Well, let me warmly welcome you back to our
series on the New Testament canon. We're working our way through a number of
issues. And in, in this session, actually, I want
to do something maybe a little unexpected. I want to talk in this session about one of
the biggest misconceptions about the origins of the New Testament canon. Now, there's a lot of misconceptions out there. I've actually written on this in a number
of different places and I suppose we could go through a long list of misconceptions about
how the New Testament formed and what happened, but there's one misconception that stood out
to me over the years. And what's interesting about it is that it's
a misconception shared by both Christians and non-Christians and it's a misconception
shared by both scholars and lay people. In fact, it's a misconception that's so widespread,
I want to devote a whole session to it because I think it really helps reshape the way we
think about the development of the New Testament canon and how it came to be. What is that misconception? It's simply this. Many people mistakenly believe that when the
New Testament writers wrote, they had no idea they were writing Scripture. I'll say that again. The misconception I want to deal with is this
idea that when the New Testament writers wrote, they had no idea they were writing Scripture. People's conception of how the New Testament
came to be kind of goes something like this. Jesus lived and did amazing things and left
a lot of teachings to the church. And then after he died and rose again, the
church, loving Jesus so much, decided to write things about Him. And a few people wrote stories about Jesus,
and a few people wrote letters to each other about Jesus. And no one really thought anything about these
books. They just decided they would write about Jesus
because they loved Him so much. Then it wasn't until much later, maybe generations
later, that the later Christians looked back on these books and said, "You know what? These books are kind of great. These are really wonderful books. Let's call these books Scripture. And then we're going to make a canon and sweep
it together and there's our Bible." Now, that whole narrative I hear all the time. It's this idea that books were written as
occasional documents with no intention of having any real authority, and that when Paul
wrote, it was just a letter. It was his own friendly advice to whoever
he was writing to. Or when the Gospels were written, it was just
information. It was just facts and data. And then it was only later that the church
decided to sort of attribute some sort of authority to those books. And so, when I talk to people in churches,
I'm amazed at how many people, even at the lay level, have that idea that the New Testament
writers didn't have any idea what they were doing, and it was only later that these books
sort of were given a Scriptural status. But it's also true amongst scholars. I could quote a number of folks in the scholarly
world that have this view. I'll mention just one. Mark Allan Powell in his introduction to the
New Testament says this, "The authors of our New Testament books did not know they were
writing Scripture." It's a pretty bold claim. Now, why's that issue matter so much? Let me just lay out why I think this is so
critical to get right. First, how you answer that question, or what
you think about that issue affects the way you date canon. Think about it for a moment. We've talked a lot about dating. Was the canon early? Was it late? Did it take four centuries to get a canon? We've kind of gone around and around that
issue, but if you think these books were not written with any awareness that these were
Scripture, then certainly you wouldn't think the original readers would have thought they
were Scripture and even the readers after them probably wouldn't have thought they were
Scripture. And you would probably assume it took a long
time for them to sort of generate the kind of following that would make people think
they're Scripture. To put it another way, if you don't think
people wrote with awareness they were writing Scripture, you would have a big gap between
when the books were written and when the church finally decided that we now have a canon. So it really does affect the canon's date. And that's one of the things I really want
to bring up with you. But there's a second reason why this issue
matters, not just because it affects the canon's date, also because it affects the, the sort
of nature of these books and what we think they are. If you believe that the New Testament authors
did not knowingly write Scripture when they wrote, then someone ends up sort of believing
that Scriptural status is something given to a book later that it doesn't
start off as Scripture, but it becomes Scripture. But if it becomes Scripture, how did it become
Scripture? Well, you'd have to almost say because the
church decided to make it Scripture at a later point. But then you would go down a very dangerous
theological road there. Now you're basically saying that things aren't
Scripture in themselves, but the church has the power to look at books and decide, "Hey,
these books are so wonderful we're going to make them Scripture." But if the church can make books Scripture,
