Preaching the Canon

Posted Friday, July 14, 2006 by Charlie Trimm

I started a sermon series this past week on early church history. My motivation has been somewhat influenced by the Da Vinci Code and presenting the truth about what Dan Brown presents in his book. And most people in the church know very little about early church history, so it is good for them to learn about it. The first sermon is about the canon of Scripture and how the books of the Bible were chosen. While there is nothing new as far as scholarship goes, this is an experiment in presenting church history as a sermon.

            I have a question for you. I am standing in the middle aisle of the church. What will be the best way to get to the back of the church from where I am standing? Walk down the middle aisle? Down one of the side aisles? The most direct way will obviously be to walk down the middle aisle. However, I think that the best way to go is to go down the left aisle, because then I get to walk by my wife!

Sometimes, the ways of God are just as unexpected as the decision I just made for all of you. Sometimes we know what God should do. We have it all mapped out, and then he does something different. I want you to think of something that has happened in your life that if you were God, you would have done it differently. Everybody have something? The primary example that always comes to my mind is the death of a good friend of mine while I was college. She was killed by a drunk driver and died instantly. One Saturday night she was at our house, and Sunday night she was dead, with no warning. She was a Christian who had a passionate love for the Lord and for the poor. She had a bright future in front of her serving God and making a difference. If I was God, I would have had that drunk driver leave the bar just a few seconds earlier and go through that stop light just before the light turned red instead of running the red light and hitting my friend’s car. But that is not the way that it happened. Now, I know some of the reasons why things happened this way. Another one of my friends, who did not know the girl who was killed, saw what happened in the paper, and the accident was something that helped to turn her life around back to following God. But ultimately, I still don’t exactly get it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter or angry at God. I still trust God and trust that this was his will. But it still just isn’t the way I would have planned.

There are many situations like this in all aspects of life, and tonight I want to look at one of those areas in theology. This area is the canon of Scripture. Now, I am not talking about the gun. I am talking about the list of books that are in the Bible. Why these books? Are we missing some? Did we accidentally include some? If I had planned things, I would have given a list, signed God at the end, with what books should be included. But, once again, I am not God, fortunately for everyone, and this is not the way things happened. Before we get too far, let me say that I have strong assurance that the books we have are the correct ones. I do think that God guided the process of choosing the books, even if there was never a fax from heaven. But nevertheless, I would have preferred a different way to show which books were part of the Bible.

For the next two weeks, we will be looking at three aspects of early church history. These three aspects are the formation of the Bible, women in the early church, and the views on the deity of Christ in the early church. I have chosen these three topics for several reasons. First, they are all areas that the Da Vinci Code has made popular topics, and they are all areas that Dan Brown has drastically rewritten history. It is important for us as Christians to be able to recognize nonsense when we see it. Second, these are topics that most Christians do not know anything about. Third, these topics are important for our lives. We base our lives on the Bible. The view of women we should have is very important for our relationships, and our view of Christ as God is central to our faith. Have we been mistaken on these issues like Dan Brown claims?

We are going to spend most of our time tonight with the NT, but at the beginning we will spend just a few moments with the OT. First, a quick review. How many books are in the OT? How are they divided? In the English texts, there is first the five books of the law, then the history books, then poetry, and then finally the prophets. The last book, Malachi, was written about 430 BC, and the Jews collected these books into a coherent unit as some point around 300 BC, probably.

The Jews divided the OT into different categories than we have. They had three categories, the Law (the first five books), the Prophets (which includes the former prophets, which we know as the history books, and the latter prophets, which we know as the prophets), and the Writings, which is everything else (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles). When Jesus speaks of the “Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms,” he is referring to this three fold division. Then when he talks about these two murders, the first occurs in the beginning of Genesis and the second at the end of Chronicles. Why is that important? Chronicles ends the OT in the Jewish order, so Jesus is signifying the whole OT.

Luke 24:44 He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms."

Matthew 23:35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

But back to the OT. While the OT was being collected into a unit, other books were being written. These books are what we know as the Apocrypha today. For those of you who grew up Catholic, these are the books that are in Catholic Bibles. These books cover a variety of topics, from history to poetry to prophecy to embellishments of biblical stories. What language did the Jews speak? At this point they spoke Hebrew and Aramaic. But as the Jews spent more time outside of Israel, there were more and more Jews who spoke Greek as their first language. Therefore, a translation was made of the OT into Greek, called the Septuagint. But when they translated the OT, they added on these books that were being written at that time. They were intended to be for edifying reading, but not necessarily as Scripture. Then the church came onto the scene, and since the church was mostly Gentile, they picked up the Septuagint as their Scripture. So they started reading from the Septuagint as their Bible. And eventually what happened was that the theology of the church came from their practice: they were reading the Bible, their Bible had the Apocrypha, therefore the Apocrypha must be Scripture. This did not happen until much later, and it was never official until the time of the Protestant Reformation. The main group that takes them today is the Roman Catholic Church.

