Hey Sean, thank you for your article. I am a baby Catholic who is still learning much of my own traditions but I have a quick question that will help me understand your position a little bit better.
What do you mean by the church? I guess I am trying to figure out if it is a visible church. More specifically, is the early church a visible church? I hear you on consensus over time, but I have a knee jerk reaction to ask about all the other things this visible church came to believe or taught over time consensus? Why trust this church on the canon and not on prayer to the saints? I guess it’s a silly question as I am not too familiar with Anglican teachings but I hope you understand what I am trying to get at.
The church is the fellowship of all those legitimately baptized and walking in the Spirit who gather visibly under the auspices minimally under the auspices of presbyters in succession, and ideally and normally under the auspices of the authority of bishops, priests, and deacons.
Thank you for that! Just some follow up on that if you don’t mind , then I will get out of your hair. I can’t help it, I see the word authority I need to know what it means.
No worries! Authority = that property which invests a claim with a credible call to obedience and to live accordingly. The authority of the medical field invests their claims about some treatment with a credible call to live accordingly, for instance.
So on those issues (it's not a silly question), Anglicans actually didn't prohibit asking the saints for their prayers if one really wanted to do that. We insisted that one should only keep it at the level of asking for prayers, and not invoking them (e.g. invoking them to do stuff in the world or consecrating oneself to Mary). For example, we hold that the mass is a sacrifice, but an impetrative one rather than a propitiatory one: https://northamanglican.com/the-impetrative-sacrifice-of-the-mass/#:~:text=In%20the%20Eucharist%2C%20one%20has,people%20to%20plead%20to%20God.
So where there is real consensus, we feel ourselves bound to that.
An ecumenical one would--but it needs to be genuinely ecumenical, and not just bc all the opponents of the council were killed and then ex post facto it was declared as such. We've always therefore seen the 7th as the most problematic because the politics were utterly atrocious. The doctrinal weight of the first five centuries weighs more heavily than all others, and we're even able to accept 6 of the 7. The problem is that the 7th makes claims the vast majority of us of Christians don't accept now and didn't at the time of the promulgation of the council (like "anyone who refuses to salute an icon is damned.")
Your read of Horn’s position seems implausible to me. You accuse him of positing “sheer fiat,” but he wants to distinguish his view from one that would have the Church “create” the canon. Why would he bother to distinguish “declaring” from “creating” if “declaring” just ends up being “sheer fiat”?
I wonder if you’re not missing a distinction somewhere along the line, and setting up an opposition where there isn’t one. For example, if someone asks why they have to believe in the Trinity, one kind of answer is “because it’s true,” and another kind of answer is “because the Church has dogmatically declared it and you’re Catholic.” (Protestants only accept the first kind of reason as infallibly binding, of course.) But if someone said, “well, HOW we know it’s true doesn’t matter all that much because given that the Holy Spirit protects the Church from error, if she declares something, it necessarily must be true,” that would totally noncompetitive with thinking there are in fact really good grounds beyond the Church’s authority to think a thing is true. So it can be the case that the Apostles play an indispensable role in revealing the canon, even if we aren’t sure all the nitty-gritty of how that worked out, because at the end of the day the results of their labors and that of their disciples have been declared trustworthy by the Catholic Church.
This seems like a pretty reasonable take that doesn’t involve the prima facie absurdity that Horn would distinguish his view from “creating” the canon and then immediately defend a sheer fiat view.
The problem there is that Trent explicitly says "it doesn't matter whether a given writing was written by an apostle or by a group or who it was written by"--which means the fiat of the church ends up being indistinguishable from her just creating it.
In other words, saying the church "declared" the canon, since a declaration can either be a creative one or one of recognition. If "who wrote the book" or internal features of these books did not ground the church's declaration, then declaration amounts to creation. If they did, then it amounts to recognition.
“Catholics don’t have the problem of having to ground Scripture’s authority in direct Apostolic authorship or citation, because the Church authoritatively teaches which human documents are Scripture regardless of which individual or individuals actually wrote these documents. Paul says he used secretaries to write his letters, so we know multiple people would be involved in these works. We don’t ground our authority for the canon of scripture on strict authorship claims that modern scholarship comes into doubt. Instead, we ground them in the perennial tradition of the Catholic Church, safeguarded by the Church’s teaching office.”
