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Audio recording of contents of the first class. Currently almost goes 40 minutes so I may have to cut some things out to allow for class discussion.
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Audio recording of contents of the first class. Currently almost goes 40 minutes so I may have to cut some things out to allow for class discussion.
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Audio recording of contents of the first class. Currently almost goes 40 minutes so I may have to cut some things out to allow for class discussion.
Listen to Class 1: Introduction, What is HT, and Bibliology Part 1 by Ryan Wolfe MP3 song. Class 1: Introduction, What is HT, and Bibliology Part 1 song from Ryan Wolfe is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 36:01. This high-quality MP3 track has 1159.543 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 6 Oct 2022. Stream and download Class 1: Introduction, What is HT, and Bibliology Part 1 by Ryan Wolfe for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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This is a request for a summary of a transcription that explains the importance of historical theology and the study of scripture. The speaker emphasizes the benefits of historical theology, such as determining orthodoxy, providing examples, and keeping focus on essential beliefs. They also discuss the misconceptions and corruption surrounding the clarity, authority, and self-evident nature of scripture during the Middle Ages. Additionally, the speaker explains the process of canonization and the inclusion of the Apocrypha in the Roman Catholic Church's Old Testament. Overall, the speaker aims to introduce the class and cover the first half of the doctrine of scripture. Alright, Brandon, if you would not mind taking five to ten minutes, probably ten minutes actually, you can't give this one in five minutes, I don't think, to introduce a class, and by the class I don't mean historical theology per se, but actually just why we're studying it here at Providence, or how we're going to study it here. So I'll be covering what historical theology is and why we should study it, but I was thinking you could like say hello to everyone and then just go through the syllabus, mention the seven topics, how they're split up into twelve weeks, who's teaching what, why you stole the good topics that you stole, just kidding, but you can mention how we chose them, what the book is, but why it's not necessarily the only book on historical theology, we chose it kind of because we already have studied Winn-Greedom's book here at Providence and they go through the same chapter outline, I don't know, you don't have to mention that, but just kind of what the book is, but I was thinking mostly to explain how historical theology has impacted you, kind of your own testimony even, how you came to Christ for sure, but even though some of your own spiritual journey, I think people will be really interested to hear that, so I'll be covering like what historical theology is in general, but in particular I think people would really like to hear that, and then whatever else you want to do in the first ten minutes, you can say hello, get people to share their name, whatever else you want to do in that time. It's going to be a packed class in terms of what I'm going to cover later on, so start at nine, try not to go over the ten minutes, but I'd like you to be up there at the start if that's possible, and that's it. So then for the rest of this I'm going to try to record what I'm trying to get through. I think it goes around thirty-five minutes, which means it's going to go over in the class because people aren't going to have questions, or at least I hope they do. So here in this first class what I want to cover today is two topics. First just an introduction to what historical theology is and why study it, and then in the time we have left after that we'll try to cover the first half of the doctrine of scripture. All right, so to start out, let's examine the nature of historical theology. What is it? Greg Allison in his book gives us this helpful definition. Historical theology is the discipline that studies the interpretation of scripture and theological formulation of the church in the past. I'll say it again. The discipline that studies the interpretation of scripture and theological formulation of the church in the past. Historical theology brings us the wisdom of the ages and helps us in developing valid interpretation of the Bible and sound theological formulations. Now one reason some of us Baptists may shy away from delving into a topic like this at the outset is for fear that it will place church tradition as an authority above the Bible. So let's talk briefly about tradition. There really are two types of tradition. Capital T tradition and lowercase t tradition. What do I mean by that? Capital T tradition are those things that the church will be bound to hold as part of their faith because it was declared from their tradition. