The Date of the Canon

Some scholars today say the church didn't have agreement on which books were actually Scripture until the 5th century.

But that's not true. Historical evidence takes us back. We have the natural assumption that the canon would have grown up very early. We can see that we would have expectations of a very early canonical collection.

But here's the question. Can we go even further? Can we go into the 1st century? Do we have any reasons to think that in the 1st century books were already being used as Scripture even then? A prominent evangelical pastor caused a bit of a stir recently when he said that there was no canon until the 400s AD. That would mean that the church didn't have agreement on which books are Scriptural for hundreds of years.

This week on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Michael Krueger is debunking claims like that and helping us understand that God's Word has been at work in his church since the very beginning. We now come to this very important issue of the canon's date. Now we've talked about this a little bit in a prior session because we talked about how the definition of canon affects the date of canon.

So we're going to narrow down our question about canon's date to be very specific. And that is, when did New Testament books first start being used as Scripture? When did the New Testament books first start being used as Scripture?

Remember what critical scholars will tell us. They'll tell us that they were not written as Scripture, that no one thought they were Scripture. It took a long time for people to start using them as Scripture. It really wasn't until many centuries later that you have a functioning canon where people thought these books were Scripture.

So in the critical world of scholarship, there's this ever-growing gap between when the books were written and when we're told they started to be used as Scripture. So when is it that modern scholars put that date? When books were used as Scripture, sort of for the first time. Well, there's lots of answers to that question, but the main date that's being used now is at the end of the second century. Right around 200 AD, scholars say, is when Christians mainly began to use books as Scripture for the first time.

Now, why that date? Why are scholars thinking that's the first time that books were being used as Scripture? Well, the main reason that scholars have settled on the end of the second century, as the time when this happened, is because of a church father by the name of Irenaeus.

Okay? Now, Irenaeus was the bishop of Lyons, which is in modern-day France, and a very influential bishop of that time period. We have a lot of writings from Irenaeus about a lot of topics, but one of the things he wrote a lot about, or did a lot in his writings, is he talked about New Testament books. And we can tell in his writings what he thought about New Testament books. In fact, he gives us some of the most clear statements to date in that century about New Testament writings. One of his most famous statements is about the four gospels. Listen to what Irenaeus says about these.

And this is writing about 180 AD. Irenaeus says this, It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer than the number they are, for since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, and the cherubim around the throne, too, were four-faced. Now, what Irenaeus is doing here in this account, what's fascinating, is that he sees the fourfold gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as so certain, so established, and so not in doubt, that he's looking for fours everywhere.

Sort of built into creation, right? It's like the four directions of the world and the four creatures around the throne. I mean, he says, look, it just kind of had to be four. And this is why scholars look at Irenaeus and think, wow, he had a pretty assured canon. But it wasn't just the four gospels.

We know Irenaeus had a much bigger canon than this. We also know that he had Paul's entire 13-letter corpus, although there was a little doubt about Philemon, had the book of Acts, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, Revelation, and, of course, the four gospels I just mentioned. And he quotes the New Testament over a thousand times and clearly regarded it as full inspired scripture.

Now, that's pretty impressive. Here's Irenaeus, 22 out of the 27 books, clearly established in scripture, and the gospels are so certain, it's like the four directions of the world. It's for this reason that scholars have placed the date of books being used as scripture at the end of the second century because they're so impressed with what Irenaeus says.

But here's the catch. They argue that Irenaeus is starting something new by doing this. In other words, they're suggesting that Irenaeus is an innovator. In fact, some scholars have even gone as far as to say that Irenaeus invented the canon, that he is the architect of the canon, that he, in one sense, took a church that had no interest in the canon at the end of the second century, and because of his great influence, he decided the church needed a canon, and boom, here's the books that he advocated, and it was his great influence that eventually led the church to accept the canon. And so this is sort of the Irenaeus as innovator approach out there in the world. But I think this approach runs into a whole host of problems. I kind of call this idea the big bang theory of canon.

This is my terminology for it. And the reason I call it the big bang theory of canon is this idea that there wasn't a canon, and then with Irenaeus' influence, kind of overnight, boom, you got a canon. But I find this big bang theory of canon very difficult to swallow. In fact, I think all the historical evidence points against it.