So I don’t think it’s a reasonable read to say Horn thinks it could be just literally anyone at all. The words “direct” and “strict” are key here. His example is also illuminating—he’s thinking of Paul using secretaries, or, as you point out, Peter teaching John Mark. But there are cases where we don’t know and cannot verify that this kind of relationship existed, so although we trust the author SOMEHOW had access to the deposit of faith, we can only know THAT he did because of the Magisterium. Horn is focusing on the epistemic problem of how one could “check” which writings are inspired, not the metaphysical question of just what makes for a New Testament text.
I literally never said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all who wrote Scripture." Given that he does not outline *what the declaration is actually based on*, it collapses into a creative declaration. If the declaration of which books were canonical were based on particular and specific reasons, then it's a declaration of recognition.
And if you declare Jesus as King, you are only giving a *recognition* and hence "declaration" reduces to one of recognition, not a median between recognition and creation.
It means there's an ontological significance that the declaration is not altering. So, yes, itis only a recognition. That's the whole point. He then goes into what he is recognizing. I'm really not sure what your position is here. If the church just recognizes scripture then how is that sheer fiat?
He explicitly denies that the church merely does so at @2:15 of his video. You're trying to smooth him over in a way that doesn't work with what he actually said.
I can't read your mind, but I'll assume you mean hedenies the church merely recognizes scripture. He says here that the church doesn't discover nor discern, but, declares.
[00:02:00.520 --> 00:02:03.360] However, the church didn't discover the canon
[00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:04.520] of scripture either.
[00:02:04.520 --> 00:02:07.280] The church didn't unknowingly discover the canon
[00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:09.560] through a providentially guided process,
[00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:12.200] like how Pharaoh's wife providentially found Moses
[00:02:12.200 --> 00:02:13.600] in the Nile River.
[00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:16.080] Rather than unilaterally determine,
[00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:19.600] or fortunately discover the canon of scripture,
[00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:24.240] the church authoritatively declared the canon of scripture.
[00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:27.760] So not determine or discover, but declare.
I literally never said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all who wrote Scripture." Given that he does not outline *what the declaration is actually based on*, it collapses into a creative declaration. If the declaration of which books were canonical were based on particular and specific reasons, then it's a declaration of recognition.
This is a false dichotomy, just because Trent says specific authorship is not central to whether something is canonical, doesn't mean it can only be canonical by fiat. Trent says in the video, quoting Vatican I, that inspiration by God is the central characteristic. Whether Paul used secretaries, or 2 Peter was written by someone close to Peter doesn't make or break the canon for Catholics. Since the Catholic canon is based on the declaration of the church throughout time, there are other criteria's that the church used in play as well, such as orthodoxy (does it contain orthodox doctrine), catholicity (is the book widely accepted), liturgical use (is the book widely read and used for worship).
That being said, your explanation for the canon, at least with regards to Hebrews, is ahistorical. Why is being written prior to 70 AD a characteristic of infallibility? That seems entirely arbitrary. Can you name one early church writer you sites being written prior to 70 AD as a characteristic of infallibility? Does all scripture have to be written prior to 70 AD? If so, you'll have to throw out some books. Or this just an ad hoc criteria that you made up just for book of Hebrews? I think it is the latter.
Individuals disputed the deuterocanonical, but can you name one church council that did? As far as I am aware, the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage all included them. As did Florence and eventually Trent.
Most protestant denominations do not have a teaching authority outside of scripture. When I was a protestant (EFCA), my pastor labored to show that he and the church have no authority in themselves, but only Word of God has authority. I would not have agreed to your claim that the consent of the church is a teaching authority. The only protestants I can think of that would agree with that would be Anglicans.
I literally never said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all wThe Sho wrote Scripture." Given that he does not outline *what the declaration is actually based on*, it collapses into a creative declaration. If the declaration of which books were canonical were based on particular and specific reasons, then it's a declaration of recognition. Either way, it collpases into one or the other.
I literally never said the fact that it was written before 70AD is what makes it infallible. It is astounding to me how frequently RC theo bro types will go onto Protestant materials, claim misrepresentation, and misrepresent the counter arguments. That shows something not healthy in the movement.
I said that the fact that it was written prior to 70AD raises the likely hood it's putting to writing apostolic teaching because it's in the lifetime of the apostles. I cited Timothy and its connection the church of Rome to heighten that claim.
