Grace
Theological Journal 11.1 (1991) 29-52
Copyright © 1991 by Grace
Theological Seminary. Cited with permission.
EVANGELICALS AND THE CANON OF
THE NEW TESTAMENT
M. JAMES SAWYER
The
conservative American evangelical apologetic for the shape of
the New Testament canon has been historically the weakest link in its
bibliology. Arguments for the shape
of the canon have been built upon
unexamined theological assumptions and historical inaccuracies. Con-
temporary evangelical apologists for the New Testament canon have
downplayed the reformers' doctrine of the "witness of the Spirit"
for
assurance of the shape of the New Testament canon, appealing instead
to historical evidences for the apostolicity of the New Testament
documents and to a theological argument of providence for the closure
of the New Testament canon in the fourth century. There are,
however,
methodological weaknesses with each of these appeals. It is suggested
the evangelicals reassert the doctrine of the "witness of the
Spirit" as a
key feature in their apologetic for the New Testament canon rather
than rely exclusively upon historical arguments.
* * *
THE PROBLEM OF CANON DETERMINATION FOR
EVANGELICALS
Over the past two decades American
evangelical scholarship has
risen ably to the defense of the doctrine of the inerrancy of the
Bible as a touchstone upholding the
historic position of the Church of
Jesus Christ with reference to its
authority. While volumes have been
penned discussing the nature of biblical inspiration and the consequent
authority of the scripture, it seems curious that in all the bibliological
discussions one crucial issue is scarcely mentioned: the issue of canon.
Apart from R. Laird Harris's Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible,1
Wilber T. Dayton's article, "Factors
Promoting the Formation of the
New Testament Canon",2 David Dunbar's chapter, "The Biblical
1R. Laird Harris, Inspiration
and Canonicity of the Bible, rev. ed. (
Zondervan, 1969).
2Wilber
T.
Canon,"
Bulletin a/the Evangelical Theological
Society 10 (1967) 28-35.
30 GRACE
THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
Canon," in Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon,3
Geisler and Nix's
discussion in their General
Introduction to the Bible,4 Merrill Tenney's
chapter in his New Testament Survey,5
and a recent series of articles in
Christianity Today,6 American
evangelicals who affirm the inerrancy
of Scripture7 have had little to say concerning the shape
of the canon.8
The twenty-seven books which compose the
New Testament scriptures
together with the Jewish scriptures are assumed to be the complete
written revelation of God to man without further comment or debate.
It
has been charged that conservative evangelicalism's reticence to
discuss the issue of canon is due to the fact that it "finds itself im-
prisoned within a
19th century biblicism which believes that to question
the canon is to undermine the authority of Scripture.”9 Outside the
evangelical fold, the question of canon has been debated for decades
with the discussion centering on the nature of canon itself. Emil
Brunner has noted:
...the
question of canon has never, in principle, been definitely an-
swered, but it is continually
being reopened. Just as the church of the
second, third and fourth centuries had the right to decide
and felt
3Donald
Carson and John Woodbridge, eds., Hermeneutics
Authority and Canon
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1986).
4Norman
Geisler and William Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible
(Chicago: Moody,
1971).
5Merrill C. Tenney, New Testament Survey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961).
Tenney's approach to canonicity mirrors closely that of Geisler and Nix, hence
it is not treated separately.
6The
February 5, 1988, issue of Christianity
Today (32:2) included five brief
articles covering different issues and perspectives on the subject of
canon; Ronald
Youngblood, "The Process: How We Got
Our Bible"; Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., "The
New
Testament: How Do We Know for Sure?"; Klyne Snodgrass, "
Not
Enough"; David G. Dunbar, "Why the Canon Still Rumbles"; Kenneth
S.
Kantzer, "Confidence in the Face of Confusion."
7Throughout
this discussion the term "conservative Evangelical" is
employed in the restricted sense of one who affirms the
inerrancy of Scripture.
More latitudinal Evangeli-cals
have recently published significant works on the
NT canon. Bruce Metzger's The Canon of the New
Testament (
1987) is the most significant of these by
an American, while British evangelical
scholar F. F. Bruce has published The
Canon of Scripture (
InterVarsity, 1988).
8Dayton's
article "Factors Promoting the Formation of the New Testament
Canon" is the one discussion which
raises some of the same issues that concern me,
but he focuses his attention in a different direction than
this article.
9Richard
Lyle Morgan, "Let's Be Honest About the Canon," The Christian
Century 84:717 (May 31,1967)
(italics mine). This confounding of the issues of
inspiration and canonicity occurs on both the conservative
and liberal side of the
theological spectrum. One need only
remember that some of those who do not
profess evangelical convictions attempt to prove that Luther did not hold
to
inerrancy since he questioned the canonicity of certain New Testament
books.