Time for a few stories. The early Protestants continued to put the Apocrypha into their Bibles, although that was a practice that quickly changed. But the original edition of the King James Bible had the Apocrypha. For another story, the church here had a very large elegant looking Bible which we used to put in our display case. It was there for years when one day someone looked at it and did not recognize where it was opened to. It turned out that it was a Catholic Bible and it was open to an Apocryphal book! Oops.

Should we regard the Apocrypha as authoritative? I do not think so. There are several reasons for this. First, the NT never quotes the Apocrypha. Second, there are theological errors in some of the books, such as salvation by works and praying for the dead. Third, there are obvious historical errors. Fourth, the vast majority of the early church was opposed to the books. Lastly, we have the witness of Jesus, who leaves out the Apocrypha when he is talking about the OT.

Does the Apocrypha have any value? Yes, I think that it does. It has a lot of historical information in it, such as the Jewish revolt a couple hundred years before Christ. It tells us a lot about what the culture was like at the time of Christ. Knowing the Apocrypha helps us understand the context of life that Jesus lived in. And some of it is rather fun reading!

 

New Testament

On to the NT. This area is more interesting, I think, because we have more information about the process of how the books were chosen. Dan Brown claims that the Bible we have was determined by Constantine when he became emperor and he claims that this is largely a new Bible, as Constantine suppressed what had been the Bible previously. For example, here is a quote from the book.

"The Bible as we know it today was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great."
           

               Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code p. 231

Now, for those who know history, this is pure nonsense. Mariah did not enjoy watching the Da Vinci Code movie sitting next to me because I kept on laughing at the absurd things they were saying. But how did the process go?

Well, the books were authoritative from the moment they were written. For example, in Colossians 4:16 Paul tells them to read the letter in the church, where only Scripture was read. Peter says that the writings of Paul are Scripture. Paul quotes the Gospel of Luke at the same level as the OT Law. The writers appear to know that they are writing Scripture.

2 Peter 3:15 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

1 Timothy 5:18 For the Scripture says, "You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing," and "The laborer is worthy of his wages."

The earliest Christian writers have the same view, as they quote the NT routinely. For example, there is 1 Clement. Who do you think wrote 1 Clement? Yes, Clement, a leader in Rome. The letter was written about 100 AD, the same time as the book of Revelation. He wrote a letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth to try and correct some divisions at the church there. Sound familiar from 1 Corinthians 50 years earlier? Some churches just have difficulties with some issues. But in this letter, Clement freely quotes from several NT books, such as the gospels and several of Paul’s letters. This is the pattern of the early church leaders, continually quoting the NT books as authoritative.

But no one seems to have bothered to make a list. Each church had their own collection. For example, Rome would have had the letter of Paul to the Romans. Then they would have had copies of other letters and gospels. Mark was probably written in Rome. But apparently no one had made an official list of what was Scripture and what was not. That is, until a guy named Marcion came along in about 150. Marcion was very helpful for the early church and we have much to be thankful for because of what he did.

But contrary to what you might expect, Marcion was a heretic. He had some odd beliefs. For example, he hated the OT. He thought that the God of the OT was different from the Father of whom Jesus spoke. The OT God was vengeful and hating, while the Father was loving. The Father wanted only a spiritual world, but the OT God made a physical and spiritual world. As you can see, Marcion did not really like the OT, so he cut it out of his bible. He did like Jesus and Paul, though there were parts of them he didn’t like. So what he did was he just parts of the Gospels and the letters of Paul and cut out everything he didn’t like. So he took a mutilated Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’s letters. He cut out the infancy narrative, because he couldn’t have Jesus being born. He cut out all the OT quotes. And he cut out any reference to the OT or its characters.

Even though Marcion was a pain in the short-term, he ended up doing the church a great favor. This was because the church was forced to think through just what books were inspired. They all agreed that there was more than what Marcion had suggested, but which ones would they include?

So within the next fifty years, people started working on making a list. One of these lists is called the Muratorian Canon (named after the man who found it). This list was made in the West, probably in Rome, around 180 or 190 or so. The list contains everything our NT contains except for James, 1 and 2 Peter, and Hebrews. Also, oddly, the Wisdom of Solomon, an Apocryphal book, is included in the list. No one knows why that one is included.

