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II. CANON

1 SIXTY­ SIX BOOKS

‘In the Bible there are sixty-six books, Genesis to Revelation.’ This statement expresses the fact in its most obvious sense that there is wide diversity between the various component writings that make up the whole Bible. It expresses the fact that there are a great number of writings coming from different times, different places, different persons, written in different styles and with different purposes in mind.

‘In the Bible there are two books: the Old Testament and the New Testament.’ expresses the fact that there were separate collections of literature, one of thirty-nine and the other of twenty- seven pieces. One is called ‘old,’ and the other is called ‘new.’ This expresses their difference. It also expresses the fact that they were considered to have sufficient unity for both to go by the same name, the name of ‘testament’!

‘The Bible is one book, the Holy Scriptures.’ We speak of the unity of these diversified materials. We think of these sixty-six, and these two, books as in some sense one. We must not take this unity for granted.

Why are there in this collection sixty-six books, no more and no less? Why did the Old Testament get put alongside the New Testament? Why is it in this case, as in no other religion, that

Christians have taken over as a whole the book of another religion, a book moreover which is very considerably longer than their own distinctive writings? Why did those who read the Old Testament alongside the New Testament call it the ‘Old Testament’? The Hebrews called it the Tanach or ‘The Law, the Prophets and the Writings.’ It was thus itself the putting together of three books, each of which had its own story. Why did they put these three books together? Why did they, as the later Christians did, then treat them as one book?

Further questions arise. What has the recognition of the books as special, unique, got to do with their being put together, used and preserved? How did they, whoever they were, come to recognize just this number of books? Why does the contemporary Christian accept their decision about which were the books to put in and which to leave out of the collection?

Most Christians never even raise the question. They find a trimly bound book, sometimes printed on India paper and edged with gold, with the title ‘The Holy Bible,’ and they take for granted that it has unique authority for their faith and for their church, and are not the least bit concerned that this collection of writings has had a history. But the collection as it is now is not the same as the collection it has been at other times and in other places. Sometimes there have been more than sixty-six and sometimes effectively rather less.

2 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STORY OF THE BIBLE

It is essential then that we look back. The reason is that unless we look back at their history we shall not be able to understand, let alone answer, the question, ‘Why does the Christian community take these particular books to be distinctive?’ An adequate doctrine of the Bible must give careful consideration to the story of the book. ‘The history of the canon can and must be the foundation on which any modern doctrine of Scripture shall be built.’10 When we examine that history, we find that decisions which make a difference to the books considered were taken at specific times and with good reason. ‘For some who first discover as adults that the canon has not always been as we now have it, but came about via a long and complex history, serious questions about its inspiration and authority may arise.’11

Christians took over the Jewish Scriptures as a whole. The Bible, a set of documents, came from a time span of at least a thousand years. That is a very, very long time. The Old Testament represents traditions which go back even further than that. It is an extremely varied collection of many kinds of literature. So it is fitting that we address ourselves to two questions: first, how did this collection of writings come to be written and put together i.e. become a whole; and second, how did this collection of writings come to be acknowledged and accepted as ‘sacred’ writings? Other writings did not. Why these? Why were some taken and others left?

The first important point is that the books circulated and were given a standing in the community. In the case of the Old Testament it was the Jewish community. Members of that community read them and chose them from among others. The standing they had in the community derived from the experience and the judgment of that community, as it read and used them. These writings gained an authority which other books did not. In due course they achieved a status. They became sacred books.

It is interesting that the term ‘scripture,’ which etymologically simply means ‘writing,’ has itself come to acquire a special meaning, namely writings which have particular value for religions, and so ‘holy’ writings, writings set aside from ordinary use, writings which ‘defile the hands.’ Such holy writings are distinguished from others by being set aside, considered as having a special status and repeatedly used within the religious community.

3 THE OLD TESTAMENT

The process by which the books of the Old Testament came to have authority was a gradual one. It was complete roughly bythe beginning of the Christian era. The books of the Old Testament are divided into three groups: the Torah, or Law, the Nebi’im or Prophets and the Kethubim, or Writings. The Prophets are divided into two and called the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets. The Former Prophets include the history books.

The Law includes narratives of ancient Israel and codes of law. The whole is divided into five parts and thus comes to be known as the Pentateuch. This collection is the core of the Old Testament. It was the first to become recognized as sacred literature by the Jews. It was promulgated by Ezra and was the foundation of the Jewish community after the Exile (which ended 538 BC). It thereafter had a special status in Jewish life.

