The term "canon" is used in Christian theology to refer to a group of books that was acknowledged by the early church as the rule of faith and practice. The term is derived from the Greek word kanon, which originally referred to a carpenter's rule (possibly borrowed from the Hebrew word qaneh, which referred to a measuring reed six cubits long). The word was used to identify those books considered to be spiritually authoriative, by which all other books were to be measured and found to be of secondary value in general church use.
Both Jews and Christians have canons of scripture. The Jewish canon consists of thirty-nine books; the Christian canon consists of sixty-six books for the Protestants, and eighty books for Roman Catholics (whose canon includes the Apocrypha, regarded by most of deuterocanonical status). Other literate religions have sacred books. But those books are generally considered secondary to the faith, the books being a deposit of the faith. The use of the canon varies in world religions -- for liturgy, renewal of faith, evangelism, or authority in faith and practice.
The obvious problem here is: what books are to be included in the canon? This problem also raises the historical problem: how and when did the church come to regard these twenty-seven books of the New Testament as an authoritative collection of books separate from all others.
In the early chruch, the process by which the these books came to be regarded as authoritative is not completely known for either the Hebrew or Christian Canon. It was commonly accepted among Christian people that it came about by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. The inspired literature was only a part of the total religious literature of God's people, and only a part of the inspired literature finaly emerged as canonical in all parts of the ancient world. All inspired literature was authorative, but it was not all equally benefical to local groups, and thus did not achieve universal or empire-wide acceptance. That is, the local lists were not necessarily identical with the generally accepted list, the Canon, which eventual consisted of the books common to all the local lists.
The Old Testament Canon
The faith of Israel existed independently of a book for hundreds of
years between the time of Abraham and Moses. None of the partriarchs
before Moses is recorded as have written sacred literature, although the
art of writing was well developed at that time in the homeland of Abraham,
as the recently discovered Ebla tablets have dramatically confirmed.
The Sumerians and Bablylonians already had highly developed law codes,
and accounts of such events as the great flood appear in their literature.
Moses was the first known Hebrew to commit sacred history to writing
(Exod. 24:4, 7).
After the composition of the Pentateuch by Moses, it is recorded that Joshua wrote in the book of the law of God (Josh. 24:26). The law was always considered as being from God (Deut. 31:24; Josh. 1:8). The other two divisions of the Hebrew canon, the prophets and the writings, were eventually selected out of a larger literature, some of which is mentioned in the Old Testament itself ("book of the Wars of the Lord," Num. 21;13; "book of Jasher," Josh. 10:13; "the book of the Acts of Solomon," I Kings 11:41; "book of Samuel the seer, book of Nathan the prophet, book of Gad the seer," I Chron. 29:29, etc.; fifteen or more such books are named in the Old Testament).
The oldest surviving list of canonical scriptures of the Old Testament comes from about A.D. 170, the product of a Christian scholar named Melito of Sardis, who made a trip to Palestine to determine both the order and number of books in the Hebrew Bible. Neither his order nor his contents agree exactly with our modern English Bibles. And neither in the existing manuscrpts of Hebrew, Greek, or Latin Bibles is there agreement in order or content. The modern English Protestant Bible follow the order of the Latin Vulgate but the content of the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament was more than a thousand years in writing; the oldest parts being written by Moses and the latest after Bablyonian exile. This means that during the entire period of biblical history, the Jews lived their faith without a closed canon of Scriptures, such a canon not being essential to the practice of the Jewish religion during that time. Why then were the books finally collected into a canon? Evidently, the books were brought together as an act of God's providence, historically prompted by the emergence of apocrypha and pseudepigraphical literature during the intertestamental period and the increasing need to know what are the limits of divine revelation. By the time of Jesus, the Old Testament, called Tanaach by modern Judiaism, consisted of the law, the prophets, and the writings (the first book of which was called Psalms, Luke 24:44). The views about the full extent of the canon seem not to have been finalized until sometimes after the first century A.D.
The New Testament Canon.
The earliest list of New Testament books containing only our twenty-seven
appeared in A.D. 367 in a letter of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria.
The order was Gospels, Acts, General Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Revelation.
