God Speaks to Us Through Scripture Part 1

[00:00:00] Cody: Hi, thank you for tuning in to the Logic of God podcast. I'm Cody. 


[00:00:09] Gina: I'm Gina. 


[00:00:10] Ben: And I'm Ben. If you're returning, thank you for coming back, and if you are a new guest, welcome. 


[00:00:24] Gina: And today we are going to be talking about our next assumption. 


[00:00:29] Ben: Yes, episode six, God speaks to us through scripture. In fact, he does. And we were very careful to word it that way. 


[00:00:38] Gina: Because we all agree. 


[00:00:40] Ben (2): Yes, this is something we all agree on. And we'll get into some of the more iffy territory, because I know this is something that's contentious even amongst Christians. 


[00:00:50] But generally, we all agree that God does speak to us through the scripture, through the Holy Bible. And how much of that is God's word, like truly inspired, and how much of that is just fluff or the word of man that builds up to the word of God is something that I think Reasonable people can have a discussion about, because that is something that's been discussed amongst Jews, amongst Christians, and a lot of accusatory stuff has been thrown our way from sources like atheists, or agnostics, or skeptics generally, or Muslims especially. 


[00:01:26] A lot of the case for the Quran is built off of the dismantling of the Bible itself. And claiming that it's not reliable and that it's been corrupted. And, Lord willing, when we get to the episode on Islam, we'll cover that in more detail. But I think it's very important for us to build off a foundation of what we all agree on. 


[00:01:44] Because I think no matter what your view is on the Bible and whether or not all of it's true, all of it's God inspired, all of it's God breathed, the important thing is that We all agree it is, in some way, inspired by God. We all agree that it's something that we can draw from as a resource, and that God does speak to us, one way or another, through it. 


[00:02:06] So it's important to start where we all agree. So, in order for us to even start with what we agree on, we have to define what it is we're talking about. So, what is scripture? 


[00:02:19] Gina: Well, the dictionary defines it. 


[00:02:22] Ben: Are you one of those people, Gina? Well, the dictionary says. 


[00:02:26] Cody: Lobster's Dictionary 1922. 


[00:02:29] Ben: I'm gonna pretend it wasn't me who wrote that down. 


[00:02:33] The books of the Bible, or a body of writings considered sacred or authoritative? 


[00:02:42] Gina: It's a little vague. 


[00:02:43] Ben: Yeah, it's a little bit vague, so let's go into this. Are there sacred texts, we'll consider it basically sacred texts, so the sacred texts from the books of the Bible. Or writings from other religious bodies that are considered sacred or authoritative. 


[00:02:56] So, are there sacred texts from other religions that would be considered scripture from a Christian perspective? Or is it just the Bible? 


[00:03:03] Gina: Well, the Jewish religion uses a good portion of our Bible for their own religious purposes. 


[00:03:10] Ben: Or we use theirs. Yeah. I mean, they came first. They came first. For the Jews in our audience, we'll give it to you. 


[00:03:16] You guys came first. No, it's okay. But yeah, that's kind of the obvious place to start. Yeah, absolutely, the Jewish faith was the one that came first and Christianity came as an offspring from that. But I think the tougher question would be, is there stuff from other religions generally that we would consider God breathed, where God spoke to someone and there was a revelation and we can use that specifically. 


[00:03:40] And we're talking more specifically about other religions, not other people that are representatives of Christianity. Yeah. Absolutely. 


[00:03:46] No. 


[00:03:48] Cody: Yeah, you can just go through pretty much any other religious source text and, you know, you'll either have instances of polytheism. It's a little bit different with the Abrahamic line that Islam has. 


[00:04:02] It follows a little bit more closely with Judeo Christianity, but I think it's pretty easy to pick apart. 


[00:04:12] Ben: Yeah, and there are a number of very good Christian theologians and atheist theologians, oddly enough, I don't know that you'd call them theologians, but there's guys like the Apostate Prophet on YouTube who is an atheist and a former Muslim who does point out a lot of the inconsistencies in Islam. 


