[Music] ladies and gentlemen their ears are mine right there out now in the audience who is suffering from the gout there's a man I feel it right now put your hands on the screen and pray with me now friends there's a man who's got the gout and he can't sing from his giblet all the wonderful magnificent Praises of the lord I want you to get your old school field study Bible our friends brothers and sisters I want you to open up to the pages of Janice I want you to put your tongue if you've got the gal right there on the pages I want you to let that magical book heal you right now because I feel it there's a man and a woman with a girl right now there's 23 people with got on their foot there's one on my chin there's five men right now that's got Gout deep down in their esophagus I want you to feel the power that James L Schofield said about and when you put your tongue inside of that little bit of Scofield Study Bible that you got you're gonna be free and friends the vowels in today's video I want to cover the top issues that relate to the the problem of Soul scripture or the problem of the idea that the scriptures alone are the final sole Authority the infallible guide for the church and this is going to relate really to all the protestantism this is going to include the main reasons why almost all Protestants end up leaving when they become Orthodox or whatever is usually geared around this issue of the Canon and the notion of tradition being used in the formation of the Canon so I want to cover a couple topics in regard to Soul scripture and why it's mainly the big issue that uh really undercuts the entire Protestant Reformation if it's false and the first regards the individual existential elements as to why people are convinced of this and what convinces them what are the means of you know convincing people to believe this and what is the church usually done in history when it comes to Big disputed questions including the disputation the history of the formation of the biblical Canon itself but the Canon means the books that go into the Bible so we're not talking about canon law we're not talking about Pirates and cannons we're talking about canon in a sense of a rule for the texts that are considered normative for the church that's one issue which relates to how do we know what the right list of books is right and that's an epistemic issue an issue of certitude an issue of historical factuality there's a separate issue which is normativity in terms of Ethics which is about who has the authority to bind anybody in the history of the church to any kind of list or any kind of morals or any kind of excommunication or anything like that and usually these two positions of these two different categories are conflated in a lot of the apologetic debates and discussions that are hot for example a lot of times Roman Catholics and Protestants go back and forth debating with each other do you have any certitude about the list of the books without the pope do you have a way to know what the doctrine is without the pope and they kind of go back and forth between one hand you know citing the papacy the other hand citing the individual leading of the Holy Spirit and really both of this of these Topics in regards to the Protestant Catholic debate are missing the issue which is twofold first again being the question of what are the factual historical elements that relate to how they came the Canon came to be and in this separate issue of how does the individual attain certitude about which list of books which church church has the right Canon so we're going to cover those two different issues we're going to start with the historical and the factual first so it's true that the New Testament makes a lot of references to tradition I'm sure most people are familiar with 2nd Thessalonians were Saint Paul gives the command to continue on both the written and the oral Traditions if you look at his letters to Timothy Paul tells Timothy multiple things that are really problematic for the Protestant positions such as passing on everything that he heard from Timothy in the presence of many witnesses and remember in Acts Paul taught in Ephesus for three years day and night so this is an entire body of apostolic teaching that is not confined to two letters written to Timothy or just the written text there's actually an injunction to continue on all of the oral teachings and this is done by the laying on of hands which passes on the gift of the holy spirit so in the Orthodox view that's Apostolic succession and so the tradition the Apostolic tradition the apostolic deposit is in more than one case beyond the Thessalonians text expanded Beyond just the written text another important point is that when Protestants encountered this issue they oftentimes refer to text in the Old Testament as if there was a set clear Canon of scripture amongst the Jews in Jesus time and what's amazing about that is that in one of the best Protestant treatments of this topic the famous Evangelical scholar FF Bruce in his book kind of scripture which I highly recommend Protestants read he admits that there was not actually a fixed cannon in the time of Christ so the idea that there was this Sola scripture attitude in the Old Testament is not the case I mean you even have Isaiah by the way to the law and to the testimony so there's a written law there's also the testimony which could be the oral preaching of the prophets who again function much like a preacher in the Old Testament not primarily as somebody who only predicted the future so note that the famous scholar FF Bruce uh says and this is on page 37 of his text that there was no fixed Old Testament Canon and so it doesn't work if you're a Protestant to appeal to Old Testament texts as if they somehow prove the doctrine of soul scriptura he also admits on page 42 that for the history of the church really there's nothing else we can say other than that competent authorities many years after the apostles fixed the Canon in other words quote the candidate was fixed by competent authorities which were utilized in the principles of the worship Community this is an admission that it wasn't just textual Scholars and church fathers looking at the veracity of the text in an academic way but the references that are used in the Liturgy that's the ordered worship service which is another direct appeal to tradition because we don't have in the New Testament and explicit worship service given by the apostles that this is known by tradition and we know this because in the apostolic seas that is the Seas that the churches that the apostles went and established throughout the Roman empire particularly the ones that became very prominent Alexandria Rome Antioch Etc in these Apostolic Seas we have traditional liturgies that come from the first and second century and they're another witness to the history of the church relying on tradition not just for the Bible but also for how she worshiped and remember in The Book of Leviticus it's very important how we worship God in fact nadav and abihu are killed because they they kind of do a DIY worship service right where they basically