Introduction | Table of Contents | Chapter 19

The Preparation

What the Lord accomplished in the days of His flesh prepared the way for the production of these Scriptures after His Ascension, and under His authority, by the operation of the Holy Spirit. They were written at intervals, not by the Church, but to the churches, and to individual believers, by Apostles or those associated with them, each writer acting in his individual capacity under the power of the Spirit of God. By Divine providence the work was accomplished during the lifetime of the Apostles, the period in which local churches were first being formed. Thus the Spirit's operation was twofold, one, the planting of local churches by oral ministry, the other, the addition of "God-breathed" writings to the similarly produced Scriptures of the Old Testament. By this means the oral instruction was put in permanent form for believers generally.

The Necessity of the Scriptures

An inference sometimes drawn, that the oral instruction would have continued in its pristine purity, even had there been no Bible, is without foundation; it is disproved indeed both by apostolic forewarnings and by facts of history. Already the Apostles were speaking of "the many corrupting the Word of God" (2 Cor. 2:17), of those who were wresting the Scriptures (2 Pet. 3:16); they were foretelling of men who would arise from within the churches, "speaking perverse things" (Acts 20:30), and of the advent of "false teachers" bringing in "destructive heresies" (2 Pet. 2:1), predictions which subsequent events fully substantiated.

The teaching of Christ and His Apostles was designed, then, not to remain merely oral, to lie open to the variable and wayward traditions of men and the seductive antagonism of errorists. The Apostle Peter definitely states, for example, that one great object of his Second Epistle was, that after his decease the things of which he wrote should be called to remembrance (2 Pet. 1:15).

There was tremendous opposition to the spread of the Scriptures, yet the activities of false teachers and the production of spurious writings was a means of stirring the faithful to assiduous efforts to keep the true and reject the false. Thus, the Divinely inspired writings of the New Testament stood out in their true character as such in immediately post-apostolic times.

The Mode of Production

The churches were the recipients (and therefore so with the Church), not the producers of the Scriptures. Nor were they produced by the subsequently organized system of ecclesiasticism known as the Church. While the general recognition of the writings of the New Testament, as being inspired of God alike with those of the Old Testament, was progressive, yet the principle by which they respectively received recognition was acknowledged from the first.

The Canon and the Apocrypha

The limits of the Canon were fixed in the earliest times, not by hostile attack, but by usage, and that long before the convening of ecclesiastical Councils and their decisions. The usage, too, was based, not on tradition, but on immediate and Divinely imparted knowledge of the authenticity and Divine authority of the writings. Their general and regular use in the churches was determined, not by the issues of controversy, but by their recognition as Divinely given, by spiritual men (I Cor. 2:14).

As to the Apocryphal books and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, certain facts mark a radical distinction between them and the inspired writings of the New Testament. As external witness, the Canonical books as thus incorporated are supported by the concurrent testimony of believers from the earliest days; in contrast to this, for the support of the Apocryphal writings only scant and isolated opinions can be adduced. Further external evidence lies in this, that, under the stress of Imperial and inquisitorial persecution, while Apocryphal writings were readily handed over, as superfluous, to officials for destruction, no pains were spared to preserve these of the New Testament.

As to internal evidence, an unbiased perusal of the contents sufficiently reveals the gulf which separates the two both in character and in time, both in the relation of the books one to another and in matters of doctrine. The Apocryphal writers themselves bear testimony to this. Further, there is an essential, untransferable unity in the inspired Canonical writings which is conspicuous by its absence from Apocryphal books, to say nothing of the convicting, soul-transforming effects of the former, with their appeal to the conscience, and the fellowship they establish with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. These Scriptures endorse no doctrine not visibly embodied in the lives of true believers.

The earliest references to the New Testament writings show that they were received as of Divine authority by the churches, and that a complete Canon of truth, conveyed orally by the Apostles, providentially became fixed in their writings by the immediate operation of the Spirit of God.

The Canons of Truth and Scripture

Thus there was an indissociable connection between the Canon of truth orally taught and the Canon of Scripture. The contents were identical as long as the oral teaching was adhered to, and was free from perverting influence. Neither the Canon of truth nor the Canon of Scripture derived its authority from the churches, much less from the Church as an organized body. The Scriptures, then, were given by the individual writers raised up of God for the purpose, and were not imparted through the Church as such.

From the earliest post-apostolic times the churches lapsed from their purity. Yet the authority and value of the Bible remained unaffected by the apostasy. The written truth stands out, indeed, all the more clearly in its permanent value by reason of the promulgation of error.

There is ample evidence, too, that copies of all the books comprising the New Testament were made in abundance and circulated in all the churches from the very first. The work of copying them out was carried on assiduously by numerous copyists. So that at the beginning of the second century the Scriptures as we have them were in general recognition and use. The production of spurious writings served only to throw into contrast those that were genuine. Hence the God-breathed Scriptures of the New Testament, issued, in their manifest authenticity and Divine imprimatur, from the conflict of the contending forces of truth against error. What the Apostle Paul had declared concerning divisions in the church at Corinth, is true of the Scriptures, "There must be heresies ... that they which are approved may be made manifest among you" (I Cor. 11:19). The exposure of the false served but to manifest the true.

Not by Church Councils

It was not the Church that settled the Canon of the New Testament. It is true that the Council of Laodicea, held in the latter part of the fourth century, gave in its sixtieth canon a list of the books of the Old Testament, and that the third Council of Carthage, held in A.D. 397, gave a list of all the books in the present Canon of Scripture, but it is not due to ecclesiastical councils that we possess the Bible as we have it. The Canon had been practically fixed by the common use of Christians long before, and was not formally marked out by any combined investigation. These ecclesiastical Councils only confirmed the antecedent recognition of the Canonical books, a recognition manifest in earlier post-apostolic writings and acknowledged in general by the earliest churches in contrast to writings which had received no such general recognition. The recognition was primarily the effect of the testimony, in this very respect, of the Scriptures themselves. They bear, to the spiritually minded, their own witness to their validity. Thus, for instance, the Apostle Peter bears witness at the end of his second Epistle to the validity of all the Epistles of the Apostle Paul as being of equal authority with "the other Scriptures," a clear intimation as to the existence, among the churches, of a well-known and recognized number of inspired Scriptures.

To show how worthless the decisions of Church Councils regarding the Canon can be, the Council of Trent went so far as to admit the Apocrypha into the Old Testament Canon. The authority of Church Councils was derived and enforced, not as the result of a process of Spirit-guided conformity to the teaching of Christ and His Apostles, nor by way of development in adherence thereto, but through departure from the faith and through prejudicial influences. The traditions of men, were as contradictory to the revealed will of the Lord as the traditions of the Pharisees and Scribes were in the nation of Israel in its degenerate state.

Appeal is made to the analogy of the so-called Church Council in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15. But the record given in that chapter shows that the nature of that gathering was vastly different from that of the ecclesiastical Councils established in later centuries. When the Apostles and elders met in Jerusalem to decide a question that was troubling the saints, their decision was given, not as from their own authority, but in the light of Holy Scripture. They did not add to truth which had already been given by God and recorded in the Scriptures. They simply confirmed what had already been revealed.

It becomes us, then, in days when the sufficiency of the Bible is being called in question, to adhere to the instruction of these Holy Scriptures, and to hear constantly the voice of God through them, remembering that they are able to make us "wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus," and are "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work" (2 Tim. 3:15-17).

Introduction | Table of Contents | Chapter 19

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