The Synod of Laodicea did not. "But the original text of Laodicea is spotty"--but the records that come in the 4th century leave them, and that accords will with Cyril's Catechetical Lectures (which were widely spread btw), Athanasius's Festal Letters, and yes other individuals *who were highly esteemed in the church at large*. Councils and synods aren't the only relevant factors here, or else we'd find someone like John of Damascus not holding the opinions he does.
That just shows you haven't done much reading on classical Protestantism. Lutherans use this principle pretty widely as well.
I never said that you said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all wThe Sho [sic] wrote Scripture." lol. I don't understand where that is coming from.
At 2:31, Trent does outline what the declaration was based on: "it did this through the liturgy, the proclamations of regional councils, and finally through infallible declarations at ecumenical councils." None of the councils believed themselves to be declaring scripture to be a creative declaration or based on sheer fiat.
Most protestants are not classical protestants. Yes, technically, you really can't make any statement that "Protestant's believe X" since there are very few beliefs that Protestants agree one. On the whole, Trent is right to say that Protestants lack teaching authority outside of scripture, and most Protestants would agree to that and say all teaching authority is derived and subordinate to scripture.
Does Horn really not think his church has any good reasons for including the books we have in the NT canon apart from the ‘church declares it so’? You can bet if there was disagreement between RCs and Prots over a particular book (like there is for the OT) he would present all the good historical arguments for why RC’s are correct. But he can’t do that for NT books otherwise he is admitting Prots really don’t have a canon problem, but instead, stand on solid ground. It seems that apologetics sometimes prevents people from realising the truth on a matter.
How so? I didn't say Trent *thinks* the magisterium has no reason for why it made its declarations. I said saying that a book need not be canonized for apostolicity or origins of authorship reduces a "declaration" to a creative declaration.
> We know the Catholic church preserves apostolic teachings because we can trust the Holy Spirit protected God's church.
Idk wym. He does accept apostolic succession undergirded by the Holy Spirit. His position isn't to limit that, but to characterize why the church is important in maintaining the tradition of scripture. If you simply used secular scholars then you'd never get the whole Bible. If you simply used scriptural coherency then you'd only get a list of 13/27 books of nt. Am I mischaracterizing you?
"He does accept apostolic succession undergirded by the Holy Spirit. His position isn't to limit that, but to characterize why the church is important in maintaining the tradition of scripture. If you simply used secular scholars then you'd never get the whole Bible. If you simply used scriptural coherency then you'd only get a list of 13/27 books of nt. Am I mischaracterizing you?"
Yes, you are. My argument isn't that we should appeal to secular scholars--I don't know why you'd think that. Protestants have *never* said the church isn't important to maintaining the tradition of Scripture.
Trent is saying that the church recognizes the authoritativeness of Scripture regardless of alleged authorship (he uses the word "regardless"--that's him, not me). That makes all the difference. We are saying the church recognizes the authority of Scripture by recognizing authorship and relation of the letter to the apostles, and has the aid of the Spirit to do so. That means the space that RCs use to try to open up a doctrine of the infallibility of the church falls apart: it's not that the church infallibly discerns some nebulous "authority" to these books, but discerns the teaching of the apostles--which means she is always accountable to that teaching, and therefore subject to that teaching's judgment.
He wasn't saying you should appeal to secular authors nor use scriptural coherency. He wasn't saying you do so nor will do so. He was giving a standard treatment on some of the more popular ways to declare scripture as canonical. He's not even necessarily talking to Anglicans since Anglicans accept apostolic succession. He's talking about sola scriptura people who do not accept apostolic succession but instead borrow from it when it's needed to establish scriptural canon.
He also gave several points for why using author or relation-to-author standards have issues. We simply don't have access to those relations ("like when Paul forgets who he baptized when he was writing for Corinthians,").
What do you think about using these criteria to argue that the Didache is inspired? If someone established that, similar to Hebrews, the Didache was written early and was intended to preserve apostolic teaching would it follow that the Didache is inspired? It seems to me that even if someone presented convincing historical arguments for both of these conclusions that that is just not sufficient for concluding that they are divinely inspired. (Perhaps it is necessary though)
Right, because the community that received this text evidently did not remember its origin or its connection with the apostle, it always remained dubious and even possibly misrepresenting itself about its origins. So the way the community of the church received these texts help us discern their relation to the apostles, given the gift of the Spirit that the church has. On the other hand, Hebrews doesn't make a claim about its authorship, has a plausible connection to both Timothy and the Church of Rome, and is plausibly written before 70AD--all of these data points together are indicia towards *apostolicity* (does this text actually put to writing what the apostles were preaching by someone connected to the apostles?).
