How We Got the Bible: Canon

Good evening, everyone. We are continuing tonight in our study of a survey of how we got the Bible, and tonight is Lecture 2, which is on the subject of the canon of Scripture. Before we begin, though, let's go to God in prayer.

Father God, as we come together tonight for a time of learning, I pray, as I always do, Lord, that you would focus my mind and keep me from error, Lord, that your truth would be on our hearts, our minds, and on my lips, Lord, that it would go into the ears, but not only the ears, but by your Spirit to the mind and to the heart, and that we would recognize the great importance of such a question as we are going to discuss tonight, and that is the question of canon, and I pray, O Lord, that you would move with us and teach us by your Spirit, and Lord, do what only you can do, in Christ's name, Amen.

Inspiration, Inscripturation, and Preservation

We are in Class 2 of 8, and the subject, of course, as we know, is the subject of how we got the Bible, and in Class 1, which was last week, we talked about the subject of inspiration. Now, who can give me a definition of inspiration?

Okay, that's disheartening. What is inspiration, Brittany? Well, the word that's translated inspired does mean God-breathed, that's right, it comes from 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, rather, and it means that the Scriptures were breathed out by God, and when we talk about the doctrine of inspiration, we are talking about the fact that we believe that God has revealed Himself in the past, and He has done so through the writing of the Scriptures, that He has revealed Himself in the Bible.

Now, this class does not focus on inspiration, but we have to at least begin there. We're more focused on transmission and translation in this class, but if we don't know what it is we're discussing, then we don't really have a good starting point, so we have to at least have a place to start.

So last week, we talked about inspiration means that God has given us His revelation, and we talked about inscripturation, which is God giving it through the written word. Now, two questions. What in regard to inspiration, this is a pop quiz, but we'll do it, we don't have to write it down, pop quiz question number one, what is inspired?

The writer or the writings? Brittany? The writing. Yes, the Bible says that it is Scripture that is inspired. It says all Scripture is given by inspiration of God or is breathed out by God. It never says Paul was inspired or Peter was inspired or Luke was inspired, even though we might apply that term to them in a generic sense, we would say the Scripture is what is inspired by God.

Those men being the medium by which it came, but the inspiration was, when we talk about the doctrine of inspiration, it's talking about the documents, not the men. Second question is, what is inspired, the autographs or the copies?

Marina? The autographs. The autographs. Now, what does autograph mean? That's right. The original writing is what we say is inspired. If you read the document for our church, for instance, our statement of faith, which I should have brought with me tonight because I mentioned it last week and I didn't have it last week either, but it does say that we believe that the Bible is inspired and inerrant in the original autographs.

We use that phrase very specifically. Now, that does not mean that we don't believe that the copies that we possess today are true. We do. We trust that God has preserved his word, but the act of inspiration does not pass down with each generational copy.

The act of inspiration was a miraculous once-in-time event where the book was inspired, and then after that, we move to a different doctrine, and that is the doctrine of preservation, not the doctrine of inspiration.

The difference between how we trust what we have versus how we trust what was given is what was given was given by inspiration, and what we have is by preservation, the doctrine of preservation. So, it's just we have to make our distinctions and make sure we understand our categories because as we're going to see in class four and five, when we get to textual variation, we have to ask the question, well, what about that?

And was God involved even in the mistakes of the scribes? And so, those questions we will deal with at that time and talk about what that means. But tonight, we are going to be looking at the second doctrine on our study.

As we said, there are four steps in the revelatory process. The first step is inspiration. The second step, which is our focus of tonight, is canonization, canonization. Now, steps three and four will take much more time because tonight, we're doing the canon.

Next week, we begin three weeks on the subject of transmission. So, for those who are taking notes, don't have it. The third is transmission, and the fourth is translation. Our last two weeks will be dedicated to the subject of translation.

But this is how, you remember what I said last week, Moses to me. God inspires the writing to be written. God uses the people of God to recognize what is written. We're going to talk about that in a moment, to discover what was written.

That's canon. That writing is then transmitted down through the ages through handwritten copies, which is an amazing feat. And then those books are translated into languages that people can understand.

That's the process. That's how the Bible goes from Moses to me. So, I want to read a quote here. This is from Dr. Norman Geisler, speaking on the subject of canon. He says, There's the difference. They may want to write that down.

That's a key distinction. Inspiration is about authority. Canonization is about acceptance. It's one thing for God to give the scriptures their authority. It's quite another for men to recognize that authority.

