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Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Doctrine of Revelation Part 10. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org Today we turn
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to the subject of canonicity. If the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture is true, then there is automatically drawn and a line between those books which are inspired and those which are not. There are inspired books and there are books that are not inspired. So the doctrine of inspiration implies that there is an authoritative body of inspired literature with precise literary limits to it. This body of writing is inspired and is therefore the word of God to us. These writings therefore belong to what is called the canon of Scripture. Now what do we mean by the word canon with 1n not 2? Well, canon is a word that means rule or standard. And when we talk about canonicity, we're talking about those literary limits to inspired books that are God's word to us. The canonicity of Scripture concerns the question of which writings belong to this inspired body of literature to which we give allegiance as authoritative. This is the question of the canon of Scripture, which books ought to be in the Bible. Now let's treat this question with respect to the Old Testament and the New Testament separately. With respect to the Old Testament, Jesus and the apostles accepted the Jewish canon of Scripture that existed as at that time. The Hebrew Bible which was used by Jesus himself as well as the Apostles is the same Bible that Protestants today call the Old Testament. So Jesus used the same Old Testament canon of Scripture that Protestants recognize today. The 24 books of the so called Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible are the books which were recognized by Jesus to be inspired by God and to be God's Word to us. And this Masoretic text is the same text that is recognized by Rabbinical Judaism as the canon of the Hebrew Bible. It's the Bible the was used by Jesus. Now there is in addition to this Hebrew Bible, a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. And this is usually abbreviated by the Roman numeral lxx470. The Septuagint was a translation of the Old Testament that was used Egypt by Hellenized Jews, that is to say Jews who were Greek speaking and lived in a Jewish rather in a Greek culture. In this Greek version of the Old Testament there are a number of books that are accepted as part of the Old Testament canon by Roman Catholic and also by Eastern Orthodox confessions. So this is where these additional books of the Old Testament recognized by Catholic and Orthodox Churches come from. They're part of the Septuagint or the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And these are referred to as the Old Testament apocryphal books or deuterocanonical books. Now, these are not the same thing as the apocryphal books of the New Testament, which I'll say something about later. When people talk about New Testament apocrypha, they are talking about books that were written hundreds of years later than the time of Jesus and are not recognized by any Christian confession as belonging to the canon of Scripture. But with respect to the Old Testament apocrypha, and as I say, Catholic and Orthodox churches do recognize these additional books found in the Septuagint as part of the Old Testament canon. And these apocryphal books include things like Tobit Judith, certain additions to the Book of Esther, certain additions to the Book of Daniel, a book called the Wisdom of Solomon, and 1st and 2nd Maccabees, among others. And these are to be found in your Roman Catholic Bible today. And the Greek Orthodox will also accept additional books like Psalm 151 and others, and these would be part of the Orthodox Church's canon. Now, the earliest list that we have in Church history of the canon of the Old Testament comes from a man named Melito of Sardis, who flourished around A.D. 175. And he lists all of the Old Testament books that are recognized by Jews and Protestants and except for the Book of Esther. So he includes all of the typical canonical books that we would recognize except Esther. Now he does also add the Wisdom of Solomon, which was one of those apocryphal books that I mentioned. And this is the earliest list that we have among the church fathers for the Old Testament. So with respect to the canon of the Old Testament, I think it's relatively uncontroversial when we say that we accept the same canon of Scripture that Jesus himself accepted and are therefore on very solid grounds. Now, what about the New Testament? Since this comes after the time of Christ, this is somewhat more difficult to establish with respect to the New Testament. Jesus promised his disciples that he would, through the Holy Spirit, bring to their remembrance everything that he had spoken to them and taught them. Look at the promises. For example, in John 14:15 and 16, First John 14:26, John 14:26, Jesus says, But the counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. And then flipping over to John 15:26, 27, John 15:26, 27. But when the counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father. Even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father. He will bear witness to me. And you also are witnesses because you have been with me from the beginning. And then one more chapter, chapter 16, and verse 13. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. So here Jesus, in commissioning the disciples to be witnesses of what he has taught them and said to them, because they were with him from the beginning, are promised the Holy Spirit to give them an accurate remembrance of what Jesus had said to them and taught them. And when you look at the remainder of the New Testament, you find that the apostles had a firm conviction that the gospel which they were preaching was the word of God. It's remarkable that they would refer to this message, this gospel that they proclaimed, as God's word. So, for example, look at 1 Thessalonians 2:9, 131 Thessalonians 2: 9, 13. For you remember our labor and toil, brethren. We worked night and day that we might not burden any of you while we preached to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses and God also. How holy and righteous was our behavior to you. For you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God which is at work in you believers. So here Paul speaks of the gospel of God which was preached to the Thessalonians, and commends them because they recogn it and received it not as the word of men, but this was the very word of God that was being proclaimed to them also in Galatians 1:11 12. Galatians 1:11 12. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from men, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So here again Paul says, this isn't man's gospel. This is a revelation from God, from Jesus Christ, and that is what I'm proclaiming to you. And Then also in 1 Corinthians 14, 1st Corinthians 1436 to 37, 1st Corinthians 14, 36 and 37. What did the word of God originate with you or. Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should recognize that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. So here Paul asserts his authority as an apostle and he says, this is the word of God that has come to you. It is a command of the Lord, and anyone who's spiritual should recognize it as such. This is not something that is merely human. So the apostles had this strong conviction that in the power of the Holy Spirit they were proclaiming the very word of God. Now this is all the more remarkable when you realize that by the time of the first century it was widely believed in Judaism that prophecy had ceased, that there were no more prophets speaking the word of God. First Maccabees 9:27, which is one of those apocryphal books from the intertestamental period. First Maccabees 9:27 says there was great distress in Israel, such as had not been since the time that prophets ceased to appear among them. So here Maccabees refers to the fact that prophets had ceased to appear in Israel. In the first volume of his commentary on the Book of Acts, Craig Keener makes the following observation. He says Josephus, who was a first century Jewish historian. Josephus contends that there has been no exact succession of prophets since the time of Artaxerxes, which is why no books had been accorded canonical authority since that time. That's why there were no more books added to the Jewish canon, because according to Josephus, prophets had ceased to appear. Moreover, although prophecy continued, the title prophet belongs only to the past and to the future. There would come at the end of history, at the end time, another prophet. But until then, prophets belong only to the past. According to Josephus. He says Josephus used the term prophets for his time only when he spoke of false prophets. No one denied that revelatory experiences continued to be possible. But biblical prophecy was seen as different from post biblical prophecy. Thus in Josephus and Philo. Philo is another first century writer in Alexandria, Egypt, one of those Hellenized Jews that I spoke of in Josephus and Philo, Pneuma, or Spirit, like the Holy Spirit, is confined to prophecy in the biblical period, giving a special role to the canon. So prophecy through the Holy Spirit, which is what gave canonical status to these Old Testament books, is confined to the past, according to Philo and Josephus. Keener goes on to say Even where prophecy continued, it was rarely seen in the same terms as Old Testament prophecy. Josephus and Philo do not associate current inspiration with the Spirit. Qumran. This is the Dead Sea scroll community, the Essenes that produce the Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran documents associate prophecy in the Spirit only with the past. The early Christians, Keener says, seem to be noteworthy in overcoming this reluctance to apply the designation to contemporary figures. So the proclamation of the apostles that they were announcing the word of God through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit really broke the mold for first century Judaism which believed that that type of prophecy had ceased. The apostles believed that in the power of the Holy Spirit they were proclaiming the very word of God to their hearers. And thus they put their proclamation on the same level as the Old Testament canonical books. And the letters that were left behind by these apostles were very rapidly accepted and as being on a par with Old Testament Scriptures. We see this in second Peter chapter 3, verses 15B and 16, two Peter 3, 15B and 16. There we read, so also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. So here he's speaking of the Pauline epistles, which he identifies as being wisdom given from God to Paul. He says there are some things in them hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures. So