[00:04:27] Dr. David Wood is actually pretty famous in Muslim circles as well as Dr. Nabeel Qureshi, God rest him. Yeah, there is a lot of internal inconsistency in something like Islam, and we'll leave that for its own episode, I think, but sufficient to say, I think, is that in the Hadith themselves, in the traditions passed on by a lot of people like Abu Bakr, is that there was a very different opinion of what the Qur'an should be. 


[00:05:00] There were many more verses at one time, and some of those verses that were lost are very fortuitous because they would not make much sense. Like the one that requires that a woman breastfeed a man staying in her house ten times. That is a slight deviation, but it is definitely something worth talking about, that there was a story that was passed on in one of the Hadith of how Aisha lost one of the the verses of the Quran and that verse was specifically pertaining to how If a woman, if a man is going to be staying in a woman's house To avoid temptation completely, that something might, you know, happen sexually between them, that she must breastfeed him ten times, and after the tenth time, she will consider, she will be considered family, and so there's no longer any issue, and Aisha is just like, oh no, I just happened to lose this verse, it was eaten by a goat that came into my house, and, you know, Even though goats aren't allowed to do that. 


[00:06:04] And it came in and it just Eight, the verse just darn. I don't know what happened there. 


[00:06:11] Freud 


[00:06:12] Ben: would have a lot to comment on 


[00:06:13] Cody: that topic. 


[00:06:16] Ben: Oh man. But there's a lot of stuff like that in Islam, a lot of strange details, a lot of odd things, even in the Quran itself. And without going too much further into it, I think it is just enough to say that we don't consider. 


[00:06:31] pretty much any other work that is claimed divinely inspired to be actually divinely inspired. We don't believe that. It's pretty much just stuff from the Bible, stuff from the Jewish tradition, stuff from the Christian tradition that we consider to be divinely inspired. As far as being scriptural, because there are sources that aren't specifically the Bible, I would say, and I think most people would agree. 


[00:06:57] We would consider to be inspired, or at the very least useful, built on the Bible, and instructive in a similar way to the Bible itself. Not necessarily canon, and by canon we mean, The actual essence of the word, which is measurement, or measuring rod, or ruler. It's the thing that we use against other works to compare and see, okay, is this something we should be looking at? 


[00:07:22] Is this true? And that's something that's very different when you look at, say, Jehovah's Witness, or you look at Mormonism. The big thing is that they say, oh no, this stuff is corrupted, this stuff is incomplete. Our stuff now. Though it is in direct opposition to it, this is the right stuff. Don't look at the old stuff, look at this stuff because it's right. 


[00:07:45] Gina: I'm glad that you say that, because in the New Age movement, there's a lot of different people that claim to channel Jesus and other biblical figures, and they write books. And a lot of that is taken as gospel by people who believe that they're Christian, but then also practice New Age spirituality. And I would like to So bring some attention to that because I know from first hand experience that I have students and my family that believe that the wisdom in those books is from God and therefore can be used as a reliable source of knowledge and wisdom and all of that. 


[00:08:24] So, 


[00:08:25] Ben: yeah, and I think. Like I said, we all do agree that there are people who do speak things that are the truth that can be revealed to them by God, inspired by God. In a similar method to the scriptures themselves, we just don't consider it to be the measurement. We don't consider it to be scripture, we don't consider it to be canon. 


[00:08:41] It is built on the foundation of script, and it has to be an additive. Not subtractive. 


[00:08:46] Gina: Right. 


[00:08:48] Ben: So, an example of that, I would say, is a lot of the writings of C. S. Lewis. Not all of it is agreed with. Obviously, we're human. But, I would say that, if you are a brand new Christian, and you've talked to anybody about resources that you should turn to for learning about it, you've probably been referred to mere Christianity. 