then what does that say about the church's authority? That it's higher than Scripture, right? And so this is one of the dangers of this
view is it creates not only that gap of time, but secondly, it creates this confusion about
status. It almost makes it seem like the church is
the real authority and the books sort of derive their authority from the church. And that's an important correction we want
to fix. So here's what we're going to do in this session. I want us to walk through New Testament books. I'm going to make an argument that they were
aware of their own authority, but I want a nuance it a little bit. And let me explain what I mean. If we're going to look in the New Testament
for evidence of this, we can't just look for places where a New Testament author
says, "Hey, everybody. I'm writing Scripture." Right? They're not going to say it that way. But how would they say it? And here's what I want to suggest to you. I want to suggest to you that the New Testament
writers are going to articulate it this way. They're going to indicate that what they're
doing in their books is passing along authoritative apostolic teaching. Authoritative apostolic teaching. Why would they say it that way? Well, you remember from a prior session together
that the apostles had a very big role in the early church. They were given the authority to speak for
Christ and act for Christ, so when they say things, it's Christ saying things. And so, the authority in the early church
was the apostles. And so, if someone was passing along authoritative
apostolic tradition, then they would be passing along the highest level of teaching you could
get. So, if someone asks, "Well, would they have
called their own book Scripture?" Well, in some senses, they did do this. You may remember yesterday, we looked at this
very interesting passage in 2 Peter 3:15-16 where he actually calls, Peter calls Paul's
books Scripture. So, did that happen? Yes, but it's really beside the point whether
it happened. It's really beside the point whether the author
would have used the term "Scripture" or not. That doesn't really matter. The question is, "Are they viewing themselves
as passing along authoritative apostolic tradition?" Because if they are, then they are writing
a book with the highest possible authority anyway, whether you call it Scripture, or
you call it something else doesn't really matter. If the voice of Jesus is speaking through
these books, then you can't get a book higher in authority than the voice of Jesus. So I want suggest to you as we go through
these examples that we're looking for evidence that the New Testament authors wrote with
a consciousness, right, that they were passing along authoritative apostolic tradition. And this is a really important point I want
us to get. Okay. So with that in mind, let's begin our little
tour here. Now, we have 27 books in the New Testament. You don't think I'm going to go through all
27 of them, right? So we're going to take some samplings from
different parts of the New Testament canon to kind of get a vibe, a feel, for whether
New Testament authors were aware of what they were doing. We'll start, naturally, with the apostle Paul. So let's begin there. Now we begin Paul, begin with Paul for a very
obvious reason, and that is he wrote the most individual books in the entire New Testament. In fact, he wrote almost half the books in
the New Testament: 13 letters from Paul, only 27 books in the whole New Testament, so it's
a good place to start, right? Because If you start with Paul, get a sense
for what he thinks about his own writings, you covered nearly half of the individual
books in the New Testament. So what did Paul think of his own writings
when he wrote? Did Paul have a sense that he was speaking
as an authoritative apostle? And the evidence for this is overwhelming,
so much so, that it baffles me how this misconception has survived so long. Let's look at a few examples of this. First is the book of Galatians. In Galatians, as you know, Paul's writing
a letter to the Galatians where he's kind of upset. And he's upset mainly because he knows the
Galatians have abandoned the gospel. They've turned to other things. But what's interesting is how Paul starts
that letter to the Galatians. He starts that letter to the Galatians by
giving his résumé, if you will, laying out his credentials, saying to them, "Here's why
you should listen to the letter I'm writing to you." And you know it well, this is the very opening
line of Galatians 1:1. Here's what he says, "Paul, an apostle," very
first thing. But notice what he says after that, "not from
men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the
dead." Paul here in this opening part of Galatians
says, "Not only am I an apostle, but you have to understand something. I didn't get my apostolic status because some
other guy gave it to me. I didn't get my apostolic status from a human
being like another apostle, perhaps. It wasn't a horizontal act; it was a vertical
act from God to me through Jesus Christ." There's no doubt in this reference he's speaking
probably about his Damascus road experience when Jesus came to him, grabbed ahold of him,
and commissioned him as an apostle. And Paul was saying, "You need to listen to
