Canonicity

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The Ministry’s Purpose and the Call to Biblical Boldness

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we're back on WV &E. How great is that? We were off for about three months or so, boycotting WV &E. Just kidding. No, we just were off for a while, and the Lord, without us, begging and asking for donations and having the donate buttons, and it's that time of year again.

It's a crunch, and if you don't send in money, we're going to go off the air. I just thought, well, if you don't have the money, then you don't go on the air. And then some folks rallied, and we're back on.

Radio Updates, Book News, and a Recent Interview on Canonicity

So I'm thankful to the management as well for WV &E to give us our time slot back. And even though sometimes we're controversial, we're still on WV &E. So good for them that they'll have some local ministries on their radio ministry.

So what is up for today? Well, just a few things before I start. My hands are being warmed by this coffee. I actually have a Harvest House mug. Harvest House is going to publish the new book, Things That Go Bump in the Church.

It should be out in April 2014, and they sent me an author's mug, an author's mug. So I didn't know we got such things. It's kind of a cool, it's got this green stuff, and it says Harvest House, and so.

And I also just picked the cover of the S. Lewis Johnson's Romans commentary that I adapted. Just picked the cover and sent in the manuscript about two months ago. And so, it's exciting days. Just amazing to think what the Lord can do through somebody like me.

I was interviewed by Andy over at EchoZoey about canonicity, the biblical canon. So I thought I'd talk about that today, since it's an interesting topic, and because truth be told, I had a quick cram before I had my interview.

I think you can access it on our Facebook site, or you can go to EchoZoey, and I'll put it on benefits .com .org or something like that. But it's one of those topics where, yes, I use canonicity in one sense every day, because I'm reading books that are in the canon, in God's standard.

What the Canon Is and Why God, Not Man, Determines It

That's what the word canon means, a measuring rule or rod, hence we get the word standard from that. These are the words, these are the books, rather, that are in the Bible, 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books, according to the English canonists, you know, the English accounting.

Of course, there'd be fewer books if we were going to count the Old Testament the way the Jewish people do, 22 books, but then that would beg the question, because they don't count the New Testament at all.

And so we were talking about the canon, because he was asking me about the Epistle of Laodicea et cetera. So let's just talk a little bit about canonicity. Who determined the books? How were they determined?

Were they in fact written by God? Lots of issues with canonicity. And so here's the main thing we'll start with first, and then we'll fill in the blanks for canonicity. The main thing is this, that the church, that no one person, that no group of people determined which books were in the Bible.

Nobody did that. That's not man's responsibility. That's not man's prerogative. That's not man's capability. Man did not decide which books were in the canon. Man, and that is singular and also mankind, councils, they recognize scripture, but they didn't determine it.

And so when you think of canonicity, that's a number one. Man did not determine which books were in the canon. They recognized which books were in the canon. It's God's decision to put a book in the canon.

He's the one that had the measuring rod. He's the one that said, these are God-breathed. He's the one who moved men by the working of the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1, verse 20 and 21, he's the one that breathed out scripture, right?

2 Timothy 3, verse 16, all scripture is God-breathed. It's not like the first edition of the Revised Standard Version, all scripture which is inspired, meaning some scriptures are inspired and some aren't, with a neo-Orthodox, Barthian kind of view.

These special verses that touch me and mean something to me are scripture, the other ones aren't. No, all scripture, and of course, in 2 Timothy 3, Paul was talking about the Old Testament at the time, the Hebrew canon, the Septuagint.

He was talking about Old Testament, and of course, it goes for the New Testament now as well, but this is God-breathed scripture. God is the one who determines which books are in. It is our responsibility to recognize those.

Our responsibility is to accept those, right? That's the issue. And whatever books have been breathed out by God, we use the word inspire, even though it's more of an exhale versus an inhale, God gives the authority, divine authority, authority from God for a book, and it's our responsibility to then receive it.