SAWYER: EVANGELICALS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 31
obliged to decide what was "Apostolic" and what
was not, on their own
responsibility as believers, so in the same way every
Church, at every
period in the history of the Church, possesses the same
right and the
same duty.10
While the issue could perhaps better be
stated that the church in every
generation has the responsibility before God to re-examine its founda-
tions, the thrust
of Brunner's comment is accurate. The question he
raises is the question of the certainty of historical knowledge. The
question has profound implications for the faith. How does the
twentieth century believer know in fact and with certainty that his
canon is the canon given by Jesus Christ?
I
would propose that the evangelical approach to canon deter-
mination has
historically been the weakest link in its bibliology.
This
weakness has persisted for several reasons. (1) Canon has not been a
pressing issue of debate on the larger theological horizon. (2) It has
been assumed that the canon
of the New Testament was closed defini-
tively in the
fourth century. (3) Apostolicity has been assumed as the
controlling issue because of the early mention of this feature by the
Fathers. (4) The New Testament canon has been accepted uncritically
because of the theological assumption that through divine providence
the early church was led (infallibly) to its canonical decisions.
This
discussion will address the question of the New Testament
canon by (1) looking critically at the traditional inerrantist
apologetic
for the canon, (2) tracing briefly the development of the New
Testament
canon up through the Reformation, and (3) proposing an alternative
method by which the believer is assured of the shape of the canon.
EVANGELICAL PROPOSALS ON CANON
DETERMINATION
Conservative
evangelical understanding of the criteria by which
the New Testament books were recognized as canonical follows the
basic outline laid down by B. B. Warfield and his fellow Princetonians,
Charles and
A. A. Hodge, over a century ago. These
criteria focused
exclusively upon the question of apostolicity. The unstated corollary of
apostolicity was the conviction that divine providence had led the
church to recognize all and only those books which were apostolic. An
examination of Warfield as a principle architect, and of R. Laird
Harris and Geisler
and Nix as contemporary adherents demonstrate
this outlook.
10Emil
Brunner, Revelation and Reason,
trans. Olive Wyon (
1946) 131.
32 GRACE
THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
B. B. Warfield
Warfield
echoed the sentiment of the early church in stressing the
primacy of apostolicity in canon determination.11 He argued
that
apostolicity was a
somewhat wider concept than strictly apostolic
authorship, although in the early church these two issues were often
confounded.12 "The
principle of canonicity was not apostolic author-
ship," contended Warfield, "but imposition by the apostles as 'law’.”13
The practical effect of this subtle
distinction is to allow for the inclusion
of books such as Mark, Luke, James, Jude and Hebrews which were
not actually penned by the apostles, but were, according to
tradition,
written under apostolic sanction. Warfield asserted that the canon of
Scripture was complete when the last book
of the New Testament was
penned by the apostle John.14 From the divine standpoint the
canon of
Scripture was complete. However, human
acceptance of an individual
book of that canon hinged upon "authenticating proof of its apostoli-
city." 15 The key idea here is the concept of apostolic law. Scripture was
authoritative because it was written by an apostle who imposed his
writing upon the church in the same fashion as Torah was imposed
upon
We
rest our acceptance of the New Testament Scriptures as authoritative
thus, not on the fact that they are the product of the
revelation-age of
the church, for so are many other books which we do not thus
accept;
but on the fact that
God's authoritative agents in founding the church
gave them as authoritative to the church which they founded….It is
clear that prophetic and apostolic origin is the very
essence of the
authority of the Scriptures.16
11F. F. Bruce surveys the concept of apostolicity in the early
church and documents
numerous occasions where this factor is mentioned as being a primary
criterion in canon
determination. He also mentions other issues related to
apostolicity which were mentioned
by some patristic writers as offering evidence that a book
was indeed canonical (The
Canon of Scripture, 256-69,
esp. 256-58). R. Laird Harris, surveying the same material,
insists that the sole criterion was apostolic authorship (Inspiration and Canonicity of the
Bible, 219-45, esp. 244-45).
12B.
B. Warfield, "The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament,"
Revelation and Inspiration (
13lbid.
14Warfield
argued here for a date of ca. A.D. 98 (ibid.), but since Domitian
died in A.D. 96 contemporary evangelical scholarship would
make this date ca. A.D. 95.
15Ibid.
(italics mine).
16B.
B. Warfield, "Review of A. W. Deickhoff, Das Gepredigte Wort und die
Heilge Schrift
and Das Wort Gottes," The Presbyterian Review 10 (1890) 506.
SAWYER: EVANGELICALS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 33
The fact that these manuscripts were
hand-copied, coupled with the
lack of modem methods of travel, made the slow collection of the
manuscripts a foregone conclusion.