The Prophets, the second section, includes writings separated by several centuries. Later prophets quote earlier ones. The writings representing the earlier prophets were in circulation before the later prophets wrote. By about 200 B.C., a body of writings other than the Law was in circulation. However, we must stress, this does not mean that such a body of writings is fixed and settled, either as to its text or as to its extent. Obviously such a book-collection is incomplete until the last book to be written is included. If this is Zechariah, or a part of it, that will be about 135 B.C.

The Writings, the third section, is a collection of different kinds of literature. It began with a small group of writings which grew as time passed. It includes the ‘wisdom literature’ namely Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. There is poetry, the Psalms, the hymn book of the second temple. Psalms came to be significant because of its being used in worship. So the Writings established themselves as having special importance through the use to which they were put, long before the Christian era.

This does not mean that the boundary between the scriptural and non-scriptural books was clearly, formally and decisively drawn. It is usage that provides the basis for more formal recognition. The fact is that collections of writings, which include other books than these, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, were being used in Jewish communities, for example by the Essenes and at Alexandria. If the Jews were not clear as to the extent and the limits of their canonical literature, how could Christians be clear about it? The debate continued long into the Christian era.12

Meanwhile the Greek culture and language sponsored by the successors of Alexander the Great (who died 323 B.C.) had spread throughout the empire. The international language was Greek, a language used in ordinary human affairs. It was called koine (common) Greek. The Jews who lived in the cosmopolitan centres in the Empire understood Greek and used it. They lost the ability to speak Aramaic. To make the Jewish Scriptures available to this population, a group of scholars translated the Hebrew Scripture into the Greek language. Ptolemy II (285 - 246 B.C.) sponsored them. The result was the Septuagint, sometimes known by the symbol LXX, the Latin term for ‘seventy’. The atmosphere in Alexandria where it was produced was liberal and it may well be that a longer canon was accepted there than elsewhere. There was uncertainty regarding the extent of the canon.

Jerusalem fell in A.D. 70. Jewish leaders felt it imperative to settle the question of the limits of the canon and so to put an end to uncertainty about it. Meanwhile Christian writings were in circulation, and apocalyptic writings were becoming very popular indeed. The so-called Council of Jamnia in A.D. 90 limited the Old Testament canon to the non-Greek books, which they believed were in existence before prophecy had ceased. It ceased, they thought, in the period after the Exile. Since the Law and the Prophets had already been decided, it was a question of fixing the limits of the Writings. The criterion was that the book be in harmony with the Torah.413

Jews who became Christians brought the Septuagint, the Greek version of their Scriptures, with them. Paul knew it well and quoted from it. Gentiles, who accepted the Christian faith, found the Old Testament already in an authoritative position. They accepted its authority and assumed its inspiration. They all knew that Jesus quoted the Old Testament. They knew also that Christian preachers held it in esteem, using it in teaching, counselling and proclamation.

The church thus readily accepted the Old Testament into its life and witness without question. They believed that God had inspired these writings. This understanding of inspiration was in due course applied to the Christian writings themselves. However when the New Testament refers to ‘Scripture’ or to ‘inspiration,’ it has in mind some book or books of the Old Testament.

What was the underlying reason why the canon as a whole, that is to say a certain body of books, was accepted by Christians? To this question there is an historical and a theological answer. Christians achieved community as they read their experiences in the light of the ideas and experiences of the Hebrew community. The new community of Christians thought of itself as in continuity with the older community, the Hebrew people. With the coming of Jesus and of faith in him, something decisive had happened, and now for the first time the language of the Old Testament was applied to Jesus. Christians saw him as the fulfilment of Old Testament hopes. Some of the New Testament writings were written with the Jew particularly in mind, for example Matthew and sections of Romans. ‘Christ’ was itself a key term.