And Paul ends in his book, the Moody Handbook of Theology, says this, If the scriptures are indeed inspired by God, then a significant question arises. Which books are inspired? Historically, it was important for the people of God to determine which books God had inspired and which ones were recognized as authoritative.

And so, that's what the subject of canon is about. The word canon, as we will see, means the standard. So, what is the standard? Our outline tonight is threefold, as it normally is. We're going to look at three questions.

Number one, what is canon? Number two, we are going to look at determining versus discovering canon. And that is a huge distinction that we will see. Thirdly, we are going to look at apocryphal writings.

Apocryphal writings, and that will be based upon how much time we have, because there's a lot in that subject that we can deal with, but we'll deal with as much as we can as time allows. By the way, just out of curiosity, did all of you do your reading this week?

Did you find it helpful? Were there any questions that came out of the reading? Well, good. This, gentlemen, my new guys, this is the book that we have for this class. This is the textbook. These are optional books that we recommend, but this is the one that the readings come out of.

So, later on, if you want to come take a look at it, it's up here. So, did you guys find it easy to read? It's pretty well written, right? I think he writes at a very good level for just about anybody to be able to understand, and it's good, solid, factual information.

The Meaning of Canon and the List of Books

All right, so let's start with our outline tonight. First question is, what is canon? Well, let's talk first about the meaning. The original meaning of the word canon can be traced back to the ancient Greeks who used the term in a literal sense.

To them, a canon was a rod or a ruler which was used for making measurements. So, one might call it a measuring rod, similar if not quite different from what we might call a yardstick. So, a canon was a standard of measurement.

In fact, it was a standard. And this literal meaning provided the basis for the later extended use of the term, and the word eventually was extended to mean a rule or a standard about anything. Anything that had a standard or a rule was called the canon of that thing.

Recently, as you all know, I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to science fiction and things like that, and recently I heard somebody reference the canon of Star Wars. And I thought, well, that's weird to use that term in regard to Star Wars.

But what it meant was, what was the real story, and what were the stories that had been put aside? And you say, well, none of it's real because it's all fake. But what they meant was, there's a standard in the movies and everything else is not the standard.

So, did Luke really do this, or did Leia really do that? But it's just funny to hear the word canon outside of the normal use of scripture. But basically what it means is, what's the standard? What is the right thing versus the wrong thing, or the almost right thing?

What is the standard? That's what canon means. And in regard to the Bible, the canon refers to the scripture, the authoritative scripture. F .F. Bruce says this, When we speak of the canon of scripture, the word canon has a simple meaning.

It means the list of books contained in scripture, the list of books recognized as worthy to be included in the sacred writings of a worshiping community. In a Christian context, we might define the word as the list of writings acknowledged by the church as documents of divine revelation.

So, in simple terms, the canon is the list of books. If you open up your Bibles to the first part of your Bible, you'll see a list of books. What's interesting though, and this must be immediately recognized, is that list was not put together as part of the Bible.

We were not handed down a Bible with a list at the front that says these books are in and these books are out. So, what we have, and this is important, and not everybody likes what I'm about to say, so buckle up.

R .C. Sproul said it first, so if you don't like it, take it up with him. He's with the Lord. He said what we have is an uninspired list of inspired books. Because the list did not come down on a golden plate from heaven.

The list was not given to us by Isaiah or Luke or Paul. So, the list itself is not inspired, but the books themselves are. So, the subject of canonization is the subject of trying to discern how that works.

And you have all been in conversations, I'm sure, if you've ever done any evangelism, or if you ever had a family over for Thanksgiving that maybe you disagreed with politically or religiously, somebody somewhere said, well, what about that Gospel of Thomas?

And why isn't that the 28th book of the New Testament? We've all been there. We've all had to face the question of canon. Now, in the early church, the term canon, in reference to the books of Scripture, developed within the early fathers, but it was not used with a clear application that we know of until the year 367.

367 is the first time we see the term canon used, and it was used by Athanasius. And if you want to look up the reference to what I just said, that's in F .F. Bruce's book, The Canon of Scripture, which I do not have up here, but it is in his book nonetheless.

So, that's the first time the term, I'm not saying that's the first time we had a canon, just understand the term standard, or measuring rod, being applied to Scripture, was applied to Scripture by Athanasius in the year 367.

