I noticed the above short video by Hayden Carroll, in which he questions the Protestant selection of the 66 books of the biblical canon, and their rejection of the 7 extra apocryphal books, which are considered by the Catholic Church to be equally divinely inspired and canonical, as the other 66 books. He begins as follows:
A question I always like to ask Protestants is like, “Where did we get the canon from?” Catholics would say, “Well, it was us, right, in the early church councils”; but the Protestants are in a weird position, because they can’t appeal to the infallible authority of the councils, because they reject that.
That is an inconsistent argument from the LDS point of view, because the LDS Church likewise accepts the 66 books of the biblical canon—and rejects the 7 apocryphal books. If that puts the Protestants in a “weird position”, it should put the LDS Church equally in a “weird position”—because it likewise rejects those 7 apocryphal books. When the Lord commissioned the prophet Joseph Smith to make an inspired translation of the Bible, he inquired of the Lord if he should translate the Apocrypha, and the Lord gave him the following answer:
Doctrine and Covenants 91:
1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha—There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly;
2 There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.
3 Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated.
4 Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth;
5 And whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom;
6 And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited. Therefore it is not needful that it should be translated. Amen.
So it looks like the Protestants had figured it out right. How they managed to figure it out right is beside the point; but it looks like they did; therefore his objections to their rejection of the Apocrypha is invalid—at least from an LDS point of view. Then he continues:
So they typically retreat to, well, the church recognized it. When they say the “church”, they just mean the body of believers; like, they just came together, and just recognized this. But there is one question that kind of shuts that down, is well, why does your Bible—you mentioned the Catholics have more books—why are you rejecting books that for a thousand years the believers thought were scripture, like the book of wisdom, or the first and second Maccabees? I think there is seven of them, if you have a 73 canon, compared to the 66 book canon. And I think that goes to show you that just saying the church was Spirit led to bring to this, they would have to agree that the church had it wrong for a thousand years.
There are several problems with that argument. Firstly, historically and traditionally, Christians have distinguished the 66 canonical books, from the 7 apocryphal books; and even in the Catholic Church, a distinction is made between the two. What the Protestants (and LDS) refer to as the “Apocrypha”, the Catholic Church refers to as the “Deuterocanonical” (meaning “second canon” or “secondly received”) books—to distinguish them from the “Protocanonical” (the 66) books, that were never disputed. The truth is that historically, there has always been a dispute about the two sets of books; and some early Church Fathers did not accept the 7 Apocryphal books, as being equally inspired as the 66 canonical books. Even in the Catholic Church it was not officially finalized, until the Council of Trent in 1546—in response to the Protestant Reformation, which had removed the Apocrypha from the Bible. The Council of Trent, which finalized the Catholic canon, was just a backlash against Protestantism. Hayden then continues as follows:
So it is like, so is the church being led by the Spirit recognizing the canon? Whatever that means, that is not biblical at all; that is not Apostolic at all.
That is illogical and doesn’t make sense, because it could be equally applied to the 66 books—which the LDS Church accepts as inspired and canonical. Then he continues:
That is just made up essentially by the Protestants, because they literally, their position was, we don’t need an infallible interpreter, we don’t need a Magisterium, all we need is the Bible. And then they started messing with all the books. And it is like, How can you be sure of the canon of the Bible, when first of all, there is no public revelation, there is no prophets to tell us in their view?
Again, that is not a valid argument from an LDS point of view, because the LDS Church accepts the 66 canonical books. How the Protestants came up with the 66 canonical books is beside the point—if they managed to get it right—which they did, according to LDS revelation. The LDS Church accepts the current 66 book canon as divinely inspired and containing the “fullness of the gospel”:
Doctrine and Covenants 42:
12 And again, the elders, priests and teachers of this church shall teach the principles of my gospel, which are in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, in the which is the fulness of the gospel.
So the real question that he needs to be asking is, how did the Protestants manage to get the canon right? The answer is, because historically and traditionally, there has always been a question mark over the canonicity of the 7 books—and the Protestants decided to be on the safe side by rejecting the 7 books—and they turned out to be right! Hayden Carroll then continues:
But also you are saying, the church was misled in those seven extra books anyway, for a thousand years? So anyway, I just feel like, when you start talking about it, it breaks down so easily.
Not so. It is his argument that breaks down completely. The Protestants managed to get it right—despite the fact that they managed to get a lot of other things wrong! They got a lot more things wrong than right! But they were lucky enough to get this one bit right!
As a sidenote, when the prophet Joseph Smith was commissioned by the Lord to make an inspired translation of the Bible, the Lord informed him that the Song of Solomon (in Old Testament) was not an inspired book; so the biblical canon strictly speaking has only 65 inspired books, not 66—according to LDS revelation.
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