me because I have a direct line to Jesus as an apostle. I didn't get it from anybody. I got it directly from Jesus. I speak to you with authority." And then what does Paul do after that? He lays out his case to the Galatians. And you know what it is. He basically says, "You've abandoned my gospel." Notice the language there. My gospel? Listen to what Paul says, chapter 1, verse
11 of the same book. He says, "You basically, you've abandoned the
gospel that was preached by me and it is not man's gospel, for I received it through a
revelation of Jesus Christ." Now, when you hear all that, how could you
reach any other conclusion that Paul, at least thinks, that he is speaking for Jesus, has
Jesus's authority, and his whole rebuke to the Galatians is predicated on the belief
that they've abandoned the very authority that he has to bring them the gospel? It's hard to miss that very plainly laid out. How would anyone else take this letter? You would never read this letter and think,
"Oh, this is just Paul's casual friendly advice." No, this letter comes with all the weight
of Jesus Himself. Let me give you a second example here in Paul. This one comes from 1 Thessalonians 2. Paul actually refers to his teachings here
as the Word of God. Listen closely, "And we also thank God constantly
for this, that when you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted
it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the Word of God, which is at work
in you believers." Here's an amazing thing, is that Paul equates
the teachings that he delivers to his churches and the teachings in his own letter as God's
Word. Now, when someone says, "Oh, New Testament
writers didn't know they were writing Scripture." Well, maybe they didn't use that word, but
they used the word "Word of God." That's pretty close, right? And that pretty much tells you what Paul thinks. And he says, "Look, you accepted it not as
men's, as the word of men, but as the Word of God," and having that authority. He commends the Thessalonians for receiving
it as such. In fact, later he says, "If you disregard
what I'm writing in this letter," he says this, "you disregard not man, but God." That's an interesting statement. 1 Thessalonians 4:8, "If you reject my teaching,
you're not rejecting man, you're rejecting God." Now, at this point, you have to ask yourself,
"What was Paul's conception of his own letters?" Well, pretty high, right? How do you get higher than that? That's pretty, pretty high. And we know that his audience would have understood
that. They would have said, "Paul thinks his letters
are the Word of God and even commends some churches for receiving these letters as the
Word of God." Clearly there was an understanding that he
wrote with authority from the very start." Let me mention a third example from Paul. And this one's actually the big one, as if
we need more examples. The two we've already looked at are pretty
compelling, but let's look at another one. This is 1 Corinthians 14:37. Paul, perhaps here more than anywhere else,
plainly states his own authority and the authority of his writing. Listen to what he says here: "If anyone thinks
that he is a prophet or spiritual," listen to these words, "he should acknowledge that
the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord." I'll read that again. "If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or
spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of
the Lord." Now, that phrase, "command of the Lord," is
a very widespread phrase throughout the Bible. It refers to God's own words delivered in
the Ten Commandments, delivered through Jesus, what have you. And Paul is now equating that with his own
letter. "The things I am writing to you are a command
of the Lord to you." In fact, it's so clear from Paul that it has
the authority of Jesus, he actually renders a judgment to anybody who rejects it. Listen to what Paul says in the very next
verse. He says this: "If anyone does not recognize
this," the "this" being "that I write a command of the Lord to you." "If anyone does not recognize this, he is
not recognized." In other words, Paul is saying, "My letters,
my words bear such authority of Christ that if you reject that, then you should be rejected." In other words, he's declaring a judgment
on people for flaunting God's chosen messenger, namely, Paul himself. Now, I suppose we could give more examples
here. We have 13 letters to appeal from, but I think
that's pretty good for Paul, right? It shows you that when Paul wrote, people
did take his letters as having the very authority of Jesus. This explains a little bit why Peter would
say what he said, "Paul's letters are Scripture," because they bear the highest authority they
could possibly bear. So did Paul's letters have
to wait for a church council to declare them authoritative? Did, did, did, did people think, "Well, until
the church rules on this, sorry, Paul. I can't listen to what you're saying." No, it's clear from the outset Paul's letters
were consciously written with this authority. Okay, let's leave Paul and go to the Gospels. Now, imagine that Paul's kind of low-hanging
fruit here and people might think, "Oh, well, it's easy to prove with Paul, but you've got
a tougher job here with the Gospels, right? Did they really write with an awareness that
