Catholic Heritage Show W/ Dr. Estrada

What does the history of the canon of Scripture teach us about discerning Christian truth claims? In this episode, I approach this question by making the general argument that Scripture by itself (sola scriptura) is incapable of establishing the nature of the canon of Scripture (i.e., the list of scriptural books). I briefly review some of the basic differences in the ways Protestant and Catholic Christians approach the question of how a Christian knows for certain which books belong to the canon of Scripture. I note that generally speaking Protestant Christians rely heavily on a certain number of criteria for determining the canon. Catholics, however, look not only to many of these same criteria but also to the Church’s authority and tradition. In this episode, we argue that Christians need the Church’s tradition and, ultimately, the Church’s authority to determine which books are indeed part of the authoritative list of scriptural books. Apart from the Church’s authority and the Church’s tradition, it becom