Hello everybody welcome back to since 33 so yesterday I uploaded a video responding to Dr Gavin Orland on solo scriptura and I just wanted to make this follow-up video hopefully a little bit more concise more explained more detailed out I'm sharing my screen here on a Google doc that I may just outlining my position hopefully to just be more clear now uh actually Dr Orland engaged in some dialogue with me in the comments and obviously the comment section it's it's almost like if you're just texting somebody it's very difficult to clearly State out what your
position is so I want to make this video to clearly State what my position is um and I think it's a pretty good argument although I'm very interested to hear what others might have to say so we'll just get started basically Dr Gavin orland's main point in his video was that a common Catholic argument saying you can't know the Canon of scripture Protestants right unless you have an infallible church is not a good argument that was the point of his video okay and I actually agreed with that it's not a good argument you don't need
an infallible Church it's not absolutely necessary to know the Canon of scripture infallibly or just to know it in general okay um now I'm going to focus my argument not so much because it depends on it but because it's a good analogy that he used uh in his video and that he actually frequently uses but basically the example he gives among many is John the Baptist I hope you know you're seeing my screen here John the Baptist being a nonin fallible person is able to identify and point to Christ Our Lord who is infallible right
who is inspired and basically his analogy is uh if I'm representing his position correctly is that the church is supposed to take the role of John the Baptist St John the Baptist and while being not infallible he actually says if I remember his words correctly at every microsc uh remaining not not infallible and still identifying inspired scripture um I think this argument is um is is definitely uh it's definitely sounds good but I'm going to hopefully show with this with this um little video why I don't think it actually works so here's my reply and
just work with me here you can read the screen and if you have any questions if I didn't make anything something clear I I try to be as clear as possible just leave it in the comments below so I concede that an infallible Church like the Catholic magisterium uh right we claim to have is not absolutely necessary to know the cannon of scripture the true difference between us on this issue regarding the church is that we Catholics believe an infallible Declaration of the church is a moral method or a moral way of knowing the cannon
infallibly in other words the church can Define the cannon not at the Council of Trent but like at any period in time and that would be one way of us knowing but it's not absolutely necessary but to say that this is absolutely necessary as some Catholics unfortunately do is bogus since an infallable recognition of the cannon did not come until Trent right so obviously a very obvious Protestant resp respon is going to be well what did Christians do for the first 1500 years without an infallible Declaration of the council so I concede that we don't
need an infallible Church I'd like to take the conversation elsewhere however the Protestant position of Sol scriptura is not a sufficient aid for the church to know the Canon of scripture or at least it's not viable it's not viable for Christianity however Christ's response to John the the the Baptist is a revelation of his divinity in other words John the Baptist may have been able to identify Christ's Divinity because Christ himself revealed it Christ uh when John's disciples come and ask him are you the one that we have been waiting for okay you're going to
need to know your gospels to for this he says go back and report to John what you hear and see the blind receive sight the lame walk those who have leprosy are cleansed and so on this is from Matthew 11 now this in itself just sound like regular Miracles but since they reference the Old Testament in Isaiah okay specifically um Isaiah 35 right and the eyes of the blind shall be open the ears of the death uh death unstopped and so on these verses in Isa in Isaiah 35 are preceded by behold your God will
come with vengeance with the recompense of God he will come and save you and then right after that you have this in other words Isaiah is telling us that God is going to come and do these things so by human conjecture we can know that because Christ the man is doing these things then he must also be God okay but this took a revelation from Christ himself telling us these things and of course you also have a reference to Bringing good news to the poor which Christ also does in Matthew 11 uh found in Isaiah
61 take other examples of Christ's self-proclaimed Divinity he says for unless you believe that I am he you shall die in your sins in Gospel of John and later in the same chapter he says truly truly I say to you before Abraham was I am now obviously there's so many more uh things that Jesus does and says that point and and reveal his divinity but these are just some clear examples my point is he is revealing this but if he did not reveal this then we wouldn't know this thus in this case the Old Testament
scriptures and God's revelation are sufficient that's a typo not is but are sufficient for the Learned man to discern the Divinity of Christ and I say learned man because you obviously have to know a little bit about Isaiah to get this reference I'm not saying that this proves whole scripture by any means right because the the common transmission of Doctrine would still be by the pastors of the church who presumably know the the the Old Testament well so my point is I'm not trying to say that like if you don't know the scriptures you're doomed
