon. Indeed, it is only as we do so that anyone can have an adequate basis for the topic of canon. But before I demonstrate the exegetical basis for this, there are several objections to Sola Scriptura that I will seek to refute:

Some have had misguided reasons to reject the use of Sola Scriptura in the defense of canon

Is an appeal to logic an appeal to an authority outside of Holy Scripture?

It is sometimes assumed that an appeal to logic is an appeal to an authority or a philosophy outside of Scripture and therefore contradicts the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Specifically with regard to canon, it might be thought that the logical deductions¹⁴ that will be employed in this book are inconsistent with Sola Scriptura. However, that is clearly not the case since logic is embedded in the Scripture and cannot be avoided without avoiding the Scriptures themselves.¹⁵ Because logic is embedded in Scripture itself, the Westminster Larger Catechism saw failure to use logic as a form of ethical rebellion.¹⁶ Scripture also assumes that God made logic to be part of man’s innate reasoning powers. John Frame has shown how it is impossible to do theology, to apply Scripture to our lives, to understand the reasoning of Scripture, to communicate or even to have assurance of salvation apart from logic. To quote him at length.

One may not, however, do theology or anything else in human life without taking account of those truths that form the basis of the science of logic. We cannot do theology if we are going to feel free to contradict ourselves or to reject the implications of what we say. Anything that we say must observe the law of noncontradiction in the sense that it must say what it says and not the opposite…

When we see what logic is, we can see that it is involved in many biblical teachings and injunctions.

(i) It is involved in any communication of the Word of God. To communicate the Word is to communicate the Word as opposed to what contradicts it (1 Tim. 1:3ff; 2 Tim. 4:2f.). Thus the biblical concepts of wisdom, teaching, preaching, and discernment presuppose the law of non-contradiction.

(ii) It is involved in any proper response to the Word. To the extent that we don’t know the implications of Scripture, we do not understand the meaning of Scripture. To the extent that we disobey the applications of Scripture, we disobey Scripture itself. God told Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit. Imagine Adam replying, Lord, you told me not to eat it, but you didn’t tell me not to chew and swallow! God would certainly have replied that Adam had the logical skill to deduce You shall not chew and swallow from You shall not eat. In such a way, the biblical concepts of understanding, obeying, and loving presuppose the necessity of logic.

(iii) Logic is involved in the important matter of assurance of salvation. Scripture teaches that we may know that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). The Spirit’s witness (Rom 8:16ff.) plays a major role in this assurance; but that witness does not come as a new revelation, supplementing the canon, as it were. So where does the information that I am a child of God come from - information to which the Spirit bears witness? It comes from the only possible authoritative source, the canonical Scriptures. But how can that be, since my name is not found in the biblical text? It comes by application of Scripture, a process that involves logic. God says that whosoever believes in Christ shall be saved (John 3:16). I believe in Christ. Therefore I am saved. Saved by a syllogism? Well, in a sense, yes. If that syllogism were not sound, we would be without hope. (Of course, the syllogism is only God’s means of telling us the good news!) Without logic, then, there is no assurance of salvation.

(iv) Scripture warrants many specific types of logical argument. The Pauline Epistles, for instance, are full of therefores. Therefore indicates a logical conclusion. In Romans 12:1 Paul beseeches us, Therefore, by the mercies of God. The mercies of God are the saving mercies that Paul has described in Romans 1-11. Those mercies furnish us with grounds, reasons, premises for the kind of behavior described in chapters 12-16. Notice that Paul is not merely telling us in Romans 12 to behave in a certain way. He is telling us to behave in that way for particular reasons. If we claim to obey but reject those particular reasons for obeying, we are to that extent being disobedient. Therefore Paul is requiring our acceptance not only of a pattern of behavior but also of a particular logical argument. The same thing happens whenever a biblical writer presents grounds for what he says. Not only his conclusion but also his logic is normative for us. If, then, we reject the use of logical reasoning in theology, we are disobeying Scripture itself…