Christians inherited the idea of a holy book. The New Testament books were produced in the context of a community which accepted the Old Testament as a holy book. So the New Testament speaks of ‘scripture.’ The New Testament refers to the book with the words, ‘It is written.’ The New Testament writers see the events which are their central concern as fulfilling what that book, the Old Testament, had said. That is not, of course, a sufficient ground for putting the two collections of books together and treating them as one, as a unity. They could have emerged as two independent collections. Or, since the events of the New Testament were treated as fulfilments of the Old Testament prophecies, the New Testament could have superseded the Old. What was the point of retaining the Old? Why did they not say that the prophecy has been rendered redundant by its fulfilment and dispense with it? Why take the two together as one complete whole? The New Testament believers and writers thought of themselves as part of the ongoing history. They believed their history to be in continuity with the events in the history of the Hebrew people. The God who had acted in that history had now acted in the new event, the event of Jesus Christ. So the earlier history could now be understood in relation to the faith in Jesus Christ which was the unifying feature of the new community. Christians took the Hebrew past as their own past. They found a ‘fit’ between themselves and that Hebrew past, with its developing belief in God.

Once Christians expressed this continuity by adopting the book of the Jews as their own they had to undertake the task of interpreting the Old Testament in a suitable way. For there was much there. Could it, in all of its diversity, be christianised?14

For the writers whose works appear in our New Testament, the only book which could be called ‘Scripture’ was the Old ‘Testament.’ This was their only written source of authority. By the end of the first century there were collections of Jesus’ sayings.15 The epistles of Paul were known and so were the Synoptic Gospels. II Peter is probably the latest book of our New Testament, a pseudonymous book as all the evidence indicates. It informs us that Paul’s writings are being misinterpreted and perverted. This means that they have begun to be taken as Scripture. The crucial passage reads: ‘There are some things in them (that is the Pauline letters) hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.’716 What then are these ‘other Scriptures’?

The Scriptures being accepted are the Old Testament. Then there are the letters of Paul, to which II Peter makes direct reference in this passage.17 The fact that II Peter speaks of these in the plural means that there are many which he knows, including some of the later ones. II Peter alludes to the Gospel of Mark, in the reference to the transfiguration.18 So he knows and probably recognizes the Gospels as Scripture. If II Peter is typical, we have a good idea of the situation at the beginning of the second century. To sum it up then: By around A.D. 100 Christians have accepted

Old Testament books, Paul’s letters, and Gospels.

4 THE WORD ‘CANON’

Now, a brief comment about the word canon. This word, kanon in Greek, had a variety of meanings, and was rather loosely used in early times. It meant a carpenter’s measure or rule, or (like a row of numbers on a measure) a list. A canon was an ideal standard, something which served as a norm. So canonical people or books were those whose names were found on a list. A collection of writings is called a ‘canon,’ for example at Alexandria, because it sets a standard and can serve as a model.

The term canon, when used of ‘Scripture,’ has three distinct meanings. All of them point to a collection of writings taken to have authority, to be unique. The word canon can be used of the books first, as they set the standard; secondly, as they conform to a standard; and thirdly, as they are found on a list.

Canonical books are recognized books. Recognition involves decision. Somebody at a particular place and time recognized such books. Somebody eventually drew up a list and, in so doing, expressed a judgment about the books on it and those not on it. To produce such a selection required a principle of selection. It takes time, a considerable amount of time, several centuries, for such a selection to be completed.

5 THE NEW TESTAMENT

We can trace the stages in this process. First the books are written and that process, in regard to the New Testament, takes us to the second century. Then the books circulate in the churches. This involves somebody copying them by hand, and taking them from one place to another, storing them carefully, at a time when Christianity was not a recognized religion and its meetings for worship were illegal. The next stage is that some people in different places, say Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, make a collection of the books and arrange them in an order which other churches throughout the Empire recognize. So a general recognition began to grow that there was a collection of books, some of them written by apostles, or by people associated with apostles and others of them thought to have been written by such people. These books helped the growing church to become stable in its beliefs in face of challenges. Gradually and with good reason it dawned on the leaders of the churches that it would be helpful to have the collection clearly defined. Lists of accepted books were produced and the different churches largely agreed. That list of books corresponds to the books which now appear in our Bibles. The compilation of a list of books which corresponds to our New Testament takes us into the fourth century.

The process is called canonization. To produce such a canon involves that those who make the selection know many books other than the books they finally recognize. Most contemporary Christians do not know of, let alone have read, other books than the books which came to be canonical. So they are not in a position to make a judgment about them and about the propriety of the selection. If one is not acquainted with the books not included how does one know that they were wisely excluded?

The alternative is simply to accept the decision of the church in the long ago past on these matters. Whether one realizes it or not that is what one is doing if one simply takes the Bible for granted.

Consider the following most interesting statement by Eusebius who wrote about AD 325.

