HT200.

History of Doctrine
Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 1. Intro to the History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures

John Hannah

Now, we come then today to the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. And if you've read Lesson
Two, this is how I would summarize it. I would summarize it – I'm asking two questions.
One, what is the extent of the Canon? The Bible didn't fall out of heaven bound. How do
you and I know there are 66 books in the Bible? What is the intellectual validity of Roman
Catholicism having 73? Okay? If there is no verse in the Bible that says 66, why do you
and I cling to it, who seek to be profoundly conformed to the dictates of that book? Those
kind of questions, okay? Ha!

And the second question is this: So how many books are in this thing? So it raises the
question of authority. And whether you're Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Protestant,
we would argue there are three sources of authority. One source is tradition. The second,
but not second in value – but second, is the Holy Scriptures. Third is reason, rationalism.
Fourth is experience. So far so good? How you arrange those in sequence determines
whether you're a Protestant, Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox, okay? It's sort of fun.

The other question is how did we understand these books in the sense of are they true? How
did we look upon them as authority? And my answer to those two questions are these.
Here's the answer. And you can challenge it; it's sort of fun. I do not the think the question
of Canon was settled to the 16th Century. When you read the pages of 15 centuries, there is
no council arguing authoritatively, ecumenically for 66 or 73 or – let's see – 80 books.
There are 80 if you include the Apocryphal books, 81 I think. So far so good?

So I don't think we settled the Canon issue until we settled another issue, which is usually
how it happens. And the other issue was, how do you understand redemption. And that's a
question of the 16th Century. I don't want to undermine your faith. Ha! This section always
scares me. No, my faith is not in the book. My faith is in the God, who by the Spirit
revealed His Son in the book, right? That's important to know.

When I lay my head on the pillow for the last time, I'm not going to – I'm going to want the
Bible read to me, but I'm going to anticipate the One whom of it speaks in a very serious
manner. The revelation of God will cease in its written form, but not in its living form. And
through its written form, I have found the living form. That kind of stuff. We all know that
stuff. And here's my argument. The Canon isn't settled 'til the 16th Century. That's why
there is a dispute today. So what criteria did we use is another issue.

Second, there is no question raised in the church by anyone about the integrity of these
books. We may doubt the number, but we don't doubt the integrity. There is no – now, there
was a Marcian, but he comes and goes. No lingering tradition in the early church. Or to say
it another way is to say it this way. What was not settled for 15 centuries – and the church
apparently never thought to deal with it. You don't answer questions you don't need to. We
live in a post-enlightened world. We've been trained in it. Our training is largely scholastic,
and we will not tolerate the ability not to answer things.

We create the answers. Our church before us never had that problem. What is assumed is
the quality of the books. If a book is accorded to be read, it's in, it's true. To be read is a
technical term. You stand in the worship service, you read the book. Paul said to Timothy –
of all of his instructions, "Do not neglect the reading of the Scriptures." Why? Church is
illiterate. They do not have a Bible. Their exposure to anything in a written form comes in
the worship assembly. So they may never have seen Romans, but they met the Savior.

Now, what is assumed in our day and rarely debated is the Canon. I can't prove it, right. I
cannot prove it. I am willing to intellectually accept it because it reveals a greater One than
itself is and, therefore, I cling to it.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 2. The Scriptures in the Ancient Church Part 1

John Hannah

So what this lesson plan does is look at how we looked at those two questions in the ancient
church, really the first three centuries. And what I would argue – and then, in the ancient
church, about from the Savior to the fall of the Great Empire, whenever that was. And you
can date it 484 to 600. Scholars just leap around based upon criteria. That era is divided
into four parts: Age of the apostles, the data of Scripture, age of the fathers – the first early
writers we got, some of them coterminous with the apostles, apparently.

The nature of the literature defines and frames that corpus. It's naïve; it's unspeculative; it
doesn't raise any questions. You're not going to get questions answered. They're willing to
live with what you and I think are conundrums. They just don't care. But in the middle of
the 2nd Century, they have to care because our critics come. The early church is very small,
and because we were so small and a mass of people in the empire, no one really cared for
us. They looked upon us as just another endless Judaistic squabble. You get three Jews
together, you've got four opinions.

Christianity is Jewish to the core. In fact, it's the fulfillment of Judaism by our bias. It's
what Judaism pointed to. But by the middle of the 2nd Century, after the big Bar Kokhba
rebellion, that destroyed the nation, finally. Judaism and Christianity are seen as separate
entities. Therefore, they come after us. When they come after us, we have to defend
ourselves, okay? And it creates an era called the Apologists. They write these massive
defenses, and in the process begin to explain the coherency of our message. And then peace
comes in Constantine, and that changes everything for a millennium or so.

So we could trace it through the ancient here. Here's the 2nd Century church for the empire.
It stretches from England to north of the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Indus Valley. It's
huge. When you walk among the ruins you get the impression that there's no such a thing as
permanence, right? Here are the early fathers. Most of them have odd names and we
wouldn't name our kids this way, obviously. But they're not consulting us. They're the
closest to the Bible, the closest to the Apostles. They're our first look into the Apostles.

This is what I would say. You don't find a doctrine of inspiration in these people. They
certainly revere the Old Testament because when they quote it they say, "The Holy Spirit
says." So it seems as though the Bible of the early church clearly was the Old Testament
Scriptures. We would say the Old Covenant Scriptures. How many books are in the Old
Covenant Scriptures? The Hebrew Scriptures is the better way to say it for us. How many?
It's not rocket science, not even a trick. How many books are in the Old Testament Hebrew
Scriptures?

Student: Twenty seven.

Dr. Hannah: Thirty-nine by our reckoning. Roman Catholics have 46, but we'll skip them
for now. So far so good? How do you know there are thirty-nine? Because a Jewish
council, in the aftermath of the fall of the city of Jerusalem, gathered at Jamnia in Northern
– today – Lebanon and held a council in 90 AD called Jamnia, and that is our first record.
Okay? We had the Septuagint. That told us something, okay – the Greek translation.
Problems with Jamnia is it's not recorded by anyone until the 4th Century. So far so good?

Nobody in Christendom doubts the 39 books as part of our Canon, no one does. The
question is, are there more than thirty-nine? So far all of us agree that there are 27 Greek
Scriptures. No one disagrees with that. We're dealing with a few books in between. Now,
here's the question. So it seems to me that it's right to say they had a high view of Scripture.
It seems to me that when they quote the words of Paul and Jesus, or what the writers say
Jesus said, if you're thinking technically, they don't elevate it as Scripture. You don't find
these quotation formulas.

They revered them. They respected them. But did they accord them the level of Scripture?
No, apparently not. It takes time to think through these things that you and I take for
granted. Therefore, if a – and they're largely illiterate people and not many wise. So if you
were asked in the early 2nd Century, "Where did you get this stuff?" When Jesus is
portrayed by the Romans criticizing us, they portray an animal on the cross and the animal
is a jackass. That's what they thought of us.

No one wore a cross around their neck. It was a symbol of shame to the Romans. It was a
death that no Roman ever would face, no matter how serious his crime. But they accorded it
to Jesus, so they're really saying, "We don't think much of this guy." So if you're saying that
He is your Redeemer, and a person said to you, "Where'd you get that stuff?" and you were
illiterate – in other words, the message is not passed in books. It's passed by word of mouth.
It's passed down the alley and over the street. It's passed by saying, "Look, this is what we
all were but we've been changed.