So even though Hebrews is formally anonymous, its connection to Timothy and the Church of Rome is evinced in the letter itself at the end, the plausibility of that connection increased by its publication prior to 70AD, and the community that received it evidently remembered it as putting to writing the apostle's teaching.
I guess my issue is that it still doesn’t seem that divine inspiration follows from apostolicity! At least in this mere sense of accurately putting to writing what the apostles teach. Imagine we discovered a letter from Saint Paul that approved of the Didache and said that a disciple of Peter composed it, it still doesn’t seem like we would know that it is inspired (maybe we would know it is free from error).
Also, do you think that the Church was guided by the Spirit in discerning the canon? I have a hard time seeing how this preserves sola scriptura if this is so. It seems to me that insofar as a person is guided by the Spirit they cannot error!
I don't think that example shows that inspiration doesn't follow from apostolicity. If we found a letter where St. Paul approved it, I'd argue it should be part of the canon!
I do--which is why I've framed the deeper logic of Sola Scriptura as better stated in terms of Sola Apostolica. See the paper attached above!
If, as you say, "the actual consent of the church through time" is your teaching authority, wouldn't the fact that the Deuterocanonical books were treated as scripture by the vast majority of the Church over most of her history suggest that they are canonical?
The fact that the books were universally read as scripture in liturgy, were used like scripture by theologians, and were included in canon lists at both regional and ecumenical councils suggests that the vast majority of the church thought they were scripture. The inclusion of them in the Vulgate is significant as well; if the entire Western church was using a bible that included the Deuterocanon, you could say that the church consented to the books' use as scripture.
Again , if your standard for which traditions are apostolic is "the actual consent of the church through time" then you can't turn around and say that the small minority of scholars who historically argued against the deuterocanon represent some kind of consensus. The majority view of the church was obviously that the deuterocanonicals were part of scripture; a handful of dissenters doesn't mean that the books didn't receive assent as scripture. If 95% of the Church's bishops, theologians, priests, and lay-people assented to the deuterocanonical books as scripture, by any normal definition of consensus you would say "this doctrine won assent through time." It seems to me as though you are treating the minority view regarding the canon as if it was the majority view. This seems like an arbitrary move in order to make a historical justification of the Protestant canon. Why do you think that the minority voices of those who didn't think the deuterocanonicals were scripture should outweigh the large majority who thought they were?
Ok, if the Catholic cedes that the exclusion of the deuterocanons was not a fringe view, how widespread do you think the view was? Did 20% of the Church think they weren’t scripture? 50%? That seems far-fetched, given that the deuterocanons were
- Read as scripture in both Eastern and Western Liturgy,
- Included in the Latin version of the bible and in-part in all Greek Septuagint manuscripts, which were both used by the churches for ~1000 years
- Embraced in conciliar discussions of what is included in scripture.
Those seem like acts of assent by the church to those books as scripture. I don’t think that these are examples of “ecclesiastical fiat” either, which is relevant because Trent Horn specifically cited all three of those examples as avenues through which the Church witnessed (or declared assent) to the canon. The existence of some minority dissent (even if it’s a significant minority) doesn’t signal widespread dissent, especially when we have clear historical data that suggests widespread use of the deuterocanon as scripture.
I guess this opens the discussion of how theological consensus works when the issue isn’t directly addressed within scripture. Does the church express its faith primarily through the voices of individual theologians, or through creeds, conciliar declarations, and her liturgy? What is to be given more weight when trying to figure out what the historical consensus of the church was on an issue?
It seems to me like you are elevating the testimony of theologians over the testimony of councils and liturgy. If somebody from the 21st century was trying to figure out which books were considered by Christians to be scripture, the books included in Christian bibles and used in Christian worship would likely be a more compelling witness to the majority christian view of the canon than the opinions held by biblical scholars and theologians about the canon.
Hey Sean, thank you for your article. I am a baby Catholic who is still learning much of my own traditions but I have a quick question that will help me understand your position a little bit better.
