The Question Beneath Every Appeal to Scripture

“And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”
—Ephesians 2:20

The Christian controversy is ordinarily conducted by an appeal to Scripture. The preacher enters the pulpit and declares, “The Word of God says.” The theologian defends his doctrine by saying, “It is written.” The Church proves her confession by producing the testimony of the prophets and apostles. The believer resists temptation, corrects error, comforts his conscience, and governs his life by opening the Bible and submitting himself to its declarations.

Yet beneath every such appeal lies a prior question that is frequently assumed but seldom examined: Which writings constitute the Holy Scriptures?

When we say that Scripture teaches the deity of Christ, the justification of the ungodly, the resurrection of the body, or the final judgment, what writings have we included under the name Scripture? When we confess that the Bible is inspired, infallible, sufficient, and authoritative, to what definite collection of books do these predicates belong? Why should Genesis be received while Jubilees is rejected? Why is Isaiah canonical while the Wisdom of Solomon is not? Why must the Church hear Hebrews as the voice of God while refusing that honor to the Shepherd of Hermas? Why are Jude, Second Peter, and Revelation part of the rule of faith, while the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocalypse of Peter are excluded?

Until these questions are answered, the expression the authority of Scripture remains dangerously indefinite. One may affirm inspiration with great eloquence, but unless he can identify the writings comprehended under the name Scripture, he has affirmed an attribute without identifying its subject. He has declared that Scripture is God-breathed without yet explaining what writings are Scripture.

The thesis of this opening article is therefore simple: the doctrine of Scripture requires an identifiable canon, and the Church cannot appeal to Scripture as her supreme rule while treating the identity of that rule as permanently uncertain.

Inspiration Requires an Identifiable Scripture

Paul declares:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

This declaration establishes the divine origin and profitable use of all Scripture. Yet the word all necessarily directs our attention to the extent of the collection. If all Scripture is inspired, which writings are included in that whole? If every canonical book is profitable for doctrine, how shall the Church distinguish those books from the many merely human religious writings that have circulated under prophetic or apostolic names?

The doctrine of inspiration answers one question: What is the nature of Scripture? The doctrine of the canon answers another: Which books possess that nature and belong to the permanent rule God gave his people? Neither question can safely be neglected.

A man may prove that whatever God inspires is infallibly true, but if he remains uncertain whether Esther, James, Jude, or Revelation was inspired and given as part of the abiding rule, he cannot receive the teaching of those books with the certainty due to the Word of God. He may regard them as ancient, edifying, orthodox, and probably apostolic. He may judge it highly reasonable to include them in his Bible. Probability of this kind is not yet the same thing as hearing God speak.

Louis Gaussen recognized this when he published his work on the canon as the necessary complement to his earlier defense of inspiration. He had argued that Holy Scripture is divinely inspired. He nevertheless understood that the argument remained incomplete until the identity of that Scripture had been established. His new work would address the integrity, authenticity, divine origin, and exclusive canonicity of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven of the New.¹

Gaussen did not regard this as a peripheral academic difficulty. If the books cannot be known, the privilege of possessing an inspired Bible is compromised in its use. A cloud of uncertainty would stand between the believer and the heavenly voice. The Church might carry a volume called Scripture while proceeding with hesitant steps whenever a disputed book spoke.

The problem is not solved by saying that most doctrines can be proved from books no one disputes. God did not give the Church a collection in which only a central core may be received without reservation. Every canonical book has the right to be heard as God’s Word. The question therefore concerns James as truly as Romans, Esther as truly as Isaiah, and Jude as truly as John.

The Canon Is Not an Academic Appendix

The doctrine of the canon is often treated as a specialized department of church history. Students encounter lists, manuscripts, councils, disputed books, and patristic quotations. They learn that some books were received immediately, while others circulated more slowly. They hear of Athanasius, Eusebius, the Muratorian Fragment, Hippo, Carthage, and the categories of recognized, disputed, rejected, and heretical writings.

All of this history possesses genuine value. Much of this series will examine it in detail. But the canon cannot be reduced to the history of how ancient Christians compiled a religious library. The question is not merely how particular books came to be bound together. The question is whether God gave those books to his Church as her permanent rule of faith.

If the question were merely historical, the conclusions of the historian might be sufficient. We could speak of the books fourth-century Christians generally preferred, the writings influential bishops promoted, or the literature that eventually prevailed over competitors. Canonicity, however, is not merely a description of ecclesiastical success. It is a claim of divine authority.