The moral life of the Christian became the testimony, that kind of stuff. My point is that –
oh, this is by and by – this is important to know that the empire’s divided linguistically and
philosophically, and they become ships passing in the dark when they talk, like you and I
do with our wives. Mars and Venus. I don't know how that lady speaks. She uses – we're
divided by a common language.

In the west, they spoke Latin. Latin, you know, the languages don't match. There's freedom,
liberty, equivalents are not always possible, so language is very hard. Latin versus Greek –
philosophically is important. In the east, they are devotees of Philo and Plato. So the way
they look at the world is looking up. The Romans are practicalists, realists. When they look
at the world, they look at it, so that the world is real. But to the Greek, it's a symbol. That's
a totally different way of thinking. It'll help you with the Trinity, but it will not help you
with the theanthropic Christ, okay?

These are hard. You and I have a volume we can turn to and read called systematics, and
shruff and go off and not realize that it took us years to figure this stuff out. This is a
difficult book. We've done the best we can for 2,000 years. But this is what they would say.
They wouldn't quote Scripture. They would simply say this. "God gave His message to His
Son. His Son gave it to the Apostles. The apostles have given it to us."

So in other words, the first line of defense of the Gospel message was oral tradition, okay?
Paul says it twice in Thessalonians, "The traditions you have learned from us." Okay? So
this is what it looks like. This is what it would say, that "God gave His message to the
Savior. The Savior gave it to His Apostles, and the Apostles gave it to their successors,"
meaning pastors. And somewhere down in this heap is my pastor, and what he says is true
because he got it directly or indirectly from the Apostles, okay? The assumption is that in
this theory of authority that everybody will agree.

What if they don't? Then you need an authority that judges even the pastors. That will make
us rethink authority and begin to collect – and they'll say, "Wow, these books have been
here. Amazing to us. Maybe we should read them." That kind of stuff. It's really neat how
God protected His Church. Then the point is this. In good times, you can be naïve and it is
wonderful, right? I had no problem with my girls when they were less than a year and could
not walk. I saw really no urgency at all. But if my girls became 19 years-old and could not
walk, it would seem reasonable that I should address that issue. And probably sooner than
19, right?

Until things are challenged, there isn't that much movement, just assumptions, okay? But
the point is that in the late second Century, we began to be attacked for what we taught by
some very high, powerful people. And out of it came a set of literature by a bunch of big-
name guys – or names we can't pronounce – most in the east 'cause that's where the church
began. So the Orthodox churches may be right historically, wrong actually, we would say.
And here are some of the great heresies of the day.

Gnosticism: Christianity doesn't answer a couple of questions. We've invented answers, but
if you know to ask more questions you know how empty they are. And one of our deep
questions that we cannot answer is, is God the author of sin? If God is absolutely sovereign,
then He is responsible for sin. If He is not absolutely responsible for sin then He is not God
because He is not sovereign. Either God is sovereign and not caring or caring and not
sovereign, okay? Well, we'll have to deal with that question.

But what we usually say about it is this. God did not create evil. It's contrary to His
character, which it is. But what God did is He created the person that brought evil.
Therefore, He is not accountable for it. He created the fact – he created the accidents of evil
but not the fact of it; the potential but not the reality. The problem with that is simply this.
He's still culpable; he did it, right? If I saw a baby waddling across Live Oak and an 18
wheeler coming, and I stood there and watched it crush the child and did nothing, even if I
failed in the process of trying, but did nothing, it would be on my conscious the rest of my
life.

God may not be actively responsible for sin, but He is certainly passively responsible for
sin. So the great question you and I have is this: that our scholars don't tell us the answer to
'cause there isn't one. Why did God let the creep in the garden? Had He stopped that sucker
we'd be scott-free, but He didn't. And is He not, therefore, culpable? We would say, "Ah,
we're not going to answer that question." No, we can answer it, but they're all going to fall
on their face if you know enough.

We would say this. "God has revealed Himself truly to His people but not completely."
And there's an infinite mind of God that we must recognize and say, "There's some
questions in life I'll never get to know because it's the difference between the Creator and
the creature. And I don't love Him because I have all the happy answers in the world, that
my intellectual system is superior to every atheist that walks. There are more benefits to
Christianity than there are to other systems. That's not why I believe it. I believe 'cause I've
met the Savior and I'm willing to live and die for it. And I could be wrong. I really could
be."

If you don't have all the answers then there may be answers that invalidate your system.
Ha! If there's no room for faith, there is no faith, right? Oh, we're putting our eggs in the
basket of a person we've never met, but believe in Him more really than the people we
meet, right? That's pretty serious stuff. They've been with us for 1,900 years. They'll be
with us when we pass off the stage.

And the point of all of this is the Gnostics had answers. "God didn't do it. A lesser god did."
No, our God did and I don't understand it, but it does not intellectually threaten me. I'm
willing to have unanswered questions because I think the answers are greater than my
unanswered ones. So those who want to reject my faith have a right to. I could even give
them better arguments for it. I just don't believe them.
Ha! Manichaenism: This is a great one. The god of light, spirits, the mother of light had
whoopee in heaven and made man. This is As the Stomach Turns, The Edge of Night, The
World Tomorrow and General Hospital. And the god of darkness tripped man, plunged him
into a mortal body, so man is a spirit trapped in his mortality, and deliverance is to rise
about your mortality to spirituality. No. The error of that whole darned thing is that God
created the world. It's a darned good place. It just has a bunch of nasty folk in it, for a
while.

And Montanism: Montanists claimed to be – Montanists claimed to be the Holy Spirit,

which was really exciting 'cause if he is then you’ve got to obey the sucker. So that makes
you think about who to listen to. And some guys have great testimonies. Bottom line,
coupled with this persecution, it makes us think about what's real. We were not persecuted
heavily as we all know, but a couple times we really took it.

Now, we could have avoided it really simply, by simply on the Caesar's birthday going to
the temple, buying a piece of meat, offering it to the darned guy and be done with it, take
the piece of meat home and have dinner. That's about all it is. We wouldn't do that. We
wouldn't accord him the place of deity. Therefore, we're atheists. And if we're atheists,
we're a potential danger to the state because the gods might get mad at us; so every draught,
every flood is blamed on us. Every earthquake is blamed on us. Hmm, if you have a piece
of Scripture, you could lose your life.

Now, if you had better second century books like the Didache, and you had the Book of
Romans, and you faced death for not giving up the Scriptures if you were an elder or a
deacon. If you're going to take a chance, what are you going to take a chance on? Romans.
You're going to do it. Now, some just gave up the Scriptures, period. But some didn't.
Because we loved these books, we didn't have a theory to live around them. That's all.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 3. The Scriptures in the Ancient Church Part 2

John Hannah

The church responds to her critics, responds to persecution by the question of authority.
That is a fundamental question. Where do you go for what you believe? You have a right to
believe it. And the church responded in three ways. Some of this we'll come back to: One,
it pressed the doctrine of apostolic succession. Trust your pastor. He's got the goods, okay?
That's going to de-evolve into tragedy. Second, we're going to write creeds like the old
Roman symbol. We'll come to them. And when you come to your baptism, you repeat those
creeds in the water. Why? 'Cause you're confessing your faith.
And the old Roman symbol goes, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty." That's the only
attribute of God we've got there. "And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was
conceived by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. He suffered, died, was buried, and on
the third day He rose again from the dead." Why all that history? Because it's anti-Gnostic.
Jesus was real. Right? He was real. We could touch Him, see Him.

