Justifying the New Testament Canon – Part 2

Identifying and justifying the New Testament canon has been the topic of two earlier articles (here and here) reviewing the comments of Albin Huss, a former professor of New Testament studies at Lancaster Bible College, Capital Seminary and at Calvary Baptist Seminary, Lansdale, Pennsylvania, speaking at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ Gap Center for Biblical Studies in Gap, Pennsylvania on Nov. 20-21. His concluding remarks concerned the complexities involved in precisely identifying the canon.

Objections to the Traditional Canon

Huss observed that the New Testament documents were written by nine authors over the course of about 60 years. Naturally it took some time for there to be general, if not universal agreement on the canon. He pointed to six accusations directed against the canon of the New Testament:

1. There was no expectation of new Christian written documents.
2. The apostles did not understand themselves to be writing Scripture.
3. There were authentic gospels which were lost and/or not included in Scripture.
4. The canon includes diverse gospels, with no single orthodoxy.
5. The canon was established by church councils long after the apostolic era.
6. The gospels were not written by the authors that they are traditionally attributed to.

These accusations reflect several types of challenges. First, Huss said there are theological challenges to the canon, specifically the influences of “historical criticism and liberal theology.” Cultural challenges caused by relativism, pluralism, and postmodernism are another issue challenging an authoritative canon. “Worldview challenges” are caused by anti-supernaturalism. There is also “messiness of historical data,” which is inevitable in historical study. There was disagreement in ancient times about the general epistles and the Book of Revelation. Finally, there was the “seemingly endless proliferation of apocryphal writings.”

Misconceptions about the Canon

Huss said that “there have been a whole host of excellent responses to the critics” of the Bible in recent years (e.g., two by Michael Kruger The Canon Revisited and The Heresy of Orthodoxy, with Andreas Kostenberger). He discussed “specific myths and misconceptions” regarding the New Testament canon. He identified twelve misconceptions, and responded to the most common:

1. “Christianity was a purely oral religion and had no interest in written texts.”
2. “Early Christians did not even think that there would be a New Testament canon.”
3. “The original writers had no idea that they were writing Scripture.”
4. “Early Christianity was highly diverse, with each following their own set of texts.”
5. “Early Christians disagreed widely over which books should be in the canon.” It is claimed that there was “a literary free-for-all.” He said that from the writings of the church faithers “nothing could be further from the truth.”
6. “The New Testament canon was a late development, which was not settled until the fourth or fifth century.”
7. “The apocryphal books [i.e., books not received into the New Testament] are just as valid as the canonical ones.”
8. “The apocryphal books were just as popular are the canonical ones.”
9. “The favorable citation of a book or a writing by a church father places it on par with Scripture.”
10. “The canonical gospels were not written by the individuals named in their titles.”
11. “The New Testament books were picked or chosen by a church council.”
12. “The choice of the books [as being canonical] was the result of a political or ecclesiastical power play.”

Responses to Criticism

Against the claim that there was no expectation of a written text, Huss said that the early Christians were “bookish.” Codices of New Testament documents were produced. They were given “prominent and early use.” He said that “in continuity with their Jewish heritage, [they] would have anticipated written documents” to testify to “the coming of the Messiah, and the inauguration of the new covenant.” Therefor “covenant and canon as written texts go hand in hand.”

The writers of the New Testament would naturally “have understood those documents to be authoritative.”  There were “specific characteristics of their sacred writings.” To argue for no expectation of written texts “is to lack an understanding of early Christianity, and intertestamental Judaism.” Against the no expectation claim, N.T. Wright has observed that “it used to be said that the New Testament writers didn’t think that they were writing Scripture; this hardly can be sustained historically today. Paul was most conscious that he was writing as one authorized by the apostolic calling he received from Jesus Christ and in the power of the Spirit to bring life and order to the church by his words.” Huss said the apostles had “a deep, spirit of God endowed sense, that as the authorized spokesman of Christ, they were writing the very words for the covenant people of God from the Lord himself.”