So that begins to raise the question. And the question is, when did the canon happen? When did we receive a canon? And this question is not so easily answered, because we have to step back and further define what we mean.

And I want to make a recommendation right now. This book is called The Question of Canon, by Michael Kruger. It is a little over 200 pages, so it's not a terribly difficult read. But this book asks and answers that question much more thoroughly than I will be able to in class.

I will summarize as best I can. But if this portion of the class intrigues you, I would recommend this book. And it is in your syllabus as one of the recommended readings. He also has a book called Canon Revisited, which is more like a school textbook.

It's a hardbound blue book. It's on my shelf at home. I recommend anything Michael Kruger writes just about, I recommend anyway. But these books, specifically on the canon, will help you. If this is a subject after tonight's class you want to dive into more deeply.

But one of the things that Dr. Kruger discusses in this book is that when we talk about canon, we're talking about the list of books, we know what the definition is. But that definition can be further outspread to three different concepts.

The first is what is known as ontological canon. The second can be referred to as functional canon. And the third is what we would call exclusive canon. So, let's for a moment talk about the meaning of these terms.

When we talk about the phrase ontological, does anyone know what ontological means? Ontos means being. Ontological means pertaining to something's being. So, like when we talk about the trinity, we talk about the ontological trinity.

God is one in essence, three in persons. And those three persons are co-equal, co-eternal and distinct. That's ontological. We talk about your ontological makeup, what makes up Billy Ray. Billy Ray is made up of body, soul and spirit.

So, that's the ontological Billy Ray. So, ontological means essentially what makes something what it is, the being of something. So, that's number one. And this is referring to the fact that when God inspires a book to be written, as soon as that book is completed, as soon as the last jot or tittle is put in that book, that book is immediately part of God's ontological canon because God inspired it.

Do you understand what I'm saying? God knows what he wrote. And so, this refers to that canon that God knows for certain. Right? And Dr. James White describes it like this. He says, I have written a certain amount of books, but I haven't written all books.

So, when I write a book, as soon as I'm finished and the last period goes in the book and it goes to the publisher and it's published, it becomes part of my canon, what I have written. I'm the same way.

I have written four books. I've written four books in my life. One is about karate. Nobody cares about that. And I've written three books in regard to church. I wrote one book called The Biblically Functioning Church.

I wrote one book called God in Three Persons, a doctrine of the Trinity study. And I wrote a book on speaking in tongues, which I don't recommend you read. It's not very good. But I wrote it. It was very young.

I was very young. It's not even really a book. It's more like a pamphlet. But I did have it published because I wanted to do it. So of the four works that I have written, I wrote them. Therefore, I know what I wrote, right?

Ontologically, I know. Now, Billy Ray knows me pretty well, and we've been friends for years. Our children played together. His kids were in my karate school. We've known each other, know our wives. Our wives are friends.

But you don't know everything I've written. You probably didn't know just until two seconds ago that I wrote a book on speaking in tongues, right? So you didn't know the canon of my writing, but I did.

So I revealed that to you, and now you have the knowledge that I have because I gave it to you. But the point about ontological canon is the point about the canon is established ontologically when the book is written because God is the author.

You understand? So this one is very important because later when we start talking about what the church's part in this is, the church doesn't determine what is the canon. God determines what is the canon.

The church discovers what God has determined. You see, in Roman Catholicism, it's different because if you talk to a Roman Catholic, they'll say, we determine what books go in the Bible. Historically, one, that's not true.

But also, it's not even looking at it from the right perspective because we don't have the authority to determine what God wrote. All we can do is discover what God wrote. And there's a big difference between determining and discovering something.

It's sort of like this. Who discovered the law of gravity? Sir Isaac Newton. But he didn't determine the law of gravity. He discovered it. He didn't determine it. That's the difference here. So ontological canon deals with God knows what he wrote, and as soon as he wrote it, it was canon.

The second is what we call the functional canon. The functional canon is in regard to what books are in use at a certain point of time. So I'm going to just put, well, this marker doesn't work, so I'm going to get another one.

Say in use at a point in time. So if we look at the history of the New Testament church, we will see that the first hundred years was when the inspiration took place. Actually, if you want to really nail it down, it was somewhere between 45 and 70, possibly out to 85 if you really want to push it to a late date.

But we're looking at a period of between 40 and 50 years of inspiration, God giving his word, it being written. Canon is formed in the sense of ontologically, right? But as far as being, this is the age of inspiration.

