The Canon of Scripture - A Presuppositional Study

2. Who may canonize scripture?

It is the position of this book that prophets alone could canonize the Scriptures. The Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox recognize that apart from an infallible or authoritative determination, we cannot know what is canonical and what is not. However, we have already seen that neither church has an infallible tradition or even a non-changing viewpoint on canon. But there is another option:

It is the Protestant position65 that the same inspired prophets who gave a revealed text that was infallible also gave canonical status to that text the moment it was written. The formation of every facet of the Scriptures was a prophetic task. Christ used the phrase “the prophets” to refer to every book of the Old Testament (Luke 24:25-2766), and Paul used the phrase “the prophetic Scriptures” to refer to all the New Testament Scriptures that were giving “the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began” (Rom. 16:25-26). Peter speaks of the New Testament Scriptures as being “the prophetic word confirmed” (2Pet. 1:19 with vv 19-21). According to Scripture all prophecy was inspired and all Scripture was prophecy.67 Only the prophets could add to the canon and only the prophets could close the canon.68 The whole canonization process was prophetic.

One must not think of canonization as the church giving its imprimatur to a book that was not previously recognized as canonical. Even as a book was being written it was recognized as being prophetical (Rev. 1:3; 22:7,9,10,18,19; see Ex. 17:14; 24:4; 34:27; Numb. 33:2; Is. 34:16; etc). Chronicles repeatedly makes mention of the Scriptural status of Samuel-Kings. But the histories also refer to the Prophets and vice versa. 2 Chronicles 36:21 quotes Jeremiah 25:11 as authoritative. Daniel 9:2 quotes the same passage as being one of “the books” of the Bible. Jeremiah 26:18 quotes Micah 3:12. The Old Testament prophets frequently recognized previous prophetic writing as part of Scripture.69 For example, Zechariah 7:12 accuses the people saying, “Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets.” He is referring to a body of writing that was already composed of law and prophets, but the phrase “former prophets” implies an ongoing prophetic inscripturation that was happening even with the book of Zechariah.70 The Bible is seen as either “the book” (Psalm 40:7), “the book of the LORD” (Is. 34:16), “the book of the Law” (Neh. 8:3; Gal. 3:10), “the Law of the Lord” (Ps. 1:2; Is. 30:9) or other titles showing the unity of Old Testament Scriptures. Each of these references implies a canonical status that the Scriptures already had.

As we will see in chapters 6 and 7, the Bible anticipated the prophetical writings of the New Testament and gave a beginning and an ending point to those writings (Is 8-9; Dan 9:24-27; Zech. 13; Joel 2:28-32). The prophet Moses anticipated the coming of Christ and His revelation. (cf. e.g. Deut. 18:15,18 with John 1:21,25,45; 5:46; 6:14,7-40; Acts. 3:22-26; 7:37). Thus the Old Testament ends by anticipating the Revelation of Christ (Malachi 3-4) and the New Testament begins by referring to Malachi (Luke 1:17) and other connections with the Old Testament (Matt. 1-3; etc.).

New Testament prophets also recognized and upheld other prophetic Scriptures. For example, they treated the Old Testament as being a fixed canon of Scripture made up of the Law, the Writings and the Prophets (cf. e.g. Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 22:29,40; Luke 16:16; 24:44; John 10:34-35; 19:36; Acts 18:24; 28:23; Rom. 1:2; 1Cor. 14:21; 2Tim. 3:15). The whole canon of the Old Testament together is called the Scripture (John 10:35; 2Tim. 3:15; Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 22:29,40; Luke 16:16; 24:44; John 10:34-35; 19:36; Acts 18:24; 28:23; Rom. 1:2; 1Cor. 14:21; 2Tim. 3:15) and the New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament over 1600 times, with many more allusions. Even the very order of the books in the Jewish Bible is implied in Matt. 23:35 and Luke 11:51. These last references are very significant because 1) they endorse the Hebrew canon, which excludes the apocrypha found in the Septuagint,71 2) and they imply the then-current view that prophetic revelation ceased in the Ezra/Malachi period.72 This second implication also excludes the pre-Christian apocryphal writings.

