The Canon of Scripture: How we got the Bible

The first thing we learn when we read the Book of God is that he is. The first thing we learn about him is that he created everything that is or ever will be. The second thing we learn is that he speaks. God speaks things into existence, he reveals himself as he speaks through his creation and through his people, Jesus is spoken one (the word of God). As one reads the Bible he sees that God is the primary communicator and he does it by means of the spoken word through is prophets and through his apostles and through his son the Lord Jesus. When we read carefully we see that men are communicators because they are like God who is the communicator. It is part of man having been created in the image of God.

We know that the Bible is the Word of God primarily because it says it is and assumes that it is. A simple examination of the various books of the Bible will show this to be true. But it is not the kind of revelation that we modern folks might expect. Is not full of tight syllogistic logic. Instead the bible is a set of books that talk about God and the things God expects of his people usually in the style of a story. So it is a collection of stories tied together saying the same thing, building on one another to reveal God, his character, and his redemptive purposes in history. This primary claim shows itself on virtually every page and in every situation. It says something like God is, man was created by God (along with everything else), man rebels, man is judged, man repents, God forgives, man is restored, man rejoices, God is glorified in all things.

There are a couple of places in the Biblical account where God anticipates the question, “How can we know if a man coming and saying he is bringing a message from the Lord is really a true prophet?” and he says that if the one claiming to be from God tries to lead the people of God after another god, he is a false prophet (Deut. 13:1-5). This is because if he is trying to lead the people after other gods, he cannot have been sent by the true God. God is a jealous God and will not share is glory with another. This false prophet is just that a false prophet and should be dealt with accordingly.

In another place when the issue of a false prophet comes up it is in the context of how can the people know if someone is claiming to be leading the people toward God, claiming to be a prophet, but is actually a false prophet speaking out of turn or in an immature way. God says in Deuteronomy 18:21 that if the one claiming to speak for God says something will happen that does not happen, or if he says something that is simply not true, he is a false prophet and should not be listened to. The context here is important because in it God is commanding the people to take great care to listen to and obey the commands of the prophets of God because they are speaking the words of God. This is why being able to distinguish true prophets from false prophets is so important and why the penalty for impersonating a prophet is such a serious breach.

In the Old Testament we have a record of God’s actions through the prophets, but God has also spoken to the world through the nation of Israel as God’s representatives in the world. In other words, it is not just the prophets who revealed God’s wisdom and Grace to the world, but also the life of the nation of Israel itself. This is why we take the historical books as canonical as well as the prophetic and wisdom books. God spoke through the prophets and through the nation and recorded it in the Book.

In the Old Testament, through the prophets and nation God revealed that he himself would one day be a man, a man who would die for his people in a sacrificial way and would rise from the dead. This person was Jesus of Nazareth. When Jesus was in his earthly ministry he chose 12 men to represent him in the earth after he ascended to the father. The men, apostles were to lead the church into all the world making them into disciples and teaching them everything Jesus had taught them about the Kingdom of God, based on what the Older testament had taught.

The New Testament is this apostolic teaching personified, again, in a book. The apostles taught went from Jerusalem, into Judea, and then into all the world teaching about Jesus and God’s salvation. They wrote preached, taught, wrote historic accounts, wrote letters and even prophet books. What we have in the New Testament is the teaching about Jesus after his coming whereas in the Old Testament we have the teaching about Jesus before his coming. Again, the book is full of the teachings of the people of God from the perspective of both apostles and church (whereas in the Old Testament it was prophets and Israel).

Again the issue of truth and error raised it ugly head when the saints began to wonder which books and letters should rightly be included in the collection of books called the Word of God. In the Old Testament the tests were: Did the prophet try to lead the hearers after other Gods? Was their teaching in line with former teaching? And did everything the prophet said would happen come about when and how he said it would? In the New Testament the test of an apostle included everything taught in the Old Testament plus, did the one claiming to be an Apostle live with Jesus, see him after his resurrection and was he appointed by Christ to be an apostle (cf. Acts 1:15-26; 1 Tim. 2:7)?

Years later, after the last apostles had died, the church struggled with which books to include in the canon of Scripture. Fortunately, Jesus had given authority to the church to make decisions about things pertaining to the kingdom of God for she was the kingdom of God, one loaf with Christ, Christ’s body, collectively Christ on earth. What this means is that when the church speaks authoritatively on any subject, that is truth. So, in various church counsels discussed which books should be included in the Bible and over time recognized what we have today as the Bible. They based their decision on what the Jews had assumed to be Scripture before Christ’s birth (the Old Testament) and books that were written by Apostles or by people closely related to the Apostles (the New Testament).

There is a theological issue that needs to be mentioned here. First, the church did not create the Bible by choosing which books should be included and which ones should be excluded. They used their criteria for choosing, looked on their shelves and arranged those books which fit the criteria. They recognized the Word of God as the Word of God according to the standards set by the Word of God. In doing so they maintained the standards set from the very beginning for recognizing God’s word when it came to them. Did the text lead them after other gods? Did it reveal truth in line with what had already been revealed? Did what it said would happen happen? Was it brought be legitimate messengers? In every case the books in our Bible are books that answer ‘yes’ to those questions. And the church recognized them as such.

Second, the church did create the Bible when they met in council and decided which books to include and which ones to exclude. The books included can never be removed and those excluded can never be excluded because the church acting as she did, was representing Christ with all of is power and authority. Because Christ left the church in the world to represent him to the lost, she is responsible to make corporate decisions that stand because of who the church represents.

Finally, the councils that decided which books should be included in the Bible did not recognize the books we call the Apocrypha as scripture until after the Reformation had begun. They found these books to be helpful and good, but not the Word of God. Therefore, because the church proclaimed them to be non-Biblical the church today does not recognize these books as canonical.