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- We talk about a canon
you're talking about the list of books
that Christians, here the Christian canon,
that Christians view as uniquely authoritative.
Okay, a fundamental question when we talk about the canon
is are we looking at an authorized collection of writings
or a collection of authoritative writings.
Now that may sound almost the same, but listen to that.
An authorized collection of writings.
There's some external force
or authority that's declared these writings
are authoritative and the basis of their authority
is on this external force.
Or is this a collection of authoritative writings
and that is the writings have an inherent authority
that is recognized, but whether you recognize it or not
they still have the authority.
As an evangelical protestant I have the second view,
right, more of a Catholic view is the first view,
that the church has invested this authority
and it's the authority of the church.
I believe that the Scriptures have an inherent authority.
Sort of a trick question I say well when was
the New Testament canon completed?
Well the New Testament canon was completed
when the last book of the New Testament was written,
around A.D. 90, that's when it was completed,
but there's a process of that being universally recognized
in the widespread and diverse early church.
When was the Old Testament canon completed?
Well 430 B.C. with the book of Malachi,
when the last book of the Old Testament was written
it was completed, but then there's some process
in the early Jews coming to recognize
a closure to that Hebrew language canon,
the Old Testament canon,
and then the way they spoke about that.
Let's talk about it in succession.
Let's talk about the Old Testament canon
and then let's talk about the New Testament canon.
The Old Testament was written from roughly 1400 to 430 B.C.
and you can see within the documents themselves
God giving guidelines for whether prophetic words
were true or really from Him.
For example in Deuteronomy 18
and it seems there's this progressive recognition
through time of the prophets truly speaking for God
and their writings being preserved.
It's clear when you get to the time of the New Testament
the way that Jesus and the apostles
referred to the Old Testament,
the way it's quoted, the way those quotes are introduced,
there's a recognition that these writings are closed.
This Old Testament prophetic canon
is not continuing to be written
and these things are authoritative.
As Jesus says in John 10 the Scripture
cannot be broken, right.
Josephus who wrote in the first century, a Jewish historian,
he said the Jewish canon had been completed and closed
since the time of the Persian King Artaxerxes,
which was you know in the 400s.
So it's pretty easy for Christians
to affirm the Old Testament canon.
We say we believe the Old Testament canon
that Jesus and the apostles believed, very simplistically.
So if Jesus and the apostles affirm
this collection of writings, that's sufficient for me.
And in fact if you go to a Jewish synagogue today
the Hebrew Scriptures that you find there
are exactly the same books that we have
in our 39 book Old Testament Protestant canon.
Now they're arranged in slightly different order,
they're grouped differently, but it's the same content
in the Hebrew canon in a Jewish synagogue
and in the protestant evangelical
39 book Old Testament canon.
Let's talk about the New Testament canon.
Okay, the New Testament.
So the New Testament was written
from roughly the 40s to roughly A.D. 90,
so a much smaller period of time over which it was written.
And even within those writings themselves
we see this recognition of their inherent authority,
right, Jesus told his disciples
that they would be his witnesses,
that the Spirit would remind them
of what he had taught them and teach them further things.
So there's this interlocking
of the old and New Testament in a really unique way
in that the New Testament was quoting
from the Old Testament, recognizing it as authoritative,
but here's this final and definitive word
on God's revelation that's now come in Christ.
And so even within those writings themselves,
for example in Second Peter 3:16
Peter refers to Paul's writings
and he calls them Scripture.
Or in Colossians 4 Paul talks about
copying the letter and sending the letter
to another church and them sending the letter,
there's a recognition these writings
are more than just specific occasional writings
for a particular congregation,
they have a universal authority.
So we find that within the writings themselves.
Then we go to the next stage of church history,
the post-apostolic period, what's called
the early church fathers, the apostolic fathers
and what we find there, remember Christians
are often having to hide so they're not killed,
right, they're separated by hundreds of miles,
there's no internet, there are no
Together for the Gospel conferences
where they're getting together
and chatting about these things,
this is just an organic thing.
I go there you have the book of Romans,
you have the Gospel of Mark.
We copy those, I bring them back to my location.
It's kind of this, it just keeps multiplying out like that.
And so in this period there is an implicit recognition
of the unique authority of the 27 book New Testament.
What do I mean by that?
