What is the Bible? (Ep. 23)

If you spend time online, you will run into people who question the Bible. They question the contents. They question the authority. They question the teachings. They assert that certain books were withheld. So, what is the Bible?

In this episode, Pastors Chris and Tony talk about the Bible. They speak of its truth, its power, and its form. Join the pastors in a lesson on the Bible.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Often Christians are exhorted to read the Bible or read the scriptures, but they may have a question, what is in the Bible? Why do we have the books that we do? For those who know more about the scriptures, they know that it's kind of an anthology of anthologies, numerous different writings included in one book called The Bible. So I thought today would be a good opportunity for us to address what is the Bible, what's in the Bible, why do we listen to the Bible? My name is Chris Flugeft, I'm the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Yorbalinda, California. I'm joined by Pastor Tony Flugeft, my brother who serves at Christ's Divine Lutheran Church in Temecula, California. And this is Double Portion, a podcast in which twin Lutheran pastors talk about the intersection of studying Scripture and living our lives as Christians. So Tony, if we begin a conversation on the Bible, where would you want to start with that conversation?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

There's a lot of rabbit holes that we can go down and we probably should go down. I I get questions about the Bible a lot. Questions about things like the book of Enoch, the the Apocrypha, slash Deuterocanonical books, or even questions about some of the more obscure whatever gospel of Barnabas type thoughts. So I do get those questions, and it's probably worthwhile addressing those. But before we get into that, we should probably talk about the importance of understanding the source of scripture that is from God. And then the fact that this impacts the way we approach scripture. So like Paul writes to Timothy, all scripture is God breathing and is useful for teaching, rebuke, and correcting and training in righteousness. There's a bunch of Bible passages we could go through that talk about how this isn't from human origin. This is a message given to us from God. And if the message of scripture is from God and if it's not of human origin, then we know that it is without error. God cannot lie, God would not deceive us, God doesn't make mistakes. So we know that the word is the inerrant word of God. And so we'll usually say that the Bible is the inerrant and inspired word of God. And it is important for us to say that outright when we discuss scripture, because that really differentiates the way that people will approach scripture. Do I believe this or not? Two people can say I believe the Bible and mean drastically different things. One person can say, I believe the Bible, and they really mean that it's a book of fairy tales that's kind of a nice moral for life. But another person might say, I believe the Bible, and they mean what we believe. This is the inspired and inerrant word of God. And again, this isn't a different approach. So I like to kind of use a visual for those who are watching this. I put the Bible ahead of me, I am receiving the message. I don't stand over it with my butcher knife, picking what I want to cut out and what I want to keep, but I receive the message of scripture from our God.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah, I think that's an important thing to mention. So within the scriptures themselves, you have the testimony of the inspired writers. You have in the Old Testament them saying things like, This is what the Lord says, or Thus says the Lord. They will say things, the word of the Lord came to me, and we'll hear other testimonies, uh, such as the passage from Timothy that you had quoted, and then you also have from Peter that they're not following cleverly devised myths, but instead that this is from the Holy Spirit. An important thing for us to recognize about the Bible, that we have this important term, verbal inspiration. And as you're talking about that, to kind of just encourage further what you had said, that we talk about verbal inspiration differently than people might use the term inspired. Say someone is talking about a poem, and they say, Wow, that poem was real that poet must have been very much inspired. Well, inspired by what? We bring this term from breathed in. All scriptures, God breathes. So it's God's word that came to these men who were writing the scriptures. So as we approach the scriptures, we can have that absolute confidence that this is the very word of our God. And as Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. If this is God's word, it is true. And then we hold the scriptures above ourselves, as you were saying, and we have it as that ruling rule. This is what governs our lives, this is what governs our doctrines and teaching. This is the word of God that comes to us.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, I I I think when I teach this, I'll often get into some other truths about scripture that we could connect with and and the main message of scripture. And it might be good to kind of establish those thoughts before we get into the specifics of canonicity and and those other things we talked about in that introduction. And I do like to draw out kind of these three truths with scripture that God's word is given for time and eternity. So one thought connected with that is we do not have the authority to say, well, that just applied back then, and today we get to change things up. Doesn't work that way. 1 Peter 1, 24 and 25 says, For all people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And that's particularly talking about the promises, the gracious promises of God will not fall. But I think you can really apply that to all of Scripture. It applies to time and eternity. The word of the Lord will endure forever. I don't get to say, well, that's just what they thought back in Genesis, and this is what we know today. We also know because it's God's word that we do not have the authority to change it. Deuteronomy 4, verse 2, Revelation is a similar point. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you. We also know that God's word is powerful, the spirit works through the word, both to convict us of our sinfulness, but to also apply that healing bomb of the gospel to bring us to life. Hebrews 4 12 says, For the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. So again, that's really focusing more on that law, sharp, piercing nature of the word, but then also there's that gospel power to bring us to life. And so these are some of the other things I would want to establish with God's Word with the Bible. It's not merely some dead word. It's not a book for, it's not just a book for our study, it's not just a textbook. It is an alive and active and powerful word that we don't have the authority to change that's been given for for our benefit, for our blessing.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, I think recognizing the function of scripture is so important. Uh perhaps you've heard it said before, the Bible is B-I-B-L-E, basic instructions before leaving the earth. And understood in the right way, that's a fine thing to say, right? Because it's telling us, well, here's the truth about Jesus. But we recognize that there are two words that make up the scripture, and that's the law and the gospel. And whether you say Christocentric, that Christ is the center of it, or Christotelic, that Christ is the end goal of it, either way, you're coming to the same place. That all the scriptures are pointing us to Christ Jesus. And Jesus himself is the one who held that forward as he used the threefold division of what would be the Old Testament scriptures, the law, the prophets, and he said the Psalms. We can talk a little bit more about that, but that'd be representative of the Ketevim, the writings. He said, all of these are fulfilled in him, and they testify up, testify about him. So we look to the scriptures and we hear this story, a true story, but the story about what God has done to save mankind. You have that very broad beginning with all of creations narrowing into this one family, following that nation through which the seed would come, the fulfillment of the promise revealed in Christ Jesus, and then he sends out his church. So that there's this function of the scriptures, and that primary one is to testify to salvation in Christ Jesus. Now there is a law that can be applied not just to convict sins as well, but instead as instruction for our Christian living, but uh all of this in light of salvation in Christ Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yeah, and and this is such an important hermeneutic for scripture to understand the law and the gospel. There's that really common misunderstanding that's kind of like Old Testament bad news, New Testament good news, and it doesn't work like that. We see law and gospel throughout the scriptures, uh, we see gospel promises passed down throughout the Old Testament. So this is something that like I said, when I do a new member class, I I like to highlight this truth and I'll kind of bring people through the red thread of the Old Testament. Not that that's even the best term because it's all over. Like all of this is about Jesus, and we're seeing illusions and types and foreshadows throughout, but we see these direct gospel promises throughout. God promised to send the the serpent to crush this or to send the seed of the woman to crush the serpent's head in Genesis 3. God promised to bless all nations through Abram's offspring in Genesis 12. God promised to bring about a king in the line of David in 2 Samuel 7. God promised to send the suffering servant in Isaiah chapters 52 and 53. God promised to create a new covenant with his people in Jeremiah 31. We see promise after promise after promise after promise until it's fulfilled in Luke chapter 2 and in the New Testament scriptures where Jesus comes into this world. And and so this law gospel is woven throughout. It is that key way to understand scripture. Uh, how does this show me my sinfulness? How does this show me my Savior? And so as we read it, we need to know the purpose. And so you think of John chapter 20, these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Uh, this was given to us again, not just to be a textbook, not just to be rules for life, but to communicate the message of our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