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, for example, this is the oral tradition allegedly handed down from Jesus to his apostles and then preserved in the Roman Catholic Church through continuous succession of ministry. Two examples of capital T tradition are the Immaculate Conception of Mary and her bodily assumptions. So in 1854, the Pope declared that she was born without sin and lived her entire life without sin. And then in 1950, the Pope declared that Mary is the only embodied believer in heaven right now. That's the idea that she didn't sin so she couldn't physically die. Now the Roman Catholic Church has to hold these beliefs and that is capital T tradition. Small t tradition is simply the wisdom that is ours from the past. The legacy and the tradition handed down to us from the past that is a great gift to the church. The Bible in, for example, Psalm 78, it's high through eight in verse 11, exhorts us to remember and teach the works which God performed in previous generations. It says that this remembrance would be a means for future generations to stay faithful. Remembrance is encouraged in the Bible. But Greg Allison lists five more. These are another additional benefits of historical theology. Number one is the one you probably think of first of all. It helps us determine orthodoxy from heresy, such as the denial of the trinity of the Godhead or the denial of the humanity of Jesus. We can look to the sound theological formulation handed down before us and ask, does this teaching go against the agreed on theological understanding of the previous centuries? It helps us to know how much skepticism to treat these new ideas that we come across. Number two, it provides stellar examples, such as like Athanasius, a man who contended for the faith of the apostles against the world, even if he got in exile from his own city five different times. Number three and number four here kind of go together. So number three, it helps us from just being attracted to the latest theological fads. And number four, it helps keep us focused on the most essential elements of the faith, these most important cardinal issues. It's easy to just get pulled into whatever is a controversy of the day, especially over time, you're not actually being rooted in the most important and edifying issues. If you're only looking at today's issues and not looking at what has been talked about historically, it's going to be like you missed leg day. You'll grow more and more imbalanced and underdeveloped in these important areas, these core areas of Christian belief. And number five, it connects us to the church of all ages. We come to Providence to learn from other Christians, to be corrected by them, and to enjoy happy agreement with them. In the same way, we gain a sense of rootedness by hearing from other Christians across the centuries. One other common question before we get into the rest of today's lesson is how does historical theology fit in with other types of theology that I'm used to? So maybe you've done some systematic theology or you've heard of biblical theology. How does historical theology fit in with all this? What Greg Allison does is he says, imagine a line where on this far left-hand side you have exegetical theology. This is deducing what theology you can from a singular passage of scripture. It's usually what you see in a sermon, something like that. Then in the middle of the line is biblical theology. This is where you're deducing theology from one author of scripture, like what is St. John's Doctrine of the Atonement, something like that. It might also trace a certain theme through the entire storyline of the Bible and show how it culminates in Christ. Then on the far right is what you're probably used to, systematic theology. Wayne Gredem defines this as the study of what we are to believe, do, and be today in accordance with all that the Bible teaches on any given topic. So if that's the line, exegetical theology, biblical theology, systematic theology, where is historical theology? Well, historical theology, the answer is it's not on the line at all. Instead it lives behind the line, playing a ministerial helping role. So in each of these three enterprises, you'd be consulting the wisdom of the ages in doing it. If you do exegetical theology, well, what was the interpretation of this passage in the Puritan's age? You're looking at your look to the wisdom of the past. And then lastly, have you ever heard of practical theology? That also doesn't live on the line. It's the fruit of all of these efforts as it seeks to apply it to the life of the believer in ethics or whatever domain you'd be looking at. So okay, that's all that we'll say for historical theology. Remember the seven topics we'll be covering in this class, scripture, God, humanity, and sin, and so on? In the time that we have left today, we'll cover the first half of the first section, the one on scripture. In so doing, we'll cover the first three attributes of scripture. The Bible is clear, authoritative, and self-evident. If you're taking notes, you'll notice it forms a kind of acrostic or acronym, CASE, clear, authoritative, and self-evident. In terms of timeline, today's lesson will start at the early church and go through to the Reformation. Tomorrow, we'll cover inspiration, inerrancy, sufficiency, and necessity, and we'll cover the history of the Reformation up until the modern church. As you probably well know, the Reformation of the 16th century was a time of major theological recovery and it was no different for the doctrine of scripture. Accordingly, in our class time today, we'll be looking at that time period as well as the time leading up to it. By the end of the Middle Ages, the church really, and unfortunately, had a very poor view of the scriptures in these three areas, the ones we mentioned, the clarity, authority, and self-evident nature of the scriptures. So we'll take them one by one, and let's take a look first of all at the clarity of the scripture. By the end of the Middle Ages, the church believed that the scriptures were so obscure that only the clergy could understand them. Normal people absolutely could not, at least not directly. Any knowledge of the Bible was mediated completely through the church. So if you wanted to know about a passage, you asked your priest, assuming he had actually studied it. The laity were not enabled to study it and were not