What do you mean by the church? I guess I am trying to figure out if it is a visible church. More specifically, is the early church a visible church? I hear you on consensus over time, but I have a knee jerk reaction to ask about all the other things this visible church came to believe or taught over time consensus? Why trust this church on the canon and not on prayer to the saints? I guess it’s a silly question as I am not too familiar with Anglican teachings but I hope you understand what I am trying to get at.
Cheers!
Good question! Here's a definition:
The church is the fellowship of all those legitimately baptized and walking in the Spirit who gather visibly under the auspices minimally under the auspices of presbyters in succession, and ideally and normally under the auspices of the authority of bishops, priests, and deacons.
Thank you for that! Just some follow up on that if you don’t mind , then I will get out of your hair. I can’t help it, I see the word authority I need to know what it means.
No worries! Authority = that property which invests a claim with a credible call to obedience and to live accordingly. The authority of the medical field invests their claims about some treatment with a credible call to live accordingly, for instance.
So on those issues (it's not a silly question), Anglicans actually didn't prohibit asking the saints for their prayers if one really wanted to do that. We insisted that one should only keep it at the level of asking for prayers, and not invoking them (e.g. invoking them to do stuff in the world or consecrating oneself to Mary). For example, we hold that the mass is a sacrifice, but an impetrative one rather than a propitiatory one: https://northamanglican.com/the-impetrative-sacrifice-of-the-mass/#:~:text=In%20the%20Eucharist%2C%20one%20has,people%20to%20plead%20to%20God.
So where there is real consensus, we feel ourselves bound to that.
Would a local or ecumenical council be considered consensus in your view?
An ecumenical one would--but it needs to be genuinely ecumenical, and not just bc all the opponents of the council were killed and then ex post facto it was declared as such. We've always therefore seen the 7th as the most problematic because the politics were utterly atrocious. The doctrinal weight of the first five centuries weighs more heavily than all others, and we're even able to accept 6 of the 7. The problem is that the 7th makes claims the vast majority of us of Christians don't accept now and didn't at the time of the promulgation of the council (like "anyone who refuses to salute an icon is damned.")
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!
Your read of Horn’s position seems implausible to me. You accuse him of positing “sheer fiat,” but he wants to distinguish his view from one that would have the Church “create” the canon. Why would he bother to distinguish “declaring” from “creating” if “declaring” just ends up being “sheer fiat”?
I wonder if you’re not missing a distinction somewhere along the line, and setting up an opposition where there isn’t one. For example, if someone asks why they have to believe in the Trinity, one kind of answer is “because it’s true,” and another kind of answer is “because the Church has dogmatically declared it and you’re Catholic.” (Protestants only accept the first kind of reason as infallibly binding, of course.) But if someone said, “well, HOW we know it’s true doesn’t matter all that much because given that the Holy Spirit protects the Church from error, if she declares something, it necessarily must be true,” that would totally noncompetitive with thinking there are in fact really good grounds beyond the Church’s authority to think a thing is true. So it can be the case that the Apostles play an indispensable role in revealing the canon, even if we aren’t sure all the nitty-gritty of how that worked out, because at the end of the day the results of their labors and that of their disciples have been declared trustworthy by the Catholic Church.
This seems like a pretty reasonable take that doesn’t involve the prima facie absurdity that Horn would distinguish his view from “creating” the canon and then immediately defend a sheer fiat view.
The problem there is that Trent explicitly says "it doesn't matter whether a given writing was written by an apostle or by a group or who it was written by"--which means the fiat of the church ends up being indistinguishable from her just creating it.
In other words, saying the church "declared" the canon, since a declaration can either be a creative one or one of recognition. If "who wrote the book" or internal features of these books did not ground the church's declaration, then declaration amounts to creation. If they did, then it amounts to recognition.
Watching the video, here is the full quote:
“Catholics don’t have the problem of having to ground Scripture’s authority in direct Apostolic authorship or citation, because the Church authoritatively teaches which human documents are Scripture regardless of which individual or individuals actually wrote these documents. Paul says he used secretaries to write his letters, so we know multiple people would be involved in these works. We don’t ground our authority for the canon of scripture on strict authorship claims that modern scholarship comes into doubt. Instead, we ground them in the perennial tradition of the Catholic Church, safeguarded by the Church’s teaching office.”
