An article of mine which stated that God would not use Protestants to define the canon for the Churches of God was published in issue #150 of The Journal, News of the Churches of God (here, page 3). The next edition of The Journal (here, page 2) carried an article by Eric Snow in which he attempted to refute my position.

This article is my reply to Mr. Snow.

Mr. Snow refers to my view as "reasoning," a term generally used in the COGs to mean reasoning contrary to the scriptures. Yet Mr. Snow is the one reasoning around the words of the very same canon that he thinks he believes in. I based my arguments on the generally accepted canon. I actually quoted more verses from the canon than he did. He simply ignored the passages I quoted and labeled my canon-based position "reasoning."

A key point in my article was the COGs go to the "harlots" (false Churches of traditional Christianity) to get the canon even though the New Testament—not my reasoning—tells us not to.

I will not repeat here the verses I used to make that point, since they can be found in the original article.

The COGs pretty much take for granted that the Protestants know which canon is correct. Few in the COGs arrive at the canon they use by carefully examining for themselves which books actually belong in the canon. It's amazing how the foundation of all COG beliefs, the canon itself, is so superficially examined. A certain fear of what such an investigation might uncover seems to be part of the reason for this.

In the uncommon event that someone has enough individual initiative to examine how we ever got the canon, he will likely be handed a one-sided article endorsing the Protestant canon and told to read it and repent. His minister will not patiently and objectively discuss the issue with him because his minister won't know much about how we got the canon and won't have the time or inclination to learn more than he already knows. The inquisitive member stands a good chance of being put out of whatever COG he goes to.

The COGs tend to quote selectively from only fundamentalist or conservative scholars, sometimes from outdated works. People remain in the dark about known serious problems with the canon that scholars recognize but don't usually publicly admit. Reading an article or two about how we got the Bible before first attending services is not enough. There are many questions that do not come to the mind of a novice or to those who don't keep investigating. One needs to keep studying, and read much literature on all sides.

Keepers of The Oracles

Mr. Snow takes two passages from the Protestant canon to defend his point of view.

By quoting the canon to support the canon Mr. Snow engages in cyclic reasoning. He has not proven that the canon he's using is the correct one in the first place. That should be his starting point.

His first quote refers to the Jews as the keepers of the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2-3). He did not produce a scripture that says Protestants are also entrusted with the oracles of God.

His reasoning is that just as the OT was entrusted to unconverted Jewish scholars, the NT must have been entrusted to unconverted Catholic and Protest scholars. I.e. we don't need converted people to perserve the works of the New Testament canon.

Using unconverted Jews and unconverted pagans is not the same thing. For one thing, Jews were God's people and the pagans are not. Secondly, in one case he has a scripture, and in the other case he does not. In fact, in the case of relying on the Protestants, the scriptures say the opposite.

Mr. Snow's argument might make sense humanly, but it's not what the New Testament says (please refer to my original article). It is just Mr. Snow's opinion. Can Mr. Snow come up with an actual scripture that says we are supposed to rely on pagans for the New Testament?

If he finds such a scripture he will have found a contradiction in the Bible.

As the OT was entrusted to the Jews, God's Old Covenant people, the NT would have been entrusted to the New Covenant people, the true church (not Protestants), just as commanded or strongly implied in verses that I quoted in my previous article.

Would it not be suspicious if the Jews got the canon from Egyptian magicians, Assyrian priests, or Buddhist monks? Of course. So why should the Church of God get the canon from pagan Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant scholars, who cannot even agree on it themselves? None of them are servants of God.

Edits and False Identities

Bible literalists talk about how texts have been diligently preserved, but that is highly misleading. It was only during certain periods of history that the books were diligently preserved. By then some books were already corrupted. If the books were always diligently preserved, how did the book of the law (conveniently?) get lost for a long time until a single copy was (conveniently?) found in the temple (2 Kings 22)?

By carefully examining the content, vocabulary, literary skills, writing style, and other data, it can be seen that some books were almost certainly forged by someone claiming to be an apostle. When scribes were copying these books they were merely copying uninspired works. What good are hundreds or even thousands of accurate copies of the wrong text?

Editing to alter the originals is another problem. Both OT and NT books have been edited, and nobody knows exactly what the originals actually said. In some cases the unedited works have all been lost (or destroyed?) and the only copies that remain have been edited.

Mr. Snow talks about comparing "the Dead Sea Scrolls (c. 100 B.C.) with the earliest medieval Masoretic Hebrew manuscript that includes Isaiah (c. A.D. 900)" and says there were "very few errors in over a period of 1000 years." (The Journal, Issue 151, p. 4). But Isaiah was written hundreds of years before the Dead Sea Scrolls (and by more than one person by the way). Mr. Snow seems completely unaware that Isaiah went through a period when it was rewritten and edited before it was stable and the Dead Sea Scrolls were finally written.

Every text started out as a single manuscript, and when there was just one or a few manuscripts, corrupting them was possible, and might have been fairly easy.

Acts 17:30

Ironically, the next passage Mr. Snow quotes to support his view is one that very few in the Churches of God actually believe: "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent" (Acts 17:30, NASB).

