The Canon Problem: Argument #5 Against Sola Scriptura, Part 34

We have finally made it to argument 5 against Sola Scriptura, which Cameron calls the Canon problem, and is part 34 of my Sola Scriptura series. Of the arguments, this one likely had a real possibility of making some valid points, because Protestants have an organic view of how the books of the New Testament came to be recognized as Scripture and it’s nothing like what Rome promotes.

Historically, how the Canon, or the books of the New Testament that are considered authentic Scripture, came about has, to some degree, baffled scholars because just like Cameron, many seem to have wanted someone or something to have made a definitive proclamation early in the history of the Church. I don’t think any of them like the obvious, which is how history documents what happened. Unfortunately, a thorough accounting will have to wait for another series I plan to write, since the goal here will be to refute Cameron’s argument. For the Protestant, the Canon came about gradually over a couple centuries during a time of persecution of the Church. Protestants see the Canon as being recognized by the Church, where Catholics see the Canon as being decided by the Church. And this difference is what will need to be discussed here.

The Argument: The Canon Problem

This is the transcript of what Cameron said in his YouTube video for argument #5,

Argument #5, the Canon Problem. So, Sola Scriptura says that the Bible is our only infallible authority. But that raises a massive problem: how do you reliably know what belongs in the Bible in the first place? If Sola Scriptura is true then Protestants should have a reliable and principled method for identifying which books are Scripture without appealing to any outside infallible authority. Why is that? Well, in order to claim Scripture Alone is infallible we have to know what ‘scripture’ refers to. And to know what scripture refers to, we need a reliable method for determining what belongs in scripture. But as we'll see Protestants don't have one. Every method they appeal to is actually unreliable. So let's consider the options. So, some Protestants say "We know a book is scripture if it was written by an apostle or someone close to an apostle." And this one sounds promising until you realize that First Clement was written by someone who knew the apostles yet it's not in the canon. Meanwhile, Hebrews somehow made the cut even though we have no idea who wrote it. So, apostolicity doesn't actually give us a consistent rule here, this method is therefore unreliable. Other Protestants say we recognize scripture because of its internal qualities. It bears the marks of divine inspiration. Okay, but then why did early Christians disagree about books like Second Peter, Revelation, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. If the marks of inspiration were obvious, you'd expect agreement from the start. But instead, the early church argued about the canon for centuries until church authorities stepped in to make decisions. Protestants can't reliably appeal to those church decisions though because they reject those same authorities as being unreliable when it comes to the Old Testament where they disagree with the Catholic cannon. So, what's left? You can't trust the church, you can't rely on authorship, you can't use internal evidence, and you can't appeal to the Holy Spirit unless you're ready to say that the spirit confirmed the exact same canon to every Protestant, something history flatly denies. And here's where it actually gets worse. Okay, many Protestant biblical scholars today are actively calling into question certain New Testament books based on modern critical scholarship. Books like first and second Timothy, Titus, Ephesians and Second Peter are often rejected because scholars argue they weren't actually written by Paul or another apostle. Other scholars like Dr Lydia McGrew are rejecting biblical inherency entirely. So what are we supposed to say about this? That these Protestant scholars, many of them sincere believers, aren't being led by the Holy Spirit, that the spirit is guiding them away from recognizing scripture or is he guiding others who disagree with them? This raises a much deeper question like who exactly is the Holy Spirit leading within Protestantism because it doesn't look like the Protestant world has a reliable way to answer that, not just on doctrine but on the contents of scripture itself. A lot of Protestants push back with a sort of two-?? know which church is the true church. The answer to that one is actually pretty simple, Okay? Catholic apologists give those arguments every single day. We do claim that there's a reliable method for identifying the church that Christ founded. For example I'm a big fan of the Matthew 16 argument for the papacy. Check out my recent video on the subject. And once you identify that church, the canon question is easy; it comes with the package. But Protestants don't have that. They've got a Bible but no principled reliable method for knowing which books should actually be in it. [emphasis added]

Cameron's video: 15:54-19:17

What Belongs in the Bible

Let’s start with the first section of this presentation concerning what belongs in the Bible, Cameron starts with this,

