Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Theological Touchpoints podcast. I'm Julian. The focus for this episode is foundations theology for the everyday Anabaptist. Over the last several episodes we've been discussing the canon of Scripture. Last time we talked about the development of the Old Testament canon and we're going to pick up in this episode where we left off last time, continuing now into the New Testament canon. We covered the process briefly in a previous episode of how the New Testament was written.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Very succinctly, jesus called apostles to walk with him, to learn from him, and then he sent them out to speak for him, to be his witnesses and his representatives, and so the apostles spoke. After Christ left the earth, the apostles testified to others of what Christ did in them, for them and what he taught them, and so they spoke and they loved the church in that way. But they also wrote and the Spirit spoke through them And, as recorded in John, the apostles, by the Spirit's ministry in them, were given the ability to recall what Jesus taught them and they were given further instruction in the truth and they were given revelation of future events, which is essentially what we have in the rest of the New Testament is a record of what Christ taught them, further revelation of truth and revelation of future events. So Apostolicity is the primary test of, of canonicity of a New Testament writing. Did it come from somebody who was commissioned by Christ to speak for him, somebody who walked with Christ, who knew Christ, was taught by him and who was sent out by Christ to witness on his behalf? Let's talk a little bit more about the development of the canon. So again, apostolic authorship and starting with the apostles themselves, there's an argument being circulated. The apostles didn't know what they were doing, they were just writing friendly letters, and then the church ran away with it and made these writings something beyond what they were supposed to be. That simply doesn't stand based on what the apostles themselves were saying in Scripture. I have four references for us to look at and I think it makes it extremely clear that the apostles knew that they'd been commissioned to speak for God and they spoke on God's behalf, specifically on behalf of Christ, who had chosen them and sent them for this work.

Speaker 1: 2:33

First, in 2 Peter 3, verse 2, it says be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, peter himself writing to the church, and he equates his own commands with the Old Testament prophets, the holy prophets, the words spoken before by the holy prophets and what we are speaking now. He gives his commands equal weight and credence with the Old Testament commands. Peter recognizes his divine calling to represent Christ and to speak for him. Apostle means delegate, messenger or one sent forth with orders. Peter says that Jesus sent him and the other apostles to represent him, and Peter recognized that he was speaking as if Christ himself was speaking. He was speaking on behalf of Christ. 1 Corinthians 4, verse 37,.

Speaker 1: 3:28

If any man thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord. Paul, here writing to the Corinthian church, and he says the things I'm writing to you are from God. Paul claims that his instructions are not merely his own but are ultimately commands from Christ, christ speaking through Paul. Christ's commands recorded by Paul, the truth about Christ recorded by Paul and preserved for the church. 2 Peter 3, again verses 15 and 16, considered the long suffering of the Lord as salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom give it to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they also do the rest of the scriptures. So the first two we looked at, one being Peter, one being Paul, them both saying what we are writing is from God. So they recognized their role as God's apostle, as speaking authoritatively for God.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Here in 2 Peter, 3, 15 and 16, peter speaks of Paul's writings and says Paul's writings are scripture. There are those who are twisting Paul's writings to their own destruction and he says they do this to all the scriptures And he puts Paul's writings on par with the rest of scripture. Grafé the word translated scriptures, here in 2 Peter is used 51 times in the New Testament, every time referring to the Old Testament scriptures in some way. So the Old Testament writings and the Apostolic New Testament writings are paralleled and the apostles knew that what they were writing was from God, was scripture, was to be accepted as such. A Peter clearly understood that Paul wrote on par with scripture.

Speaker 1: 5:27

A fourth, 1 Timothy 5, verses 17 and 18, let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word, in doctrine, for the scripture says you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain and the laborer is worthy of his wages. The scripture says two things, says Paul, two things. First one you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. That's from Deuteronomy 25, old Testament scripture says this. But then he goes on to say laborer is worthy of his wages. That's a quote from Luke's gospel. Luke's Gospel would have been written not too long before Paul's writing. And Paul says Luke's Gospel yeah, that's scripture. We can call that scripture. That's from God, that's divinely inspired, it's authoritative, it should be recognized by the church, received by the church as from God and binding on God's church. And so he puts Luke's Gospel on par with Old Testament and he says what's being written now is of equal weight, equal importance to the Old Testament scriptures.