(v) Scripture teaches that God himself is logical. In the first place, His Word is truth (John 17:17), and truth means nothing if it is not opposed to falsehood. Therefore His Word is noncontradictory. Furthermore, God does not break His promises (2 Cor. 1:20); He does not deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13); He does not lie (Heb. 6:18; Tit. 1:2). At the very least, those expressions mean that God does not do, say, or believe the contradictory of what He says to us. The same conclusion follows from the biblical teaching concerning the holiness of God. Holiness means that there is nothing in God that contradicts His perfection (including His truth). Does God, then, observe the law of noncontradiction? Not in the sense that this law is somehow higher than God himself. Rather, God is himself noncontradictory and is therefore himself the criterion of logical consistency and implication. Logic is an attribute of God, as are justice, mercy, wisdom, knowledge. As such, God is a model for us. We, as His image, are to imitate His truth, His promise keeping. Thus we too are to be noncontradictory.

Therefore the Westminster Confession of Faith is correct when it says (l, vi) that the whole counsel of God is found not only in what Scripture explicitly teaches but also among those things that by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture. This statement has been attacked even by professing disciples of Calvin, but it is quite unavoidable. If we deny the implications of Scripture, we are denying Scripture…

I would therefore recommend that theological students study logic, just as they study other tools of exegesis. There is great need of logical thinking among ministers and theologians today. Invalid and unsound arguments abound in sermons and theological literature. It often seems to me that standards of logical cogency are much lower today in theology than in any other discipline. And logic is not a difficult subject. Anyone with a high school diploma and some elementary knowledge of mathematics can buy or borrow a text like I.M. Copi, Introduction to Logic and go through it on his own…¹⁷

In several of his books, Gordon Clark has shown that this innate power to logically reason and discourse is the image of God in man.¹⁸ It is not something alien that we impose on Scripture. Christ the Logos¹⁹ (John 1; 1 John 1:1) is the common Author of both since He not only gave Scripture, but also gives light to every man who comes into the world (John 1:9). It is this innate grasp of logic that enables man (with effort) to perceive Scriptural argument just as the rules of language are innate and enable us (with effort) to perceive the grammatical forms of the text.²⁰ It is true that the noetic affects of sin make us very prone to error in our use of logic. But this just makes our study of logic that much more important if we are to grow in our understanding of ethics.

In any case, if logic is both innate and embedded in Scripture, there is no violation of Sola Scriptura to appeal to those Scriptural rules of logic.

Is this book engaged in the fallacy of circular reasoning?

Others have objected that the Reformation’s approach to canonicity was an example of the fallacy of circular reasoning.²¹ While this is technically not an example of petitio principii (since the terms in the premises are not identical to the terms in the conclusion), it still gives the appearance of circularity. My response to this non-technical use of circularity is twofold: First, ultimate authority is always circular by nature or it ceases to be the ultimate authority.²² As Hebrews 6:13 says, "For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." God’s swearing by Himself is a form of circularity, but it is an unavoidable characteristic of any claim to ultimate authority.

Second, to make an argument for canon that implicitly makes the creature the ultimate authority is not only self-defeating, but also irrational. It is self-defeating in that it is seeking to prove that a canon of Scripture is the ultimate authority while appealing to another source of authority as more ultimate. It is irrational not only because of the inconsistency of the previous point, but also because it jettisons the consistency of a coherent circle. This is the difference between arguing in a coherent circle and arguing in a vicious circle.²³ Thus, to fully appreciate the significance of this volume, it is helpful to study Presuppositional Apologetics.²⁴

Some have abandoned Sola Scriptura by using additional criteria by which to reject the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal books

But even those who agree with the previous paragraphs might still be puzzled about how we know which books are truly canonical. If archaeologists found the lost letter mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5:9, should it be included in the Bible? And if so, who would make that determination? How do we know that Esther is part of Scripture? What should we think about the Apocryphal books in the Roman Catholic Bible? Is the canon closed? How do we know? How do we know that any of the books of the Old and New Testaments are really Scripture?

