All Scripture is
God-breathed (“θεόπνευστος”)
“If anyone ponders
over the prophetic sayings … it is certain that in the very act of reading and
diligently studying them his mind and feelings will be touched by a divine
breath and he will recognize the words he is reading are not utterances of man
but the language of God” (Origen, Princ., 4.1.6)
“… the heavenliness of
the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent
of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God),
the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other
incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments
whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself
to be the Word of God …” [WCF1.5].
The “beauty and excellency”, the “efficacy and power”, the
“unity and harmony” of the Scriptures, in these qualities, the Scripture
speaks, bearing “the very attributes of God himself” (Michael J. Kruger, Canon
Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books,
Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books © 2012, pg 127). “When men encounter God, they are
vividly aware of his beauty, majesty, and perfection and need no further ‘evidence’
that he is God (Pss. 27:4; 50:2; 96:6; Isa. 6:1-7; Rev 1:12-17; 4:3). In
addition, Scripture itself is described over and over again throughout the
Bible as bearing these very same attributes” (pg 127).
By contrast, Scott Hahn, a Roman Catholic apologist, for
example, considers that “the Church” somehow gives the Scriptures their attribute
of being Scripture:
“without reference to the meaning
these texts possess in the [Roman Catholic] Church’s life and liturgy, the
Scriptures become a kind of dead letter, an artifact from a long-extinct exotic
culture. Biblical exegesis becomes an exercise in “antiquarianism” or
“archaeology” or perhaps “necrophilia.” [quoting Joseph Ratzinger: [Feast of
Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy”, 1986] … The Church makes the
very individual texts into a single book or ‘Bible.” Without the [Roman Catholic] Church we have only a jumble of
unconnected texts [Hahn, “Covenant
and Communion”, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press ©2009, pg 35].
Kruger here draws on speech-act philosophy: “Speaking (and
therefore divine speaking) can take three different forms: (1) locution (making coherent and meaningful
sounds or, in the case of writing, letters); (2) illocution (what the words are actually doing; e.g., promising,
warning, commanding, declaring, etc.); and (3) perlocution (the effects of these words on the listener; e.g.,
encouraging, challenging, persuading) (pg 119-120).
The very nature of their content, their “divine qualities”
have a perlocutionary effect on the
reader. Citing Hebrews 4:12, the Scriptures are “the word of God is living and active,
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of
spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of
the heart”… “It changes, shapes, and transforms its reader or hearer. The canon
[of the New Testament] is not so much to be judged as the thing that does the
judging. When this attribute of the canon is appreciated, once again, we can
see how the canon is not so much shaped by the community of faith, but a means
of shaping the community of faith”.
Echoing this, Kruger cites Justin Martyr on the words of
Christ” “For they possess a terrible power in themselves, and are sufficient to
inspire those who turn from the path of rectitude with awe; while the sweetest
rest is afforded those who make a diligent practice of them (Dialogue with
Trypho, 8:2)
He cites the Apology
of Aristides (C. 130) “the author invites the emperor to read ‘the Gospel’
because ‘you also if you read therein, may perceive the power which belongs to
it’” 2.4 (Syriac).
He cites Irenaeus defending “the fourfold Gospel” on the
grounds that these Gospels are always “breathing out immortality on every side,
and vivifying men afresh” (Haer 3.11.8).
The Unity and Harmony
of Scripture
Kruger affirms that in the Scriptures, “there is unity on a
complex array of theological issues, such as the nature of God, the make-up of
man, the nation of Israel, the purpose and structure of the church, the person
and work of Christ, the message of forgiveness and redemption, the importance
of holiness, the role and function of the sacraments, eschatology and the last days,
and so on” (133-134). “Whenver we speak of a canonical book’s doctrinal unity
with other divine revelation, that is just another way of saying that book is orthodox”.
Orthodoxy in Scripture manifests itself in several different
ways. Traditionally, Protestants understand orthodoxy as exhibited through the
test of a prophet (Deut. 18:20) or by examination (Acts 17:10), as the Bereans
searched for themselves to verify that Paul’s inspired teaching is consistent with
the inspired teaching of the Old Testament.
