Eavesdropping in my Conversation with a Friend about the Canonization of Scripture, Part 1 of 2

Question Posed To Me By a Good Friend (that I thought I might make available to you)

I'd like you to shed some light on the idea of "Divine Inspiration" of the Holy Bible and the selection of the books we consider to be the "Word of God." Is there a theological concept of 'divine selection?' There are different 'canonizations' out there, like the Jewish Bible, the Deuterocanonical writings, and the various Vulgate versions (e.g., Jerome's, Gutenberg, Clementine, and the Nova Vulgate).


My Thoughts

Good questions.

I started to write a really long treatise on this, because it is so important and needs treatment on any number of levels to be an adequate answer.

What I then did was to locate this "summary article" that is written by one of the best thinkers in the world, one whom I respect and who taught at a school that I formerly attended. I'm going to give the link below, but will also give some other perspective, just so you can get a few specific tidbits about the specific questions you have. Still, this article is so outstanding, it will help you clarify these issues greatly, giving you lots of inner peace.

Beyond that, here are a few other tid bits.

The key to divine inspiration is that the Bible represents the only divinely authorized sacred text in existence. Meaning, this is God's self-disclosure and only authorized autobiographical/biographi

cal work in existence. But, as you've asked, beyond that-- how do we think about the selection of the books?

It's important to understand that the books "recognized" as authoritative and "scripture" were not haphazardly chosen, which is what some who wish to have unbounded moral freedom would have us believe. They believe that, if they cast doubt on the selection of books, then that jeopardizes the authorship and, hence, the authority of the Bible.

Essentially, it worked this way: The books were given by what conservative evangelicals and others call "Verbal Plenary Inspiration." This is one of about 7-9 views of inspiration. Those theories of inspiration range from viewing "inspiration" as being nothing more than a slightly heightened sense of awareness... to the human writers being nothing more than entranced copyists who fell into a divinely-induced trance. Serious Bible-Believing Scholars generally agree that the Bible was given by verbal-plenary inspiration, meaning that God gave the content of the book and, while allowing freedom to the author to express his or her general attitudes, personalities, emotions, and so on-- that God superintended the ULTIMATE PRODUCT so that (a) the writer was supernaturally enabled to ensure that the individual words chosen were in accordance with God intended and were free from error-- and (b) that the final autographs (the original book the writer completed) were wholly, as a complete document, free from error (inerrant). Then, Bible-believing scholars agree (and insist, due to specific passages of scripture such as 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:19-21) that though thousands of copies of those originals (autographs) were copied (viz., manuscripts), that the careful evaluation of those as a whole by qualified biblical scholars has given us a clear and still accurate understanding of exactly what God originally intended. This is a view called "preservation." We know from textual evidence (the 24000 partial, whole, and fragmental pieces of ancient manuscripts, including the 5200 or so complete ancient manuscripts), that even the copyists of those originals were in 96% agreement, with (a) the remaining 4% of differences being on non-essential and non-doctrinal issues (unspecific, minor words) and (b) that those 4% can be explained by obvious slips of the quill of the copyists, alternative spellings for words between different dialects of languages, and obsolete words that were replaced by future generations, and the like. ALL OF THAT TO SAY that we have solid certainty about the authority of the text in general.

Then, 5 tests (described in the document I sent-- I checked to make sure it was in there) were applied by the church and its global leadership to ensure that the books which were being evaluated for inclusion into the Holy Bible met each and every of these obvious and clearly biblical standards.