And I think that is an important thing for us to bring up as you were talking about how we view the Old Testament scriptures in light of Christ Jesus. And this isn't us having a wild imagination or running away with things, but as you even read through Matthew or you read through Hebrews, you can see that this is the way that the inspired writers of the scriptures, the New Testament, saw these things. They uh it was revealed to them, this is Christ Jesus, and this is how it's fulfilled. So we're not having a wild imagination as you're looking to the Old Testament and asking that question, where is Christ here? But instead, you are reading it in the way that the Holy Spirit brought them to understand these things too.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah, I I've always thought that maybe uh Matthew or Paul might not do so well in a seminary class because they would see something in the Old Testament and say that that's about Jesus, and then that people would be kind of uncomfortable because they would say, like, are you saying that this isn't historically true? But if you look through, if you study through Matthew's gospel and and he's identifying Jesus as the fulfillment of these things, like if if the Holy Spirit didn't use Matthew's writing to draw our attention to this, we would have never caught that on our own. Like out of out of Egypt, I've called my son. When you go back, it's Hosea, right? When you go back to the Old Testament and and see this context, it's like, how is this referring to to Jesus and how is this fulfilled in Jesus' flight to Egypt? And then we all it helps us understand how Jesus is the the greater son of of God, the the greater Israel, and and that's one example. Or or you see how Jesus is the fulfillment of the sign of Jonah, and and we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of the bronze serpent. That one's a little clearer, I think. But we see all of these these types and illusions that are brought out to us by the writers of scripture that we might not have caught if it weren't told to us.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah. And thank thank goodness that the inspired writers were inspired by God to catch these things. Sometimes you read through Mark or you read through the gospel readings, and you may struggle with how did they not get it, how did they doubt, how did they not understand, but then say, without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, these things are challenging to grasp and to understand. I was preparing my my sermon for this upcoming Sunday, and one of the statements that I had read was in their Matthew chapter, maybe it was uh chapter 28, maybe verse 16 or 17, it says that they the disciples believed and some doubted. They still doubted. And he Matthew had said it before before this that this was the eleven. And so then there's some commentators who are saying this must be more than the eleven. This must be that time that Paul was talking about 500 gathering, because how did they not get it yet? We certainly see that Pentecost seems to be the event where everything really clicks for them, and it's like, all right, this is what we're doing, as in in that outward expression, they were given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Even after that, though, Peter has to be rebuked by Paul because he gives in to the Judaizers. And so there's still like that that struggle post Pentecost to an extent as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

So then I think one thing we that can then add to our application here, although the writings of Scripture are clear, we also uh need to kind of have this uh balance as we understand that the truths are spiritually discerned. That you can clearly read that Jesus Christ was crucified for the sins of the world. You can clearly read the truths expressed in Scripture, uh, but we do have our own faulty human logic and understanding that can cloud us from seeing these truths. So scripture is both clear and challenging at times, and we thank God that we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit to understand the depths of what this says.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Yeah, and that the fact that at times scripture appears to be unclear to us, and and the fact that we need these things to be spiritually discerned kind of connects to this thought. Often when I'm teaching this, I'll give people kind of tips for reading the Bible, and and you might talk about this being hermeneutic principles, but one of the tips that I'll give is this idea that we need to ask God to give us ears to hear and eyes to see. We need his blessing. And so when you when you read the scriptures, pray that God helps you to see the truth that he has laid out for you. Another thing that we can get into is just some of those other thoughts that connect to interpreting scripture, because of that, at times there is the perceived lack of clarity, and and that lack of clarity is because of the fault within us, not because of the fault in scripture. But that might be worth getting into a little bit. I I know we want to talk a little bit more about the canon and some of those maybe controversial thoughts, and and maybe some thoughts you can share for to the person who's hearing a lot from the online Roman Catholic apologist who's asserting that we've taken books out of the Bible or something like that. We could get into that, but do you want to talk a little bit about hermeneutic principles?

