Canon of Scripture

(This is my transcript for the sermon I had given on 15-2-2015 in Vellore Reformed Church, Christian Medical College, Vellore)

There are many ‘Christians’ who read Scriptures, who discuss about many doctrines, who wants to know about the intricacies of Baptism and second coming of Christ but when it comes to their practical life, there is no spiritual fruits. They live just like non Christians, they think just like non Christians and their actions also would be like non Christians. Jesus says, “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words (Joh 14:24)”. So if you are indeed loving God, your actions will be Biblical and God honouring. And remember, the word of God is so valuable that many Christians have willingly given their lives both in the past and in present just for the sake of reading it.

I hope and pray that the message which I am giving here is not just going to be an academic interest but rather would be life changing and transforming so that we would be glorifying God to the maximum through our obedience to his words.

In this session, I am going to talk on following subtitles:

1)      Pretest: To test our current knowledge before attending this session if we can answer the questions which are normally asked to a Christian from other faith.

2)      Definition of Canon

3)      Principles of Canon

4)      How 66 books of Bible were compiled in the past

5)      What is not canon?

6)      Practical applications of Canon

Pretest:

I am going to give you three practical scenarios. And think about those and if you know the answer, I hope, God willing you would be even more clear about how to answer such questions. If you don’t know the answers, don’t worry you would be able to answer these after this session if you pay attention to what I am telling.

Scenarios:

1)      What about the gospel of Thomas found in 1940s? Would you add that to the gospels in current Bible? If not, Why?

2)      Why the catholic books like Apocrypha not added in Protestant Bible?

3)      Some Hindu sages have said Jesus Christ is mentioned in Rig Veda. So is Rig Veda also God’s Word?

Canon of Scripture – Definition:

According to Merriam Webster, Canon means ‘a criterion or standard of judgement’. It simply means ‘Rule’. Roman Catholics preferred ‘list’ as the definition of Canon. Protestants consider ‘rule’ as the best definition of Canon.

Principles of Canon:

There are three rules which were considered by both old and new testament saints to test the authenticity of Scriptures.

1)     

Internal consistency of 66 books of Bible:

Gordon Clark says, “One of the main test for validity of a worldview is internal consistency of its axiom.” For Christians, we start our worldview with Scripture as the axiom. When I say internal consistency, I mean this: “All 66 books of Bible are not self-contradictory”. From Genesis to Revelation, all 66 books talk about the Attributes of God, the sinfulness of man and the need for a messiah to atone for our sins. This theme has been there throughout the scriptures. Most importantly the greatest test is whether a book is proclaiming Christ or not. Luther said, “This is the touchstone by which all books may be tested, to see whether they proclaim Christ or not, since all Scripture witnesses to Christ, and St.Paul will know nothing save Christ. Whatever does not teach Christ is not apostolic, even were it taught by St. Peter or St. Paul.”

Jesus and New testament authors quoted the passages of Old testament as Scriptures for about 295 times. Even in the new testament era, the apostles quoted from each other’s epistles as ‘Scriptures’. I will get back to you later about this in detail in the next part.

In other words, Bible has been inspired by God through many authors who lived in different parts of time, from different background (Prophets, kings, administrators, doctor, Pharisee, tax collectors) and yet they all proclaim the similar theme which is in unison with rest of the scriptures.

2)     

Illuminating witness of the Holy Spirit:

Before Jesus was taken up to heaven, He said "But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. “(Joh 15:26). God has promised us that the Holy Spirit would guide us in truth. Since God’s promises will come to pass, this has been the testimony of Christians throughout all the time. Wayne Grudem puts it in this way:“

“As we read Scripture the Holy Spirit works to convince us that the books we have in Scripture are all from God and are his words to us. It has been the testimony of Christians throughout the ages that as they read the books of the Bible, the words of Scripture speak to their hearts as no other books do. Day after day, year after year, Christians find that the words of the Bible are indeed the words of God speaking to them with an authority, a power, and a persuasiveness that no other writings possess. Truly the Word of God is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).”

3)      God’s providence in closing the canon:

Since God is good and perfect, it is against His nature to hide some of the ‘God’s word’ somewhere in a scroll in a secret place for more than 2000 years after Christ has risen to heaven. Heb 1:1-2 says “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. “(Heb 1:1-2). This verse is the proof for what I have said with regards to closure of canon. There are two periods of time where God revealed. One during the time of Jewish nation which we call as Old Testament and another during the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles in the 1^st century Rome, which we call it as new testament. And God has Rev 22:18,19 not to add or remove the words from the Word of God. Jesus also says in Mat 5:18, “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” These are the assurances from God himself that we don’t need to worry if the Bible is incomplete.