Speaker 1: 6:37

These writings were put into use immediately in the church. First Thessalonians 5, verse 27, contains a command to the church that this epistle was to be read to all the church. So this isn't just a personal letter. This is Paul addressing the entire church there. And so this is given by Paul for the sake of that church, that they can grow in the truth. But not only are these to be read in the church and continually read in the church, but in Colossians there is a command that the letters between churches be exchanged. The church at Colossae is supposed to get a letter from Laodicea, and the church at Laodicea is supposed to get this letter, which Paul's writing from Colossae. Now this is a side issue, but it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 7:25

There's quite a bit of discussion about this epistle to the Laodiceans. Why don't we have it? Should we have it? And given that here the church at Colossae was supposed to read it, does that mean it should have been a part of scripture? We understand that if it's supposed to be in God's word, it would be. So we're not missing anything we need just from a base point, but also just for the sake of our understanding. There's nothing about this that requires that the letter the Laodiceans has is actually a letter written to them, and it could very well have been one of the other New Testament epistles that had circulated to the Laodiceans. It was a letter that they had that had not yet made it to Colossae, and they were to exchange these letters for mutual benefit and edification, and so from the very beginning it's expected that these letters be circulated among the church, that they be preserved, that they be studied and that the church hold on to these things and grow through a reading of these writings.

Speaker 1: 8:30

And that these writings should be included in the collection of scriptures of known apostolic writings and they should be recognized as authoritative and as canonical because they were written by Christ's chosen men, so written by apostles, they were put into use immediately, as they continually circulate and they're gradually collected. By the end of the first century, gospels was collected in one unit. Paul's epistles was collected in one unit. This collection continually happens Until later on. Then we have the church recognizing the writings that are truly and undeniably from God. So, of the books we have now in the New Testament, the majority of them were accepted immediately.

Speaker 1: 9:15

A very little dispute, very little discussion, contradiction among the early church as to the authority, as to the inspiration, as to the canonicity of these writings, and included in this all four gospels, the book of Acts, all of Paul's epistles, 1 Peter and 1 John. No dispute, no question. The early church recognized there was something special about these writings and they considered them to be scripture and treated them as such from the very beginning. There were several books that were disputed. If you look at early Canon type lists, a number of these will not be included. These were questioned by the church for various reasons. Among the disputed books were Hebrews James, 2, peter, 2 John, 3 John, jude and Revelation, and there are some reasons for all of that, which we'll cover here very briefly. More information on this can be had in a book entitled The General Introduction to the Bible by Norman Geisler and William Nicks Not the only resource on the issue, but it is a good one And if you're interested in those kinds of things, you might want to pick that up.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Looking at Hebrews Hebrews was questioned early on, primarily because the authorship was unknown, especially in the West. This was a problem because the West's understanding of apostolicity is that it had to have apostolic authorship. Versus how I've discussed it previously, it needs to be either written or endorsed by an apostle Call it apostolic authority. So apostolic authorship stresses that a book must be written by an apostle to be authentic, while apostolic authority sees both authorship and endorsement as legitimate. So a writing did not need to be written by an apostle, it just needed to be confirmed by one, and so the unknown authorship of Hebrews is not necessarily disqualified. Now we don't have written record that the apostles endorsed Hebrews, but it was widely accepted in the early church and that indicates that it was probably considered scriptural very early on.

Speaker 1: 11:27

As we discussed the principles of canon, apostolicity, orthodoxy, universality and power are our four tests. Apostolicity is a little bit uncertain but we don't know either way. But its content is orthodox, it speaks, it is consistent with the Word of God, it was universally accepted and it speaks with God's power. It was eventually universally accepted and it was in wide use up until the point when it was officially recognized by the church as being canonical. So Hebrews the main hang-up is we don't know who wrote it, but there's good reason to accept it, even though we still don't really know who wrote it.