they were writing Scripture?" I think so. Let me give you a few quick examples. Yesterday, we talked about the Gospel of Matthew
and what made him unique. People often miss this, but Matthew begins
his Gospel with a genealogy, as you know, which we tend to skip over, right? We think, "Ah, this is boring. This is meaningless. Let's just move on." But that's not meaningless to the first century
Jews who would have read it. To write a Gospel with a genealogy is basically
Matthew saying that "what I'm writing to you is continuing the biblical story, the biblical
story that ended in the Old Testament, I'm picking up where it left off and I'm continuing
that biblical narrative." Even secular scholars have agreed to this. Even non-Christian scholars have said, "You
know what, Matthew sees himself as continuing the Scriptural narrative." Put another way, Matthew sees himself writing
Scripture. And starting with a genealogy, as foreign
as that is to us, would have indicated that exact thing to his listeners. You may remember yesterday I mentioned that
the last book of the Old Testament, from what we can tell, was not Malachi, but probably
Chronicles. Chronicles was a book that famously began
with a genealogy. Is it not a surprise, then, that the first
book of the New Testament, Matthew, would begin with a genealogy? Why? He's connecting the dots there, right? He's saying, "Old Testament ends and new revelation
begins," and Matthew would have viewed himself as continuing the Scriptural narrative. Let me give you a second example from the
Gospels. And we come now to the Gospel of John. You know, what's interesting about the Gospels
is, unlike the letters of Paul, they don't include the names of the authors in the texts
themselves, okay? But John comes pretty close to this. What do we mean? Well, at the very end of John's Gospel, you
may, may remember that the text plainly tells us that the author of John's Gospel is this
mysterious figure called "the beloved disciple." "The disciple whom Jesus loved" is another
interpretation, or translation, of that in some English texts. Regardless, this beloved disciple figure is
the author of the Gospel of John. Why should I listen to this author? Well, if you do the math in John's Gospel,
and you go back through and you start looking to see who this beloved disciple is, it becomes
very clear who he is. He is in fact the apostle John. He was there at the Last Supper. He's the one who laid his head on the chest
of Jesus at the Last Supper. He was the one with Peter at the end when
he's being told about his future and how he'll die, and, and how Peter will die and how he'll
live on. He was there at the very beginning of the
ministry of Jesus. The beloved disciple is the apostle John himself. And any, any reader would figure that out
without much effort. And so, to end the Gospel of John by saying,
"These are the words of the beloved disciple," does what? It tells the author, or rather, tells the
audience that the author is, in fact, an apostle and you should listen to him by virtue of
that fact. Give you a third example from a Gospel. And this is the Gospel of Luke. Now, this is a little bit of a challenge,
right, because Luke was not an apostle. You might think to yourself, "Well, hey. You know, you had it easy going with Matthew
and John, but what about a book that's not written by an apostle? How in the world do we think those have the
authority of apostles?" But remember what we're arguing here. We're arguing not necessarily that the apostle
held the pen; we're arguing here that the author sees himself as passing along authoritative
apostolic teaching, which would have held that high authority. Does Luke view himself as getting information
from the apostles and passing that on to his audience? Is there a self-awareness of that? Absolutely. In fact, Luke tells us that in his prologue,
the very opening verses of his Gospel. One of the things that makes Luke interesting
is that he's one of the few Gospels that actually gives us a prologue that tells us where the
Gospel came from. This is curious. He actually tells us why he wrote, and he
even tells us who he's writing to, namely this person named Theophilus. He gives us all this interesting information. And here's one of the things he tells us in
his prologue, is he tells us basically where he got his information from. Here's what he says, basically says, "I got
my information from 'those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. They had delivered this to us.'" Now, when you hear that, you think, "Well,
who are these eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word that have been there from the beginning?" And the answer is obvious. Those were the apostles. Luke is situating himself here as what you
might call an apostolic man, right? He's not an apostle himself, but he's part
of that apostolic circle. He's a companion of the apostles. He's a learner from the apostles. In fact, elsewhere in the prologue, and we
don't have time to explore it, Luke even indicates that he's a student of the apostles, that
he has learned these things and been taught these things and now he passes them on to
us. And so, what you realize, then, is that Luke
