By Rick Plasterer, Juicy Ecumenism.
Identifying and justifying the New Testament canon has been the topic of two earlier articles (here and here) reviewing the comments of Albin Huss, a former professor of New Testament studies at Lancaster Bible College, Capital Seminary and at Calvary Baptist Seminary, Lansdale, Pennsylvania, speaking at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ Gap Center for Biblical Studies in Gap, Pennsylvania on Nov. 20-21. His concluding remarks concerned the complexities involved in precisely identifying the canon.
Objections to the Traditional Canon
Huss observed that the New Testament documents were written by nine authors over the course of about 60 years. Naturally it took some time for there to be general, if not universal agreement on the canon. He pointed to six accusations directed against the canon of the New Testament:
- There was no expectation of new Christian written documents.
- The apostles did not understand themselves to be writing Scripture.
- There were authentic gospels which were lost and/or not included in Scripture.
- The canon includes diverse gospels, with no single orthodoxy.
- The canon was established by church councils long after the apostolic era.
- The gospels were not written by the authors that they are traditionally attributed to.
These accusations reflect several types of challenges. First, Huss said there are theological challenges to the canon, specifically the influences of “historical criticism and liberal theology.” Cultural challenges caused by relativism, pluralism, and postmodernism are another issue challenging an authoritative canon. “Worldview challenges” are caused by anti-supernaturalism. There is also “messiness of historical data,” which is inevitable in historical study. There was disagreement in ancient times about the general epistles and the Book of Revelation. Finally, there was the “seemingly endless proliferation of apocryphal writings.”