Now the writings which bear the name of Peter, of which I recognize only one epistle as genuine and acknowledged by the elders of olden time, are so many; while the fourteen epistles of Paul are manifest and clear (as regards their genuineness). Nevertheless it is not right to be ignorant that some have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed by the church of the Romans as not being Paul’s.19

Eusebius knew many writings that bore the name of Peter. But, drawing on the judgment of the elders, that is to say, sources from the second and third centuries, he recognized only one writing as genuine which bore the name of Peter. It was not sufficient that the book be attributed to an apostle. But, it counted against it, if it could not be, as in the case of the book of Hebrews. Eusebius knew a lot of other books and made his judgment about the worthiness of what we call the first epistle of Peter on the basis of that knowledge, and on the basis of the attitude of former church teachers. It is clear that he has rejected II Peter, a book which appears in our New Testament. There were other writers who also found II Peter not to be genuine.

To put some books in means to leave others out. Why were the twenty-seven put in and the other dozens left out? Who decided that? Was it a good choice? Do we want to endorse that decision? If we do not, what difference does it make? There was no shortage of books. Many were left aside. Others did not survive. By the middle of the second century there were many writings. As well as the twenty-seven books which Christians are familiar with from their New Testament there were such books as the two Epistles of Clement, the Didache, or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the Shepherd of Hermas, Letters of Ignatius, the Epistle of Barnabas, Polycarp, various Gospels and Apocalypses, the Wisdom of Solomon.

Already there were different assessments of all these books. Not all churches agreed as to what were and were not acceptable books, as to which ones were written and which ones were not written by apostles or by someone closely associated with an apostle. From early lists we know that there were several disputed books, books whose standing as Scripture was questioned. These were Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, Jude and Revelation.20 These books were included in later lists, but in assessing their position, we should not overlook the fact of earlier judgments about them. From the beginning the church was aware that some of the books it would later endorse were less important, and less widely accepted than were others, less important in particular than the Gospels and the letters of Paul.

It was not until judgments and lists began to appear that it could not agree with, that the church made an effort to secure uniformity. The heretic Marcion produced a list of books which led the church to give attention to the matter. By the end of the fourth century the church came to agree, almost unanimously, on the twenty-seven books which form our New Testament.21 That decision and that list was handed down and was accepted thereafter as right. The limits of the Christian Bible had (it seemed) been finally decided upon. After the list had appeared in the Festal Letter of Athanasius in A.D. 376 there is no serious question as to which books constituted the New Testament.

It is important to observe that while councils made such pronouncements, it was not the pronouncements that established the authority of the books. The books were not authoritative because they were included on a list, because a council or two, or an archbishop or two, or a pope or two, pronounced them so. They were included on the list because they had already won recognition. The fact that a list is made does not confer status on the books. It constitutes a formal recognition that the books have performed and are performing a most important function in the church. It gives formal recognition to a state of affairs in the church. These books were the books the communities were reading and were finding helpful in promoting their life and mission, worship and proclamation. The church in her practice had already settled the question. The pronouncements of the synods and the lists drawn up endorsed and expressed the implications of that practice.

Christians pronounced on the limits of the Canon for three particular reasons:

1 to exclude heretical books, such as those of the Gnostics, whose teachings ran counter to the teachings of Christianity.

2 because an unsatisfactory list of writings had appeared. This was Marcion’s canon. Marcion separated the God of the Old Testament (whom he rejected) from the God of Jesus. He ‘mutilated’ Luke and dismembered the letters of Paul,22 so as to make them agree with his teaching. These two reasons are historical ones.

3 Underlying them is the theological conviction that for a collection of books to have authority, you have to be quite clear which books are to be included. The limits of that collection must be clearly fixed.

When the books are taken as doctrinal sources, as providing the resources for true teaching, it is obviously necessary to know precisely which books are to be taken in this way, and which other writings are not. If we are going to get authoritative guidance for both practice and teaching, we have to know which are reliable books to give such guidance, and which are not. A decision is appropriate, provided such guidance is sought for. Agreement in the Christian community that certain teachings, for example about faith, about Jesus, about the resurrection of believers, are true, goes along with an agreement about those books that teach correctly. So the ideas of heresy and of unacceptable writings develop together in the formative period of the church’s growth. So do the ideas of orthodoxy and of canon.

But what do we mean when we say that the church used, endorsed and then formally recognized particular writings?

