To affirm that the Bible is the record of special divine revelation and that it is divinely inspired while being also the product of human composition is to need to ask further questions as to the scope of the Bible and the relation of its various parts to the whole. Hence we now come to the study of what is called the “canon” of the Old and the New Testaments, the relation of the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the basic unity of the Bible.
I. THE CANON OF THE BIBLE#
The Greek word kanon, translated into English as “canon”, seems to have had originally a general or secular usage, namely, a reed used for a measuring rod or yardstick. Among Christians of the postapostolic era this Greek word was, it seems, first used to refer to the Old Roman Symbol (R) - what we now call the Apostles’ Creed - and then later was used in reference to accepted biblical books.
By this second usage “canon” came to be understood as the inclusive number and exact identity of the books of the “New Testament,” and subsequently as the inclusive number and exact identity of those books which Christians had received from Jews and now called the “Old Testament.”
A. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT#
Scholars do not fully agree concerning the stages in the canonization of the books of the Hebrew Bible, which stages must not be assumed to be identical with the times of writing of these books.
Some have traced the beginning of the canonization of the Law prior to the Deuteronomic reform movement during King Josiah’s reign in the late seventh century B.C.
Others have allowed for a possible sixth-century canon collection of the Prophets during the Babylonian exile, which collection correlated the prophecies of doom and the prophecies of salvation.
Still others have held that the Pentatuech did not attain full canonicity until the fourth century B.C. and the prophetic books not until about 200 B.C.
There has been greater agreement as to the probability that the third portion of the Hebrew Bible, the Writings, did not attain to full canonicity prior to the end of the first century A. D., though it is not clear whether this occurred at the rabbinic Council of Jamnia (A.D. 90).
It has been argued that this process of canonization, however, did not result in one universally accepted canon among all Jews. Instead the result was two canons.
One was the Palestinian canon, which consisted only of the books of the Hebrew Bible. According to this reckoning the books of Joshua-Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah were taken as five, and not ten, books, all the minor prophets were considered one book, and Ruth and Lamentations were counted as separate books.
The other was the Hellenistic canon, which consisted of the books of the Hebrew Bible, nine additional books, and some additions to the books of Daniel and Esther.
But now, on the basis of a reconsideration of the entire history of the Old Testament canon, David G. Dunbar has rejected the theory of closure at Jamnia and the theory of a distinctive Alexandrian or Hellenistic canon and has inclined to the conclusion that the canon closure occurred by about 100 B.C.
If this was in summary the role of the Jews in recognizing as canonical the books of their sacred writings, what did Christians do as to the recognition as canonical of these same books?
During the first and second centuries A. D. Christians were in no dispute on this question and tended to follow the so-called Hellenistic canon. By the fourth and fifth centuries, however, a perceptible difference had arisen.
The Eastern, chiefly Greek, Church Fathers seemed to look upon those books included in the Hellenistic canon but excluded from the so-called Palestianian canon as “deuterocanonical,” and hence as being less fully canonical than the other books.
The Western or Latin Church Fathers, however, following the lead of Augustine of Hippo, adhered to the more inclusive canon of the Old Testament. This Western pattern was continued in the West during the medieval period and then given conciliar sanction by the Council of Trent.
On the other hand, the Protestant Reformers adopted the less inclusive canon of the Old Testament.
Consequently, during the modern era Protestants and Eastern Orthodox share a common canon, which is that of the Palestinian canon of the Jews, and Roman Catholics have a more inclusive canon, as was the Hellenistic canon of the Jews.
B. THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT#
The canonization of the New Testament involved a process that extended from the second century A D. until the latter fourth century. During that period there were yet to be clarified views as to the extent of the canon and the precise identity of the canonical books.
Some post-apostolic Christian writings such as the Shepherd of Hermas, Clement of Rome’s Epistle to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Acts of Paul were for a time recognized in some circles as being of equal value with the apostolic writings.
Some of the books which comprise our canonical New Testament were not indisputably canonical until after the middle of the fourth century.
Hebrews, James, and 2 Peter were slow to be accepted in the West, and in the East there was reluctance to receive Revelation.