Some Protestant theologians have felt the pressure of these questions and have developed elaborate criteria by which to judge whether a book should be included in the canon, but almost all of these criteria have come under serious criticism.²⁵ For example, if the antiquity rule is correct, how could people have accepted the writings of Moses the moment they were written? Obviously no book of the Bible met the antiquity rule for the first people who used those books as Scripture. Furthermore, this rule assumes without proof the closing of the canon. While this book will exegetically defend the closing of the canon in AD 70, it is the Scripture alone which can grant such an assumption. One arbitrary rule often given is that all New Testament books must have been written by an apostle or approved by an apostle. But how can it be proved that the non-apostolic books of Mark, Luke, Acts, Hebrews,²⁶ James, and Jude were approved by an apostle? And for that matter, how could the text be said to be inspired if it was uninspired while it was being written by Luke and then subsequently inspired when the apostle approved it? That violates the Biblical definition of inspiration that we will look at later in this book and contradicts this book’s evidence that inscripturation was tightly connected with the prophetic office. Another objection that has been raised is that it seems strange to apply different criteria to the New Testament than would be applied to the Old Testament, and vice versa. Who has the right to answer these questions? Why were so many inspired books excluded from the canon of Scripture during Old Testament times, even though these books were clearly written by inspired contemporary prophets like Samuel (1 Sam. 10:25), Solomon (1Kings 4:32), and many others?²⁷ Obviously inspiration is not the sole criterion for canonicity, or many more books would have been included in the canon. Again, abandoning Sola Scriptura by adding man-made tests complicates the situation rather than resolving it. Once the reader understands the self-referential statements given in the Bible, they will instantly recognize that no additional tests are needed.

False dilemma of individual judgment versus corporate judgment

But our application of Sola Scriptura to the issue of canonicity should not be taken as an individualistic decision. This is frequently the charge brought against Protestants by both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. However, the Reformers believed that to leave the judgment of canonicity to each individual person would be both unbiblical and self-destructive. For an individual to determine what they think is (or is not) Scripture would be to place man as a judge of Scripture and ultimately as a judge of God. Though Luther was troubled by the book of James, he seemed to recognize that his personal opinions could not be the criteria for what is or is not canonical.

On the other hand, if the decision is a corporate decision, we need to ask the question, Which group gets to decide? The Samaritans and Sadducees²⁸ only accepted the first five books of the Old Testament. The Alexandrian Jews may have added some apocryphal books,²⁹ while the Essenes may have added some and excluded others.³⁰ The Pharisees accepted the same books that the Protestants now accept, but what makes their view authoritative? Even if we agreed with the Pharisees because the vast majority of Jews did so, what would make them right and others wrong? Surely there must be a more authoritative standard than an appeal to the very Pharisees whom Christ opposed! This book will show how God anticipated debates such as these and gave sufficient information to completely bypass the individual versus corporate false dilemma.

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox approaches inadequate

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists have recognized these Protestant inconsistencies and have presented an alternative answer - that the authority of the church over the canon avoids circularity and provides a sufficient answer. Their argument is that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth³¹ (1Tim. 3:15), and as such it provides an authoritative church or tradition to establish the question of canonicity.

Inconsistencies of their church traditions

Setting aside for the moment their misinterpretation of that verse,³² we might ask the following questions: Which claims to an authoritative tradition or church should we follow? Should we follow the authoritative tradition of Rome,³³ the Greek Orthodox Church,³⁴ The Slavonic Orthodox Church,³⁵ the Coptic Church,³⁶ the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,³⁷ the Armenian Church,³⁸ or some other Orthodox Church?³⁹ As the footnotes demonstrate, Church tradition has been fractured. Furthermore, how can this so-called tradition be infallible or in any way authoritative when these non-Protestant churches have changed the content of their canon? For example, in AD 600 the Pope declared the Apocrypha to not be Scripture⁴⁰ (as did the translator of the Latin Vulgate, Jerome). However, in 1546 (at the Council of Trent), the Roman Catholic Church officially declared the apocrypha to be part of the canon. This does not seem like an infallible tradition. It seems like changing church policy.

