When I was the Director of Admissions at Reformed Theological Seminary Houston, I would recruit for potential new students at various universities and colleges around the Houston area. Typically, I would run into my counterparts from other seminaries at these graduate school fairs, and we’d strike up conversations which would always evolve into theological discussions. I am amazed at what some seminaries are turning out. Below is one such discussion.
Me: Don’t you take comfort in knowing that we have God’s Word as He intended for us to have it?
Them: Well, I certainly take comfort in God’s Word, but whether or not we have it as He intended for us to have it is another thing.
Me: What do you mean?
Them: What I mean is how can you be certain we have the canon today as God intended it? The canon has historically undergone multiple revisions. How can you say with a high degree of certainty that it will not undergo revision in the future?
Me: So just to be clear, you believe that the issue of canonicity is not closed?
Them: That’s correct. Maybe for the time being, perhaps.
Me: And you are of the opinion that some future discovery may disrupt what we know as canon?
Them: It could.
Me: And you further believe that this possible new discovery could either add to what we thought we knew was canon, or it could dispel books we thought were canon, undermining them, and causing us to toss them from the canon?
Them: That’s what I’m saying.
Me: Okay. That’s a novel idea, Could you help me understand how you think this could be?
Them: It’s not really that novel – it’s actually the whole of the history of the church.
Me: How so?
Them: The canon has been up for revision several times in the history of the church. The Council of Carthage in 397 actually included books as the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobias and Judith.
Me: Okay. Aren’t those actually Old Testament apocryphal books? And where does the Council of Carthage claim to be a definitive list? As far as I know, what was presented at Carthage in 397 was a proposed list of canonical books. You are aware that the Council of Carthage met again, correct?
Them: I would disagree. That there wasn’t unanimous agreement from the beginning tends to the idea that the canon is still open.
Me: How so?
Them: Because if the canon had been apparent to everyone, then there would not have been disagreement. That there was disagreement about which books belonged and which didn’t, as well as which were at one point included and later discarded evidences the openness of the canon.
Me: Unanimous agreement does not determine canonicity. Where has unanimity ever determined anything? Not even laws are passed that require a unanimous approval.
Them: True, but if it comes from the Lord, would it not be abundantly clear to all?
Me: Jesus came from God and even that was not abundantly clear to all. Even then there were authoritative voices who could not recognize He had come from God, and according to your thinking, because there was disagreement, He could not have been who He said He was.
Them: And the debate still rages on, nonetheless. Yet that does not take away from the fact that the canon has been influx for 1500 years.[3]
Me: So your basis of determining canon is it’s receptivity?
Them: Absolutely.
Me: So then there is nothing inherent in the books we know as the Bible that makes them canonical?
Them: You mean divine inspiration? I think that’s overplayed a bit nowadays. Inherent canonicity? I think that’s a stretch.
Me: If the authority of scripture is not inherent, then it lies in the decision-making ability of fallen men. To an extent, men as well the historicity of canon are determining factors – just not THE determining factors for canonicity.
Them: But if the measure of canonicity is in the canon itself…
Me: It HAS to be within the canon itself. It cannot be canon because of the effect it has on the reader, or because a group of people said it was, or because it’s just an old book.
Them: But isn’t that circular reasoning? “The Bible is God’s Word because it says so,” type argument? Surely you don’t buy into such a thing?
Me: “The Bible is God’s Word because it says so,” is only circular reasoning if it’s false. If the Bible says it’s God’s Word and it is God’s Word, then it’s self-authenticating truth. This is what the Reformers called ‘Sola Scriptura.’
Them: Granted.
Me: But let’s get back to this idea that the canon is open. You say because there has been a process determining canonicity that leads it open to further revision.
Them: That’s right.
Me: I do not dispute that what was and was not canon has been disputed. I think we’d agree on this.
Them: I think we would.
Me: Where we would not agree is that because the church wrestled with what was canonical, that we will have to do so again.
Them: So what is the criteria for canon? I think we’d agree that New Testament canon would have to be written by an apostle and date to a time contemporary to that apostle. Would you agree?
Me: Partially. Just because we would recover a letter genuinely written by an apostle would not in and of itself make in canonical and force its inclusion into our corpus of scripture. If God would have wanted us to have it, He would have preserved it for us, but since it was ‘lost’ and ‘recovered,’ it only served a temporary purpose. It may have tremendous historical value – it may even be inspired – but its inclusion in the canon would be redundant.
Them: A divinely inspired Apostolic letter that is NOT included in the canon?
Me: Absolutely. God has providentially seen to it that it was excluded for whatever reason. God superintended His Word and gave us exactly what we needed. But this is speculative. The ‘What if’ scenarios are endless. I’d like to address this idea that the church has not had a settled canon and this is the history of the church.
Them: Please do.
Me: You cited the Council of Carthage as well as the Council of Trent.
Them: Even the Protestant Reformation called into question the canon.
Me: The problem with all that is that you’re using a model that determines canonicity according to corporate reception. I alluded to this earlier but I’d like to expound a little more. Councils and so forth do not determine what is canon, they simply recognize what is canon. That is, there are certain attributes that canonical books will absolutely have that the church simply has to recognize.