Why was it necessary to have a closed canon of the New Testament? Among the reasons or factors given for the necessity of a definitive canon have been:
The proliferation of Gnostic gospels and apocalypses
The challenge of the Montanist movement
The issuance of Marcion’ s canon (c. 140) with its truncated Gospel of Luke and ten Pauline letters
The Syrian Church’s use of the Peshito as its canon after the second century.
Early in the second century the Gospels and Pauline epistles attained to an authority akin to that of the Old Testament. Late in that century, as evidenced in lrenaeus, the canonicity of the four Gospels was seemingly complete, and the Pauline epistles were theoretically equal to the Gospels.
The full canonicity of the latter and of Acts surely came early in the third century. During the century between 250 and 350, 1 Peter and 1 John were recognized as canonical; and 2 and 3 John, James, 2 Peter, and Jude were striving for canonicity, with Hebrews being accepted in the East and Revelation in the West.
The Synod of Laodicea (363) recognized all our present New Testament with the exception of Revelation, and in the Festal Letter (367) of Athanasius one finds the oldest extant list of the precise books comprising the later New Testament.
Synods at Hippo Regius (395) and Carthage (397, 419) formally adopted the closed canon. Some use of apocryphal books and of the shorter canon persisted. From its origin c. 431 the estorian Church never accepted Jude or Revelation. With this single exception the prevalent closed canon of the New Testament became the common heritage of all Christians.
What were the internal factors that led to the canonization of some early Christian writings and to the non-canonization of others? Were there indeed tests or standards for canonicity, and is it possible to speak of a theology of canon formation? From patristic literature it seems impossible to derive any authentic lists or statements of such standards, and modern scholars have no widely accepted list.
Inferences as to what likely were factors in canon formation can be drawn.
- Vawter has suggested that “the community tradition of a unique authority and character,” not the content of the writing, was the key to canonicity.
But why did some writings have such “tradition of a unique authority” and others did not? Are not some more specific answers needed?
- Recent authors as different as Floyd Vivian Filson (1896-1980) and Robert Laird Harris (1911-) have made apostolic authorship or authorship by a disciple of an apostle the principal factor in canonization.
But was it also not very probable that frequent reading of the writing when Christians gathered for worship was a criterion for final canonization? Moreover, would not the factor of content also have likely been retained?
Since the sixteenth century Roman Catholics have attached greater significance to the decisions of the late fourth-century and early fifthcentury synods as to the scope and identity of the canon of the New Testament, whereas Protestants have given greater stress to the agency of the Holy Spirit and to the providence of God in canon formation.
Furthermore, during recent years the latest form of biblical criticism to be practiced has been the so-called “canonical criticism,” which has as its focus the canon of the Bible and its relation to biblical interpretation.
C. THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE CANON OF THE BIBLE#
For the systematic theologian, the most important consideration about the biblical canon may prove to be the cluster of questions which theologians are prone to ask about the canon, even though the answers to some of these questions must be left open-ended.
1. One Canon of the Old Testament?
Can or will the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Protestant churches ever reconcile their centuries-long differences concerning the canon of the Old Testament?
A Southern Baptist scholar has reopened the issue of the tenability of the Protestant position, and a Presbyterian scholar has insisted that 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh not be restored to the Old Testament canon.
2. The Canon of the New Testament: Closed or Open?
In view of the Qumran, the Nag Hammadi, and other important nineteenth and twentieth-century discoveries of ancient documents related to the New Testament and the possibility of important future discoveries, would the canon of the New Testament be considered open if and when a newly discovered book should be widely recognized as having been written by an apostle of Jesus Christ?
This question is different from the view of those who have expressed regret that the canon of the New Testament was ever closed.
3. The Functioning Canon of the Bible
Do most Christians and most churches actually function with a “canon within the canon” of the Bible?
Martin Luther elevated the Gospel of John, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, the First Epistle of John, and the First Epistle of Peter to a centrist position in the New Testament canon. The nineteenth-century “quest for the historical Jesus” and Ritschlian “back to Jesus” from Paul movement represented an inner canon within the canon. Such is also true of Ernst Kasemann’s (1906-) elevation of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians and criticism of “early Catholicism” in other parts of the New Testament.
