3.4 – The New Testament Canon (16 min video)

Transcript

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– Well, today I have the privilege of talking to you about the canon of the New Testament. In other words, what has given us the list of 27 books in the New Testament? Why four gospels? Why a set number of epistles? And of course, a book of history and a book of prophecy. A canon, in fact, is a word that basically means the standard or the rule by which something is judged. If you look into this subject on your own, you may find historians and critics, all starting really in the 1800s and on, so really in modernity time period, all arguing that the canon wasn’t really organized until probably the fourth century, maybe at the Council of Nicaea, for example. Well, it is true that the Council of Nicaea affirmed what New Testament books were New Testament books. But it wasn’t like they were voting on what got in and what was gonna be kept out. Rather, they were affirming what was already the practice of the church and had been the practice of the church for centuries. If we look back at the church in Acts, we see very clearly that they’re already comfortable using the Old Testament. The Old Testament had been affirmed as the canon, as the word of God by Jesus. In fact, he cites Deuteronomy 8 when he’s tempted in the wilderness, saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Or we have, for example, when he’s on the road to Emmaus with the two disciples, he interprets all the law and the prophets, showing how they’re all pointing to him. We also, of course, have the Gospel of Matthew. It’s the Gospel of Matthew that shows the connection between the prophecies of the Old Testament and how Jesus has fulfilled them. It’s also the Gospel of Matthew, for example, that gives us a very clear genealogy. This is how Jesus actually connects to the patriarchs of old, to the promise of the covenant. We, of course, have a book like Hebrews, or really Paul’s letters are filled with references to Old Testament prophecies, explaining how Jesus has fulfilled these things. Paul also refers to both himself and the other apostles as being ministers of a new covenant. He makes it clear that there’s only one gospel, that’s in Galatians 1. That’s important because there would be alternative gospels that would be written past the time of the earliest church in the book of Acts or say the first century.

And those gospels were clearly dismissed because they didn’t tell the same story. Meanwhile, we have John making it very clear at the end of Revelation that this is a book of scripture saying, quote, “You shall not add to the word “that I command you, nor take from it, “that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God “that I command you.” In other words, with Revelation closing the New Testament and based upon the authority that Paul claims of himself and the apostles, the canon of the New Testament was closed as soon as it was finished with the writing of say revelation.

It was not closed or determined by a church council. So you really could argue that it was determined by the Holy Spirit who spoke through the apostles. In fact, the New Testament bears its own witness to its authority. The great theologian, Herman Baving says, quote, “The canonicity of the books of the Bible, which would include the New Testament, is rooted in their very existence. They have authority in and of themselves simply because they exist.” Now, that’s kind of an interesting idea right there. He’s pointing out that the very fact that the books exist, that they are such unique works of literature, and they’ve been so well-preserved, is a testimony to their authority. It’s also getting at the fact that the Holy Spirit specifically serves as a witness throughout the stories of the scripture. You see the Holy Spirit hovering over the water, say at creation, it’s like he’s a witness to that event. We see the Holy Spirit sitting as a dove at Christ’s baptism. We see him descending as flaming tongues of fire above the apostles head at Pentecost. And according to Romans eight, we’re told that he witnesses that we are truly the children of God. Or in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul refers to his own words as being, quote, “spirit taught.” In 2 Corinthians, he says that Christ is speaking through him, that’s 2 Corinthians 13 3. And then Paul again in 1 Thessalonians 2 13 affirms his message is the word of God. So we actually have Paul saying that, yes, what I’m giving to you is the actual word of God. We have the same thing in Peter. In 2 Peter 3, 15 through 16, he says, “Count the patience of our Lord a salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him.” Meaning this is not something that Paul’s coming up with, it’s wisdom that was given to him. Peter goes on, he says, “As Paul does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand.

” It’s kind of a funny critique of Peter on Paul. Which the ignorant, he says, an unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. In other words, Peter testifies that Paul’s words are actual scripture. There’s also the fact that the New Testament letters, and all the books in the New Testament, are written by the apostles. That was one of the big questions the early church asked, if they ever did ask a question about this, was, was this letter or was this book written by an apostle?

That was a big deal because the apostles had been given direct authority by Jesus. First in the gospels, we see him sending them out, giving them the authority to cast out demons and to heal the sick. But he also gives them authority to preach what they have seen. In fact, that was the whole message of the apostles, that they had seen the resurrected Lord. Peter notes this, for example, in Acts 10 41. Paul goes through a whole list of who’s actually seen the risen Lord in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Or we even have Jesus telling his disciples in John 13 20, for example, that whoever receives the one I send receives me. In other words, they had his authority. And there was actually a Hebrew word and legal term, the word shaliak. which meant that you were the legal representative of another person, that you could speak on their behalf, that you have their authority to speak what they had commanded you to say.