So here's what we're going to do in this session. I want to argue that, in fact, Irenaeus was not the innovator that they say he is. I want to argue that he didn't create the canon, and he was not the architect of the canon. In fact, I want to argue that Irenaeus was actually pretty normal and ordinary in his day.

In fact, he was doing just about what everybody else has already been doing. And I'm going to argue even further than that that Irenaeus is doing what the church had been doing for hundreds of years already. So I'm going to argue that not only was Irenaeus not alone, but I'm going to argue that we can trace these books being used as scripture even further back, much further back, than Irenaeus. So we're going to take a little historical tour here. I'm going to take you through a number of names from the early church. I'm going to talk about what we see about the state of the canon. And this is a chance, I know we're going to be very brief, to talk about how far back can we go seeing books used as scripture.

And I think we can go very far back. All right, first thing we want to do then as we take this historical tour is talk about the contemporaries of Irenaeus, the contemporaries of Irenaeus. We want to ask the question, was Irenaeus alone in his beliefs in about 22 out of the 27 books? In other words, when he lays out this impressive canon, was he the only one doing this? And I want to argue that he was not alone. In fact, he has contemporaries all around him that were basically doing the same thing. And this pretty much shoots down the critical case that Irenaeus is doing something new and innovative. All right, so who are the contemporaries of Irenaeus? Let me just mention a few. First is what is known as the Muratorian Fragment.

How's that for a fun name, right? Muratorian Fragment is just a reference to a fragment we have which is basically our earliest canonical list. And it's our earliest canonical list that the writing of which dates back to about Irenaeus' day, right around 180 AD, late second century. Now, Irenaeus had nothing to do with this list. It's independent of Irenaeus, but it's dated about the same time as Irenaeus. It's our earliest list that we can see in the historical record.

Here's what's remarkable about it. It basically affirms the same books that Irenaeus does. What's included in this Muratorian canon?

Here's what's included in it. All four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The book of Acts. All 13 letters of Paul. Jude. First and second John. Maybe even third John. And Revelation. In other words, about 21 or maybe 22 out of the 27 books included in the Muratorian fragment as clearly scripture at the end of the second century.

Now, as soon as you see that, you're like, well, hold on a second. How can Irenaeus be an innovator when parallel to Irenaeus on different locations is already happening? And of course, this is one of the points you want to say here. This makes the whole big bang theory of canon already suffer from significant problems. Moreover, here's the other thing to realize about the Muratorian fragment is it's a list. And I know this is probably a new category for you, but it's one thing for an author to say, hey, these books are scripture, but it's another thing for someone to list them out because when you list them out, that implies some sense of restriction, some sense of like these and not others. So, to have a list at the end of the second century is a pretty mature step in the canon process. And it happens at the same time as Irenaeus. Let me mention another contemporary of Irenaeus, a person by the name of Theophilus. Theophilus was the bishop of Antioch, which is a strong Christian and Jewish center.

And he wrote about the same time. Now, what do we have from Theophilus by way of writing? Well, Theophilus, we don't have a lot of works from Theophilus, but we do have one apologetic treatise from Theophilus, what's called Two Adelikas. And he writes this apologetic treatise to this guy named Adelikas trying to make his case for Christianity. And as he makes his case for Christianity, what does Theophilus do? He tries to show Adelikas that the New Testament writings are as fully authoritative as the Old Testament.

Pretty interesting. There is a scriptural and as much authority as Old Testament books. So, what writings does Theophilus have? Well, when we piece together the various statements of Theophilus, we can see what writings he includes in this list. And the answer is the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He has a fairly developed collection of Paul's letters to boot, although we don't know exactly how many. And then on top of this, he has a number of the other smaller books.

In other words, this is starting to seem like a broken record. He seems to be doing pretty much what both Irenaeus and the Muratorian fragment were also doing. One last contemporary I'll mention here of Irenaeus, and that is a person by the name of Clement of Alexandria. Now, Clement of Alexandria is maybe one of the most famous church fathers. He was a very prolific sort of theologian in Alexandria, Egypt, the head of the school there. You may know his successor maybe more than him because he was the mentor of Origen, who became one of the most brilliant minds in the early church. Well, Clement of Alexandria was a genius. He was well read. He wrote tons.