And they finally have to come up with the issue. We've got to collect these books. We've
had them all around. These will answer our ultimate questions and even judge our pastors,
okay? So it took a while to do it. These are the great bishoprics in the empire. The great
bishoprics always get the final answer. Rome is the least important. Alexandria is probably
the most important. Jerusalem has no weight. Antioch is where we first got Christians.
Constantinople is founded in the 4th Century. We'll come back to all of these.

So they press this doctrine of apostolic succession. The bishops had the truth. They pressed
these creeds. Stand in the water, confess your faith. We'll talk about how they did that. And
they began to collect the books. Here's my point. It was a gradual process. There is no
ecumenical council, no gathering of all of our bishops; 318 gathered at Nicaea, 509 at
Chalcedon to take up Trinity and Christology. No meeting on the Holy Scrip[ture] – how
about that? It must have been assumed if you don't question it. No ecumenical council to
address the issue until the 16th Century.

Why do I believe there are 66 books in the Bible? It's really 'cause my mom taught me that.
And mom saw me when I was naked and helpless and she didn't deceive me, so she must
have told me the truth, right? I mean that's how I believe. Ha! Now, first collection that we
have is late second century so we did begin to collect them early. But it questions 1 Peter.
Only two Epistles of John and no 2 Peter. Second Peter is always a problem with me, right?
So it's a collection.

The council of Laodicea contained Baruch instead of Esther. Eeeew! Esther's always a hard
book 'cause there's no reference to God there. What would we want with that book? It's
Persian court records. We would say it speaks loudly of the sovereignty of God. And we
pray that every big kahuna we meet, that the night before we meet him, he has a happy
evening with his wife. Ha! 'Cause if she made him mad, he's going to get me in response.
We know that. God causes insomnia of the king. He can do that.

Now, here's my point. Here's my point and it's in the notes. That the most dominant church
center in the first four centuries was at Alexandria, not Rome for sure. We'll come back to
argue that. The Bishop of Alexandria was the most powerful guy in the Empire, church
wise. He sent out a letter each year that arranged the feast days to coordinate it among all
the churches so they celebrated Pentecost and those things together.

In 366, 367, he sent out a list of books exclusively to be read in the churches, okay? That
list – and I gave it to you in the appendix. In every lesson, there's an appendix. It has a
document that is important. I wanted you to see it, and transparencies, pictures, although I'll
give them to you in PowerPoint. His list contained 39 Old Testament Books, 27 New.
Wow! Twenty-seven matches our 27, the Roman Catholic 27, Orthodox 27. That's it. And
39 Old, with one problem. Esther is missing; Baruch is included.
I was taught at Dallas Seminary that the Easter Letter of Athanasius settled the Canon issue.
It's wrong on two scores. It's right on one; we haven't varied from the 27 New. But it's
wrong on other scores. Athanasius was a great bishop, but he didn't speak for the whole
church. No one does until Gregory comes in the seventh century and we don't believe he
did anyway. Second, Baruch is there, Esther is not. So far so good? They've come a long
way. It's an amazing story if you don't look at what's missing. If you look at what's there,
it's amazing.

And that's my point. No Esther, but Baruch, okay? And if you read through the notes, the
Council of Laodicea – that was a council, not ecumenical. But books are missing.
Augustine argued that 1 and 2 Maccabees were Scripture, Judith was Scripture, Baruch was
Scripture, Ecclesiasticus was Scripture. It isn't settled. It is settled in the Reformation,
okay? Now, if you accord a book Scripture – the books that have trouble, obviously, are 2
Peter 'cause there's nothing in it not someplace else. So the assumption is that God never
tells us twice. But if He didn't, we'd have problems. He hasn't told us enough in repetition.

2 and 3 John have problems. They're small. People didn't know them. They're passed
around. Revelation always has problems. Why? We can't understand a darned thing. And at
the end of the book it says we're cursed if we teach it incorrectly. So the early church
basically said this. John wrote it but not John the Apostle. The text doesn't say that.
Therefore, we don't want to read that book in the church. Read it at home but don't read it in
the church. And we've got a massive argument, linguistically, between Revelation and
John's Gospel that does sustain the notion that they are two different writers. Remember
those old liberal arguments. We just don't buy it anymore. So far so good?

Luther had problems with Hebrews because once he had a problem with Hebrews 6
because Hebrews 6 says that it's impossible to renew them who've fallen away. That isn't
Scripture, but that's Luther. And he had a problem with James, justification by works. So he
didn't like that book. But it gets settled. Now, if it's accorded to be read in the churches –
Canon means standard, that's all it means – then it's true. Nobody debates it.

Here's my last thought – two last thoughts in the notes. One, in the early church tradition
equaled Scripture. The telling of the story and the Scriptures were the same. Why? 'Cause
it's the Gospel. It's not crazy stories. It's not – in other words, the Bible, and the books and
the telling of the story – tradition. So tradition meant the Gospel only are equal. That's
where the Roman Catholics got the crazy idea, and this applied it, okay? Good ideas. Most
ideas are good that are sour. You don't create a bad idea. You create a good idea and
corrupt it, okay?

And the last thought I had in the notes was the early church – and we'll come back and say
this later – they interpreted the Bible literally. The question is what does literal mean? That
is the question, okay? The first look at the Scripture was to take it at surface value. When
they couldn't understand it that way, they took it in a non literal way as the literal way.
What's wrong with that? We don't believe the sun rises. We don't believe the sun is mobile.

But Joshua commanded the sun to stand still. We have solved that problem by a big fat
word, anthropomorphism, and we go our way. But the Bible says the sun rose, right? So we
arbitrarily decide on the anvil of rationalism and that which is true is repeatable and
verifiable. Anomalies are not, so we have to deal with the Scriptures on that. So it becomes
fun. You will struggle with that.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 4. The Scriptures in the the Medieval and Reformation Church Part 1

John Hannah

What we're doing together is we're in the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. There's a debate,
obviously, in a rational person's mind because our faith is built upon two great assumptions.
And those two assumptions, while they are warranted, are not demonstrable finally. And
those two great assumptions we have is that God exists, and this God who has existed and
exists, has revealed Himself through His Son in the volume of a book. Those are our great
Christian assumptions. If you buy those, then we can build an edifice that suggests that we
have a right to believe what this text says. And that's basically the essence of it. And so I
chose to begin with the doctrine of Holy Scriptures. And my point is simply this: that if you
read the pages of the church up through the great Reformation, there is no question about
the integrity of the text. It's simply not raised. The Bible is true is the assumption of the
world, of the Christian world. What is not in place is the question of the extent of the
Canon.

And that issue loiters around in the church, not resolved until the great Reformation when
the church divided a third time and polarized over the doctrines of redemption. Then they
addressed the issue of authority, and it's not until then that the Canon is resolved, okay?
When I say that, I always sort of panic because there are certain books that are never
questioned. And that's the vast majority of the Old Testament, save Esther. It is the vast
majority of the New Testament writings. No one disagrees. But where we had our troubles
thinking it through was Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Book of the Revelation were the hard books
for various reasons at the time, okay?