A collation of all sermon texts and all biblical passages read in worship services for a period of fifteen or twenty years in a given congregation and a comparison of the total with the entire canon of the Bible would provide empirical evidence as to whether that congregation functions with a “canon within the canon.”
4. A Third Canon of POstbiblical Christian Writings?
If Christian congregations should continue to read in their services of worship quotations from the writings of postbiblical Christian authors such as Augustine of Hippo, Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Martin Luther, John Bunyan (1628-88), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45), Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), and Watchman Nee (1903-72), should there be delineated a third canon of such writings?
II. THE RELATION OF THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS#
Inasmuch as the Old and the New Testaments were composed in different languages, were derived from different communities of faith, and had distinguishable processes of canonization, one should not find it difficult to understand why Christian systematic theology would need to deal with the basic relationship between these two testaments.
A. DENIALS OF THE FUNDAMENTAL CONNECTION BETWEEN OR ESSENTIAL UNITY OF THE TWO TESTAMENTS#
Floyd V. Filson’s germinal article surveying the prevalent twentieth-century denials of the coordinate integrity of the two testaments serve as the principal source and structure for this review of the denials.
1. Rejections of the Old Testament and Hence of the Integrity of the Two Testaments
a. Some have rejected the full canonicity of the Old Testament on the basis of an asserted antithetical dualism within the attributes of God, that is, a conflict between God’s justice and his mercy, which leads to a doctrine of two gods, one the just deity of the Old Testament and the other the good God of the New Testament.
These are the modern followers of the second-century Marcion, who completely rejected the canonicity of the Old Testament.
b. Some have downplayed the role and significance of the Old Testament by making the Old Testament synonymous with law and the New Testament synonymous with grace with the result that the Old Testament, as well as law, is deemphasized, if not denied.
This view ignores aspects of divine love and mercy in the Old Testament and aspects of divine wrath and judgment in the New Testament.
c. Some have challenged the canonicity of the Old Testament by stressing the Hellenistic background of the New Testament to the neglect of the Old Testament as its background.
Rudolf Bultmann represented this view, especially in his Theology of the New Testament, and the earlier Nazi rejection of the Old Testament as Semitic and non-Aryan was an awesomely disastrous form of this view. The biblical theology movement during the middle third of the twentieth century sought to correct this view.
d. Some may have unintentionally curtailed the relevance of the Old Testament in their quest for shortened forms of it and selected portions from it which would be more useful to Two-thirds World peoples today.
2. Rejections of the New Testament and Hence of the Integrity of the Two Testaments
a. Present-day Jews who reject Jesus as the Messiah and whose interpretation of the Hebrew Bible is in the light of rabbinic theology and later Jewish tradition reject the New Testament as sacred Scripture.
b. Some have downplayed the significance of the New Testament by assuming that:
Jews and Christians today equally possess the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament)
Jews and Christians both belong to the “Judaeo-Christian tradition”
Modern Judaism is also the rightful culmination of the Old Testament
Such a perspective either concludes or implies that there are two equally valid routes: the Talmud and Rabbinic Judaism, and the New Testament and Christianity.
c. Some scholars, such as Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), have undercut the importance of the New Testament, without necessarily intending to do so, by turning from their own highly apocalyptic reinterpretation of the New Testament to a philosophy of “Reverence for Life” with roots in Stoicism and Chinese thought.
d. Some have made a de facto denial of parts of the New Testament and hence of the essential unity of the New Testament by adoption of a “canon within the canon” of the New Testament.
B. EFFORTS TO FORMULATE AN ADEQUATE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO TESTAMENTS#
Some form of Christological interpretation of the Old Testament has been followed throughout the Christian era.
1. Typology
This approach involves the location and usage of “types” in the Old Testament as “prefiguration by counterpart” of certain “antitypes” in the New Testament, especially antitypes that pertain to Jesus Christ. Typology is at the same time both a method of relating the two testaments and a method of interpreting the Old Testament. Typological interpretation has usually been the method used by those who have affirmed a complete identity of theological content in respect to the Old Testament and the New Testament.
During the modern period the effort to set limits on typological interpretation has been called Marsh’s principle. Herbert Marsh (1757-1839), Anglican bishop of Peterborough, led a school of interpretation based on the principle that only those Old Testament types which are specifically identified as types within the New Testament writings should be regarded as types by modern Christians.
