Last year, I took a course at Reformed Theological Seminary entitled The Origin and Authority of the New Testament Canon, taught by Dr. Michael Kruger. I thought this would be a course more or less on how and why certain books were picked to be in the New Testament and why others like the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Thomas were not. Although the history of this was covered, it ended up being so much more than that and revolutionized the way I understood the Bible.
Over the next couple of months, I hope to cover many of the most relevant portions of the course and Dr. Kruger’s book Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. Understanding how we got our Bibles and why it matters has important implications for how we understand God’s Word and its authority over our lives. By way of introduction, I would like to write about the impact that it made on me, and hopefully, by the end of this series, you will also have a new appreciation for the Scriptures that God has given us.
#1: We can know that the 66 books of the Bible are God’s Word, with no books being added or removed in error.
Why? Because God has promised that he will preserve his Word for his people. God promised to Israel, and to us, “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11 ESV). From this we have assurance that there is not a lost canonical Gospel buried in a remote desert that God wanted us to have. Were there other authoritative letters that Paul wrote, for example? Of course (1 Cor. 5:9)! But from this, we can know that every book that God intended His people to have, they have. We all know the verse, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17 ESV). If Scripture is useful for all these things, will not God ensure that his people have his full and complete Word?
#2: We know that God’s Word is its own authority on its authenticity.
Although we will delve into this in more detail in future articles, it is all-to-common for Christians to hold to incomplete (or even wrong) authorities to know what God’s Word is, ignoring the fact that it is its own authority! Yes, the Catholic Church is wrong in making themselves the authority to recognize the canon, but evangelicals also make errors when they point to anything other than the Bible for its authority. It is common to point to apostolic authorship as the authority for the canon, and that’s not completely wrong, but it misses the foundational issue. John Calvin writes, “The highest proof of Scripture derives…from the fact that God in person speaks in it…for…God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word.”1 We know Scripture has authority because it is from God!
#3: The historical trends in which books were recognized as belonging in the New Testament are consistent.
As early as the second century, there was almost universal agreement on the authenticity of the majority of the books which makes up our New Testament, and many of the books that are not in our Bibles today were rejected as non-authoritative or outright heretical. Books were not “picked” at Councils as some have suggested. Christians have agreed on what God’s Word is from the early Church to today with very few exceptions. The fact that there has been such a consensus throughout the ages should give us great confidence indeed that we have His Word! This is a powerful demonstration throughout history of Jesus’ words, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27 ESV).
#4: There is no current or future argument or “lost gospel” that can undermine God’s Word.
If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a genuine “lost gospel” in a clay jar somewhere that will fundamentally change the Christian faith, know that even if a new gospel is ever found, you can have confidence that its claims and the gospel it promotes are false. When we look at the unity of redemptive history and the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation from Genesis to Revelation, its absolute perfection is clearly perceived by the Christian. Jude gives us the warning that “certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4 ESV). If Jude was warning the church in the first century to watch out for false teachers, then surely some of them may have written a false gospel in order lead God’s people astray. Any such writings that may be found that do not agree with the testimony of Scripture may be immediately rejected by the Christian without a second thought.
At a time when not only the truths, but the very integrity of the books that we adhere to are under attack by the secular forces in our society, it is vitally important that we not only believe God’s Word, but have a proper understanding of how we know it’s his Word and how it has been passed down to us. Through this series, it is my hope that your confidence in the Bible will be strengthened in the same way mine was.