Everything is simpler as a child. Reality seems less complex than it does when you’re older and you’ve investigate it more thoroughly. As a child I remember just assuming that the Bible had more or less “dropped out of Heaven.†Not literally, or course, but I did imagine that the process of receiving God’s revelation in print as recorded in the Bible had been less complex then it really was. Looking back, I guess that I had a view of divine revelation which was much more commensurate with the Islamic or Mormon explanation. After all, wouldn’t it be cleaner if we could just believe that God more or less dictated to a “secretary†or dropped down pages of golden texts?
However, the Bible doesn’t come to us in such a fantastical way at all. The process of recording, transmitting, and even translating is all so normal and human. But then again, the recorded history, poetry, letters, apocalyptic writings, etc. within the Bible seem likewise to involve humanity as well. And they are never whitewashed or idealized. The authors seem to record even those parts which might be embarrassing. It’s just all so real to life.
Given this, one process that people often wonder about is how the particular books of the Bible were selected to be a part of the canon, or rule of faith. Specifically, why these 27 books to comprise the New Testament (NT)?
What lead to making a list of books of the New Testament (canonization)?
There are at least two reasons why the early church was forced to establish a formal list of books which were recognized as divinely inspired or God’s Word. The first reason was the external circumstance of persecution within the early church. For instance, when Christians were being heavily persecuted for their faith by the Roman Emperor Diocletion (A.D. 303), it became extremely significant for the persecuted Christians to know which books could be handed over to the civil authorities for destruction and which were worth giving one’s life for. Death has the effect of persuading people to clarify what’s important. Therefore, Christians were willing to trade their lives for God’s very Word, but not for mere ink and paper.
The second circumstance which lead to the church clarifying which books were in fact divinely inspired was the rise of heretical sects who either rejected books or suggested their own sacred books. For example, the movement called Gnosticism posed a threat by claiming that Jesus, while spiritually God, was not truly human. One of the strongest attempts to set up a standard other than the developing NT that we have today was made by a man named Marcion from the mid 100s. Marcion only accepted a trimmed down version of Luke’s Gospel along with some of Paul’s letters.
The criteria
Since there were not scores of these hand-written copies of the NT books, they were read by Christians primarily in corporate worship settings rather than by individuals in their homes. So, determining which books should be read and included in corporate worship was paramount. As far as historians can tell, there are three key criteria used by the early church for accepting a book as divinely authoritative. The three standards are (1) orthodoxy, (2) apostolic connection, and (3) universal acceptance or church-wide consensus.
Orthodoxy—The sources of authority for the early Christians were the Old Testament, Jesus’ teachings, and those of his apostles. Therefore, the first test for any writing had to be its conformity to what the church already knew to be true. As a side note, the Apostle Paul applies this same line of reasoning to the Christians in Berea, applauding them for checking out what he said in light of the Old Testament Scriptures (Acts 17:11).
Apostolic connection—Because an Apostle had to be someone who was commissioned by Jesus and had both been with Jesus since his baptism by John and had witnessed the resurrection (Acts 1:21-22), the early church placed great weight on their authority. Therefore, the early church required that a NT book have apostolic connection, which meant authorship either by an Apostle himself (though often recorded through a scribe), or someone who had intimate connection with an Apostle. For instance, of the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) only the 1st and 3rd were actual Apostles. Nevertheless, Mark was the traveling companion with the Apostle Peter, as Luke was with the Apostle Paul, establishing their places or authority and credibility.
Universal acceptance—The books of the NT were distributed and copies by the churches which the Apostle’s had planted around the known world. However, it was a world without phone, fax, e-mail, or satellite conference. Churches scattered not only around the Mediterranean world but also from Britain to Mesopotamia expressed general agreement on 20 of the 27 books of the NT (by the mid 100s only Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were yet to be universally recognized by the church).
Therefore, when church councils in the late 300s (Carthage in A.D. 397 and 419) began to pronounce official lists of New Testament books, we must be careful not to a-historically suggest that they were neither arbitrarily choosing books like pulling numbers out of a hat, nor engineering a list of books for political purposes. Rather, they were simply ratifying a general acceptance which had existed for well over 100 years among the universal church.
For further reading on this topic see:
1. Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: It’s Origin, Development, and Significance.
2. _____, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, & Content, 3rd ed.
3. David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Why do you suppose that God chose to include humanity in the recording and transmitting process of His Word instead of just “dropping it down from Heaven�
2. Which kind of autobiography do you think is more credible—one which presents a white-washed and idealized version of its author or one which records even the embarrassing flaws and details? Why?
3. Read Acts 1:15-26 which recounts the event when the Apostles filled the apostolic role left empty by Judas the betrayer of Jesus. Who was selected to be added to the remaining 11 Apostles?
5 Comments on “What were the criteria for New Testament books?”
Thanks for the posting.
I think the true threat posed by the Gnostic texts was in demonstrating ways to understand the canonical texts that did not fit with the agenda of the Athanasian bishops. Now that we have some translations of banned texts available, they shed light on the deeper meaning in the canonical texts that the power structure sought to suppress.
It’s clear from the Gospel of Thomas that the Gnostics were less interested in canonical dogma than in experiencing the divine Logos directly. For those who sought to control people by controling the meaning of the canonical texts, nothing could be more dangerous.
Sophia,
I assume by “Athanasian bishops†you’re referring to the vast majority of pastors in the 4th century who disagreed with Arius? However, Arius’ error was not Gnostic. So, I’m a bit confused about your reference to this later time period in church history as it relates to the church’s rejection of Gnosticism. The Christian battle against Gnosticism began much earlier as seen in the famous work of Irenaeus (ca. 130—200) called “The Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So Called.â€
And while not the full blown Gnosticism that emerged in later centuries, various biblical authors also refuted elements of it in the New Testament. For instance, see Paul’s correcting of theosophical or Gnostic speculation about “the elemental spirits of the universe†(Col 2:8, 18, 20) who, according to the false profits, were said to exercise power over people and were worthy of worship along with Jesus.
