Canon of the Scriptures
The term canon comes from the Greek meaning ‘rule’ or ‘measuring rod’. The canon of Scripture refers to the collection of writings or Scriptures God has given to rule the church and they are grouped into Old and New Testaments (OT,NT). Christianity throughout the ages has believed God’s special revelation in His personal words. It was necessary for the people of God to identify what were God’s words for them to be governed at present and in the future for the practice and expansion of their faith in God. So at every stage of Israel’s history, there was a canon, a definite body of divine writings, which spoke to the nation and its individuals with supreme authority. The first canon was the two tablets of the covenant. A later canon added to these the Deuteronomic law of Moses (Deut. 31:24). Still a third added words of Joshua (Josh. 24:25-28).[1] Jesus referred to these documents as Scriptures along the with prophetic writings: “The scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35); “Everything written about me in the law of Moses, and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:24).
OT canon: Throughout history considerable controversy existed among Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches over which books to be included in the OT. The controversy is over certain books known as the Apocrypha[2], whether they were to be included or not as part of the canon. The Jews who lived in the region of Palestine where Jesus did His ministry did not consider Apocrypha part of their Scripture. The evidence seems to indicate neither Jesus nor His disciples ever quoted from the Apocrypha as the Scripture[3]. The thirty nine books endorsed by the Protestants since the time of Reformation are thus the Scriptures accepted by the Palestinian Jews living around the time of Jesus. Beyond Palestine and particularly in the Greek translation of the OT known as the Septuagint, books belonging to the Apocrypha were included as part of the OT[4].
NT canon: Quite remarkably the NT canon contains 27 books[5] whose inclusion finds unanimous agreement among Protestants, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers. Given the political, theological and cultural turmoil prevailed in the three centuries following the time of Jesus, this agreement over the NT canon among Christians belonging to all traditions, is quite astonishingly a reminder of God’s sovereign power to unite and reveal His Son Jesus Christ to the world. Nevertheless, it took more than two centuries to define the precise shape of the NT canon, although Pauline collection of letters and the four gospels circulated and were used as authoritative documents[6] among Christians very early on. It was in AD 367 that the church has finally listed the 27 books of the NT canon. The church father Athanasius of Alexandria drawn up this list of book in the NT canon. The process by which the 27 books of the NT were determined to be canonical was guided notably by three principles[7]:
- The books that are Scripture and are truly the Word of God have about them a self-evidencing and self-authenticating quality. They exert and exercise unparalleled power upon the lives of people – some examples are Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus (original recipient of the book of Acts), Hilary, Victorinus, Augustine.
- Books that were used in the Christian worship during the decades immediately following the resurrection. Eg. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Col.4:16).
- The evidence of apostolic authority: Was it written by an apostle, or at least by someone who had direct contact with the circle of the apostles?
Two historical facts/theological controversies in the life of the early church gave impetus to the definition and the closure to the scriptural revelation of God. They involve the heretical views propagated by Marcion and Montanus.
About A.D. 140, Marcion believed and diffused a view that the God of the OT was a God of wrath and author of evil and the God of the NT is the God of grace and love and disclosed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son. He rejected the OT along with the NT gospels that acknowledged the validity of the OT Scriptures. The Scripture that Marcion accepted was a stripped out version of the Luke’s gospel and ten letters of Paul. The church took its stand against Marcionite heresy and affirmed the OT and the rest of NT books as the Christian Bible/canon. By rejecting Marcion’s heretical views the church scored two important points[8]: (i) The Christian faith must reconcile the wrath of God and the love of God. The Pauline letters contained the message of the cross that not only revealed the love of God but also the righteousness of God. Christ’s death allowed God to be both just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus (Rom.3:25,26), which is the gospel of the grace of God that Marcion missed; (ii) By retaining the OT, the church affirmed that Christianity is a historical religion. God in time and in places and with people made His promises/covenants and fulfilled them later in His Son Jesus Christ.
Montanus arrives between the period A.D. 156 and 172 when the church was increasing in number and slowly starting to lose its distinction compared with the world around it. Montanus called for higher spirituality among believers and along with two prophetesses named Prisca and Maximilla prophesied declaring the dawn of a new age of Spirit and the Second Coming of Christ. The new age of the Spirit that Montanus proclaimed asserted that the OT period is past and the NT period focusing on Jesus Christ has ended as well. The church rejected the teachings of Montanus by identifying the apostolic gospel message as the authoritative and final revelation of God in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has spoken the final words (Heb.1:2) and these have been attested by Jesus’ original hearers[9] (Heb.2:2). In doing so, the church did not reject the work of the Spirit but affirmed that the Spirit enabled men to write the sacred Scriptures of the Christian Faith and in later times would enable men to understand, interpret and apply that which had been written completely.
Contrary to what the popular Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code alleges (that Roman emperor Constantine in A.D. 325 suppressed dissenting Gnostic views against the Christian church’s view and propagated Jesus Christ as divine by sheer political power, history tells a different story. The church had been reading the books of the canon of the Scripture much earlier[10] and proclaimed the gospel of the revelation of God in Christ during the heat of the Roman persecution of Christians and the burning of their Scriptures. Missions to North as far as Spain, to South in North Africa, in the East all the way up to Northern Afghanistan, and to India by apostle Thomas have been carried out before the end of the 2nd century. The history of the Christian church is written in the blood of Martyrs of the faith. The writing of Scripture is once-for-all; but God continues to speak to us through Scripture day-by-day[11].
[1],9,11 John Frame, Doctrine of the Word of God, P&R Publishing, 2010. http://reformedperspectives.org/newfiles/joh_frame/joh_frame.DWG_022.pdf
[2],5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
[3],4,7,8 Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995.
[6] Mark A. Noll, Turning Points – Decisive moments in the History of Christianity, Baker Academic, 2000.
[10] Timothy Keller in a sermon titled Literalism – Isn’t the Bible historically unreliable and regressive, Nov.5, 2006.