In the first century, Peter spoke of Paul writing "in all his letters"
(II Pet. 3;16), and by the early second century the letters of Ignatius
were being collected. Evidence of exclusive collections being made in the
second century is seen in the writings of Justin Martyr, who argued for
only our four Gospels. Discussion about the authorship and authority of
various letters appears in writers of the second century A.D., and one
canonical list which has been dated from the second to the fourth century,
the Muratorian Canon, differentiates between books that are suitable to
be read in worship and those that should be read only in private devotion.
That other books formed the larger collection of available books is indicated by the reference to a prior letter to Corinthians in I Cor. 5:9, and a letter to the Laodiceans in Col. 4:16, and the inclusion of I and II Clement in the fifth century manuscript of the Greek New Testament, Codex Alexandrians, as well as, Barnabas and Hermas in the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus. Eusebius cited a letter from the second century Bishop of Corinth, Dionysius, stating that Clement's letter was read in the church there "from time to time for our admonition" (Ecclesiastical History IV.23.11).
The formation of the canon of the New Testament was not a concilliar decision. The earliest ecumenical council, Nicaea in A.D. 325, did not discuss the canon. The first undisputed decision of a council on the canon seems to be from Carthage in A.D. 397, which decreed that nothing should be read in the church under the name of divine Scriptures except the canonical writings. Then the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are listed as canonical writings. The formation of the New Testament canon must have been by consensus of use and by a historical process rather than a biblical matter. The coming of the word of God in print is only slightly more capable of explication than the coming of the Word of God incarnate.
This solution of the problem of how and when did the Church come to regard these 27 books of the New Testament as an authoritative collection of books, separate from all others, raises a second problem: upon what grounds has the Church accepted these books as canonical and was it warranted in doing so? The answer to this problem involves not only a description of how and when the Church arrived at the canon but also the problem of the basis for the judgment concerning the formation of the canon. This is the basic problem that is dealt with in the general Introduction to the New Testament. We will now undertake a brief study of this problem here.
The answer to this problem of the basis for the formation of canon rests upon the ultimate ground of authority in the Church. Since the Canon has the position of authority with regard to which books and writings are to be accepted as authoritative in the Church with regard to faith and practice, this raises the question of ultimate authority in the Church. Obviously, the ultimate authority comes from God. But as soon as we attempt apply this to the Canon of the New Testament, we encounter at once the great divergence of viewpoint as to the basis of the Canon. Historically, the basic difference was that which distinguished the Roman Catholics from the Prostestants at the Reformation. According to the Roman Catholic view, the Canon was viewed in itself (quoad se) possessing undoubted inherent authority. But as it concerns us (quoad nos), the recognition of the Canon rests upon the authority of the Church. The Roman Catholics held that the Church, as the supposed infallible authority, guarantees for its members the authority of the Canon of Scripture. It is the Church that has established and fixed the boundary of the Canon. It is the Church that stands behind the Canon and upon which the authority of the Canon rests for the faith that this Canon is the Word of God.
The Reformation Protestants recognizes no infallible authority in the Church, and also in relationship with the Canon. They accordingly did not make the authority of the Canon dependent upon the Church's authority, but primarily upon the evidences of Scripture itself and upon the witness of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers (testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum). The Reformers all held that, although the meaning of the Bible is for the most part clear and simple in itself, its message cannot be received merely by human reading or scholarship or historical research. There is needed in the reader the work of the same Spirit who gave the writings. This is one of the most widely and firmly attested of all points made by the Reformers, for it was of crucial importance in their attack on the medieval doctrine and their whole resistance to the traditional view of authority. Luther put it in this way:
"The Bible cannot be mastered by study or talent; you must rely solely on the influx of the Spirit"Calvin says in his Institutes,
(Briefwechsel, ed., Enders & Kawerau, I , 141).
"As to the question, how shall we be persuaded that it comes from God without recurring to a decree of the church? it is just the same as if we asked, How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Scripture bears upon the faith if it is clear evidence of its truth...."For the recognition of Scripture as the Word of God, the Reformation Protestants called upon no authority other than Scripture itself as illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
(Institues, I,7,2)"For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted."
(Institutes, I,7,4)
(See also his Commentaries on I Cor. 20ff.; II Cor. 3:6.)