We should not take for granted the idea that Scripture is holy. Christopher Evans raises the question sharply. He asks, ‘Is Holy Scripture Christian?’23 The fact is that the books of the New Testament came to be regarded as holy Scripture. How did they? Various explanations have been offered.

1 The writings came to have authority because of their contents.

2 The writings came to have authority because they were written by authors who were recognised as having authority, by apostles.

3 The writings come to have authority because they are included on a list which is considered authoritative, that is to say canonical.

A writing comes to have influence as it is read widely and accepted as helpful and edifying for the growing and struggling Christian community. Because it actually built up the communities the writing would, by that very fact, have approved itself. It would have shown its worth, its merit. It would then be accepted as authoritative, because it had shown and was showing its value in its effectiveness. It exhibited its ‘authority’ by its effects. It thus ensured its place in the actual life of the church. This is what some writers mean when they say that it is ‘self-authenticating.’ It is not necessary to appeal from the writings and their effect in edifying the church to some other, external, criterion, for example: to who wrote them, or to whether they appear on a list which is officially accepted. It is enough that they nurture the faith of the community.

The books at first held their place because of their effect upon the groups of believers who read them. Paul’s writings were effective. They built up the piety and unity, doctrinal and practical, of the congregations to which they were addressed, and of the wider church in due course. This is what, I take it, Evans means when he says that the books made ‘profound religious sense.’ That was at the beginning. ‘It is, however, the case that the criterion of self-authentication is speedily overtaken by that of authorship, and the writings are then on their way to becoming canonical on other grounds.’24 Evans prefers such self-authentication to the appeal to apostolicity, finding that the evidence does not permit us to establish the ‘authority’ of the books on the ground of their being traceable either directly or indirectly to an apostle as their source. He regards such apostolicity as a fiction, a fabrication.

6 THE CANON AND THE QUESTION OF INSPIRATION

Christians inherited a doctrine of inspiration from the Jews. The doctrine of inspiration was later made into a very elaborate scheme and led to no little confusion. One thing is noteworthy. The term itself is not in evidence in the earliest judgments of the church about Scripture. Only much later did it become in some circles the standard, the orthodox way of speaking of the authority of the Bible. But from the beginning it was not so. And with good reason. You can, as did the early church, affirm the primary importance of Scripture without elaborating a theory of inspiration.

Would it be true to say that the books considered canonical had qualities which the doctrine of inspiration was later to emphasize? Are we able to say: because we recognize the books are inspired, we endorse their decision? But the fact is that it is just as difficult to determine whether a book is inspired as it is to say whether it is canonical We have already seen that the word ‘canonical’ has at least three meanings, namely (1) functioning in the community in a special way; (2) apostolic, that is traceable to an apostle or a close associate of one; and (3) being included on a list.

We shall discover that the term inspiration is also ambiguous and that we can give no simple answer to questions we have here raised. We do not simplify the problem by introducing a theory of inspiration to establish canonicity.

One procedure would be to accept the decision about the canon and starting there proceed to discuss inspiration. Or, one might start rather earlier, look at the practice of the church, consider the books available and ask whether, for whatever reasons, the books they chose were wisely chosen. One might then relate the reasons for accepting the books to the discussion of inspiration.

To conclude this section:

1 We cannot determine whether a book is canonical by finding out whether that book is inspired.

2 We cannot infer from how the book got written whether or not it has authority in the community. These are two different questions and we must not confuse them.

3 We cannot, without further ado, i.e. without further thought and investigation, simply accept the claim that the book or the writer is inspired or has authority, even if the book makes the claim for itself.

4 We must appeal to facts external to the writing to determine whether that writing has authority.

5 It is not sufficient to appeal to the fact that a book is included in a list of accepted books. Canonicity, in that sense, does not establish authority. We must ask whether we can agree with the reasons why the list was set up in the first instance in the way it was, and whether it has continuing relevance.

6 We must inquire whether the list they made of acceptable books still has contemporary relevance. To do that we shall set the books in the context in which they are used. For that is where the issue of their inspiration and their authority is properly discussed. We may not find these terms to be the most satisfactory.

To establish the status of a book we must consider the community in which the book is read and accepted, both its past — Who made the decision and why? — and the present — Who confirms the decision once made, and how? Does present attitude agree with past decision? Is there reason to reconsider, to reaffirm, or to revise older decisions once made? Answer these questions and then we may come to a reasonable view of the matter.

