Category: Scripture

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Did the Apostles Establish the New Testament Canon?

At the core of the apostolic testimony found in the New Testament are the four Gospels. The Gospels are central to the apostolic testimony, not only because they give a direct witness to the reality of God’s salvation manifest in Jesus but also because, as Moses authorized subsequent prophecy in Israel in Deuteronomy, Jesus in the Gospels authorizes the infallibility of apostolic witness.

The Gospels were written by at least two apostles (John and Matthew) and two persons authorized by the apostles (Mark by Peter, Luke by Paul). They therefore bear the stamp of the risen Christ’s authority. Although liberal scholars have questioned the reliability of the four Gospels and their authorship, there are many good arguments in favor of both their reliability and their traditional authorship….

Overall this evidence suggests that there was an early, very strong, and geographically diffuse consensus in the early church that the four canonical Gospels were indeed Scripture and that they were handed down from the apostles….

Finally, beyond the external evidence of the traditional authorship, there is evidence within the Gospels themselves. Richard Bauckham has shown that the Gospels bear literary features that suggest the authors were themselves eyewitnesses or had access to eyewitness testimony….

As should be clear from this discussion, the claims to apostolic origins made by the New Testament documents are extremely credible and grounded in objective historical fact. From this it is assured that they possess the infallibility Christ promised the apostolic witness and therefore legitimately belong to the canon. But it is also possible to go beyond the argument for mere apostolic authorship of each individual. Below we will argue that a case can be made that at least certain blocks of canonical materials, if not the whole canonical list itself, were recognized and authorized during the apostolic period. If valid, this argument would suggest that the canonical decisions of the fourth century were correct not simply because they accurately ascertained the apostolic source of each writing. Rather, their canonical lists grew organically out of the implied or explicit decisions the apostles themselves made about their own writings and their apostolic co-witnesses in the faith.

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 160, 162, 165, 171-172.

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The Triune God, the Person of Christ, and Inerrancy

In contrast to the Enlightenment’s subject-object dualism, Scripture teaches that all reality is rooted in the triune God, who unites subjectivity and objectivity in His personal existence. On the one hand, God is omniscient and therefore possesses an absolutely objective knowledge of Himself and all His creatures. At the same time, God’s knowledge of Himself and His creation comes in and through His personal and subjective existence as eternally actualized in the persons of the Trinity. God therefore knows what He knows absolutely objectively, but from the analogical “perspective” of the individual persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moreover, God’s knowledge, particularly of Himself, is relational in that it is actualized through the perichoretic mutual indwelling of the persons within one another. Although the persons of the Trinity know one another through mutual indwelling, they do not lose their personal and distinct subjectivity as persons.

Beyond the life of the Trinity, one can see the unity of objectivity and subjectivity in the incarnation. Here the universal and absolutely objective God takes into Himself a particular subjective human existence in time. Again, the subjective and objective are not antithetical to one another but perichoretically indwell one another through the communicatio idiomatum of the incarnation. Just as the persons of the Trinity perichoretically know and dwell in one another without abrogating their distinct personal realities, the two natures communicate their properties to one another without obliterating their distinctness as divine and human.

Therefore, the man Jesus participates in the fullness of divine glory (genus majestaticum, Col 2:9) and even the archetypal theology of God’s eternal self-knowledge (theologia archetypa, Col 2:3).[1] Likewise, in and through His unity with the human nature the person of the Son in His absolute objectivity and omniscience participates in the historical situatedness and particularity of the human nature. As a result of the communicatio idiomatum in Christ, creatures in their subjectivity, finitude, and historical situatedness are given access to the full objectivity of God’s reality and truth.

The form taken by Scripture as the inspired Word of God thus comes into focus. As we have already seen, in moving the scriptural authors to write, the Holy Spirit incorporated (one might say by enhypostasis) the individuality of each scriptural author and his particular situation in time and space into the composition of the divinely inspired books. In the incarnation the human nature of Christ possesses its own individual characteristics while at the same time lacking its own center of identity (anhypostasis). Rather, Christ’s humanity is incorporated into and possesses its center of identity in the eternal person of the Word (enhypostasis). By analogy, the individual characteristics of each scriptural author are not negated by the revelation of the Holy Scriptures but are incorporated into the act of inspiration and composition. Nevertheless, since the words of the Bible are the very words of God, the written words of the scriptural authors find their ultimate center of identity not in the personality, intentionality, and circumstances of the individual author but rather in the hypostasis of God’s revelation.

