Reformation500: a new review of Michael Kruger’s “Canon Revisited”

Michael Kruger, "Canon Revisited"

John Stebbe, a new writer at http://reformation500.com and a former-Lutheran-turned-Reformed believer, has posted a glowing review of Michael Kruger’s “Canon Revisited”:

http://reformation500.com/2013/06/25/review-of-canon-revisited-by-michael-kruger/

The author answers the question, “How can Christians have confidence that the 27 books of the New Testament are the correct ones?” …

Kruger … says that God has provided “the proper epistemic environment in which belief in the canon could be reliably formed.” This environment has three parts:

1) Providential exposure: the books which God has inspired as Scripture will be available for Christians to examine.

2) Attributes of canonicity: Divine qualities, corporate reception, and and apostolic origins.

3) Internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.

The author says that the[se] ‘attributes of canonicity’ are mutually reinforcing.

While Kruger “does not attempt to convince skeptics that the Bible is the Word of God”, he makes the firm case, “from the Scriptures themselves, as well as evidence from history”, that the Bible, especially the New Testament, contains precisely the books that God intended.

Stebbe reminds readers about Roman Catholic claims to authority, and reminds them that the Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures came first:

Rome asks us to accept its authority because it is the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, Rome’s authority is self-authenticating. Yet Catholics criticize Protestants for claiming that the Scriptures are self-authenticating. Kruger asks us to recall that the first Christians had a canon even before the New Testament was written. Their canon was the Old Testament, which “seemed to have existed just fine before the founding of the Church.” So the first Christians had no trouble recognizing the books of the Old Testament as Scripture, without an external authority such as Rome giving its imprimatur. This was only possible because the Old Testament books were self-authenticating.

You can check out some articles I wrote earlier on this work, and also the “Kruger vs Ratzinger” series that I wrote on the topic of “which came first, “the Church” or the Scriptures?

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