Well, the Greeks had a word for that as well. It was called apostolos, from which we get the word apostle. Not only do we have the New Testament basically testifying to its own authority or the fact that the apostles make it it’s very clear that they have authority. We also have the early writings of the church. For example, you can look at the Epistle of Barnabas. It’s a letter that was probably not written by the Barnabas of say, Acts. It’s probably written late in the first century, maybe the early second century, but it’s in the Epistle of Barnabas that Matthew 22, 14 is quoted. And before it is quoted, a very curious phrase is used. The phrase is, “As it is written.” That is a phrase that was always reserved for quoting specifically scripture or the word of God. We also have the letter of Clement. When he wrote to the church at Corinth, he said this, “Paul wrote you a letter in the spirit.” meaning this is specifically the word of God. And then he goes on to say, but I don’t write to you in that same authority. He makes a distinction between the authority of the apostle Paul and his own authority as a successor to Paul. He’s not writing in the spirit in the same way. Or we have Ignatius of Antioch, probably in the year 107, as he’s being marched off in chains to Rome to be torn by wild beast. He makes it clear in his letters that Peter and Paul spoke with the authority of God, but I don’t speak to you with the same authority. I speak to you merely as a Christian condemned. Even Polycarp gets into this. In his letter, he uses the same formula as it is written in scripture and then immediately quotes Ephesians 4.26, one of Paul’s letters. By 150 AD, we have Justin Martyr writing in his first apology that, quote, “the memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits in the church service.” In fact, that kind of became the names for different parts of the New Testament. The memoirs of the apostles would be the gospels, and the writings of the prophets would be all of the letters and revelation. He also specifically testifies that there were exactly four gospels, two by actual disciples of Jesus and two by companions of those disciples who became the apostles.

We also have the testimony, for example, of Irenaeus of Lyon. He himself was disciple of Polycarp, who in turn was a disciple of John. Well, it’s Irenaeus who quotes from every New Testament book except for Leman. In fact, quotes from them over 1,000 times and always quotes from them, assuming that his audience will see them as authoritative or as scripture. In other words, it was the common practice of the earliest church, as far as we can tell, to treat these writings that we now call the New Testament as actually being the word of God.

Well, it’s not just that evidence that we have. that’s the most compelling evidence, but there’s also archaeological evidence. The great church historian F.F. Bruce notes that the earliest text of Caesar’s Gallic War that we actually have, well, our oldest copy of it is 900 years after its original writing. He also points out the oldest form we have of Thucydides, who wrote in the B.C. era is from the year 900 A.D. and that we only have fragments of the historical works of Tacitus and Livy. We’re missing massive accounts of the ancients. We’re missing massive copies of the ancients. And yet, by contrast, in terms of the New Testament, we have some 90 papyrus manuscripts. We have another 260 manuscripts that are in the unsealed letters, and another 2,700 manuscripts that are in what’s called miniscule, which is just a small, flowing type of writing. All of these things, many of them, date from the second century and on, so from the 100s on. In fact, the earliest fragment we have of the New Testament actually contains John 18, verses 31 to 33, and it’s most likely from around the year 130 AD. Our oldest, almost fully complete New Testament, It’s called the Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri. I know it’s a long name, but it contains most of the New Testament books and most of it dates to the second century or in some cases, the third century.

Then we have the Muratorian fragment. That was actually put together probably in the 600s, but it appears to be based on a Greek copy that we think dates from the time of Irenaeus or about 170 AD.

It catalogs some 22 books of the New Testament. And then, of course, we have the Codex Sinaiticus. It’s one of the most famous texts from the 300s that contains not just most of the New Testament, but also most of the Old Testament.

It wasn’t actually discovered until the 19th century. In fact, many of these works are still being discovered or have been discovered in modern times, meaning we probably haven’t uncovered what is fully out there. Still, you may be asking yourself, so what was the test that the church had? How did they actually test that these writings were truly scripture? Well, let me read to you from F.F. Bruce’s, “The Canon of Scripture.” It’s there that he writes, “The earliest Christians did not trouble themselves about criteria of canonicity. They would not have really understood the expression.” In other words, they didn’t have a test. He says, “They accepted the Old Testament scriptures as they had received them. The authority of those scriptures was sufficiently ratified by the teaching and example of Jesus and his apostles. The teaching and the example of the Lord and his apostles, so the writings of the New Testament, whether conveyed by word of mouth or in writing, it had axiomatic authority for them, meaning they accepted it immediately as being the word of God.

In fact, Paul makes it very clear sometimes that he’s writing in his own hand or that he’s signing the letter to make it clear that, yes, this is coming from me. Which is why the early church saw anything written by the apostles as being the word of God. They would also sometimes look at his orthodoxy. If there was a letter that was written by a false prophet and those do exist, we’ll talk about those later. They would check to see, do they agree with the theology of the New Testament and the Old Testament? And if they didn’t, and they often have very wacky ideas, like it’s the Gospel of Thomas, for example, where Jesus says that women have to become men in order to be Christians, that’s a very wacky idea. You’ll not find that in the Bible anywhere else. In other words, the orthodoxy was under such great suspicion and while that was actually written by an apostle was also suspected that the church said, But no, we are not going to actually follow this.

There’s also the fact that the church would often look to see how widely accepted is this work. Is this work being used by the rest of the church as scripture? That’s how, for example, the church in Rome accepted the letter to the Hebrews. They didn’t think it was scripture, but when they realized, oh, the rest of the Christian world traces a scripture, we should too. So there was never a need for a council to actually decide what the scriptures were. They were accepted both by practice and especially by faith. In fact, the Belgic Confession, written in 1562, comments on this by saying, “We receive all these books and these only, the books of the Bible, as holy and canonical for the regulation, the foundation, and the confirmation of our faith, believing without any doubt all things contained in them, not so much because the church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God.

” That seems to actually exhibit what the early church practiced. They accepted these as being the Word of God from the earliest days, and therefore that’s how we have treated them in the church ever since.