permitted to. How did the church get to this place? There's really two tributaries that came together to form this situation. First of all, the early church fathers encouraged people to live a holy lifestyle if they wanted to be true theologians. And that's good advice. Not just anyone can be a theologian, not a good one anyways. First Corinthians 2, for instance, says, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things. The question though is, what exactly is the standard for being a spiritual person? Is it simply the life of faith in a normal believer, or is it something more? And that leads us to the other major tributary contributing to this dark situation. And that is that in the early church there was also a very strong monastic movement. People were going into the desert, forsaking all worldly possessions, and pledging lives of chastity. This movement led to a view of two different classes, the super spiritual Christians and the normal status quo Christians. So on the one hand you've got the church fathers telling you that only the spiritual can study the Bible, and on the other hand you've got the desert fathers telling you that a life of asceticism is the real path to spirituality. And the merger of these two ideas is responsible for the view that the scriptures were clear for some and dark for others. Unfortunately, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the scriptures were deemed obscure, they weren't read, and while a surprise if you don't read them, of course you're not going to understand them. The Bible wasn't even translated into the common language. They didn't want common people reading it. In fact, that might even be dangerous. As a result, the Bible wasn't being read. Instead it was treated as a mystery and spoken in ceremonies in Latin, almost like reading a spell. So that's where the church was in terms of its understanding of the clarity of scripture, or lack thereof. What about the other two that we mentioned, the authority and self-evident nature of the scriptures? Well, let's cover it. Did the Biblical Church think of the Bible as authoritative? It's actually a tricky question, and to answer it we'll need to revisit our discussion from earlier about tradition. Remember how earlier we said that there was capital T tradition and lowercase t tradition? By the end of the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church had fully embraced tradition with a capital T. But it wasn't always this way. In the early church, tradition with a lowercase t was treated with great respect. It was simply a help and subservient underneath the authority of the scriptures to aid the church in all the ways we talked about earlier. But some of the scholastics of the high medieval period, around the 1200s, started to ask an interesting question. Sure, that is true, the scriptures are authoritative over the church, everyone knows and believes that. But, they asked, suppose some rogue man or some group of men differed in their interpretation of scripture from what the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church teaches. In this case, who is to be believed? Those men with their new interpretation, or the traditional interpretation already held by the universal church? And that line of questioning was how it started out, kind of an innocent question among the scholastics of the high medieval period. But by the late middle ages, that argument was taken over and extended to further the power of the church. There was, unfortunately, a lot of corruption in the late medieval church. So every time someone brought forth an argument like this, in favor of the church's authority, especially that of the pope, they were crowned with scholastic glory and honor. It was a very corrupt system with quite a bit of conflict of interest. By the end of the middle ages, it was common knowledge that even though the scriptures were authoritative over the church in theory, in practice, the Roman Catholic Church's interpretation of the Bible and its doctrine were the only real authority to speak of. We will cover what happened to this concept during the Reformation, but first I want to cover a couple other developments. So far we've covered how the Bible's clarity and authority were corrupted. What about its being self-evident? The Bible is self-evident, both in its identity in the canon and in its interpretation. We'll cover both of these. The first one is that the Bible is self-evident in its identity, the canon. The canon is a list of God-breathed books that make up the Bible. And when we say that the church had a corrupted view of its self-identity, or the canon, at the time leading up to the Reformation, what do you think of? The Apocrypha, correct. But this time before we get to the corruption of the doctrine, I want to look first at what they got right. And that's the story of the New Testament canon. The books of the New Testament underwent a centuries-long evaluative process before they were adopted as the New Testament canon that we have today. Now, first of all, understand, the vast majority of the contents of the New Testament were established early on and were uncontested. And actually, that number is 84%. So 84% of the New Testament has never been questioned. That's everything Paul wrote, the Gospels, Acts, 1 John, and 1 Peter. They were all attested to very early on. These core books, if you will, were always included. But there was debate on things like Jude and 2 Peter. It was kind of weird when you first come across it, is that there weren't very many lists being made at all to try to standardize those. Skeptics sometimes point this out, but wouldn't they have more of an issue if there had been a centralized effort to control what the canon was? When