Sermon Tone Analysis

The Sufficiency of Scripture: Canon and Community

Apologetic scenario: Andy Stanley says that the Bible did not exist before the church.

The church actually created the Bible.

How would you answer Stanley

As means of grace, the Word (particularly the gospel) preached creates the church; as normative canon (constitution), the Word as Scripture stands over the community.

Through this Word, Christ not only creates a redeemed communion but governs it as Prophet, Priest, and King.

The church is the recipient of God’s saving revelation, never a source.

What is the necessary condition of the church?

What are the Scriptures?

Sola Scriptura: The Reformation Debate

The confessions and creeds are authoritative and binding only insofar as they accurate reflect the teachings of Scripture.

What does Roman Catholicism teach about Sola Scriptura?

Scripture is fully authoritative.

Only the Church can interpret the Scripture?

The unspoken apostolic tradition is equally authoritative with Scripture.

What are the problems with the Pentecostal view of Scripture?

Their view on authority is inconsistent: Scripture is final authority, but so are prophecies, etc?

The biggest problem is their view on sufficiency.

The crucial difference between Roman Catholic and confessional Protestant interpretations at this point is easily summarized.

While the former treats the p 190 church’s authority as magisterial, the latter treats it as ministerial.

Neither possessing absolute authority nor devoid of any authority, the church’s role is that of a court rather than of a constitution.

Kruger makes the point that the NT Canon was taking shape in parallel with apostolic tradition.

After all, if the Old Covenant was accompanied by a covenant word that would eventually become a written covenant canon, how much more should we expect to see the same them with the New Covenant?

Judicial decisions and the history of case precedent cannot be equated with the constitution itself.

The new covenant had been inaugurated and now, by Christ’s appointment, was receiving its constitution.

While all apostolic pronouncements concerning faith and practice were to be received as God’s Word (“either by our spoken word or by our letter”), the Spirit saw fit to commit the most necessary oral and written teaching to the New Testament Scriptures.

Analogous to postprophetic traditions, then, postapostolic traditions have ministerial but not magisterial authority.

The court is not the author of its own constitution.

Horton makes some very critical points here:

This sovereignty of Scripture over the church may be defended not only from the New Testament but secondarily from the actual process by which the postapostolic church arrived at the canon.

Our twenty-seven books in the New Testament canon were first codified in an official list at the councils of Carthage (393) and Hippo (397).

However, two important facts need to be considered.

First, most of these texts were already widely recognized and employed regularly in public worship as divinely inspired.

Second, from these ancient Christian writers we can identify four main categories in which texts were to be placed: canonical, widely accepted, spurious, and p 195 heretical.

The Criteria of Canonicity Argument

The New Testament can be proven to be generally reliable history.

The New Testament testifies to the miracle of the resurrection.

The resurrection authenticates Jesus as the Son of God.

Jesus appointed 12 apostles to be his authoritative witnesses.

Therefore, books by apostles should be received as authoritative.

What are some flaws in this argument?

The NT is only generally reliable.

This means it could be wrong about the resurrection.

If it is wrong about the resurrection, then Jesus is not the Son of God.

How does the resurrection authenticate Jesus as the Son of God.

At best it just shows that something very odd happened to Jesus.

At worse, and more likely, his followers lied.

What is more likely, that they died for a lie or that an actual resurrection took place?

Well, if you deny God’s existence beforehand, the latter is more likely.

Does the resurec

It also does not follow that just because Jesus appointed these 12 apostles as his authoritative witnesses that everything they wrote was authoritative.

They didn’t stop being imperfect men did they?

Look at Peter!

Do Christians have warrant for believing the Bible is the Word of God or is does the de jure objection defeat Christian belief?

This is why the self-authenticating model is the model of canonicity that every Christian should embrace.

If Christians wish to reflect critically on their religious claims, therefore, they should do so with reference to the normative standards internal to their own tradition.

[Ronney Mourad, Transcendental Arguments and Justified Christian Belief]