Frank Turek’s Blind Spot
I enjoy a lot of Frank Turek’s apologetics and listen to his weekly podcast, but he really does have a few blind spots. I recently came across this video which shows that the canon of Scripture is one such blind spot…
What he says here concerning the discernment of the canon isn’t entirely false, but he offers a very insufficient description of what took place. It was the Catholic Church who determined the canon in the early centuries of the Church. In fact, it’s a bit embarrassing that it’s the questioner who is the first person to bring up these councils!
His statement about the Protestant Bible lining up with the Jewish Old Testament is too simplistic, so much so that it’s misleading. The Protestant Old Testament matches the canon of the Jews today… but not of all the Jews in the First Century! After all, there were a number of different Jewish sects in the First Century, such as the Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. Each of these groups had a different canon of Scripture…
Now, the Protestant canon matches the canon settled by the rabbis in the Second Century, following the establishment of the Church and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. However, this begs the question: why should Christians accept the opinion of this particular Jewish group? After all, these are the successors to those who rejected that Jesus was the Messiah! If they didn’t recognize the Word incarnate, why would they necessarily correctly recognise the written Word of God? Not only that, wouldn’t they have motivation to exclude books from the canon which very clearly prophesy the suffering of Jesus?
The really egregious error in this video is Frank’s assertion that Roman Catholics added books to the Bible at the Council of Trent. That claim is patently false and honestly I’d expect more from an apologist of Frank’s calibre. Catholics did not add books to the Bible at the Reformation, the Protestants removed them. This is just one of the worst arguments used against the Deuterocanon. Incidentally, Luther even tried to remove books from the New Testament, such as the Epistle of James because he couldn’t reconcile it with his novel theology of Sola Fide…
The Catholic Bible aligns itself to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament which is the translation most often quoted by the New Testament authors themselves. The Catholic Canon was declared by the early councils of the Church, as well as later ones such as The Council of Florence (AD 1431). You don’t have to wait for the Council of Trent (AD 1545). For further proof of this, just ask a Coptic or Eastern Orthodox Christian if they have the Deuterocanonical books in their Bible. These Churches separated from the Catholic Church long before the Reformation, yet still have these Deuterocanonical books…conclusive proof that what Frank said here is incorrect.
I am Catholic yet I like Frank tuarick However I really appreciated your insight
Thanks 🙂
Thanks for this, this is true, they accuse catholics of removing these books because in those other 7 books we have reasons for sacraments such as conffesion. What I don’t like is accusations and fightings between other Christians. I don’t think, nor belive that Jesus wanted true Christians (who really follow Him) to fight over this. We all have (except the mormons and JW, maybe some others) have the same base/core belief and that is the Holy Trinity and that Jesus Christ is our saviour and our Messiah and God and through Him and his sacrifice on the cross we have salvation. Now let’s all pray that the Holy Spirit unites us as true Christians and let’s actually help other non-belivers or other religions that really need Jesus. Also I am loving Frank Turek even do I’m Catholics.
Thank you for this post
but that isnt what the catholics claim. hence the infighting
The Catholic church did not “determine” the canon of scripture, thus giving it authority. They merely AFFIRMED the already-existing books BECAUSE the books were authoritative in and of themselves. They were already universally recognized within the church as being authoritative and written by the authors attributed to them. Evidence of this is seen in list of New Testament books enumerated by Eusebius 60 years before the Council of Hippo. To claim that the Catholic church gave us the Bible is like saying Daniel Webster gave us the English language. In both instances, they were merely provising a weight of standardization to what already existed.
I never said that they gave them authority, but the fact that the Catholic Church was the agent used by God to discern the canon is without doubt.
In the Early Church, there was quite a deal of disagreement about which books should be included in the canon, and this erupted once more at the Reformation. You only have to look at the books of the New Testament which Luther attempted to throw out to prove that.
I would really like to hear Frank’s response to your article. I want to hear more from franks side on this matter.
I have send messages to his ministry, but never received a response.