The Canon Question, Tom Brown Part Two

Back to John Calvin-

As an initial matter, Calvin misstates the Catholic position by stating that, according to the Catholic Church, Scripture has its authoritative weight accorded to it by the Church. Rather, the Catholic position is that Scripture has divine authority because it is God-breathed, the Holy Spirit having inspired the texts’ authors...First Vatican Council...Dei Verbum, written by Pope Paul VI in 1965. These texts prove that the Catholic Church...

Calvin had his opponents that he was referring to. Technically then, if Calvin was accurately portraying his opponents position, then Tom Brown and modern Roman Catholics agree with Calvin that his opponents were making an erroneous argument. But to say he wasn't accurately portraying the Catholic position is to apply his argument to the Vatican one and DV claims. Well, they weren't extant in his time. It would seem his opponents were possibly satisfied with a bare authority claim of the Church as the final say in the matter. This notion is absurd to John Calvin and Tom Brown.

More on the issue at hand

[A]part from Magisterial guidance concerning the canon, it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for all believers independently to come to complete agreement about the canon without each believer receiving miraculous enlightenment from the Holy Spirit.

Without God's guidance. Understand that the RCC claims that the Magisterium is guided by the Holy Spirit.
Also, notice the need for 'miraculous enlightenment' this is not the same as the claim that had been presented by the reformed side regarding Spiritual confirmation of the Scriptures.

Note the significance of Calvin’s addition of the word “teaching” to his restatement of Ephesians. But St. Paul actually says that the Church is built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles themselves. For Calvin, a teaching has authority, not the teacher. He treats Paul’s statement that the Church is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles” as referring to a set of teachings, not any persons.

Calvin’s whole doctrine of Scripture revolves around this insertion of the word “teaching” into St. Paul’s statement to the Ephesians, and upon seeing the teacher as having authority derived from the teaching only insofar as he holds to that teaching...The Church is not founded upon these words, the teachings of prophets and apostles, but upon the prophets and apostles themselves based on their divine authority. Because of the prophets’ and apostles’ divine authorization, we can know the teaching they transmitted to be divine in origin.

Here we see a bit of drifting into a claim of theological corruption on the part of Calvin. The teaching of the Apostles comes not from themselves, but God. Roman Catholics are hard focused on the notion that its the Apostles the Church is built on, and the Apostolic succession rides on that very notion. Irenaeus said "We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith." Huh? the Scriptures are the ground and pillar according to this Father. No mention that Apostolic succession is the focus, but the Scriptures are.


Regarding Ridderbos-
If Scripture is the sole infallible authority of the faith, and everything else is subordinate in authority to Scripture, then the basis for determining the canon cannot be any authority but Scripture...Lessons of history, use by Hebrew-speaking Jews of the time of Christ, prophetic and apostolic authority, and the like–each of these involve criteria by which a text is judged to be canonical that is extra-canonical, so goes beyond the canon itself, and thus posits a canon above the canon.

Tom Brown likes this- he considers this honesty, the other positions to be a dodge of the real issues. Again, sola Scriptura does not mean that we cannot use reason or seek confirmation in history. I haven't read the book, so I can only work with this quote. How does Ridderbos say that we came to get the canon of Scripture? Would he say that any effort of man fails, including the Roman Catholic effort? What if God has decreed that He would work through man to sort and organize the Scriptures? I have read a few of the responses of Tom to inquisitors about Ridderbos, and I'm seeing only the appeal to reason as being inadequate. The appeal to reason alone IS inadequate according to orthodox (small o) Christianity in general. God provides and guides.

But prior to Calvin, the Church never used this method to recognize a book as belonging to the canon.

Not true. Please see my post on the subject of self attesting , just a week ago. The total list includes Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Lactanius, Hilary of Poitiers, Nemesius of Emesa, Salvian the Presbyter, Origen, Epiphanius, and Augustine.



Today’s average Protestant does not study why he has the Protestant 66-book canon, and does not independently decide if the Bible handed to him is correct. Rather, he accepts as an a priori of his Protestant faith that the 66-book canon is correct. Belief that the 66-book canon is right is part and parcel with the small cluster of unifying evangelical Protestant beliefs. Since it is a unifying principle for most Protestants, we would hardly expect to see anything but universal agreement; thus we can draw no lessons about the canon from this widespread agreement.

I would say that the lessons we can learn about the Roman Catholic Church includes a remarkable lack of unity in the body in anything other than a very superficial 'gather together' mentality. Phil Johnson goes out of his way to make this point very clear, with links to Catholic sites galore as proof. But I digress.



To resolve the disputes that lingered in spite of his supposedly objective test, Calvin employed a potpourri of fall-back arguments to shore up his teaching that the Holy Spirit allows a reader to perceive directly what belongs to the canon of Scripture...Calvin, in using reason and historical proof to determine the canon (for example, by appealing to “those books” that have “been recognized [as canonical] from the church’s inception”), is either contradicting his principle that no evidence outside of Scripture can determine the canon, or is refining his principle in an ad hoc fashion.

Again, the lack of noticing the complete council in the Institutes in this matter has brought forth the notion that allegedly Calvin is telling his readers how to go out and select a canon of Scriptures for themselves. Now he supposedly has to back-peddle and beef up his arguments. No- in Chapter 8 (link in part one) Calvin considers "Secondary helps to establish the credibility of Scripture" including "proofs from Church history". He held what Tom would call a plurality view.

In part 3, I will get to the rest, I imagine it will be 4 parts