The
problem for the church today, as Warfield admitted, is that we
cannot at this day hear the apostolic voice in its [a New
Testament
book's] authorization. Beyond the witness one apostolic book
was to
bear to another--as Paul in I Timothy
what witness an apostolic book may bear to itself, we cannot
appeal at
this day to immediate apostolic authorization.17
To
answer the question of canonicity, Warfield took as a test case
the Second Epistle of Peter, a book whose canonicity had been re-
peatedly doubted
over the centuries, and proceeded to investigate the
provenance of the epistle to prove
its canonicity. He asserted that if
one demonstrated that the letter was old enough to have been written
by an apostle and that the church had from the beginning held the
book to be an authoritative rule of faith, then "the presumption
is
overwhelming that the church from the apostolic age held it to be
divine only because it had received it from the apostles as divine."18
Having completed his external proof,
Warfield then examined critical
objections to Petrine authorship based primarily
upon internal evi-
dence to see if
indeed the critical were valid. The objections Warfield
dealt with were six. (1) Peter's name was frequently forged in the
ancient church. (2) The external support of 2 Peter is insufficient.
(3) The epistle plainly has borrowed
largely from Jude, which by some
was judged unworthy of an apostle, while others held this to be a
proof
that 2 Peter belongs to the second century, due to the assumed lack of
genuineness of Jude. (4) The author exhibits too great a desire to make
himself out to be Peter. (5) The author betrays that he wrote in a later
time by numerous anachronisms. (6) The style of 2 Peter is too diver-
gent from that of 1 Peter to have been written by the same individual.19
In typical style, Warfield concluded:
The
state of the argument, then, really is this: a mountain mass of
presumption in favor of the genuineness and
canonicity of 2 Peter, to be
raised and overturned only by a very strong lever of
rebutting evidence;
a pitiable show of rebutting evidence offered as a lever. It
is doubtless
true that we can move the world if the proper lever and
fulcrum be given.
17B. B. Warfield, "The Canonicity of Second Peter," in The Selected Shorter
Writings of B. B. Warfield-II, ed.
John Meeter (
formed, 1976) 48-49.
18Ibid., 49.
19Ibid., 73-74.
34 GRACE
THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
But
if the lever is a common quarryman's tool and the fulcrum thin air!
The woe to the man who wields it. What can such rebutting
evidence as
we have here really injure, except his own cause?20
Having dismissed the critical objections,
he concluded that the book
was genuine and that to question its canonicity is to lead the Church
astray into heresy.21
Warfield's
argument is closely reasoned. He refuted arguments of
his opponents by showing their inadequate basis and contradictory
presuppositions. However, even his colleague and friend at
Francis Landy
Patton, in eulogizing Warfield noted that the rationalism
of Warfield's system of logic was built upon probability which pre-
cluded the absolute certainty of his conclusions.22
R. Laird Harris
Harris's
1957 work, Inspiration and Canonicity of
the Bible, re-
vised in 1969,
was among the first in recent years to address seriously
the question of the canon from a conservative evangelical
perspective.
Harris follows Warfield closely in
insisting upon apostolic authorship
as the criterion for New
Testament canonicity.23 He goes beyond War-
field by denying that the Reformation principle of the witness of the
Spirit is a valid test of canonicity of a
book of Scripture.24 Harris
painstakingly demonstrates that the crucial question for the early
church was, "Was the work written by an apostle?" To answer
this
question he deduces numerous quotations from the ancient fathers
which attest the apostolic authorship of the New Testament books.
To
answer the question of the presence of books which make no
claim to apostolic authorship, he asserts that such books were written
by disciples of the apostles who carefully reproduced their master's
teaching. With reference to Mark, Harris notes the ancient tradition
connecting the second gospel with the Apostle Peter: "…Papias
explicitly states that the second Gospel is accepted because of Peter,
not because of Mark."25 Harris concluded:
It
appears that Mark and Luke were not mere second-generation disci-
ples who followed their masters in
time and wrote what they pleased, but
were disciples who followed the teachings of their masters
in such a way
that they presented their masters' teachings, and their
production had
20Ibid., 78.
21Ibid., 79.
22F.
L. Patton, "Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield," The
Review 19 (1921) 369-91.
23This
corresponds to the requirement of prophetic authorship as the requirement
for canonicity of an OT book.
24Harris,
The Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible,
292-93.
25Ibid., 239-40.
SAWYER: EVANGELICALS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 35
their masters' authority. ...We are reminded of Tertullian's use of the
phrase "apostolic men," referring to Mark and
Luke. In both cases It
should be noted that these are not mere companions of the
apostles but
are, as it were, assistants, understudies, who reproduced
their masters'
teachings. ...Quite clearly Mark and Luke are not
authoritative in
their own right; rather they are authoritative because of
their adherence
to their apostolic masters.