We conclude that the question of canonicity is the question of the book’s use and influence in the community. That is determined by empirical considerations, e.g. by asking, Does it have an influence which is unique? Books which have current influence have authority. Thus the question becomes central. What influence does the book have in the Christian community? Answer that and you have a dynamic rather than a formal answer to the question of Scripture. We must put practice into theory and then test the theory. We are then ready to address one further question: What sort of authority do such writings have?

7 A PARADOX

The contemporary church has inherited both the books and the decisions about which books are to be taken as primary and which as secondary. It inherits the decision and affirms it. But it does not examine all the books. It affirms the books it reads, and those it finds have been accepted. But it may not be aware of what other books there were, and are, to choose from. It does not say to itself something like: ‘Here are the books produced during the first two Christian centuries. Let us examine them, and choose the ones we consider appropriate and profitable to set aside for special use in the church. Something similar, mutatis mutandis, might be said about the Hebrew books.

We should ask: Why does a particular church community not do that? We can obtain and examine all these writings without difficulty. But most Christians have never read any of them. Why are we content to inherit and endorse a decision we did not make about which are the right books when we have not considered such books as, for example, actually were included in only some of the lists which were drawn up? Why do we continue to retain some books which were seriously questioned and whose place in the canon, i.e. on the list, was contested? Is it strictly honest to endorse such books as we are somewhat familiar with and exclude other books we have never read? Are we really prepared to leave that decision to someone else, without giving ourselves convincing reasons for endorsing that decision?

Of course Christians are influenced by decisions of the past in the way in which we use the writings. That these writings are handed down to us as those chosen by some historical decision means that we do not, and will not, read other important writings, or consider them in the same way as we consider these.

So Christians continue to use certain books and not others. That is the important fact, however it has been influenced by decisions of the past.

This means that most Christians, most of the time, simply endorse the tradition. They simply accept what has been handed down to them from the past. Even those who most enthusiastically affirm the principle of ‘the Bible and the Bible only’ depend upon the tradition about the canon so that they can identify what the limits of the Bible are. This is usually done without much concern or criticism. As a result we have a strange paradox: to affirm both ‘The Bible and the Bible only,’ and to affirm as well the traditional identification of the Bible, limiting it to those books which the tradition has affirmed. It is particularly ironical that most Protestants assert that the Bible stands alone, while relying upon tradition to identify which are the books which constitute the Bible, tradition which existed long before the divide between Protestant and Catholic took place.

So when the church acknowledges Scripture is this anything other than a formal recognition of sixty-six books?

The fact is that the effective canon is not identical with the sixty- six books which the church formally defines as its official canon. The church does not use all portions of the canon consistently. ‘The church’ refers to the congregation, the churchman, the preacher, the theologian, the individual believer. Each of these is a particular entity. By ‘use’ we refer to doctrinal definition, proclamation, devotional reading, liturgical practice and have in mind the distinctions we made at the very beginning of this book. It is essential that we now make a clear distinction. It is that between books formally and traditionally defined as canonical and books or portions of books actually, repeatedly and consistently used in the various activities of the church. The effective canon of the church consists of those books and parts of books the church actually uses. These are a limited selection and are drawn from the whole which the church formally calls its canon. The official canon is the list of accepted books. Some will be used frequently, some seldom, some not at all. The ‘canon’ sets the outer limit. Within that limit there is selection. This means that there are inner limits. In the performance of its varied activities the church appeals to certain portions of the writings whose outer limits are defined by the official canon. The books whose limits are formally defined and the books actually used repeatedly and consistently are not identical.

We might use technical language to make this important distinction.25 The community might say, We are not bound to an historical decision, a contingent decision about the canon, for the manner in which we use these books. The church identifies herselfby specifying which books she uses. That means that the definition of the canon is made by, and at the same time is an identification of, the church itself. The church identifies itself by specifying as canonical those writings it uses in its varied activities.

A further observation is important. We have in what precedes been speaking of the canonical books as formally defined, in contrast to books or portions of books actually used regularly and seriously. But, of course, books outside of the formally defined canon can, and often do, exercise as much or even greater influence on Christian understanding, worship and practice than writings from the canon of Scripture. What writing is effectively authoritative within the church will be assessed in proportion to the influence it exercises and the acknowledgment it receives. The writings of a teacher, a charismatic figure, a churchman, a theologian may, in a given community, have more effective influence than whole sections of the formal canon. That is an important fact of church life which the Protestant must take into account in understanding what the principle of sola scriptura can mean. The activity of the Holy Spirit, so the church claims, manifests itself in many ways in the church. Some of them may not be directly related to the actual words of formally canonical Scripture.

