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How do we know the early church chose the right books to be in the Bible? Let’s look at the New Testament. We have twenty seven books of the New Testament that comprise the canon, that is, books believed to be divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. But how did they come to be chosen and collected? Did a group of church leaders sit down and just arbitrarily pick out books they liked and declare them canonical? What criterion was used to include a certain book as part of the Bible?
The need to define the canon became more important in the second century, when many heresies and false teachings were challenging the church. Many forgeries and other questionable writings were in circulation. So the early Christians needed some criterion to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
One criteria for a book was how early it was written, how close to the time of the apostles. Recent writings were rejected even if they sounded good. This was called the criterion of antiquity.
Another criterion was how well the teaching in the book conformed to books already accepted as canonical, and how well they all agreed with each other. This was called the criterion of orthodoxy.
Another test was what was called catholicity, that is, was the book in general usage and accepted as authoritative by all or most churches, in all or most regions, from the beginning?
It’s significant that there was no great pressure within the church to accept certain books as canonical. There were some books that were disputed for a while, but the ones that were eventually accepted passed all of the above criterion. The fact that some books were debated proved the early church didn’t just accept every book that had an apostle’s name attached, or named the name of Jesus. In fact, they used much the same tests scholars use today, rejecting; a. obvious forgeries, b. late productions, and c. books that didn’t conform to the teaching of the books already know to be early and authentic.
New Testament expert Bruce Metzger comments on this: “
To my mind, that just shows how careful the early church was. . .they weren’t ‘gung ho,’ sweeping in every last document that happened to have anything about Jesus in it. This shows deliberation and careful analysis.”[1]
But one of the main things to see here is that there was no official church decree that proclaimed certain books to be canonical. There was no special group of people who alone had this authority. Rather, the whole early church, led by the same Holy Spirit that inspired the books, also was able to recognize which books were inspired and canonical.
I will sum this up with a final comment from Dr. Metzger:
“The canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These documents didn’t derive their authority from being selected; each one was authoritative before anyone gathered them together. The early church merely listened and sensed that these were authoritative accounts. For somebody now to say that the canon emerged only after councils and synods made these pronouncements would be like saying, ‘Let’s get several academies of musicians to make a pronouncement that the music of Bach and Beethoven is wonderful.’ I would say, ‘Thank you for nothing! We knew that before the pronouncement was made.’ We know it because of sensitivity to what is good music and what is not. The same with the canon”[1] (emphasis mine).
Whether or not a book of the Bible is inspired was never determined by men, but only by God. Men merely recognized, with God’s help, what He had already determined.