So I don’t think it’s a reasonable read to say Horn thinks it could be just literally anyone at all. The words “direct” and “strict” are key here. His example is also illuminating—he’s thinking of Paul using secretaries, or, as you point out, Peter teaching John Mark. But there are cases where we don’t know and cannot verify that this kind of relationship existed, so although we trust the author SOMEHOW had access to the deposit of faith, we can only know THAT he did because of the Magisterium. Horn is focusing on the epistemic problem of how one could “check” which writings are inspired, not the metaphysical question of just what makes for a New Testament text.
I literally never said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all who wrote Scripture." Given that he does not outline *what the declaration is actually based on*, it collapses into a creative declaration. If the declaration of which books were canonical were based on particular and specific reasons, then it's a declaration of recognition.
If you declare Jesus is King, that's not making Jesus be king by fiat.
And if you declare Jesus as King, you are only giving a *recognition* and hence "declaration" reduces to one of recognition, not a median between recognition and creation.
It means there's an ontological significance that the declaration is not altering. So, yes, itis only a recognition. That's the whole point. He then goes into what he is recognizing. I'm really not sure what your position is here. If the church just recognizes scripture then how is that sheer fiat?
He explicitly denies that the church merely does so at @2:15 of his video. You're trying to smooth him over in a way that doesn't work with what he actually said.
I can't read your mind, but I'll assume you mean hedenies the church merely recognizes scripture. He says here that the church doesn't discover nor discern, but, declares.
[00:02:00.520 --> 00:02:03.360] However, the church didn't discover the canon
[00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:04.520] of scripture either.
[00:02:04.520 --> 00:02:07.280] The church didn't unknowingly discover the canon
[00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:09.560] through a providentially guided process,
[00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:12.200] like how Pharaoh's wife providentially found Moses
[00:02:12.200 --> 00:02:13.600] in the Nile River.
[00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:16.080] Rather than unilaterally determine,
[00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:19.600] or fortunately discover the canon of scripture,
[00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:24.240] the church authoritatively declared the canon of scripture.
[00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:27.760] So not determine or discover, but declare.
I literally never said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all who wrote Scripture." Given that he does not outline *what the declaration is actually based on*, it collapses into a creative declaration. If the declaration of which books were canonical were based on particular and specific reasons, then it's a declaration of recognition.
This is a false dichotomy, just because Trent says specific authorship is not central to whether something is canonical, doesn't mean it can only be canonical by fiat. Trent says in the video, quoting Vatican I, that inspiration by God is the central characteristic. Whether Paul used secretaries, or 2 Peter was written by someone close to Peter doesn't make or break the canon for Catholics. Since the Catholic canon is based on the declaration of the church throughout time, there are other criteria's that the church used in play as well, such as orthodoxy (does it contain orthodox doctrine), catholicity (is the book widely accepted), liturgical use (is the book widely read and used for worship).
That being said, your explanation for the canon, at least with regards to Hebrews, is ahistorical. Why is being written prior to 70 AD a characteristic of infallibility? That seems entirely arbitrary. Can you name one early church writer you sites being written prior to 70 AD as a characteristic of infallibility? Does all scripture have to be written prior to 70 AD? If so, you'll have to throw out some books. Or this just an ad hoc criteria that you made up just for book of Hebrews? I think it is the latter.
Individuals disputed the deuterocanonical, but can you name one church council that did? As far as I am aware, the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage all included them. As did Florence and eventually Trent.
Most protestant denominations do not have a teaching authority outside of scripture. When I was a protestant (EFCA), my pastor labored to show that he and the church have no authority in themselves, but only Word of God has authority. I would not have agreed to your claim that the consent of the church is a teaching authority. The only protestants I can think of that would agree with that would be Anglicans.
I literally never said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all wThe Sho wrote Scripture." Given that he does not outline *what the declaration is actually based on*, it collapses into a creative declaration. If the declaration of which books were canonical were based on particular and specific reasons, then it's a declaration of recognition. Either way, it collpases into one or the other.
I literally never said the fact that it was written before 70AD is what makes it infallible. It is astounding to me how frequently RC theo bro types will go onto Protestant materials, claim misrepresentation, and misrepresent the counter arguments. That shows something not healthy in the movement.
I said that the fact that it was written prior to 70AD raises the likely hood it's putting to writing apostolic teaching because it's in the lifetime of the apostles. I cited Timothy and its connection the church of Rome to heighten that claim.