He basically liked to quote from everybody, from the Greeks or the Romans, and he was just an impressive guy all around academically. And we have so much written by Clement, we can tell what books he received as scripture in the New Testament. And this is going to sound like a repeat story, but guess what books they were?

I'll tell you what they were. When we look at Clement of Alexandria's list of books, he receives what? The four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, 13 epistles of Paul, the book of Hebrews, Acts, 1 Peter, 1, 2 John, Jude, and Revelation.

In other words, what? About 22 out of 27 of the books, once again, at the end of the second century, exactly like Irenaeus. Now, you'll notice in all these lists what's missing too. In all these collections, you notice that they're not saying, oh, it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas, or Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the Gospel of Mary. Now, notice how uniform this is. Now, the edges aren't complete yet of the canon, right? We talked about that.

They're a little fuzzy with these smaller books. But notice how consistent the core is. And this is what I want you to see, all this happening in Irenaeus' day. Now, just pausing on Irenaeus' contemporaries for a moment, if we go back to our academic friends who are suggesting that Irenaeus is the architect and the creator of the canon and all these sorts of things, you're thinking to yourself, well, it doesn't seem so innovative here.

In fact, he seems to be doing kind of what everybody else was doing. Here's what's another interesting fact, is that Clement of Alexandria, which I just mentioned, what's interesting is that when he talks about which books are canonical, he seems to indicate that it's been that way for a long time. In other words, Clement of Alexandria doesn't act like it's a new idea.

He doesn't act like it's an innovation. In fact, when you read Clement, he says that the books I've mentioned are the books that had been handed down to the church from the apostles. In other words, in Clement's mind, this has got a very old pedigree to it. The idea of a collection of books like this isn't some new thing at the end of the second century.

In Clement's mind, at least, it's old. In fact, the same kind of language can be found in Irenaeus. Or Irenaeus is like, these are the books that the apostles gave us.

The church has had these for generations. This is not at all new. So the big bang theory of canon simply doesn't work when we look at the contemporaries of Irenaeus. Okay, with that in mind, let's look secondly then at the predecessors to Irenaeus. Did anybody use books as scripture earlier than this? Or to put it another way, can we go back further and find out how far back we can go and see people using these books as scripture?

And what's amazing is I think we can go back really, really far. But let's start with some of the immediate predecessors to Irenaeus. And for those of you who are into your church history, you're going to recognize some of these names. The first one is very well known, and that is Justin Martyr.

Justin Martyr was sort of a theologian, philosopher, writing about the middle of the second century out of Rome. Justin was very well known as sort of an apologist and defender of the faith. And we can see very plainly that Justin received four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Interestingly again, how tight this fourfold unit is. Now we know that Justin also had other books, but he doesn't leave us enough writing to know for sure what these are. Probably a collection of Paul's letters and some smaller books as well. But we have the most evidence about what Justin is these four gospels. The four gospels that he believes are handed down by the apostles. In fact, one of the famous phrases that Justin likes to use for these gospels is he calls them the memoirs of the apostles.

Isn't that interesting language? Memoirs of the apostles. Now when you think about a guy like Justin, who is very well known, you might think, yeah, okay, so he thought these four gospels were great, but did he really think they were scripture? Maybe he just thought they were reliable historical records. Maybe he just thought they were interesting records that you could read, but he didn't think they're really that special or that different than any other book, right? Perhaps that's what he believed.

Ah, but it's not. Here's what's interesting. Justin actually tells us that the gospels, what he calls the memoirs of the apostles, were read in public worship right alongside the Old Testament. This is a stunning thing, and this is happening in 150 AD. Listen to this quote from Justin Martyr, and just let this sink in how detailed this is.

It's remarkable. Justin says this. On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or the writings of the prophets, Old Testament, are read as long as time permits. Then when the reader has ceased, the president, preacher, it's a different word here, I know, but it basically means the same thing.

The president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Now, when you read that, you're like, that could have been written about your church, I bet. You could write that today. You could have said on Sundays, all the people gather together, and what's read? Books from the new, books from the old, and someone preaches on it.

