The Need for the Canonization of the New Testament Scriptures

28 January 2009

The Need for the Canonization of the New Testament Scriptures

In a religion as complex as Christianity, man would need some type of guidance to lead him in the straight and narrow gate, which Christ so explicitly said in Matthew 7:14, was the only way to find life. While He was on earth, He also made it clear in John 10:1-2 that “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.” So what type of direction would be the means, in which He would leave to instruct mankind in these matters so that he could be assured that he was indeed entering in by the correct door? How would mankind know what it is to lead a godly, moral life? And how would he know exactly what it is to be a follower of Christ? Let us examine these questions now.
As man was shown his need to know exactly what it meant to live in Christ, to die in Christ, to separate from the world, through the aspects of regeneration and sanctification, he realized that spreading the Gospel around by the word of mouth wasn’t enough, as Christianity increased no New Testament manuscripts were yet written as authoritative bases for delivering the Gospel. He needed something much more concrete to rely on, as if the history of our Lord and Savior had not been written, we, today, and those in history past, as well as those in the future, would depend upon hearsay and tradition for the root of our faith. And as one can see, especially in the epistles of Paul, that man had many questions and misunderstandings within the church. Paul always had to clarify something, whether it be the resurrection, in 1 Corinthians Chapter 15, or the process of how to come together for the purpose of communion, as shown in 1 Corinthians Chapter 11. For these purposes, thanks to the graceful insight of our wonderful God, the apostles wrote down their knowledge and instructions, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, on papyrus or on vellum, so that man could always refer to their teachings for time to come. Luke, who likewise recorded the early church history in the book of Acts, states, in Luke 1:1-3, that his writings were done by researching what had been given to and recorded by several eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. Although the original autographs were never found, as it is assumed they were misplaced or worn out, they had been passed around within the churches, and copies were made. Replicas were made from these and so on, until there were many, many duplicates, which could be passed on from generation to generation. By the close of the first century A.D., all these reports had been inscribed, the books were passed around, read as single books, or epistles, yet these books had not yet been congregated into a single tome, as no one could decide exactly how they should be placed all in one bound article.
In 140 A.D., a businessman from Rome, known as Marcion, put together what he believed was the correct content to live by, omitting the Jewish Scriptures completely, and much of the New Testament as well, specifically including only Luke, minus chapters 1 and 2, and some of the Pauline epistles, effectively breaking up the Pauline Corpus. The reason for this was because he had concluded that the God of the Old Testament was rude and malevolent, and wished to extinguish all aspects of Judaism from his Christian religion. He was excommunicated as a Gnostic, and his idea of canonization did not find acceptance.
In 170 A.D. Tatian created his Diatessaron, which was the first attempt to correspond the four Gospels. Other people of the early church, who labored to harmonize the four Gospels, include Ammonius of Alexandria, who systemized a method of weighing segments in Mark, Luke and John against comparable episodes of Matthew; and Eusebius of Caesarea, who found a way to annotate each Gospel with similar passages each of the other Gospels. Irenaeus also united the four Gospels in his work “Against Heresies. His writings also seem to be corroborated by the Muratorian Canon. “Consequently, Mark was the first Gospel to be written, followed by Mathew, Luke and John. However, prior to the four Gospels being placed together, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, had already agreed that Matthew, Luke and John were definitely genuine works of the apostles, and they also agreed the Pauline Corpus was authentic. Papias, Bishop of Phrygian Hierapolis, composed a work describing the origin of Mark. Clement, Bishop of Rome, had recognized the synoptic Gospels, as being Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Early in the third century, church fathers, such as Origen, who had written commentaries on all of the books of the New Testament emphasizing their inspiration, had compiled three categories, into which all the books being considered for canonization should fall. Among these categories were: accepted books, disputed books, and rejected books. According to the testimony of this writer, the four Gospels were under the accepted category, along with Acts, the epistles of Paul, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation. Second and 3 John, 2 Peter, James and Jude were disputed, and the Gnostic gospels were plainly categorized under the rejection section. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, who was a student of Origen’s, early in the fourth century, also made an inventory similar to that of Origen’s. The only difference, which he has, is that he omits under the rejected branch, Acts and Hebrews. Eusebius is also said to be the primary one to bring into light the differences in the array of the four Gospels. Cyprian, of the African church, put together a canon, which was much like the first Latin Bible, omitting Hebrews, 2 Peter, James and Jude.
At Easter in 367 A.D., Athanasius, the Bishop at Alexandria, wrote a letter to his congregation, which he used that holiday, stating the list of books, which he used with his particular assembly each week. He had written down on his inventory twenty-seven books and letters, including the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the epistles of Paul, Peter, Jude and John. These books, which he had listed later, came to be known as the canon of the New Testament. His listing was approved, because it listed only works that proved to be divinely inspired, and omitted what seemed to be only deemed as “useful”. He had also included a list of books, which he rejected, known as The Apocrypha. These books included The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of James, The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Judas and The Secret Gospel of Mark among others. The councils, which approved this letter of divinely inspired literature, were the Councils of Hippo, in 393 A.D. and Carthage, in 397 A.D., of which Augustine attended both meetings and was the overseer of the church at Hippo. At these synods, these books weren’t given any more authority than they already had, but simply were confirmed to be one single collection of divinely inspired works, connected by the apostles for the purpose of edification for the church.
As to the method by which the great book, we know of today as The Holy Bible, specifically the New Testament, came into existence, Archibald Alexander, D.D., says that first the books had to be proved authentic and valid history, as they were received. They had to be certain, and not under deception, to make such an important decision as to what content should be contained in the instructions of the Lord. To do this, they had to investigate into the records of the church. Other criteria for deciding which works were canonical included the authorship, (being associated with an apostle), the prevalent recognition and employment of it, and the consistent comparison to the Gospel tradition as obtained verbally from the first century. The capability of the book to edify and educate also served as a general rule when testing the works.
No matter how the New Testament Scriptures were eventually placed into some type of sensible arrangement, one thing is certain, and namely that it was in God’s sovereign plan to have them bound together in a solid volume, so that Christians would have access to all His instructions for all time to come, as Jesus said His Words will never pass away in Luke 21:33. The word canon literally means stick or rod, as in measuring rod, and with all the tests of canonization, one can certainly determine that the books deemed infallible and inspired gauge elevated enough on that rod to be positioned at the highest honor of being placed in the book, which God left to us. The apostles never thought about collecting their parchments and placing them in any type of systematic order, which makes us wonder why the idea never occurred to them to prevent the confusion of man not knowing which books belong and which don’t. One can only venture to guess that God has a plan and a mission for every person, and left the task to those, in a later time, of illustrious understanding, education and discernment. To say that God has a commission for many throughout history, involving the Scriptures is also exhibited in about 1445 A.D. when Johann Gutenberg printed the first Bible. It was at this era that Bibles became more readily available to the public at a cheaper rate than they had been when they were hand-copied, that literacy was largely improved, and that scholarly studies became more reliable and progressive, which lead to the Reformation and the Protestant truth we have today. To God be all the glory for His sovereign and brilliant plan, concerning His precious Book we are all enlightened with in the present day.

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© 2010 Kimberly Padilla, A.A Religion