As will be demonstrated later, the church has held to the Protestant canon all the way up until it was changed by Rome at the Council of Trent. Likewise, we will see that while there were numerous church fathers from the second through fourth centuries who endorsed the shorter Protestant canon, and while even Jerome (the translator of the Latin Vulgate used by Rome) agrees book-for-book with the Protestant canon, there is no document during the same period that matches the canon of Trent book-for-book. That is significant since it means that the only precedent for a universally accepted canon at earlier periods of church history is the Protestant canon. Roman apologists continually appeal to the late fourth-century councils of Hippo and Carthage as including some apocryphal books, but those two councils only list 43 of the 46 books of Trent. They omit Lamentations and Baruch and mention five books of Solomon (which Trent excludes). Those councils were not ecumenical councils, but local, and as Cajetun mentions, used the term canon in two senses - a church canon of uninspired books approved for reading and God’s canon of inspired books that were authoritative in the Scripture.

An unbiblical view of church authority

A close study of the debates on canon shows that their appeal to church authority presents even more problems and internal inconsistencies. The Romanists and the Reformers had quite different views of authority related to the canon. The following is a summary of the teachings of Rome since the Council of Trent in contrast to the Reformation (and early church):

Rome said the church is the determiner of the canon; the Reformers said the church recognizes the canon based on its own self-witness. There is a big difference between determining and recognizing.

Rome said the church is the mother of the canon; the Reformers said that the church is the child of the canon, or that the canon produces everything in the church. The idea that Rome is the mother of the canon shows that they believe the church is an authority above the canon. The idea that the church is the child of the canon shows the opposite.

Rome claims authority to infallibly teach beyond what even their own canon addresses; the Reformers said that the only voice that should be heard in the church is the voice of God speaking through the Scriptures.⁴¹

Rome claimed the church is the magistrate of the canon and has magisterial power; the Reformers said that the church is the minister of the canon and only has ministerial power.

Of course, Rome has been attracting Protestants because Protestants have abandoned the Reformation doctrine of authority long ago. Here are some of the competing views on authority that have the potential to negatively impact canonical studies:

Sola Scriptura was the view of the Reformation and church fathers and the view of this book.

Church as the authority is the view of the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, and some Protestants.

Science is the ultimate authority of textual critics, some historians, those who insist on scientific tests of canonicity.

The individual is the ultimate authority is the view of authoritarian teachers and cults.

No authority tends to be the view of many postmodernists; though ultimately this leads to individualism or some authority filling the gap.

This book will demonstrate that the ancient church rejected the last four views of authority. Theirs was a Sola Scriptura approach to canon. They (along with the Reformers) believed that Scripture is the only infallible authority, and any authority that church officers have is a Scripture-delegated authority. All other approaches can be demonstrated to have substituted a man-made authority or to give up in cynicism (the no authority view).

This book defends the first point not only on canon, but on all theology. I have no authority as a pastor except the authority of the Word of God. I am a minister of the Word; a steward of the mysteries of God. As to canon, Protestants said that God alone can determine His Word, and He did so by the prophets and apostles who wrote the Scriptures, and they canonized the Scriptures the moment they were written - not centuries later. Unlike modern Protestants, they presented a view of canon that was 100% consistent with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. They claimed that the Bible was self-authenticating and its own internal testimony gave all the information we need to be able to know with certainty which books belong in the Bible.

Modern Protestants don’t know how to do that anymore. We have already seen that some Protestant theologians have felt the pressure of coming up with rational arguments as to which books belong in the canon, and they have developed elaborate criteria by which to judge a book (science as authority). But Rome rightly points out that these criteria are contradictory, and they end up putting the individual higher than the Bible. Rome also points out that there is no good reason for making the criteria for the Old Testament different than the criteria for the New Testament. And they ask, And by the way, who gave you the right to ask or to answer these questions? Without an infallible church, there is no way you can infallibly answer such questions. They claim that the church has the highest authority and church members must submit to church teachings that go beyond the Scriptures. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #88 says, the Church… does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence. For them the traditions of the church are equal to Scripture. But ultimately it is the church’s interpretation of Scripture and tradition that is the highest authority. So when they claim that the church is the mother of the Bible and has the full authority to add books to the canon, it is logically asserting an authority over the Bible.