I mean by the way that the Ignatius, Irenaeus,
the way that these guys are quoting
the books of the New Testament,
the way they're introducing those quotes,
there's an implicit recognition,
a functional canon that forms rather quickly.
Now to be fair there are also some other books
that are circulating in this time period
that did not make it into the New Testament canon.
And again you can see how this is pretty easy to happen
with geographic distances widespread,
with you know someone says well here's the Gospel of Peter.
You know oh wow we only have the Gospel of Mark,
I'd love to read the Gospel of Peter too,
but then as you read and study it
and it's read to your congregation
and someone else comes in like
we've never heard of this before
and Peter was in our church.
You know we have no, Peter preached in our church,
we have no, and so there's a time of discerning.
It takes time for this to happen.
Eusebius, early church historian
who wrote in the early 300s, he said in his time
there were those books that were
universally confessed as true,
there were those that were debated
and then there were those that were rejected as spurious.
So it was a very honest, forthright conversation
and as they were talking about these things
they wanted to know, this is a work
that really went back to apostolic authority.
This wasn't something someone had a great idea,
I wish Paul had said this to the Corinthians,
someone did this, and they wrote Third Corinthians
you know and it was orthodox even,
but it wasn't written by Paul
and so this person was removed
from their ecclesiastical office
and the writing was condemned.
And so this again took time and then
we know that in the early 300s
as Christianity became able to flourish publicly
and to be even the religion sanctioned officially
by the Roman empire, then came time
where public communication and discussion could flourish.
It was not internet, there were no T4G conferences,
but there were councils and conferences
that could now meet and very quickly
we see coalescing in these discussions
this 27 book canon that we have.
Now the first time we have it in a enumerated list
that exactly matches our 27 books is in 367 A.D.
in a letter from Athanasius, his Easter letter,
his festal letter where he lists
the 27 book New Testament canon.
But sometimes people will hear that out of context
and they'll be like oh wow the canon was just wide open,
crazy for 400, no, as I said,
right after the time of the New Testament
you see this functional authority
that is uniquely given to the New Testament writings
with this discussion and with some of these outlier texts
which later are rejected.
Now Athenasus was not a council, he was an individual,
a prominent church leader.
But soon after that in the councils of Hippo Regius
and Carthage in the late 300s
the 27 book New Testament canon that we have
was formally, I would say formally recognized.
The status was not given, but the status was recognized
by the Christian leaders of that time.
The early Christian community
was extremely careful and extremely interested
to make sure that they only gave
reverence and final authority
to books that were apostolic, inspired.
There was not a loosey goosey
well just bring your own book
and maybe we'll add that in too.
There's a very, these discussions so
they're very, very concerned to not have any corruption
and when you read through those words
of the early father's there's no recognition
that pseudonymity works falsely written
in the name of someone else could ever be accepted,
but only what is truly apostolic
and goes back to John, Matthew
or a follower of an apostle who wrote their words like Mark.
One scholar has pointed out that even if we lost
all our New Testament Greek manuscripts
we could construct the entire Greek New Testament
on the basis of the quotations in the early church fathers
because they so extensively quoted the New Testament
and looked to it as uniquely authoritative
alongside the prior written Scripture of the Old Testament.
So sometimes Christians could hear something on the news,
pick up, their coworkers say something
that could really make them question
hey when were these books written
or when were they recognized as Scripture?
But I really think we shouldn't have anything
to be afraid of looking at the actual process.
God is a loving heavenly Father
who's not trying to hide things from us or deceive us
and we recognize the process He chose in history
of having His word written and then having it recognized,
having us recognize the inherent authority
of those documents.
For the Old Testament Jesus and the apostles
so clearly affirm that authority.
How could we deny it when our Lord
and his inspired apostles affirm it?
For the writings of the New Testament
even within the writings themselves
there's this inherent recognition of Peter for Paul
or Paul for his own writings,
but then we see immediately we see
the post-apostolic period, recognizing this authority,
affirming it, affirming the apostolic authorship
uniquely commissioned by Jesus,
affirming the consistency of the teaching
across these documents,
affirming the universal recognition
and where there outliers, where there are small communities
or manuscripts that did not make it in,
that just shows that the process itself
did what it was supposed to do,
it weeded out the false writings,
the non-apostolic writings, the later writings
and the ones that were true and reliable
came to be universally recognized
and revered and rightly by Christians around the world.
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