The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (6 page)

In response, Sundberg and his followers focus unduly on the
church's
closing of the canon while failing to give adequate attention to
God's
activity of inspiring the NT writings in the first place.
⁴¹
Thus these writers base their assessment primarily on definitive ecclesiastical pronouncements on the NT canon. Since this kind of final resolution does not occur until the fourth century, this is taken as evidence that “canon” was not an operative concept during earlier stages of the canonization process. Such reasoning is hardly convincing because it puts an undue emphasis on the church's role in the determination of canonicity. It also neglects to acknowledge that already by the end of the second century most NT books were recognized as part of the church's canon of sacred Scripture.

Viewing the determination of the church's canon of inspired, authoritative books primarily in terms of a “patristic accomplishment”
⁴²
casts the debate along the lines of two possible options: wholesale acceptance or critical evaluation. Sundberg favors the first alternative. One of the entailments of such a full-scale acceptance of the fourth-century church's determination of the canon is the inclusion of the OT Apocrypha in the canon of Scripture on the basis that the same councils that enumerated the 27-book NT canon also included the OT Apocrypha.
⁴³
C. D. Allert, likewise, seems to suggest that the church's proper response is to submit to this patristic decision. In doing so, he attempted to affirm inspiration and inerrancy but only through the lens of the church's interpretation, not as a function of the Bible's own testimony regarding itself.
⁴⁴

Conversely, while largely concurring with Sundberg, L. McDonald concluded his book with the following list of seven questions that suggests that he would prefer to evaluate, rather than merely accept, the “patristic accomplishment” in delineating the NT canon.
⁴⁵
He asked:

1. Is the very notion of canon a Christian idea? In his view the earliest Christians had no concept of canon. So why should believers today entertain such a notion?
   
2. Should the contemporary church adhere to a canon that legitimizes abhorrent practices such as slavery or the subjugation of women?
   ⁴⁶
   
3. Does a move toward a closed canon limit the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the church?
   
4. Should the church be limited to an OT canon to which Jesus and his first disciples were clearly not confined?
   
5. Should the church continue to recognize nonapostolic literature? Here McDonald affirms the criterion of apostolicity but rejects the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter, and Jude.
   
6. Is it appropriate to tie the modern church to a canon that emerged out of the historical circumstances in the second to fifth centuries?
   
7. Does the same Spirit who inspired the written documents of Scripture not still speak today?
   

McDonald did not advocate replacing the Christian Bible, and he acknowledged that no other ancient document is, on the whole, more reliable than Scripture in its current configuration. But he did seek to listen to other voices to tell him about the Lord Jesus Christ. According to McDonald, the
agrapha
(supposedly true stories of Jesus that were not included in the canonical Gospels), the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and other early Christian literature are valuable in informing the church's faith. While the questions raised by McDonald are certainly worthy of further reflection and discussion, his blurring of the edges of the canon is of doubtful merit.

Critique

How should one evaluate the various contributions by recent scholarship on the NT canon? To begin with, as noted above, the claim that the Muratorian Canon was a fourth-century composition has been decisively refuted. Also, much of recent scholarship on the NT canon is beset by a series of methodological problems. One such difficulty is that the available relevant evidence is often judged as if “not extant” necessarily means “never existed.” For example, Athanasius's list is sometimes declared to be the first time the present
27-book NT canon was listed as such.
⁴⁷
But the truth is that we have precious little evidence from the previous centuries on any one subject. Is this the first complete list of NT canonical books ever compiled or the first such list that is extant today?