Which viewpoint on authority does the Scripture side with? We have already seen that the Christian is called not to think beyond what is written in the Bible (1 Corinthians 4:6), and that the Bible gives us all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3) and is sufficient for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness and gives to us all other necessary information needed to make the man of God complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:15-17). Nothing more than the Scripture is needed - not even to determine the canon. The rest of this book will give detailed proof of this principle.

Of course, the Romanist’s first retort is to ask, Well, were there any books added to the Bible after 2 Timothy 3:16-17 was written? Of course the answer is yes, so they think they have you trapped. Their logic is that if more books were added after Paul made that statement, there is no reason to question the addition of books in 1549 at the Council of Trent.

But to anticipate a later chapter, the Bible gives several axioms that completely rule out 100% of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. For example, Amos 8:11-14 prophesied a complete absence of any God-given prophecy from the time of Malachi/Ezra to the time of the Messiah. This rules out 100% of the Old Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha since those books were written in the first and second centuries BC. Likewise, we will show that Isaiah 8:16-20, Daniel 9:24, and other passages prophesied the closing of the canon and the complete cessation of all inspired prophecy in AD 70 (when temple was destroyed and Israel was cast into exile - see context of those passages). This rules out 100% of the New Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, since all of those books were written long after AD 70. It also rules out Mormonism, Islam, and any others who claim to have ongoing inspired prophetic ability to add or subtract from the canon. By using the authority of these passages (which are recognized as Scripture in all Christian traditions), we rule out any additional authority beyond the Scripture. In other words, this book will exegetically demonstrate a view of Biblical authority that is 100% consistent with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

An unbiblical view of epistemology

Furthermore, this appeal to church authority as the highest authority violates Biblical epistemology, which shows that justified knowledge is found in Scripture and that which can be deduced from Scripture.⁴² Epistemology is simply a ten dollar word for how we know that we know anything (including what is in the canon). Gordon H. Clark has given devastating critiques of non-Biblical epistemologies⁴³; something I do not intend to do here. But he accurately summarizes Biblical epistemology in one sentence: A rational life is impossible without being based upon a divine revelation.⁴⁴ Because the Scriptures are the infallible word of God (John 10:35), and the word of truth (Ps. 119:43; Eph. 1:13; 2 Tim. 2:15; James 1:18) they are also said to be the key of knowledge (Luke 11:52). The Bible clearly states that God’s Word is the ultimate standard by which all other truth-claims are judged (John 17:17; Ps. 11:7; 119:89,151,160; Numb. 23:19). Christ’s statement, Your Word is truth (John 17:17), has profound implications for epistemology. If Jesus had simply said, Your Word is true, it would imply that the Word was being judged for its truthfulness by an outside standard. But by saying, "Your Word is truth," Jesus was affirming that the Bible is the standard of truth and the measure of all truth claims. Nothing in man is the standard, whether that be emotions, experience, tradition, science, human authority, etc. John Frame summarizes the claims of Biblical epistemology by saying,

The only way to find truth is to bow before God’s authoritative Scripture… The very essence of knowledge is to bring our thoughts into agreement with God’s revealed Word. Thinking God’s thoughts after him is to be the rule not only in narrowly religious matters, but in every sphere of human life… history, science, psychology, sociology, literary criticism… business, sports, family life, worship, politics… God calls us to ‘presuppose’ him in all our thinking. This means that we must regard his revealed truth as more important and more certain than any other, and find in it the norms or criteria that all other knowledge must meet.⁴⁵

An unbiblical view of implicit faith

It might be thought that Rome has an answer to this objection by saying that God has two streams of revelation (tradition and Scripture) and that both streams are mediated through the church. Therefore, they call for implicit faith in the church and its traditions alongside of Scripture.⁴⁶ Chapters 6-8 will deal with the faulty assumption of ongoing authoritative revelation, but let us now consider the two conflicting views of implicit faith: Rome teaches the need for implicit faith in the church while the Reformers called their people to have implicit faith in the Scripture alone. The word alone was key to the Reformation.