situates his Gospel also as an apostolic book, and people would have understood it to be
such. Now, that's a sampling of the Gospels. Let's move on to some other books in the New
Testament that I think also make this point and I think round out our understanding of
this. Let's think about the book of Hebrews for
a moment. Now, the book of Hebrews is a, is a thorny
conundrum, right? Because the author is anonymous. You might think, "Well, how could you have
a book in the Bible where the author is anonymous?" We don't know who wrote Hebrews. Now, there's all kinds of speculation. You know, was it Paul? Was it Luke? Was it someone else? But you know, that kind of misses the big
point. The point isn't knowing so much the precise
identity of the author of Hebrews. The question is, "Does the author present
himself as passing on apostolic material, and do we have any credible reason to think
that author is situated in the circle of the apostles?" And with Hebrews, the evidence for this is
abundant. We know that the author of the book of Hebrews
was a first century figure who ran in the apostolic circles. We have reasons to know he's connected to
the apostles by the greetings he gives at the end of the book. But then listen to this. At the very opening of the book in chapter
2, he tells us where he gets his information from, once again doing something very similar
to Luke. He tells us that all his message of the gospel
that he's getting ready to pass along was "attested to us by those who heard," "attested
to us by those who heard," Hebrews chapter 2, verse 3. Who were those who heard from the beginning? And then later the author goes on to say,
"and it was attested through them by miracles." These are none other than the apostles, once
again. What does Hebrews do? It situates itself again in that apostolic
orbit. One last book we'll look at here is the book
of Revelation. Since it's the last book of the New Testament,
it's fitting it's the last book we mention, right, and, for that matter, the last book
of the Bible. Now, does the book of Revelation, does the
author here, John, write in such a way that his audience would understand that he's writing
authoritative inspired, an authoritative inspired book? I think the answer is overwhelming. In fact, in the very first line of the book,
he tells us that he's writing inspired prophecy. He tells us that he's received an apocalypse,
a revelation from Jesus Christ that he's passing along to his audience. In fact, there's very little doubt that anybody
reading the book of Revelation would think, "I am reading a direct revelation from Jesus
when I'm reading this book. Yes, through the pen of John, but a direct
revelation from Jesus." In fact, John's so convinced that he's writing
inspired Scripture, he actually ends his book with a warning. And you've read it in Revelation. Listen to the warning, "I warn everyone who
hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to them
the plagues in this book. And If anyone takes away from the words of
the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life." That's a bit of a scary warning, isn't it? Now, if you're just writing a casual book
with some friendly advice, do you put a warning like that on the end of it? No, that warning is the same warning that
was also given in the Old Testament for Old Testament books: "Don't add or take away." What does that tell you? That John understood the revelation that he
was writing as inspired Scripture, and the audience would have understood it to be inspired
Scripture as well. Now, as we draw this to a close, I just want
to recap what we're doing here in this session. We were arguing very plainly that we think
the New Testament writers did know what they were doing when they wrote, that they wrote
consciously as people delivering authoritative apostolic content. And therefore, their books would have had
the highest possible authority right from the start. Why does all this matter for canon? Because if that's true, then that affects
our understanding of how early the canon emerged, right? Now we can recalibrate our sense of dating. Do we have to wait until the fourth century
for some church council to think these books were received early? No, we would expect these books to be received
almost as soon as Paul wrote them, right from the get-go, that there would have been a sense
that they had that authority right from the start, and that changes our perception of
canon in a grand fashion. It really swims against the tide of modern
scholarship that continually wants to push the date of canon further and further back,
but also has a second important factor to it, and that is it reminds us these books
were Scripture from the outset. They didn't have to wait for the church to
get authority. They didn't have to wait for a vote to get
authority, that they were infused with authority from the very beginning because God gave apostles
to speak to His people. In other words, they held divine authority
from the start. And that's another important thing about the
canon to take away. The church did not make the canon. The church did not create the canon. The church did not cause the canon. The church simply recognized what was already
there. And what was already there? A divinely inspired book that God had given
to His church.