The same holds true with regard to terminological discussions. For example, concerning the term
canon
, Gamble stated, “It is important to notice that the word ‘canon’ did not begin to be applied to Christian writings until the mid-fourth century.”
⁴⁸
This is problematic for the following reasons. To argue that there was no concept of a canon in the previous centuries on the basis of the presence or absence of the word
canon
is an argument from silence that is notoriously difficult to substantiate. In fact, the argument constitutes an instance of a semantic fallacy that fails to consider the possibility that another expression or set of terms may have been used to communicate the concept that was later called “canon.”
⁴⁹

A third problem arises with regard to the significance placed on dissenting voices. How heavily does one weigh those who received a book versus those who rejected it or indeed the mere notation that some rejected or, more often, disputed the canonicity of a given book? Must one extrapolate from such discussions an unfinished collection of Scripture? If dissenting voices obviate the widespread mainstream consensus, there is still no canon today, nor was there ever a biblical canon, whether of the OT or the NT. Someone somewhere has always and will always object to a given book for often less than compelling reasons.
⁵⁰
If unanimity, rather than consensus, is required, then there is no hope of ever having a canon of Scripture.

Thus recent scholarship has been helpful in raising important questions regarding the NT canon but appears to be headed largely in the wrong direction by focusing on the final determination and closure of the NT canon by the church councils while unduly diminishing the significance of earlier developments in the canonization process. For this reason the conventional evangelical understanding continues to be preferred. In fact, closer scrutiny suggests that the traditional view may concede even more than is necessary by placing the closure of the canon at a date later than may be warranted by the available evidence. As seen below, there is good reason to believe that the core of the NT canon was established at least by the middle of the second century if not before.
⁵¹

The Evidence for an Early Canon of Core NT Books

The Fourfold Gospel
Even before the Gospels were written, there was an intense interest in the words and deeds of Jesus on the part of the church. J. D. G. Dunn argued
that the oral pre-Gospel traditions were already functioning as canon in the first century.
⁵²
He was undoubtedly correct when he stated that “it was the authority which it [the Gospel tradition] already possessed which ensured that it was written down.”
⁵³
His conclusion was that “the canonical process began with the impact made by Jesus himself.”
⁵⁴

It was not too long after Jesus' earthly ministry that the Synoptic Gospels were written (most likely, all before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70). Originally, the four Gospels disseminated independently of one another. Their individual status as Scripture is usually not debated. Whether the collection of Gospels should be limited to these four is a different matter. There are about 30 known Gospels that appeared before the year 600,
⁵⁵
but none were as popular as the canonical Gospels.
⁵⁶
Only these four were recognized because, as Serapion (died 211) and others said, they were “handed down” to the church.
⁵⁷
The other Gospels were rejected on the grounds that they did not agree with the commonly accepted four canonical Gospels. This implies not only antiquity but also the authority of the transmitters.
⁵⁸

The collection of the Gospels, and even the whole idea of a canon, is frequently attributed to a reaction to Marcion's rejection of all the NT Gospels but Luke.
⁵⁹
Today most are less certain that Marcion is to be given as much credit, but many still see his canon as an important influence in the formation of the NT.
⁶⁰
More importantly, Marcion's canon
most likely presupposed a large portion of the present canon.
⁶¹
Ferguson noted that Marcion's contemporary, the gnostic teacher Basilides (c. 117–138), “is our earliest full witness to the New Testament as scripture, but the off hand way he speaks shows that he was not the first to do this and was reflecting common usage.”
⁶²
An orthodox contemporary of Marcion, Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165), wrote of the Gospels (“the memoirs of the apostles”) being read in the churches alongside the prophets.
⁶³
This reference has a bearing not only on worship in the early church, but it also indicates the status afforded the four Gospels.
⁶⁴
They were Scripture on a par with the OT.

In this context the question of format takes on special significance. When a given group of similar documents is gathered together, the writings that are included, by definition, constitute the limits of the collection. In terms of the Gospels, the creation of the fourfold Gospel codex says as much about the limits of the Gospel canon as it does about the Gospels that were chosen for inclusion. Rather than assigning the date of the Gospel collection to the
end
of the second century, it may very well be that the canonical Gospels were circulating as a unit as early as the
beginning
of the second century.