This verse states that God is "now" calling on "all people everywhere" to repent. First of all, most people have never heard the gospel so there is no way all men everywhere can repent or ever could. Further, the COGs teach that very few are called in this age, not that all men everywhere are being called to repent. God is not now calling on all men to repent, and he never has.

If Mr. Snow is convicted that God is only calling a few now (a traditional COG belief) he should consider the possibility that Acts 17:30 is a spurious verse. The Trinity verse in I John 5:7 is spurious. If there is one spurious verse, there could be others.

Quoting One Side

Mr. Snow then quotes from a number of scholars who follow in the tradition of the Great Harlot and her wayward daughters. He can't seem to produce quotes from bonafide men of God from the early Christian era to tell us which books are supposed to be in the canon. He has no choice but to get his canon from Satan's men, or he would have no canon at all.

Mr. Snow could find many quotes from scholars to support his side and I could find many quotes from scholars to support other views. That's why each reader needs to carefully and thoroughly examine different views for himself.

Before anyone gets their canon from Satan's men, they'd better examine it with a fine-toothed comb.

Contradictions and Controversies

According to Mr. Snow, "if a later purported revelation of God contradicted an earlier one, the [later one] was rejected as false."

First of all, that is not true since contradictions in Bible books do exist. But to the extent that the books are in agreement, all it shows is that the pagan church was able to keep out of their canon those books which contained the most blatant contradictions with other books that were more consistent with the doctrines of the early pagan church.

What happened before that time is what should interest us the most. It took hundreds of years before the "early" church finally "settled" (to some degree) on a canon, or at least on which books to argue about.

It seems odd that the COGs accept the Protestant canon with more certainty than the Protestants do themselves. Debates about which books really belong in the canon have gone on among Christians for 2000 years and continue today. Even some of the greatest Protestant leaders like Luther did not agree with the canon we have today.

When NT authors quoted the OT they usually quoted from the Greek Septuagint instead of the Hebrew texts. The use of the Septuagint by NT authors implies that they considered it authoritative. This seems to put the COGs at odds with the New Testament authors. The COGs prefer the Hebrew texts—they do not consider the Greek OT to be authoritative because it was a translation from the original Hebrew.

Jews, who had the oracles of God, were using both the Hebrew and Greek texts. They stopped using the Greek Septuagint because it was used by early Christians to cite prophecies Christians believed were fulfilled by Christ. This, of course, was after the Christian era had begun. It's debatable if the Jews still had authority over the canon at the time they stopped using the Greek translations, and their reasons for doing so are suspect.

The choice of texts (Greek or Hebrew) is important because it can make a difference in doctrine. For example, Isaiah 7:14 prophesied that a young woman would give birth to a son. The Hebrew for "young woman" does not mean virgin, but the Greek word, which Matthew quoted, came to mean virgin. If we disregard the Greek OT, there is no prophecy that Jesus would be born of a virgin. In other words, if we insist on using only the Hebrew, Matthew had no basis for claiming that the virgin birth fulfilled prophecy (Matt 1:22-23). False claims of fulfilled prophecy would make the book of Matthew suspect.

It may also be significant that NT authors quoted the Septuagint even though the Septuagint included books not in the OT today. Some people see this as an endorsement of books that have been omitted from the OT. Even the original King James Bible of 1611 included books which are not in the KJV today. Why those books were removed is another interesting story that readers should want to look into.

These are important things to research and think about—for ourselves—not from ministers with limited knowledge who have their minds already made up. Unfortunately, scholarship is derided in some COGs even though, as Mr. Snow acknowledges, the ministers depend on scholars themselves (to determine the canon, produce commentaries, make translations, etc). People are not encouraged to "prove all things" (I Thess. 5:21) for themselves when it comes to the fundamental question of the canon.

Sincerely Wrong

Using human reasoning, Mr. Snow attempts to sway us by an appeal to the purported sincerity of deceived persons in the harlot tradition.

Mr. Snow seems to have forgotten that many preachers are not sincere (2 John 1:7), and that we should not follow their errors even if they are. Have we not learned that sincerity is not enough? The 9-11 terrorists were no doubt sincere. So were the prophets of Baal. They were so sincere they were stabbing themselves with knives in a passionate appeal to their non-existant god (I Kings 18:28). Elijah slew them (v. 40), which was their just reward, according to the OT canon.

Mr. Snow believes I am on the road to "rack and ruin" but none should fear that doing honest research will lead to spiritual ruin.

Note 1: Some Encyclopedia Links

Here is an article from the Encyclopedia Britannica discussing how many people wrote Isaiah and when.

Here is an article from the Encyclopedia Britannica discussing the Septuagint.

Here is an article from the Catholic Encyclopedia discussing their view of the canon and a history of the canon dispute.

Note that, according to Britannica, Luther rejected several books that are now part of the most widely accepted Protestant canon. He included them in the NT out of tradition rather than conviction.

For Luther, the criterion of what was canonical was both apostolicity, or what is of an apostolic nature, and ... what drives toward, or leads to, Christ. This latter criterion he did not find in, for example, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation; even so, he bowed to tradition, and placed these books last in the New Testament. (From Britannica, here).

Note 2: This article appeared in The Journal: News of the Churches of God in 2013 here.