Of course, the Reformers differed in some respects, especially with reference to the Canon of the New Testament. For Luther, the books of the New Testament had authority according to the measure in which they spoke clearly of Christ and justification by faith alone ("was Christum treibet und prediget"). Luther thus followed more or less the principle "Canon in the Canon". On the one hand, in this manner he placed the Christocentric character of the authority of Scriptures in the foreground with great force. On the other hand, in this manner he came to a more critical position with reference to some books of the Canon which, according to him, did not contain the essential content of Scripture, or at best contained it partially. Luther had doubts about the canonicity of James and Hebrews, on the grounds of their teachings. However, the churches of the Reformation have held more closely to the view of Calvin than those of Luther in these matters, and the 27 books of the New Testament maintained their position in the Reformation Church as holy and canonical until the days of the Enlightment.
During the Enlightment when rationalism gained more and more influence in the Reformation Church and faith lost ground, the authority of the Canon was quickly called into question and attacked. It is well known that in the years 1771-1775 Johann Salomo Semler published his large work (Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanons), in which he set aside the a priori of the authority of the Canon. He asserted that the value of the books of the New Testament must be investigated critically, and that the Canon rested upon human decisions which often could not withstand the test of criticism. Only such elements of the Bible, he said, which yield evidence of a true religious knowledge have authority for us. But this authority in no way rests upon the idea of their inclusion in a holy book or in a collection of sacred books. Not the Canon, not the Bible, but the religious consciousness of the enlightened man is the final judge in matters of faith and practice.
In Semeler's view, the element of authority is transplanted from the Canon to the religious man. The great primary principle of the Reformation, namely, that of the self-evidence of Scripture and of the witness of the Holy Spirit, was now perverted into a thoroughgoing subjectivism. Nevertheless, Semler's interpretations became the starting point for later critical positions over against the Canon. Especially his thesis, that the Canon was the result of fallible ecclesiastical decisions and that it was therefore subject to free criticism, made a deep impression upon many. It is true that Semler's rationalism and subjectivism were opposed even by some critical schools, whch sponsored a variety of attempts to compromise the authority and the criticism of the Canon.
In recent times, the question of the authority of the Canon has again been brought to the fore in New Testament theology. It is often said now that the authority of the Canon is to be accepted because and in so far as God speaks to us in the books of the Canon. But in this very criterion "in so far as" lies the difficulty of the problem and the danger of subjectivism. Some wish to return to the essential content of the Gospel as the "Canon in the Canon." They search for an incontestable objective measure within Scripture. Others protest that this is a too static interpretation of the Canon. God speaks -- so they say -- now here, and then again there and again shows itself as Canon. It is the preaching, Kerygma, they say, in which Scripture again and again shows itself Canon. This actualistic concept of the Canon is interpreted by others in a still more subjectivistic manner; Canon is only that which here and now (hic et nunc) signifies the Word of God for me. For one like Ernst Kasemann, for instance, the Canon, as it lies before us, is not the Word of God nor identical with the gospel, but it is God's Word only in so far as it becomes gospel. The question, what then is the gospel, cannot be decided through exposition of Scripture, but only through the believer who "puts his ear to Scripture to listen" and is convinced by the Spirit [1].
It is clear on this approach, the Canon of the New Testament as a closed collection of 27 books becomes a problematic matter. Can we still hold fast to the creed of the Reformation: We accept all these books as holy and canonical? What basis remains for the Church to believe that God not only wishes to use the books of Bible as a medium in which He speaks to us through the Holy Spirit, but that He wishes also to bind the Church to the Canon of the New Testament? Can we continue to call upon the self-evidence of Scripture? Or are there additional considerations to be gathered out of the Scripture itself whereby the place and significamce of the Canon of the New Testament come to stand more plainly before us in the plan of God's salvation? In the measure in which we lay emphasis upon the objectivity of the Canon upon Scripture as absolute authority, this question will now have our attention.
For a clearer insight into the meaning of the Canon of the New Testament, it is of great importance to notice that the foundation for this Canon lies in the history of redemption itself; that is, in what God has done in the coming and the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. In other words, the significance of the Canon, as a distinctive and authoritative report of what happened "when the time fully come" and as an objective and fixed norm for faith and practice, is given in the New Testament history of redemption itself. While this thought may not be new itself, recent studies, especially of such concepts as apostle, witness, and tradition, have produced a deeper insight into what here is at stake and a better understanding of what the Canon means for the Church. Although it is not feasible to go into full detail here, a closer appreciation of some outstanding results is important.