Even the New Testament canon was determined by first century prophets.73 We will see that the apostles were indeed prophets when writing or speaking infallibly and thus called the New Testament writings “the prophetic Scriptures” (Rom. 16:26). John’s apostolic book of Revelation was “the prophecy of this book” (Rev. 22:7,10). Paul said, “If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual,74 let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord” (1Cor. 14:37). Recognizing 1 Corinthians as a canonical text was obviously a duty of New Testament prophets, not of uninspired churchmen. These prophets were present in every city of the empire (Acts 20:23) in order to confirm the “mystery” of New Testament revelation (see Eph. 3:2-7; Rev. 10:7; Heb 2:3; Rev. 19:10).75 Thus it wasn’t just Paul who was commissioned to help others to “see the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden” (Eph. 3:9; see v. 3), but this was the function of all God’s “holy apostles and prophets” (Eph. 3:5 in context). Paul prophetically revealed Luke to be Scripture (1Tim. 5:18). Peter by inspiration lumped all of Paul’s letters in with “the rest of the Scriptures” (2Pet. 3:15-16), and as a representative of the inspired prophets (see 2Pet. 1:19-20) said, “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place” (2Pet. 1:19). It is possible that Peter and John had a role in finalizing the gathering of canonical books, much like Ezra by inspiration finalized the canon of the Old Testament. Ernest L. Martin hypothesizes,

The Second Epistle of Peter is actually the key to the first canonization of the New Testament. It is an official statement to show how he and John (not long before Peter’s death) gathered together some written records which the apostles themselves either wrote, or authorized to be written, or sanctioned already existing works into a position of canonicity. Peter’s second epistle was written, among other things, for the express purpose of showing that the apostle John and himself were the ones ordained of God to leave Christians with the canon of the New Testament. It is not the later church who collected the 27 books of the New Testament… it was the apostles themselves who canonized the New Testament. Probably with Paul’s writings in hand, Peter then wrote his second epistle… sending it along with the writings he and Paul had collected to John… who would be the last remaining apostle…and who would perform the final canonization.76

But though a canon was being pulled together and would be completed with the book of Revelation when “the mystery of God would be finished” (Rev. 10:7),77 it is still clear that the books were canonical the moment they were written. For example, Paul quoted Luke 10:7 as already being a portion of Scripture (1 Timothy 5:18). Peter quoted all of Paul’s writings as having already been added to “the rest of the Scriptures” (2Pet. 3:16). Jude assumed that his readers would have 1Peter in their canon already when he quoted 1Peter 3:3 in Jude 18. Paul treated his own writings as being “the word of the Lord” (1Thes. 4:15) and praised the Thessalonians that they welcomed Paul’s words, “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe” (1Thes. 2:13). Obviously the recipients of these books received these books as canonical Scripture. The very juxtaposition of the Old Covenant with the “New Covenant” Scriptures (see 2Cor. 3:6,14) implies that the new should be read like the Old – as a canon of books given by inspiration of God through prophets.

We will later demonstrate that the canon was closed by AD 70. If this is true, there would have been no confusion in the early church as to what was Scripture and what was not. There was no wait of years before the churches read the New Testament books as Scripture. Instead, the New Testament books were read as already being part of the Scriptures as soon as they were written (1Thes. 5:27; Col. 4:16; Rev. 1:3), and were immediately copied and circulated to other churches to be so read (Gal. 1:2; Col. 4:16; 1Thes. 5:27; 2Pet. 3:15-18; Rev. 1:4,11), and the copies of the growing canon were archived in every church (see 2Pet. 3:15-18). All of this flies in the face of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theories of canonization and supports the Protestant view that the books of the Bible became canonical the moment they were written. It should be pointed out that many books have been written to demonstrate the falsity of the Roman...