skeptics point this out, I think it actually might betray a misunderstanding on their part of what the Church's doctrine of the canon is. If you've taken systematic theology here, you've probably heard this. The Church doesn't decide the canon, it discovers it. Aided by the Holy Spirit, obviously, but it's a process of discovery. Has anyone heard that before? So it did take more than three centuries of evaluation and discovery, but at the end of the day, all three branches of Christianity agree on the result, which is pretty remarkable. One of the things you'll find out in this class is that unfortunately, Christians have a pretty long history of finding things they disagree about, but they all agree on the New Testament canon, which is a clear testament to its self-evident nature. Now compare that to a process where instead of putting them through rigorous evaluation, they simply relied on a tradition. And that's how you get the Apocrypha. What is the Apocrypha? For those that don't know, it is a collection of an additional seven books which the Roman Catholic Church includes as a part of their Old Testament canon. But why do they include them? So let's talk now about the story of the Apocrypha. Remember that the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. When the main language of the people switched to Greek, the Jews undertook a great project to translate it into this new common language. The name of this Greek Old Testament was, does anyone know? Right, the Subtugent. And it was a very highly respected translation. Remember that even most of the New Testament quotes of the Old Testament used the Subtugent. So the question is, was the Subtugent itself inspired? There was already widespread belief among the Jews that the translation project was inspired. And so adds to this the fact that even the Apostles used that translation in the New Testament books, which we know are inspired. And you can see how it was easier to adopt the view that the Subtugent itself was inspired. Now even though I think we can all agree that the Subtugent is not inspired, that was not at all for certain in the first few centuries. But what does that have to do with these seven books that we've been talking about? Well, the Subtugent wasn't just a translation. It also included these seven books which were not in the original Hebrew Bible. These seven additional books in the Greek Subtugent were Tobit, Judas, the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and they also made additions to Esther and Daniel. So, the argument for their inclusion in the canon was one of simple deduction. One, the Subtugent translation of the Old Testament was inspired. Two, these books are included in the Subtugent. So three, therefore, these books must also be inspired. But notice that this is not the same inductive process of discovery that the other Old Testament books underwent. Instead, they were grandfathered in. If they had just relied on reading the books and evaluating them for their own merits, they probably wouldn't have made the cut. Some of the best students of the Bible in the early church, including big names like Origen and Jerome, studied these seven books and did not believe them to be inspired. Nevertheless, the argument from the tradition of the Subtugent won the day. One of its core proponents was Augustine of all people, and because he was held in such extremely high regard, the inclusion of the Apocrypha remained unchallenged for the next thousand years. So, that concludes the story of how the church, at the time leading up to the Reformation, both affirmed and denied that the Bible is self-evident. The Bible isn't only self-evident in its identity, it's also self-evident in its interpretation. As has been said, its meaning is discoverable within the Bible itself. By the time of the Middle Ages, many of the passages in scripture were thought to be allegories which had special interpretations, and so you'd need to go and read the History of Interpretation on a given text to understand what the proper allegory was. This doesn't mean that they always denied the literal meaning of the words, but they insisted on this additional component, often called the spiritual meaning. How did the church arrive at this point? First, it's important to understand that the interpretive environment of the early church was a mixed bag. While there were a lot of good, straightforward readings of the Bible, still, in even some of the most normal interpreters, such as Irenaeus, you'll notice these weird practices right alongside healthy ones. And that's because, even though they seem weird to us, they were fairly normal to the second century mindset. And one of these examples of weird interpretive practices was numerology. That's the idea that behind every number in the Bible, there's some special meaning. Now, of course, numerology is valid for some genres, like Apocalypse, the book of Revelation is packed full of numbers which should be read in this light, but these early interpreters applied this anywhere they could, genre notwithstanding. So like when the disciples catch 153 fish in John 21, there must be some hidden meaning behind that number that we've got to figure out. Another common practice was allegory, and this was especially the case in the city of Alexandria. This one, more so than numerology, caught on and was held as a valid interpretive practice in the coming centuries. Probably the most famous of all allegorizers was, does anyone know his name? Origen. Origen lived shortly after Irenaeus, right at the start of the third century. Alexandria already had a tradition of allegory, but Origen was the first to really create a Christian body of work employing that technique. One of the reasons he did it, he