The following scholarly article from note theological scholar Benjamin
Warfield is on the topic of the canon of the New Testament. I recently ran
across the article after seeing the debates on the same topic on Usenet.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
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The Formation Of The Canon Of The New Testament
by B.B. Warfield
In order to obtain a correct understanding of what is called the formation
of the Canon of the New Testament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very
firmly in our minds one fact which is obvious enough when attention is
once
called to it. That is, that the Christian church did not require to form
for
itself the idea of a "canon," - or, as we should more commonly call it, of
a
"Bible," -that is, of a collection of books given of God to be the
authoritative rule of faith and practice. It inherited this idea from the
Jewish church, along with the thing itself, the Jewish Scriptures, or the
"Canon of the Old Testament." The church did not grow up by natural law:
it
was founded. And the authoritative teachers sent forth by Christ to found
His church, carried with them, as their most precious possession, a body
of
divine Scriptures, which they imposed on the church that they founded as
its
code of law. No reader of the New Testament can need proof of this; on
every
page of that book is spread the evidence that from the very beginning the
Old Testament was as cordially recognized as law by the Christian as by
the
Jew. The Christian church thus was never without a "Bible" or a "canon."
But the Old Testament books were not the only ones which the apostles (by
Christ's own appointment the authoritative founders of the church) imposed
upon the infant churches, as their authoritative rule of faith and
practice.
No more authority dwelt in the prophets of the old covenant than in
themselves, the apostles, who had been "made sufficient as ministers of a
new covenant "; for (as one of themselves argued) "if that which passeth
away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory."
Accordingly not only was the gospel they delivered, in their own
estimation,
itself a divine revelation, but it was also preached "in the Holy Ghost"
(I
Pet. i. 12) ; not merely the matter of it, but the very words in which it
was clothed were "of the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. ii. 13). Their own commands
were, therefore, of divine authority (I Thess. iv. 2), and their writings
were the depository of these commands (II Thess. ii. 15). "If any man
obeyeth not our word by this epistle," says Paul to one church (II Thess.
iii. 14), "note that man, that ye have no company with him." To another he
makes it the test of a Spirit-led man to recognize that what he was
writing
to them was "the commandments of the Lord" (I Cor. xiv. 37). Inevitably,
such writings ', making so awful a claim on their acceptance, were
received
by the infant churches as of a quality equal to that of the old "Bible";
placed alongside of its older books as an additional part of the one law
of
God; and read as such in their meetings for wor****p -a practice which
moreover was required by the apostles (I Thess. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; Rev.
i.
3). In the apprehension, therefore, of the earliest churches, the
"Scriptures" were not a closed but an increasing "canon." Such they had
been
from the beginning, as they gradually grew in number from Moses to
Malachi;
and such they were to continue as long as there should remain among the
churches "men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
We say that this immediate placing of the new books - given the church
under
the seal of apostolic authority - among the Scriptures already established
as such, was inevitable. It is also historically evinced from the very
beginning. Thus the apostle Peter, writing in A.D. 68, speaks of Paul's
numerous letters not in contrast with the Scriptures, but as among the
Scriptures and in contrast with "the other Scriptures" (II Pet.
iii.16) -that is, of course, those of the Old Testament. In like manner
the
apostle Paul combines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Luke under the common head of
"Scripture" (I Tim. v.18): "For the Scripture saith ' 'Thou shalt not
muzzle
the ox when he treadeth out the corn ' [Deut. xxv. 4]; and, 'The laborer
is
worthy of his hire'" (Luke x. 7). The line of such quotations is never
broken in Christian literature. Polycarp (c. 12) in A.D. 115 unites the
Psalms and Ephesians in exactly similar manner: "In the sacred books....
as
it is said in these Scriptures, 'Be ye angry and sin not,' and 'Let not
the
sun go down upon your wrath."' So, a few years later, the so-called second
letter of Clement, after quoting Isaiah, adds (ii. 4): "And another
Scripture, however, says, 'I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners'" -quoting from Matthew -- a book which Barnabas (circa 97-106
A.D.)
had already adduced as Scripture. After this such quotations are common.
What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously
are
not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament
books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be
tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of
the
estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as
Scripture,
and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in
hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival "canon" of
"new
books" which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and
authority with the "old books"; they received new book after new book from
the apostolical circle, as equally "Scripture" with the old books, and
added
them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures,
until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked
upon as another section of the Scriptures.
The earliest name given to this new section of Scripture was framed on the
model of the name by which what we know as the Old Testament was then
known.
Just as it was called "The Law and the Prophets and the Psalms" (or "the
Hagiographa"), or more briefly "The Law and the Prophets," or even more
briefly still "The Law"; so the enlarged Bible was called "The Law and the
Prophets, with the Gospels and the Apostles" (so Clement of Alexandria,
"Strom." vi. 11, 88; Tertullian, "De Prms. Men" 36), or most briefly "The
Law and the Gospel" (so Claudius Apolinaris, Irenaeus); while the new
books
apart were called "The Gospel and the Apostles," or most briefly of all
"The
Gospel." This earliest name for the new Bible, with all that it involves
as
to its relation to the old and briefer Bible, is traceable as far back as
Ignatius (A.D. 115), who makes use of it repeatedly (e.g., "ad Philad." 5;
("ad Smyrn." 7). In one passage he gives us a hint of the controversies
which the enlarged Bible of the Christians aroused among the Judaizers ("
ad
Philad." 6). "When I heard some saying," he writes, "'Unless I find it in
the Old [Books] I will not believe the Gospel' on my saying,' It is
written.' they answered, 'That is the question.' To me, however, Jesus
Christ is the Old [Books]; his cross and death and resurrection and the
faith which is by him, the undefiled Old [Books] - by which I wish, by
your
prayers, to be justified. The priests indeed are good, but the High Priest
better," etc. Here Ignatius appeals to the "Gospel" as Scripture, and the
Judaizers object, receiving from him the answer in effect which Augustine
afterward formulated in the well known saying that the New Testament lies
hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is first made clear in the New.
