(music) - We talk about a canon you're talking about the list of books that Christians, here the Christian canon, that Christians view as
uniquely authoritative. Okay, a fundamental question
when we talk about the canon is are we looking at an
authorized collection of writings or a collection of authoritative writings. Now that may sound almost
the same, but listen to that. An authorized collection of writings. There's some external force or authority that's
declared these writings are authoritative and the
basis of their authority is on this external force. Or is this a collection
of authoritative writings and that is the writings
have an inherent authority that is recognized, but
whether you recognize it or not they still have the authority. As an evangelical protestant
I have the second view, right, more of a Catholic
view is the first view, that the church has
invested this authority and it's the authority of the church. I believe that the Scriptures
have an inherent authority. Sort of a trick question
I say well when was the New Testament canon completed? Well the New Testament canon was completed when the last book of the
New Testament was written, around A.D. 90, that's
when it was completed, but there's a process of that
being universally recognized in the widespread and
diverse early church. When was the Old
Testament canon completed? Well 430 B.C. with the book of Malachi, when the last book of the
Old Testament was written it was completed, but
then there's some process in the early Jews coming to recognize a closure to that Hebrew language canon, the Old Testament canon, and then the way they spoke about that. Let's talk about it in succession. Let's talk about the Old Testament canon and then let's talk about
the New Testament canon. The Old Testament was written
from roughly 1400 to 430 B.C. and you can see within
the documents themselves God giving guidelines for
whether prophetic words were true or really from Him. For example in Deuteronomy 18 and it seems there's this
progressive recognition through time of the prophets
truly speaking for God and their writings being preserved. It's clear when you get to
the time of the New Testament the way that Jesus and the apostles referred to the Old Testament, the way it's quoted, the way
those quotes are introduced, there's a recognition that
these writings are closed. This Old Testament prophetic canon is not continuing to be written and these things are authoritative. As Jesus says in John 10 the Scripture cannot be broken, right. Josephus who wrote in the first
century, a Jewish historian, he said the Jewish canon had
been completed and closed since the time of the
Persian King Artaxerxes, which was you know in the 400s. So it's pretty easy for Christians to affirm the Old Testament canon. We say we believe the Old Testament canon that Jesus and the apostles
believed, very simplistically. So if Jesus and the apostles affirm this collection of writings,
that's sufficient for me. And in fact if you go to
a Jewish synagogue today the Hebrew Scriptures that you find there are exactly the same books that we have in our 39 book Old
Testament Protestant canon. Now they're arranged in
slightly different order, they're grouped differently,
but it's the same content in the Hebrew canon in a Jewish synagogue and in the protestant evangelical 39 book Old Testament canon. Let's talk about the New Testament canon. Okay, the New Testament. So the New Testament was written from roughly the 40s to roughly A.D. 90, so a much smaller period of
time over which it was written. And even within those writings themselves we see this recognition of
their inherent authority, right, Jesus told his disciples that they would be his witnesses, that the Spirit would remind them of what he had taught them
and teach them further things. So there's this interlocking of the old and New Testament
in a really unique way in that the New Testament was quoting from the Old Testament,
recognizing it as authoritative, but here's this final and definitive word on God's revelation
that's now come in Christ. And so even within those
writings themselves, for example in Second Peter 3:16 Peter refers to Paul's writings and he calls them Scripture. Or in Colossians 4 Paul talks about copying the letter and sending the letter to another church and
them sending the letter, there's a recognition these writings are more than just specific
occasional writings for a particular congregation, they have a universal authority. So we find that within
the writings themselves. Then we go to the next
stage of church history, the post-apostolic period, what's called the early church fathers,
the apostolic fathers and what we find there,
remember Christians are often having to hide
so they're not killed, right, they're separated
by hundreds of miles, there's no internet, there are no Together for the Gospel conferences where they're getting together and chatting about these things, this is just an organic thing. I go there you have the book of Romans, you have the Gospel of Mark. We copy those, I bring
them back to my location. It's kind of this, it just
keeps multiplying out like that. And so in this period there
is an implicit recognition of the unique authority of
the 27 book New Testament. What do I mean by that? I mean by the way that
the Ignatius, Irenaeus, the way that these guys are quoting the books of the New Testament, the way they're introducing those quotes, there's an implicit recognition, a functional canon that
