Providential Care - Thoughts on Canonicity and Historicity
"Christianity is primarily not merely doctrine, but life, a new moral creation, a saving fact, first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man, to spread from him and embrace gradually the whole body of the race, and bring it into saving fellowship with God. The same is true of Christianity as it exists subjectively in single individuals. It begins not with religious views and notions simply; though it includes these, at least in germ. It comes as new life; as regeneration, conversion, and sanctification; as a creative fact in experience, taking up the whole man with all his faculties and capacities, releasing him from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with God, restoring harmony and peace to the soul, and at last glorifying the body itself. Thus, the life of Christ is mirrored in his people, rising gradually, through the use of the means of grace and the continued exercise of faith and love, to its maturity in the resurrection.
But the new life necessarily contains the element of doctrine, or knowledge of the truth. Christ calls himself "the way, the truth, and the life." He is himself the personal revelation of saving truth, and of the normal relation of man to God. Yet this element of doctrine itself appears in the New Testament, not in the form of an abstract theory, the product of speculation, a scientific system of ideas subject to logical and mathematical demonstration; but as the fresh, immediate utterance of the supernatural, divine life, a life-giving power, equally practical and theoretical, coming with divine authority to the heart, the will, and the conscience, as well as to the mind, and irresistibly drawing them to itself. The knowledge of God in Christ, as it meets us here, is at the same time eternal life. We must not confound truth with dogma. Truth is the divine substance, doctrine or dogma is the human apprehension and statement of it; truth is infinite, unchanging, and eternal; dogma is finite, changeable, and perfectible.
The Bible, therefore, is not only, nor principally, a book for the learned, but a book of life for every one, an epistle written by the Holy Spirit to mankind. In the words of Christ and his apostles there breathes the highest and holiest spiritual power, the vivifying breath of God, piercing bone and marrow, thrilling through the heart and conscience, and quickening the dead. The life, the eternal life, which was from the beginning with the Father, and is manifested to us, there comes upon us, as it were, sensibly, now as the mighty tornado, now as the gentle zephyr; now overwhelming and casting us down in the dust of humility and penitence, now reviving and raising us to the joy of faith and peace; but always bringing forth a new creature, like the word of power, which said at the first creation, "Let there be light!" Here verily is holy ground. Here is the door of eternity, the true ladder to heaven, on which the angels of God are ascending and descending in unbroken line. No number of systems of Christian faith and morals, therefore, indispensable as they are to the scientific purposes of the church and of theology, can ever fill the place of the Bible, whose words are spirit and life." (Philip Scaff pg 511-513)
The questions surrounding canonicity and Historicity of Scripture may not find top billing on the priority list of most Christians today. At first glance such questions seem superficial rather than essential, secondary rather than primary. However, if we start with a more fundamental question we may gain insight into the primacy of such discussions. That question is: did the church create the canon, or did the canon create the church?
I. Disclaimer about the Argument:
In an age where books like the "Di Vinci Code" are best sellers, the obvious desire of the culture is to imagine the vain thing of psalm 2 - as "the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." The undisputed authority of the scriptures rises more and more to the forefront of true Christianity
Definition of Terms.
The first duty before me is to define quickly some necessary terms. First there may be some confusion about the term "canon". The Greek word simply means rule or measuring rod. After the first century the word began to take on the meaning of "revealed" truth, or rule of faith, and it wasn't until the 4th century that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were referred to as "the canon". Apologetics - "the defense of the faith". Bibliocity - "the study of the Bible as a principle to itself. (This should always include a sound apologetic!) Presuppositional, the foundation of truth is established preverification, or that truth must have an assumed beginning, and evidentialism where truth must be determined by the material evidence and weighed by the reason of man.
II. Historical Considerations:
Now we have already said that it was not until the 4th century that the word canon was applied to the New Testament, However, as Steven Voorwinde points out, this does not mean that the idea of the canon did not exist earlier. Herman Ridderbos said: "the history of the Canon is the process of the growing consciousness of the Church concerning its ecumenical foundation." "From its earliest days the Christian community was aware that it had a body of writings equal in authority to the Old Testament and equally revelatory in character." It must be said that the New Testament Christians used the Old Testament as Scripture but that they new at the same time there was more to the story. By 200AD we already find the terms "Old and New Testaments", palaia diatheke and kaine diatheke.
A. The First 140 Years.
The Apostle seem to be aware that they where writing Scripture. Especially the Book of Revelation. Again Voorwinde says: "There is as awareness within the New Testament itself, but these are mere "hints" compared to the authoritative tone conveyed by certain New Testament concepts." He enumerates three terms. Apostle: "transmitter of revelation. Witness: eyewitness in a forensic way. And Tradition: 'what had been handed down with authority'. "The tradition of which the New Testament speaks is therefore not an unchanneled stream which is then perpetuated as the faith or theology of the Church. It is rather the authoritative proclamation entrusted to the apostles, as the witnesses of Christ and as the foundation of the Church."
B.The Rise of Heretics: The Church endures a rather rough beginning with missionary efforts being complicated with the Jewish conceptions, as Paul informs us, yet amazingly or rather providentially the Apostles teaching is wide spread and quickly embraced. However, the rise of heretics is always on the horizon and by the year 140 the Roman church receives her first visit from Marcion.