In the first place, we should observe in this connection the significance of the apostles for the coming of the Church. We know that the concept of "apostle" is defined especially by the idea of authorization, by transmission of definite powers. In Jewish jurisprudence, there existed what was known as the sjaliach (apostle), a man who in the name of others could appear with authority and whose significance was thus described: "the sjaliach for a person is as this person himself." It is with this meaning that Christ confronted the apostles when He applied the rule, "He that receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me." (Matt. 10:40; compare John 13:20). The apostles are Christ's representatives, those to whom in a very special and exclusive manner He has entrusted the preaching of the gospel. For this purpose, He has not only chosen them through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:2), but He has also endowed them with the Holy Spirit -- the Spirit of truth -- who will teach them all things and recall to mind what Jesus had said, will guide them into the fulness of truth and will also explain the future (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15). Therefore, the apostles are given a special significance in the history of salvation. In Hebrews 2:4ff. they are compared to the angels of the Old Testament as transmitters of the revelation. The salvation that has appeared in Christ Jesus, first proclaimed by the Lord Himself, was validly attested to us by the apostles.
This peculiar mandate is always paired in the New Testament with another important datum, namely, that the apostles were witnesses of the salvation revealed by Christ. This concept of witness will also have to be understood primarily in a forensic way, that is, the apostles were eyewitnesses of the things that have occurred once, and they bear this testimony on the forum of the coming Church and of the entire world. Exactly for this reason, they are authorized by Christ to bear this testimony in His name. We see, therefore, that in the history of salvation Christ Himself has made the provision for sharing of salvation. This presentation was not left to chance, nor to the general tradition, nor to the preaching of the Church. It belongs, in the first place, as apostolic preaching and witness, to the reality of revelation itself and as such it carries an entirely unique and exclusive character. This apostolic preaching is the foundation of the Church, to which the Church is bound (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 2:21; Rev. 21:14); it is the most holy faith, upon which the Church itself is built (Jude 20); it has been delivered to the Church by the apostles as depositum custodi (I Tim. 6:20; II Tim. 1:14; 2:2), which the Church must above all things preserve.
And what holds concerning the New Testament concept of witness, holds also for the concept of tradition. In the New Testament, just as certainly as also in the early Church, this has a connection entirely different from the modern Western idea of transmission. The latter has an indefinite character; it is conveyed through a collectivity; its source and trustworthiness are often uncertain. Opposed to this, the New Testament concept of "tradition" stands in clear and complete agreement with the Jewish concept; that is, it bears an overwhelming authoritative significance. "Tradition" means: what has been handed down with authority. And this importance, tradition does not owe to its antiquiy, nor to the communion in which it is preserved, but to the persons in whom the source of the tradition lies. These persons in the New Testament are the apostles. The apostolic kerygma and the apostolic witness form the foundation and authority of the New Testament tradition. This is then also the technical significance of "tradition" (paradosis) in the New Testament and of the "perservation" and the "holding fast" of the tradition (I Cor. 11:2; 15:2; compare Mark 7:4,8!). How important a place the concept of "tradition" occupies, for instance, in Paul's letter, is apparent from I Corinthians 15:1-5:
"1Now I would remind you, brethern, in what terms I preached to you the gospel,That Paul means by this repeated tradition-concept the authoritative apostolic witness appears from the subsequent verses in I Corinthians 15, in which he sums up the apostolic eyewitness to the resurrection of Christ, which guarantees the content of the tradition referred to.
which you received [by tradition, paralambano], in which you stand,
2by which you are saved,
if you hold it fast [as authoritative tradition: katecho];
unless you believed in vain.
3for I delivered to you [by tradition: paradidomi],
as of first importance
what I received [by tradition: paralambano],
that Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the scriptures,
4that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures,
5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve."
We can go a step further: the last authority, who guarantees the tradition and who Himself also carries forward the tradition, is Christ Himself. In this respect, what is especially important is Cullmann's treatment of the utterance of Paul in I Corinthians 11:23:
"For I received by tradition from the Lord what I also delivered to you,Of special importance here are the words: "For I received by tradition from the Lord...." Often this has been interpreted that the historical Jesus stood at the beginning of the transmission chain. But in this sense, Paul can hardly be said to have "received from the Lord" what here has been transmitted. Actually, Paul does not say that he has received from the Lord the establishment of the holy supper; he says, rather, that he has received the message of the institution of the holy supper by tradition from Him: "I received by tradition from the Lord ... that the Lord Jesus", and so forth. Paul means by this tradition, without doubt, the message that he received from the original witnesses. Nevertheless, he writes that he has himself (as apostle) received the deliverances "from the Lord." Paul means specifically the ascended Lord. The testimony of the eyewitnesses is for him as apostle the delivered word of the glorified Lord. And as such Paul himself delivers it to the church of Corinth: "what I also delivered to you, ..." The ascended Lord stands behind the testimony of His apostles. Not alone as the earthly Jesus, but also as the ascended Lord, He clothes the testimony of the apostles with His authority. Therefore, the delivered word of the apostles can also be spoken of as the word of God:
that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread...."