It's the same thing happening for 1800 years. This should give you a lot of comfort and assurance, but in particular, notice what books are included here. The memoirs of the apostles, and notice they're not just good books or interesting books or historically reliable books.

They're on par with the Old Testament as inspired scripture. Let me mention a second predecessor to Irenaeus. Justin Martyr was one. Let me mention a second now who goes back further, and that is a bishop by the name of Papias. Papias was the bishop of Heriopolis, and he writes in the early second century, maybe 125 AD. What's fascinating about Papias, though, is that Papias has a source for what he tells us about the gospels. In fact, he tells us that he got his information about the gospels from this mysterious person called the elder. And we can do the math on this, and we can date this person from the end of the first century. So whoever this elder is, Papias got information from this guy probably around 90 AD. And what's curious is that we actually have evidence in our New Testament who was called the elder.

And you know who this is. We know that the apostle John was called the elder. The evidence points to the fact that Papias actually knew and heard preached the apostle John himself. Imagine this.

It's amazing. But not only did he hear John preach, but he apparently got information from John about the writing of some of the gospels. Particularly, he tells us about the writing of the gospel of Matthew and the writing of the gospel of Mark. And then since he knew John, guess what else we know that Papias would have known? Certainly John, and we know he quotes Luke and other places.

So what does Papias have? Another fourfold gospel. In fact, we also see him mentioning other books. I don't have time to get into some of those details, but we have very good reasons to think that Papias probably knew other New Testament writings as well, particularly the book of Revelation being a good example of this. What's curious though is that even when Papias writes in 125 AD, he's getting his information from someone in 90 AD called the elder who's probably John.

You think that's pretty reliable information? Yes, this is an incredible resource that tells us that these books are being used as scripture from a very early point. A couple other predecessors I'll mention here. A third one I'll mention is a person by the name of Ignatius. Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch, and he wrote even earlier, right around 100 AD. He wrote all these letters on his way to his martyrdom, which is pretty interesting. What was in his collection of books? Well, from his letters, we can tell that he had a pretty extensive collection of Paul's letters. He had a Pauline letter collection that was pretty well developed. We don't know the full extent of it, but we know it at least had these books.

Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1, 2 Timothy. And probably was he going to be even bigger than that. One of his sort of compatriots was another bishop by the name of Polycarp. You may know Polycarp's name because he was martyred very famously. He was the bishop of Smyrna, and he had a canon of Paul's letters that looks almost exactly like Ignatius.

The same books pretty much. We have a reason to think his collection may have even been bigger than that, but that's all we can glean from the historical evidence. Now, we could go even further than this in terms of Irenaeus' predecessors, but what I want you to see is that we started in the late second century about Irenaeus.

And we looked at his contemporaries, right, and they were all doing the same thing. And then we looked at the middle and early second century. Justin Martyr, Papias, Ignatius, Polycarp, and guess what?

They also have four full Gospel, Pauline letters, and some other books. And so already you're seeing that the canon goes much further back than what scholars are willing to admit in terms of the historical evidence. By the way, should that surprise us based on the prior session? Remember what the prior session said, that the canon grew up naturally and innately from the early Christian faith like a seedling out of the soil?

We can see how these two are meeting in the middle, right? Historical evidence takes us back, and we have the natural assumption that the canon would have grown up very early. We can see that we would have expectations of a very early canonical collection. But here's the question. Can we go even further?

Interesting question. I've taken you right up to the edge of the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century. Can we go into the first century? Do you have any reasons to think that in the first century, books were already being used as scripture even then?

The answer is a hearty yes. Let me give you two examples from the New Testament writings themselves where we see books from the New Testament used as scripture which show us this was already happening even in the first century. One of the most famous is a passage you probably know from 2 Peter. 2 Peter 3.16. In this passage, what Peter does is remarkable. He calls Paul's letters scripture.

Let's let that sink in for a moment. Peter, in 2 Peter 3.16, calls Paul's letters scripture. Here's what he says. Our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you, Peter says, according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. Now, that passage has all kinds of fascinating things about it. First of all, you probably ought to take comfort in the fact that Peter's even confused by Paul, right? So hey, if you look at Paul and go, I don't understand this guy, you're like, even Peter. He says, yeah, Paul's hard to understand, so you're in good company, right?

