Introduction:
In the last post here Growing Christian Resources: P1 The relevance of canonicity and how we got our New Testament we began to look at the importance of canonicity and how we got our New Testament canon. Today's post will continue our brief survey.
The earliest records that bear witness to the development of the New Testament Canon
Church historian Everett Harrison cites the letters of Paul, Peter, and John as the first immediate evidence of the early church’s recognition of the inspired texts of those apostles.[1]
In more recent evangelical scholarship, Michael Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary has noted in his lectures how the New Testament canon had a consistent "core" of twenty books (four Gospels, thirteen of Paul's letters, James, 1 Peter, 1 John) with seven discussed and weighed in certain quarters of the early church throughout the second century or 100's A.D. (Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.)2
With all of these New Testament texts dated between 50-95 A.D, we can safely acknowledge that recognition of what constituted inspired Scripture from the hands of the Apostles were virtually established for the most part by the end of the third century, with virtually every quarter of the church using all of them as authoritative Scripture. Let me comment on what I just wrote "virtually established".
There was a core of 20 books that were already agreed upon well before the end of the apostolic era. The other remaining seven (Hebrews, James, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John, Jude, and Revelation) were held by the majority of the early church fathers to be divinely inspired and authoritative texts. The church historian Eusebius lays out three categories where he gives an overall summary of the canonization process by the end of the second century and into the third century in which he was writing. Interested readers can read what he wrote in the endnote below at the end of this post.[4] As I've noted in more detail in the endnotes and in general in this post today, the circulation, copying, and translation of the 27 books of the New Testament testify to their tacit acceptance by the church at large. Even those books which were briefly disputed were disputed by few and then readily accepted upon further inspection. Documents such as the mid second century Muriturian fragment and Athanasius' Easter letter of 367 A.D. give a public account of these books.
What criteria did the early Christians look for when recognizing a book as inspired?
Some church historians have recognized certain so-called "criteria" or principles that we can glean from reading the records of church history of how the early Christians recognized the New Testament documents as they were written, copied, and spread. Everett Harrison notes three tests used by the early church in determining which books were canonical:[5]
a). Was it of apostolic origin or authority?
b). Was it received by the earliest churches and in use?
c). Was it consistent with the teaching of the already established norm of the Old Testament?”
Between the principles employed by the early church in identifying which books were divinely inspired and the records showing us how the canonization process went from the end of the first century to the beginning of the third century, we have evidence to show that the early Christians had a handle on knowing which books belonged and which ones did not.
This flies in the face of skeptics who tout the notion that the early church had no idea which books belonged in their canon and thus picked and chose the books at random, or that the church didn't make a final decision until the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. Any student of church history reading the documents of the Council of Nicaea will acknowledge that canonicity was not at issue in that meeting, but rather disputes over the deity of Christ and the public censure of the Arian heresy. "As a general observation, canonicity was not about selecting a few books out of hundreds for the canon. Rather, canonicity was a reception and recognition of an already established set of books from the inception of the Christian movement, with exclusions of other books that were never serious candidates.
No doubt God in His providence guided the process. It wasn't the case of the New Testament canon being a by-product of the early church as it was those individual books shaping and molding the early church to discern and identify them. I'll close for now from 1 Thessalonians 2:13, which proves this final thought very well:
"For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe."
Endnotes:
[1] Harrison, Everett. Introduction to the New Testament.
He cites 1 Thess 5:27, Colossians 4:16; 1 Timothy 4:13; and passages throughout the Book of Revelation as evidence for there being at least a beginning point of a formation of the Canon.
[2] About New - Canon Fodder. Dr Michael Kruger's website where readers can find out more information. Let me comment here about how Dr. Kruger lays out the process of canonization of the New Testament.
To begin, we can trace the process of canonization from citations of the church fathers to aid us in tracing how often a given book of the Bible was cited and used with Scripture. All twenty-seven books enjoyed universal acceptance by the mid-second century. Kruger lays out a helpful three-step process for looking at New Testament canonization in the first three centuries:
A. God revealed the 27 New Testament books or gave them to the early Christians through the hands of the Apostles in the first century. Kruger refers to this stage of the canon as the revealed books themselves or what he called "the ontological canon", with "ontological" meaning the very existence of the books were by nature revealed literature from God, with no church body determining which were inspired and which were not.
B. The second stage of canonization is what Dr. Kruger calls "the reception stage" or "received canon", which has to do with the early Christians receiving them, using them, and regarding them as Divinely inspired literature. We see this almost immediately after their writing. The Apostle Peter for instance cites all of Paul's letters as "Scripture" in 2 Peter 3:16, writing only a few years after Paul had completed them. Paul cites Luke 10:7 in 1 Timothy 5:18 as "Scripture" alongside a quotation from Deuteronomy, equating both as equally authoritative and inspired. For the most part, all of the books, but especially 20 of the 27 were regarded as Divinely authoritative by the end of the first century and well into the second century.
C. Kruger's third and final stage for defining the process of New Testament canonization is the "public recognition stage", wherein whatever hesitations some in the church may have had with the remaining seven books of the New Testament (2 Peter, 2,3 John, James, and Revelation) were ironed out by the end of the third century (200's A.D.).
[4] Eusebius. Ecclessiastical Church History. Book 3, chapter 25, sections 1-5.
The church historian Eusebius records the situation surrounding the canonization process of the New Testament books by first noting those accepted by all or what is called "homolegoumena" (Greek "homo" meaning "whole, all" and "legomena" meaning "spoken of or regarded") in his "Ecclesiastical Church History, Book 3, chapter 25, sections 1-2:
"Since we are dealing with this subject it is proper to sum up the writings of the New Testament which have been already mentioned. First then must be put the holy quaternion of the Gospels; following them the Acts of the Apostles."
Eusebius continues:
"After this must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; next in order the extant former epistle of John, and likewise the epistle of Peter, must be maintained. After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. These then belong among the accepted writings."
Eusebius then later mentioned two other categories of books. There were what he called "antilegomena" or those spoken against by some. He wrote these words in section 3 of the above cited section of his "Church History":
"Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name."
Eusebius doesn't go into detail about who opposed these remaining books. As noted already, the opposition was by outlier church fathers and a handful of churches. By the end of the second century or beginning of the third century A.D, such opposition quelled and those five books came to be accepted by all with the other 22 book noted earlier. Eusebius then mentioned a third category of spurious or immediately rejected books or what we call today "New Testament pseudepigrapha", mainly the Gnostic literature I referenced in the last post.
[5] Harrison, Everett. Introduction to the New Testament 104-106
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