What is the canon of Scripture?
The word "canon" is a technical term for something very simple: the list of books that count as Scripture, and the question of who has the right to draw up that list. Commentators in this collection treat it as a battle over authority — whether a book is God's word because a church body says so, or whether God's word carries its own proof.
What the word means
The term is borrowed from a measuring tool, and applied to the Bible it settles which books are inside the boundary.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe word κανών meant a rod or rule by which things were tested. Paul uses it that way in Galatians 6:16 and Philippians 3:16. As to the Scriptures, the expression refers to what books should be included: so people often speak of the "canon" of Scripture, and the books are called "canonical" or "uncanonical." Happily most Christians are not troubled with such questions. In Christian simplicity they believe that in the Bible they have nothing but what God caused to be written, and that it contains all that He intended to form a part of His book. Still, as everything is now challenged, it may be well to examine the subject a little.
Canon is not the same thing as inspiration
Two different questions get mixed together — what a book is, and what people have recognised it to be.
E. E. WhitfieldIt is necessary to distinguish between the inspiration and the canon of Scripture. "Canon" as applied to Scripture — first used that way by Christians in the fourth century after Christ — means a rule or standard. In result it may and does coincide with inspiration. But the one is a question of reputation, decided by historical evidence for the collective human judgment of the past upon the inspiration of these writings... the other is of positive divine authority, to which heart and conscience under moral conviction give their assent. The ecclesiastical argument that our possession of the New Testament is a debt we owe to the historical Church... rests on a confusion of these two things.
The claim that a church body decides
The Church of Rome settled the list at the Council of Trent and included the Apocrypha — the extra books found in the Latin Vulgate. Writers here reject both the ruling and the principle behind it.
Morrish Bible DictionaryNow the Scripture informs us that the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:2), and as is well known they most carefully guarded the Old Testament Scriptures for centuries before there was any Christian church. The books were written in the Jews' language — Hebrew — with which the Apocrypha never had a place... The above principle — that the Scriptures require to be accredited by the church — is false. Surely God could make a revelation that would in no way need the seal of a body of men placed upon it, however holy they might be.
Alongside that, the risen Christ named the divisions of the Hebrew Bible as one settled whole.
William KellyThe Lord Jesus when risen said to the disciples, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44). This covers the entire Hebrew Old Testament as the Jews present it to us. And here the Latin church has proved a faithless guardian by adding apocryphal Greek writings to that canon, which even Jerome in his preface to the Vulgate admits are not properly included.
Why the oldest manuscripts cannot cast the deciding vote
The ancient copies themselves carry extra material, and they do not agree with each other.
The Original Form of the WordsIt will be seen from the above that the early Greek copies which are complete all contain additional books, though of those which have other writings appended to them, no two copies agree in selecting the same books. Nor do the few named here include anywhere near the whole of the rejected books. There are about a score of different "Gospels," a dozen "Acts," a dozen "Epistles," and four or five "Revelations."
How an ordinary Christian knows
The same Spirit who gave the book gives the certainty about it.
C. H. MackintoshThe question is this: "How are we to know that the book which we call the Bible is the word of God?" Our answer to this question is a very simple one: the One who has graciously given us the blessed book can give us also the certainty that the book is from Him. The same Spirit who inspired the various writers of the holy Scriptures can make us know that those Scriptures are the very voice of God speaking to us... If the Holy Spirit does not make us know and give us the certainty that the Bible is the word of God, no man or body of men can possibly do it; and, on the other hand, if He does give us the blessed certainty, we do not need the testimony of man.
A closed collection
If the canon is complete, no later book or movement can be added to it.
Samuel RidoutIt may be asked, How do we know that the book is complete?... One Scripture answers that question: "to fulfil (or complete) the word of God" (Colossians 1:25; ESV: "to make the word of God fully known"). The body of revelation was completed with the writings of Paul. No further unfolding of truth remains... Peter and John, in rounding out their ministry, doubtless did write later than Paul, but they were simply finishing a ministry already begun, and adding no fresh line of truth.
Commentators differ on what "complete" covers: some tie it to the subjects revealed through Paul, others to the closing of the book collection with Revelation. On the practical ground, they agree.
The Original Form of the WordsAll Christians, all over the world, receive the canon as we now have it. Or a Christian can base it on faith and say, "I believe that God caused the book to be written, and that He has preserved it to us intact. He has told us that it must not be added to nor taken from" (Revelation 22:18-19). And, as one has well said, "this method of faith — the simplest and the shortest for establishing the certainty of the canon — is also unquestionably the most beneficial and the surest."
Summary
- Rule. "Canon" means a measuring rod — which books belong inside God's book, and which stay outside.
- Distinction. Inspiration is what a book is by God's authority; canon is the recognition history gave it. Confusing the two makes the church the source instead of the reader.
- Guardian, not author. Israel kept the Old Testament long before any church existed, and Christ sealed that Hebrew collection; the Apocrypha never stood in it.
- Light, not licence. No council can stamp God's word as genuine. The Spirit who inspired it gives the certainty — and where He gives it, no human testimony is needed.
- Closed. Revelation was completed, and the book cannot be added to or taken from. Faith's short road to the canon turns out to be the surest one.