Picture yourself in the situation of a sola-scriptura Christian
in the year 100. All the Apostles are dead, so you are just left with
the Scriptures since you don't believe the church has the authority to
declare the canon of scripture. You only
knew one apostle's gospel narrative---Matthew, you read and accept his
gospel, you have not seen or read other accounts, you heard some are
floating around. Finally one day some comes to town saying they have a
new fancy gospel by some guy you never heard of named Luke. And Luke
also wrote another book named Acts of the Apostles. You are skeptical
since you never heard of Luke, you read Matthew 10--Luke is not a name
of an apostle, so you already question this narration. You look through
the whole gospel of Matthew--you see no Luke mentioned anywhere (how can
you trust this guy, doesn;t even pretend to be someone known or
noteworthy). Despite your doubts already, you read Luke's gospel and
Acts to give it a chance, if Luke is true, it won't say something
contrary to what you know is scripture in Matthew.
So you start off with the genealogies---the book you know is scripture says Joseph's father is named Jacob (Matthew 1:16), but you read this new guy Luke and he says Joseph was the son of Heli (Luke 3:23). Your doubts increase, how could this Luke guy screw up so barely? Perhaps there is an explanation for this, but you have no reason to try to go out of your way on accepting the word of this guy who wasn't an apostle. You read much of the rest of Luke and see many things are in common with Matthew, making you think Luke just borrowed, corrupted and embellished MAtthew's writing--which irritates you. You look at the story of the passion, your gospel said Christ was crucified with two criminals--both mocked Christ. Luke claims one mocked Christ and the other defended Jesus and Jesus told him he would see him in the kingdom! Unbelievable, this Luke guy just have to act like he has special information, he is again contradicting what MAtthew 27 seems to plainly say. Matthew 27:3 said Judas killed himself by hanging, but before that he gave the money back he was paid for betraying Christ, the elders bought a field for foreigners, and the field is called field of blood because it was bought with the money that killed Christ, but Luke in Acts 1 said Judas bought a field himself but had a gruesome death that does not mention suicide, and says the field is called the field of blood because his blood and guts were everywhere. Luke is just getting too hard to believe. You conclude Luke probably has the same faith as you do, but his history is off, and contradicts scripture, since its contradicts what you know to be true, you burn the copy and Luke and Acts since Luke is obviously unreliable.
As a reminder for those who claim that the 4 Gospels were all accepted in the 1st century--this is only true of the group that is now the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, but not true of the Ebionites.
So you start off with the genealogies---the book you know is scripture says Joseph's father is named Jacob (Matthew 1:16), but you read this new guy Luke and he says Joseph was the son of Heli (Luke 3:23). Your doubts increase, how could this Luke guy screw up so barely? Perhaps there is an explanation for this, but you have no reason to try to go out of your way on accepting the word of this guy who wasn't an apostle. You read much of the rest of Luke and see many things are in common with Matthew, making you think Luke just borrowed, corrupted and embellished MAtthew's writing--which irritates you. You look at the story of the passion, your gospel said Christ was crucified with two criminals--both mocked Christ. Luke claims one mocked Christ and the other defended Jesus and Jesus told him he would see him in the kingdom! Unbelievable, this Luke guy just have to act like he has special information, he is again contradicting what MAtthew 27 seems to plainly say. Matthew 27:3 said Judas killed himself by hanging, but before that he gave the money back he was paid for betraying Christ, the elders bought a field for foreigners, and the field is called field of blood because it was bought with the money that killed Christ, but Luke in Acts 1 said Judas bought a field himself but had a gruesome death that does not mention suicide, and says the field is called the field of blood because his blood and guts were everywhere. Luke is just getting too hard to believe. You conclude Luke probably has the same faith as you do, but his history is off, and contradicts scripture, since its contradicts what you know to be true, you burn the copy and Luke and Acts since Luke is obviously unreliable.
As a reminder for those who claim that the 4 Gospels were all accepted in the 1st century--this is only true of the group that is now the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, but not true of the Ebionites.
Along these same lines, as you continue to gather NT books, at which point can you say your collection is "sufficient" for all doctrine/practice? If all you ever knew of was Matthew, could you honestly think Sola Matthew was what the Apostles intended?
ReplyDeleteThis was originally an article to address the arguments against the Deuteros, since Protestants reject those books believing them to be error ridden, but they believe they are error ridden because they are not scripture. Likewise, those who might not have know about Luke would have believed him to be error ridden and no scripture. But magically Protestants account Luke because they were told to, and therefore they don't see any mistakes in his scriptures.
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