And that also tells you why the Roman Catholic Church has ascended, by historical
argument, upon 72 books – 73 books, and we have ascended, by historical argument – not
by text – upon 66. Does that make sense? So far so good? There is a reason for the
discrepancy, and it's because we don't have a text in the Bible that says the Canon is
composed of 66 books. It's just that simple. It's an assumption, okay? Well, within that
assumption, there's an awful lot of validation. We're talking about the edge. Does that make
sense?
So if you look at the notes, I quote at the very beginning in Lesson 3, a work by Polman on
St. Augustine, who speaks for the era. But Polman says, "Together with the entire church of
his day, St. Augustine was convinced that the Bible was divinely inspired, and was greatly
heartened in his belief by the unanimous witness of the church from apostolic times
onward." Again, he says, "The Bible was both the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit alone
and at the same time, the exclusive work of the biblical writers. Beyond that, St. Augustine
did not theorize." So you don't get a theory of how this occurred is the point, okay? It's
something they assumed.

And then on Page 2 and following, what I'm doing is simply going through the medieval
period to make the point that issues are not resolved on that issue. There's a looseness. If
you look on Page 2, Gregory the Great – why did I pick Gregory the Great? The answer is,
by most guesstimates, Gregory the Great is our first Pope. I think that's fair. Of course,
Rome would disagree with us. They're at 256 now. But most Protestants would argue that
our first great Pope, a godly man, came in the 7th Century.

So if you look on Page 2, Gregory the Great, the first great Pope – I would argue this that a
pope doeth not a Roman Church make. There are deeper issues than the issue of
hierarchical authority, okay? We'll come back to that later. But notice Gregory. He
understood Maccabees to be apocryphal, which is awfully encouraging to us. He elevated
Tobias and Ecclesiasticus called the wisdom to the term Scripture.

And the point is, simply is, is that we haven't agreed. We haven't settled that. No one's
talking about it that much either. Isidore of Seville placed the Apocrypha into the Canon.
They fall back on Jerome. If you know Jerome, what Jerome did – I'm over here, so I don't
have to think about that. Jerome, when he translated the great Latin Vulgate in the fift
Century, divided the vulgate into three parts: Old Testament Scriptures, our 39; the New
Testament Scriptures, our 27, and then in a separate third sub-section, he put 15
Apocryphal Books, okay?

So they linger in the Scriptures. They're even translated in the King James Bible of 1611.
So he placed the Apocrypha into the Canon, but expressed doubts about Hebrews, Peter,
James and John's letters, which was typical. Okay, smaller letters, maybe troublesome
letters. Let's see, basically, what the notes are saying is that the issue is just not resolved. It
just lays there. If they do state a canon, they're going to fall back to Laodicea, they're going
to fall back to Trilum, early councils of the church. That's all. Not to Athanasius' letter.

Now, look on Page 4. Pope Eugenius IV – we'll argue this later. It's hard to get all the
pieces early. But if I were to argue for the origin of the Roman Catholic Church, I would
argue that it's 16th Century in origin, not 16th Century in precedent. And if you were to
trace it in the medieval period, you would trace it through two people for reasons we'll state
later: Peter Lombard and St. Thomas. Then you would trace it through three great councils
where you finally get dogmatic statements, which are the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215,
the Council of Florence of 1438 and the Council of Trent, which is definitive in 1453.
Those are the great councils.
Now Eugenius IV at the Council of Florence – notice the dropping down. Eugenius' list
contained those in the vulgate as universally inspired. Tobit and Judith are between
Nehemiah and Esther; Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus are between the Song of
Solomon and Isaiah; Baruch before Ezra, usually follows Jeremiah and Lamentations, and
Maccabees after Malachi. Point – he obliterated Jerome's careful distinction between books
to be read in the churches and those to be read for edification. Okay? So far so good? But
there's really no council.

On Page 5, Thomas Devito, who faced down Luther and beat him, actually, at the
[inaudible] had reservations about the Old Testament and New Testament Apocrypha. So
it's the fringe, that's all, just the fringe. He doubted James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, but he had no
trouble with 2 Peter. So the tapestry is uneven. That's my point. We just haven't come to
settle the issue. No one doubts Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. No one doubts the 14 letters of
Paul; they even increase it to 15 because they like Hebrews so, that you’ve got to find an
Apostle having written it, so that say Paul did it. So that's sort of nice, makes sense. That's
called argumentation.

Let's see, nota bene. Someone asked me about that today. Nota bene is a just a Latin phrase.
It just means note well. It's a summary or something. The Roman Church finally spoke to
the issue, finally did, at the Provincial Council of Paris in 528, but the Reformation is on –
by denouncing as heretical and divisive anyone who refused to adhere to the Senate of
Carthage and Innocent III’s later list that included Tobit, Judith and Maccabees.

Now, so here's my point. Very simple. There is no debate about the issue of quality. There
is a – and it's not even a debate, as that is a wrong word. There is varying lists of the books
that should be read in our churches. That would be better to say. It's not resolved. People
don't see it as an issue. You and I, living in the post-enlightenment era would find that to be
unconscionable. But we live in a different world, right? Now, when the Reformation came
– and my theory goes like this – the church of our Lord, the visible one, remained orthodox,
fairly orthodox for 1,200 years.

About the year 1200, you can discern variegation in the church's teachings. The church
began to pry apart. It remained quite orthodox for 12 centuries, which is tremendous. We
would have our differences, but they're ours. And between 1200 and 1500, accompanying
the theological dissidence in the church, came moral dissidence in the church. They usually
go together. And by the end of the 15th Century, people are saying that there's something
wrong with our church. It needs a correction.

Most people recognize that we needed a correction, but they didn't agree on the problem.
And if you don't agree on the problem then you offer different solutions. It's just that
simple. That creates, creedally, the Roman Catholic Church. It was there before, but not so
clearly and not so universally. It creates the Protestant churches, okay? We were there
before but not so clearly we would say.

Both of use the past; both of us, somewhat, abuse the past. Both Protestants and Roman
Catholics walk through 15 centuries picking a bouquet of ideas that they think are
consistent with their sources of authority. But when you analyze it, they picked different
bouquets, okay, because they come to different authority bases. So far so good?

Now, so that's what I'm doing at Page 5 in the notes, and what I'm arguing is this. On the
Roman Catholic side of the ledger, the great formative, dogmatic council that creates
Roman Catholicism creedally is found at the Council of Trent. That's the great defining
moment for them. It began in 1443. It ended in 1463, 20-year council, meeting three times
with long, big gaps in between. The first thing – and the council's purpose is to defend their
ideas against the Protestants, okay?

So for the first time, in a coherent creedal fashion, we have a listing of the differences
between Protestants and Roman Catholics. And, obviously, it all boils down to authority.
Your authority sources determine your teaching, okay? Now, for the Roman Catholic
Church, where is authority?

Student: Tradition.

Tradition. Where else?

Student: [Inaudibe].

Holy Scripture. Where else?

Student: Magisterium.

Pardon me?

Student: Magisterium.

