Of discernment in terms of the denomination of Christianity that I meant. And I’ve arrived at Catholicism. And I understand you were once Catholic and. Yeah, you’re not correct now. There’s question I’ve been asking my friends who remain Protestant that I have not yet received what I consider to be a very good answer to how do you know that all of the books of the Bible are the inspired word of god specifically. So not that they are correct, not that they are true, cuz a math test textbook is true. But how do we know that they are inspired?
Well, according to Bruce Metzker, who was the top manuscript expert of the last century, who taught at Princeton University, he put it this way, the Canon is not an authoritative list of books. It’s a list of authoritative books. In other words, we don’t determine what should be in the canon. We discover what should be in the canon. And as you know, the Protestant and the Catholic Bibles are identical in the New Testament. But in the Old Testament, Protestants would say Roman Catholics have added books that the Jews did not have in their canon. Yes. And so for Protestants, they’re saying, if the Jews don’t have it in their canon, why do we have it in ours?
Is that the view ho you hold? Yes.
Okay. Yeah, I don’t think, although those books have good historical data, like 1st and 2nd Mackabies, I don’t think they were inspired. And even the early church, Father Jerome, who would been considered Catholic, cuz there was no protestant reformation at that point, wouldn’t translate those books because he didn’t think they were part of the canon. And if you look at what Jesus and the apostles did, they quote from every section of the Old Testament except the Apocrypha? That’s not true. Where did they quote? I.
Believe there are seven books that were not quoted. One of them is Esther. I don’t believe song of Solomon was quoted, but there may have been more. Oh, no, not, there may have been. No, there are more. I don’t remember.
What. I’m saying a different, let me say it differently, Christian. I’m not, what I’m saying is that the books that weren’t quoted were the apographer.
But Esther also was not quoted.
You’re thinking of it. You’re thinking of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls didn’t have the book of Esther in it, as far as we know. Whether or not Jesus and the apostles quoted from Esther, and I have to look that up again. But one thing that may be confusing us here is the only book in the Old Testament that was not discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls was Esther. Okay, but the point here is if Jesus and the apostles never quote from any of the Apocrypha, that would seem to indicate that they didn’t take it as authoritative, whereas they quote from all the other Old Testament books. Maybe, Esther, maybe they didn’t. Maybe there’s a couple minor. They didn’t. Yes, but none of the apocrypto they quote from. Yes.
I guess a question that goes along with that, to make a positive statement, how can we determine then that something is not merely true, but specifically that it is inspired?
Well, the way, you know, that’s, there are ways that the early church tried to discover what was in the canon. So let’s take a look at that, because it is an interesting question. What book should be in the Bible? And as I just mentioned, this is how Metzker put it. The Canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. In other words, human beings discovered. They don’t determine what should be in the Bible. Yes. Here’s how they discovered the Canyon. Was it written by a prophet of god? Was the writer confirmed by acts of god or someone who’s confirmed as an eyewitness? For example, Paul confirmed Luke. Okay. And was it accepted by the people of god? These are some of the criteria they went through. And early on, just about every book, particularly in the New Testament, was accepted by about 110. There’s a few that still weren’t, we weren’t sure of, but, and we all agree on that. Roman Catholic or Protestant as far as I understand it and my co author Dr Norman Geisler wrote a seminal book on this issue called Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and differences back in 1994. It’s endorsed by both Roman Catholics and evangelical. So it’s a fair book. And if you look in there, it’ll talk about more of this in more detail if you really want to get into it. But the bottom line here is that, well, here’s some more on this.
What book should be in the Bible? The Gospels and acts are cited during the lives of the apostles. They’re quoted as authoritative and unique. They’re collected in one early volume. They’re publicly read and expounded. Commentaries were written on these opponents admitted the gospels were written by the disciples and no other gospels were treated this way. This for people who try and say, well, there should be other gospels in our Bible. Not according to this, those other gospels that you hear about, you know, gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel Judith, they’re written in the 2nd century, not written by those people. All right. But the best book to look at for this is look at Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, agreements, differences. Okay. Right now, from a Catholic perspective, you could say, well, we got a guy, a pope who’s gonna say these books are in there. But my question is, why should we trust the pope? We still gotta trust somebody, right?
Would you like me to answer that? Oh, go ahead. Okay. So my view is not particularly on the Pope. The Pope is not the subject, especially in these extremely early times. Yeah, it would rather be that Christ founded one church. He said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. And then I believe it was in first Peter where he says that the church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth. And so my view is that through Christ’s one church, the Grace to declare something free of error was given. And so that is how we could know through the collection of the early church what was and was not. Right. But.
As you know.
Not that it would make those books authoritative, right? That’s how you would recognize.
It. But as you know, Rome didn’t begin to assert its unique authority until like after 500 ad and all these books were confirmed long before that. Yeah, so that’s not gonna be, it wasn’t until the council of Trent in 1545 did the Roman Catholic Church officially put those Old Testament books in their Old Testament? There was never any ecumenical decree prior to that, although Augustine thought they should have been in there. Jerome said they shouldn’t have been in there. Yes. It wasn’t until Luther comes along and he says, why you guys praying for the dead’s not in the Bible. And they said, it sure is. It’s in 2nd Maccabees or first Maccabees, wherever was. And Luther said first and second Mcabees aren’t in the Bible. And the church said, well, it is. Now say that’s the problem, that all that stuff comes super late.
Now, could it still be true that those books should be in the. Yeah, it’s possible, but it doesn’t fit historically. And the problem is there are things in some of the apocryphal books that talk about works being necessary for salvation, which that contradicts just about everything Paul says. Yeah, I’d love to talk to you all about. All right, so maybe we can talk another time. But one last. How do you get to heaven? Let me ask you that.
How do you get to heaven? Through the Grace of God. By faith. Okay.
Good. That’s all. We’re good.