So, Sola Scriptura says that the Bible is our only infallible authority. But that raises a massive problem: how do you reliably know what belongs in the Bible in the first place? If Sola Scriptura is true then Protestants should have a reliable and principled method for identifying which books are Scripture without appealing to any outside infallible authority. Why is that? Well, in order to claim Scripture Alone is infallible we have to know what ‘scripture’ refers to. And to know what scripture refers to, we need a reliable method for determining what belongs in scripture. But as we'll see Protestants don't have one. Every method they appeal to is actually unreliable. [emphasis added]

In reality, Cameron’s whole argument seems to be that because the Catholic Church is an infallible authority, she stepped in and ‘decided’ the Canon to clear up all the confusion as to what was and was not Scripture. But the Protestants cannot appeal to an infallible authority and thus have no way to determine what does and does not belong in the Bible. And it’s not just Carmeron that believes this; all Catholic and Orthodox apologists agree with this and line up together on this view.

So, let me start my response to Cameron with what I presented in my previous blog, Not in the Bible: Argument #6 Against Sola Scriptura. Catholicism claims to have a number of ‘infallible authorities’ but as we saw in my previous blog, none of them are actually infallible, except the only infallible authority that Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism agree upon, which is Scripture. Stating that a fallible authority is infallible is meaningless when it's demonstrably false. So, if Protestantism has an issue, then so does Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Now that all three branches of Christianity have the same problem to solve, let’s turn our attention to how the Canon of Scripture actually came about.

The problem to solve here is, for Scripture to be our infallible authority, we have to determine, as Cameron points out, what belongs in Scripture.

The Rules for Canonicity

Now let’s look at the rules for canonicity since Cameron makes this an important part of his argument,

So, some Protestants say, "We know a book is scripture if it was written by an apostle or someone close to an apostle." And this one sounds promising until you realize that First Clement was written by someone who knew the apostles yet it's not in the canon. Meanwhile, Hebrews somehow made the cut even though we have no idea who wrote it. So, apostolicity doesn't actually give us a consistent rule here, this method is therefore unreliable. Other Protestants say we recognize scripture because of its internal qualities. It bears the marks of divine inspiration. Okay, but then why did early Christians disagree about books like Second Peter, Revelation, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. If the marks of inspiration were obvious, you'd expect agreement from the start. But instead, the early church argued about the canon for centuries until church authorities stepped in to make decisions. Protestants can't reliably appeal to those church decisions though because they reject those same authorities as being unreliable when it comes to the Old Testament where they disagree with the Catholic cannon. So, what's left? You can't trust the church, you can't rely on authorship, you can't use internal evidence, and you can't appeal to the Holy Spirit unless you're ready to say that the spirit confirmed the exact same canon to every Protestant, something history flatly denies.

Before we get to Cameron’s flawed and incomplete understanding of how Protestants determine what is Scripture, let’s start this off with looking at the rules that Augustine documented for determining what was and was not Scripture. In On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Chapter 8, Augustine wrote,

Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of Catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the Catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (though this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as equal. [emphasis added]

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Ch. 8

So, what does this actually mean? It’s pretty obvious that the Catholic Church did not just ‘decide’ which books were canonical, or part of the Canon of Scripture. Augustine said, “he must follow the judgment of the greater number of Catholic churches.” The “he” in this paragraph is the “skillful interpreter” of Scripture, something the Catholic Church discourages ordinary Catholics from doing. And “he” is told to use the Scriptures that the greater number of churches use and agree are in fact authentic, which would likewise make them infallible. It should stand out right here that Augustine is admitting that the ‘church,’ as in the people of God, the body of Christ, are the ones that have determined what the genuine and authentic Scriptures were. In fact, Augustine has also admitted that there were some discrepancies within the churches on which books were and were not Scripture. So, what Augustine wrote above was how to resolve those conflicts and that process only makes sense if the recognition of Scripture was an organic process that came about, just like Protestants have always maintained. This does NOT fit the Catholic model of the Church stepping in and infallibly deciding which books were and were not part of Scripture.