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, I think let's let's lay a solid foundation before we start addressing these flags that pop up, right? You want to go for the foundation, not just the distractions right away. So lay a solid foundation. I think get into the hermeneutics, you can talk about that. I would also want to talk a little bit about the fact that the word of God is is performative and what it does too. But I'll bring those thoughts in and after you say what you're gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah, so uh I these are kind of the the list of rules for reading the Bible, tips for reading the Bible, I'll share with people, and maybe you can see if there's anything you want to supplement or add to that. So I talked about the one asking for God to give us ears to hear. Then I'll also tell them to read through the lens of Christ. So Jesus tells us that these are the scriptures that testify about him. Um it's all about him. He tells that to the Mayus disciples, he opens their eyes to see. We see him tell that to the to the Pharisees as well. Um, these are the scriptures that testify about Jesus. So it is Christocentric. Uh, to remember the purpose of scripture, I quoted this before, John chapter 20, verse 31. These are are the scriptures that testify about Christ, so that you may believe this is given to you to bring you to faith in Jesus. So those are some important things. Then also to know that scripture alone establishes doctrine. And so that's where there are differences of opinions. And uh I will share quotes from Anglican resources and Roman Catholic resources. I could share the Wesley's quadrilateral type thoughts as well to show not everyone believes that in the same way, that scripture alone establishes doctrine. I mean, frankly, Roman Catholics would flat out deny that. They don't believe that. And so to this is the presupposition we're working with that scripture alone establishes doctrine. The formula of Concord will specifically say Old Testament, New Testament scriptures establish doctrine. We'll get into that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

What I would say, yeah, what I would bring to that point is it's important to recognize that it scripture alone establishes doctrine. And you only need one Bible passage to establish a doctrine, right? So uh Christ's descent into hell is well, it seems to only be talked about in two Bible passages, but you only need one passage to demonstrate a uh a biblical truth. And if you move away from scripture alone being that uh that firm ruling rule, at the end of the day, the other quote unquote rule, the other thing that sets the standard ends up taking over. That thing ends up going over scripture because you imagine, well, if it's scripture and my human understanding, what happens when scripture doesn't match with my human understanding? Well, I don't subject my fault to human understanding all the time, then to scripture. My faulty human understanding starts to twist and bend scripture according to what I want to believe. Or if you say it's scripture and tradition, what happens when tradition doesn't line up with what scripture says? It's uh well often, unfortunately, people start to make excuses or explanations for tradition to bring that then as the okay thing. So so often if it's scripture and something else, the other person thing does end up getting that prominence.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Well, and and for example, the the idea of praying to the saints. So this idea of like the interceding of the saints is something that is in our Lutheran confessions. This is something we see in Revelation, the saints in the Revelation. How long, O Lord, holy job on the surface. And and so that that interceding of the saints is is biblical. But then what ends up happening is that the there is this Roman Catholic tradition of praying to them, which seems to have all their origins, and and they impose that traditional thought into the scripture passage. Nowhere in that revelation passage is it implying that people are too pray to the saints and they will intercede on their behalf. They are interceding about the injustice. That's just what's happening. People are not called to pray to them. And so that that will also happen is when traditions are elevated on the same level of scripture, they'll kind of take that traditional thought or that rational thought and impose it into a section of scripture.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

And then you see how different false teachings get interwoven in this, and I can't help but think that the that false teaching of the treasury of merits, the idea that there is this treasury of good mer uh good works that can get given out to people, right? There's a little bit of a crass way of talking about it. But well, if the saints are in heaven and they are no longer like me, all covered in sin, can't they more easily talk to God? And so then it's even some false other false teachings that don't particularly inform praying to the saints, but they end up coming in there, and you you do have that faulty human reasoning that can take over. And rather than hearing the clear words of Jesus when he says, when you pray, say, Our Father in Heaven.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Yeah. And then going back to the rules for reading the Bible, another one, let scripture interpret scripture, which is connected, but then also particularly let clear scripture interpret unclear scripture. Not that scripture is ever unclear, but it seems unclear to us. And this is the example I use of people. If you're reading Ezekiel or Revelation and your apocalyptic literature section of Scripture, Daniel, and you come up with what you perceive to be a date for the end of the world. Well, check that with the times that Jesus says you won't know the day or the hour. Very clearly, he says you won't know the day or the hour. So let clear scripture interpret what seems to be unclear. Apocalyptic literature could be difficult to interpret. If you are coming up with an interpretation that's in the face of a very clear statement of scripture, then then maybe that interpretation's wrong. Yeah, certainly it's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

I did a Bible study on Zechariah recently within my congregation, and it was for part of an overall study on the minor prophets. So we did not give Zechariah enough time. And I said that in a bunch of times in the study, is we're not doing do justice to Zechariah. This is really just a survey to introduce him to you. And perhaps we'll do a Bible study on Zechariah in the future. But as you go through Zechariah, there are challenging things, especially as it talks about the end times, as and especially as it uses symbolism. And there are some things that you just have to say, the Lord knows what that means. I might not know what that means. Thankfully, in Zechariah, there is an overarching clear truth that just shines out from it, and that's the salvation that comes from that promised Messiah, that our Lord Jesus was fulfilled that. So you can walk away from Zechariah and say, I have wonderful confidence about the victory that there is in Christ Jesus. And there's some things you might say, well, God knows what that means. And I'm struggling a little bit understanding that.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