What
we need now to observe, however, is that to Ignatius the New Testament was
not a different book from the Old Testament, but part of the one body of
Scripture with it; an accretion, so to speak, which had grown upon it.
This is the testimony of all the early witnesses - even those which speak
for the distinctively Jewish-Christian church. For example, that curious
Jewish-Christian writing, "The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs" (Beni.
11), tells us, under the cover of an ex post facto prophecy, that the
"work
and word" of Paul, i.e., confessedly the book of Acts and Paul's Epistles,
"shall be written in the Holy Books," i.e., as is understood by all, made
a
part of the existent Bible. So even in the Talmud, in a scene intended to
ridicule a "bishop" of the first century, he is represented as finding
Galatians by "sinking himself deeper" into the same "Book" which contained
the Law of Moses ("Babl. Shabbath," 116 a and b). The details cannot be
entered into here. Let it suffice to say that, from the evidence of the
fragments which alone have been preserved to us of the Christian writings
of
that very early time, it appears that from the beginning of the second
century (and that is from the end of the apostolic age) a collection
(Ignatius, II Clement) of "New Books" (Ignatius), called the "Gospel and
Apostles" (Ignatius, Marcion), was already a part of the "Oracles" of God
(Polycarp, Papias, II Clement), or "Scriptures" (I Tim., II Pet., Barn.,
Polycarp, II Clement), or the "Holy Books" or "Bible" (Testt. XII. Patt.).
The number of books included-in this added body of New Books, at the
opening
of the second century, cannot be satisfactorily determined by the evidence
of these fragments alone. The section of it called the "Gospel" included
Gospels written by "the apostles and their companions" (Justin), which
beyond legitimate question were our four Gospels now received. The section
called "the Apostles" contained the book of Acts (The Testt. XII. Patt.)
and
epistles of Paul, John, Peter and James. The evidence from various
quarters
is indeed enough to show that the collection in general use contained all
the books which we at present receive, with the possible exceptions of
Jude,
II and III John and Philemon. And it is more natural to suppose that
failure
of very early evidence for these brief booklets is due to their
insignificant size rather than to their nonacceptance.
It is to be borne in mind, however, that the extent of the collection may
have - and indeed is historically shown actually to have varied in
different
localities. The Bible was circulated only in handcopies, slowly and
painfully made; and an incomplete copy, obtained say at Ephesus in A.D.
68,
would be likely to remain for many years the Bible of the church to which
it
was conveyed; and might indeed become the parent of other copies,
incomplete
like itself, and thus the means of providing a whole district with
incomplete Bibles. Thus, when we inquire after the history of the New
Testament Canon we need to distinguish such questions as these: (1) When
was
the New Testament Canon completed? (2) When did any one church acquire a
completed canon? (3) When did the completed canon -the complete Bible -
obtain universal circulation and acceptance? (4) On what ground and
evidence
did the churches with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books when
they
were made known to them?
The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative
book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote
the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98. Whether the church of Ephesus, however, had
a
completed Canon when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would depend on
whether there was any epistle, say that of Jude, which had not yet reached
it with authenticating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for
historical investigation here. Certainly the whole Canon was not
universally
received by the churches till somewhat later. The Latin church of the
second
and third centuries did not quite know what to do with the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The Syrian churches for some centuries may have lacked the lesser
of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But from the time of Ireanaeus
down, the church at large had the whole Canon as we now possess it. And
though a section of the church may not yet have been satisfied of the
apostolicity of a certain book or of certain books; and though afterwards
doubts may have arisen in sections of the church as to the apostolicity of
certain books (as e. g. of Revelation): yet in no case was it more than a
respectable minority of the church which was slow in receiving, or which
came afterward to doubt, the credentials of any of the books that then as
now constituted the Canon of the New Testament accepted by the church at
large. And in every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or
doubts against it laid aside, was the historical tradition of
apostolicity.
Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was not exactly apostolic
author****p which in the estimation of the earliest churches, constituted a
book a ****tion of the "canon." Apostolic author****p was, indeed, early
confounded with canonicity. It was doubt as to the apostolic author****p of
Hebrews, in the West, and of James and Jude, apparently, which underlay
the
slowness of the inclusion of these books in the "canon" of certain
churches.
But from the beginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity was not
apostolic author****p, but imposition by the apostles as "law." Hence
Tertullian's name for the "canon" is "instrumentum"; and he speaks of the
Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and New Testament. That the
apostles so imposed the Old Testament on the churches which they founded -
as their "Instrument," or "Law," or "Canon" - can be denied by none. And
in
imposing new books on the same churches, by the same apostolical
authority,
they did not confine themselves to books of their own composition. It is
the
Gospel according to Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul
parallels
in I Tim. v. 18 with Deuteronomy as equally "Scripture" with it, in the
first extant quotation of a New Testament book as Scripture. The Gospels
which constituted the first division of the New Books, - of "The Gospel
and
the Apostles," - Justin tells us were "written by the apostles and their
companions." The authority of the apostles, as by divine appointment
founders of the church was embodied in whatever books they imposed on the
church as law not merely in those they themselves had written.
The early churches, in short, received, as we receive, into the New
Testament all the books historically evinced to them as give by the
apostles
to the churches as their code of law; and we must not mistake the
historical
evidences of the slow circulation an authentication of these books over
the
widely-extended church, evidence of slowness of "canonization" of books by
the authority or the taste of the church itself.
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