tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post2200824776382920961..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: The Origin Of The Four-Gospel CanonRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-56058880400972666872010-11-24T09:01:57.938-05:002010-11-24T09:01:57.938-05:00Andreas J.Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger, in &...Andreas J.Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger, in 'The Heresy of Orthodoxy', Crossway, 2010 have a section on how the canon came to be and conclude that canon is inherent to and derives it's function from the concept of covenant; that the canonical writings are God's documentation, as it were, of his covenantal relationship with His people, laying out the nature of their relationship, the terms and conditions, and the blessings and curses. <br /><br />They write, 'the canon is not simply an idea created by fourth-century Christians or some after-the-fact concept that the church devised to battle early heretics like Marcion. Rather, the canon is a concept that has been indelibly part of the life of God's people from the very start of the nation of Israel, and thus continues to be part of his people in the life of the Church'.<br /><br />They further go on to document the use of apostolic writings in the life of the early church in the first century and conclude that there is 'no doubt that the early church understood that God had given a new set of authoritative documents that testified to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and that those documents were the beginning of the New Testament canon.<br /><br />The book is well researched and documented.Steve Drakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17435371814330595643noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-77581349341801517812010-11-23T18:42:54.542-05:002010-11-23T18:42:54.542-05:00JD Walters,
There's some truth to what you...JD Walters,<br /><br />There's some truth to what you're saying, but I'm not satisfied with leaving things were you've left them. There aren't many people today who are "pressing too far" in the way you've mentioned. In the atmosphere of our day, the bigger problem is on the other side of the spectrum.<br /><br />As Hill mentions in his book, and as I've noted in my series of posts linked above and elsewhere, the patristic, heretical, and non-Christian sources we have come from a wide variety of backgrounds, personalities, theologies, and locations. Some of them lived in multiple locations and were often in contact with individuals and groups elsewhere. A large number of individuals and groups are mentioned in the early extra-Biblical literature, and their beliefs are often described, sometimes in a lot of detail. Often, even minor figures and movements receive some attention.<br /><br />Since so many of the modern critical theories have little or no external evidence in their favor, the critic's appeal to the incompleteness of the historical record would have to be wide and deep. The more somebody has to make that sort of appeal, the worse the implications for his theory.<br /><br />And some of the critics' claims have to do with what was <i>popular</i> in the ancient world, not what might have been believed by a few individuals or one small group. When a critic of Christianity suggests that the gospels didn't acquire widespread acceptance until the late second century, or suggests that a heretical or apocryphal gospel was about as popular as the canonical gospels early on, those aren't just claims about a lone individual or a small movement that might have gone unmentioned in our extant records.<br /><br />The nature of historical claims varies from case to case. The incompleteness of the historical record has different degrees of significance in different contexts. I'll repeat some examples I cited above. If the fourth gospel had been composed by some sort of Johannine community, and it circulated without John's name attached for a few decades or longer afterward, would we expect such a series of events to not only leave no external evidence in the historical record, but also be contradicted so early and so widely? So often, the critical theories have a lack of external evidence where we'd expect to have some. An appeal to the incompleteness of the historical record can only go so far. And it doesn't go far enough, nowhere near far enough, to sustain the sort of critical theories I've referred to. It's a <i>major</i> problem for those theories, even though it's often treated as if it's just a minor problem, if it's even mentioned at all.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-89216835601473136712010-11-23T13:17:42.728-05:002010-11-23T13:17:42.728-05:00Your last point (about absence of external evidenc...Your last point (about absence of external evidence for alternative views) is a good one, but cannot be pressed too far. As Martin Hengel notes in <i>Four Gospels</i>, roughly 85% of the literature of the first Christians has been lost. We certainly do not have a representative sampling of literature from all the various Christian communities, heretical or otherwise. The Church Fathers we do have access to commented on some heretics and some pagan challenges, but still only those they were familiar with. I'm not saying that I expect to find evidence that GJohn was composed anonymously and was originally considered heretical, but we need to be careful in extrapolating from our extant sample of early Christian literature.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com