And I think that's really a value of actually just taking books of the Bible and studying through them. And and I'd encourage people to like the little devotionals and stuff that people do are are wonderful. But to actually just read scripture or or churches, like it's fine, do thematic Bible studies about outreach and equipping and leadership. Sure, that's that's great. Do all those things. But don't forget to just grab a book of the Bible and study through it. Like my congregation was wonderfully blessed by going through First Corinthians, because there's a lot of things that you need to wrestle through as you're studying through First Corinthians, particularly things that we're not used to talking about, head coverings, the charismatic gifts, even closer to the thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Dealing with thoughts, deal dealing with sexual immorality within the congregation is a big one.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

And so there's and and so two of them that are complicated are the ones about charismatic gifts and the part about the head coverings, because uh we don't think about those things very much. And if you just did a thematic Bible study, you'd never come across these. And so it's good to deal with these things. And and so I know it's a little bit of a tangent from Let's Clear Scripture interpret unclear, but I think it is just valuable to actually be encountered with these Bible passages because there are some complicated sections and it's good for you to know what's what's in there.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

And it can be helpful though as you do that, because you can put it into practice. You can say, All right, well, Zechariah is talking about the last days here. Well, let's see what what did Jesus say about the last days here, so that can put in that principle in practice.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Well, and and and that's exactly like what we're doing with like the role, the roles of men and women type thoughts. Okay, so we're talking about head coverings. Well, what is the principle? Where else do we see this in scripture? Yeah, and you're putting in the practice of this idea of clear versus what seems to be us unclear to us. Maybe connected with that is, I think, a very valuable rule. Know that the simplest understanding is preferred. If you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to explain away the clear words of scripture, that might just mean you don't like what it has to say. And so I think of a lot of the progressive readings of scripture about human sexuality, and they they they explain away the clear words about homosexuality. Or you even think about churches that deny the saving power of baptism or deny the real presence of the Lord's Supper. Uh, there's very simple, clear words. 1 Peter 3 21. This water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also. It's not saying baptism symbolizes something, the flood symbolizes baptism that saves you also. And I remember listening to an episode of The White Horse in one time, and there's podcasts where a Lutheran and three other pastors, three other, I think, talk from different perspectives. And finally, the Lutheran just asked the people from the different perspectives, what do you say about 1 Peter 3 21? And the Baptist joked, as Baptists, we don't dance, but we dance from that passage. And I thought that was kind of telling. Like it there's very clear words. Baptism saves you also. So are you going to take the simplest understanding of that, or are you gonna have to reinterpret it in a way that fits your scheme? And I think that can be another major issue with interpreting scripture, is when people try to fit scripture into their scheme. And then also connected with that, like we were talking about the Lord's Supper, when when people have a scheme and it's like, well, God is sovereign and and nothing can ever affect his sovereignty, and and for him to give himself to people and and it not be a blessing to them would make God seem ineffective. Like you see you hear people talking like this, and so then they take their their scheme and impose that into the Lord's Supper and say, therefore it can't truly be Jesus' body and blood. Yeah, because what you're talking about not understanding the simplest understanding.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah, what you're talking about is Occam's razor. Yeah, the the simplest, the simplest understandings uh are solutions, often the best one. So as you approach scripture, uh understanding that this is a powerful word, that the Holy Spirit works through it, that God has given this and it's to be sufficient, and we have a God who's working through, who desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of salvation, that the the the clear understanding of this is often going to be, well, what does it say? Not how can I explain this in different ways? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

And if you find yourself up against your doctrine and you're reading sections of scripture, it might be good to push against that a little bit and say, is my understanding correct? Now, again, going back to the previous one, um, scripture interprets scripture, like maybe we need to understand who this is spoken to, James versus Paul type thoughts. Like there's a good point in saying, like, maybe I am has right to be hesitant in understanding in a certain way. But we ought to be careful about when we we aren't comfortable with speaking the way that scripture speaks. And so I find this within Lutheranism when we talk about exhortations for Christian living. You get a lot of people who get really uncomfortable with the ther what we call the third use of the law. The law is a guide, your word is a a lamp for my feet and a light from my path, to the point where they'll say things like, you can't end a sermon with the law. Well, the epistles often end with law thoughts. Are we saying that the word is not powerful enough to overcome a law encouragement? Like, let's be careful about going too far with something. If we're not comfortable talking with the what talking the way that scripture talks, like read like read the epistles. The epistles constantly are giving encouragements for Christian living. And I think I maybe talked about this in a previous podcast. Um, I used to be really uncomfortable with the phrase WWJD. What would Jesus do? Because it's like, well, Jesus is not just our example, he's our savior. That's true. But the Bible talks about Jesus' example all the time. And and so, like, if if I have this little slogan that gets in the way of what the way scripture actually talks, like maybe I I should stop my sloganeering and handle scripture rightly.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