It is not known whether Justin's Gospels were bound in one codex, but these four apostolic Gospels were being read in the churches.
⁶⁵
What is known is that by the end of the second century the fourfold Gospel codex was common.
⁶⁶
Irenaeus (c. 130–c. 200) is perhaps our strongest patristic witness to the fourfold Gospel. For Irenaeus, the Gospels formed a fourfold unity. In fact, Irenaeus preferred the singular “Gospel” to the plural “Gospels.”
⁶⁷
While this is no doubt a theological conviction, it may very well be reflected in the physical arrangement familiar to Irenaeus. Irenaeus declared the Gospels to be precisely four in number, comparing them to the four winds, the four angelic creatures of Ezekiel, and the four covenants of God (
Against Heresies
3.11.8).

Irenaeus's argument is often understood to be limiting the number of the Gospels to only “these four and no more.”
⁶⁸
But this is only part of what Irenaeus was seeking to establish.
Irenaeus's point was that there were four canonical Gospels—neither more
nor less
. He castigated the Ebionites for using only Matthew; the Docetists for only using Mark; the Marcionites for using only Luke; and the Valentinians for preferring John and audaciously creating a
Gospel of Truth
. In fact, Irenaeus wrote more about those who
reduced
the number of Gospels in the canon than about those who
added
to their number, which assumes a fixed Gospel collection in both directions.

T. C. Skeat has persuasively argued that Irenaeus's comparison to the four creatures of Ezekiel is both a citation of a previous work and an argument about the
order
of the Gospels. If so, he rightly drew the following conclusion: “Any question of the order of the Gospels only makes sense when all four have been brought together in a single volume, which must be a codex, since no roll, however economically written, could contain all four Gospels.”
⁶⁹
As mentioned, Irenaeus referred to a four-Gospel codex. Thus it is more than just an abstract point when he declared that the Gospel was in its very essence “fourfold.”
⁷⁰
Moreover, he concluded, “Now, these things being so, all these [men] are vain, unlearned, and moreover also audacious—these who destroy
the form of the gospel
,
⁷¹
and [by supposing] either more or less than what has been spoken, amend
the appearance of the gospels
”
⁷²
(emphasis added). In saying this, he was referring not only to the apostolic Gospels but very likely to a fourfold codex that was known and well established at the time he wrote.
⁷³
Thus this Gospel collection likely had a very early archetype, possibly a half-century earlier than Irenaeus.

There is ample manuscript evidence of a fourfold Gospel collection from the third century onward.
⁷⁴
All of these have different ancestors, which seems to suggest at least a mid-second century origin.
⁷⁵
In fact, there may be evidence to this effect from the late second century. Skeat argued that P
⁴
, P
⁶⁴
, and P
⁶⁷
(dated c. 200) were all originally from the same codex and that this codex must have had an archetype earlier in the second century.
⁷⁶
He elsewhere proposed that this four-Gospel codex was the reason the early Christians preferred the codex over the roll. If so, their choice of the codex was a theologically driven decision. While it was possible to include these four Gospels in a codex, placing them in the same roll would have been impossibly large.
⁷⁷
This is one of the more intriguing and plausible pieces of evidence accounting for Christians' preference for the codex in the early days of the church.

While a dozen or more heretical “Gospels” may have been circulating in the second century, the manuscript evidence is telling regarding which of these Gospels the church considered canonical. First, whenever there is manuscript evidence of more than one Gospel that includes a canonical Gospel, the other Gospel was canonical as well. This means that no noncanonical Gospel appears bound with a canonical one, so there is no evidence for Matthew–Thomas or Luke–Peter, for example. This would indicate, by and large, that the issue of other Gospels having an equal scriptural status was a moot point among the orthodox.
⁷⁸
Second, the manuscript evidence for noncanonical Gospels is amazingly thin when compared to the numbers of Greek manuscripts of the canonical Gospels. For example, there is only one known full copy of the Gospel of Thomas (and two fragmentary pages of other editions). The evidence points to the fact that the apocryphal Gospels never had a wide hearing among the orthodox or quickly fell out of favor.