So, let’s talk about councils that supposedly ‘determined’ the content of the Canon of Scripture. David King wrote,

It’s also interesting that Roman apologists seem to believe that the Church of Rome infallibly determined the books of the canon first at the North African Councils of Hippo in 393 AD and Carthage in 397 AD., presided over by Augustine. [1]

But since neither of these councils were ecumenical, they are not considered infallible by the Catholic Church. To be an ecumenical council, it must be presided over by the entire Catholic Church, which was not the case for either of these councils. That makes these two only regional councils and thus fallible. And if they are not infallible councils, then their conclusions have no binding authority upon the Church. So now, because the Catholic Church pretends that these two councils ‘decided’ the Canon of Scripture, the infallible Canon was determined by fallible councils. So that you don’t think I’m just making this up, the councils of Hippo and Carthage ‘canonized’ an apocryphal book called 1st Esdras which was later rejected by the ‘ecumenical’ Council of Trent. If these two councils had been ‘ecumenical’ then their canonization of 1st Esdra could never have been changed, ever. In my previous blog I mentioned that Augustine stated that councils had contradicted each other; this is a great example of that.

So, what Augustine laid out above was a process on how to arrive at which books of the New Testament were the authentic Scriptures. David King put it this way in Holy Scripture: Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Vol I,

Here we see an implicit but nonetheless clear denial that the Church acted infallibly with respect to the canon of Scripture. Augustine wrote that if various churches differed as to which books were to be included and which were to be rejected, their authority was to be regarded as ‘equal.’ The implication was that though respect was to be given to the greater number of churches, especially those believed to have been the seat of an apostle, if they disagreed over which books were canonical, their authority was to be regarded as equal. His view [Augustine] is incompatible with belief in an infallible determination of the canon. [2] [emphasis added]

So, Cameron’s view that the “church authorities stepped in to make decisions” is simply not historically accurate.

1 Clement and Hebrews

Let’s also deal with Cameron’s reference to 1st Clement as an epistle that was possibly considered as Scripture. This book is dated to around 95 AD, and there seems to be enough evidence to believe that Clement knew Peter, Paul and John. However, even though this book was passed around in the early church, there is really no evidence that it was ever considered Scripture. I am sure that Cameron can find at least one person in the early Church that thought this, but I found no evidence that any of the major Church fathers ever believed this. This seems to be meant to put doubt into the Protestant’s mind about some of the beliefs Protestants hold on how a New Testament book was determined to be canonical. It would seem that Cameron wants you to believe that since Clement knew some Apostles, his writings therefore would have been considered as part of the canon of Scripture, especially since they were passed around to some of the churches. But the Apostles likely knew thousands of people and there has never been a hint that most of those people, who likely wrote letters, wrote Scripture as well. We count Mark, Luke and the writer of Hebrews as the exceptions, and we recognize that Mark and Luke traveled with a living Apostle.

And jumping to Hebrews as an example of Scripture with an unknown author doesn’t really make the point he intends. Yes, doubt in its authenticity is planted, but even the Catholic Church does not provide any reasons as to why they selected it as Scripture. That said, it does fit nicely with their view that the Church ‘decided’ that it was canonical. The problem with that supposed decision is that after doing a little research on the topic, I found that Catholicism seems to recognize the organic nature of how Scripture was initially accepted by the early church, i.e., the body of Christ. It’s only much later in time that the Catholic Church, in her fallible councils, ‘recognized’ the books that the church was already using as canonical, i.e., part of the Canon of Scripture. But the Catholic Church did not ‘decide’ that the books of the New Testament were canonical until the Council of Trent, in 1546. Yes, you read that right, that was the first time the books of the New Testament were officially ‘decided’ as being Scripture. So, now the question you should be asking is: what did the Catholic Church do with an unknown Canon of Scripture for 1500 years? I'm sure the Catholic Church will make something up, but there really is no good answer for them. For the Protestant, however, that answer is actually easy: the Canon was organically recognized by the Church, so that by the time of Athanasius (367 AD) all 27 books of the New Testament had been recognized as authentic and infallible Scripture. Actually, according to Michael Kruger, one of the foremost scholars on the New Testament Canon, it occurred earlier, much closer to the middle of the 3rd century. [3] Concerning the other books he mentioned, neither the Shepherd of Hermas nor the Didache were ever serious contenders for Canon inclusion. So, the doubt he attempted to plant has no roots.