And thinking about some of the thoughts that you're sharing there, it's it makes me think about uh the accusation that you might see online. I I don't know what everyone else's social media feed looks like. Mine is full of Roman Catholic apologists speaking against Protestantism. And one of the huge accusations that they're gonna bring is okay, you guys don't have one pope, you have a million different popes because everyone's the Pope who determines what the Bible means to them. In a sense, there there's a fair accusation there because there is a strong temptation to bend and twist scripture towards my own preconceived ideas, but that doesn't mean that scripture as the rule is a problem. That means that we need to remove our ourselves as much as we can so that we can hear that testimony of scripture, and when scripture doesn't make sense, not say, oh, that doesn't make sense to me, I'm gonna make it make sense and bend and twist it, but instead simply listen. What does do the scriptures say? How does God speak through these men? And tying it to one thing I was thinking about before you got into this list, I'm gonna share it here now, and then you continue on the list, is that this word is powerful. So why can we have confidence? Because the Holy Spirit is working through it. And you think about how did God create the heavens and the and the earth? It is his powerful word that created all things. So God comes to us and it is his powerful word, so we can have wonderful assurance and confidence as the scriptures are brought to people that they can hear and understand these truths.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Yeah. And maybe connecting with like kind of the little critique I see within Lutheranism is one of the the the word is powerful not just to create faith, but to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness. And so when we say, like, well, we speak against any third use of the law encouragement for Christian living, we're downplaying the power of the Spirit working through the Word, because the God God tells us that the Spirit works to train us in righteousness through the Word. God tells us that His Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our paths. So we need to understand that the Word is powerful in that way as well. Let's not downplay the power of the Spirit. So just four other encouragements that I'll kind of wrap into one thought. So be informed by the historical context, be informed by the context of scripture, know that miracles happen, and read according to the genre. So with the context thoughts, knowing that there's an audience, and and there's this is a specific person writing to a group of people often, and there's a this is happening within a certain time period in history, and these things influence. But this isn't also a standalone, it's a part of a greater body of scripture or God's word to us. So just understand that this it's it's always a little it's good to be a little cautious about people who just take a Bible passage and say something with it. Okay, is that actually what that Bible passage is saying? Well, what does the context say? Content with the context, it's easy for us to kind of have this issue of chronological snobbery and say, well, back then they were a bunch of fools, today we know better, and then they discredit any possibility of miracles. Well, no, they aren't a bunch of fools. They were there. They they can be eyewitnesses and and and they saw what happened. That's a fair study of the history to say they know better than me, who is 2,000 years removed. So no one trusts that miracles happen. Uh we believe in incredible things. And then connecting also with that, like the historical context, and then maybe bridging a little bit further. There's genres to these sections of scripture. Some of these things are actually just historical narrative. That's where the historical context is super important, like what's happening in Israel at this time. But other parts are poetry, other parts are epistles, they're letters from um from an apostle to the congregation, uh, or it's apocalyptic literature. And so we read literally and accurately by reading according to its genre, how it's intended to be understood.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Yeah, I think that's really important for us to recognize those things as we approach the scriptures tied to the genre thought that you had there. And we don't want to run away with this, but to understand that there are some passages that are describing what happened, and there are some passages that are telling you what to do, or we might say description versus prescription. Again, sometimes scripture describes what happened and it gives you a pretty good idea of what you should do too. Uh so that's why I'm saying don't run too far away with it. Uh, but it is helpful for us to recognize that there is a difference between describing what happened in that instance and prescribing or telling Christians this is what you are to do now in this instance.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Yeah. So David takes multiple wives. That doesn't mean therefore go and do likewives. But also we can take an implied message from the narratives where we see it's always a bad thing, even if God doesn't directly like strike them down from above, we see polygamy is always a bad thing in scripture. It causes problems. And so we have implied, implicit doctrines that we derive from scripture, but also we want to be careful, like you said, about whether this is prescriptive or descriptive. I do we want to now get into kind of some of the canon thoughts, or is there anything you can talk about?

SPEAKER_00 38:14

There's one thought that I think would be really important to get into before we get into some of the thoughts of what are in the canon. And before we talk about it more, the canon's the rule. It's like what why do we have 66 books of the Bible? And we'll we're gonna talk more about that. But as we think about these things, I think it can be helpful for us to ask, like, what is the word of God? And we talked about God inspired men to write it. But when we talk about this, you can have a distinction between the form the form of the word and the meaning of the word, and we actually mean both, right? So what we're not saying is like you can totally throw out the form, like the letters, none of that matters. It does matter because God inspired those letters to be used. But the meaning's there too. The meaning matters. So when we have God's word, we have the form of the word and the meaning of the word. Now, this doesn't mean it can't be translated, right? Like you move from the Hebrew letters to English letters, and you don't have that form anymore. It can be translated. And in the book that Professor Geiger from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary published recently from Northwestern Publishing House, I think this was a really good point, is what the first translator that we see in in the New Testament is actually God, the Holy Spirit. He on Pentecost, he uses the disciples to speak in different languages. So we can see that the Word of God can indeed be translated.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Or I'll even point to often it seems as though the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament is what the gospel writers are operating with. And he makes that point as well. But they took a lot of advice from Lutherans when they were putting that together.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, and in Professor Geiger's book, he actually references this idea of having confidence in the translations, uh, because we we do have Christians who are looking to faithfully translate these things. Yes. And making these decisions, although there can be bias and there could be malice with the popular translations of the English Bible. We don't need to have that fear for the most part. Even the New Living Translation, Professor Geiger mentioned it in his book. I've used the New Living Translation through a resource called Street Lights. There are times where you're like, I don't know if that's the best way to represent what was said there, but even the New Living Translation is a translation that's striving to be faithful. And we get way into the weeds between the difference between dynamic equivalence and formal correspondence with translation and say just because it this translation tries to render word for word as much from as possible from language to language doesn't mean that's actually the most faithful translation because sometimes the communicating the thought is actually done more clearly than going word for word.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Yeah. Like I'll I'll use this example. If if I were um like talking to someone, like my kid, kind of jokingly, you make a better door than a window because they're standing in the way of the TV, and you just translated that into a different language, they might not really understand what that means because you've got different turns of phrase, different AVMs, whatever, in different languages that that just might not communicate. And so like the the Hebrew one, like it's getting angry is like what getting long in the nose, right? And it's like that if you just literally translated it that way in English, it would make no sense. And so some of these things you need to make decisions to properly communicate the thought. And so just because the NASB or the ESV does this more often doesn't mean it's better. And sometimes it's it's too wooden. It's like this isn't really doing a good job of communicating to a receiving audience. But then also there's the the errors of the kind of the more liberal like thought-for-thought that might lend itself more to the person's interpretation of things, or even like something in the middle, like the NIV is not perfect. There's some there's some pretty not great stuff in the NIV, but overall, overall, like these translations are are really rather solid.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Thoughts on that textual criticism that it's a very small amount of of the text. It's w m less than one percent, way less than one percent of the text. We have absolute confidence. And when you come to a text that was written over the course of thousands of years and has now been preserved for thousands more, that is incredible. It's incredible to have that confidence. It's confidence we don't have o of other historical writings. I mean it look to Shakespeare, who is much, much newer, and you have so many questions about the things that Shakespeare actually wrote. I mean, even Martin Luther's table talks, there are times where you say about students' assessments. Yeah, is m is this Martin Luther's thought or is this Vite Dietrich's thought here?