are like evangelicals kind of doing their own thing worshiping God in their own way based on what they think is the case and of course they end up dead so we have to take worship very seriously and in the Orthodox view it's no different now it's very serious you can't just make up your own way to worship so this idea that the apostles didn't leave a form of worship in a liturgical pattern not only is it not is it not in the in the scriptures we don't know what the worship service was like we immediately have to rely on the tradition and testimony of the liturgies that are different from the church fathers I'm talking about there are writings of the church fathers but there's also liturgical rights and traditions and that's how we know the way to worship God properly is that every one of these Apostolic churches that was founded has this liturgical worship and it goes beyond just those big seas that you've heard about in the ancient Church like Rome Alexander and Antioch it's also Ephesus it's also Thessaloniki and there are Orthodox churches in in those cities today that descend from the very churches that Paul was writing to so they know we know based on this tradition how to worship God and you're getting you're getting the same admission from the top Evangelical Scholars who have studied the history of the formation of the Canon and how it's inextricably linked with the celebration of the Liturgy another example of this is the daily lectionaries the daily readings that are done and what texts are cited in these ancient daily readings if the Bible was cited in a lot of these then the that would be a good evidence for the or the attestation to that's that being canonical that being an Apostolic and inspired text if you enjoyed this video be sure and take use of the promo code for the show sponsor for this channel sponsor which is chalk.com that's choq.com and you can find the links in the description below the video you get 50 off any of the great organic actually better than organic supplements that they offer at chalk.com if you want to support my channel the best way to do that is to head on over there and use that promo code j50 that's j50 to get 50 off you can also use the recurring subscription of j53 life that's j53life if you want to sign up for automatic recurring subscriptions on those excellent supplements health is absolutely necessary in combating the toxic culture that we live in I also would say if you want to get access to my books head on over to the shop at my website and get signed copies there thank you fired text but not every one of those texts for example the gospel of Matthew identifies its author so even Apostolic authorshipman's own cases is something that has to be relied upon in terms of church tradition oral tradition right the the Sea of Alexandria has the tradition that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew and so it is called the gospel of Matthew we don't have author grafa or as it is known the Inspire the direct texts of the Apostles himself we don't have the letters that Paul himself wrote we have copies later on which we believe are authentic but the only way that we really have an attestation to that authenticity is by first relying on the reliability of the church to preserve those copies and to pass them on Faithfully to hand them down in the various bishoprics and C's now episode succession is not an infallible guide in every case it doesn't mean that every single church that has a succession won't or can't fall away they can apocalypse two and three has many warnings against Apostolic churches that if they fail in their mission if they apostatize if they teach heresy their lampstand will be removed they'll be taken out of the church so don't misunderstand what I'm saying as if this is some automatic mechanical guide by which every single Bishop that except that extends from the time of the Apostles is necessarily protected from apostasy her heresy or Schism however when it comes to the overall maintenance of the tradition that the church has passed down that Apostolic deposit we can see that it has not fundamentally changed in the Orthodox Church it retains that same fundamental deposit from the first thousand years into the second thousand years now between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics I think that is pretty clear nowadays that the Roman Church has deviated especially as we look at the second Millennium of Christianity from what was there in the first thousand years only the Orthodox Church is left as the faithful transmitter of that first thousand years of Christianity the Protestant Church which is divided into countless sex and divisions is all over the place when it comes to this question but the easiest way I think to refute the Protestant tradition so-called so-called tradition is to go to the root of it what does it hinge everything on well it hinges everything on the infallible inspired texts alone as if you don't need a body of people to interpret and enforce that text and that's my next point which is about normativity normativity relates to a body of people alive who can't enforce and has authority to enforce these texts now imagine you know in Corinthians for example we have Paul talking about doing an excommunication and he lays down this as a principle that the church has the authority to do that if there's not any living normative Authority there's no way for any body of people to actually enforce any kind of actual excommunication because if you're a Protestant and you get excommunicated which is 99 of Protestant churches don't even do excommunications anymore which shows by the way another example of how they are not actually Apostolic not only can you just go to another church you can just start your own church because there's not any grounds by which anyone can authoritatively enforce doctrines and you have to have that given the fact that the New Testament passes on this principle of excommunicating if nobody if and if it's all relativized based on the right of private interpretation normativity is not possible these two things don't work together you can't have a body of people with authority that can enforce something and excommunicate people and at the same time every individual has the right to private interpretation by which they can go and join any other church or start their own sect down the street at the strip mall so essentially all of protestantism is premised on the removal of Authority from the historical church Orthodoxy is grounded on the idea that the church historically in synods has the authority to excommunicate and enforce that excommunication such that those people are no longer in the Orthodox Body of Christ right so that alone is really an attestation to the the principle of passing on this kind of a tradition I'm just using excommunication as an example the same principles apply to the formation of the biblical Canon and if you read Bruce's book for example he goes into great detail throughout the entire text of showing how a lot of the books that were disputed for many centuries such as the Catholic Epistles or the Book of