Kruger also works through two other perspectives on
orthodoxy:
“First, from the perspective of the earliest Christians as
they worked with an incomplete New Testament canon and sought to recognize (for
the first time) the books that God had given”
“Second from our modern day as we work with a complete New
Testament canon and ask whether there are sufficient grounds for thinking that
these books are indeed from God” (134)
1. The earliest church working
with an incomplete New Testament Canon
Critics such as Walter Bauer
(“Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity”) argue that orthodoxy “could
have not been a reliable guide in the development of the canon because there
was no uniform standard for orthodoxy until the fourth century” (pg 135).
Kruger instead, while acknowledging that Bauer “is certainly correct at a
number of points” including that “early Christianity was quite a diverse
affair, heresies emerged early,” and “this diversity certainly continued into
the later centuries of Christianity, other aspects of Bauer’s thesis have been “challenged
and roundly (some say decisively) critiqued”. “The sticking point for Bauer is
whether there was a reliable standard by which a book’s orthodoxy could be
measured in this earliest phase of Christianity”. Kruger argues that there were
three sources:
a. The Old Testament. Citing Ben Witherington, “Gnosticism was a
non-starter from the outset because it rejected the very book the earliest
Christians recognized as authoritative—the Old Testament”. The Old Testament
provided the earliest Christians with an initial (orthodox) doctrinal
foundation).
b. “Core” New Testament books. Some works, such as the letters of
Paul and the Synoptic gospels, as has been noted
earlier, never were not regarded as Scripture, and thus a source of
orthodoxy. “Thus, there appears to have been a collection of core New Testament
writings that would have functioned as a norm for apostolic doctrine at quite
an early point.
c. The “rule of faith”. While Kruger provides, elsewhere, a more
detailed discussion of apostolic tradition in the earliest church, he notes
here that “the rule of faith worked to bring harmony precisely because there
was harmony already there” (within
the OT, core NT works, and the understanding of redemptive history that the
early church already had) “that could be summarized and expressed. It was this
conviction about the internal qualities of Scripture that helped guide the
church fathers in their reception of the canon.
2. Orthodoxy and a Complete New Testament
Canon
“We must remember that the question
about how we recognize the canon is not just a historical one (how it happened
in the early church) but an epistemological one (whether the Christian religion
[today] has sufficient grounds for thinking that these twenty-seven books are
given by God as canonical)” (141-142). “When we answer the latter question, we
can do so by considering the New Testament canon as a completed whole”.
Remember, we are now working in the context of considering
the “divine qualities” of the 27-book New Testament canon. And of course, “the
theological unity of the New Testament books has not gone unchallenged. Whereas
Walter Bauer challenged the existence of orthodoxy in the early church, F.C.
Baur has challenged the existence of orthodoxy across the spectrum of the
completed New Testament canon”. Baur, in the 19th century, argued
that each New Testament book was produced and motivated by separate particular
theological agendas, some of which were in conflict. This type of objection,
Kruger notes, constitutes a second potential defeater to the divine qualities
of Scripture, “and certainly cannot be dismissed lightly” (143).
Again, though, while acknowledging some diversity within the
New Testament, “it must not be assumed (though it often is) that differences necessarily
entail genuine contradiction”. He discusses apparent differences between Paul
and James, as well as many of their agreements (such as the unity of the Gospel
Message, Acts 15, and Paul’s “ongoing care and affection” for the church at
Jerusalem, and the fact that “there is no real disagreement” between Paul and
James on Paul’s understanding of justification [145]).
Kruger also notes a key contradiction within the argument of
the Bauer/Baur camp: “If the ‘winners’ [of
the “orthdodoxy” battles of the early church] determined the canon, then why
would they pick books from various and contradictory theological camps? One
cannot argue that the canon is the ‘invention’ of the proto-orthodox designed
to suppress the opposition [as Bauer claimed], and then turn around and argue
that the canon is a cacophony of diverse theological viewpoints that stand in
opposition” (146).
Thus, “Should Christians abandon their commitment to the
canon’s authority because biblical critics, who view scriptural interpretations
as merely a human enterprise, claim to have discovered theological
incongruities? No” (147).
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