In fact, I want to put that on the board. So from a time period standpoint, let's say this is Christ. There's a period of time between Christ and the first book written, which is between 45 and 49. It's either going to be James or Galatians.

One of those books comes first, and it's going to be around that time period. If it's James, it's possibly 45. If it's Galatians, it's more like 48, 49, but somewhere in that period of time. The last book to be written, we could argue, Revelation most likely.

I do believe it has a nice little bookend on the end where it says, don't add or take anything away from this book, which I think does apply to all of Scripture, even though contextually it's only referring to Revelation itself.

I do think it has an expanded application where we could say God has finished his Revelation. Don't add or take anything away from it. And so the dating of that, I believe it was about 66, 67. Some people believe it was all the way to 85.

But we'll just say by 100, the ontological canon is complete. Now you might have a question in your mind, and I wouldn't mind if you did. The question might be something of this effect. You haven't mentioned the Old Testament at all.

Good question. A couple of reasons why I haven't mentioned the Old Testament. The Old Testament, while there are books that are debated in the Old Testament, as we're going to see later, the Jewish community had recognized and understood what was Scripture by the time of Christ.

And we know this because Christ actually pointed to those very Scriptures and called men accountable to those Scriptures. And he said, have you not read what God wrote? Indicating that this was God's Word.

So when it comes to the Old Testament Scriptures, if you believe Jesus, as we as Christians do, then we believe that the Old Testament canon was complete and recognized by the time of Christ. And it's the same canon we now possess.

The Palestinian canon is the same 39 Old Testament books that we have, even though they numbered them different. They numbered them at 24 because they don't have 12 minor prophets. They have one book of the prophets.

They don't have first and second kings. They have kings. If you start bringing it all down, you get to 24 rather than 39. But it's the same books. You say, but what about all those books in the Catholic Bible?

The Catholic Bible does include 12, depending on how you number them, again, 12 to 15 books that are known as Apocrypha. And we're going to get to that in the third part because there are books that the Jewish people did not recognize, but they were included in something called the Latin Vulgate.

And the Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the Western Church for 1 ,000 years, and therefore they were considered to be part of Scripture by the Roman Catholic Church. But they were not accepted as part of the Palestinian canon, and Jerome did not want to include them in the Vulgate when he wrote it in the 4th century.

So I think this is a much bigger deal for New Testament than Old Testament, but there is an answer to the Old Testament question. Yes, sir? My dad is Catholic. Sure. I don't want to get too far off my subject, though.

Okay, let's not talk about that right now, okay? Not that I don't want to answer your question, but that's not part of what I'm doing. So we'll get back to that. We'll talk about it when it's just you and me, okay?

All right, so 45 to 100, we're dealing with the ontological canon. Now, does anyone know when the first time we get an actual list that is the same list that we have today? The same list that we have today is here, 367.

The same guy I mentioned earlier, Athanasius, has that same list. So that's 367. It's way out here, right? So we have between 100 and 367. And I have heard people say, well, the Bible wasn't in use for 300 years after Christ, or we didn't have a Bible for 300 years because the first time we even have a list is almost 400 years after Christ.

This is where the subject of the functional canon comes into play. Because even though there was not, up until this point, a universal recognition of the canon, the books were already being used within the church as authoritative books.

The books were already being recognized as authoritative in this time. Therefore, we refer to them as the functional canon. They are functioning as Scripture. The first list that we are aware of, now you might say, didn't you just say it was here?

No, I said this is the first list that's exactly like ours. This is the first list, it's the 27 that we have. But there are lists that precede that, that we can go back into history and find. That the church was still discovering, remember when I used that word, still discovering what God had written.

And the oldest list that we have would fall into the category of functional canon. It's what's known as the Moratorium Fragment, which was written somewhere around 170 to 200. So between 170 and 200 we have a fragment known as the Moratorium Fragment.

And here's what's interesting about the Moratorium Fragment. 20 of the 27 books that we have are in it. But there were some that were not included in that particular list. The books that were not included were Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 3 John.

And there were books that were included, that we no longer include, such as the Shepherd of Hermas. And two letters that were attributed to the Apostle Paul, but were not written by him, the letter to the Laodiceans and the letter to the Alexandrians.

So we have some books that were included, some books that weren't. And here's basically what we call these things. And these are big words. If you want I'll just make you a copy of this, because these words are a little hard to even say, much less write.