Hence, as a byproduct of God’s trinitarian and incarnational agency the Bible gives the Word of God in and through a variety of creaturely witnesses. Indeed, in the Bible there is a “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1). Like the Trinity and the incarnation, Scripture witnesses to a single harmonious truth manifested in and through difference. The Bible is absolutely objective and inerrant. It witnesses to what genuinely occurred in time and space, but it does so from the perspective of the individual authors in their individual communities and historical situations, thus conveying to its readers a symphony or even a polyphony of truth.[2]

[1] Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 1:252; Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism 1:170–72.

[2] See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987).

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 143-145.

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Human Agency in Relation to Verbal Inspiration

The doctrine of verbal inspiration should not be confused with a kind of mania that eliminates human agency.[1] When the Bible and the later Lutheran scholastics speak of verbal inspiration, they do not mean that God took over the minds of the prophets and apostles so that they ceased to function consciously as the men they were.

Nevertheless, it is very common to hear modern scholars and theologians attack the theologians of scholastic orthodoxy for essentially teaching such a doctrine. For example, Matthew Becker suggests that verbal inspiration and inerrancy erase human agency in the production of the Scriptures.[2] Becker claims Johann Gerhard taught that divine inspiration makes the inspired author like a flute played by God.[3] Such a claim lacks validity: Gerhard never uses such an analogy in his treatment of inspiration.

The manic concept of inspiration actually is present not in the Protestant scholastics but in the Ante-Nicene fathers. Indeed, one finds the flute analogy for divine inspiration in the second-century apologist Athenagoras.[4] As men of their time and cultural milieu, these theologians often borrowed this concept of inspiration from earlier Jewish and Hellenistic sources. Within the Palestinian Jewish tradition, the intertestamental Book of Jubilees (second century B.C.) speaks of Moses receiving the Torah as a whole on Mt. Sinai in the form of heavenly tablets.[5] This concept suggests an extraordinarily crude notion of inspiration as a kind of literal dictation.

Likewise, pagan Hellenistic culture possessed a concept of prophecy that was manic. Inspiration was understood as a state wherein the rationality and self-consciousness of the individual disappeared and was replaced by the divine agent, whatever form that might take.[6] Taking over this conception as part of their cultural assimilation, some Hellenistic Jews (notably Philo of Alexandria) came to think of Moses and the prophets as entering a kind of trance state brought on by the power of the Spirit.[7] Although Hellenistic Jews and the later Ante-Nicene fathers generally did not think the prophets and apostles had behaved in an irrational manner in the state of inspiration,[8] they nevertheless did speak of God taking over their minds.[9]

Although admittedly there are portions of the Bible where those prophesying enter into a trancelike state (1 Sm 10:10–12; 19:24), there is no evidence to suggest that such a state led to the production of the Scriptures themselves. Indeed, writings like the Psalms embody a genuinely human voice that prays, laments, repents, and praises God. At the same time the Psalms repeatedly are referred to by Jesus and the New Testament authors as divine prophecy and therefore the very voice of God (Mk 12:35–37; Jn 10:30–36; Acts 4:25–26; Heb 2:6–8, etc.).

[1] Franzmann, “New Testament View of Inspiration,” 746.

[2] Becker, Fundamental Theology, 305–6.

[3] Becker, Fundamental Theology, 305.

[4] See Leslie William Barnard, Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 76.

[5] Leslie Baynes, The Heavenly Book Motif in Judeo-Christian Apocalypses 200 BCE–200 CE (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 110.

[6] See Christopher Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and Its Hellenistic Environment (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 124–42.

[7] For example, Philo writes of prophecy: “No pronouncement of a prophet is ever his own; he is an interpreter prompted by another in all his utterances . . . when knowing not what he does he is filled with inspiration, as the reason withdraws and surrenders the citadel of his soul to a new visitor and tenant, the Divine Spirit which plays upon his vocal organism and dictates words which clearly express its prophetic message.” Philo, De specialibus legibus 4.49. Cited in Henri Blocher, “God and the Scripture Writers,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2016), 503.

[8] Charles Hill, “‘The Truth above All Demonstration’: Scripture in the Patristic Period to Augustine,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, 81–83.

[9] Blocher, “God and the Scripture Writers,” 503–4; Preus, “View of the Bible,” 363.

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 132-133.

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The Word Opens God to Abuse

In spite of this glorious fulfillment, God’s Word must always withstand opposition from His fallen creatures. Testing must precede validation. As in the life of Christ, humiliation always precedes glory, and trial always precedes vindication. Indeed, the reality of testing and opposition to God’s Word reveals the deep kenotic dimension to the act of revelation. Through His Word God not only reveals Himself, His will, and His purpose but is sacramentally present in it by the power of the Spirit (Mt 18:20; 28:20; Gal 3:2). God’s eternal Word, without losing its uncreated power and glory, kenotically makes itself available and tangible through the medium of finite human words. By making Himself known and tangible through His revelation in means, God opens Himself up to rejection, blasphemy, and abuse by His creatures.