With
reference to the book of Hebrews, Harris cites the early
traditions which ascribe the work to Paul, noting that the lack of that
apostle's characteristic salutation was, according to Pantaenus,
due to
the fact that Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, rather than the
apostle to the Hebrews. He notes, too, the statement of Clement that
the epistle had been composed in Hebrew and then translated into
Greek by Luke.27 This early
testimony notwithstanding, Harris denies
Pauline authorship to the book of Hebrews
because the author of the
epistle himself claims to be a second generation believer (Heb 2:3-4).
But having said this he asserts that,
"No apostle other than Paul is
seriously mentioned in connection with the writing of Hebrews.”28
So
committed is Harris to the proposition of apostolic authorship,
that having noted the fact that the author himself claims to be a
second
generation believer, not of the apostolic
inner circle, he then notes that
wherever the epistle was accepted as canonical "it was accepted into
the
canon only in those places…where it was considered to be a genuine
work of Paul. Appeal was not made to its antiquity nor
to the testi-
mony of the Holy Spirit, nor
to any other auxiliary reason. Authorship
was what was decisive."29
Harris
recognizes the dilemma in which this position places him.
If the book is not Pauline in authorship, should it be excised from
the
canon? His previous judgment notwithstanding, he proposes that the
book was written by Paul
employing Barnabas as his amanuensis.30
"This would at once explain the
unquestioned acceptance (no other
anonymous work was so accepted), variation in style from Paul's, the
anonymity where the details of authorship were not known and only
the style problem appeared, and the double tradition of authorship in
other circles."31
While
he seriously proposes the Paul-Barnabas authorship of
Hebrews, he recognizes that this cannot be
proven beyond the shadow
of a doubt, and allows that there may have been some other amanuen-
sis. Even so, the basic thrust of the argument remains the same.
26Ibid., 244.
27Ibid., 264.
28Ibid., 266.
29Ibid., 268.
30Ibid., 269.
31Ibid., 269-70.
36 GRACE
THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
Apostolicity in the strict sense remains
the governing criterion for
acceptance into the canon.
Geisler and Nix
Norman
Geisler and William Nix evidence a widening of the
very
narrow position adopted by Harris. Taking a different starting point
than Warfield and Harris, they assert that canonicity is determined by
God. Humans do not determine canon; they merely discover the al-
ready existent canon which God has given. The key concept in the
discovery of canonicity was the recognition of a book's inspiration by
God.32 In addition, canonicity
is seen as being inexorably linked to
authenticity. While Harris made apostolicity the sole criterion for the
church's subjective determination of the already existent objective
canon, Geisler and Nix propose five
principles which guided the ancient
church in its discovery of canon. It should be noted that these five
principles involve assumption on their part. There is no documentation
from patristic sources that these principles were consciously
employed.
The
first of these principles is that of authority. Specifically, this
criterion looks at the book itself and asks the question, "Does it
have a
self-vindicating authority that commands attention as it communi-
cates?,”33 Many books were either rejected or doubted
because the
voice of God was not heard clearly.
The
second test for canonicity was that of the prophetic
nature of
the book. Whereas the former test looked at the book itself, this
test
looked at authorship. “ ...A book was judged as
to whether or not it
was genuinely written by the stated author who was a spokesman in the
mainstream of redemptive revelation, either a prophet (whether in Old
or New Testament
times) or an apostle.”34 This criterion evidences a
loosening of the principle of apostolicity which Harris asserts, since
Geisler and Nix would include New Testament prophets (presumably
Mark, Luke, James, Jude, the author of
Hebrews). By this test all
pseudonymous writings and forgeries are to be rejected.35
The
third test for canonicity which Geisler and Nix
contend was
operational in the early church was that of authenticity. By authenticity
is meant authenticity of doctrine rather than authorship. This test
would compare the teachings of any book vying for entrance into the
32Geisler
and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, 133.
33Ibid., 138. This criterion is akin to the Reformed
doctrine of the autopistie
of
Scripture.
34Ibid., 139.
35Ibid., 140. Geisler
and Nix are careful to point out that pseudonymity
adopted as a
literary device would not exclude a book from the canon.
The case in point here would
be the book of Ecclesiastes in which many understand the author to
have written
autobiographically as though he were Solomon. Such a device would in their view be
allowable since it involved no moral deception.
SAWYER: EVANGELICALS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 37
canon with the doctrine of the already accepted books. Since truth
cannot contradict truth, if the book under consideration was found to
be at variance with the rest of the canon it would automatically be
rejected as non-canonical.
The
fourth test was one of power.
"Does the book come with the
power