“A Well-Aimed Canon”

Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Why do christians accept the New Testament canon?

Sincerely,
Authenticating Orders

Dear Authenticating Orders,

The question of what books to include in the Bible and what books to exclude as false is a major issue – and it is an issue that the early christians had to face.  Twenty-seven books are included in the New Testament canon (the word ‘canon’, when applied to Scriptures, means ‘the officially accepted list of books’), and each one of these books is documented by early christians as being a divinely-inspired piece of literature.  In other words, the early christians believed that God wrote it.

The key to understanding why some books are included in the Bible and other books (even books from the same time period) are excluded is to remember that the Bible claims to be God’s Book (2 Pet 1:19-21).  The early christians lived during the time when these books were being written, and they were fully aware of who was doing the writing.  Today, we can’t tell which religious documents were written by apostles and which documents were written by heretics… but the early christians certainly could!  If someone claimed that a letter was written by the apostle Paul, all they had to do to verify the authenticity of the letter was to ask Paul for themselves.  The early christians were in the best position to differentiate between authentic apostolic writings and other manmade documents.  This is exactly why the early church quickly adopted the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, and they have been almost universally accepted as the only New Testament books ever since.  Numerous historical documents verify that the New Testament canon that we use today was accepted, read, collected, distributed, and used by the early christians from very early on.  People who seek to say that they have “found” some new Bible books that have been missing from the canon have to prove that their books were accepted by christians from the beginning – no one has been able to do that.

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