Introduction
What constitutes Holy Scripture? Which books belong in the Bible, and which do not? These questions are answered in paragraphs two & three of chapter one of the confession. Today we’ll consider paragraph two and the sixty-six books of the Holy Scriptures.
The 1689 Second London Confession of Faith (1.2)
Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these,
Of the Old Testament
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, II Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
Of the New Testament
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, The Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I Thessalonians, Il Thessalonians, I Timothy, II Timothy, To Titus, To Philemon, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Epistle of James, The first and second Epistles of Peter, The first, second, and third Epistles of John, The Epistle of Jude, The Revelation.
All of which are given by the inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.
The Canon
The Confession lists those books which are considered canonical by Christians in the tradition of the Protestant Reformation. These are the sixty-six books we are familiar with in our Bibles at church.
Notice that the Confession equates these sixty-six books with the very Word of God. This list of books is often referred to as the canon of Scripture. The word “canon” derives from a Latin word meaning, “reed” or “rule.” Both Jews and Christians recognize the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Old Testament as canonical, and all Christians recognize the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as canonical. As we will see next week, there is debate amongst Christians over the canonicity of several other books.
The Confession concludes this paragraph by affirming that all sixty-six books are given by divine inspiration. There is no argument given for this assertion because the Confession is not an apologetic or argumentative document, rather it is a statement of shared belief among early English Baptists.
While the canon of the Old Testament is a relatively settled issue, skepticism of the New Testament abounds in our culture. How did we get the New Testament? Who “decided” which books belong in the New Testament? Questions like this swirl on social media today. Thankfully, the church has spent nearly two millennia answering these questions with academic rigor. For now, allow me to give you a very brief and general overview.
Contrary to skeptical influencers & critics, the New Testament canon was not invented centuries after the lifetimes of Christ and the Apostles by power-hungry Roman Emperors and Bishops in clandestine councils. Rather, the New Testament documents were widely circulated and recognized as authoritative by the early church. All of the Apostle Paul’s letters were written within fifteen to thirty years after the resurrection of Christ, and the Gospel of John (likely the final gospel to be written) was authored by AD 95 at the latest. Other non-canonical gospels such as the Gospel of Judas and Thomas were written centuries later.
Reading church fathers such as Eusebius, we learn how discerning the church was as they recognized and collected the individual documents into the larger New Testament. They applied strict criteria to these texts such as:
Apostolicity: Did we receive this document from an Apostle, or someone connected to an Apostle?
Orthodoxy: Does the theological and historical content of the document align with Apostolic doctrine?
Catholicity: Was the document widely recognized as authoritative by the church?
So, you see, the early church exercised careful discernment in affirming which books were to be included in the canon. If a book showed up with the ink still wet, they tossed it. If it didn’t accord with the rule of faith, they set it aside. It’s crucial to understand that the church did not see themselves as creating the canon so much as they understood themselves to be recognizing the canon. The Scriptures are the Scriptures because they come from God. They are self-authenticating. So, the church didn’t “invent” the Scriptures. Rather, they acknowledged what was already true: that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are divinely inspired and thus, already canonical.
God has not given us a few phrases, or just one book. He has given us a library of knowledge concerning him and his purposes. The famed Princeton professor, Benjamin Warfield put it like this:
“On first throwing open this wonderful volume we are struck immediately with the fact that it is not a book, but rather a congeries of books. No less than sixty-six separate books, one of which consists itself of one hundred and fifty separate compositions, immediately stare us in the face. These treatises come from the hands of at least thirty distinct writers, scattered over a period of some fifteen hundred years, and embrace specimens of nearly every kind of writing known among men. Histories, codes of law, ethical maxims, philosophical treatises, discourses, dramas, songs, hymns, epics, biographies, letters both official and personal, [prophecies], —every kind of composition known beneath heaven seems gathered here in one volume.”[1]
We could easily spend weeks thinking and learning more about the canon of Scripture. Church history, biblical languages, archaeology and even theology all weave together as we study the process by which the church arrived at the final recognized shape of the Scriptures. If you are interested in learning more, I recommend the ministry of Wesley Huff for a popular audience, as well as the academic writings of Michael Kruger and Daniel Wallace.
I want to end today’s letter by quoting Psalm 138:2, which says:
I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. (ESV)
In Christ,
Pastor Jonathan
[1] Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 1, Revelation and Inspiration (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 436)