obviously that doesn't dispro Sol scriptura in any way but anyway someone who knows Isaiah and the Old Testament is able to discern Christ's Divinity but only because he said those very specific things about him being before Abraham about him doing those specific Miracles that God would do but very important but if Christ's Revelation was absent in other words by Revelation let me bold that by Revelation I mean if his words and miracles that imply Divinity were absent no man could discern his divinity unless the God had revealed it through any mode hence his miracles are
not sufficient to point to his divinity for example many who had not fully heard of Christ misidentified him with John the Baptist or Elijah or because these two John the Baptist and Elijah they also prophesied and perform Miracles right at least Elijah did and you get this in Matthew 16 who do people say that the son of man is and they said some say John the Baptist other Elijah and other Jeremiah in other words human conjecture from these General attributes we'll get to why this matters later just make sure you trust a plan and and
stick by the video trust me this will make sense later are not sufficient to identify the Divinity of Christ this Supernatural attribute cuz clearly people who were comparing Christ uh they they saw a lot of similarities to him of John the Baptist or Elijah now obviously John the Baptist and Elijah were never saying I was before Abraham but many people had hadn't even heard of that they just heard of his miracles uh which were just uh I guess normal Miracles when compared to those of Elijah and Prophecies of of uh John the Baptist yet the
true Divinity the True Divine identity of Christ is given exclusive exclusively by divine revelation not human conjecture as were the other people concluding that Jesus was just a prophet so in other words by human conjecture of Miracles people were concluding that Jesus was just elijahs or John the Baptist but Simon Peter said you are the Christ the son of the Living God and Jesus answered him blessed are you Simon bar Jonah for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my father who is in heaven in this case it happened to be the
godhead who objectively revealed it to Peter even if Peter may have subjectively arrived at the conclusion through human conjecture furthermore identifying the Messiah in itself is not a supernatural act and can be done so by conjecture from scripture many apostles did so but they could not identify Christ's Divinity without his Revelation so what I mean here is I don't have a problem with talking about the sufficiency of scripture like I could totally affirm scripture is sufficient for a whole lot of things you have the church fathers talk about this a lot you have our own
Catholic authors saying scripture is sufficient for many things in the faith sometimes you even have some very crazy statements like for all things in the faith and you you understand that in different ways but my point is is scripture sufficient to identify the M the Messiah heck yeah of course right many apostles did so but yet they could not identify his divinity without him explicitly revealing that so just just stick by me trust me I think this is going to all make sense so even if John may have done so in other words identify the
Messiah without divine revelation even though I think he did receive divine revelation but right this this only reveals the Messiah himself the the Messianic character but that doesn't tell you whether he's Divine or not right he was not absolutely required to be divine since people in Israel did not really expect him to be um therefore only through divine revelation can we know the Divinity of Christ which is a supernatural fact so why am I bringing this up so I'm going to draw some parallels because I I think this is a good example that Dr Orland
gives about John the Baptist poting to Christ but even then in this example I think this supports the Catholic position not the Protestant position because Christ is not merely existing just like the The Inspired scriptures don't need to just exist and be in the world and in the church God needs to tell us that Christ is God and not just the Messiah and not just man God needs to tell us that these scriptures are inspired that he inspired them so the parallels that I'm drawing here in my example are the presence of Christ with inspired
scripture right these are Supernatural entities okay divine revelation of Christ's Divinity like his statements of being before Abraham with the divine revelation of a book's inspiration whether it be by word whether it be by letter or even infused knowledge right like this also counts as divine revelation my point is God needs to reveal it in other words God needs to reveal that Christ is divine as he did and God needs to reveal that a certain book or many books are inspired I also draw a parallel between Christ's more casual Miracles like walking on water Healing
The Sick or even raising the dead and when I say casual I'm not underplaying them they're obviously um EXT extravagant Miracles uh and very very mirac you know beautiful but my when I say casual I mean they're not exclusive to him right like like Peter also walked on water um Elijah even also raised the dead so if you have Elijah right I'll get to this later but basically if you have Elijah and Jesus living at the same time and they're doing the same Miracles that is not enough to conclude okay one is divine but the
other is not okay and so you need that to be revealed to you explicitly by God or implicitly um and so I draw this parallel with Miracles that Christ did like that Elijah also could have done or any other Prophet with a criteria of canonicity so in other words these attributes of Christ his miracles with the attributes of Holy Scripture they're Apostolic either written by an apostle or someone related to them in that age uh they were of wide use in the church and they teach orthodox Doctrine right they're they're Orthodox and their teaching and