by the time that the Epistles of Peter were written, we see that Paul's letters were already being accepted as being on a par with Old Testament Scriptures. And when you read the sub apostolic Church fathers, that is to say those church fathers who wrote immediately after the apostles, and we find them distinguishing very clearly between their own writings and the writings of the apostles that are found in the New Testament. They did not regard their own work as inspired, but they did treat the works that we today find in the New Testament as being authoritative. For example, Ignatius, who is one of the very earliest of the sub Apostolic Fathers, much earlier than the canon of Scripture being established, already spoke of a collection of writings which he called the Gospels and the Apostles, the Gospels and the Apostles. These were evidently the four Gospels and certain epistles of the New Testament written by people like Paul. So this would be the early evidence of the canon of Scripture already being accepted, including the four Gospels and various epistles. Now from the very beginning, these four Gospels and the Book of Acts were never doubted by anyone. Everyone recognized that the four Gospels and the Book of Acts were part of authoritative Scripture. So it wasn't the case that the Church selected these books to be in the canon or that they decreed that these books would be guarded as authoritative. Rather, these books imposed themselves upon the early Church. It was never doubted that these were the correct record of the life of Jesus and his teachings and the history of the early Church. So these were not selected or declared to be authoritative. They simply imposed themselves upon the early Church and were recognized right from the very beginning. In fact, even those who doubted the canonicity of some books that are today included in the canon of the New Testament always accepted the four Gospels, the book of Acts, 13 letters of Paul, first John and first Peter. I'll repeat that even though they may have doubted some of the other books of the New Testament, they always accepted the four Gospels, the book of Acts, 13 letters of Paul, first John and first Peter. And that is already a substantial enough canon to establish fundamental Christian doctrine as authoritative. These books were accepted as authoritative scripture even by persons who doubted some of the other books that were included eventually in the canon. Now, in the Eastern part of the empire, that is to say in the Greek speaking Eastern empire of Rome, there were doubts expressed about the Book of Revelation or as it's sometimes called, the Apocalypse of John. Some doubted that the Book of Revelation was really authoritative scripture. In the west, the Latin part of the Empire, some Church fathers expressed doubts about the Book of Hebrews. They didn't think that that should be an authoritative book. So there was some doubt expressed about those two books. But the rest of those books that I mentioned were universally recognized. In AD 175 we have the earliest list of canonical books belonging to the New Testament. And this is a list that was discovered by a an Italian scholar named Ludovico Muratoni. And so it's called the Murratonian canon. And the Murratonian canon dates from around A.D. 175. As I say. What belongs in this list? What is listed in the Muratorian canon? Well, it includes the four Gospels, the book of Acts, 13 letters of Paul, the book of Jude, two letters of John and the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of John. It doesn't mention Hebrews first and second Peter or James. So the Muratorian canon doesn't mention those books, Hebrews first and second Peter, James. Interestingly enough, the Muratorian canon does accept the wisdom of Solomon as canonical and it also accepts the Apocalypse of Peter, which is not in our New Testament today. This Apocalypse of Peter is not the same thing as a Gnostic document that goes by a somewhat Similar name. This is something different. And the Muratorian canon includes it in the year A.D. 200. Another church father named Caius provides a similar list of accepted books. He lists the same 21 canonical books that are found in the Muratorian canon, so that this shows that there was a pretty firm conviction about those books at that time. So I think you can see from the list of New Testament books that I've provided that the issue of canonicity was never about are there things outside the New Testament that should have been included in it? Rather, the doubts were, are there things in the New Testament that should have been left out? So there were some doubts expressed by certain Church fathers about Hebrews and Revelation, for example. But if anything, what we have in the canon would be too many books, but not too few. So we don't need to worry, I think, that there may be some inspired book that has been left out of the canon and that therefore we're deficient because we lack this book in our authoritative Bibles. Nobody was worried about that. The only concern was, did something get in that should have been left out by the year A.D. 340, the church, Father Eusebius gives the list of the canonical books of the New Testament and that we accept today by all Christian denominations, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox. So we might ask the question, well, what qualifies a book then to be in the canon? The way Protestants answer this question is typically by saying that