Historically, Lutherans have made a distinction within the canonical books of the New Testament between the homologoumena and antilegomena. As noted above, the distinction refers to the division between the books of the New Testament that were affirmed unanimously by the witness of the early church as being written by the apostles, and those that were not thus affirmed. Among the first class (homologoumena) are reckoned the Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, 1 Peter, and 1 John. Among the second class (antilegomena) are reckoned Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.[1]
It is important to recognize that for Lutherans the antilegomena does not relate to the undisputed books of the New Testament in the manner that the Apocrypha relates to the Old Testament proper. Whereas the Apocrypha is not considered the Word of God because it was not authorized as such by Christ, the antilegomena may be apostolic in origin, but that origin is disputed….
Throughout our discussion we have consistently emphasized the centrality of Christ’s promise of inspiration to the prophets and apostles. Belief in inspiration is therefore derivative of our faith in Christ and His historical reality, mediated to us by the power of the Spirit as active in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church.[2] For this reason we should not abandon the distinction between the antilegomena and the homologoumena. The canon of Scripture must be grounded in the actual authorship (or at least authorization) of a prophet or apostle, because Christ has attached His promise of inspiration to them alone.
Our approach to discerning the canon is thus quite different from that of the Reformed and Roman Catholic traditions, both of which tend to distance the work of the Spirit from the external Word, albeit in different ways. In the Reformed tradition the canon is established mainly on the basis of the subjective reality of the inner testimony of the Spirit.[3] Catholicism holds that the Spirit- guided (Roman Catholic) Church can establish the canon by fiat. Both assume that the Spirit makes the canon discernible not through the objective historical promise of Christ but through the interior work of the Spirit. Both represent Enthusiasm, albeit in different forms: one individualist (Reformed) and the other authoritarian (Catholicism). In contrast to all this, the historic Lutheran approach insists upon the unity of the Word and the Spirit, that is, the objective principle (apostolicity and the historical promise of Christ) with the subjective principle (the inner testimony of the Spirit).
For this reason, to the extent that certain texts are of mixed attestation or face other credible challenges to their apostolic origin, we cannot treat them as possessing the status of primary canonicity. Of course this does not mean that our judgment on this issue must remain static. Indeed, over time our judgment may change in the light of the evidence….
Nevertheless, even if the authorship of the antilegomena is historically ambiguous, as Gerhard properly notes, it does not mean that the divinity of the content itself is ambiguous. That is to say, even if the antilegomena possesses mixed attestation regarding authorship, we may still recognize its content as being the Word of God in the light of its agreement with the apostolic content of the homologoumena. As we saw in an earlier chapter, when the church preaches in accordance with the teachings of the prophets and apostles, that too is a proper form of the Word of God. So the antilegomena may be understood at minimum as the proclaimed Word of God even if there is some ambiguity as to whether or not it is the directly inspired Word of God.
Ultimately, though, the antilegomena must remain distinct from the homologoumena. To establish doctrine we must look to the fountain of truth (that is, the inspired books of the Bible themselves) and only secondarily to the stream (subsequent preaching of the church). As in a stream of water, the stream of doctrine may become mixed together with muck while the fountain remains pure and clear. For this reason we also stand in moderate agreement with Chemnitz. While not totally rejecting the canonicity of the antilegomena, we affirm the interpretative primacy of the sedes doctrinae found in the homologoumena.[4] This rule is a logical outgrowth of the primacy of the apostles and their infallible witness over that of the post-apostolic church. Hence, just as the New Testament clarifies the meaning of the Old, the homologoumena should be seen as possessing the ability to clarify the content of the antilegomena.
[1] Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 308–10.
[2] John Warwick Montgomery writes: “Note that we do not argue that the Bible must be divine revelation because it is inerrant; we argue, rather, that it must be a divine revelation because Jesus, who proves himself to be God, declares that it is such—and he regarded it as inerrant.” Montgomery, Tracatus Logico-Theologicus, 146.
[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.7.1 and 1.7.4, in Calvin: The Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. and ed. John T. McNeill and Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967), 1:74–75, 78–80; Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 25–26.
[4] Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent 1:189.
From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 174-175, 179-180, 180-181.