People keep on talking about the issue, but there are not any more definitive lists that we posses today until about 320, the time of the emperor Constantine. The debate continued, and there was general agreement about most of the books, including the Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul, 1 Peter, and 1 John. However, the other books were debated, the majority taking them as Scripture, others denying them. While there were three or four other books that a few church fathers suggested should be inspired, these were never seriously considered (for more information, see my paper “Close but no cigar”).

The official historian of Constantine, Eusebius, has a list of books divided into three categories. Eusebius was a fascinating man who wrote an excellent history book about the early church up to his time. Much of what we know about the early church comes through him. He is fairly fascinating reading today, if you are interested. His first category is the universally acknowledged books. This category includes the Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul (which probably includes Hebrews), 1 Peter, and 1 John. Revelation is mentioned in this category as well, although Eusebius personally did not like it very much. The second category is the disputed books, which includes James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John. Then the third category is the rejected books, either unorthodox or orthodox books that were not inspired. The only unusual book here is Revelation again, because Eusebius did not like the book. He wanted to see all prophecy fulfilled in Constantine and some groups were misusing the book of Revelation for other purposes, so he decided (along with some others) to just get rid of the book. As you can see this list is fairly similar to what we have today.

The first list that we have that matches what we have today is in a letter by a man named Athanasius, a bishop in Egypt. He was a feisty man who fought vigorously for the deity of Christ and suffered for his beliefs when the Arians gained power. His nickname was the “Black Dwarf.” There is a funny story about how one time when he was escaping from the Arian authorities that he was fleeing on a boat. The police came up in a boat behind him and asked if they had Athanasius. He said yes, and that if they continued that would overtake him in a short time. Well, it was a very short time indeed, as the police just kept on going and passed him!

He wrote a letter in 367 to the Egyptian churches about the date of Easter (which varied every year), and in the letter he gave a list of the NT books that exactly matches ours today. After his time, the controversy died down, and the list was complete.

How did the church decide which books to choose? There were several things they looked at when they examined the books. The most important reason for them was that the book was apostolic. It had to be written by an apostle or by someone closely associated with the apostles, such as Luke. For example, the Muratorian list says this:

But Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the prophets [OT], whose number is complete, or among the apostles [NT], for it is after their time (Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 307).

However, just because an apostle wrote something does not mean that it should be in the canon. So this is only part of the criteria. If we found a 3 Thessalonians written by Paul, it would not be inspired and part of the canon, although it would be very interesting. The second criteria is orthodoxy. The books had to agree with the teaching handed down from the apostles. This cut out many of the heretics books.

A third criteria was usefulness. A book had to be useful to the wider church to be helpful. A fourth similar criteria was that the book had to be accepted by a wide group of churches. If most people rejected it, then it did not get accepted. The fifth reason is the best reason, but difficult to determine: inspiration. If the book is inspired, then it should be in the canon. But that does get us into a little of a circle: a book is in the canon because it is inspired, but it is inspired because it is in the canon! This is why the church needed the other criteria.

So that is the story of the canon. The canon is the list of books that are in the Bible. One final thought about the canon. The canon is not an authoritative list of books. The books did not become authoritative because they made the list. They made the list because they were already authoritative. The canon is not an authorized list of books; it is a list of authorized books. The books are authoritative not because they are on an authoritative list, but because they were authoritative from the moment they were written. It just took awhile for the church to put together a list of appropriate books.

In conclusion, I am very convinced that we have the correct books in the canon. I do not think that any books were left out or wrongly included. The claim of Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code is false, that someone came along late in church history and forced the Bible on the church. The church has always, more or less, had the same canon. With that being said, I would still prefer an inspired table of contents. I would have liked it if God had finished Revelation with a list of books that he wanted in the canon. But he chose to not do it that way, in spite of my advice. I would have preferred a miracle. But he instead chose to work providentially, behind the scenes.

My response is not to be bitter or to start doubting the Bible, but to see this as a way to trust God. We started tonight thinking about something in our lives that we would have done differently if we were God. Our response to the canon issue, as well as to these other issues, is to trust God. We can trust the Bible. God has shown us that we have good reason to trust that the right books were chosen. He was providentially working behind the scenes to ensure the correct books were chosen. Now, we can trust him with the results. Similarly, we can trust God with all the situations in our lives, no matter what our advice may be to God on the topic.

 

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