I also draw a parallel between John the Baptist and Elijah with other writings that share that share the criteria of canonicity and you have many of these in the first century I know hermas is dated to the 150s but even then some talks about it being in the first century whatever uh even if you exclude that you still have at least these three that I'm that I'm aware of and that I can think of at the top of my head when writing this but maybe there's like one or two more in other words you have
the D which seems pretty doctrinally Orthodox it was written during the times of of the Apostles uh many people thought it was written by the apostles themselves and we know it was written during the apostles times because it talks about traveling Apostles during that time and how to receive them so obviously at least John is alive uh the Epistle of Barnabas although I I know there's you know you could debate all you want about whether it's Orthodox or this or that but my point is these are and first Clement undoubtedly very Orthodox very well received
uh even throughout uh even throughout um the early church so in other words uh John the Baptist and Elijah had many things in common with Jesus like prophesying and and miracles like raising the dead just like the D and first Clement have many things identical with inspired scripture they were Apostolic they were wide Us in the early church and they were Orthodox in their teaching okay therefore we're kind of left with nothing there I mean we're left with a very good idea of what is and what's not but we still can't identify this there God
needs to tell us that Christ is God and that Elijah is not in a sense Christ need uh God needs to tell us that James or Jude or or even the epistle to filimon I mean think about it compare filimon to First Clement first Clement at least from someone who's like never read in inspired scripture before and is not never been a Christian first Clement kind of seems more inspired I would say because filon is to one person right uh very short whereas first Clement has a lot of different points it's definitely I would say
Orthodox in in its in it Doctrine it definitely Apostolic um and why you s the early church so like my point is God needs to tell you hey I inspired the letter to filon and not first Clement despite first Clement displaying all of these attributes of being Apostolic why use and Orthodoxy so that's my parallel there right here's my argument whether a book is inspired or not is a question concerning a supernatural object God must reveal all that is Supernatural for a man to know such a thing which is distinct from the existence or presence
of the thing I'll get to this a little bit later but in other words the presence of Jesus in the world does not is not the Revelation that he is divine he has to actually tell and reveal that he is divine just like the presence of a an inspired book is not itself the Revelation that it is inspired God needs to also reveal that it is inspired therefore God must reveal that a book is inspired in plural it would be like the Canon of scripture so either one book or like many books are inspired for
that inspiration to be known by men he has to reveal it through through any mode I'm not restricting it to like verbally or whatever right as the 1689 London Baptist confession of Faith notes I assume Dr ortland holds this he's a Reformed Baptist this Revelation must be in scripture because the definition that it gives for Sol scriptura is the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own Glory man salvation faith and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in Holy Scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added
whether by new revelation of the spirit or traditions of men so in other words I'm going to go back to point three God must must reveal this it must be point of Revelation that a book is inspired and the London Baptist confession of Faith as just pretty much General Protestant uh Doctrine would say that a revelation must be found in scripture but this revelation of whether a book is inspired or not the letter of James um I don't know the letter to filmon uh Revelation this is not in scripture therefore not all of God's revelation
is found in scripture and therefore this proving Sol of scriptura but the Canon I would argue can be found in secret tradition so that that definitely supports a Catholic position but I guess that doesn't automatically prove the Catholic position I but I do think it it disproves the Protestant position here's a note that I I think my voice cracked here's a note uh back to point three this premise is why those and this is kind of supporting Dr Orland and the Protestants or at least at least agreeing with them on this point this is why
those who argue that the cannon can cannot be known without the church are wrong in other words God must reveal super natural fact he has to reveal these things he has to tell the church hey I inspired James or I inspired John or I inspired Matthew right so when people say you you need the church to know they make it sound as if the church is infallible as a source of Revelation but the church does not spew out Revelation the church is infallible I believe this as a Catholic right because it's a teacher uh regarding
Doctrine it's able to judge between matters infallibly binding and loosing right um and I know Orland I know Dr Orland won't agree with that but my point is this is my Catholic position but but the church is by no means us you know a source of Revelation so that's why I think because God must reveal a book as inspired I don't think this argument that Catholics use that oh you need the church to I I totally agree with you there Dr orand if you're watching this okay that's just to know but that this is my
argument right these Five Points hopefully you can respond to this I'd love to engage in dialogue I'm going to give another example in his video Dr ortland uses Moses right Moses did not he says that Moses did not need a secondary infallible source to identify God in the bush I didn't finish typing I was so excited to record this um but my reply is if you actually if you read Exodus 3 I think this actually supports my point uh but God did identify himself uh and only after did Moses discerned the supernatural nature of the