Speaker 1: 12:11

James was rejected by some because they thought what James taught contradicted Paul's epistles. And as the church continued to study, it grew in their understanding of some of these truths. The church eventually came to see how James and Paul actually complement each other. They're both addressing issues, similar issues, in different ways. Paul in Romans 6, for example, romans being probably the apex as far as the doctrine of justification, apart from works. Paul goes on to say Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound, god forbid. And that's very similar actually to what James is saying I will show you my faith by my works. And James is simply saying faith is going to be lived out in works. He's not contradicting justification by faith. Once that was understood it was no longer a problem and the truth of James was accepted and James's book was brought in the canon.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Second Peter I haven't studied extensively, but I've been told it is stylistically different than first Peter, and so that led some people to question whether or not it was genuine. There were false epistles and false gospels being circulated, a number of false apostles using the name of a true apostle and trying to borrow their authority, and so the early church wasn't clear if Second Peter was actually written by Peter due to some of those differences. But the church did go on to recognize it as being from Peter. A possible explanation for some of the differences stylistically is if the first was potentially written by an eminuensis, a clerk, somebody who kind of wrote the letter for Peter, and that might explain why there are some differences. First and Second Peter are very similar doctrinally and so that has led some to see that Second Peter belongs in the canon as well. 2 John, 3 John. They're both very short, both very private in nature, they had limited circulation early on, but they were from the Apostle John. The content is very similar to 1 John, the authorship was certain and they were eventually accepted as being a writing from one of Christ's apostles and beneficial for the church and spoke the truth, and so they were accepted in the canon Jude.

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The book of Jude references the book of Enoch, which is an apocryphal book, and that led some to question it. But that reference does not mean that Jude saw the book of Enoch as scripture, as used to be Enoch. It serves to illustrate the greater truth he's communicating. It is not the ground of that truth. So there's a distinction there. Where, for example, the Apostle Paul many times argues a greater truth on the basis of the New Testament, jude is arguing a truth that is independent of what's going on in the book of Enoch and he simply uses Enoch as an illustration to fill out, to color the point he's trying to make, similar to Paul in Athens referencing a pagan saying in order to make a greater truth. The use of the book of Enoch does not necessarily mean that Jude saw the book of Enoch as being scripture, but simply that he was familiar with it and he referenced it. And again, overwhelming truth of Jude, consistency with the doctrine of the rest of the New Testament, the benefit for the church in the book of Jude and its clear warnings against false teaching, false doctrine and so forth eventually led the church to recognize its canonicity and to include it in its official list of canonical books.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Finally, revelation Revelation was misused early on by certain sects and that caused the Orthodox Church to question it because it was being misused and it was kind of a favorite of the heretics. But it was quite definitely from John. It was circulated early on. Strangely enough it was accepted almost immediately after it was written. It was sent to seven churches and would have been accepted and put into use very early on. But it took a very long time for the church to actually adopt Revelation into the canon. It was questioned for much longer than most of the other books. It was introduced early on but due to misuse and due to just the nature of the book being apocalyptic and easily misused, the church was a little bit cautious of it. But again, the truth of Revelation being written through one of God's apostles and speaking the truth accurately, the church eventually accepted it as one of the canonical books. So these seven books were questioned for a time but were all eventually included in the canon.

Speaker 1: 16:58

There were multiple lists being circulated. All of these, including the questioned books, were being used from the very beginning. They just had not all made it into one unified canon that had been published by the church. The trigger for the church actually creating a formula list Heretic named Marcion had published a truncated canon. It took the body of writings that were being circulated in the church, stripped out everything he didn't like and published the things that agreed with his perspective and said this is what's true. And the Orthodox Church responded with a formal list of the books that were believed by the Church to be canonical. That list does not include all of our current canon but it does not include any books as canonical that were later rejected. There were multiple lists given by early Church leaders. The first complete list as we know it was given by Athanasius around 8367. Again, all the books were affirmed individually much earlier than that, but the 27 book list that we are familiar with did not come together until 8367. And in the following centuries several Church councils confirmed the same list, which firmly established the New Testament canon And it is significant that there has been little dispute over the New Testament canon within the Christian Church from the 5th century onward.

Speaker 1: 18:29

The Church, of many different persuasions, of many different convictions, many different interpretations of Scripture, is for the most part unified on the extent of the New Testament canon, of which books should be accepted and which ones not. Both the Old Testament canon and the New Testament canon have a strong history within the people of God and we should not feel the need to question or redefine or reinvent the canon. So the question of canon is not a new one. Our 66 book canon, the one we're all used, to Genesis, to Revelation, that canon has a long history. We should be grateful for the clarity of the Christian Church and confident that what we have today, two millennia later, is still truly God's word.

Speaker 1: 19:20

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Theological Touchpoints podcast. This podcast is a production of Sword and Trumpet Ministries. For more information, visit wwwswordandtrumpetorg Or theologicaltouchpointscom slash podcast. If you have thoughts or questions, you can contact us at podcastattheologicaltouchpointscom. Now may the God of Peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. Who also will do it.