Ep. 18 - Are We Missing Books from the New Testament?
Episode Transcript
Ep. 18 - Are We Missing Books from the New Testament?
[00:00:00] JC Schroeder: Hello friends! Today, we have an awesome subject. And we're going to ask the question, are we missing any books from the New Testament. Now I think this is a really interesting question for us to think about, because a dominant narrative about the New Testament is that we are missing books from the New Testament and that there are other books, Gnostic books, or other sorts of literature that should be included in the New Testament canon.
[00:00:28] So today we're going to talk about what those texts are and why we have the New Testament the way we do. And is that even correct? So let's dive in. I'm JC Schroeder, and welcome to Bite Size Seminary.
[00:00:44] Introduction
[00:00:44] JC Schroeder: So, as I said in the intro today's episode is all about, are we missing any books from [00:01:00] the New Testament? This discussion deals with something called the canon of the New Testament. That word canon just simply means a list of authoritative documents. And if we're interested about the canon of the Old Testament, you can check out the two previous episodes: Do we have the right books in the Old Testament: parts one and two. And part of the information that we're going to hit on here regarding the New Testament builds off of the idea of the authoritative lists, the canon of the Old Testament as well. The concepts of the New Testament and what is the makeup of the New Testament is built off of the concepts of the Old Testament. If you haven't listened to those episodes on the Old Testament, I would really encourage you to go do so I think it's really a helpful framework to think about the canon of the Bible and the canon of the Old [00:02:00] Testament.
[00:02:00] Concepts About Canon
[00:02:00] JC Schroeder: Now, just as a reminder of what the core concepts of what we talked about for the canon of the Old Testament that are important for today's topic about the Canon of the New Testament. Is this idea that the canon, this authoritative list has both some rigidity and fluidity. What do we mean by that is rigidity? There is a set idea of what could be considered a part of the canon and what could not be considered a part of the canon. There was a canonical core. And we talked about how, if you had something that was part of Scripture or was considered to be Scripture, that's something that's special. Thus, that's an authoritative list. Whether it's fully agreed on or not. And this idea of God making a covenant with his people, sets up this idea of a written form of God's word given to his people. But then there's also some fluidity in the sense that not everyone agreed [00:03:00] about what the canon was actually going to look like. There's that agreement about a canonical core of the base ideas of Christianity, but there were some issues and questions about some documents on the margins. And we'll talk about those that applies for the Old Testament that applies for the New Testament as well.
[00:03:22] Now, if we remember in the Old Testament, the starting point for the Old Testament canon is God's work with his people. And that's a nice, helpful reminder for us is that God is the one who determines what's in the canon, by inspiring that text. But later Christians, Jews, believers need to recognize what God has already inspired and determined to be canonical. So there are groups of believers that look at a text and they say, yes, this is what God has said, this is canonical for us. But this is [00:04:00] all based off of God's work and his agreement with his people, his covenant, that he made with his people, Israel, on Mount Sinai, right after the Exodus. And this set up a canonical trajectory of God speaking to his prophets, to his people, and those prophets taking that text and putting into written form and that becoming the basis of the Old Testament canon.
[00:04:29] New Covenant, New Scripture
[00:04:29] JC Schroeder: Now one final--this is more than one minute--one final recap of the Old Testament, is that in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, you have the promise of a new covenant. The first giving of Scripture was in the first covenant, the Mosaic covenant, but there is this promise in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel of a new covenant. And what we had in the first covenant there's going to be Scripture and a promise of new covenant there's going to be Scripture as [00:05:00] well. And so this sets the basis for us and the expectation, even, of the Christian community of what the new Scripture, the New Testament is going to look like.
[00:05:13] Now we see in the New Testament you have Jesus himself and the New Testament authors are latching onto and grabbing that idea of the fulfillment of new covenant coming in Jesus and in his church. So when Jesus at the last supper, the night before he is betrayed and killed, he takes the bread, he takes the cup. And what does he say? Take, eat. This is my body. Take, drink. This is my blood, which is poured out for you, which is a new covenant. So Jesus is evoking that Jeremiah and Ezekiel language to signify, what's going to happen to me is the establishment, is the foundation of this new covenant for his people and [00:06:00] for the world. Now, the expectation that we already had with the first covenant is that there was going to be Scripture, new revelation, new writing from the Lord through the human prophets. And the expectation now for this new covenant is new revelation, new Scripture with new prophets.
