The professor does not rely on the authority of the Synagogue, though he adduces it, to settle the canon of the Old Testament, for that would be anti-Protestant; but attempts to settle it by the authority of the New Testament. Such books as he finds a text quoted from by our Lord or his apostles he assumes to be canonical and inspired; but such as he does not find thus quoted from, he rejects from the canon. But this is not conclusive, for the author concedes that our Lord and his apostles said many things that are not recorded in the New Testament, and how does he know that in those many
unrecorded discourses the books which he rejects as uncanonical, and which Catholics hold to be canonical, were not quoted? Then, by what authority does he pretend that a citation of a text from a book proves the book to be canonical or the whole book to be inspired? St. Paul, at Athens, cites the Greek poet Arrian, and in his Epistle to the Hebrews he manifestly adopts a phrase and a sentiment from Plato’s Republic: must we therefore conclude that the poems of Arrian and Plato’s Republic are canonical, and Arrian and Plato to be included in the list of divinely inspired writers? Has the professor any assertion of our Lord or of any writer in the New Testament that a Jewish or any other book cited by him or by his apostles is canonical and divinely inspired? Certainly not. St. Paul says in his second Epistle to Timothy, “All Scripture divinely inspired is profitable,” etc., but he does not say what Scriptures are or are not divinely inspired.
Then, again, as to the New Testament, the author concedes that, during the first century and later, the canon of the New Testament was uncertain. It, then, was not settled by our Lord or his apostles themselves. On what authority, then, was it settled? Manifestly only on the authority of the church, that is, of popes and councils. But our Princeton professor denies the authority of popes and councils; denies the infallibility of the church; nay, he denies that the church, Catholic or Protestant, has any teaching authority, fallible or infallible. The canon neither of the New Testament nor of the Old is settled, then, by any infallible rule or authority. How, then, can the professor maintain that Protestants have, in the Scriptures, an infallible rule of faith? No fallible rule suffices for infallible faith.
As Protestants are unable, without the authority of the church or tradition, to settle the canon, so are they unable, without the same authority, to determine what books are or are not divinely inspired. The author contends that it suffices to prove that the writers were messengers from God, and commissioned to speak or write in his name. But that cannot be proved unless they accredited themselves as such by their miracles, and not even then, unless the miracles are attested to us by a competent and credible witness of them. Who or what, for Protestants, is that witness? The Record! But the record may have been forged or interpolated, and must, before it can be adduced as evidence, be authenticated. How can the Protestant authenticate it, except by showing that it has been carefully and vigilantly guarded from the first till now by an official keeper with whom it was deposited? Deny the church as the depositary of the record, as the Protestant does, and there is no certain means of authenticating the record, and then none of authenticating the miracles; then none of establishing the fact of the divine commission of the sacred writers, and consequently none of proving the divine inspiration of the sacred writings, since inspiration is a supernatural fact.
But did it ever occur to our learned professor that he has, in order to prove the inspiration of the Scriptures, not only to take the authority of the church for so much, but to prove, before he can allege the authority of the Scriptures, all the Catholic has to prove, in order to prove the divine authority and infallibility of the church? He must prove that our Lord and his apostles spoke and wrote by divine authority, and that is all the Catholic has to prove. In either case, the authority,
whether of the church or of the Bible, turns on the fact of the divine commission, which the Protestant must prove in the very outset as well as the Catholic, and which he cannot prove if he rejects the testimony of the church as the contemporary and living witness of the facts. The church, having been founded by and grown out of that commission, and continuing without interruption from the apostles down to us, is herself the living witness of the facts which prove the commission. She authenticates the record; but the Protestant has, in addition to authenticating the record which proves the commission, to establish the genuineness, integrity, and authenticity of the sacred writings before he can infer their divine inspiration and infallible authority, or use them as a rule of faith, and not even then unless their writers expressly declare them to be inspired, for it is possible for divinely commissioned men to write at times on matters not covered by their commission.
But we are not yet through with the Protestant’s difficulties, if he is to proceed independently of Catholic tradition. Supposing him to have proved all this, he still has to prove the completeness or sufficiency of the Scriptures. Dr. Hodge does not pretend that the Scriptures contain all the revelations made by our Lord to his apostles, but only what is now extant. “It is not denied,” he says (pp. 182, 183), “that there may have been, and probably were, books written by inspired men which are no longer in existence. Much less is it denied that Christ and his apostles delivered many discourses which were not recorded, and which, could they now be known, would be of equal authority with the books now regarded as canonical.” But how does he know that these discourses or the
instructions they contained are now lost, or that they are not preserved and as well-known and authenticated in the traditions of the church as the canonical books themselves? Furthermore, how does he know that it is not precisely in these discourses which were not recorded that is to be found the key to the sense of those which were recorded? The church has always so held and taught; indeed, the author himself concedes that, at the first, the whole revealed word, whether written or unwritten, went by the name of the tradition, and the written tradition was not distinguished from the unwritten. He says:
“In the early church, the word [tradition] was used in this wide sense. Appeal was constantly made to the traditions, that is, the instructions the churches had received. It was only certain churches at first that received any of the written instructions of the apostles. And it was not till the end of the first century that the writings of the Evangelists and apostles were collected and formed into a canon or rule of faith. And when the books of the New Testament had been collected, the fathers spoke of them as containing the ‘traditions,’ that is, the instructions derived from Christ and his apostles.... In that age of the church, the distinction between the written and unwritten word had not yet been distinctly made. But as controversies arose and disputants on both sides of all questions appealed to ‘tradition,’ that is, to what they had been taught; and when it was found that these traditions differed, one church saying their teachers always taught them one thing, and another that theirs had taught them its opposite, it was felt that there should be some authoritative standard. Hence the wisest and best of the fathers [who were they?] insisted on abiding by the written word, and receiving nothing as authoritative not contained therein. In this, however, it must be confessed, they [the wisest and the best of the fathers] were not always consistent. Whenever prescription, usage, or conviction founded on unwritten evidence was available against an adversary, they did not hesitate
to make use of it. During all the early centuries, therefore, the distinction between Scripture and tradition was not so sharply drawn as it has been since the controversies between Romanists and Protestants, and especially since the decisions of the Council of Trent” (pp. 108, 109).