Someone, Please, Make Up My Mind!

Let’s look at the last part of this section,

But instead, the early church argued about the canon for centuries until church authorities stepped in to make decisions. Protestants can't reliably appeal to those church decisions though because they reject those same authorities as being unreliable when it comes to the Old Testament where they disagree with the Catholic cannon. So, what's left? You can't trust the church, you can't rely on authorship, you can't use internal evidence, and you can't appeal to the Holy Spirit unless you're ready to say that the spirit confirmed the exact same canon to every Protestant, something history flatly denies.

Cameron’s initial statement for this section above reads, “the early church argued about the canon for centuries.” They did? What proof do you have that there were ‘arguments’ about the content of the Canon of Scripture? That’s news to all of the people that have actually read and studied the early Church writings. Were there any church councils on these disagreements between the Council of Jerusalem in the books of Acts and the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD? No. But if it was as prevalent as he seems to think it was, there would have been plenty of documentation to support that statement, don’t you think? But there really isn’t any proof for his assertion, so where does his information come from? I checked several Catholic sources and found nothing at all. So, who knows.

Sorry, but I’m picturing a couple of 5 year olds arguing about whose crayon is the blue one, and Mom stepping in to break the crayon in half to settle the argument. His statement about the arguments in the early church on the Canon has to be hyperbole because it’s simply not documented. Yes, there were churches who thought certain non-canonical books were Scripture, but they were not having food fights in the monastery cafeteria over it. So, let’s come back to the land of reality. Most of the people depended upon scholars in the Church, the bishops/pastors and deacons. Men like Papias, Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus and these men quoted from what we consider Scripture today quite often. And during the first three centuries, the Church was being persecuted constantly, so many of the smaller churches were likely just happy if they had a copy of any of the New Testament books, especially one or more of the Gospels or a book like Romans. With the amount of Scripture encapsulated in the Didache, they would have loved having that, even though it was not Scripture!

But the real problem in his argument is when he starts in on the poor Protestants. Protestants understand that the books of the New Testament came about gradually over a two or three century timeframe. By around 110 AD, Polycarp recognized 15 of the 27 books, and by 170 AD, 22 of the 27 books were recognized as Scripture. And as I said above, Catholicism seems to have accepted this same organic recognition of the Canon (The Letter to the Hebrews) even though they appealed to nonbinding regional councils once we get into the 4th century (Was the Canon of Scripture Determined before the Church Councils That Decided It?).

And it is not that Protestants reject church councils, we just don’t believe they infallibly proclaimed anything, especially the Canon of Scripture, since their resolutions seem to be aimed at recognizing the books that were part of the Canon, not selecting the books. But the ending of this section is pure nonsense. I don’t proclaim “my” canon of Scripture, like every single Protestant must determine the Canon for themselves. Protestants, as Augustine laid out, believe there were rules the churches used over the first few centuries to determine what was and was not part of the Canon of Scripture, along with the Holy Spirit seemingly revealing which books were part of the Canon to the body of Christ. Councils helped the process by formally recognizing the books that were in general usage throughout the church in their day, as did certain scholars, like Irenaeus. So, by the time of 1st Council at Nicaea in 325, the Canon recognition was nearly or fully complete. But let’s be clear about one thing, fallible men convened fallible councils to discuss and decide doctrinal issues, both heretical and orthodox, that fallible men disagreed upon. It was ‘good faith’ attempts to work through and decide doctrinal issues based on Scriptural evidence that threatened the faith and practice of the Church. Most of what they did in the early centuries was focused on rejecting heresies and protecting believers from accidentally being pulled into heretical and cultic beliefs since they ran rampant throughout the Roman empire.

I should also mention, once again and a little differently this time, that it was never the place of the Christian church to set the Canon of the Old Testament, since this was the responsibility of the Jews, per Rom 3:2. The books of the Old Testament had been ‘laid up in the temple,’ which meant they were the official books that the Jewish leaders taught as their Canon of Scripture. Additionally, Luke 11:50-51 seems to indicate that Jesus pointed to the 3 sections of the Hebrew Canon (the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa) and never quoted from the Apocrypha in the Gospels during His earthly ministry and neither did the Apostles. [4] It is not the Protestant authority that is unreliable in reference to the Old Testament books, but the Catholic Church’s assumed authority.