That said, though you are right in saying that there are some differences in opinion between Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism today, it's more easily explained than it seems. But first note that, those branches of modern churches are not authoritative on these matters, because believers of the ancient Jewish faith before Christ and the Early Church, as a whole, established these facts about what was and wasn't scripture. More recent waffling on these issues doesn't change the global and collective agreement that stood for centuries. But the gist of it is this: Deuterocanonical works are just that-- deutero (secondary) canonical (standards). Meaning, they are "edifying reading" but not authoritative-- but still generally better than, say, a romance novel. So they have some historical or religious merit, but are not scripture. Think of them as ancient Christian novels or ancient Christian historical-narratives, with some bias and some potential errors (factual and/or theological), but still... somewhat valuable. Now, of course, we have newer reflections on things that exceed the value and accuracy of the deuterocanonical writings, so many of those newer writings are of greater insight, accuracy and worth than the DC writings-- hence, I study those more than I take time for DC books like Judith, Ecclesiasticus, etc. But those DC books were NEVER considered scripture, equal to the Bible. But because of Roman Catholic elevation of them and their relative value in the early centuries of the church, they were sometimes included as Christian writings after the biblical writings-- but never simply interspersed with the scriptures themselves.. They would appear in groupings, etc. Other words, such as the Pseudopigrapha in particular-- (pseudo/false pigraph/writings-- are known to be spurious, so they are even further out and less reliable than even the DC writings (apocrypha), so they hardly, if ever, appear beside scripture. These are books like the Gospel of Thomas (which wasn't)... that things like the DaVinci Code was based on, and so forth.

When scripture was established by the global community of faith-- there was nearly immediately universal agreement on the books of scripture. The Old Testament canon was established very early as it was being written (through the tests of canonicity) and the New Testament was as well. The only exceptions were very limited and regional differences among some smaller factions (such as a group that may have objected to including Esther because the name of God didn't technically appear), but those disagreements were dispensed with quickly and global consensus cleared up those matters. Only later, as less informed people and even unbelievers crept into churches and began to push the legitimacy of some books (e.g., such as today, where many Roman Catholics value certain DC books-- but aren't, themselves, even bonafide and legitimate believers who honor biblical teachings on what salvation and the church are, for example). So, yes, on the surface, this seems to have confused the issue-- but no Bible belieiving Christian who is abreast on the facts is confused by these things.

One other thing-- differences in things like the Vulgate, though I'm not an expert on it-- are due to a few things (a) the fact that the Vulgate represents a less technical and 'vulgar' or 'low brow, colloquial' type of language-- as opposed to the higher, technical language that would be more appropriate for theological language-- but less suited for a less-educated populus (think of how more accurate you could explain something with the complete English language versus explaining technical issues with only a 600 word vocabulary that is under the 7th grade reading level-- you get the idea); (b) as time went on and language changed-- as all living languages do, nuances and etymologies and meanings of some words changed, leading to variances of words between dialects, regions (just like Cuban Spanish and Mexican Spanish may differ), and so on-- so that affected how some words were understood and written; (c) finally, for the sake of time and brevity, different publishers and scholars had varying opinions and budgets to work from, and some we know chose to include footnotes in the text and explanatory notes, historical pieces that shed light on some texts, and other glosses as they may be called, and this led to the differences. Just as different writing styles and formatting approaches (like APA, MLA, and so on are used today here, and different ones may be used elsewhere in the world), different companies publishing Bibles with different scholars included different things.

Eavesdropping in my Conversation With a Friend About Canonization of Scripture (Part 2 of 2)

Follow Up Question (related to the last blog I wrote):

Are you saying that, as the books of the Bible were being written that they were becoming canonized (pronounced as Holy Writ and placed in the Bible as scripture)? That is to say, were we working with an open canon for quite some time, during both the Old and New Testament times?


Answer

It worked this way.

As the texts were being written... (around 1500BC-400BC for the Old Testament, and 40-100 AD for the New Testament), there were these general understandings that the People of Israel/Jews had about this literature they were exposed to, as there were with the New Testament writings (which, again, came MUCH closer together and were more widely circulated, because the Christian Church was geographically spread apart than Israel and Judah). So there were a 'little' differences between Jewish perspectives about authoritative tests and that of the Christian church, but that's too technical to really matter here.

So let's don't get tripped up on the word 'canonized.' That's showing a more Roman Catholic perspective, and we want to think in terms of the New Testament period and that of ancient Judaism, not to suspend a several-centuries later perspective on it.