Indeed, one suspects that this is the motivation behind Aquinas and Barth’s previously discussed theories of revelational analogy. If God makes Himself to be known in a merely analogical echo, then He does not fully open Himself up to the possibility of blasphemous abuse, misuse, or rejection of His Word. If God does not fully identify Himself with the means of grace, then He is saved from being rejected and abused when they are rejected and abused.

Aquinas and Barth’s revelational analogy is of course the logical corollary of their thoroughly Leonine view of the incarnation, wherein the communication idiomatum is little more than notional.[1] Nevertheless, as Luther notes, a God who does not communicate Himself fully to the flesh of Christ and suffer abuse is ultimately of no use to us.[2] And a God who has not communicated Himself fully to the external Word as both propositional truth and effective presence is of no use to His sinful creatures in need of “grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). If God is not fully present in His Word then He remains distant and hidden from His creatures, and they cannot grasp Him for the sake of their salvation. Just as the very Word of God made flesh submitted Himself to abuse and blasphemy on the cross and yet triumphed in the resurrection, in giving His external Word God submits Himself to abuse and opposition, and yet triumphs in either the creation of faith or the hardening of judgment.

[1] See my description in “Thomas Aquinas and Martin Chemnitz on the Hypostatic Union,” Lutheran Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2013): 1–32.

[2] Regarding Zwingli’s attempt to separate the two natures in Christ, Luther writes: “Beware, beware, I say, of this alloeosis, for it is the devil’s mask since it will finally construct a kind of Christ after whom I would not want to be a Christian, that is, a Christ who is and does no more in his passion and his life than any other ordinary saint. For if I believe that only the human nature suffered for me, then Christ would be a poor savior for me, in fact, he himself would need a Savior. In short, it is indescribable what the devil attempts with this alloeosis.” Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 1528 (AE 37:209–10; WA 26:319).

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 67.

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Inerrancy and the Sacramental Nature of Scripture

By contrast, the confessional Lutheran commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture is based on the sacramental nature of Scripture. Just as the reality of grace in the sacraments is hidden in and under the physical elements and is recognizable only due to the word of promise attached to them, God’s Word in Scripture is recognizable as such because of the dominical promise of infallibility Christ has attached to the authors and their words. Hence, calling into question the inerrancy of the Bible also means calling into question the validity of the sacraments. If Christ’s promise remains good for the sacraments, then it should hold for the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Because Christ has risen from the dead, thereby validating all He has said and done, we must believe Him over our fallen and finite human reason. Indeed, as Luther aptly states in the Large Catechism regarding the promise of Christ: “Because we know that God does not lie. I and my neighbor and, in short, all men, may err and deceive, but the Word of God cannot err.”[1] If [Matthew] Becker wishes to accept the validity of the sacraments (as one suspects he does) but not the inerrancy of Scripture, then he must insist on arbitrarily rejecting one of Christ’s dominical promises while accepting the others.[2]

Finally, as observed earlier with regard to [Rudolf] Bultmann, the Gospel cannot be isolated from the scriptural worldview, narrative, and other dogmas of the faith. As we have shown repeatedly, while the Gospel is the central article (Hauptartikel) of the faith, it nevertheless does not exhaust the content of the Christian faith. Neither does the Gospel exist in isolation from other revealed truths. By analogy we may say that if the Scriptures are like a wheel, the Gospel is the axle and the other articles of the faith like the spokes. Although an axle is central to the functioning of a wheel, the wheel is in fact non-functional without the spokes.[3]

In the same manner, the Gospel is ultimately a solution to the problem of the sin committed originally by Adam and Eve and transmitted to their descendants. Adam and Eve could sin only because they were creatures who violated the Law of their creator God. Similarly, Christ’s atoning work would be incoherent without the doctrines of the Trinity or the incarnation or the background of the whole history of Israel. The difficulty with Becker wishing to make the Gospel the ultimate criterion of all theological authority is that the Gospel does not make sense without the context of the total witness of the Bible and hence its inerrant authority.[4] If I believe the Gospel as true unconditionally, then I must believe the whole Bible as unconditionally true.

[1] LC IV (Bente, 747).

[2] Reu makes a similar point. See Johann Michael Reu, Lutheran Dogmatics (Dubuque: Wartburg Theological Seminary, 1951), 459–60.

[3] This is a common analogy within many conservative Lutheran circles. Nevertheless, I thank the Rev. David Fleming for first alerting me to it.

[4] Becker, Fundamental Theology, 285.

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 110-111.