[00:09:07] It is one of those books where C. S. Lewis builds a reasonable case, both for God himself and for Christianity generally. And, there are some folks who 


[00:09:17] Ben: would say, some people, okay, some people say, not me, lots of smart people, very wise people, okay? They say, he's pretty smart, he's divinely inspired, okay? 


[00:09:28] Ben: Yeah, there's some people who would say that it is divinely inspired. 


[00:09:31] At the very least, a lot of it is true, a lot of it is solid, a lot of it is reasonable. And so because of that, you could consider it to be scripture in a sense, but not really because it's not canon. It's not the, it builds off of it. It's supplementary to it. It builds on the foundation. 


[00:09:49] Cody: It builds on it and covers more modern. 


[00:09:54] Like, you know, when the Bible was written, the theory of evolution was not around, so that's not really something that the Bible tackles and whole we have the creation story that covers how creation happened, but doesn't give a. More attackable approach to evolution from a biblical worldview. 


[00:10:13] Ben: And I think the important thing is that for all of these sources Gina was talking about, there are plenty of people who claim to be spiritual and who will claim that they have received something from God, some kind of revelation. 


[00:10:25] And we use scripture itself. We use the canon as a measuring rod, as a plumb line. To say, okay, how does this match up? If it matches up, if it doesn't directly contradict with what scripture says, and is in agreement with it, and builds on it as the foundation, then we say, okay, yeah, that's good, that's great, and we use it, and we learn from it, and we build and grow in our understanding of God and the world that he's made, and the wisdom he's passed on to us. 


[00:10:51] If it's in direct opposition, it's very dangerous. 


[00:10:55] Cody: Yes, and the source material outside the Bible, I would argue, you should not be making any Doctrinal decisions on you shouldn't get your biblical doctrine outside of something that can be founded inside the Bible 


[00:11:12] Ben: Agreed and that isn't to say that you can't receive something from God that is not specifically mentioned in the Bible That isn't true Because there's a, there are a number of books that are written on various topics, like specifically Heaven. 


[00:11:27] And there are questions that are brought up, like, are children in Heaven? And that's not something that's specifically talked about in the Bible. And there are people who claim that they've died, and came back shortly after, or were in comas, or whatnot, and went to Heaven for a specific amount of time, and they've talked about seeing children there. 


[00:11:45] Who grew up in heaven and had conversations with people. Even for me, there was a point where I had a dream that I was in heaven and was talking to my brother. I don't remember much of it, but I do remember the feeling as I was coming out of the dream was very different from any feeling I've ever had before. 


[00:12:02] And the feeling while I was there was very different from any feeling I'd had before. And I only remember the tiniest bit of the conversation, but I know there was a much larger conversation that happened. I only remember a tiny piece of it because that was all that I was supposed to remember. Whether or not it was just a dream, or I was actually, just like Paul said, whether I was caught up in the body or out of the body, only God knows. 


[00:12:25] But I know what it was that I felt, and I wouldn't build a doctrine out of what I felt or what I saw. That doesn't mean that God didn't show me something, and that doesn't mean that it's false. But it's very important for us to distinguish. We can have opinions based on things that God shows us. They just can't be in direct opposition to the Bible. 


[00:12:47] Gina: And on that note, Satan masquerades as an angel of light. 


[00:12:52] Ben: Absolutely. 


[00:12:52] Gina: And also test everything. 


[00:12:55] Ben: Which is scriptural. So, that does lead nicely into the next question. Are all books of the Bible considered to be scripture?

[00:13:09] Gina: I have a feeling that you're going to present me with some sort of Very, I don't know, authoritative something or other. 


[00:13:18] It feels like it's scripture. 


[00:13:20] Ben: It feels like it, guys. I don't know what to tell you. 


[00:13:23] Gina: They, in the canon process, no. 