So what happened was that the people of God were exposed to both false prophets and prophets/apostles of God throughout time. Some of them had writings that were ostensibly received from God. As the people of God heard or read these things, the Spirit of God bore witness in the hearts of people, along with the tests of canonicity-- general principles that were taken into consideration, that these were (or were not) the Word of God. (Keep in mind, when you read the Gospel of Mark, you don't have to be a theologian with a Ph.D. to know it is God speaking, if you follow me). But the people of God quickly and immediately identified certain books as scripture. And as they were being identified and written, more and more were accepted (and others were universally rejected, like the apocrypha and pseudopigrapha, etc.). And as this happened in real time, over centuries, as God dynamically gave His word and self-revelation to people, the 'canon' grew. When the Old Testament was completed in or around the 400s, it was already an established fact which books were official. Later on, like in the article below, because of some later challenges by smaller factions of people who probably weren't even true believers and the like, there were sometimes a need to 'reaffirm' or 'clarify' officially what was universally known, accepted, believed, and taught all along. So when groups like this met, they sometimes reminded people of what they believed and sometimes offered a statement publically to summarize their beliefs. So, like at Jamnia below, there were times when the "canon" was identified in writing and it became a part of the historical record we have. And that's fine and no problem.

The problem is that, because churches like Catholicism think that their church and their bishops speak for God in an official authoritative way-- in ways that go beyond scripture, I might add-- and when they do this, they make statements that make the untrained theological eye believe that they had the authority to make official pronouncements about canonizing scripture and establishing what scripture was, etc. While, in fact, that was already established by the people of God, universally, in the past. There was no need for any canonization because (and this is my central point), HUMANITY CANNOT 'CANONIZE' AND DICTATE WHAT GOD'S WORD IS OR WHAT THE BIBLE IS-- GOD DOES THAT. GOD DICTATES WHAT HIS WORD IS AND HE DETERMINES WHAT THE BIBLE BOOKS ARE... THEY DON'T NEED THE APPROVAL OF SOME CHURCH BODY LED BY IMPERFECT PRIESTS. The fact that they are from God is a self-justifying reality and they are easily identified as scripture, and it is God (not we) who establishes the canon. We only recognize and affirm what it is, we don't determine it. However, through discernment, we can compare other writings against the established canon, and through that, we speak to establish what ISN'T THE CANON. So the church's job is one of polemics and apologetics.

Polemics is when Christian leaders speak to the church and clear up confusion to people inside the church and call out on the carpet false teachers pushing false teachings and false books. Apologetics is when Christians defend the faith against unbelievers outside the church. I hope that makes sense.

So, like at Jamnia, the point wasn't to "try to figure out what books will be included in the Bible" but to come to consensus among those people (who didn't have universal authority in the church in the first place) regarding issues about certain scriptural questions they had. Just like today, if there was an issue we needed to really establish clarity on, we could call a church council to discuss and try to DISCOVER what God said about the matter-- and not to create a policy about it. God has spoken, and our job is to discover what He said and to then communicate that-- our job isn't to speak for Him by putting words in his mouth.

So canonicity was God's people agreeing publically and "for the record" stating the obvious and helping, once and for all, to promote ideas that were already widely understood and accepted-- and to clarify minor issues related to those topics as well.

Final point:

Because the Bible came to us not as one finished book, but as it was being revealed in real time in history by God at the appointed time-- it HAD to be 'open' during those days.

But, at the completion of Revelation, God made it clear there (in chapter 21 or 22) that it was the concluding authoritative book, and said so. This officially CLOSED the canon, so now we know that any and all books (form the pseudopigrapha to the Quran to others) that claim equal status to scripture are in error, because God made that clear. And that's why there has never been any serious challenge to what is authentic canon since that time. Only small factions of uninformed activists ever dream up these ideas, but the universal church speaks against those things and they never materalize, because it's clear to the church what is and what isn't scripture.