So I can make a copy. But we have what's called as homologomena. Homologomena is books that everyone accepted. And I think those books are really important for us to consider, because the books that everyone accepted without controversy were all four Gospels.

No one ever debated whether or not the Gospel of Thomas should go in, or any of those things. And people knew they existed. But the four Gospels were never debated. In fact, the four Gospels were universally accepted.

And I don't remember who did it, but one group actually combined the four Gospels into one harmonious book. And it has a name, and for the life of me I can't think of it right now. I'll look it up. But it puts all four in a harmonious storyline.

So you have the one story from all four books. So the four Gospels, Acts, and 13 letters of Paul, not debated. In fact, we have some evidence that the first grouping of books to ever be combined together and sent out as a grouping of books was the 13 letters of Paul.

So we have the Gospels, the 13 letters of Paul, and the book of Acts. But there were some books that were not recognized. What were those called? The books that were not recognized are called the Antilogomena.

So you have the Homologomena. Everybody recognizes them. And then you have the Antilogomena. That's the books that some disputed. And again, don't try to write it off my bad pronunciation. I'll give it to you later.

The Antilogomena included Hebrews. Why do you think it included Hebrews? Yeah, there's no one who knows who wrote it. Now some attribute it to the Apostle Paul, and there is some historical evidence for that because when I mentioned earlier that the first listing of books that ever was sent out was the writings of Paul, they included Hebrews in that.

So there were those who believed that Paul wrote Hebrews. I don't, but there were those who did. So Hebrews was one that did not receive universal acceptance right away. Some of the smaller letters, as I mentioned earlier, 3 John.

Again, very small, seemingly personal letter. Revelation did not receive universal acceptance right away. Can anybody want to guess why? Because it's about like ten-headed monsters and stuff. It's got all kinds of stuff in it that people read it, and they were like, whoa, this is pretty serious stuff.

So you have also Jude was not accepted universally because Jude references a pseudepigraphal work called Enoch. If you ever read the Book of Jude, it references a book called the Book of Enoch. And so there are questions about these books.

However, given time, the church did recognize that these actually were from God, but it was not something that the church recognized immediately. There were also books that were known as pseudepigraphal.

Pseudepigraphal is probably a term you remember maybe from school, or maybe you were more familiar with the term pseudonym. Pseudonym means what? No, that's a synonym. A pseudonym was a false name. Like if you author a book and you don't want to use your name, you use a fake name, that's called a pseudonym.

Well, a pseudepigraphal book is a book that uses someone's name, but it's not them. Someone who uses someone's name to write, and who would be someone that would do that? Well, the Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas.

By the time the Gospel of Thomas was written, based upon history and the type of writing that was done and the location, Thomas was long dead by the time the Gospel of Thomas was written. So the Gospel of Thomas is pseudepigraphal.

It has the name Thomas, but not the true person writing it. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. You maybe have never heard of that one, but the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, if I remember correctly, is a 4th century work.

And unless Mary Magdalene lived to a very old age, I'm pretty sure she didn't author a book 400 years after her life. So these are things called pseudepigrapha. Let me just give a note here. The first few centuries of the Christian era saw the production of numerous fanciful and heretical works that were neither genuine or valuable.

These books indicate the heretical teaching of the Gnostics, the Docetics, and Ascetic groups, as well as the exaggerated fancy of religious lore in the early church. That's a quote from Dr. Norman Geisler again.

Some of these are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and of course there are others. How many of you ever heard of the Da Vinci Code? Remember when the Da Vinci Code came out?

Do you remember what caused the Da Vinci Code to become such a big controversy? I have a copy in my office. If you open the Da Vinci Code to the first page, it says all of the facts mentioned in this book are true.

Even though the book itself is a book of fiction, it argues that all the facts in the book are true. But if you actually look at what facts it claims, it claims certain things like Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, they had children, their children became the Holy Grail, and that's what the search for the Holy Grail is.

It's not the cup that Jesus drank from, but rather it's the offspring of Christ that still exists in the world. Fanciful fiction, but nothing regarding reality. But they claim that the Gnostic texts are the true Christian story, and that the texts that we have, the 27 New Testament books, are actually false stories about Jesus.

And the Gnostic texts, like the Gospel of Thomas, I would encourage you, go read it. If you want to see the striking comparison between what God has written, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then pick up the Gospel of Thomas, you will see an absolute striking difference.