And He will give us illumination as we read it, and He will help the process of having His people recognize what He reveals as God-breath, as scripture. But the key is, and I've said it, you know, how many times have I said it now in the past four minutes, but we don't determine, we simply recognize.

And how does man recognize what's in the scripture and what's not? That's a good question. Well, let's think again, big, big picture here with Canonicity, first Starbucks, Starbucks Keurig. Maybe we should ask for that to be donated.

Maybe, you know, I was thinking about, I don't know if this is bad or not, there are many who want us to get an app developed by the same people that developed the Grace To You app for NOCO, but I can't really do that and be on the radio as well.

So anyway, there you go. I'm begging, I'm borrowing, I'm stealing to get that. You have church councils, Christians getting together, and they are recognizing what God has determined to be in the canon.

That is the issue. Recognition, say it over and over and over, recognition. And they would start to look at things like, how authoritative is this? Thus saith the Lord mentality. Who wrote it? Was this a man of God?

Remember in 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17, that the man of God may be equipped, adequate for every good work. That the preacher, that's what the man of God was back in the Old Testament, O man of God.

And so is this prophetic? Was it written in the Old Testament, for instance, by a, was the Old Testament a book written by a prophet or a king or a judge or a scribe? Was the New Testament book written by an apostle or a close acquaintance with the apostle?

Was it received? When you think about canonicity and you just look at all kinds of different views, Jesus Christ talks about the Old Testament books as scripture. Matthew chapter 21, verse 43, verse 42, excuse me.

How about councils? Jamnia, A .D. 90, recognizing 39 Old Testament books. Josephus, the historian, Jewish historian, A .D. 95, 39 books recognized as authoritative. Moving to the New Testament, we have apostles writing.

And they know that they're writing authoritatively. Colossians chapter 3, verse 16, 1 Thessalonians 5 .27, 2 Thessalonians 3 .14. They're on the same par with Old Testament scriptures. 2 Peter chapter 3, you can read those, and even Peter understands Paul's writings on level with Old Testament scriptures.

For the New Testament councils, Council of Athanasius 367, Council of Carthage 397, 27 books of the New Testament. God breathed. Now let's think about other books that pop up into our mind when it comes to canonicity.

The Apocrypha, Roman Catholic Doctrine, and the Test of Scripture

That's really what we're after today in the Gospel of Thomas, the infant Gospel of Thomas, Apographa, Pseudepigrapha. What about those books? Why are they not included? Why have they not been recognized?

So fair question. Let's kind of think through what's going on. Well, with the Apographa, these 15 books written between Malachi and Matthew, so in between the Old Testament and the New Testament time, you've got about 400 years, and there were some books written.

And so, why are they in the canon according to the Roman Catholics? Well, I think the simple answer is, even though probably people won't like it, is that if you have certain doctrines that you like, but they're not found in the 66 books of the Bible, you've got to find other books and then insert them in.

There's nothing different from that and Mormon stuff. But here, the Roman Catholic Church needs doctrines like purgatory, prayer for the dead, and so they find books for that. They need salvation by works or almsgiving, they find a book for that.

So 2 Maccabees chapter 12, verses 39 through 46, we'll have purgatory, prayer for the dead. You'll have Tobit 12 .9 for the almsgiving salvation. And they, the Catholic Church, recognize these books as Scripture, 1546.

So you've got Luther, about three decades earlier, saying that these were not true, not biblical, not in the canon. Think about the Apographa as well, these books that the Catholics have in their Bible as Scripture.

The Jews never accepted those books as Scripture. The Apographa was not recognized as God breathed from the Jewish community. If you look at the Scriptures themselves, regularly and often, probably a couple thousand times if memory serves me, thus saith the Lord, God says, but if you look at 1 Maccabees chapter 9, verse 27, it seems to say the opposite.

Does the Apographa even claim to be God breathed? I think the answer is no. The Church, Roman Catholic Church, they claim it to be, but does the Apographa even claim it to be like the New Testament claims it to be, like the Old Testament claims it to be?