says, was to defend the truthfulness of scripture. That sounds odd, but there were skeptics in his day who loved to allege contradictions in the Bible and say, therefore, your little religious book can't be trusted. Instead of dealing with these problems head on, Origen said, oh, you only see it as a problem because you're reading it wrong. These contradictions are there to point you to the fact that it's meant to be taken as allegory. In other words, the contradictions are there on purpose, inerrant contradictions, if you will. And this method of interpreting the Bible allegorically was attractive to many intellectuals. Even Augustine, early on, when he had issues with some of the Bible on ethical and intellectual grounds, found the allegory option very helpful. There are lots of problems with these interpretive approaches, but one of the most obvious problems is that the meaning of the Bible is no longer self-evident. If allegory is a valid interpretive technique, you now have to have the collected works of Origen available to understand the text's true meaning. You can see how this actually contributed to the medieval idea of the Bible as being an obscure book, which only the super-spiritual could discern. Once you jettison the idea of the self-evident nature of the Bible's meaning, its meaning is no longer controlled, and you can make scripture teach whatever you want it to teach. Nevertheless, it was considered a valid approach until the time of the Reformation. So that concludes our section on how these two attributes of scripture were corrupted by the time of the Reformation. The Church had rejected all three concepts that we talked about—the clarity, the authority, and the self-evident nature of the Bible. In their view, the Bible was not clear. It was clear only for the clergy. The Bible was not authoritative. Really, in practice, only the Church's interpretation of the Bible was authoritative. And the Bible wasn't self-evident. Only the tradition could tell you both its identity and its interpretation. And if you violated any of these assumptions, you actually did so at risk of your own life. The Roman Catholic Church had grown in its power from the time of the early Church. It now held the power of the state, and it had no problem rooting out anyone it deemed as a threat to its power. So how was it that these corruptions were remedied? Let's look at each one of these three issues one by one to see how they were recovered at the time of the Reformation. First, the Bible is clear. Despite the Church's insistence on the obscure nature of the Bible and the inability of the common man to properly understand it, there were some in the Church who so firmly believed in the clarity of the Scriptures that they were willing to die for that belief. The main heroes in the story of the Church's recovery of the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture were not systematic theologians. They were Bible translators. My personal favorite is William Tyndale. He gave us our English Bible and was an amazing translator. We still have a ton of his words and phrasing in our ESV. But the Church didn't want anyone making translations into the common language. It was a capital offense. William Tyndale knew this when he translated it, but it was worth it to him. They caught him in 1536 and killed him for it. But let's back up a bit. Who was the first one to undertake the translation of the Bible into the English language? Correct, John Wycliffe. Does anyone know what period we're talking about? Which century he was born in? Right, before the Reformation. 1328, a full two centuries before the Reformation. This is why he's sometimes called the morning star of the Reformation. Now his project at first came across as an academic one. He was at Oxford, and while at the university, he oversaw the translation of the Latin Vulgate into the English language. So it appeared it'd just be a bunch of monks off doing their own thing. So at the time, Rome did not perceive the threat of his work or his philosophy. It was his philosophy, he said, he wanted a plowboy to be able to understand the Bible just as well as a priest. Well once Rome understood what he was advocating for, they condemned him as a heretic. John Hus decided to be a Wycliffeite and was killed about a century later for doing so. In fact, one of the first accusations leveled against Martin Luther was that he was a Wycliffeite. And this was before the Diet of Worms when he was tried as a heretic. So early on, they could sense something different about Luther, and they rightly labeled him a Wycliffeite. Appropriately, Luther would go on to produce maybe one of the best Bible translations ever given to a people. And John Calvin, of course, helped to translate the Bible into French, and as we've already mentioned, William Tyndale translated it into English. Were these men justified in their conviction that the Bible really is clear and understandable, even for the common people? The answer lies in the Bible's own testimony about itself. The Bible itself teaches how understandable it is. In Deuteronomy 30, 11, it says, For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. And in the next chapter, it tells them to read the Bible every seven years to everyone, even little children, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord. In the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 through 11, Paul rehearses four Old Testament narratives of sin and judgment. Then he says, Now these things happened to them as an example that they were written down for our instruction. The scripture teaches that it is clear and able to be understood even by children in different geopolitical contexts and in different centuries, and it was still