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things I think also you you do just at a certain point need to cling to like the sovereignty of God in the sense like he says the that his church will will endure and and the word is what feeds his church. And so he's gonna he's gonna give his church her word. And and so like there is like also just trusting in God to do what's good for us, to do what's be best for us to preserve his word for us. And we we do just need to trust in him.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Alright, so do we want to talk about some canon thoughts here after we got into a little bit of practical criticism?

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah, I think it might be a little bit of a longer episode, but that's okay. I think people might be interested in this.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Yeah, so as we're talking about the texts uh of the Bible, you're gonna have your classic understanding within pro Protestant churches that it is 66 books of the Bible, 39 books of the Old Testament, 27 books of the New Testament. We're gonna go to the 39, and the the canon of the Old Testament is a little bit easier than it is of the New Testament to have that conversation and understanding. Although there will be people who have some pushback and questions and concerns, but uh what we can have is there are there's testimony from Jesus' day about the canon that they have. And when Jesus talks about the scriptures and he talks about the threefold division of the law, the prophets, and the writings, well, he says Psalms, and Jesus uh points back to the scriptures, then we can have confidence. Now, there were 24 books then, so where did the other books come from, from 24 to 39? Well, we we actually just have books that were included together that uh as one instead of multiple. So the minor prophets, where there's 12 of them, it's actually one. Or you think of Ezra and Nehemiah, you have those together. So you have a number of situations where you have multiple books, but those 39 books that we have would be the same as that typical 24. So the question on what belongs in the Old Testament is a little bit less challenging there because it's the the the rule of the scriptures that were used in in Jesus' day.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah. There there is a little bit of question about the Septuagint, including what's called like what we would call it the Apocrypha. And I don't know if we want to get into that at all right now, but that's because that's where the question comes in. Like, well, the the collections of the Old Testament don't have these books necessarily in Hebrew, but the Greek Septuagint seems to have them. And there's a there's a history behind that of when the these things were not really considered to be on the same par of the the Old Testament scriptures. But the there's a a couple of the apocryphal books that would be included with the Septuagint, but they're not included. But the understanding seems to always have been that this isn't on the same level.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And uh to uh have those books and then the testimony, I think it would be good to have a little bit of a conversation about what might be called the Apocrypha, because if someone's doing their internet research, they're just scrolling through TikTok, this is gonna be one of the things that's brought before them. They're going to hear a caricature. This was in the Bible, and then well, actually, here's the overall caricature that we can address. There there was no Bible until the Council of Nicaea in 325 uh A.D. when the Roman Catholic Church brought it together, and and then in 1517, Martin Luther removed books from the Bible that didn't fit with his theology. And we'll say that the character of their argument, sometimes that people on that side even present the caricature of their argument. We're gonna say for a number of reasons that's just not true, and we can talk about that more. Maybe after we talk about the New Testament, we can get into the Council of Nicaea 325 AD date. But let's talk now about the idea that Martin Luther just removed books that he didn't want because it didn't fit with his theology. Particularly, that's in connection to what we call apocryphal books, what the Roman Catholic Church might call deuterocanonical books.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Yeah, I had a member at my church ask about this recently, and I see it all over social media. Like you mentioned before, Roman Catholic apologists are memeing against Lutherans, talking about the drunk monk of Luther or taking books of the Bible out or whatever. And so I I if you if you're okay with that, I'd kind of just like to lay a number of things out about this. So so Luther did not take the Apocrypha out of Scripture. Actually, his translation included the Apocrypha, but he put it at the end, and he's not the only person that does that. And and so the Lutherans kept the Apocrypha with their printing of Scripture until relatively recently, actually. I was kind of surprised to learn this. There were some other groups like the in English translations that took it out uh for other reasons, but Lutherans kept it for quite some time, and then it kind of gets left out in some ways for pragmatic reasons, because it was cheaper to print without it, and the understandings it's not on the same level of scripture, anyways. Um this idea that Luther got it if it's not true. Lutherans do not consider the Apocrypha to be heretical, but rather there's this value in understanding what's being taught. Or um, some might consider some things, depending on how you interpret it, as heretical, but overall there's understood to be like this is a valuable book. Um so the Septuagint includes it, yes, and and Jerome includes includes it. We see this history.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