All right, I have another question for you. The Apographa, the books between Malachi and Matthew that the Roman Catholics have in their Bible, the Douay version, for instance, and others, does the Apographa show up in the New Testament quoted as Scripture?

The answer is no. And you say, well, there's something maybe in Hebrews 11, a historical fact that is recorded in 2 Maccabees 6. Friends, that's a stretch. You see how many quotes from the Old Testament in the New.

I mean, one after another after another, and depending on Nestle Alon's count, I'm guessing about 350 direct quotes from the Old Testament in the New, plus 600, 900, 1 ,000 allusions to the Old Testament text.

But why don't we have any of that with the Apographa? Because it's not considered Scripture. The Old Testament folks didn't consider it Scripture, neither did the New Testament. Now, there are other books besides the Apographa that have tried to make themselves divine.

And of course, to recognize something as divine would lend it a lot of authority, of course, and so you can see why people want things in the Bible. But we have another group of writings that the Roman Catholics don't have in their Bible, but we're floating around, right around this intertestamental time period between Malachi and Matthew, and a little bit later, 1st century, 2nd century, they're called Pseudepigrapha.

It's always fun to say the word pig in some kind of pigrapha, but pseudo, false, grapha writings that were floating around, Pseudepigrapha, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter. It helps to have names like that because if it's going to be the Gospel of Bobo the Clown, not many people are going to read it.

But if it says Gospel of Thomas, oh yeah, he was an apostle. Gospel of Peter, oh yeah, he was an apostle. You can see why they gave them those kind of names. And so what do we do with those books? Well, it doesn't take you very much reading before you figure out these things had crazy talk involved.

So I'm just going to read you a few things that were written in the Pseudepigrapha books, so you'll say, wait a second, that just is crazy, it doesn't match up. The infancy Gospel of Thomas, it's about the middle of the 3rd century, Pseudepigrapha writing, and one commentator online said this is cheap devotional literature focusing on the miraculous and bizarre.

And that's exactly right. So Jesus takes in this book, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, he takes clay pigeons and, or takes clay, makes pigeons on the Sabbath. And people don't like that because you're not supposed to do things on the Sabbath.

So he snaps his hands together and these clay pigeons, I think you're supposed to shoot clay pigeons, but anyway, these pigeons turn into real pigeons and they fly off. The account also says that there's a child and he was messing around with a pool of water that Jesus created and Jesus calls him basically numbskull and then paralyzes the kid.

I mean, it doesn't take you very much to figure out that's not in the canon. How about somebody bumping Jesus' shoulder and Jesus kills the child by cursing him. And when people go to his parents to complain, so you've got these other, you know, you've got a dad who's bugged that Jesus is paralyzing kids and so he goes to the parents of Joseph, he goes to parent Joseph and Jesus smites them as blind.

I can't even believe I'm reading this. So we're talking today about canon. Canon means measuring rule or rod or standard. What books were in the canon and why? And the key word today is, again class, recognition.

How Prophetic Authorship and Apostolic Authority Mark the Canon

Now when you think about what was a criteria for the inclusion of the canon, humanly, how do we in fact recognize this? We're not making these things canonical like the Roman Catholic Church would do.

We made the Bible from the church. We're just recognizing these things. One of the tests would be prophetic authorship. These men who are writing scripture could accurately predict the future. And you can look at Deuteronomy, for instance, Deuteronomy chapter 18.

For that, you could look at 1 Samuel where Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord because the Lord didn't let any of his words fail. Jeremiah 28, 9, the prophet who prophesies of peace when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then that prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent.

So their words were inerrant and what they said came to pass. And so we see prophetic authorship because they're predicting things that come to pass. Additionally, people would look as councils would get together and people would get together, how do we recognize this is in the canon?

Once the canon started being recognized, everything has to match up with what's already been recognized. In other words, does it agree with something that's already been included in the canon? So Deuteronomy chapter 13 talks about prophets and dreamers who come up and give signs and wonders but say things opposite to what's already there.