Likewise, the Apostle John harshly rebuked a group who was claiming special insight (gnosis) and who had separated themselves from other Christians in forming their own sect (1 Jn 2:19). They seemed to be advocating a mixture of Gnosticism and Christianity which denied the physical human body of Jesus (I Jn 2:22; 4:2-3, 15).
Sophia, I don’t know how familiar you are with early Gnosticism, but one of the chief characteristics of all it’s various forms (and its forms are many) was a fundamental separation between the spiritual and material universe. That is, they believed spirit to be pure and good, while the material world was lesser or even evil. It’s for this reason that Gnostics rejected the Christian claim that God (spirit) had became incarnate (material) in the person of Jesus.
Therefore, contrary to what you stated above, the threat of the much later Gnostic texts to the first century canonical Gospels was not reinterpretation but replacement. Again, they put forth a much different Jesus—a nonhuman cryptic teacher of secret knowledge which was only available to a special elite group of people. And, as it sounds like you’re familiar with the 2nd century Gospel of Thomas, The Gnostic Jesus was also a sexist Jesus, who claimed that women were only able to inherit the Kingdom of God because they would be resurrected as males.
If you meant something different, I’d be curious what precisely you were referring to when you wrote that Gnostic texts “shed light on the deeper meaning in the canonical texts that the power structure sought to suppress.†Also, what Christian power structure are you referring to within the persecuted church of the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd centuries?
I mentioned the Athanasians because they were the party of bishops that decided which books to include in the canon. The power structure to which I refer is the Church hierarchy.
I’ve seen the arguments that the mention in Thomas of Jesus saying he would make Mary male point to a sexist Jesus. Certainly, that is one way of receiving the passage. It is a reception that omits the fact that all of Jewish and gentile society at the time was sexist. From such context, the quote is not necessarily sexist.
In the canonical Gospels there is a quote of Jesus saying that a seed had to die in order for it to become a plant. That was probably believed at the time. The knowledge of how a seed grows into a plant was not studied as closely by the ancients as we have studied it. The remark must be taken in context.
The Gnostic concept of leadership by an elite group of people is typical of the state of philosophy in the ancient world. It’s little different than having a Church led by an elite group of bishops, or by a single elite archbishop. The American form of Democracy is based on the same notion. In that system, the people select which member of the elite they want to perform a specific governing role. The elite proposed a Constitution, and the land-owning populace voted to adopt it. There is elitism in both clerical and secular institutions without the ancient Gnostic texts.
What should be at issue is whether the canonical texts constitute the divine Logos, or whether it is to be found elsewhere. The Gnostic texts support the latter position because they imply that the meaning of the text is not apparent. One must seek in order to find the deeper meaning. This makes more sense. The divine Logos in ineffable. It can’t be contained in canonical texts.
Sophia,
You said, “the Athanasians . . . were the party of bishops that decided which books to include in the canon.†You might reread my original post in which I briefly demonstrated that these 4th century church councils merely ratified “a general acceptance which had existed for well over 100 years among the churches around the known world.†However, your claim fails to understand the first 300 years of church history in which we saw the acceptance of those first century books which make up the NT. And if you disagree please give more than assertions. Rather address the arguments (evidence, then a conclusion) which I made in my initial post.
I offered the strong criteria used by the early church for recognizing divinely inspired books—criteria which we can still apply today. For instance, the Gospel of Thomas did not agree with either the Jewish worldview or the teachings of Jesus’ Apostles (test #1); it was a later 2nd century writing falsely ascribed to the Apostle Thomas (test #2); and it never received general acceptance by the persecuted universal church of the first 3 centuries (test #3). And please also remember that you can’t invoke the political-power-structure card in this case either, as the persecuted, fledgling, early church didn’t have your supposed political power structure as it did in much later centuries (e.g., from the 4th century onward). If you would like to propose texts (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas) over and against the church’s received NT canon, you must at least demonstrate why the above three tests failed to accurately recognize divinely inspired books, and then propose alternative tests.
You also asserted that because the larger Gentile and Jewish cultures were sexist, the sexist statement made by the Gnostic Jesus (in the Gospel of Thomas) was not sexist. However, this is what is called in logic, a non-sequitur. That is, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. By the same reasoning, we could call a racist author a non-racist so long as everyone else around him is racist too. Do you see the faulty (and dangerous) reasoning here? Nevertheless, the Jesus presented in the New Testament is anything but sexist—elevating the status and position of women in what was a largely sexist 1st century culture.
You also misunderstand my comment about Gnosticism being elitist (you claimed it to be elitists in its manner of selecting its Gnostic leadership. However, my comment about the elitist nature of Gnosticism is not in reference to the leadership but to who could be saved. The Gnostics did not believe that everyone could experience gnosis or the secret knowledge required to achieve enlightenment, and thereby, salvation (only a select few were even capable of it). And as you can see, democracy is not based on the same notion (see your comment above).
Per your last comment, Christians don’t claim that the canonical Gospels “contain the divine logos†(and by “divine logos†I assume you mean the person of Jesus). Rather, they claim to be an accurate account of the events of Jesus’ life as recorded in the texts. They claim to be an accurate proclamation of the Gospel, good news, or announcement of what the Jewish Messiah has accomplished in the coming of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a far cry from the Gnostic Jesus who, while fully divine, was not even human. Be sure you know what Gnosticism taught before you contend for it.
And never the twain shall meet.