able to be understood. There is something about the nature of scripture that makes it able to bridge these gaps. So yes, they were justified. Before we move on to talk about the authority of scripture, one more word about the clarity of scripture. You know, the clarity of scripture never makes it into the five solas of the Reformation. Sola Scriptura, or the mantra that stands for scripture alone, was really about the authority of scripture, not the clarity of scripture. But this recovery of the understanding that the Bible is a clear book and the common person can understand it just fine was really, I think, the main vibe of the Reformation. When you read Luther and Calvin, you can taste it in their writings and in the way that they teach. The church today should learn from their example and strive to shape its thinking by the Bible itself directly because it is understandable. So the Reformation restored the vision that the Bible is clear. Let's talk about how it restored the understanding that the Bible is authoritative. Not that these two ideas are unrelated. The clarity of scripture was a super decentralizing force. Now anyone can read and interpret the Bible for themselves. But by itself, the doctrine of the clarity of scripture had no teeth. It wasn't sufficient to build a movement of lots of people. I think that's why Martin Luther placed such an emphasis on the authority of the Bible. You see him saying it over and over again in his writings, how the Bible is authoritative no matter what tradition says, no matter what the church powers say, the Bible is authoritative. In 1521, the church finally decided that Martin Luther was not just some harmless priest with some strong opinions, but that he really was a threat to the church. And he was brought before the Knight of Worms and was asked to recant his writings. But Luther, of course, did not recant. He said, unless I am convinced by scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the word of God and I cannot and I will not recant anything. For to go against conscience would be neither right nor safe. God help me. Here I stand. I can do no other. When Luther said this, he was making a radical statement about the authority of the scriptures over against the entire Roman Catholic authority structures. I could list quote after quote on this. So pervasive was it in all of the reformers' writings. The reformers were clear on this issue. The Bible is authoritative in its own right, not the interpretation handed down from tradition. The Bible itself was authoritative. You probably heard the mantra, sola scriptura, or scripture alone. This is the Reformation teaching that the scripture and the scripture alone is the final and only infallible source for matters of faith and practice. And from Rome's perspective, this was the real threat. John Wycliffe and the translators were only a threat insofar as they might indirectly threaten the central authority of the church. But now Luther and his ilk were to find the church outright and just enrage them. If the reformers had only modified certain doctrinal particulars like the indulgences or the mass or maybe even justification by faith, the Reformation possibly would never have happened. They could have argued for these respectfully in the universities, exercised some patience, built up an academic consensus, and changed the teaching of the church from the inside. But no, they insisted that the Bible alone, not their Roman church, not the academy, was the authority. This is what awoke the monster. Now, when the monster awoke, why do you think they didn't back down? Why do you think Luther didn't back down? It's an interesting question, right? If faced with the option of either being burned at the stake or just abandon this one little doctrine of solar scripture, which would you do? Think, if you were there in the 16th century, just how easy it would have been to say, hmm, okay, you still let me believe the Nicene Creed? You still let me believe all the creeds? You even let me teach salvation by grace through faith? Hmm. Well it does seem that the entire rest of the holy Catholic church disagrees with me on this one little doctrine of solar scripture, so as a matter of humility and understanding that I could be wrong, I'll back down and let the church continue to play this role instead of the Bible. I won't make it an issue anymore and I promise not to teach any more on the subject. And then you get to live, right? Why do you think they didn't give that answer when faced with the threat of death? The reformers were convinced that your submission to the Bible's authority directly shows your submission to God's authority. The way a person treats the authority of scripture exposes the way they treat the authority of God. If you don't give scripture exclusive authority, you cannot give God exclusive authority, and this is why they were willing to die for it. And thousands and thousands of people over the next century and a half died for it. The church's embrace of the authority of the scripture proved to be the unraveling of the Roman Catholic church's control. If the clarity of scripture was the vibe of the Reformation, the authority of scripture was the blade. It's what enabled the church to escape the errors and corruptions of the Middle Ages. It's probably actually the climax of our story today. The authority of the Bible was the main issue. So we've covered how the Bible is clear and authoritative. What about how the Bible is self-evident? And you know how in a movie, even after the scene where the hero rescues everyone and defeats the villain, there's always still a couple loose ends to tie up? That's kind of what we're doing here. The Bible is self-evident. Let's talk first of all about