NT Canon
According to Paul, the decisive criterion to apply to prophets is their testimony to Christ: ‘no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:3). Somewhat later, John suggests a more specific test: ‘every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God’ (1 Jn. 4:2). Such tests anticipated the later insistence on orthodoxy as a criterion of canonicity.
If a writing was the work of an apostle or of someone closely associated with an apostle, it must belong to the apostolic age. Writings of later date, whatever their merit, could not be included among the apostolic or canonical books
In other words, they had recourse to the criterion of orthodoxy. By ‘orthodoxy’ they meant the apostolic faith—the faith set forth in the undoubted apostolic writings and maintained in the churches which had been founded by apostles. This appeal to the testimony of the churches of apostolic foundation was developed specially by Irenaeus.
They had to defend the apostolic teaching, summed up in the rule of faith, against the docetic and gnostic presentations which were so attractive to many in the climate of opinion at that time.
When previously unknown Gospels or Acts began to circulate under the authority of apostolic names, the most important question to ask about any one of them was: What does it teach about the person and work of Christ? Does it maintain the apostolic witness to him as the historical Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and raised from the dead, divinely exalted as Lord over all?
A good example of the application of this test is provided by the case of Bishop Serapion and the Gospel of Peter, When Serapion found that this document was being read in the church of Rhossus, he was not greatly disturbed; he certainly did not examine its style and vocabulary (as Dionysius of Alexandria might have done) to see if its claim to be the work of Peter or a product of the apostolic age was well founded or not. But when he discovered that its account of the Lord’s death was tinged with docetism (it implies that he did not really suffer), then he decided that he ought to pay the church of Rhossus a pastoral visit to make sure that it had not been led astray by this heterodox teaching.
A work which enjoyed only local recognition was not likely to be acknowledged as part of the canon of the catholic church
Even Paul’s letters to individuals have an ecumenical reference, says the Muratorian compiler: ‘they have been hallowed for the honour of the catholic church in the regulation of ecclesiastical discipline.’
Each individual document that was ultimately acknowledged as canonical started off with local acceptance—the various epistles in the places to which they were sent, the Apocalypse in the seven churches of Asia, even the Gospels and Acts in the constituencies for which they were first designed. But their attainment of canonical status was the result of their gaining more widespread recognition than they initially enjoyed.
If any church leader came along in the third or fourth century with a previously unknown book, recommending it as genuinely apostolic, he would have found great difficulty in gaining acceptance for it: his fellow-Christians would simply have said, ‘But no one has ever heard of it!’ (We may think, for example, of the widespread hesitation in accepting 2 Peter.) Or, even if the book had been known for some generations, but had never been treated as holy scripture, it would have been very difficult to win recognition for it as such.
For many centuries inspiration and canonicity have been closely bound up together in Christian thinking: books were included in the canon, it is believed, because they were inspired; a book is known to be inspired because it is in the canon.
On one occasion, when Moses was told that two men were prophesying who had not received any public commission to do so, he replied, ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!’ (Num. 11:29)
The New Testament records the answer to Moses’ prayer, telling how, on the first Christian Pentecost, God initiated the fulfilment of his promise to pour out his Spirit ‘on all flesh’ (Joel 2:28, quoted, in Acts 2:17).
Only one of the New Testament writers expressly bases the authority of what he says on prophetic inspiration. The Apocalypse is called ‘the book of this prophecy’ (e.g., Rev. 22:19); the author implies that his words are inspired by the same Spirit of prophecy as spoke through the prophets of earlier days: it is in their succession that he stands (Rev. 22:9). ‘The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy’ (Rev. 19:10): the prophets of old bore witness to Jesus in advance, and the same witness is still borne, in the power of the same Spirit, not only by a prophet like John but by all the faithful confessors who overcome the enemy ‘by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony’ (Rev. 12:11). The readers of the seven letters at the outset of the book are expected to hear in them ‘what the Spirit says to the churches’ (Rev. 2:7, etc.). Whether the seer of Patmos was the son of Zebedee or not, his appeal throughout the Apocalypse is not to apostolic authority but to prophetic inspiration.
but most of the New Testament writers do not base their authority on divine inspiration.
But when he needs to assert his authority—authority ‘for building up and not for tearing down’ (2 Cor, 13:10)—he rests it on the apostolic commission which he had received from the exalted Lord. In his exercise of this authority, he told the Corinthian Christians, they would find the proof which they demanded ‘that Christ is speaking in me’ (2 Cor. 13:3).
at this stage inspiration is no longer a criterion of canonicity: it is a corollary of canonicity. ‘It was not until the red ribbon of the self-evident had been tied around the twenty-seven books of the New Testament that “inspiration” could serve theologians as an answer to the question: Why are these books different from all other books?’
in some churches at least other works were read which, although they lacked apostolic authority, were orthodox and edifying. Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, wrote to the bishop of Rome about AD 170 to express the thanks of his church for a letter and a gift which had been received from the Roman church. ‘Today’, he says, ‘we observed the Lord’s holy day, and we read out your letter, which we shall keep and read from time to time for our admonition, as we do also with the letter formerly written to us through Clement.’ So, between seventy and eighty years after it was sent, 1 Clement continued to be read at services of the Corinthian church. Neither it nor the more recent letter from Rome carried anything like the authority of the letters which the Corinthian church had received from Paul; but they were helpful for the building up of Christian faith and life.50
In the second book of his work On Christian Learning, after listing the books within which, as he says, ‘the authority of the Old Testament is contained’, he continues:
But for the sake of greater accuracy I must needs, as I write, add this: there are other books outside these, which are not indeed included in the canon, but have been appointed from the time of the fathers to be read to those who are recent converts to our company and wish to be instructed in the word of true religion. These are … the so-called Teaching of the Apostles and the Shepherd. But while the former are included in the canon and the latter are read [in church], no mention is to be made of the apocryphal works. They are the invention of heretics, who write according to their own will, and gratuitously assign and add to them dates so that, offering them as ancient writings, they may have an excuse for leading the simple astray.
Among the canonical scriptures he [the interpreter of the sacred writings] will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Again, among those which are not received by all, he will prefer such as are sanctioned by the greater number of churches and by those of greater authority to such as held by the smaller number and by those of less authority. If, however, he finds that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (although this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be considered as equal.
take a problem peculiar to one of the evangelists, why does Matthew 27:9 ascribe to Jeremiah an oracle which actually appears in Zechariah 11:13? (Matthew perhaps experienced a slip of memory, thinking of the incident of Jer. 32:6–15, and then reflected that this slip of memory may have been divinely prompted: after all, the prophets spoke with one voice.)
The Reformers rejected all levels except for the literal, and on this basis the Gospels were interpreted as history, telling the story of Jesus, sometimes being seen as biographies.