One, it's not even a gospel. It is not a narrative story of the life of Christ like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But rather it is a list of quotes that are supposed to be from Jesus himself, and stories about Jesus' life, some that are so fanciful that they're hard to even make sense of.

But the greatest quote is the one toward the end, and if you read the Gospel of Thomas, it does say at the end that Peter asks about Mary Magdalene, how can she be saved because she is a woman, and Jesus said, well, she will become a man.

And that's how she'll get saved. I'll get you the quote later if you want to read it, but it's very awkward, and it also bears pretty discomforting for all the ladies in the room, who now you know, before you can get saved, you have to become a man.

It is not a work that came from God. It was from the mind of the Gnostics. The Gnostic teachers and heretics existed even in the first century. We see references to them even in the New Testament and the false teachings that they brought in, and they had their own writings and they had their own libraries.

The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in the last century, and the Nag Hammadi Library is a trove of books that were found, and they were the Gnostic texts, and this is where many of the books that you hear about today came from, that discovery.

Exclusive Canon and the Church's Recognition

So, we've talked about the ontological canon. That's the canon that comes from God. We've talked about the functional canon. That's the canon that's functioning, but it's still not an exclusive canon, and that's where we're going to get to the third thing.

What is the exclusive canon? The exclusive canon is one where the church has finally recognized what God has given, and at that point has closed the canon. We talk about the phrase closed canon, meaning no more acceptance or rejection.

These are the books. I said earlier it was 367. Let me clarify one thing. In 363, so four years earlier, right? Yeah, I'm bad at math, so I have to double-check. In 363, the Council of Laodicea stated that only the Old Testament, along with one book of the Apocrypha and 26 of the New Testament, everything but Revelation, were canonical and to be read in the churches, and it was the Council of Hippo, which was in 393, and the Council of Carthage in 397 that affirmed the 27 books we now have as authoritative.

So even by the fourth century, Revelation was still being disputed, being debated. But by 393, the Council of Hippo, and 397, the Council of Carthage, we see the affirmation of the 27 books by the church.

So that was a lot of history in a very short amount of time. But you understand now what we mean when we talk about ontological canon, that which God knows and gives, functional canon, that which is operating at a particular point in time, we would say prior to the exclusive canon, and the exclusive canon comes and is recognized by the end of the fourth century.

By the end of the fourth century, the church has discovered and at that time made a proclamation regarding the discovery of the canon. Here's a few things I want you to remember. You may want to put these in your notes.

When we talk about the subject of canon, it is always important to keep the distinction in our mind that God is the one who determines whether a book is inspired or not. Councils do not do that. Churches do not do that.

God is the one who determines if a book is inspired. I'll read a quote. This is from the book God Speaks to Man. The church no more gave, well, never mind. I don't need to read that quote. I said it earlier.

The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. I went ahead in my notes a little. Sorry. Number two, and this is just reiterating what we already know.

God determines whether a book is canon. Number two, God determines canon immediately. And number three, the church discovers what God has determined, making, and this is the point I'm trying to drive to, making the canon, I hate when I run out of board.

I have so much board, but if I go way over here, people at home won't see it. The canon is not an object of revelation. The canon is an artifact of revelation. The canon is not an object of revelation.

It is an artifact of revelation. And what do I mean by that? Well, we said earlier God didn't give us an infallible list, right? He didn't send down golden plates from heaven. He didn't send us a list.

But what he did was inspire books. And by inspiring those books, by inspiring some books and not all books, he created a canon, and the canon becomes an artifact of what he did. So the canon itself is not an object.

It is an artifact. I drew this last week. I don't know how many of you remember. I said if you imagine a circle, and the circle represents all books in the world, all books that have ever been written, and then within that circle you put a very small circle, and we say that is what God has inspired, this small circle right here.

God did not inspire all books to be written. He did inspire these books to be written. And because he inspired these books to be written, the artifact is the list of books. It's not an object. It is an artifact.

So the question is, as we've been talking this whole time, how do we know what books they are? And I want to propose to you this thought. And I remember I talked about this in a conference I was at a few years ago where I was speaking with some other men, speaking on the dais, and I made this point.

The question of which books are right or which books are wrong is not as much a historical or practical question as much as it is a theological one. The question is not as much a historical question or a practical question as much as it is a theological one.

Because if God inspired certain books to be written and God wants his people to know what he wrote, then he would guide his people into that truth. That is a theological assertion. If God determines what he wrote and he wants his people to know what he wrote, then he will assure that his people have what he wrote.