Protestant Chaos?

Next, Cameron presents what he sees as the chaos Protestants are mired in concerning the Canon,

Okay, many Protestant biblical scholars today are actively calling into question certain New Testament books based on modern critical scholarship. Books like first and second Timothy, Titus, Ephesians and Second Peter are often rejected because scholars argue they weren't actually written by Paul or another apostle. Other scholars like Dr Lydia McGrew are rejecting biblical inherency entirely. So what are we supposed to say about this? That these Protestant scholars, many of them sincere believers, aren't being led by the Holy Spirit, that the spirit is guiding them away from recognizing scripture or is he guiding others who disagree with them?

I find it interesting that so many non-Protestants like to tout the work of those on the Protestant fringe who seem to think it's ‘cool’ to reject books of the New Testament because of the recent ‘love’ of modern skepticism. No one takes the works of those ‘scholars’ seriously when they reject long standing books of the New Testament. The difference between the writing style of someone writing a letter to a broad audience versus the style of writing to a close friend are obvious and should not need to be explained to someone that touts themselves as a ‘scholar.’ There is an intimacy you express to a close friend that you just do not do when writing to a broader audience of people you likely don’t know. So, Paul’s writing style in the book of Romans is much different than his writing style to Timothy or Titus, whom he personally taught and mentored. And what’s more, a true scholar should know this. Next, he presents a ‘scholar’ that rejects biblical inerrancy. Again, this might be popular in the Protestant fringe, but the mainstream biblical Protestants just don’t read these people or believe as they do. That said, I share his concern for such ‘scholarship.’

And Cameron’s purpose seems to be to dazzle us with facts of the Protestant fringe to plant the seeds of doubt in Sola Scriptura. That doubt goes something like this; “How can you be associated with Protestantism when it's questioning the authorship of New Testament books and questioning the inerrancy of Scripture? The True Church isn’t doing that.” The insinuation seems to be that these views are what all Protestant scholars are moving towards. But that just simply doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe the progressive United Churches of Christ, or the United Methodist Churches do, but the mainstream Protestants do not doubt the books of the New Testament or the inerrancy of Scripture.

And I think I can safely say that if a scholar is questioning the Canon and inerrancy of Scripture, they are not being led by the Holy Spirit. And I trust Dr Michael Kruger over Dr Lydia McGrew. As another response video pointed out, quoting some modern scholars does not change the fact that the early church embraced the New Testament Scriptures we have today. Protestants have historically done the same.

A Bible With No Principles

And finally, he ends his presentation and the last of his doubts with this,

This raises a much deeper question like who exactly is the holy spirit leading within Protestantism because it doesn't look like the Protestant world has a reliable way to answer that, not just on doctrine but on the contents of scripture itself. A lot of Protestants push back with a sort of two-?? know which church is the true church. The answer to that one is actually pretty simple, Okay? Catholic apologists give those arguments every single day. We do claim that there's a reliable method for identifying the church that Christ founded. For example I'm a big fan of the Matthew 16 argument for the papacy. Check out my recent video on the subject. And once you identify that church, the canon question is easy; it comes with the package. But Protestants don't have that. They've got a Bible but no principled reliable method for knowing which books should actually be in it.

His point here is that the ‘one true Church’ decided what was and was not Scripture and you can trust that decision because that one true Church is infallible. But Protestants can appeal to the early Church in somewhat of the same way because our view of an organic understanding of what was Scripture came about by the Church in the early centuries after the Apostles, which was not ‘Catholic’ as in the institutional Church but ‘catholic’ as in the universal Church. Let’s take his examples of Hebrews again. Cameron misrepresents the history of Hebrews a bit. What he doesn’t tell you is that Clement of Rome (c. 100 AD), Polycarp (c. 155 AD), Clement of Alexandria (c. 215 AD) and Irenaeus (c. 202 AD) quote from the book and that the early Church believed Paul wrote the book. It did take some time for it to be accepted as canonical because there was never proof it was from Paul, just a belief that it was. The same is true today. There are a number of theories about who the writer of Hebrews was, but they all seem to be either someone that traveled with Paul or Paul himself. But what is common to all is Paul. Obviously, that is not proof, but the early Church accepted it as Scripture because they believed it was written by Paul. Today, most scholars believe that the book has Paul’s writing style and therefore likely came from someone that traveled with Paul. The common factor here is that the Church of the day recognized it as Scripture long before any council did, regional or ecumenical. Notice I didn’t say ‘decided’ because that is not what history records. So, Cameron’s statement that there is no principled reliable method for knowing which books are Scripture puts both the Catholic and Protestant on the same ground. The difference is Protestants believe Scripture was recognized by the 3rd or 4th centuries, where the Catholic Church’s ‘decision’ was not officially made until April of 1546.