Which view of implicit faith is taught in Scripture? Scripture clearly teaches the view of implicit faith that is consistent with Sola Scriptura. For example, Paul praised the Bereans in Acts 17:11 for being more excellent than the Thessalonians. What made them differ from the Thessalonians? It was precisely this issue of implicit faith. The Thessalonians had an implicit faith in the church fathers of Judaism and stood emotionally against anything that contradicted their rabbinic teachers. That’s why they persecuted Paul. In contrast, the Bereans did not have implicit faith in any man - not even the apostle Paul himself. Instead, they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (v. 11, NIV). The Bereans were consistently applying the Biblical maxim, Your Word is truth (Psalm 119:16) as a standard by which to judge all truth claims.

A failure to understand Biblical tradition

Apologists for the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox communions will claim that the Bible itself mandates the preservation of apostolic oral traditions (1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thes. 2:15; 3:6), and therefore the Bible is opposed to Sola Scriptura. However, biblical tradition is simply apostolic teaching, which was itself the systematization of Scripture. If all apostolic teaching was tested against the Scriptures to see if it was true (Acts 17:11) and if all apostolic teaching was saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come (Acts 26:22), then one would expect that apostolic tradition did not add anything to the Scripture. Instead, it would be equivalent to Protestant confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Reformation was not opposed to tradition as the early church defined tradition, because that view was consistent with Sola Scriptura.⁴⁷

So we have two radically different conceptions of tradition. The Reformation sided with the church of the first millennium⁴⁸ in believing that not one word of tradition should be believed unless it was grounded in the Scriptures. In contrast to the church fathers,⁴⁹ the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church both teach that tradition includes a vast body of information that cannot be found in the Bible.⁵⁰ In contrast to the church fathers,⁵¹ the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church both teach that tradition is equally authoritative with the Scriptures.⁵² In contrast to the church fathers,⁵³ the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church both deny the sufficiency of Scripture and say that Scripture must be supplemented with church tradition.⁵⁴ Chapter 10 will give an extensive collection of quotes from church fathers to show that it is not the Reformation that left the true catholic faith but it is Rome that has deviated from the catholic faith on several major issues related to canonicity.

I bring up the church fathers because both Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy claim to be in continuity with the catholic faith of the first millennium, and nothing could be further from the truth. The early church fathers themselves claimed that nothing could be considered catholic or to be apostolic tradition unless it was proved from the Bible. As Melanchton worded it in 1519, It is not necessary for a Catholic to believe any articles of faith than those to which Scripture is a witness.⁵⁵

So which of these competing views on tradition is Biblical? It is clear that every positive reference to the tradition (or deposit) that the apostles gave to the churches by way of teaching was 100% based on Scripture. The tradition that Paul received from Christ in 1 Corinthians 11:1-2 is explicitly laid out in written Scripture in the rest of the chapter. Thus, though Paul imposes tradition on the churches (1Cor. 15:3-4), he twice makes clear that the tradition is according to the Scriptures (see verse 4 and 5). Paul was not opposed to tradition (2Thes. 2:15; 3:6) since tradition is simply apostolic teaching. What he was opposed to was the tradition of men (Col. 2:8). Everything Paul taught could be proved from the Scriptures (Acts 17:11) and he insisted that the church not think beyond what is written (1Cor. 4:6). It would be impossible to obey that command if Paul’s tradition went beyond the Scripture.

In stark contrast to apostolic teaching (tradition), the Scriptures categorically condemned the tradition of the elders (Matt. 15:2) because it went beyond the commandment of God (v. 3) and made the commandment of God of no effect (v. 6) and because it was teaching as doctrines the commandments of men (v. 9). The Jewish conception of the traditions of the elders is almost identical to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox conception of the tradition of the fathers. Both Rome and Judaism have an unbiblical tradition that goes beyond the Bible.