The Synod of Laodicea did not. "But the original text of Laodicea is spotty"--but the records that come in the 4th century leave them, and that accords will with Cyril's Catechetical Lectures (which were widely spread btw), Athanasius's Festal Letters, and yes other individuals *who were highly esteemed in the church at large*. Councils and synods aren't the only relevant factors here, or else we'd find someone like John of Damascus not holding the opinions he does.
That just shows you haven't done much reading on classical Protestantism. Lutherans use this principle pretty widely as well.
I never said that you said "Trent thinks it could be anyone at all wThe Sho [sic] wrote Scripture." lol. I don't understand where that is coming from.
At 2:31, Trent does outline what the declaration was based on: "it did this through the liturgy, the proclamations of regional councils, and finally through infallible declarations at ecumenical councils." None of the councils believed themselves to be declaring scripture to be a creative declaration or based on sheer fiat.
Most protestants are not classical protestants. Yes, technically, you really can't make any statement that "Protestant's believe X" since there are very few beliefs that Protestants agree one. On the whole, Trent is right to say that Protestants lack teaching authority outside of scripture, and most Protestants would agree to that and say all teaching authority is derived and subordinate to scripture.
Does Horn really not think his church has any good reasons for including the books we have in the NT canon apart from the ‘church declares it so’? You can bet if there was disagreement between RCs and Prots over a particular book (like there is for the OT) he would present all the good historical arguments for why RC’s are correct. But he can’t do that for NT books otherwise he is admitting Prots really don’t have a canon problem, but instead, stand on solid ground. It seems that apologetics sometimes prevents people from realising the truth on a matter.
Just watch the video. He's not giving an accurate summary.
How so? I didn't say Trent *thinks* the magisterium has no reason for why it made its declarations. I said saying that a book need not be canonized for apostolicity or origins of authorship reduces a "declaration" to a creative declaration.
> We know the Catholic church preserves apostolic teachings because we can trust the Holy Spirit protected God's church.
Idk wym. He does accept apostolic succession undergirded by the Holy Spirit. His position isn't to limit that, but to characterize why the church is important in maintaining the tradition of scripture. If you simply used secular scholars then you'd never get the whole Bible. If you simply used scriptural coherency then you'd only get a list of 13/27 books of nt. Am I mischaracterizing you?
"He does accept apostolic succession undergirded by the Holy Spirit. His position isn't to limit that, but to characterize why the church is important in maintaining the tradition of scripture. If you simply used secular scholars then you'd never get the whole Bible. If you simply used scriptural coherency then you'd only get a list of 13/27 books of nt. Am I mischaracterizing you?"
Yes, you are. My argument isn't that we should appeal to secular scholars--I don't know why you'd think that. Protestants have *never* said the church isn't important to maintaining the tradition of Scripture.
Trent is saying that the church recognizes the authoritativeness of Scripture regardless of alleged authorship (he uses the word "regardless"--that's him, not me). That makes all the difference. We are saying the church recognizes the authority of Scripture by recognizing authorship and relation of the letter to the apostles, and has the aid of the Spirit to do so. That means the space that RCs use to try to open up a doctrine of the infallibility of the church falls apart: it's not that the church infallibly discerns some nebulous "authority" to these books, but discerns the teaching of the apostles--which means she is always accountable to that teaching, and therefore subject to that teaching's judgment.
He wasn't saying you should appeal to secular authors nor use scriptural coherency. He wasn't saying you do so nor will do so. He was giving a standard treatment on some of the more popular ways to declare scripture as canonical. He's not even necessarily talking to Anglicans since Anglicans accept apostolic succession. He's talking about sola scriptura people who do not accept apostolic succession but instead borrow from it when it's needed to establish scriptural canon.
He also gave several points for why using author or relation-to-author standards have issues. We simply don't have access to those relations ("like when Paul forgets who he baptized when he was writing for Corinthians,").
We need an equivalent of the fedora meme for troods to shut these kinds of lowbrow polemics down for good.
What do you think about using these criteria to argue that the Didache is inspired? If someone established that, similar to Hebrews, the Didache was written early and was intended to preserve apostolic teaching would it follow that the Didache is inspired? It seems to me that even if someone presented convincing historical arguments for both of these conclusions that that is just not sufficient for concluding that they are divinely inspired. (Perhaps it is necessary though)
Right, because the community that received this text evidently did not remember its origin or its connection with the apostle, it always remained dubious and even possibly misrepresenting itself about its origins. So the way the community of the church received these texts help us discern their relation to the apostles, given the gift of the Spirit that the church has. On the other hand, Hebrews doesn't make a claim about its authorship, has a plausible connection to both Timothy and the Church of Rome, and is plausibly written before 70AD--all of these data points together are indicia towards *apostolicity* (does this text actually put to writing what the apostles were preaching by someone connected to the apostles?).