Historical Background on Canon:

The idea of Canon started by God when He gave the Ten Commandments. “And he gave to Moses, when he had made an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God” (Ex. 31:18). Moses wrote from Genesis to Deuteronomy. Joshua and Judges contributed books Joshua and Judges. After that prophets wrote most of the books. King Solomon wrote Proverbs, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Psalms is collection of many people from different background. Prophets wrote the rest of the books. Last book to be written in Old Testament is Malachi around 435BC. The Jews considered these works as part of Torah and Apocrypha was not considered to be part of Canon. The confusion for Canon of Old testament was not very much because in the New testament Jesus and apostles quoted from these 39 books upto around 295 times.

Just like how the apostles quoted the Old Testament texts, they also quoted New Testament verses as Scriptures. For example, Peter is equating Pauls epistles with Scriptures in 2Pet 3:16 : “So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15–16). Paul also quotes from Luke 10:7 for the verse in 1Tim 5:18: For the Scripture says, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain," and, "The laborer deserves his wages." (1Ti 5:18). These two instances prove that the new testament books were recognised as Scriptures by the apostles.

Historically, it has been considered that the apostles were entrusted with the writing of books under divine authorship and inspiration of God. Bible says, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2Pe 1:21)” So the first century Christians considered new testament books as scriptures and were quoting them in their letters written to churches. But still all 25 books were not compiled together as new testament till 2^nd century. In 2^nd century, a gnostic heresy called ‘Marcion’ heresy came which claimed that gnostic gospels were the sole truth of God. Gnosticism involves various heretical doctrines like denying humanity of Jesus Christ, Literal death of Jesus on Cross etc. In order to save the church from heretical teachings, the early church leaders wanted to identify and compile the books which are truly inspired by God. Irenaeus was the first to compile as New Testament based on apostolic witness. By the end of 2^nd century, the church leaders understood and accepted the current 25 books as part of New Testament canon.

What is not Canon?

Church is not the authority of Scripture:

The most important argument of Roman Catholics for Scriptures is that, the church authorities of the past were the one who decided what books are to be part of Scripture and what books are not canon. Canon is not the list of books as approved by any human authority. Be it apostles, prophets or Church councils. The Scriptures are self-attested. God providentially illuminated the church leaders in the past to recognize and understand the superiority and the authority of the books of the New Testament. In other words, Church is not above Scripture to decide which books to include and which book to not to include. Rather, God made the church to recognise the books in the new testament as Scriptures through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit.

Practical application of Canon:

Satan’s attack on Christianity always started with undermining the truthfulness of Scripture and to add or modify the Scripture with falsehood. Be it during the time of Adam and Eve, or with the usage of the divorce laws by Pharisees, Satan always attacks Scripture. Almost all Pseudo-Christianity like Roman Catholics, Liberals, JW, Morons have a distorted Scripture. So if you want to know if a person is truly saved or not, look at his attitude towards Scripture. They may be reading all other Christian related books, watch Christian movies, listen to contemporary Christian songs and even organise Shiloh. But If he or she is not at all interested in reading Scriptures and practically applying it in their lives, it more or less means that they are not saved. Because only a regenerated person will have a desire and passion to read the Word of God. Only a truly saved person can say: “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psa 119:72)”.

Also closed canon gives us assurance that we don’t need to go and run around other books and ‘prophecies’ to know about the salvation and things of above pertaining to God. We don’t need to run around special anointed leaders to know God’s will. We can read the Scriptures and God will reveal it to us His will directly to us. Read Deu 29:29.

"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. 

(Deu 29:29)

If Bible is truly God’s word inspired, then it also means all of what Bible says is true. The mark of a true Christian is not by just easy believerism. When I say ‘easy believer’ I mean Christians who claim to be born again but their lives have been just like that of the world. A true Christian will have new affections to please God. He would willingly want to do the things pleasing God. In order to know what pleases God, we need to go back to Scriptures since 2 Tim 3:16 says Bible is complete for all necessary Christian life. If you are a Christian, you should be asking this question to you: What motivates your daily activitities? For example, why you go to college? Why you choose a particular future goal? Why you go for shopping etc? Why do Pegasus etc…. What is your answer for these questions? If your answers are no different from what the world says, then you should be questioning your salvation. A Christian should base his life through scripture. You should be able to say the reason why you live in a way different from what the world says.

Answers for Scenarios:

1)      What about the gospel of Thomas found in 1940s? Would you add that to the gospels in current Bible? If not, Why?

Because it is not internally consistent. And God in His providence would not have kept Christians for the past 2000 years in darkness without revelation, illuminating work of the spirit

2)      Why the catholic books like Apocrypha not added in Protestant Bible?

Not internally consistent, God’s word has more authority than church councils, illuminating work of the Spirit

3)      Some Hindu sages have said Jesus Christ is mentioned in Rig Veda. So is Rig Veda also God’s Word?

Even if Jesus is mentioned, that doesn’t make any difference. Ultimately Vedas and Puranas endorse other gods also which is in total contradiction to the nature of Christian God. So either it is an intellectual plagiarism of Bible or just hearsay which ultimately means not truth.