[00:13:27] Cody: So, Unless you wanted to talk. Go for it. So for me in this one, the Old Testament is very verifiable as a complete canon, because it came before Jesus. So it's an easy argument to make. What? Is considered scripture inside the Old Testament canon rather than the New Testament is where it gets a little bit more in depth and the critical review comes into play a little bit more because at least with the Old Testament you have the So, so we have him quoting the Septuagint, that was a very strict process in the canonization there. 


[00:14:08] You also have Josephus, with the 22 books, he never lists them, but there is a very specific Jewish canon inside of that, and you, you know that is scripture. And when the Bible refers to scripture, it is referring to the Old Testament, not the New Testament. 


[00:14:23] Ben: Well, let's stop for a moment there and address a couple of things in there, because you mentioned the Septuagint. 


[00:14:28] Yeah. It's best not to breeze past that because a lot of our listeners probably don't know what that is. So why don't you define what the Septuagint is specifically? 


[00:14:38] Cody: So the Septuagint was a translation. The current culture at the time was going away from biblical Hebrew. A lot of the modern Jews did not understand, speak, or read biblical Hebrew. 


[00:14:53] So there was a major need to translate the Old Testament scriptures into a more common language of the time. So there was, Septuagint basically means 70, I think, right? Something like that. So there was 70 Jewish scholars who took the Old Testament Biblical Hebrew and translated it into the modern Greek of the time, just so it could be more distributed and understood by everybody around at that time. 


[00:15:24] Ben: Well, so there's a body of work inside of the Septuagint called the Apocrypha. Why don't we include the Apocrypha in the Bible? 


[00:15:34] Cody: That is a very good question. What's the Apocrypha? 


[00:15:36] Ben: That's a work of, I believe, 13 individual writings that came about in the 2nd century BC. And it's from various authors, I don't remember, I don't remember all of the names, there's like Maccabees in there, there's, it's a bunch of different works, but 


[00:15:52] Cody: More commonly probably referred to today as Deuterocanon. 


[00:15:56] There we go. Oh, really? Yeah, so Apocrypha Enoch is still considered Apocrypha, which basically just means hidden. 


[00:16:04] Ben: So, yeah, why is it specifically that we don't include Apocrypha Enoch? Those 13 works, the Apocrypha, in the Bible, because in the Catholic Bible, they are included. 


[00:16:13] Cody: Well, Catholic Bible and actually early Church Fathers origin, Augustine, I believe, confirmed these. 


[00:16:19] So, why we don't is because later on, you know, I think it was the, gosh, what is the council? Was it Cambridge? Nice. No. 


[00:16:28] Ben: So, yes, it was Cambridge slash whatever. It's, uh, it's one of those joint names. 


[00:16:33] Cody: Deuterocanon. That actually didn't get removed till after the Reformation. So it's actually pretty widely accepted. 


[00:16:40] Ben: So, unfortunately, this is where I'm going to have to disagree with you a little bit. Oh, 


[00:16:45] Cody: okay. Are 


[00:16:45] Ben: you aware of what the Tanakh is? 


[00:16:47] Cody: Yes. 


[00:16:48] Ben: All right. So for the people who don't know, there are three different bodies of work that are recognized by Jewish tradition as scripture. There's the Torah, there's the Prophets, and there's the Writings. 


[00:17:04] There are specific Jewish names for these, and the Tanakh is basically an acronym for them. The Torah, There's the Prophets, and there's the Writings. And that's 22 books. 22, 24, depending on who you ask. But it is all the same works regardless. The reason there is the discrepancy between the book numbers is not because there are different books included versus not included. 


[00:17:24] It's because there are certain writers, like Ezra and Nehemiah, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, that are combined into singular books. And sometimes they're split. All of those Writings in the Tanakh, were established by the year 400 BC. It was all considered to be scriptural according to the Jewish tradition by that point. 


[00:17:47] And the reason we know that is in part because, as you mentioned, Josephus, he mentions the 22 books as being the canonical ones, and he references how strange it is, how sad it is, that for 400 years God was silent. There were no prophets, there were no additional works being added, Nothing. 