The magisterium of the church, which means the teaching ministry of the church, okay? We
would say, also, to give them the favor of experience as well. Not papal infallibility until
the 19th century, right? I think we would all agree on those sources. But the issue becomes
how you prioritize them. So far so good? At the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic
Church equated tradition and Scripture as equal authority in determining teachings.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 5. The Scriptures in the the Medieval and Reformation Church Part 2

John Hannah
Now, so about 1200 I'd say, the church began to waffle, and by 1500 the wheels came off
the cart. People were saying on all sides of issues, "There's something really bad about this
thing." We agreed it was bad, but we didn't agree what was bad about the bad. And,
therefore, the solutions are variegated too. For Roman Catholics, they went back to St.
Thomas. They went back to St. Augustine, but we'll view this chart many, many times.
They skipped achemabile, they were Palagians. Roman Catholics are Augustinians, even
though I hate to call them that 'cause it's such a nice term.

I am, too, but I pick a different bouquet. Augustine thought baptism removed original sin.
We don't. Second, evil is just the absence of good. No, it's guilt and punishment. Third,
justification is a process. It is not. It is a forensic, divine declaration, complete when it's
stated. So in a way, St. Augustine was a medieval Catholic. We go to Augustine for the
absoluteness of grace. He understood the depravity, inability. He understood the absolute
necessity of grace, but not how grace came. And determinism, God chooses His people. He
is a Monarch, not a Democrat, right?

And in the Bible, we found imputed sin, imputed grace, inability and declarative
justification. We'll come back to all that. That's redemption. Now, so when it comes to the
difference between Protestants and Catholics, Roman Catholic people, their canon is a bit
larger because it includes apocryphal books. But they equate tradition with Scripture. And
that's a problem because there's all kinds of crazy tradition in the history of the church.
They mean the tradition we agree with, which is a nice argument, okay?

And if you look in the notes, gosh, what could I say? Maybe all. The introduction is
probably as good as any. The advent of the Reformation brought a massive schism in
European Christianity as Romanists and Protestants polarized into divergent groups, each
claiming divine apostolic authority. If you get disagreeing people claiming divine authority,
there's only three answers. One is right. One is wrong. One is wrong, one is right or both
wrong. But they can't both be right. Each appealed to the error of the other, and in that
holocaust the question of ultimate authority was finally addressed. Okay?

So for us, we believe in 66 books because tradition says so and because that tradition
reveals to us who Jesus is. The assumption that we had, really, under all of this stuff, is that
God is incapable of being deceived or deceiving. Ergo, therefore, His creative work is a
function of His character. And if He is absolutely perfect and infinitely wise, then that is
His creation. The reason we reject the apocryphal books is they're out of sync with the
Canon. They offer something else. Does that make sense?

I think at the end of the day, I just really say I love the Lord and that's it. If the pagan ever
read the Bible seriously, he'd offer us some questions that are more serious, but fortunately
he doesn't. And I think this. This is what I learned. God has revealed Himself truly to us but
not completely, and there are massive gaps. When God condescended, He stooped awfully
low but not quite low enough if we want all of our answers answered, right? You can get all
your answers answered by simply denying a portion of Scripture, okay?

So being biblical, to me, doesn't mean I have a text for it. Every heretic has a text. Being
biblical means that as much as I can, I have grappled with the totality of the revelation of
God on that subject, weighing all of its different parts and come to a synthesized
conclusion, right? And I have problems. I have verses I can't answer, right? It just makes it
exciting.

Now, the Reformation – here is Luther. Luther spoke of the Bible as the Word of God,
which you would think. Pike says of him, "Scripture is the Word of God because it is the
original witness of the redemptive work of God and because it participates in the nature of
that which it records." He had trouble with Jude. Ha! But if you know Luther, he often
opens his mouth before he does his mind, which makes him really a nice guest to have
around 'cause you can laugh when he leaves. James, because he couldn't square it with
Romans; he didn't understand that justification has different nuances, but he was battling a
certain setting.

He had trouble with Hebrews because Hebrews does not grant repentance for some sins,
right? Hebrews 6: "It is impossible to renew them again who have once been enlightened."
That is a difficult text. There are 250 interpretations of it, which tells me we are struggling
with that text, right, which makes it fun. So he had trouble with Hebrews, but it was his
own problem. And he had trouble with Revelation, obviously, because as the images,
visions, such as found nowhere else in the Bible. And the author adds threats while no one
knows what he means. So on the Book, let's just stay away from it. It's better to leave it die.

That's just typically Luther. When the day ends, he holds to 66 books. The best way to get
to it, I think, is to look on Page 9 and here are the great confessions of the Reformation. Oh,
I should show you this. The Reformation boils down to a word that is not in the Bible. And
when Luther translated the New Testament, he put the word in the text, and the Roman
Catholics just crowed like crazy. We accuse them of adding to the Scriptures. And Luther
did by one word alone, in Romans 3 and 4. Luther said, "Every translation is an
interpretation and that's what the text means, so I put it in."

He's right, actually. But he's wrong, right? He should have italicized it or something. That's
what we do. So the content – the Reformation is about redemption. We came to our
understanding – we put them in the Canon issue because of redemption that is in Christ.
The Bible is the sole content of it; grace is the means of it and faith is the subjective
appropriation of it, right? These things you and I know. There are really five solas. We'll
get to all five of them.

So instead of justification by faith and sacrament, you pick up the word, alone. Instead of
grace administered through the church, we believe that the simplest saint, however
uneducated, can stand before a Holy God, right? And instead of authority and tradition,
equally, we said no. We do our best, but sometimes we have tradition. This is Luther, an
interesting fellow standing before his emperor. Remember what the emperor said? The
emperor said, "Luther, who are you to go against 1,500 years of the teaching of the
church?"

And Luther answered it the next day by saying, "There's no 1,500 years of the church.
There's no uniform teaching because our teachers have contradicted themselves." History is
like kissing your sister, not that hot, okay? There are better options available. [Laughter].
It's wonderful and good as a lens, but you'll never come to any conclusions if you're
objective with it. My conscience is bound to the Word of God. Unless you can convince me
from the Word of God, it is neither right nor safe to deny my conscience, right?

Here are some of the confessions. Look at the Gallican Confession. "We know these books
to be canonical and the sure rule of our faith. Not so much by the common accord and
consent of the church, not because we took a vote, as by the testimony and inward
illumination of the Holy Spirit." In other words, our faith is rooted in the assumption that it
is true because you and I, by the Spirit – the Spirit has revealed to us the Son of God. It's a
dog chasing its tail. The Bible revealed Jesus to us. Jesus reveals the Bible to us by the
Spirit. That's our great assumption.

How does that differ from Mohammed's revelation in a cave? How does that differ from
Joseph Smith's revelations in New York? They're both intense. They're both revocatory.
How would you answer that? You're going to have to answer that darned question
someday.

Student: I think ST 101 would almost have you answer it as, "Well, so what. What is that
[crosstalk] a correct thought, assumption of what...

I think we would say that I cannot validate the validity of my emotional experience, but
what I can validate is that it is consistent with an explanation of two things: One, the
problems that you see around you, and a solution, okay? All systems boil down to two
things: explanation of problem, offer of hope. Christianity does the same thing. We believe
mankind's problem is innate sin, not environmental, although that's influential. And we
believe the solution is a Savior. Now, I can't prove either of those, but if you grant them to
me I can explain fairly well the tragedies I see and offer hope in the midst of them. And
maybe we're right.

There is faith, hope and love. There will be a day when faith will not be necessary. What is
faith? Believing something to be true when all the facts are not in, right? We have cast
ourselves on the integrity of an invisible Redeemer. There's enormous testimony for it. Far
more than the existence of Napoleon or Plato, right? But we're willing to trust because for
some inexplicable reason, God opened our eyes to Him, right? Does that make sense? And
if I am wrong, I am wrong, right? I don't think I am, and I'm willing to give my life for this.