And we define what the Septuagint is. We've mentioned it a couple of times.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

The Greek, yeah, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. But there was not like a uniform voice throughout church history saying this is these books are our scripture. Uh in fact, both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox call it the deutero-canonical books. And and so we see Jerome even speaks about it in a way that this isn't the same level as Scripture. Now, eventually who you might call the inclusionaries, the ones who want to include it, won the day within the Roman Catholic Church, but that's not until the Council of Trent, which is after Luther. So they don't really um have a unified voice saying, yes, this is a part of Scripture until after Luther, really in response.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

And I want to bring something else in tie tying it to the Council of Trent. There are a lot of things in the Council of Trent, which if you would go through it and you would say, this is very problematic. Right? So there kind of the the kid there's multiple aspects of a counter-reformation following Martin Luther and the other reformers, but there are a lot of big problems. So Martin Chemnitz, he writes this whole response to the what's going on in the Roman Catholic Church. But to say something follows after the the Council of Trent, what one thing we should recognize is they they hardened themselves in some teachings that went against what the Reformers so things that may have been more questions in within the church at that time, they took a harder stance on those things.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

So there there was this debate that existed in the early church, in the church fathers, about the what we would know as the Apocrypha as these deutero-canonical books as they call it. And it wasn't resolved until the reaction after Luther. And the Lutherans follow the example of some of the church fathers like Jerome, who says that it's it's good for examples of life and instructions on manners, but it's it's not scripture. Um or Athanasius. Uh the uh Athanasius does not hold it on the level of scripture. They follow the idea of the Eastern Council of Laodicea, which listed a canon that was identical to Athanasian's Athanasius' canon, which didn't include these books. Uh, there's another man, I actually only have read his name, I don't know if necessarily pronounce it, Rufinus, I would Rufinus, who distinguishes between ecclesiastical books and canonical books, and that seems to be kind of a common description. The canonical books are the books of scripture that we know the ecclesiastical books are these apocryphal or what they might call deuterocanonical books. And so even when you get down to that view of the deuterocanonical books as according to the Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox, they don't match in what they think those books are. There's not a unified list. And so this idea that like Lutherans just remove books is just not accurate. And so Luther thinks that the Apocrypha is valuable. He says that they are books which are not to not to be held equal to sacred scriptures, but rather, nevertheless, they are useful and good to read. So as Lutherans, we would say doctrine alone comes from the Old and New Testament scriptures. That's what the formula of conquered conquered says. That's what we believe. But we do think that there is value to these apocryphal books, and one of the reasons that it's valuable is because it helps to provide history for that time period that we don't have a lot of documentation for.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Yeah. The the scriptures are self-authenticating. So the scriptures reveal themselves to the church. The church does not determine what is in the scriptures. And we could get more into the uh apocrypha on uh on different points. We could even talk about specific things such as Bell and the Dragon or the Book of Tobit. There's interesting stories in in them. I I think one of the aspects of the apocryphal books is there are some of them which seem to be relying good, reliable history, such as first and second Maccabees. There are other books that you might ask, is this actually just kind of a a story meant to teach a lesson? Such as Tobit. Tobit would be one of those where you're like, is this a something that actually happened? Did anyone ever think this was something that actually happened? Or is this just like a Christian story that was used? And having those serious questions that about Tobit or Bell and the Dragon that you don't have as a confessional Lutheran, as a Christian who relies on the scriptures, that you do have like Jonah, or you have about Daniel in the lion's den. And so there are some historical questions that you do have about these books in the Apocrypha.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

And with Jonah, where it's like it's hard to place Jonah exactly when it is, the one major difference is we have Jesus referring to this. And so that that's like, well, we know it happened. We might not know exactly when it happened. That's a little, or not Jonah, like Job. Job, we don't know exactly when that happened. But Jonah, Jonah, too. Jonah Jonah becomes a little complicated. And Jonah's referenced in one of the other testament books, but still there's no question about these things. Well, it's like Jesus said this happened. And so um it's a little different. Another thing I was kind of looking into is a book that's not exactly in the Roman Catholic Apocrypha canon, but people will talk about it. It is included in the Ethiopian Bible called the Book of Enoch. Yeah, so the Book of Enoch. And well, I guess what we can say about the book of Enoch is it seems to be like falsely attributed to Enoch. So Enoch is referred to in Genesis chapter five, and this man who walked with God appears not die.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

The seventh from Adam. So it's interesting to note that too. He doesn't die, he's the seventh from Adam. Like the he's very in he's very much an interesting figure. So you would understand why people might want to hear more from him.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

But the the book doesn't the book of Enoch that that they're referring to seems to be written maybe the 300s BC, like a long, long time after Enoch lived, because Enoch was pre-flood. And so it it can't be Enoch. It is falsely attributed to Enoch. And so whenever a book is like what's called pseudopigrapha, uh that kind of like disqualifies it automatically, because it wasn't actually written by the person that they say it was written by.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

So if we don't know who wrote it, we can have comfortability still. If the author lies about who wrote it, that's a big red flag.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

Yeah. And then one question that gets talked about with this is because the book of Enoch may be quoted in Jude. So does that mean that it should be scripture? Well, here's a question. Is it quoting the book of Enoch, or is this something Enoch maybe actually said? That's one issue. Or just because something is quoted in Scripture doesn't mean that the original source is scripture. Paul quotes the prophets of the day. All Cretans are liars. Does that mean that the quote, all Cretans are liars before the poets and the prophets and all that? Does that mean that the quote all Cretans are liars, liars in its original source is inspired in scripture? No, it's inspired inspired scripture in the context of scripture. And so this doesn't it doesn't work retroactively like that.

