The Taste Test

And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus.
II Timothy 3:15

One begs to ask the dreaded question, “What are the scriptures?” and “How do we know that we have the scriptures?”.

As a Protestant, I was very keen on the idea that my King James Version of the Bible which had been authorized by King James I had either dropped out of heaven, preserved by Christ Himself, authorized and approved by one of the most powerful monarchs of the time, or that God somehow preserved His words by using humanity throughout all time, to preserve a written text that could neither be corrupted or destroyed.

As time progressed, I learned more historical facts, the preservation of ancient texts, the manuscripts, the translations, the translators and the actual errors that had to be sorted through. I also learned from my Protestant pastor, that the scriptures that St. Timothy would have known from a child, would not have been the New Testament Scriptures that we have so nicely bound in our Bibles today, but rather the Old Testament Scriptures, the Tanakh (or more than likely, a Greek translation of it, the Septuagint).

As a data driven deep thinker, I began to wonder then, “How do we know that we have the right books in the New Testament?”. A good thought, for we could be certain that the scriptures that Christ & His Apostles had were certain and true, but what of the New Testament Scriptures? Who has declared these books as “official” or where in the New Testament does it say that they are scripture?

I remember a Wednesday night discussion or possibly a sermon from our Protestant pastor who was alleging that he had read The Book of Mormon, the Apocrypha, the Shepherd of Hermas or such and could tell that these other books were false, or imposters because they “did not taste right”. He alleged that he was able to determine the correct books of holy scripture, just by reading them and sensing in himself if they aligned with his understanding of other books he considered to be scripture. He reiterated that these other books “tasted phony”!

And this was an interesting concept. We could judge “other books” by how they “tasted” or aligned with other previously accepted books in our KJV Elizabethan English. The rule by which we measured other books was our intellect and a book we had infallible accepted to be divine. But the haunting question became, “But how do we know that this book [the KJV] is sacred scriptures, and doesn’t include some phony books or is missing some that are inspired by God?”; after all, we had accepted it at face value. The answer to this deep troubling question was “because we do not see where it contradicts itself”; again, back to our own intellect.

But when in doubt, we would refer back to faith. An unreasonable faith, in that we could agree that the KJV was the Word of God because we thought so. For in fact, many men had given their lives for this book and God must have divinely preserved it until our day, else we would not have it. A shallow argument that also fits many other religions, such as Islam, Mormons, etc.

This “spirit led”, “taste test” may have explained why we did not accept other extra books in our Bible such as the Shepherd of Hermas, The Acts of Phillip, or the Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles but it did not explain why we accepted the book of James, II Peter, III John or Revelation. For how did these other books become accepted that we now measured every other book against?

This taste test fails scientifically, as the second source for our measurement is the measuring device itself. One can not test the whole of scripture to see if it aligns or contradicts itself when one starts at the beginning to determine if the books they have are scripture! Scripture does not define scripture. There must be an outside source that is greater which defines what scripture is. To the heretics, this becomes themselves. They become the rule by which they measure, test and determine what scripture is. For these heretical groups which reject the authority of all Councils and Creeds, they are left with a flimsy idea of how they received the scriptures; more along the lines of some conspiracy theory with an “underground church”, “a hidden line of truth” or some secret knowledge of what the early Christians believed to be scripture, absent of documentation.

Yet this heretical group that I term Marksism, who claims to be a first century, apostolic, christian church, maintains the exact identical collection of books considered to be sacred scriptures as do the Calvinists of the 17th century. For indeed, they use their English translation, but also never question the number of books in their canon (sixty-six), as if this number was divinely preserved from the times of the Apostles.

So, pray tell me, what are the odds that the leader of Marksism could come to a list of 66 books for his Bible, which matches exactly with that of the Calvinists, when there are somewhere around 136 potential possibilities of ancient books / writings that could have been chosen as part of his Bible? The Catholic’s have 72 or 73, depending on how you count. The Protestant’s have 66. History, as early as the 4th century, records the approved canon of sacred scriptures to contain the extra books that Protestants are missing.

Have confidence in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not upon thy own prudence.
Proverbs 3:5

One’s own intellect, understanding, reason or feelings can not be your guide when determining holy scriptures. One can not have enough faith to make something so. Truth exists with or without our understanding. We are but dust before our Creator. His truth has continued from before the existence of the world and will continue on past our mere vapor of a life. We can not possibly comprehend all of the truth or all the deep mysteries of God. To think that we can sniff out and determine sacred scriptures by our own brain is arrogance. To firmly believe and die for faith in ourselves is extremely foolish.

God has designed a means for us to know which books are scripture and the interpretation thereof. This way is called His Church, His salvation program. Christ established a Church, gave authority to His Apostles and they to their successors. This means of Apostolic Succession and authority has preserved and given to us today the Gospels, the Epistles and the writings of the Apostles. It was she who knew, by the leading of the Holy Ghost, which books were inspired of God and which were not. The solution to these deep theological questions are simple; Trust in the authority Christ gave to His Church and lean not upon thine own understanding.

The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
I Timothy 3:15