But in terms of the canon, look what Peter says. Not only are Paul's letters scripture, but notice it's plural letters. There's a collection of books of Paul. We don't know how big it is here, but there's a collection of Paul's letters he regards as scripture. And then notice that when he mentions Paul's letters as scripture to his audience, he assumes they know about Paul's letters.

He doesn't mention it as a new idea. Like, have you heard of Paul? Or here's an idea, maybe you should consider Paul's letters scripture. Now, he mentions it as if they know about it, they have Paul's letters and that they already know Paul's letters are scripture.

That's a phenomenally early thing. This is probably happening in about the mid 60s of the first century when Peter wrote 2 Peter, which tells us there was already a collection of Paul's letters well established and well known as authoritative. By the way, if Paul's letters are scriptures, because they're written by a apostle, what would Peter's letters be?

Implicitly, his letters would bear the same authority. Let me mention a second thing that takes us even further into the first century. And this is a passage I think is often overlooked. It comes from 1 Timothy 5 18, tucked away at the end of that letter. What Paul does at the end of this letter is he gives us a double quotation from scripture. Listen to this, Paul says this, for the scripture says, and then he quotes two different things.

For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. That's the first quote. And then he says, for the scripture says that one. And then here's the second quote, and the laborer deserves his wages. Two quotes that Paul offers as scripture.

Now, here's what's tricky. The first one we know where it comes from. The quote about the ox treading out the grain comes right from Deuteronomy 25 4. Okay, great, Old Testament book.

But what about that second quote? The laborer deserves his wages. Paul quotes that as scripture too, but where does that come from? Here's what's interesting. There's only one place that we know of on the entire planet that matches word for word what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5 18, the laborer deserves his wages.

There's only one other place in the whole world that we know of that matches that. And that's Luke 10 7, on the lips of Jesus. Jesus himself says the words, the laborer deserves his wages. Is it possible that Paul knew the gospel of Luke and cites it here as scripture? It seems at least possible. In fact, what's remarkable about this is that we know that who was Paul's travel companion was Luke. We know they had a friendship.

We know they were connected. And yet here is Paul quoting, and the only other source we have for it is Luke's gospel. Now, more can be said here.

Here's the point. We can go back even in the middle of the first century and see that New Testament books were used as scripture. So drawing this to a close, here's the big picture. We've asked the question here, how far back can we go? When did books first start getting used as scripture, right?

When did that happen? When did that definition of canon manifest itself? Certainly by the time of Irenaeus, but he had contemporaries who were all doing the same thing. Even earlier, Justin Martyr, Papias, Ignatius, Polycarp, all doing pretty much the same thing.

And then even earlier, what? We have Peter doing it and Paul doing it. What does that tell you? Somebody says there's no canon to the fourth century. I'm thinking to myself, well, from one perspective, that's true. But when you look at this evidence, there was a canon very, very early that stretches all the way back to the very beginning. And if it stretches all the way back to the very beginning, then we have even more reasons to be assured of its truth and that we have the right 27 books in our New Testaments.

All this week, Dr. Michael Krueger has helped us see through many false notions about the canon of Scripture. I hope this has been a helpful study for you here on Renewing Your Mind. If you'd like to go back to any of these messages, you can contact us and request the complete video series on DVD. We'll send them to you for your gift of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. There are a couple of ways you can reach us.

One is online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us at 800-435-4343. You know, as we study the Scriptures, whether alone or in a group, we're going to encounter things that we may not understand, and that's where Ask Ligonier comes in. Your biblical and theological questions can be answered by trained team members 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday.

This is a free service of Ligonier Ministries, and you can get started by going to ask.ligonier.org. Well, tomorrow, Dr. Burke Parsons joins us. Do you realize there was a time in Israel's history where, by and large, they had forgotten and they didn't know, because their fathers had left the Word of God aside and it had become eclipsed by all the other cult and pagan and idolatrous worship of Israel, and so they had to bring Passover back to God's people, because that is the way God demanded He should be worshiped. It's a reminder that Scripture is the Church's only authority for faith and practice. We hope you'll join us Friday for Renewing Your Mind. God bless you.