SPEAKER_00 59:51

Yeah, I think that's a really, really important point to bring up. So we talked about the the Apocrypha. It's important to recognize that even the list of what someone might call deuterocanonical or apocryphal books isn't always standardized and set in stone. If you want to know more about it, I would encourage the Concordia Publishing House released uh around when they released their Lutheran Study Bible. They released a Lutheran study apocrypha. I had a young man in my congregation who was really interested in those Deuterocanonical texts or the Apocrypha, so I actually just gave it to him. But I've lent it out to people before, so I need to purchase a new copy of that. But there you can you can read it. We're not saying don't read it. One encourage I might give, practically speaking, as a pastor, is read read the 66 books of the Bible first. If you are just reading out of curiosity, there might just be more benefits to going to grab that Bible that you have in the church pew, grab that Bible you have at home and read from the Holy Scriptures. And then later on, if you have questions still about the Apocrypha, read it, learn from it. It might be good to have a study partner or just get that Lutheran study Apocrypha where there can be some helpful footnotes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:20

Yeah. And one point with that quickly, the connecting with the like the caricature of what Lutherans believe, because there's there is one section, I think Maccabees, it's quoted in the confessions, basically in Augsburg Confession, basically saying that there's the section that doesn't actually teach praying to the saints. And it kind of just lines up with what we were talking about before. There this idea that there's some doctrine that we're trying to hide is not true because if you have an honest view of what this actually says, it's not praying to the saints. And and and so that would be one thought too. It's like we're not trying to hide what's in there. Do you want to get into the New Testament canon a bit then?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

Yeah, I think the New Testament canon would be really important for us to get into. We might not be able to give it enough time. It's an important conversation to have. We've already laid out that all scripture is God breathed, that it's useful for teaching, rebuke, and correcting, and training in righteousness. We've always already laid out that Christ is the center of it. We have confidence in the scriptures because uh Jesus has put his stamp of approval on it. He put his stamp of approval on the Old Testament, and He also put his stamp of approval on the New Testament by uh telling his disciples that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who would cause them to remember these things and then send them out. So then for that very reason, uh, one of the things that he looked for as a mark of authenticity of the uh New Testament is apostolicity. It's connected to an apostle, and that doesn't mean that they're all written by apostles, instead to have that strong connection to apostles and to our Lord Jesus. So Matthew and John are apostles. Luke is connected to Paul, John Mark is connected to Peter and to Paul, and perhaps very likely not an apostle, but as a young man, a follower of Jesus. And then we can go to all the letters of Paul. We can uh go to Peter's letters, John's letters, we've got apostles there. There's some books that you have some question about the authorship of it, and that would be Hebrews would be kind of the main one. And then you would get into Jude and James. There's some conversations. It would seem they are very much brothers of each other, and a lot of people then would say brothers of Jesus as well, but it's having those connections. So we have the these books that you look for apostolicity for them, and that'd be the major marker. Do you have other thoughts that you want to talk about the canon of the New Testament?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:12

Yeah, so there's some books of the New Testament that are spoken against, and that's a historically valued, like valuable conversation, and even conversations about like should you be getting doctrine from one of these books that's historically spoken against. That's probably a longer conversation than than we need to do a podcast on. But but to say a lot of times I my personal opinion is that the the speaking against these things isn't being fair. It's like, oh, Peter sounds a little different in this epistle than this one. And it's like, well, people can write a little differently from time to time depending on their off of their audience. And so just different things like that, where it's like, is this even a fair critique of this? Uh or maybe like James is makes people uncomfortable because of the content. Well, we can properly understand that. And so sometimes I think the the way that they're spoken against isn't necessarily that in my opinion, a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:23

Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't make a bigger deal out of it than we ought to, because there are sometimes people would speak against scripture because it just it's hard for them to hear, or during their day there was some sort of false teaching, or they weren't necessarily thinking about uh the the proper recipients of it. Uh so you're talking about uh the hama legumina and the anti-legumina. Uh so that there was this general consensus on certain books, and then you had some voices. Over the time, saying, I don't know if that belongs there, but we we can have confidence that the word of God is powerful, and the word that God wants us to hear is here for us. And I think that's something where we as Christians want to put our comfort and confidence, that not only is scripture sufficient for salvation, Jesus demonstrated that in his story about the poor man and rich Lazarus, or rich man and poor Lazarus, rather, and said they wouldn't even believe if someone rose from the grave, but they they have Moses and the prophets. And Moses and the prophets weren't alive at that time. They're preserved through the scriptures, and Jesus talks about the sufficiency for scriptures, and we can also have confidence in our Lord who wants us to have these words, to hear the words of salvation, that we may believe and have everlasting life. And God has preserved for us what we need to know for salvation.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

Yeah, I I think this was a useful conversation. I don't know if I have much else I want to add to this. I I think there's just so much out there that's looking to mislead, and we just need to stick stick to scripture.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

Read read them, learn them, bring them to your heart, bring them to your family. The wonderful word of our Lord Jesus Christ that has come to us. And something we can have confidence of because it has come from our God who wants us to be saved. Thank you for joining us today, and we pray that the Lord blesses you today and always.