There are a number of other things I could say, but I can wait until I tackle the next argument for some of those.

Conclusion

I have attempted to address the main points of Cameron’s argument, which seems to have been wrapped in the belief, “since the Catholic Church is an infallible authority, she has the ability to step in and ‘decide’ the Canon of Scripture for both the Old and New Testaments.” She assumes the authority for the Old Testament, an authority she does not have according to Scripture and Jewish history. And more, she doesn’t even have the authority for the New Testament, since her authority is in her infallibility, something she does not process.

As an additional example of why this is true, several decades ago, James White posed a question in one of his debates that stumped a Catholic apologist. He asked, “how did a believing Jewish man know that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles were Scripture 50 years before the coming of Christ?” [5] According to James White, the point of the question was to “force the Roman Catholic Church to come clean with their presuppositions” that they have the right to define what Scripture is simply because they see themselves as the supposed ‘one true and infallible Church.’ They state boldly that the Church decided what was Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments and then tell Protestants, “Prove us wrong.” Nice tactic, but the Catholic Church has never proven they are infallible, and I dismantled that claim in two previous blogs that showed the Catholic Church has erred and is therefore NOT infallible. They simply throw down Matthew 16:18-19 as if that proves their point when half of the Church fathers never understood those verses as the modern Catholic Church does today.

What White’s question demonstrated is that the one true and infallible Church cannot show whether anything in the Old Testament was considered ‘Scripture’ in Jesus’ day, even though in Matt 22:31, Jesus held the Sadducees accountable for what was in Scripture when He asked, “have you not read what was spoken to you by God.” To Jesus, the Word of God (John 1:1, 14), what was written to them is what God spoke to them, which made the Old Testament books Scripture, regardless of what the Catholic Church thinks or says. The Jews in Jesus’ day knew what was and was not Scripture, even though the Catholic Church would not define the Old Testament Canon until 1546, over 1500 years after Jesus challenged the Sadducees.

Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant all agree that the Church helped define the Canon of Scripture, but we disagree on how that came about. The Protestant rightfully sees this process as the church ‘recognizing’ the books of the New Testament because that is what is actually documented in history. Protestants see the full Canon as being recognized between the middle of the 3rd century and the end of the 4th. It was an organic process of churches throughout Christendom that provided the feedback, and her scholars documented what books were being used. It also fits what happened during this time as books of the New Testament were copied and distributed throughout an ever-expanding area throughout the Roman empire and beyond.

The Catholic Church believes in an infallible Church and uses its supposed infallibility as its ability to infallibly ‘decide’ which books were and were not part of the Canon of Scripture. But Church history does not support this at all, since we know the Church was not and still is not infallible, any more than a Pope, who is just a man, can be infallible. But much worse for the Catholic Church is that there was no formal Canon of Scripture until April of 1546. So, what did the Catholic Church do for Scripture if no one knew what was actually Scripture until 1546? Once that question is answered, the Catholic Church must answer why the Church was using Scripture authoritatively throughout its history, even though no one knew what was and was not Scripture. Quite the conundrum, don’t you think?

Footnotes

1. David King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 132.
2. David King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 133.
3. See: Not in Early Church: Argument #9 Against Sola Scriptura and What is the Earliest Complete List of the Canon of the New Testament?
4. See: How Do We Know What Books Go in Our Old Testament? And When, by Whom, and Where Were the Books of the Old Testament Finally Collected? by Don Stewart
5. See: The White Question: Jews Recognizing Scripture Decimates Catholic Canon Arguments