1. Marcionism. Marcion presented his teachings to the presbyters at Rome, "but they found it utterly unacceptable, which was not surprising considering his radical Gnostic views. Marcion rejected the Old Tesament and regarded the the God of the O.T. as evil. He also found little use for most of the New Testament with the exception of Paul and Luke. Marcion's views were wide spread. The Marcionites were the first to have a clearly defined canon.
2. Gnosticism. Gnostic errors were of course around prior to the coming of the Lord. It is not clear when they started. Basically it was the supremacy of thought, esoteric gnosis (knowledge) The Gospel of Thomas was chief among there documents along with the apocryphal Gospel of Truth. For the Gnostics true gnosis was beyond Scripture. Gnosticism is alive and well anywhere where individual experiance, feelings or knowledge is exalted as the arbiter of
3. Montanism. Started in [/COLOR]
Asia Minor[COLOR=gray] around 156AD its leader Montanus believed that Christ promise of the Holy Spirit had now been fulfilled. Montanus was the Spirits mouthpiece, so obviously it stressed the renewal of the prophetic gift.
C. The Churches Response:
It is important for us to understand the state of the Church at this point. During the early development of the church most movement was apolitical, and spread through simple means. The apostles established the churches and were faithful to their calling to preach the gospel to the whole earth. Faithful men were made leaders to continue that which they had received and on the smaller scale that was easier to maintain. The warnings about present antichrist and ravenous wolves however, show that even during the life of the apostles there was always a contention for the truth, but the mechanism for affirming the truth of the one catholic church could not be in place until after the formation of such a grand organism. How the church responded to heretics and established its canon basically falls into to points of view.
1.The Liberal view. Voorwinde suggest that the liberal view was epitomized by the work of Adolf von Harnack the leading liberal theologian in at the latter half of the 19th century. He was basically a Gnostic and a montanist himself. Believing that the true inspired word was by the spirit and not by the Letter. He asserted that the drive for a written canon came from the heretics. He proposes what the boys over at infedel.com and the Jesus Seminar picked up on, and that is that right makes right. The Bible that we have is mere the church that won the canon wars.
2.The Orthodox View. Defending the Orthodox view there are many. William Whitacker, Francis Turretin and Theodor Zahn however, are at the forefront of the debates. There is much to their arguments, but one of the strongest factors they bring out is in the state of the New Testament around 200. "Basic agreement coupled with random disagreement characterizes this period. Difference of opinion rages over some books. The idea of fluid boundaries is unthinkable if (according to Harnack and the Liberal school) the Church is creating a canon in response to Marcion. The Church's canon would have been defined as exactly as Marcion's. The New Testament is not then a book that falls out of the sky, nor is it an invention of the Church to combat heresy.
III. Theological Considerations:
As we consider these questions it is important that we don’t forget our theology. Remember what we have been taught on apologetics. About the problems of evidentialism, and thinking we can come to these concerning questions from a neutral stance. We need to argue for the Bible the same way that we argue for the faith; presuppositionally. This does not mean carelessly, however. Some men in an attempt to simplify the question have made grave errors.
A.Problems with Warfield’s View.
For example B.B. Warfield gives more content to apostolic authority than is warranted by the New Testament itself. "In his view the New Testament canon was imposed by the apostles on the church. Thus the canon was not only complete but also fully and finally accepted by the end of the first century. Warfield writes: "In every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or doubts about it laid aside, was the historical tradition of apostolicity". Warfield goes on to assert that the canon was whatever, the apostle had imposed on the church as law whether written by them or not. He completely leaves out the question of reception, and cast doubt on the historicity of the early church struggles. This view may be tempting to those wanting easy answers, but it is not correct.
Criterion and the Problem with it!
The real nature of the question strikes at what criterion can be used to establish canonicity. Many suggested things such as apostolicity and Christological Concentration. (This was the big one for Luther, who used the motto: 'what urges and preaches Christ' - As good as these criterion sound, they are of no use. Again Steven Voorwinde states: "all attempts to establish criteria have failed. More to the point is the observation that all attempts to establish criteria must in principle fail and in fact destroy the canonicity of the New Testament...(for) It would mean subjecting the canon to fallible human insight - and this destroys the absolute authority of the canon!"
IV. Redemptive History:
To helps us here, Herman Ridderbos has suggested that the authority of the canon is not to be sought in the history of the Church, but in the history of redemption: God provides a verbal commentary on his redemptive activity. Hence the New Testament itself is a phenomenon in the history of redemption.
Ridderbos continues by saying: "In conclusion we can only say that the deepest foundation of the canon can only lie in Christ himself, and in the nature of his coming and work. The very basis or ground for the recognition of the canon is, therefore, in principle redemptive-historical. ...For Christ is not only himself the canon in which God comes to the world, and in which he glorifies himself in contrast to the world, but Christ establishes the canon and gives it a concrete historical form. (Read Heb 1: 1-3) Christ is our all in all!
Originally Posted by SamothWerdna
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