Marsh was reacting against the earlier school of Johannes Cocceius, which had made much more extensive use of typology, allowing for “inferred” as well as “innate” types. An American exegete contemporary with Marsh, Moses Stuart (1780-1852), agreed with Marsh, but in Britain Patrick Fairbairn (1805-74) rejected Marsh’s principle as being too restrictive.
Some have reacted very strongly against all forms of typology and moved to the opposite extreme of radical discontinuity between the two testaments. Against such a view three considerations need to be offered:
First, the extensive use of Old Testament quotations by New Testament writers
Second, Paul’s use of the “how much more” argument in 2 Cor. 3:7-11
Third, the total indebtedness of the New Testament to the Old Testament.
2. Homology
This approach to the relationship of the testaments finds a “correspondence” of “patterns” between the testaments. A leading exponent was William John Phythian-Adams (1888-1967). He saw three stages in each testament:
Redemption from bondage
Consecration of the people by covenant
Gift of the inheritance
Both “testaments tell a literal story, but the two stories correspond closely.” Filson criticized homology for magnifying the priestly at the expense of the prophetic in the Old Testament.
3. Midpoint
This approach finds the relationship between the testaments to be explicable in terms of the once-for-all “Christ event” as the “midpoint” of salvation history.
Oscar Cullmann, the chief representative, took a linear view of biblical history and saw the “Christ event,” embracing his life, ministry, death, and resurrection, as the “mid-point” of that linear history. Such an understanding enabled Cullmann to avoid both typology and allegory and still have a Christological interpretation of the Old Testament. The Old Testament prepared the way for the Christ event, its redemptive history pointing toward the incarnation.
4. Promise and Fulfillment
This approach reckons the Old Testament primarily in terms of promise and the New Testament primarily in terms of fulfillment. There have been some variations among the advocates of this approach.
Arthur Gabriel Hebert (1886-1963) represented a “mystical” or spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament which was essentially fulfilled Messianism, not only in the person of the Messiah but also in the throne of David.
Emil Brunner employed promise and fulfillment as terms descriptive of the revelation under each of the covenants.
Filson has warned that this approach could:
Fail “to come to grips with the reality of Old Testament history”
Fail to recognize that “the Old Testament is not all promise”
Miss the “element of surprise and novelty” in fulfillment
Fail to see the New Testament as “a book of hope”
III. THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE#
A. ITS DENIAL AND ITS REAFFIRMATION#
The unity of the Bible has been denied during recent decades not only by those who have downplayed or denied one of its two testaments and by those who have posited a radical disjuncture between the two testaments but also by those who have magnified the diversity within the New Testament writings to the point that diversity has been taken to mean contradictions.
1. Diversity as Consisting of Contradictions Which Make Theological Unity Impossible
a. Walter Bauer (1877-1960)
In a large volume first issued in 1934, Bauer, having studied second-century Christianity, concluded that “orthodox” and “heretical” parties or churches “existed side by side”; the orthodox sometimes being in the minority; and that the orthodox churches prevailed in the end for primarily political reasons, there not being until veryl ate a clearly defined difference between truth and error.
b. James D.G. Dunn (1939-)
Accepting Bauer’s conclusions and writing in 1977, Dunn took the idea of contradictory kerygmata back into first-century Christianity, that is, the New Testament writings.
He found thoroughgoing diversity among these writings and also certain “unifying elements,”
He denied the existence of a “single normative form of Christianity in the first century” or of any basic awareness of the difference between orthodoxy and heresy
He concluded that the only connecting link within the diverse New Testament writings is a rather general acknowledgment of “the unity between Jesus the man and Jesus the exalted one.”
For Dunn, therefore, the canonization of the New Testament meant the affirmation of the theological diversity of early Christianity, not of its unity.
c. James Leslie Houlden (1929-)
Popularizing what were more intricate studies by Bauer and Dunn, Houlden criticized systematic theologians in the twentieth century for a clumsy use of the New Testament and for selecting overarching themes so as to eliminate elements of diversity in the New Testament. He leveled a similar criticism at Cullmann, a New Testament scholar, for his choice and use of salvation history.