[00:18:05] Gina: I've actually heard that taught on, but, continue. 


[00:18:09] Ben: So, the reason we don't have the apocrypha, specifically, is because they aren't scriptural. And when you actually look at a lot of the teachings, yes, there are a lot of early church fathers who do teach that the, the Apocrypha is scripture because it is included in the Septuagint. And the reason it's included in the Septuagint is because the Septuagint is an inclusion of a bunch of different writings that the, the compilers of the Septuagint consider to be important. 


[00:18:45] Cody: forgot to mention, the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanon that you mentioned is translated much later than the original 22. Sure. Yeah, so it wasn't, the Septuagint was a span of time. It took a while to get the full. 


[00:19:00] Ben: And when you look at a lot of the early church fathers that specifically believed it to be canon, they were people who didn't actually read the Hebrew language. 


[00:19:10] When you look at people like Josephus, and then there were a couple others I can't remember specifically, but Pastor Mike Winger has a video specifically on this, which I highly recommend to anybody who wants to learn more about this, where he references the fathers who did talk about it, like the guys you mentioned, and some who didn't. 


[00:19:26] The ones who didn't were ones who actually could read the original writings and who were familiar with Jewish works. And because they were familiar with Jewish works, they referred to the Tanakh, not the Septuagint, because they knew the difference culturally. A lot of the guys like Augustine didn't know the difference, and so they were looking at the Apocrypha. 


[00:19:43] They were looking at the Septuagint in its entirety, as was at the time, which included the Apocrypha. And so they said, well, obviously this is scripture, but when you look later on, there is a specifically a study Bible that was available in the middle ages, the Glossa Ordinaria, and it specifically labels all passages from the, the Apocrypha as non scriptural. 


[00:20:07] This is something that was discussed at length between different parties going up until our full canonization process. This is something where a lot of people look at it and say, Okay, so at some point there were a bunch of guys in silly hats that decided that the Bible was the Bible. That's not really how it happened. 


[00:20:26] How it happened is that slowly over time there were revelations. At one time the canon was the five books of Moses. And that was all the canon was, because no further books had been written. Eventually, there were additional writings that were included in. As the Minor Prophets and the Major Prophets prophesied, their words became canon, because at that point, God's word was revealed. 


[00:20:48] By the time we reach from 1400 BC to 400, by the time we got to 400, the Last of the Prophets had spoken. And by that point, The canonization of the Old Testament was completed, and there's not too much debate on that. When you really look at the, the writings from the time when you look at Ezra, you look at Nehemiah, you look at Daniel, they re, they refer to each other, they talk about the different prophecies. 


[00:21:12] And Isaiah's reference, Jeremiah's reference, they refer to one another. They talk about the foundation on which they were built on. So I agree with you in that it's not really up for debate. What the Old Testament is. 


[00:21:24] Cody: No. 


[00:21:25] Ben: But I would say, oddly enough, that it is harder to address than the New Testament. 


[00:21:30] And the reason I say that specifically is because there are a lot of different verses specifically in the New Testament where they talk about how the writings of Paul and the writings of the Apostles are equivalent to the Prophets. So, I got a list of about twelve of them here. I'm not going to read them all. 


[00:21:46] But there are three specifically that I wanted to address. The first is 1 Corinthians 14, 36 38. Alright, so 38. Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached, if anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit? Let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. 


[00:22:11] But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored. There, Paul is specifically talking about what he's writing, what he's telling people. Now, you could just be saying that's what he's talking about in the moment, and that's a fair argument. One citation of Paul calling himself canon does not an entire New Testament make. 


[00:22:34] So, second one. Would be Second Thessalonians two 13 through 15. But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by God because God chose you as first fruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel. 


[00:22:56] That you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. The good news that they passed on the gospel is by word of mouth and letter that they passed, that Paul and the apostles passed to these people. 