To say that Hebrews is canonical is not merely to say that it was widely read. It is to say that God commands the Church to receive its doctrine. To say that James is canonical is not merely to report that ancient catalogues eventually included it. It is to say that its words bind the conscience. To say that Revelation is canonical is not merely to explain how it overcame regional opposition. It is to receive its promise: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy” (Revelation 1:3).

No council, bishop, historian, or critic can bestow such authority upon a book. If a writing is canonical, it possesses authority because God gave it. If it is not canonical, no ecclesiastical decree can transform it into the Word of God.

A Definite Foundation for a Definite Church

Gaussen begins his doctrine of the canon with Paul’s declaration that the Church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” This foundation is not an indefinite body of religious experience. It is not an ever-expanding tradition deposited partly in Scripture and partly in the unwritten consciousness of the Church. Nor is it a collection whose boundaries remain permanently subject to reconstruction by later scholars.

Christ founded his Church upon authoritative revelation given through his prophets and apostles. Through that revelation the Church receives her life, growth, power, and beauty.² The Word creates the Church; the Church does not create the Word.

This order is indispensable. God speaks. His prophets and apostles deliver his revelation. The Church hears, believes, receives, guards, and confesses it. The Church’s hearing does not make the voice divine. Her reception does not create the authority of the books. The sheep recognize the Shepherd’s voice because it is already the voice of the Shepherd: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

The action of the sheep is real, necessary, and providentially governed. Nevertheless, it remains an act of recognition. The sheep do not elect Christ to be their Shepherd by agreeing that his voice sounds authoritative. His voice calls them because he is their Shepherd. The same relation exists between the Church and the canon. The Church receives the canonical books because God has given them; they do not become canonical because the Church receives them.

Why the Reformed Confessions Name the Books

The Reformed churches did not confess an abstract doctrine of Scripture while leaving its contents unsettled. They identified the books.

The Westminster Confession does not proceed immediately from the existence of revelation to general assertions about inspiration. It first declares: “Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament.” It then names them.³ The sixty-six books are identified before the Confession explains their authority, sufficiency, clarity, preservation, and interpretation.

This order is doctrinally significant. Westminster does not merely say that inspired books exist somewhere. It identifies the books to which its subsequent assertions apply. It then expressly excludes the Apocrypha, “not being of divine inspiration,” from the canon and denies it any authority in the Church beyond that of other human writings.

The Belgic Confession follows the same pattern. After naming the books, it declares that “all these books, and these only” are received as holy and canonical for the regulation, foundation, and confirmation of faith.⁴ The phrase and these only confesses a defined boundary. It excludes subtraction and addition. It does not leave Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, or Revelation suspended at the level of probable religious authority. Neither does it reserve a place for Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Maccabees, or a newly discovered apostolic document.

The confession of the canon is therefore not an unconfessional preliminary to theology. It is itself a confession of faith.

Constitution and Recognition Must Not Be Confused

Two questions must be carefully distinguished.

First, what makes a book canonical?

Second, how does the Church know that it is canonical?

God’s act answers the first. God inspired particular writings and gave them to his covenant people as their permanent rule. Canonicity is therefore an objective property grounded in God’s purpose and authorship. The Gospel of John did not become canonical when a council listed it. It was canonical when God gave it through John for the abiding government of the Church.

The second question concerns recognition. How did the Church distinguish John from the many false gospels that subsequently appeared? What place belongs to divine qualities, prophetic and apostolic origins, corporate reception, historical testimony, and the inward testimony of the Holy Ghost?

These questions are inseparable, but they must not be collapsed. If ecclesiastical recognition creates canonicity, the Church stands above the Word. If recognition is impossible or permanently uncertain, God has given the Church a rule she cannot confidently identify.

The Reformed doctrine avoids both errors. It neither makes the Church creator of the canon nor renders the canon unknowable. God constitutes the canon, manifests its divine character, preserves it through history, and causes his people to receive it.

Historical Evidence Cannot Carry the Whole Weight

Historical evidence has an important and honorable office. The antiquity, authorship, circulation, public reading, quotation, collection, and corporate reception of biblical books can be investigated. False claims concerning councils, competing Christianities, suppressed gospels, and late canonical inventions must be answered historically.

