Lecture 18: How We Got the Bible: Christ and the Canon

The lecture, section by section

1. The thirty second answer

   Why these sixty six books? Because Jesus Christ affirmed the canonicity of the thirty nine books of the Old Testament, and authorized his apostles to bring further revelation, which the twenty seven books of the New Testament record. The question of the canon is finally a question of authority, and the authority is the incarnate Word himself vouching for the written Word. Everything else in the lecture unpacks that sentence.

2. Inspiration determines canonicity

   A book is canonical because God inspired it, not because anyone voted: no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God, as 2 Peter 1 says, and Hebrews 1 traces the channel, God speaking through the prophets of old and in these last days in his Son. Old Testament canonicity runs through the prophets; New Testament canonicity through the Son and his appointed representatives.

3. Christ affirmed the Old Testament

   Jesus received the Jewish canon of his day, the law, the prophets, and the writings, the same content as the Protestant thirty nine, and treated its histories as fact, its prophecies as sure, and its words as God's. That canon did not include the Apocrypha, which is the short answer to why we do not either: those books never carried the endorsement of God incarnate. He disputed the leaders' interpretations constantly, and their canon never.

4. Christ authorized the New Testament

   In the upper room Jesus promised his apostles that the Spirit would teach them all things and bring his words to their remembrance, John 14, and would guide them into all the truth and disclose what is to come, John 16. That is the charter of the New Testament: supernatural remembrance behind the gospels, and continuing revelation through Christ's authorized men. To receive the apostles' writings is to submit to the Christ who sent them.

5. Isn't that circular?

   Busenitz meets the objection head on: yes, the argument is presuppositional, and every worldview finally rests its weight on some ultimate authority taken in faith. The Christian claim is that this faith is reasonable, internally consistent and externally verifiable, that the Jesus of Scripture is the Jesus of history, and that final certainty is the Holy Spirit's gift, opening blind eyes to recognize God's Word for what it is. There is no higher authority to appeal to than God himself.

6. What makes an apostle

   Three biblical criteria: an eyewitness of the risen Christ, and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that he was the last of all; directly appointed by Jesus Christ; and able to confirm his message with miraculous signs. The circle is therefore fixed: the eleven, Matthias, James the Lord's brother, and Paul. No one alive today meets the criteria, and the generation after the apostles knew it, calling themselves elders, bishops, and deacons, never apostles; Ephesians 2 assigns the apostles to the church's foundation.

7. Why the canon is closed

   Because further revelation was promised only to the apostles, the canon closed when the apostolic age ended. That is why the lecture is blunt about modern movements that reinstate apostles, by whatever capitalization: reopen the office and you have reopened the canon, and even the continuationist theologian Wayne Grudem argues there are no apostles today for precisely that reason. The New Testament's own provision for the post-apostolic church names two offices, elder and deacon, and no third.

8. The church recognized, it did not establish

   Against the claim that the church gave us the canon stands the actual test the church applied: did this book come from an apostle, or from someone writing under an apostle's direct oversight? Book by book the answer holds: Matthew and John, apostles; Mark, Peter's memoirs; Luke and Acts, eyewitness investigation under Paul's orbit, with Paul quoting Luke as Scripture in 1 Timothy 5; Paul's letters, confirmed as Scripture by Peter; James, Peter, John, apostles; Jude, the Lord's brother under James's authority; Revelation, John. Hebrews alone hides its author, but the early church received it as apostolic, and its thought is so thoroughly Pauline that it plainly stands under that umbrella. The church's slow care in sifting, provoked partly by Marcion's mutilated canon, was reverence, not doubt: the books were canonical from the moment they were written; recognition simply took time.

9. Five principles for recognizing the canon

   From Dr. Pettegrew's classroom: the credential principle, God's authorized messengers; the competency principle, only God adequately witnesses to himself, so Scripture identifies Scripture, as when Peter affirms Paul and Paul affirms Luke; the chronological principle, prophets for the Old, apostles for the New, and no Scripture outside their eras; the consistency principle, God cannot contradict himself, the Berean test of Acts 17; and the conviction principle, the Spirit's internal testimony in his people, the sheep of John 10 knowing the shepherd's voice.

10. Succession, Rome, and the open canon

    A question draws out the papal claim: apostolic succession, the pope as Peter's heir, is an anachronism read back into history on scant evidence, and its consequence is severe, for a pope speaking ex cathedra with apostolic authority means Rome's canon is not actually closed. The appeal to a parallel oral tradition fails the same tests: the fathers understood the apostles' tradition to be what was written down. Busenitz classifies Rome carefully: not a cult, which never had the truth, but an apostate church, one that had the truth and let the traditions of men bury it, as Israel's leaders had by the time of Christ. The lecture ends where the Reformation will begin: if Christ is Lord of his church, his Word is the church's authority.

1. Try the thirty second answer aloud in your own words. Where does it feel strong, and where would you want a second sentence ready?

2. The early church's caution about the canon was reverence, not doubt. Where do modern believers mistake careful discernment for weak faith, or the reverse?

3. If Christ's lordship settles the canon, what does daily submission to a closed canon look like in an age hungry for new words from God?