It looks as though the Protestant principle of sola scriptura might be compromised on two levels:

1 because of an acceptance of a definition of the limits of Scripture handed down by tradition, i.e. of an endorsement of the traditional pronouncements about the canon; and

2 because a non-Scriptural office or person or tradition may, in any given community, wield more effective influence and be referred to more consistently than the writings of the canonical Scripture, whole portions of which may be quietly left aside.

So a doctrine of Scripture cannot be isolated from the life and practice of the community which uses Scripture. Otherwise the doctrine becomes formal and the church’s claim concerning Scripture does not then correspond to its actual practice.

8 THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE CONSIDERATIONS

We conclude this chapter with a brief suggestion about the theological significance of these considerations.

1 That the books of Scripture have a history means that human elements play an essential part from the very beginning and throughout the whole process of the book’s production. It is necessary to say this only because (at times) there has been a misleading emphasis in the opposite direction, to play down, even to suppress, any reference to the human. We may then have to insist that the books are human productions because so much emphasis has often been laid on the divine.

2 It is then a matter of saying how to speak well of God’s revelation in and through the books whose history we can trace. Christians affirm that these are the books through which God reveals himself, as they recount how God revealed himself in the past. This book is the written Word of God because of its intrinsic relationship with God’s revelation to the church.

3 Authority means influence. These books have influence of a particular kind. Christians accept them for having had and for continuing to have such influence. We must then, in giving a theological account of Scripture in relation to the life of the church, carefully state what this influence is. This will require clear, unprejudiced thinking.

4 The context for discussion of the Bible is where the Bible is spoken of as Holy Scripture, where it is received as having a special status, where, if it happens, God reveals himself. The authority of the Bible is not a property which inheres in it and which can be demonstrated, for example by showing that it is inspired, but rather connotes a relation in which divine and human elements both play an important role. Hence our insistence that we observe what actually happens with regard to the Bible in the practice of the church.

We cannot do justice to the status of the Bible without dealing with the community, the church, in which the Bible is used, and in which judgments about the Bible are made and passed on, sometimes formally and sometimes informally. Only by speaking in relational terms shall we be able to do justice to the problem of the authority of the Bible.

10 Donald E. Gowan, Bridge Between the Testaments, p. 334.

11 Ibid. p. 331.

12 The Reformers decided that the so-called apocryphal books were to be read but not to be held as having authority. ‘The Roman Catholic church at the Council of Trent (AD 1545 - 1563) decided that the apocryphal books were to be included, since they had been long used in worship. So a difference arose among Christians.

13 B. W. Anderson comments: ‘These principles may strike us as being rather arbitrary. It would certainly not have detracted from Jewish Scripture, if for instance some reason had been found to substitute the Wisdom of Ben Sire or some of the psalms from the Qumran community for the Song of Songs or Esther. We must remember, however, that the question of the authority of most of the writings now found in the Hebrew Bible had been answered before the Academy of Jamnia, especially in the worship practice of the community. Those writings were preserved and used devotionally which spoke authoritatively to the community of faith.’ B. W. Anderson, op. cit., pp. 536-537.

14 It leads us into complex problems of interpretation. See below, chapters X and XI.

15 The evidence for this is presented in Robert M. Grant, The Interpretation of the Bible. Chapters III and IV.

16 II Peter 3:15,16.

17 Ibid.

18 II Peter 1:17-18.

19 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III. 3. 4-5.

20 Evidence for this is readily available. See J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius. pp. 144-146, 337-340.

21 Our list of twenty-seven books appears in the proceedings of the synod of Laodicea (AD. 363) and again in the proceedings of the synod of Carthage (AD. 397). A council held in Rome in AD 382 under Damasus agreed.

22 This is the language of Irenaeus. Cf. J. Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 97-98.

23 Christopher Evans, Is ‘Holy Scripture’ Christian? and Other Questions.

24 Ibid., p. 24.

25 D. H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology. pp. 105, The theological judgment that precisely these writings are canonical is an analytic rather than a contingent judgment. For historical judgments are contingent and uncertain. (Footnote 16).