Them: Go on.
Me: If a book was sent from God it will receive testimony first and foremost of the Holy Spirit. Now, I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit will tell someone which books are canon and which aren’t, but He will enable us to see its divinity.
Them: That sounds a bit like what a Mormon would say.
Me: Not really. The Mormons rely on a feeling that authenticates their book and relay that as being the Spirit of God. We simply say the Holy Spirit enables us to see Himself in the works, not a feeling we get from the works.
Them: But is it not the experience with the Spirit though the Word that authenticates canon?
Me: Now you’re starting to sound like a Mormon. The canonicity of a book cannot be its effect upon the reader. This is where we depart. If you are committed to this idea of equating human activity with canonicity – whether in its effect on the individual or creaturely activity in determining canon – you will never see the hand of God as being authoritative.
Them: Then why Councils and so forth in the first place?
Me: As time went on, there were works introduced as canon that were new and unfamiliar to the church community. Now understand this – not everyone in the visible church community was the redeemed of the Lord. There were those who attached themselves to the church for their own reasons, and these types were notorious for trying to introduce novelty to the church one way or another. So it’s not so much undivided unanimity that became a decisive factor within the community; it was the overwhelming unity of the majority of those recognized by the church as the church.
Them: But it would seem all the way up til Calvin there was disagreement. I mean, Calvin doesn’t include Revelation in his commentary.
Me: That doesn’t mean Calvin didn’t view it as canonical just because he didn’t write a commentary on it. I think you’ve gone a little far here – the Reformers actually sought to recover the Apostolic faith so they reached back to what the consensus of the early church. So as opposed to trying to pin a specific date on the canon, I think you’d be better off tracing the timeline of corporate receptivity. That is, the process by which we came to possess the canon we have today. You’ll find much more uniformity and similarity in what they had then and what we have now than you’re willing to admit.
Them: I think you give the church fathers of old too much credit. I’m still not clear why you think some books were disallowed later and some were added later.
Me: Would you be satisfied had the Lord given us a complete canon, dropped from heaven on tablets of gold, hand delivered from Gabriel straight from the throne of heaven, inked by the very hand of the Holy Spirit himself?
Them: Well, you have a point.
Me: Of course! We’ve seen that. You cited the Council of Carthage but the reality is that the canon was recognized much earlier than that. From the time contemporary to the apostles, there was already a canonical core, which we have today, in circulation.
Them: So there was a time when the canon was open?
Me: Not necessarily open; more like understood. It took a little time for the writings of the apostles to be collected and circulated as one, but originally, they circulated independently and there was no discussion about whether or not they were ‘canon’ as it were. But from the beginning, there were books received as scripture written by the apostles acknowledging other
books written by apostles as scripture. We see this with Peter when he refers to Paul’s writing as ‘scripture.’ So even in the Apostle’s lifetime there was a demarcation of what was scripture.
Them: Yes, but in the time preceding the apostles, this was not the case. Even relatively shortly after the death of the last apostle, there was doubt regarding which books were written by them.
Me: I think you’ve got it backwards. What was in dispute was not normative – what was received was normative. You see, your view of scripture cannot account for the 22 books acknowledged as apostolic by 90 AD. This went unchallenged for more than 200 years.
Them: But the mere existence of disputed books meant the canon could not be closed.
Me: How so?
Them: It would seem obvious: They did not know if it was apostolic or not so it took a council to make that determination.
Me: That’s speculative. Just because a book was disputed doesn’t mean it wasn’t canonical. There were several categories of Christian literature: Recognized, disputed, rejected, and heretical. You make it seem as if the line was drawn, erased, and re-drawn among the four categories, but it was set early on.
Them: So in your estimation, what was the point of contention?
Me: The size of the book. If you look at the five disputed books – James, Jude, 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John, those are small books and much lesser known compared to say Romans. It was a matter of practicality because they weren’t circulated as much and people were less familiar with them. But that they were in circulation during the time of the apostles and commonly known to have been apostolic, they were ultimately included.
Them: You consider yourself Reformed, yes? Well how do you reconcile that the Reformers rejected certain New Testament books?
Me: Which?
Them: The Reformers rejected Hebrews, James, Jude, Revelation, 2 and 3 John, and 2 Peter.
Me: Rejected? My man, that’s a strong word. Which Reformer omitted it from their canon or disputed their inclusion?
Them: Luther clearly had serious issues with those books.
Me: But Luther never said they were spurious. He had questions concerning their value, but neither he nor his followers nor any other Reformer omitted them. So what the Reformers ultimately did was refer back to the those closest to the apostles and put the pieces together to determine canonicity. To say that the canon is still open would mean that the early church got it wrong, the Church Fathers got it wrong, and the Reformers got it wrong. Further, it would say God is insufficient to administer His own Word. If He cannot do that, then the Bible is untrustworthy altogether.
Them: I get where you’re coming from, but I still think that there may yet be other books out there that may be discovered and toss the question of canonicity back to the fore.
Me: Well, there you go (tosses up hands, shrugs shoulders.)