[00:06:20] New Prophets
[00:06:20] JC Schroeder: And you see that the New Testament authors, and the apostles, many of which are the New Testament authors, take on this idea and this identity, of apostolic and prophetic authority, which manifests itself in written Scripture. So think of the verse Ephesians 2:20, which Paul, the apostle Paul is speaking about the church and he says this about it. It is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone."
[00:06:56] Now we like to emphasize Christ and that's a hundred percent, right? [00:07:00] Uh, that he is the chief cornerstone, right. That he is that cornerstone for the church, everything depends on. But the foundation of the church is the apostles and prophets, they are that authoritative, foundational element. They function in that prophetic role. Similar to what we have in the Old Testament, by the prophets. And they lay the groundwork, the foundation for the church. So that it may be established. Everything rests on the apostles and these New Testament prophets. And the idea here is not that it's resting on them, but on their authority, their authority to teach and their authority to write and to communicate the revelation from God.
[00:07:48] Evidence from the New Testament About the Canon
[00:07:48] JC Schroeder: And you can see that the apostles here are taking on this authority for themselves. Paul claims to be an apostle. And here, he says the apostles and prophets are that [00:08:00] foundation. They have been given a unique position. And a unique authority as apostles and prophets in his church to build up the church and to give that revelation from God. So you see that the apostles are taking on this identity and this authority.
[00:08:20] Now the first couple of points that we've already made here about the New Testament canon is that it's built off of that new covenant structure, similar to what we have in the Old Testament structure and I'm taking this cue primarily from Kostenberger and Kruger's book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy. I'll link it in the notes. It's a great read.
[00:08:41] And then there is also the point we just made that the apostles are recognized as that authoritative role, that prophetic role to give Scripture, to give revelation from God. And then what we're going to see now with a passage like 1 Timothy [00:09:00] 5:18 and 2 Peter 3:16 is that the New Testament authors are also continuing to take on that identity of giving Scripture and recognizing that the New Testament writings are Scripture themselves. They're not just thinking, isn't this a wonderful work of literature. They're thinking this is from God. So the first one 1 Timothy 5:18. I like this verse. It's a great verse to have in your back pocket for thinking about the New Testament canon. It says this, Paul says this "For the Scripture, says "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain" and "The laborer deserves his wages." Now you might be thinking. I misheard that, that was a weird verse. You probably didn't miss hear me. And it is a weird verse for what we're talking about. Paul's talking about how Christian leaders should be. taken care of financially. And so he [00:10:00] quotes two different passages from Scripture to back up his point. The first one he introduces the quotation with, "For the scripture says," and then he quotes the first passage from Deuteronomy 25:4. "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain." And then he has a second quote, "The laborer deserves his wages." And this is the shocking point. He's quoting from Luke 10:7 here. That's a New Testament text. That is something that is not from the Old Testament, but he puts both of these quotations, one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, one from Deuteronomy one from the Gospel of Luke. And puts both of them under the umbrella, the banner of the term "Scripture says." So in Paul's mind, here he is uniting these two verses under the one umbrella of Scripture. So you have an early recognition by the church of [00:11:00] both the Old Testament as Scripture. And at the very least the Gospel of Luke as Scripture.
[00:11:07] Another great verse that maybe sounds a bit odd until we think about it a little bit more closely is 2 Peter 3:16. Peter writes "and count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you, 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 here's the line he's talking, Peter's talking about Paul, and his letters. We don't know how many letters he has in mind. If it's two, if it's 13. We're not a hundred percent sure. It's plural though. And he talks about how there are other people who twist Paul's letters, to their own destruction, and then this is the important line at the end of [00:12:00] 16, "as they do the other Scriptures." So here, Peter seems to be equating Paul's letters with the Old Testament. That they are both Scripture. Whoa! Isn't that a shocking statement that Peter would say about Paul's writings? So this shows again, another instance, all within the New Testament of the early church recognizing what they are writing as being inspired Scripture from God.
[00:12:34] Now some scholars would recognize that, 1 Timothy and 2 Peter, are not written by Paul and not written by Peter and are written a little bit later than when we might think in the 60's AD. That is a possibility. I personally don't side there. But even if we play devil's advocate a little bit or play the hypothesis that they were written [00:13:00] later in the late first century, or even into the early second century, this is still phenomenal evidence of the early recognition by the early church of these New Testament documents, the Gospel of Luke and some plural form of Paul's letters as being inspired, as being Scripture from God.
[00:13:21] Is There Diversity in Early Christianity?