"When you received by tradition from us the preached word of God,Even though the apostolic witness and the apostolic tradition in the early period had primarily an oral character, the inscripturation of the apostolic word came speedily to the fore. New Testament indications of the increasing significance of the scripturally fixed tradition are not lacking. In I Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul fixed and established in ample and deliberate scriptural form what he had first transmitted orally regarding the resurrection. His purpose here is not the introduction of something new, but that the congregation of Corinth should hold fast this tradition "in what terms I preached it to you." (I Cor. 15:1). Therefore he repeated this tradition in scriptural form. Here the scriptural fixation of what had happened aims to preserve the statement for now and for ever. We find the same motive in the prologue of Luke.
you accepted it not as the word of men,
but as what it is really is, the word of God." (I Tim. 2:13).
"1Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of thingsThe evangelist Luke has followed the apostolic tradition accurately from the beginning and has written it down, in order that Theophilus may know the trustworthiness of the things of which he has been informed. Here we can see the beginning of the demarcation-line between the oral and the scriptural tradition, a process which finds its end finally in the formation of the New Testament Canon.
which have been accomplished among us
2just as they were delivered to us by those
who from the beginning were eye witnesses and ministers of the word,
3it seemed good to me also,
having followed all things closely [accurately] for some time past,
to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,
4that you may know the truth concerning the things
of which you have been informed." (Luke 1:1-4)
All this suggests the superficality of the oft-repeated contention that neither the authors nor the readers of the New Testament might have seen originally in the books of the New Testament something holy or canonical, and that the real problem of the history of the Canon is: how the books of the New Testament became holy Scripture (Lietzmann). No doubt it may be true that the scriptural form of the apostolic tradition did not receive, provisionally, the same pregnant and outstanding significance as the books of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that any apostolic tradition, either oral or written, as such had a special authority that ranked with the prophetical word of the Old Testament. The authority of the New Testament books was not something attributed to them subsequently by the Church, but was inherent in them from the beginning (J. Gresham Machen). The New Testament letters were destined by the apostles themselves for public reading in the congregation and for that purpose they were exchanged by the churches (compare I Thess. 5:27; Col. 4:16; Rev. 1:3). The concept of a new "Scripture" comes to its expression very clearly in the Gospel of John. The evangelist not only applies the promise of the Holy Spirit (to lead and inspire the apostles in their witness) to his own book (John 14-17), but he also explicitly says that "to bear testimony" consists in "to write" (John 21:24), and that what "has been written" in this way ought to induce the readers to belief in Jesus Christ (John 20:30-31). He uses the technical term, with which he quotes the Old Testament, for his own work when he calls men to believe.
"30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples,There are other scriptural instances, such as the well-known saysings of II Peter 3:16 and Revelation 22:18-19. But it seems to me that what has been said in the above justifies sufficiently the conclusion that the great work of salvation of God in Jesus Christ does not confine itself to His actual words and deeds. It consists also in the preservation and in the authoritative communication of what has happened and what has been said in the tradition and testimonies of specially indicated and qualified bearers and instruments of revelation. Already in the New Testament itself, the scriptural tradition, represented by these delegated apostles and witnesses, receives the significance of the foundation and standard, that is, of the "Canon", on the behalf of the coming Chruch.
which are not written in this book;
31but these are written that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31)"24This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things,
and who has written these things;
and we know that his testimony is true.
25But there are also many other things which Jesus did;
were every one of them to be written,
I suppose that the world itself could not contain
the books that would be written." (John 21:24-25)
[1] E. Kasemann, Evanelische Theologie, 1951-52, p. 21.
John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, two volumes
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1966.
Oscar Cullmann, "Scripture and Tradition," in
Scottish Journal of Theology, June 1953.