Gaussen therefore devoted the first large portion of his work to what he called the method of science. He argued that the testimony for the universally received books of the New Testament surpassed the evidence available for any other ancient literature. Yet he refused to make historical criticism the foundation of divine faith. Historical evidence serves as an auxiliary and defense; it cannot impart living faith apart from Scripture made effectual by the Holy Ghost.⁵

Historical inquiry is performed by fallible people using incomplete surviving evidence. Its arguments may be powerful and morally conclusive without becoming divine testimony. Moreover, the ordinary believer cannot be expected to master patristic chronology, ancient languages, manuscript catalogues, and the authenticity of every ecclesiastical document before receiving the Bible as God’s Word. If certainty concerning the canon depended upon such expertise, the canon could function as a certain rule only for specialists.

The method of faith does not despise history. It places history in its proper office. It reasons from God’s character and declarations, Christ’s testimony, the nature and perpetuity of the Church, the divine qualities of Scripture, the work of the Spirit, and the providence by which God guards his revelation. History accompanies this faith. It does not create it.

The Modern Form of the Question

Michael J. Kruger deserves credit for recognizing that the problem cannot be solved merely by producing another history of early Christian book collections. His self-authenticating model incorporates the divine qualities of the books, their apostolic origins, the Church’s corporate reception, providential exposure, and the inward work of the Holy Spirit. He rejects both the claim that the Church created the canon and the attempt to authenticate it by supposedly neutral historical criteria.⁶

Kruger therefore does not deny that Christians know the canon. Any criticism that represented him as teaching canonical skepticism would be inaccurate. He argues that belief in the twenty-seven-book New Testament can be warranted knowledge.

The eventual question is narrower: does warranted but fallible knowledge exhaust the Reformed confession? Kruger expressly declines to claim infallible or incontrovertible certainty and allows that a person may possess knowledge while remaining theoretically mistaken. Gaussen speaks differently. Historical science alone cannot produce the intimate certainty required by faith; the foundation must finally be the testimony, wisdom, faithfulness, and providence of God.

The disagreement must not be exaggerated, but neither should it be hidden. Both affirm a divinely given canon, providential exposure, the work of the Spirit, the Church’s recognition, and the exclusion of lost apostolic writings from the permanent canon. The question is whether these truths give only fallible warrant or the certainty proper to divine faith. Later articles will face that issue directly.

The Strongest Objection

The strongest objection says that this argument demands an impossible, almost mathematical certainty. Christians are finite, disagree with one another, and sometimes doubt. No believer possesses exhaustive historical knowledge. How, then, can the Church claim certainty without pretending to omniscience?

The answer rests on a necessary distinction between the weakness of faith and the weakness of its foundation. A believer’s hand may tremble while receiving a gift, but the gift itself does not tremble. His understanding may be partial and his assurance assaulted, but the God who speaks, preserves, and testifies is not uncertain.

Divine certainty is not omniscience. It does not mean that every Christian can answer every objection, that subjective assurance is always equally strong, or that historical study has nothing to teach. It means that God has supplied an objectively sufficient and infallible ground upon which his Church may confess the books he has given. The believer’s act of knowing remains creaturely; the ground of that knowledge is divine.

The Pastoral Necessity of the Canon

The canon was not given principally to historians. It was given to the Church.

It belongs to the minister who must preach the whole counsel of God. It belongs to the elder who must refute error, the father teaching his household, the mother instructing her children, the believer resisting temptation, and the suffering saint seeking consolation. It belongs to the missionary who may possess few books besides his Bible and to the martyr who must decide whether the words before him are worth dying for.

These Christians need to know that when they open the Scriptures, they possess the oracles of God—not a provisional scholarly anthology, not the successful literature of an ancient ecclesiastical party, and not a collection whose limits await the next archaeological discovery.

The same God who commanded his people to hear his Word undertook to give them that Word. The same Christ who founded his Church upon the apostles and prophets did not allow that foundation to disappear beneath history. The same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures has not abandoned the Church to an uncertain search for them.

Before the Church can say, “Scripture teaches,” she must be able to say, “These are the Scriptures.” Before she can appeal to the rule, she must know the rule God has given. The doctrine of the canon therefore stands beneath every appeal to Scripture—not as a human foundation placed beneath God’s Word, but as the Church’s faithful confession concerning the identity of the Word God has already given.

Notes and Further Reading