forms rather quickly. Now to be fair there are
also some other books that are circulating in this time period that did not make it into
the New Testament canon. And again you can see how
this is pretty easy to happen with geographic distances widespread, with you know someone says well
here's the Gospel of Peter. You know oh wow we only
have the Gospel of Mark, I'd love to read the Gospel of Peter too, but then as you read and study it and it's read to your congregation and someone else comes in like we've never heard of this before and Peter was in our church. You know we have no, Peter
preached in our church, we have no, and so there's
a time of discerning. It takes time for this to happen. Eusebius, early church historian who wrote in the early
300s, he said in his time there were those books that were universally confessed as true, there were those that were debated and then there were those that
were rejected as spurious. So it was a very honest,
forthright conversation and as they were talking
about these things they wanted to know, this is a work that really went back
to apostolic authority. This wasn't something
someone had a great idea, I wish Paul had said
this to the Corinthians, someone did this, and they
wrote Third Corinthians you know and it was orthodox even, but it wasn't written by Paul and so this person was removed from their ecclesiastical office and the writing was condemned. And so this again took time and then we know that in the early 300s as Christianity became
able to flourish publicly and to be even the religion
sanctioned officially by the Roman empire, then came time where public communication
and discussion could flourish. It was not internet, there
were no T4G conferences, but there were councils and conferences that could now meet and very quickly we see coalescing in these discussions this 27 book canon that we have. Now the first time we have
it in a enumerated list that exactly matches our
27 books is in 367 A.D. in a letter from Athanasius,
his Easter letter, his festal letter where he lists the 27 book New Testament canon. But sometimes people will
hear that out of context and they'll be like oh wow
the canon was just wide open, crazy for 400, no, as I said, right after the time of the New Testament you see this functional authority that is uniquely given to
the New Testament writings with this discussion and with
some of these outlier texts which later are rejected. Now Athenasus was not a
council, he was an individual, a prominent church leader. But soon after that in the
councils of Hippo Regius and Carthage in the late 300s the 27 book New Testament
canon that we have was formally, I would
say formally recognized. The status was not given,
but the status was recognized by the Christian leaders of that time. The early Christian community was extremely careful
and extremely interested to make sure that they only gave reverence and final authority to books that were apostolic, inspired. There was not a loosey goosey well just bring your own book and maybe we'll add that in too. There's a very, these discussions so they're very, very concerned
to not have any corruption and when you read through those words of the early father's
there's no recognition that pseudonymity works falsely written in the name of someone else
could ever be accepted, but only what is truly apostolic and goes back to John, Matthew or a follower of an apostle who
wrote their words like Mark. One scholar has pointed
out that even if we lost all our New Testament Greek manuscripts we could construct the
entire Greek New Testament on the basis of the quotations
in the early church fathers because they so extensively
quoted the New Testament and looked to it as uniquely authoritative alongside the prior written
Scripture of the Old Testament. So sometimes Christians could
hear something on the news, pick up, their coworkers say something that could really make them question hey when were these books written or when were they recognized as Scripture? But I really think we
shouldn't have anything to be afraid of looking
at the actual process. God is a loving heavenly Father who's not trying to hide
things from us or deceive us and we recognize the
process He chose in history of having His word written
and then having it recognized, having us recognize the inherent authority of those documents. For the Old Testament
Jesus and the apostles so clearly affirm that authority. How could we deny it when our Lord and his inspired apostles affirm it? For the writings of the New Testament even within the writings themselves there's this inherent
recognition of Peter for Paul or Paul for his own writings, but then we see immediately we see the post-apostolic period,
recognizing this authority, affirming it, affirming
the apostolic authorship uniquely commissioned by Jesus, affirming the consistency of the teaching across these documents, affirming the universal recognition and where there outliers, where
there are small communities or manuscripts that did not make it in, that just shows that the process itself did what it was supposed to do, it weeded out the false writings, the non-apostolic writings,
the later writings and the ones that were true and reliable came to be universally recognized and revered and rightly by
Christians around the world. (music) - [Narrator] Thanks for
watching Honest Answers. Don't forget to subscribe.
