{"id":6578,"date":"2011-08-18T15:07:49","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T19:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/?p=6578"},"modified":"2011-08-21T11:40:49","modified_gmt":"2011-08-21T15:40:49","slug":"questioning-the-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/questioning-the-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"Questioning the Canon of Scripture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we looked at what I was taught in\u00a0Bible College and Seminary about “The Canonization of Scripture<\/a>.” By way of summary, Canonization is the process and standards by which the early church leaders selected which documents to include in the New Testament.<\/p>\n

Over the next few posts, I want to question and critique what I was taught, asking the questions about Canonization that I had neither the time nor the courage to ask while in Seminary.<\/p>\n

\"Dallas<\/p>\n

Before I ask these questions, I do want to make it clear that I am personally glad that the early church undertook this process. I agree with their conclusions, and I am glad that we have the 27 books of the New Testament that we do have, and no more.<\/p>\n

Having said that, I will show in the next few posts that the process and standards of Canonization undermines nearly everything else we evangelical Christians believe about the Bible, and so we must either change our view on some of these other things (such an inspiration and inerrancy), or we must decide that the process of Canonization was wrong. But we cannot logically\u00a0maintain\u00a0everything we have traditionally\u00a0taught about the Bible and remain consistent.<\/p>\n

The first area I want to address is how Canonization Undermines Inspiration.<\/p>\n

Canonization Undermines Inspiration<\/h2>\n

Evangelicals have traditionally believed that Scripture is the inspired Word of God. (Read this post for more on Inspiration<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

However, one of the standards\u00a0used in the process of selecting which books to include in the Bible is that they only chose those books which had the\u00a0characteristics of\u00a0inspired Scripture (whatever that meant to the church leaders at the time).<\/p>\n

Is it really fair to say that\u00a0all\u00a0Scripture is inspired, if only those books that seemed to be\u00a0inspired were included\u00a0in Scripture? Isn’t this “cheating” a little bit?<\/p>\n

Let me ask the question a different way.<\/p>\n

If you drove by a parking lot and it was filled\u00a0with blue\u00a0cars and only blue cars, would you assume that a miracle\u00a0had\u00a0occurred in which God has\u00a0changed\u00a0the color of all of those cars in that lot to blue?<\/p>\n

Of course not. You wouldn’t think it was miraculous at all. You might not know the reason for why the parking lot is full of blue cars, but it would be clearly obvious that someone (or a group of people) had decided to fill that lot with only blue cars.<\/p>\n

\"Interpreting<\/p>\n

When we are\u00a0talking about Scripture, the argument is similar. We say that the Bible is divine because the\u00a0various books are clearly inspired. But when we see that in 397 AD, some church leaders\u00a0put together 27 books which they thought\u00a0had the touch of\u00a0the divine upon them, we must ask if this is really a miracle of inspiration, or is it something else\u00a0entirely?<\/p>\n

In other words, the real question is, “Were these books chosen because they really are inspired, or because a group of church leaders only allowed certain books into the Bible, and called them ‘inspired’ because they had some ulterior motive?” Maybe they had a theological point to prove, or a political reason to select these 27 books, and wanted to reject others which contradicted their teachings and ideas, and so selected these 27 by calling them “inspired.”<\/p>\n

We will see later that this is very similar to what did in fact happen.<\/p>\n

In this case, the doctrine of the inspiration of\u00a0Scripture seems to be\u00a0more a matter of human selection\u00a0for human reasons, rather than a matter of divine and human authorship.<\/p>\n

Some scholars recognize this dilemma, and have proposed that God did in fact inspire the writing of these 27 books, and then God also guided the Council of Carthage in 397 AD to select these 27 books for inclusion in the New Testament.<\/p>\n

So in other words, God inspired both the accurate\u00a0writing of Scripture, as well as the accurate\u00a0selection of which books to include within Scripture.<\/p>\n

But why stop there?<\/p>\n

In fact, some do not.<\/p>\n

\"Inspiration<\/p>\n

Once you have allowed God to guide the selection process of Scripture, then\u00a0there is reason\u00a0to restrict Him from also guiding\u00a0the copying of Scripture, the translation of\u00a0Scripture, and even the teaching and preaching of Scripture.<\/p>\n

Historically, the church decided that just as God guided the writing, the accurate transmission, and the church\u2019s decision about which texts to include in the Bible, so also, God guided the accurate translation of the texts (TNDT VI:455). This led the church to depend primarily on Latin translations for the next 1200 years. So the Canonization of Scripture by the church led the church to extend inspiration to the transmission, translation, and teaching of the biblical text.<\/p>\n

This view looks nothing like the doctrine of Inspiration.<\/p>\n

So what is the solution? Well, the traditional understandings of Inspiration and Canonization seem to be\u00a0mutually exclusive. So one or the other (or both) must be discarded or changed.\u00a0\u00a0Most theologians who are aware of this problem opt to change their understanding of Canonization. I don’t have the room here to discuss some of their theories. If you are aware of these, feel free to write about them in the comments below.<\/p>\n

My solution, however, is to allow\u00a0Canonization to stay as it is, and\u00a0modify my understanding of Inspiration<\/a>. In this way, inspiration does not extend to the process of Canonization, nor to the transmission, translation, or teaching of the texts.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Did I lose you? This post depends on remembering what was written\u00a0in numerous\u00a0previous posts (which I tried to link to above).\u00a0So if I lost you, I apologize.<\/p>\n

What do you think about the Bible you own and read? Did you realize that there were other books which did not make it into the Bible? Does that make you trust your Bible more or less? Do you think the early church leaders who chose these 27 books did a good job? We will discuss more of this in future posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The traditional idea of how the books of the New Testament were chosen undermines the traditional doctrine of Inspiration. So what should we do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[128],"class_list":{"0":"post-6578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"tag-theology-bible","8":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nQuestioning the Canon of Scripture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The traditional idea of how the books of the New Testament were chosen undermines the traditional doctrine of Inspiration. 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