Bush for example like the bush could have been an apparition of an Angel okay but if you read Exodus 3 it's uh it says so Moses thought I will go over there and see this strange sight why the bush does not burn up God called him from the Bush saying Moses Moses and even though God was there speaking to him Moses said here I am but it's only until God said I am the god of your father the god of Abraham only after does Moses hide his face because he was afraid to look at God
so in other words this bush right had attributes of something Supernatural right but it doesn't necessarily mean it's God speaking to him until God said I am God I am the god of your father Abraham and so only then does go does Moses say Okay God has just revealed to me that's kind of how I see it okay um my conclusion is and this is actually just quoting from pesh which I quoted in my recent video my last video therefore the church holds a book as inspired because it has been handed down to her as
inspired and indeed by the apostles from whom the church has received all her tradition that is capital T tradition this is the reason why the Ancients attributed to the gospels I'll let you read this uh I want to keep this video as concise as possible I really want to get to my final notes um not trying to skip over that you could definitely read it I guess this last part's important right because the church has no dogmas except those divinely revealed I think that makes sense I think I think that makes sense from both sides
right um the Canon has to be revealed but it's not revealed in in scripture and I don't think let's get to this note right in Dr orland's response I mean when I say response I mean like his comment to my YouTube video he seemed to equate the act of inspiration with the act of Revelation he said quote the cannon is not itself a new revelation from God but I think it is but just as from Christ's presence in the world and even his miracles right that were mistaken for other prophets even though from this alone
it's not possible to discern his divinity unless he reveals it it is also not possible to discern that a book or many books are inspired from the Mere from the presence of them right I don't want to say the word mere right but but just because a book is circulating in the church and it's inspired does not mean that God has revealed it's inspired he has to reveal it in some way whether it be by means of another scripture or whether it be by means OFA of tradition from the apost Apostles in other words if
Jesus walked on water during the same time that Moses split the Red Sea or Elijah stopped the rain it would not be possible to discern his divinity unless he or The God had revealed it through other means another another point I want to make is both sides agree that when Jesus promises the spirit will guide the church into all truth in John 16 that does not mean introducing a new revelation after the apostolic age but rather it would come to understand defend and maintain an already revealed truth later on and when I say come to
understand it later I don't mean like you didn't understand it before I was saying grow in understanding right for example the Council of NAA First Council of NAIA it wasn't the spirit introducing the Divinity of Christ but instead it was helping the church defend it and protect it uh and protect the church from s succumbing to the denial of uh the Divinity of Christ so and we would both agree on this right so in other words divine revelation must be in the first century in the apostolic age and I think we can both agree on
this so when you say the church is the the spirit is guiding the church to discern the Canon Dr Orland what do you mean by that are you saying a Canon has already been revealed and I think I think you would say like it sounds like like Dr Orland believes that like God inspiring books is the same thing as revealing the fact that the books are inspired but I don't think that that follows and if if you don't that doesn't make sense go back to what I said about the presence of Christ in the world
it's not the same as him saying I am you know before Abraham was I am so and finally uh I guess not really the point of this video but St athanasius Council of laia Rome and and a lot of others right they I don't think they he Dr Orland said they you know which tradition are you going to follow that's not what I mean by tradition I mean cap tradition the fact that things are handed down um so yes you had people and councils who oppos the Catholic Cannon but as I say here the fact
that the Dural Cannon remains in the Liturgy and general use of the church despite giants like Saints athanasius and Jerome objecting to them is great evidence for the spirits for the Spirit uh guiding the church into all truth and I'm just curious how Dr Orin would def would Define Church infectability there because I mean if St Jerome is objecting to the to these things to the Doral canon in the uh the fourth Century but they're still around by the Reformation in the use of the church then I'm I'm I'm curious how Dr or would Define
infectability there but I think this is a pretty solid argument and I think it it it works at least it helps Dr Orland and and maybe his viewers understand because it uses his own lingo you know I think it's a good example of John the Baptist and and being able to I I kind agree but I would say Jesus did reveal himself as Divine and had he never done so had he had he only like I don't know walked on water and multiplied bread these things technically God can do with any man I mean he
made Peter walk on the water so if if Jesus had not done specific things that point to his divinity then I don't think it would be able to identify him precisely as Divine although maybe you could identify him as the Messiah I think I think that makes sense um so I'd love to engage in in in in conversation on this um but yeah I hope you you guys enjoyed uh and yeah stick around for more content thank you