Revelation right it was people like Saint athanasius who went and had to defend the inclusion of those texts when other seas and bishoprics were doubting the authenticity and inspiration and inclusion of those texts saint athanasius for example convinces Rome to accept Hebrews and this is discussed at length in uh Bruce's book on pages 220 and 221 and the same goes for other disputed texts so in other words when it comes to the root of the issue when it comes to the his you cannot divorce the history of the church and the Bishops who are way after the apostles from the decision about what books go into the Bible this means that the Bible can't be divorced from the community the liturgical worshiping Community which put that book together and made it part of the church's liturgy in other words the the Bible is really a liturgical book it is not primarily a book that you study in your study corner it's mainly a communal worship service book meant to be read in the hearing of the rest of the community and this is a radically different approach than the Protestant view which typically has at least in the history of protestantism taken the Bible and mainly made it a subject of academic discourse and then we get large corporations that are then in charge of the translation and printing of the text does this make any sense no the church is who hands down this text the churches who receives the text and passes on that text and the irony is that in many Protestant Evangelical Scholars history of the formation of the Canon all of these principles are admitted and so if that's the case then the Protestants and the Calvinists and these kinds of uh apologists can no longer use this argument that it's a fallible collection of infallible books that's their argument well if the starting principle for the collection of the books is fallible then it's entirely plausible that you have the wrong list of books and so it really defeats your second claim that the books are infallible because you might have the wrong list and in fact the history of protestantism has textual Scholars particularly German hire critics removing books that they don't think should be in the Canon they're just following in the footsteps of Luther who as everybody knows doubted the Book of James doubt of the book of Hebrews and even at times speaks of other books as doubtful which is a kind of marcianism because he didn't really like the Old Testament either well Luther's forebearers Luther's uh excuse me Luther's a success Source in the academic sphere it just continued that higher critical tradition and deconstructed the texts all the way down to basically nothing that's where all of higher criticism comes from right this idea that these texts are not reliable because it does turn out that we rely on the history of the church and people after the death of the Apostles to determine what books went into the Bible and if we can reject the church and the decision of the Canon well then it only logically Falls that then we can reject the books in the Bible you see so it's a logical follow through uh in terms of the logic of protestantism itself other books by the way I test to this as well there's the famous biblical Baptist scholarship you mean Lee McDonald the formation of the Christian biblical Canon and towards the end of McDonald's book he actually gives multiple appendices where not only does he show the dozens of times that the deuteron canonical books are cited in the New Testament he actually shows the multiple varying cannons amongst the church fathers over various centuries for the first five or six centuries you have multiple variations of which Canon is correct right you have Origins list you have Jerome's list athanasius is a list you have all these varying lists and it's not until very late in the game 500 600 Etc that we start to get a crystallization and an agreement on what the books of the New and Old Testament are in terms of the official listing particularly by the Council of Trello if you're Orthodox so for us you know this is proof an attestation to the fact that as Saint Paul says the church is the pillaring ground of Truth what he says to Timothy it is not the written text which is the pillar and ground of Truth sure the written texts are infallible they're inspired they point us to the person of Christ but they are not themselves Christ Jesus says you search the scriptures because you think that it's in them that you have eternal life wouldn't it is they that bear witness of me so the book tells you and points you to the second person of the godhead the book is not an equivalent to the second person of the godhead and in recent years a lot of Protestants have been trying to kind of make sense of this point and work this into their system and particularly more classical Protestants there's Keith Matheson's book the shape of Soul scripture where a lot more uh place is being given to tradition a lot more attestation a lot more admission is given to this generic idea of tradition But the irony is that they're all really missing the whole point there's no such thing as a generic tradition there's only a specific living body a living community that was in continuity with what came before that has a given Authority by Christ in terms of the breathing honor of the Holy Spirit who can then in successive Generations make decisions about doctrines and about how to rule and govern the church that's why the church has synods it's synodal and it's local in the enforcement of those sentence that's how the Orthodox Church is governed in terms of collegiality and synonymity really there's no other church that has retained that anymore some Protestant some Calvinists have an idea of synodality but it really doesn't matter what some 21st century Presbyterian tiny group in America is doing because that is absolutely no historical connection with the Church of the first thousand years which has Bishops and episcopate the real presence of the sacrifice and offering of the Eucharist and The Divine Liturgy which has an ecumenical council called by Emperors right the Byzantine Symphonia idea none of that none of that is anywhere in any of the magisterial reformers of the Continental reformers in fact their positions are all based on a rejection ultimately of the first thousand years of the church in fact Alistair McGrath the first uh the famous Protestant scholar uh has uh you know shaken things up for many years because he published his famous book eusticia day admitting that for the first 1500 years of the church nobody taught Martin Luther's Sola feed a Doctrine now uh these are the top Protestant Scholars out there nowadays and they're they've really been forced to admit a lot of these things and so the issue here is just that as Protestants if Sola fide goes and if solo scriptura goes that means protestantism goes and really the only thing left is Orthodoxy because as we've shown in countless other videos the robin Catholic Church is not in continuity with and the successor to the first thousand years of Christianity only Orthodox Christianity upholds and still transmits those that first Millennia tradition