Perhaps one of the most common challenges raised by Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists is this:
“How do you know that you have the correct canon of Scripture?” or “Who canonized the Bible, and when?”
These questions are often presented in debates, taken as though they expose a fundamental weakness in Protestant Bibliology. Roman Catholic and Orthodox proponents often assert that Protestants have borrowed or “piggybacked” off of tradition in order to establish their canon of Scripture. They assert that unless an infallible Church or Holy Tradition declares which books belong in the Bible, Protestants have no basis for knowing what Scripture actually is.
James Orr made an observation over a century ago that remains remarkably relevant today. He argued that while doctrine develops throughout church history, the ultimate criterion for determining whether that development is healthy is not tradition, antiquity, or ecclesiastical consensus—it is Scripture. Anything that cannot be found in Scripture or legitimately deduced from it (exp. The Trinity, The Hypostatic Union of Christ) cannot be binding upon the church. He writes:
“Yet in the evolution of dogma the need is imperative for some criteria by which sound and healthy developments may be discriminated from such as are the reverse. Do such criteria exist? Naturally, our minds turn here first to Scripture, which must always be the ultimate test. There is one use at least to which Scripture may always be put-negative, and yet immensely important as clearing away much that does not belong to the system of truth for which the Church is called to contend. There may be disputes about the authority of Scripture, but there ought to be no dispute about this, that whatever has no place in Scripture, or cannot be legitimately deduced from it, is no part of the truth of revelation for which the Church is set as “the ground and pillar.” This, I take it, is the distinction between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and it warrants us in rejecting straight off a vast mass of what passes as Catholic dogma, and cuts no less at the roots of many of the theories of modern Protestantism.” ━━ James Orr, The Progress of Dogma (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1901), 14-15. Bold added by me.
As evangelicals, this is precisely why we protested against Rome. The reformers rejected doctrines that had accumulated through centuries of tradition that did not comport with Scripture. Unfortunately, the reformers did not complete the reformation, nor did they reform all the necessary areas of theology. They continued to hold onto theological errors such as: baptismal regeneration, supersessionism, amillennialism, paedobaptism, Greek philosophy, etc. This is why further reformation was required. As a side note, I am still convinced that dispensational was forged from reformation and was the true outcome of reforming back to scripture, but I also contend that dispensationalism requires further refinement and further reforming.