And I simply follow the trend of millions of people. They might all be hallucinating. But I
am. Does that make sense? At the end of the day, I face my Savior. At the beginning of the
day, I face my Savior. That's where my faith is. My faith is not in this book. My faith is in
the God revealed in this book. You can know this book real well and not know the Savior.
We meet all kinds of people. Most of our teachers in secular schools were that: wonderful
exegetes of the Bible, but didn't know the Person who wrote it. Very good I would say, but
sort of missed the point.

Now, does that make sense? Look on Page 10. These are the Belgic Confession. "We
confess that this word of God was not sent or delivered by will of man, but that holy men of
God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" – 2 Peter – "as Peter sayeth." – old
English here – "And that afterward God – from a special care, which He has for us and our
salvation – commanded His servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit His revealed
Word to writing. And He Himself spoke with His own finger the two tablets of the law.
Therefore, we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures." Isn't that pretty? That is
pretty.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 6. The Scriptures in the the Modern Church Part 1

John Hannah

And at the end of Lesson 3, Arminias – Arminias, basically, I like his argument. It simply
is, is that the integrity of Scripture rests upon its Creator. And He who is perfect issues
perfection because His work is a function of His character and never divorced from it. So
when the Bible came to us – although I cannot prove it – it came looking like the character
of God Himself. It has been sullied by well-intentioned scribes, editors and scholars, but it
came from His hand. And by His mercy, He has preserved it for His people, right?

Error has entered it. I know that. But my assumption is – though I can't prove it – is that it
came from a great God. And I know Him through His Son, so I have a familial connection,
right? And there I rest my case. I can prove that. I mean I can marshal arguments. But
remember, arguments don't prove. Infinite – finite arguments end up proving finitude, not
infinitude. And there's a quantitative gap between argumentation and proof. When we say
it's proven, all we mean is it's more reasonable that it's true than that it's not.

I believe, by rational argument, it's more reasonable to believe the Bible is true than it's not.
But that's not why I believe it. I believe it because I met the Lord, and these are just
arguments I use on the street for fun, right? What did Paul say to the rational Corinthians?
"I determine to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified," right? He could
have spun a rational argument that could've whipped those suckers, but he knows that
rational argument gets you a draw, right? We can do it, but that's not where our faith is.
Does that make sense?

Now, what I would argue on the notes is that on the edge of the Enlightenment – or on the
edge of the Reformation, the Enlightenment begins to come. We can begin to see people
doubting the Scriptures. And it flowers in a man called Michael Servetus, who was burned
in Geneva. But the Catholics would have gladly burned this Spanish medical doctor, but
they couldn't get him. Why? Because he denied the Holy Trinity; he said it was irrational.
He is correct. I wouldn't say it's irrational. I would say it's suprarational.
When does one, plus one, plus one – 'cause mathematics is the queen of the sciences right
now – equal one? How can you have three Gods but one? That's illogical. You must have
three Gods. So far so good? In other words, what is reasonable is true. Now, that brings us
to this. What the notes basically say is that on the edge of the Reformation, you can see the
Enlightenment. What is the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment is a confidence in the
power of the rational process. It's a child of the Renaissance. The Renaissance produces the
Reformation in Northern Europe, but it produces the Enlightenment in Southern Europe.

What are people enlightened about in the Enlightenment? This diagram is technically
wrong because it gives the impression that the Renaissance came, and then the Reformation
and then the Enlightenment. But the Renaissance produces both the Reformation and the
Enlightenment. It's a return to sources, back to old data, odd fonts. But in north of Europe,
it was back to the first Century or thirdCentury origins of the church, not so much in Greco
Roman culture – more secular by its nature.

In other words, this is what happens. If there is a criticism among many criticisms of the
Reformation; if you have a movement that you can't criticize, you have a movement you
don't understand. Criticism is not a lack of love. Criticism, if legitimate, is true devotion,
right? I love my school. I've given – I didn't plan on it, but I gave my life to this crazy
thing.

I wrote a book on this crazy thing just to understand it, but it was an act of worship for my
gratitude to God for giving my life up this way. But do I see things wrong with it? Have I
been called to the president's office because of my protestations? Of course I have. Do I
love it? Yes, I do. I want to preserve its best features and forget its worst, right? Criticism is
not bad. It depends on the motive and the object, right?

Now, if there's a criticism of the Reformation, is that when it threw out 1500 years of bad
teaching, it threw it all out. It threw out all tradition, tried to; it denigrates tradition. So what
the reformers did is that there are three sources of authority we would hold to – at least
three, maybe four – tradition, reason and revelation. It denigrates tradition. What the
Enlightenment did is that it denigrated revelation. The books are doubted now, placing
reason on the throne, okay? And reason stands and judges.

What is the essence of reason? The essence of reason is that which is true is verifiable by
repetition. It is observable and repeatable. That is what is true. If that is all that is true, we
are out of business because the assumption in the Enlightenment is one-time events can't
occur. But we believe in an incarnation. It never happened since, stuff like that.

Now, so I would argue this. While the Roman Catholics and the Protestants have their
major differences, we have one commonality at this point, and many commonalities,
actually. Roman Catholic would say to us, "If you want the happy life, trust the teachings of
the church." We say, "If you want the happy life" – whatever that is – "trust the Bible." In a
sense we're saying the same thing. We're saying, "Trust something outside of you to stand
over you as the guide of your life."
Roman Catholicism has led to unimaginable butchery. Protestantism has led to
unimaginable butchery. The 16th Century was a tragic era for both sides. It doesn't take
somebody to think very hard to say, "Maybe both of them are wrong and trusting somebody
else, other than yourself, is the origin of this whole darned mess."

Maybe, you know, all that philosophy is is a footnote to Aristotle and Plato. Maybe those
guys were right. So you trust yourself. In other words, it denies human depravity, which is
at the center stone of our understanding of tragedy. And, therefore, its solution is just
human, quite good I think, if there is no heaven or hell. If this life is all that there is, these
guys are on to something, I think.

Now, so the essence of the Enlightenment that produces modernity – under which you're
trained – is that reason can find all kinds of answers to things. The mind has ways of
plummeting the heart knows not of. Reason is the authority.

Are we going to make the world safe from war and tragedy by the application of science
and technology? We're going to conquer polio. We put a man on the moon. It just seems
right. But human nature has not changed. Mortality has remained constant at 100 percent.
We can now live – I think I had reason to believe that I can live to seventy-nine. One
Hundred and fifty years ago, the average lifespan in the West was forty-five.

But I'm still going to die, and 30 years of living really doesn't make much difference when
you die because time has no meaning, right? So whether I live to be 45 or 29 or 79 doesn't
matter, right, as far as I can tell. And some of us live too long like David did, right? Don't
let me live long enough to dishonor You with my brilliant ideas, oh God. Take me home,
which I think he does for a lot of us.

The first modern man – now when we talk about these crazy philosophers, it's not about
their ideas at all. Don't worry about their ideas. It's not their ideas. It's their method. That's
the issue. It's the how, not the what. Just dump those suckers' conclusions 'cause no one
follows them. But they adopt their method. That's the issue. René Descartes is the first
modern man. In 1618, he went out to a woodshed – Jesuit-trained man, brilliant man – with
an idea. Bingo! The idea was what do I know that's indisputable.