Against the claim that the apocryphal gospels are just as valid as the canonical ones, Huss said that these gospels (of which there are about 30) all originate in the second century or later. Many Bible critics insist that they were “excluded because they were on the losing side of several competing and equally valid forms of Christianity.” But they are not of first century origin. The canonical gospels are “the only gospels traceable to the first century” and “with apostolic origin, either directly or indirectly.” Importantly, there is no case of an apocryphal gospel appearing in the same codex as a canonical gospel.

While some material in the apocryphal gospels is drawn from the canonical gospels, there are many wild departures that record sayings and events that are not at all like what is reported in the first century gospels. The Gospel of Thomas, written well into the second century, has no narrative about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is a collection of the supposed sayings of Jesus. According to this supposed gospel, Jesus says that the Virgin Mary must become male to enter the kingdom of God, as well as any other women who enters the kingdom. In the Gospel of Peter, also from the second century, there appears the Docetist claim that Jesus felt no pain on the cross. This contradicts the Biblical and orthodox claim that Jesus was fully human and needed to suffer for our sins. It further says that when he rose from the dead, he appeared “as tall as the sky,” and was followed out of the tomb by a large talking cross. The Gospel of Judas (which made the cover of National Geographic in May 2006) claims that Judas was the hero of the passion narrative. It holds that salvation comes through secret knowledge, or “gnosis.” The physical world is evil, “created by a lesser god.” This gospel holds that Jesus revealed “to Judas, and Judas alone, the mysteries of the kingdom.” Judas betrayal of Jesus was actually “an act of obedience,” in which Judas helped Jesus escape the material world. In general, Gnosticism characterizes many apocryphal writings

As for the “canonical diversity argument,” he said that in fact there have been many heresies throughout history, but they should not be thought of as “alternate Christianities.” Diversity, which he said is not uncommonly exaggerated, does not mean that there is no doctrinal center to Christianity. Indeed, this writer would add, it would be senseless to speak of Christianity otherwise. The New Testament repeatedly warns against false teachers, Huss observed. He said that “the apostles faced apostates in their day, and there were those that followed them.”

In regard to the “late date church council argument.” it insists on unanimous agreement on the canon before any authoritative canon can be said to have been established. Most churches (other than certain non-Chalcedonian eastern churches)  accepted the current 27 books of the New Testament by the fourth century, with Athanasius’ festal letter of A.D. 367, usually considered the first formally enumerated list of the current canon. Huss observed, however, that Michael Kruger has pointed to a list of canonical books from Origen more than a hundred years before the festal letter listing all 27 books of the canon.

Huss then considered claims about the Council of Nicaea. This viewpoint, Huss said, “looks to official church councils” to identify the canon. The First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) was convened to address, and did address, the Arian heresy concerning the deity of Christ. It had nothing to do with the canon and did not address the canon. It might be noted here however that four regional councils of the patristic era (the Council of Rome in A.D. 382, Synod of Hippo in 393, the Third Council of Carthage in 397, and the (not numbered) Council of Carthage in 419) did identify the 27 books of the New Testament, but they were not ecumenical councils.  The Council of Trent in the sixteenth century likewise identified the 27 books of the New Testament as canonical, and it was an ecumenical council. But the New Testament canon was well established before Trent, which was a specifically Roman Catholic council.  

The ”gospel anonymity argument” insists that the gospels were not written by their traditionally attributed authors (as if this mattered to first century authorship). The four gospels did not identify their authors – their traditional designations are exactly that, traditional designations of authorship. Ironically, Huss said, the apocryphal gospels do identify their claimed authors. Where manuscripts of the canonical gospels have been found, “on their first or their last page,” they identify the traditional author as the author of that gospel. With the early Christians, there was unanimous agreement that the traditional authors of the canonical gospels were the true authors. He noted that Josephus left his name out of the text of The Antiquities of the Jews. And similarly for other ancient non-Biblical writings. Yet a different standard is used to question the canonical gospels.

Concluding Observations

To conclude, Huss said:

1. The canon was closed when it was written.
2. Recognition was a process, over time, but began very early.
3. There was an emerging “canon consciousness’ starting in the first century.
4. The covenantal character of Biblical faith implies a new canon for a new covenant.
5. The canon is “God breathed,” and self-authenticating. It was “recognized or affirmed, not determined or chosen.”

These convictions have been near universally held by Protestant Christians since the Reformation and form a solid foundation for defending the existing canon as the church moves into the future.