its self-evident identity, the canon. As you know, the Reformers rejected the Apocrypha as part of the Bible. This big rejection is the reason that Protestants and Catholics have two separate Bibles in the bookstores. But why did the Reformers reject it? First of all, the main ingredient, I think, was the recovery of the vision that the Bible is authoritative. If the Bible is authoritative of a tradition, then tradition can't decide the Bible. So that was the first step to even allow them to reconsider their question of the canon. Second of all, another key ingredient that I think is too often overlooked was the return to the original languages. And this was actually a popular movement at the time, even in the academy apart from the church, to return to the original sources and read them in their original languages. One of the leaders of this movement, Erasmus, produced a Greek New Testament which Luther used to translate the New Testament. So whereas Wycliffe had done his translation from the Latin, Luther was doing his directly from the Greek. Well, what did that mean for the Old Testament? To translate the Old Testament, can they translate it from Latin? Which language would they need to translate it from? Correct, the Hebrew, not Latin. This move away from the Latin Vulgate meant that the inclusion of the Apocrypha was no longer the default position. The Reformers also pointed out that these books were not used by Jesus and the Apostles and that they had historical errors. So after re-evaluating the books, they decided that while they were helpful to read, they shouldn't be considered God-breathed. So put in its historical context, this process of evaluating the Apocrypha and rejecting it was actually just a continuation of the conviction that the church, rather than deciding the canon, discovers it. And that's because it has a self-evident identity. It also has a self-evident interpretation, and that's the other loose end we need to cover. The Bible is self-evident in its interpretation, that is to say, its meaning is discernible within itself. This is what some people call the plain sense. The Reformers rejected the allegorical interpretive method outright and without apology. I mean, the disdain that Calvin and Luther had for allegory was very palpable in their writings. Listen to Luther. Allegorical studies are the work of idle men. Who has a mind so weak as not to be able to launch into allegories? When I was young, I dealt with allegories and analogies and did nothing but clever tricks with them. Now I've let them go, and this is my last and best art, to translate the scriptures in their plain sense. The literal sense does it. In it there's life, comfort, power, instruction, and skill. The other is Tom Fullery, however brilliant the impression it makes. When I was a monk, I was a master of the use of allegories. I allegorized everything, even a chamber pot. Dear Roman origin contributed to the practice of searching only for allegories, God forgive them, in all of origin there is not one word of Christ. So as you can hear, it wasn't just an academic distinction for them, but a matter of mature faith. So that finishes it. The Reformation recovered a fresh vision of how the Bible is clear, authoritative, and self-evident. I mean, it's just pretty awesome the extent to which the Reformation recovered the doctrine of the Bible. It's been a refreshing class just recalling how much God used the Reformers to guide His church back to His word. But before we close out the class, I want to take a moment to go back and reflect on some of what's happened in this class and going back to some of the errors that they made early on. I think there's some wisdom in taking a moment to reflect on the story of how the church abandoned and later recovered these core teachings about the Bible. Because in each case, I think the intention started out well. The church fathers were worried about nominal Christians making the Bible commonplace or corrupting its meaning. So they built some safeguards, but they went beyond what the scriptures required. And what did that lead to? A couple of men exploited this concern and barred the commoner from even reading the Bible. In another case, the early church was worried about critics destroying the credibility of the truthfulness of scripture. But as a defense, they ended up justifying allegory as a valid method of interpretation. What did this lead to? For over a millennia, many in the church did not experience the edification that comes from hearing and applying the plain sense of the Bible. And even in the case of Augustine, when he was arguing for the Apocrypha, he thought he was defending a venerable tradition which he thought the apostles adhered to. In some of my favorite stories, one of the good guys ends up becoming a bad guy, either by a surprise like he was keeping a secret or he was changed himself by the events of the story. There's something similar going on here. In all four of these cases, there were good intentions at the start. And the cultural moment justified their actions. I think we can learn from this that when we're pushing back against the errors in the church or the culture, we ought not to overcorrect and go beyond the bounds of scripture, even if the cultural moment lets us. Instead, we ought to weigh our corrective measures and let them be measured and bounded by the scriptures. And then finally, the last encouragement that we take away from this lesson comes from the time of the Reformation, and that is that Christ is the head of his church. He didn't allow these errors to persist, but worked powerfully in the church to bring about the great recovery of his most necessary doctrines.
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