But what did he take with him when he went out and sat in his chair before his fireplace?
Nothing. He didn't take the Bible. He didn't take the ancient books of knowledge. He took
himself. And that action makes him the first modern man. So far so good? That by a
sedulous reflection upon what I already know that's in my head, that's revelation now, I can
find truth. And he came up with it. What was it? "I think, therefore I am."

That's not true. He should have said, "I think I'm thinking. Therefore, it could be that I am,
but I am not sure," because he could be suffering from a gastrointestinal disorder, right,
[laughter] which is very real and potent, but passing, right? So he established a method. It's
called the deductive method. The deductive method assumes that all knowledge is available
to you to deduce from.
There's the error. So far so good? It's called epistemology. If I had the choice between two
things, teaching you what to know or teaching you how to think about what to know, I'd
choose the second because if you knew how to think, I'd guarantee what you know. It's
called prolegomena. Everything you need to know can buy my opinions. We all have them.
When I did my second doctorate, I had 12 hours of prolegomena. The university was
teaching me how to think so I could think their way. It was exciting. I knew it was a game,
so I did. I thought their way because I wanted my degree.

This is John Locke. John Locke differs from Descartes in this way. Descartes said this: "All
knowledge is by deduction." God wrote stuff in your head. Think about it. The revelation is
there. You can get theorems from it. John Locke, the father of British empiricism, called
sensationalism, argued this, just the opposite. So what they're struggling with after the
Reformation is, "How do we know? How do we know to know?"

Its really a wonderful question. His answer was, "Our minds are just flat empty. They have
nothing in them. The revelation is not in the head. It's in the external world. God wrote it
there." – Deism – "If you think about the world and collect data through the senses, all
knowledge is sensational." Is that true? Then I can gather enough information, piecemeal,
to arrive at conclusions.

In other words, simply put, Descartes is a deductionist. John Locke is an inductionist. But
the realm of knowledge that they're either deducing or inducing is within the sphere that's
down here, so you're going to come up with what's down here, right? Philosophically,
you've got to.

If there's a hell's hall of fame, this guy is the doorkeeper. You divide the history of
philosophy by Immanuel Kant. You talk of pre-Kant, post-Kant. Pre-Kant was uncritical,
believe the Bible. Post-Kant philosophers reject it as an initial axiom, okay? I like him,
actually. I just think he's wrong.

What I want to teach you is this. You'll do well in your ministry if you do this: One, before
you criticize, understand why a person took that view. Understand how they saw benefit in
that view – good, then criticize. So the first thing you owe is understanding. The second
thing you owe is sympathy, and it will lessen your criticism and make it more accurate,
okay? 'Cause six of your ten arguments don't hold water normally, but four do, so it's
helpful. These are good people. These are not crazy people. They're wrong, but that's all.

What Immanuel Kant said, simply put is this. He faces David Hume, the great skeptic, who
took the ideas of Descartes and Locke and turned them on their head to prove that you can't
prove anything, which I follow Hume. He's brilliant. No, he may be dumb, but he's got
good ideas. Good ideas and brilliance don't connect. That's not true. I've seen some very
dumb people with great ideas, and some very brilliant people with lousy ones, right? It
don't work that way.

But Kant argued this. We know this way. We know because we have a mind that has data
in it – Descartes. We gather data, however, through our senses. All knowledge is physical.
All knowledge is phenomenal." This is devastating. "There is a spiritual realm," he said,
"but you and I can't know it because God has not spoken to us." So in one fell swoop, he
puts the Bible in the world of phenomenology. He creates German higher critical theory of
trying to find a Bible in the old book. But it's not any longer to be identified with the book.

To know God – in other words, what he does is this. We can't know God because He hasn't
revealed Himself. All that the Bible is is testimony of some very important people, but
equal to anybody else's and full of error. But God put in us a sense of moral duty called the
categorical imperative. If we listen to our moral duty, we can know God. What did he do?
He reduced theology to ethics. He elevated theology to morality. He elevated revelation to
anthropology. That's all it is, okay? Now, if all of that is true, then what do you do with the
Bible.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 7. The Scriptures in the the Modern Church Part 2

John Hannah

This is how they treated the Bible. In science – if you read the history of science, this is
what we did. To prove the validity of Christianity we said, "That the things we can't
explain, God does." But what if science comes along and explains them? It's called the God
of the gaps, and through the 19th Century God is getting pushed out because we're learning
more of how things occur.

Here's a question. What do you do with dinosaurs? Oh, let's phrase it another way. Was the
earth created how about 6,000 or 7,000 years ago? Was James Usher right when he dated,
and it's now in Bible, 404 BC? I doubt it because I know how he did it. He assumed two
things. The length of a generation – three things. The length of a generation in the Bible, an
unbroken sequence of generations in the Bible, and that a generation was 30 years. Those
are all assumptions.

We're not discussing is the Bible true. There's no question. So did God create – well, here's
another one. Did God create the universe, the world, earth in Genesis 1? I don't think so.
Why? Because the text says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
And then you have four dependent clauses that relate to the main verb in Verse 4. "The
earth was without form and void, meaning uninhabitable. So who [inaudible]? It was here
but not inhabitable.

"And darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the
face of the waters. And then God said …." – In other words, it seems that creation is not
creation. It is a fashioning of material to inhabitability, okay? That's fun to think about.
Where do you put the dinosaurs? The medievalists said, "God just made them to test our
faith." Ha! How do you face geology? How did we do it? We believed, before Charles
Lyell, that the earth was recent.

What did we do with the dinosaurs? We threw them in a gap in Genesis. We made our
exegeses fit it. So Genesis 1:1 is not a topical statement. It's the first creation. "In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," then He got messed up somehow. An
angel fell from heaven or something, and we throw the dinosaurs in there because we
believe a day means a day.

But then, we face this time problem, so we discover that day doesn't always mean a day. It
can mean an indefinite period. So exegesis goes that way because science is wagging its
tail, right? I think day means a day. It's exactly what it says in Genesis 8, evening and
morning, right? As long as there's sun, and moon and stars, there'll never be another flood
like that one, right? So it's fun to think about.

And our exegesis is trying to keep up with the Bible and this is what basically they say.
Before we discovered all this advance, we made up myths, stories to explain, to give us
comfort. For instance, when my kids would come to me in really heavy storms and say,
"Daddy, I'm afraid." I'd say, "Don't worry kids, God is clapping His hands. A soul has
entered paradise." I made up a lie. I don't know. It wasn't not true; it just wasn't true.

They would come to me and say, "Dad, why is the grass green?" I would say, "Kids, I don't
know. It is not my field. I'm a historian," meaning I've learned to express my ignorance
intelligently. That's all what education is. "Why is the sky blue?" I'd say, "I don't know,
kids." We always had fun with our kids. And then, they would say to me, "Dad, why is it
raining?" And I would say, "Kids, I know the answer." Now, it sounds a little bit terrible,
but I would say, "God is crying." And they'd say, "Dad, why is God crying?" I'd say, "Well,
I don't know. But you did something horribly wrong and broke His heart."

I made up myths to explain natural phenomena. That's what Christianity is. But science has
come and we don't have to make up myths anymore, like a God becoming man. It just can't
be true because we've never had one like that. All that is true is repeatable. A man walking
on the water. Give me a break. None of us have ever walked on water. Ergo, therefore,
none could. Truth is found in repetition. We would say, "No, truth is found in revelation."
There's a lot of truth about repetition. But there's more truth than just repetition. That kind
of stuff, it's really fun.