Houlden found no “single pattern” in the New Testament “sufficiently coherent and comprehensive to serve as the basis for any modern attempt to reach a unified statement of doctrine.” Hence the modern Christian theologian should do what the New Testament writers did: from one’s own perspective, mind-set, and circumstances to work out “the implications of a theism shaped and defined as a result of Jesus.” There have been replies and refutations to the diversity-as-contradiction school, and these must now be examined.
2. Diversity as Noncontradictory and as Embraced in an Overarching Unity of Truth, Which is Distinguishable from Error or Heresy
a. Archibald Macbride Hunter (1906-)
In 1944 Hunter reported among New Testament scholars “a growing recognition of the essential unity of the New Testament and of the need for synthesis.” He attributed to the framers of the canon a recognition of a certain unity, and he made use of the German term Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) to express this unity.
He then proceeded to expound the unitary message of the New Testament under three principal themes: “one Lord,” “one church,” and “one salvation.”
b. Harold Henry Rowley
Rowley’s The Unity of the Bible (1953) was directed more to the relation of the two testaments than to the unity of the New Testament, but it has important implications for the latter. Rowley noted the shift in biblical scholarship from a preoccupation with biblical diversity to an openness concerning biblical unity.
What Rowley wrote about the two testaments is not inapplicable to the books of the New Testament: “It is unnecessary to close our eyes to the diversity in order to insist on the unity, or to close our eyes to the unity in order to insist on the diversity.”
Moreover, the Bible’s unity is “dynamic,” not “static.” Variation in the Bible “does not spring from any variation in God, but from the variety of the levels of the persons whom He used.”
c. Henry Ernest William Turner (1907-95)
Turner, writing in 1954 a major answer to Bauer
According to D.A. Carson, “examined Bauer’s work in ruthless detail and exposed its repeated arguments from silence, its sustained misjudgments concerning the theological positions of such figures as Ignatius and Polycarp, and its incautious exaggerations on many fronts.”
Turner declared: “Christians lived Trinitarily long before the evolution of Nicene orthodoxy.” He also expounded eight characteristics of the “classical theory” of the nature and rise of heresy.
d. Donald Arthur Carson (1946-)
In an article published in 1983, Carson, after a critique of Bauer and Dunn, concluded that the “diversity in the New Testament very often reflects [either] diverse pastoral concerns, with no implications whatsoever of a different credal structure,” or “the diverse personal interests and idiosyncratic styles of the individual writers.” Hence “there is no intrinsic disgrace to theological harmonization, which is of the essence of systematic theology.”
The evidence in favor of the unity of the Bible, when coupled with recognition of elements of diversity, therefore, seems to outweigh the evidence in favor of the diversity of the Bible when diversities are regarded as contradictions that make impossible any unitary message of the Bible.
B. ITS NATURE#
- The unity of the Bible is not to be found in the identity of all its concepts, on the assumption that a conceptual sameness prevails throughout the books of the biblical canon. Rather there is diversity of expression and emphasis amid an underlying unity.
The Old Testament must be interpreted and understood by Christians in the light of Jesus Christ and the New Testament. But the Old Testament does not present all New Testament truth in preview, as the extreme typological interpretation would seem to suggest. “It is right that we should view the Old Testament in temis of that to which it has led as well as that out of which it arose.”
The New Testament must be interpreted with full recognition of the aspects of diversity which responsible modern biblical study has located and investigated. Such diversities ought not to be smothered in an attempt to effectuate an unnecessary scheme of uniformity.
- The unity of the Bible is capable of being identified and expressed. Such unity may be, for example, found in the following:
a. The identity of the One who has been manifested under both covenants and in both testaments-Yahweh God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is the God and Father of Jesus Christ
b. The man Jesus, the promised and expected Messiah and the Messiah who has indeed come, who is also the incarnate Word and the eternal Son of God
c. The Spirit of God, who in both power and intimacy empowers and indwells persons under both covenants and in both testaments
d. The correlatable completeness of the work of the one God - in creation, in sustenance of that created, in redemption of a people, and in the consummation of all things, whether in judgment or blessedness - to which aspects of the work of God both testaments bear witness
e. The correlatable identity of the people of God, both the people of the Old Covenant with Abram and the nation-people of Israel and the people of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.