God safeguards his revelation by saying these people can't be true. When you look at the Bible, you see prophets writing the Old Testament. These prophets spoke for God. What they said was true. What they said came to pass.

What they said didn't contradict each other. See how it all just comes together. Moses, the prophet, writing the Pentateuch. The major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, they call themselves prophets.

The twelve minor prophets, as we use the words today, minor, short in length, they identify themselves as prophets. First Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, Second Kings, written by prophets. Joshua, Solomon, Daniel receive direct revelation from God, from a vision to a dream to other ways.

David, he writes the Psalms, identified as a prophet in Nehemiah chapter 12. David, the man of God. That's what we're after with the man of God may be equipped, right, adequate for every good work. New Testament evidence for Old Testament canonicity.

Jesus’ View of the Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Jesus is the key. Here's how we do this. And I wrote a chapter in The Prince of Preachers about this very thing. My view of the Old Testament is Jesus' view of the Old Testament. He didn't say, by the way, you forgot a couple books.

Let me add those in. Second Maccabees is in. He did not say Jonah is too wild to have in there. God doesn't save Ninevites and he doesn't actually have large fish swallow prophets either. This is just a story.

It's a fable. It's a moral deal. No, how does Jesus view the Old Testament? Can you imagine? If I were God, I would put a canon together like this. I'd have gold tablets come out of the sky from an angel.

That's what I would do. No one could mess it up. There's not 500 different manuscripts floating around for the New Testament. What's true? Lower criticism. How do we get to the textual evidence? You know, we don't have to have Bible teachers like Abendroth get online and say, if President Obama delivered a speech from a manuscript and 5 ,000 professional scribes, dictation artists, perfectly transcribed his message and we put those 5 ,000 together, could we in fact give President Obama's speech word for word?

It wouldn't have to be any of these kinds of discussions, but God didn't do it that way. God did something differently. And in New Testament time periods and beyond that, the first thousand years, you had people in the West, people in the East, Byzantine area, Alexandrian area, wherever people were, they were recognizing these things to be true.

Jesus and the Apostle, they had the Old Testament that we have today and quoted so many, hundreds of times, they quote from it. Then what happens in the future? Not that we need this, but it's a nice confirmation.

You get the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1947, and they've got portions of virtually every Old Testament book with one exception, the book of Esther. Well, what can we learn from that? Continuity is what we can learn from that.

A continuity between what was in the Old Testament times and what was found in the Qumran area. And then that makes it easy because when we look to the Apographa, we say, not written by prophets, not recognized as authoritative in their day.

They don't say that they're Scripture, and Jews don't regard them as Scripture, Christians don't regard them as Scripture. It makes it very simple. First Maccabees chapter 4, verse 46, No prophets around.

How can you have a Bible book being written if there's no prophet? There was no prophet seen in Israel. First Maccabees 9, 27, You need to have a prophet to have Scripture. Josephus says against Apion 1, 8, From Artaxerxes to our own time, the complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records because of the failure of exact succession of the prophets.

That's exactly the thought of the Jews at the time. F .F. Bruce says in his book called The Book and the Parchments, Those which they received refused to admit had never been included. They did not expel from the canon any book which had previously been admitted.

The Council of Jamnia was the confirming of public opinion, not the forming of it. So my name is Mike Abendroth, talking today about the canon. You can study more about the canon if you want to get F .F.'s Bruce book on the canon.

God Preserves His Word and Christians Should Read It

And the good news is God, the powerful, almighty God, can keep His Scriptures pure throughout the years, even though He didn't decide to use the golden tablet approach. We recognize things as Scripture.

That's what man has done. Man has never said, this is a book of the Bible, and therefore we're going to put it in there. We have only received, we have only recognized, we have only accepted these things, and that's all we have done.

We have internal evidence of apostolic authority in the New Testament. We have prophetic writers in the Old Testament. You can write me at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com, and the best thing to do since God has written the Scriptures is for you to read it.

So many problems solved in the life of a Christian when they read their Bible. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.