[00:13:21] JC Schroeder: Now what's interesting about that observation from 1 Timothy and 2 Peter, and it's recognition of the Gospel of Luke, and Paul's letters as being Scripture, is that if you only had Luke and just a handful of Paul's letters, would we be able to define what Christianity is from that? Yeah. Really a lot. Luke's gospel gives you a wonderful interpretation and the meaning of Jesus's life and death and resurrection. Paul's [00:14:00] letters further expand on that meaning of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. So if we only had, let's say the Gospel of Luke and a handful of Paul's letters, we would be able to define what was true Christianity based on those documents. And if we had some other form of Christianity or some other teaching about who Jesus was, did he die, did he rise again from the dead, and what was the meaning of all this? We would be able to evaluate that teaching and say, that doesn't correspond to what we find in Luke or what we find in Paul's letters. So thus, we can reject that that's not the true gospel. That's not who Jesus really is.
[00:14:47] Some would suggest that in early Christianity, there was a divergency among many Christians of all different types of Christian theologies. [00:15:00] Some that recognize Jesus as God and man, the Orthodox view. Some would say that he is just a man, some of that, he was a, some form of God, but not fully man. There was all different views of who he was with an equal amount of legitimacy. Now, what I find interesting here is that based on those passages that we looked at, it seems to suggest that that idea of all are equal there was no way to tell which one's the right version seems to be not a viable option in terms of that evidence from 1 Timothy and 2 Peter.
[00:15:34] It seems as if the early church had a way to distinguish between what would be true teaching about the life, death and resurrection and the meaning of all that about Jesus based upon the earliest documents that we have, Luke's Gospel, Paul's letters, and the other material that we find in the New Testament as well. And if something didn't agree with that, something like a Gnostic gospel that said that Jesus [00:16:00] didn't rise again, physically. Or was just a ghost or wasn't fully a man or wasn't fully God. The early church could look at that and say, that is wrong. Now it is important that there were Christians that believe those errant things. But it is wrong to say that it's an equal everyone had the equal position and there was no way to tell the difference between them. I don't believe that that seems to correspond well with the evidence.
[00:16:30] The early church also dealt with this issue as well. And they looked at those sort of responses to these other texts that described a different version of Jesus. And they said, no, this doesn't work with the traditions that we've been given in Scripture, and in the oral tradition, and in what God has given us. D. A. Carson lists three different factors that the early [00:17:00] church utilized to recognize if a document was truly from God, if it was truly inspired. The three things that they would look for was, was it written by an apostle, did it conform to the rule of faith or the gospel, and was there widespread usage of this. So when they came to look at different books that were in circulating in the early church, they applied these three factors. Was it written by an apostle, conformity to the rule of faith or the gospel, and did it have widespread usage?
[00:17:37] 3 Types of Books in Early Christianity
[00:17:37] JC Schroeder: So there's three different types of books that they encountered, books that eventually became a part of the New Testament. And they said, yes, these were written by the apostles. Yes, these do conform to the rule of faith and they do have a widespread use. So these are going to be included into the New Testament. Now there were debates about the canonicity of some. [00:18:00] Usually it had to do with is this person really an apostle. Is this widespread usage? Does this actually cohere with the rest of the message that we have, uh, regarding the gospel and the rule of faith? So something like Revelation. If we're being honest, Revelation is kind of a strange book. So there was questions is Revelation a canonical book? And the end result was yes, because it's written by John the apostle, and it does cohere with the rule of faith and it did have a widespread usage. So it was eventually accepted into the canon, even though there was debates about that. Now, one thing we need to add on here regarding these New Testament writings, not all of them are actually written by an apostle. So you think of the Gospel of Mark. Mark is not an apostle, but he is a very close associate to the apostles. He is very tight with Peter. He's very tight with Paul and even [00:19:00] Barnabas. So he's within the inner circle of the apostles. So, all of the New Testament writings are either written by an apostle or a very close associate with the apostles.
[00:19:11] A second group of writings that early Christians would have thought about and debated about were Christian writings. These were not inspired, but were viewed as helpful and edifying. Something like The Didache or The Shepherd of Hermas. These were books that early Christians really loved, just like maybe books that we love today, such as C. S. Lewis's, The Screwtape Letters, or The Chronicles of Narnia. Hey, these are great. These are helpful for our spiritual lives, but they're not actually inspired. They don't actually have all of the qualifications that are not written by an apostle. So we can't accept them.
[00:19:50] Gnostic Gospels?