[00:23:17] Again, he's reaffirming that the things that he wrote and the things that the apostles wrote are Scripture, are equivalent to the prophets, are the good news, are equivalent to the word of Christ himself. But, Again, this is just Paul referring to his own writings. And he does this multiple times. Like I said, I've got about 12 of these. 


[00:23:34] So it's enough to say that he claims his epistles, his letters that he wrote to the various churches, are important, are equivalent to scripture. But that's just him. Did anyone else refer to his writings and the writings of the apostles as canon? Well, we go to 2 Peter 3, 15 through 16. Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul was. 


[00:24:00] Also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things which are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do with the other scriptures, to their own destruction. The letters of Paul are considered scripture by Peter. 


[00:24:22] And if you're Catholic, that means something. If you're not Catholic, that still means something, but slightly less. But that's just the people of the time. Were there people after that considered this to be the foundation on which they should not add to? That it's the writings of Paul, it's the writings of the apostles, and that's it. 


[00:24:42] Well, there are also the writings of the early Church Fathers, and there are a few that we could go to, but specifically I wanted to go to Clement of Rome. So 1 Clement 41, 42, 1 through 2. Yeah, 1 Clement 41, 4, and then 1 Clement 42, 1 through 2. So sorry about that. First Clement 4, sorry, First Clement 41. 4. 


[00:25:07] Ye see, brethren, in proportion as greater knowledge hath been vouchsafed to us, so much more we are exposed to danger. Essentially, we've been taught a lot of stuff, and it's true, and we're in a lot of danger because of it. First Clement 42. 1. Yeah, I'm really butchering this, but I, there's really not any great translation that's in modern talk. 


[00:25:30] So I don't read good old stuff. All right. First Clement 42. 1. The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was sent forth from God. So then, Christ is from God. The Apostles are from Christ. Both therefore came of the will of God in the appointed order. I get that there is the strong Jewish tradition, that it's built very strongly, and that there's not a whole lot of question, if you really go into it, about what the Old Testament is. 


[00:26:03] There are a lot of people who try to throw in stuff like the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas, and all that stuff, and say that we don't really know what should be in the New Testament, and that no one really knew what anyone else was saying. I don't really believe that. I think that you can make arguments. 


[00:26:22] However strong they might be, that there's more stuff that should be in the New Testament, even more stuff that should be in the Old Testament. But when you really look at what the people of the time believed, they believed in what Paul wrote. They believed in the gospels, they reference it. They reference one another. 


[00:26:40] Paul references himself, he references the other apostles. And so it's very clear that the Apostles believed what Paul wrote was authoritative. Paul believed what he wrote was authoritative. And he believed what the other Apostles wrote was equivalent to the Word of God Himself and the Word of the Prophets. 


[00:26:56] If you disagree, you're disagreeing with Paul and the Apostles. And I think it's pretty clear from what I've cited here because it's not my opinion, it's their opinion. If you disagree with them, you're disagreeing, you're disagreeing with the foundation of Christianity. It doesn't mean that they're right. 


[00:27:13] I think that you can still argue, you can still doubt. Seriously, it's just, I personally find it very difficult to make an argument that we don't know, with any measure of reliability, what was in the New Testament and what people believe with Scripture. 


[00:27:28] Gina: I really like how Cody has described making those judgments as a believer with cross referencing. 


[00:27:37] So it's like if you removed the doctrine that one person said. Could you find it somewhere else in scripture and most of the time the answer is yes, so Like you have so many different sources backing up each other. It makes it hard to Believe that they're not accurate and I think that's part of the process of removing certain scriptures Like the book of Thomas or Judas because you can't back up Stories from when Jesus was a child you can't back up like it's not Mentioned in other areas, 


[00:28:14] Ben: correct 


[00:28:15] Cody: Scripture interprets scripture, and if you can't interpret scripture with other scripture, then you know it. 


[00:28:22] It's probably not supposed to be there. 


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