But beyond that issue, the New Testament indicates that the deposit (tradition) of truth that was given to the church cannot be added to after the apostolic age. Jude says: "Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered (παραδοθείσῃ) to the saints. (Jude 3) If this body of truth has already been once for all delivered in the first century, it logically precludes the deliverance of apostolic tradition in later periods of church history. As F. F. Bruce worded it, Therefore, all claims to convey an additional revelation… are false claims… whether these claims are embodied in books which aim at superseding or supplementing the Bible, or take the form of extra-Biblical traditions which are promulgated as dogmas by ecclesiastical authority."⁵⁶

Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy have abandoned the catholic faith by adding to the Protestant canon

If what we have already seen is true, then one would expect that the Protestant view on canon would have been held by the early church. And it was. The reason the Council of Trent had to claim authority to add new books to the canon was because the vast majority of the church fathers prior to Trent held to the Protestant canon.⁵⁷ This of course contradicts their definitions of what constitutes the catholic faith - namely, universality, antiquity, and consent of the church.⁵⁸ Indeed, my study of the church fathers has convinced me that none of Rome’s distinctive doctrines has had the universal consent of the church. That is why all the Reformers (without exception) said that Protestantism is the catholic faith and that the Romanists had abandoned the catholic faith. They demonstrated that the church of the first twelve centuries was Protestant. And this was certainly the case when it came to what books should be in the canon. In fact, that was true all the way up to the Council of Trent.

Jerome, the translator of their Latin Vulgate Bible, translated the apocrypha because it was useful background history (just like we treat it as useful history), but he denied that the apocrypha was inspired, inerrant, or part of the canon of Scripture. He distinguished between a church-made canon of uninspired books that were useful for study and a God-made canon of inspired books that are authoritative for faith and practice.⁵⁹ As we will see, this was the view that predominated until it was changed by the Council of Trent, which purportedly rendered an infallible decision to include the Apocrypha.

My response to that is to ask, Why was Trent’s vote to include the apocrypha an infallible vote when it was a minority vote? The vote was 24 in favor, 15 opposed, and 16 uncertain and abstaining. So why were 24 of these church leaders infallibly guided in their yes vote while 31 of these church leaders were not infallibly guided in either their no vote or their abstentions? And furthermore, what makes their voted opinion more infallible than the opinion of the majority of the church fathers in previous centuries?⁶⁰ What makes their voted opinion more official than the official marginal notes in the official Latin Vulgate Bible as late as 1498? We call these marginal notes the Glossa Ordinaria. Though the Latin Vulgate Bible contained the apocrypha as useful background material (just like many Protestant Bibles did), it emphatically declared that the apocryphal books were not inspired Scripture. That was the official catholic Bible up through the time of Trent. When commenting on Apocryphal books, these marginal notes clearly distinguish them from canonical Scripture. At the beginning an apocryphal book it says, Here begins the book of Tobit which is not in the canon, or Here begins the book of Judith which is not in the canon, etc. The Prologue to the Glossa ordinaria (written in AD 1498) maintained a distinction between canonical and apocryphal books, stating that though both are included in the Bible, the canonical books are inspired and the apocryphal books are not.⁶¹

This represented the views of a huge number of the most influential and well-known scholars of the previous twelve centuries. Even Cajetan, the most famous Romanist scholar at the time of the Reformation, said that the Church of his day followed Jerome in believing the Bible only had 66 books.⁶² He also insisted that any earlier references to the apocrypha being in the church’s canon as edifying were not a reference to God’s canon of Scripture but to the church’s rule of which extra-Biblical writings had been approved as edifying. As mentioned earlier, this two-canon distinction of Cajetan was a distinction made by Jerome and it completely explains some of the disparate information in earlier ages - there was an inspired canon given by God and there was an uninspired but useful canon given by non-ecumenical councils on which books are useful for study. Cajetan’s admission was a huge admission