So even though Hebrews is formally anonymous, its connection to Timothy and the Church of Rome is evinced in the letter itself at the end, the plausibility of that connection increased by its publication prior to 70AD, and the community that received it evidently remembered it as putting to writing the apostle's teaching.
I guess my issue is that it still doesn’t seem that divine inspiration follows from apostolicity! At least in this mere sense of accurately putting to writing what the apostles teach. Imagine we discovered a letter from Saint Paul that approved of the Didache and said that a disciple of Peter composed it, it still doesn’t seem like we would know that it is inspired (maybe we would know it is free from error).
Also, do you think that the Church was guided by the Spirit in discerning the canon? I have a hard time seeing how this preserves sola scriptura if this is so. It seems to me that insofar as a person is guided by the Spirit they cannot error!
I don't think that example shows that inspiration doesn't follow from apostolicity. If we found a letter where St. Paul approved it, I'd argue it should be part of the canon!
I do--which is why I've framed the deeper logic of Sola Scriptura as better stated in terms of Sola Apostolica. See the paper attached above!
If, as you say, "the actual consent of the church through time" is your teaching authority, wouldn't the fact that the Deuterocanonical books were treated as scripture by the vast majority of the Church over most of her history suggest that they are canonical?
The fact that the books were universally read as scripture in liturgy, were used like scripture by theologians, and were included in canon lists at both regional and ecumenical councils suggests that the vast majority of the church thought they were scripture. The inclusion of them in the Vulgate is significant as well; if the entire Western church was using a bible that included the Deuterocanon, you could say that the church consented to the books' use as scripture.
Again , if your standard for which traditions are apostolic is "the actual consent of the church through time" then you can't turn around and say that the small minority of scholars who historically argued against the deuterocanon represent some kind of consensus. The majority view of the church was obviously that the deuterocanonicals were part of scripture; a handful of dissenters doesn't mean that the books didn't receive assent as scripture. If 95% of the Church's bishops, theologians, priests, and lay-people assented to the deuterocanonical books as scripture, by any normal definition of consensus you would say "this doctrine won assent through time." It seems to me as though you are treating the minority view regarding the canon as if it was the majority view. This seems like an arbitrary move in order to make a historical justification of the Protestant canon. Why do you think that the minority voices of those who didn't think the deuterocanonicals were scripture should outweigh the large majority who thought they were?
This is not a small minority: https://javierperdomo.substack.com/p/church-fathers-and-medievals-on-the-753
In no sense is this a "fringe" view.
Ok, if the Catholic cedes that the exclusion of the deuterocanons was not a fringe view, how widespread do you think the view was? Did 20% of the Church think they weren’t scripture? 50%? That seems far-fetched, given that the deuterocanons were
- Read as scripture in both Eastern and Western Liturgy,
- Included in the Latin version of the bible and in-part in all Greek Septuagint manuscripts, which were both used by the churches for ~1000 years
- Embraced in conciliar discussions of what is included in scripture.
Those seem like acts of assent by the church to those books as scripture. I don’t think that these are examples of “ecclesiastical fiat” either, which is relevant because Trent Horn specifically cited all three of those examples as avenues through which the Church witnessed (or declared assent) to the canon. The existence of some minority dissent (even if it’s a significant minority) doesn’t signal widespread dissent, especially when we have clear historical data that suggests widespread use of the deuterocanon as scripture.
I guess this opens the discussion of how theological consensus works when the issue isn’t directly addressed within scripture. Does the church express its faith primarily through the voices of individual theologians, or through creeds, conciliar declarations, and her liturgy? What is to be given more weight when trying to figure out what the historical consensus of the church was on an issue?
It seems to me like you are elevating the testimony of theologians over the testimony of councils and liturgy. If somebody from the 21st century was trying to figure out which books were considered by Christians to be scripture, the books included in Christian bibles and used in Christian worship would likely be a more compelling witness to the majority christian view of the canon than the opinions held by biblical scholars and theologians about the canon.