Defending the Canon

The place and authority of the Bible is a key distinguishing factor in where people fall across the Christian spectrum. In the churches I grew up in and continue to be a part of, we tightly cling to the tradition of Sola Scriptura, which began with Martin Luther and means “by scripture alone”..

This is the belief that for modern Christians, our sole infallible source of authority for the Christian life is the Bible. We see our life and experiences through the lens of God’s Word and it guides our decisions and the practice of our faith. Theological drift most commonly occurs when people begin to question this and move away from the Bible as true and authoritative.

Several years ago, I was asked to provide my input on the question of Canon. It is a common accusation that the Bible we have today is nothing but the result of the choices of a few men during a period of history. The accusation is that there were many writings available at that time, but only a few powerful individuals made the choice to include some and discard others for the New Testament.

There are many excellent resources on this topic out there and I’ll list a few at the end, but this article is my brief response to the attacks on the Canon of Scripture.

First, I want you to understand that over 90% of the books we have in our Protestant New Testament were accepted very early on as Scripture (during the lifetime of some of the followers of Jesus who knew Him). They were considered firsthand accounts from the apostles and Paul (Paul’s miraculous encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus wasn’t questioned). The early church passed these writings and letters from church to church as key foundational documents for early church doctrine.

There was some uncertainty with a few documents at this time, but most of this uncertainty didn’t become prominent until after the original authors and those who knew them personally began to die out. At that point, new “scriptures” began to appear with great frequency and it was often difficult to distinguish between what was seen as originally written by Paul and the apostles and what was false.

Many of these new documents contained helpful teachings and stories that may have been true, but their source was problematic. It was out of this difficulty that the idea of developing a list of authorized documents that could be gathered together into one collection seemed like a necessary step. This would protect those documents regarded as the most reliable and distinguish them from the rest. It also would make it easier to share those documents with the various early churches.

As mentioned earlier, most of what we see in our New Testament today was included without question and with universal agreement. A few of the books (Hebrews, James, 2nd Peter, Jude) were only finalized after extensive research and backtracking to talk to the early church fathers and determine their origin. Many documents were eliminated and early lists were very conservative before a few final books were added in as authoritative. These lists continued to be debated even after various church councils, but there were few changes.

In the end, the need was apparent for the sake of the future church to indicate what books of the Bible should be recognized as God’s Word. Only these books, which we still have today, should be read as Scripture.

The Bible we have today is one story with many pens. When we examine the multiplicity of authors writing over a great length of time, and consider the strong consistency of the message, we can see the hand of one true author. God directed what would be included.

One of the greatest arguments for this is what we find when we read the Bible. It is filled with the sinful and embarrassing actions of God’s followers. These accounts show men and women as weak and very human, failing time and time again. There is much in the Bible that a human editor would have been tempted to remove in order to make their religion and its followers look better. By God’s inspiration and protection, we can read about sinful people just like us in the Bible.

Later there were discoveries that would call into question the validity of a few passages. As Bible historians discovered older manuscripts, they found that a few verses were not in these older copies. This represents a scattering of verses across the New Testament and most modern translations have moved these to the footnotes to still include them in an appropriate way while helping people to understand their questionable provenance.

We can still read these verses, just as we can read the apocryphal books found in the Catholic Bible, but shouldn’t hold them up as the same as the rest. There are many things we read that are probably true, but are not Scripture.

Some call for a revision of Scripture. They point to the desire to update the Bible for the modern world. The reality is there are groups revising the Bible every day, editing it either formally or informally. Some churches revise the Canon by choosing to ignore much of what is found within it. Studying church history, we see this process repeated around the world, sometimes with whole denominations joining in.

But a more important lesson we learn from church history, is that wherever and whenever the church holds to the authority of Scripture, the Church is strong and growing. Where churches teach and practice this in the personal lives of their believers, people’s lives are changed and they have hope for the future. When the church turns it’s back on scripture (changing the canon), it loses its ability to exist as a living thing, putting in its place something that is hollow which will ultimately die or disappear.

We see this in the westward movement of the Gospel, where the center of Christian life is constantly moving west. In some of the earliest places where the Gospel spread, we now have an empty version of the faith that has little meaning, left behind by the remnants of Constantine’s decision to nationalize Christianity. In Europe, you have a shell of Catholicism and Protestantism, where only a faithful few hold onto the truth and most look upon Christianity with disdain.

In America, many places have given into a corrupted view of the faith where the main emphasis can be something as diverse as materialism wrapped in Christian language or nothing but social ministry, with most “Christians” practicing their faith in hypocritical social clubs. Compare this to Asia, S. America and Africa, where the church is vibrant and alive across some whole countries. Wherever God’s Word is preached as true, it is alive, regardless of location.

The Bible is the center of growing Christianity because it is the authoritative source of truth about God and Jesus Christ. It and Christ are what unite Christians with the truth. If we abandon it, then our bonds are nothing more than the paper-thin, fragile yokes of the words of people. That cannot keep the Church grounded in the truth. Only God’s Word can do that.

Some good books on the Authority of the Bible:

• B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible
• John Owen, The Divine Original: Authority, Self-Evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures
• J.I. Packer, Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God
• D. A. Carson and John Woodbridge, eds., Scripture and Truth

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. Timothy 3:16–17

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

John 5:24

Originally published at http://seeinggodclearly.com on October 19, 2023.