Now, I'll show you a couple more and we'll take a break – take a quit. So, what they
explained is simply this. In other words, we've had 400 years of massive intellectual assault
on the Holy Scriptures by the best minds of humanity. And the Bible stands. It may take us
a decade to answer our critics, but they go away in silence. But they're always coming up
with new ideas, right? If the Koran took that beating, it'd be gone. But this book stands.

Voltaire said, "Within 100 years, the Bible will be gone from the public eye." And the truth
is, 100 years later, his house was used by the French Bible Society to print Bibles. Mock all
you want. Time will cut us down, both great and small, right? And God exists. You do it in
two ways. Either – the hard-core way it to simply say, "The writers of Scripture flat lied to
us." And that's true. All people are liars. That would be rational.

And you and I know that if I told you a story and we repeated it all through the class, it
would become distorted by the end. That's what they did with me in Philosophy 101 at the
University of Texas. And I'll never forget the prof saying, "That's exactly how we got the
Bible, a simple story, by repetition, embellished over centuries, making a God out of a
Jewish peasant." That sounds rational. I can't knock that. That's how it happens. Is it true?
That's another issue. Or simply, they didn't mean to do it, but they did.

The disciples were frightened on the sea and they made up the myth of Jesus walking on
the water, but He actually walked on a sandbar. And when Peter got out of the boat, he hit
one, lucky sucker. But he stepped off the edge. Who tells us this first? Always find out the
origin. It came in 1875 in a back room at Tubingen University. Would you believe a person
1,800 years removed with prejudice, or a guy that was there who was a seasoned fisherman,
and he was afraid? The Sea of Galilee is a fresh-water lake. There are no sandbars in that
lake. Give us a break. It don't work. But they didn't mean to lie to us, but they flat did.

And then what I do in the notes is this. Here's the point. Here's the point. What Immanuel
Kant is philosophically, Friedrich Schleiermacher is theologically. He took – he is the
father of religious liberalism. He took, he accepted the epistemology of Kant that revelation
is impossible, but he wanted to remain a Christian. How can you be a Christian when God
has not spoken? The answer is, he said, "That God has spoken subjectively to me and I
verify the Scriptures as true because they're meaningful to me." He turned objectivity into
subjectivity, okay? Does that make sense?

And we have – in other words, we would say, "The locus of truth is revelation." He would
say, "It's reason." We would say, "Revelation is from without, God speaking." He would
say, "Revelation is from within." So he's Kantian. All liberals are Kantians, perceiving.
"Jesus," we would say, "was the Son of God," which is a statement of deity. He would say,
"He's the best man who ever lived, who showed us the way to God."

Now, he can't be the best man who ever lived because He made claims that would make
Him a liar, right? So far so good? We have just been beaten for 400 years, right? Now,
there's a key man. We'll come back to him. And that's Barth. Barth tried to stop 100 years
of German theology. He did a marvelous job but failed because of one flaw in his system.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary

HT200. History of Doctrine

Unit 2. The History of the Doctrine of the Scriptures
Video 8. The Scriptures in the the Modern Church Part 3
John Hannah

Lastly, I wanted to say something about Karl Barth. Now, I think he's over about page –
he's too important not to say something about – about Page 9. I can give you a synopsis of
Karl Barth, and this is it. Dr. Barth, who I treat as a hero, and I know evangelicalism
because of his epistemology, has ripped him pretty good. I think this of Dr. Barth. He came
to pretty darned good conclusions when given who his teachers were.

There are two ways to be judged. Do you want to be judged by how far you fail to come to
perfection? Or do you want to be judged by how much progress you've made toward
perfection? All of us want the second, but we won't give it to Dr. Barth. Dr. Barth, a
brilliant man, trained in the most liberal of liberalism, met the Lord Jesus. And he spent his
life seeking to dismantle 100 years of German theology. That's what he says.

He believed that World War I was the judgment of God upon Germany for her teachers.
Ha! That's why he lived in Basel. You can have your opinions but don't express them
loudly around people who don't like them. To Dr. Barth – I guess this is the best way to say
– he came to the right conclusions about the Bible, but he came in a fraudulent way. The
right conclusion about the Bible is it's the Word of God. And you will find no 20th Century
theologian grappling with more Scripture and never finding an error than Dr. Barth. We can
give him all of that. Give him everything you can, and then stand and criticize him.

The difficulty with Dr. Barth, in my view, is the method of verification of the truthfulness
of the Bible. It's the method. And simply put the method is piecemeal. And that is the Bible
becomes the Word of God when the Spirit of God and the Word of God intersects with the
Word of God, meaning Christ. The Bible becomes the Word of God, so he has no problem
with errors in the Bible in that theory. Because for him – and as you read him – he
experienced the Bible one verse at a time and he got it all.

Now, he had some crazy ideas, but when it comes to who God is and who Jesus is, he's
straight as an arrow. He's a little wrong on the atonement, but there's reasons for that. So far
so good? So the Word of God becomes the Word of God, when you, by the Spirit, intersect
with Christ. So it's piecemeal. What I would say is this. When God saved me, if indeed He
did, He told me two things. He told me that He was true, and I've been learning a lot about
what that meant. And secondly, He told me that as the Living Word was true, the written
word was true.

He never said that in so many words, but I came out of this mind-boggling conversion
experience that reoriented my world, making it to some degrees quite unhappy, with an
understanding that the Bible was true. He never said 66 books. I couldn't find them for a
long time, but I finally did. It's called indices. And I still got to use my indices 'cause I can't
memorize those darn books for some reason. So when I came to my ordination council, I
thought, "If they ever ask me for the 66, I'm sunk." It's just not the way my mind thinks. So
ha!

But I have no question. I have no question intellectually that the Bible is true. Not because I
can argue it's so, but because I met the person for which it points and I'm willing to rest my
case, okay? So I came to the Bible as true, though I can't prove it, as a whole unit in the
person of the Savior in redemption. He came to it one verse at a time. So John 3:16 isn't the
Word of God, but it became the Word of God to him. So meaning determines validity. I
reject that.

I think there is objectivity apart from individual meanings. Does that make sense? So to me,
he is quite a hero. I think he came to some wonderfully right conclusions. But I think he's
methodologically wounded. And that is why – he tried to stop the progress of liberalism,
did a marvelous job in his lifetime – but none of his students followed him. None of them
came, on his method, to believe the Bible was actually true. Just pieces. So he's flawed
methodologically. He could never understand how Moltmann could come up with such
crazy ideas.

He had never experienced the Bible. That was his problem, right? It takes knowing Christ
to have an affection for the Holy Scriptures in the right way, right? Not a traditional great
book but the Book. Does that make sense? So I see Barth as a genius, wonderful,
exceptionally gifted, who put his finger in the dyke but didn't stop the deluge because of a
methodological flaw that he taught His students.

God exists whether I experience Him or not. My subjective experience of God is not the
origin of His existence, right? I will not buy that. Does that make sense? And Barthianism
has flowed into the church. If we had time, we'd talk about it, right? I like him. He's my –
one of my – with Augustine and Calvin, Edwards and Owen, Barth is my hero but for
different reasons.

© 2019 Dallas Theological Seminary