the canonical books have to come out of the apostolic circle. Either they were written directly by an apostle, or they were written by those who were associates of the apostles. For example, Luke. Luke wasn't an apostle, but as an author of a Gospel and an associate of the apostles, he comes out of the early apostolic circle. So having an origin in the apostolic circle would be a necessary condition for being canonical. Also, consistency with the other books already recognized as canonical would be a necessary condition of being in the canon. You couldn't have something in the canon that was inconsistent with the other canonical books. And then finally, frankly, Protestants trust in the Holy Spirit to guide the Church and in recognizing those books of Scripture in which we hear the word of God spoken to us. Now, this criterion is admittedly more subjective, but it is saying that through the words of the New Testament that have been assembled, we sense that God speaks to us through these books, and therefore we believe that these are the limits of the canon. Now, I don't think, however, that we should think of the canon as something that is decided upon by men. I think it's Rather the opposite. As we've seen, these books rather imposed themselves upon the Church. The Church recognized them as being authoritative and therefore part of the canon. There was never any question that the apocryphal Gospels, for example, and other forgeries that were written centuries later should ever been included in the canon. Popularizers like Dan Brown in his book the Da Vinci Code, who present the Church as being some sort of conspiratorial alliance to destroy these other Gospels and prevent them becoming part of the Bible is just a total fabrication and distortion of. Of Church history. Right from the very earliest time, the Gospels and Acts imposed themselves as the authoritative record of the life of Jesus. And everybody knew that these later so called apocryphal Gospels, like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Philip and so forth, were forgeries that arose decades and even centuries after the death of Jesus and therefore were spurious. So the only question that the Church really faced was with regard to certain books, there were some doubts expressed as to whether or not they should be in the canon. But here's what's critical. I think even if you rejected those books as canonical, say you didn't admit Hebrews or Revelation, nothing essential to Christian doctrine would be lost because there is no Christian doctrine that is taught uniquely by those books and depends solely upon those books. And so there is no harm in recognizing them as canonical since they are in harmony doctrinally with the indisputable books of the canon. And so I think we simply trust God in providentially ordering history such that these books which he has inspired commended themselves to the early Church fathers and imposed themselves upon the Church from a very early date. Any question about questions of canon? Yes, down here in the front, Cindy,
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wasn't it true there was some people that were coming into the Church bringing false doctrine and these books were kind of examples of, you know, these miss. These other attempts to bring false doctrine into the church. Am I correct?
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Yes, you are, Cindy. That's right. When you look at these apocryphal Gospels, these are not really Christian documents. They're Gnostic.
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Gnostic.
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They come out of pagan philosophy and religion, and Jesus is merely used as a convenient mouthpiece for spouting gnostic doctrine. So you look at something like the Gospel of Thomas, for example. This isn't a life of Jesus. Jesus is just like the ventriloquist dummy that then is made to spout the gnostic doctrine. So you're quite right that there were certainly efforts to use Jesus and Christianity as a means of propagating pagan philosophical and religious thought. And as I say, the Church repudiated
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these at Constantinople, in some cases.
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Excuse me, at Council of Nicaea. Well, that was where the Arian heresy was condemned, which said that Christ or Jesus is similar in essence to the Father, but he's not the same in essence to the Father. That the Father alone is truly God, and Jesus is a kind of God with a lowercase g. He's a sort of. Well, he's the Father's charge. In effect, he's a creature. He's made by God or begotten. Well, they said he was begotten, but he was made or created by God, and therefore not really God, however exalted and elevated he may have been. So the primary purpose of the Council of Nicaea was to condemn this Arian heresy and affirm the full equality of the Son and Father. And we'll talk about that in some detail when we get to the doctrine of the Trinity. Okay, well, we're out of time, but we can continue this discussion next week if you would like. Let me simply ask us to bow our heads as we read the benediction now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory, with rejoicing to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen.
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The copyright for the content of this program is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.