[00:19:50] JC Schroeder: Now the third group of texts that early Christians has dealt with were called Gnostic gospels. These were eventually determined to be heretical and not inspired [00:20:00] because why were they considered to be heretical? Not because of political gamesmanship. But because they deviated from the core of Christianity. They were not written by an apostle and they deviated significantly from that rule of faith. They did not cohere with the gospel. They said something different about who Jesus was and thus we're rejected from the canon. And the vast majority of Christians in the early church said, no, these are not the right books that should be included in the New Testament.
[00:20:38] D. A. Carson also has a helpful list of factors of why people rejected the Gnostic gospels. And this kind of goes along with his factors of recognizing the New Testament canon. Is that these are, they have a late date of writing. Many people today say that, oh, look at these Gnostic gospels. Aren't these interesting? They present a different view of Jesus. Yeah, but [00:21:00] they're all written in the second century or later. They're not contemporaneous with the New Testament writings and with the New Testament Gospels. So if we're just looking at the Gnostic gospels and the New Testament Gospels from a historical standpoint, the Gnostic gospels give us very little to if any historical data about who Jesus is. Whereas the four Gospels are actual historical documents. The reason the Gnostic gospels are not helpful is that they have a very late date of writing. They're not from eyewitnesses. They're not from people who were there or they can be verified. They also contained false teaching that went against the rule of faith, the essence of the gospel.
[00:21:47] And also they were not written by an apostle or close associate. It's interesting that a lot of these Gnostic gospels take the title, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the [00:22:00] Gospel of Mary Magdalene. They take these individuals who are prominent, that people would know. And they are clearly not written by them because they're written second, third, fourth century. They're already dead. And this is almost like a backwards sort of way of recognizing that a text had to be written by an apostle in order for it to be considered canonical. So it's like a backwards way of recognizing, what the true factors of recognition were already. And so it's not that the church was reacting against Gnostic gospels by coming up with these, it had to be written by an apostle, rule of faith, wide usage. Is that the Gnostic gospels were reacting in response to the true Gospels and the true New Testament texts as the canon was beginning to fully emerge. That I think is a really helpful point that I drew from Michael Kruger. [00:23:00] Um, really, really helpful, factor in thinking about the Gnostic gospels there.
[00:23:04] Now one final thing that I want to say about the New Testament canon and about the Gnostic gospels. Michael Kruger has this great little article on his blog. "10 Basic Facts about the New Testament Canon that every Christian Should Memorize." I'll link it in the show notes. It's a great read. I'm not going to go through all 10. I'll let you look at that. But there's two that I really want to focus in on here. Is that all of the Gnostic gospels are written later. They're all written in the second century or later. This is in contrast to the New Testament documents, which were the earliest writings, that we possess about Christianity. The other thing that I want to just note about what Michael Kruger brings out in this article, is that the early church decided nothing [00:24:00] about the New Testament canon in any church council. No council. That was a weird way to put it. No church council ever made a decision about the New Testament canon. Not at the council of Nicea, not at any other council. It was very much a sort of grassroot, organic way of the church examining and approving the New Testament text. There was no group, political group, Constantine or some religious faction within Christianity that stood up and said, these are our documents. And if you don't like it, well get lost. No, no, no, no. A very organic way, grassroots way of the church examining the New Testament documents, examining other texts and examining the Gnostic gospels and saying these 27 books of the New Testament. These are the texts that God has given us.
[00:24:58] Why Does the Canon Matter?
[00:24:58] JC Schroeder: So there's a lot [00:25:00] there for the New Testament canon. And if you're interested, I've linked some more resources in the show notes for you to check out if you're interested. But what I want to just finish on and just note is that this topic has been a point of contention by some and people highlighting that see, this is the reason why Christianity is made up or why we shouldn't believe in Christianity. But I just want to just highlight for us is that these factors give us really good historical evidence and historical precedents of why these New Testament books are the best and earliest and best interpretation of earliest Christianity. And addition to that we can make that decision, as we hear the voice of God, speak in his word that this is God himself speaking to us. This is not just a historical document about [00:26:00] early Christianity. It is God speaking to you and to me. So I would just really encourage you, if this is a point in your faith that you're wondering that you're debating. Is the new Testament true? Is the Bible true? And are these texts where we hear God's word? Continue to seek after him, look at those resources to further work through these historical factors and theological factors, but also read his word, hear God speak through his New Testament.
[00:26:38] Outro
[00:26:38] JC Schroeder: That's all we have for today. If this has been helpful to you today. I would ask you, maybe share this with a friend. Maybe there's someone that, you know, that is interested about the New Testament canon, or is just has lots of questions, have them check this out, have them check out the resources, which are way better than this. But if you enjoyed this, if you found this helpful, I'd just love it, if [00:27:00] you would , if you would share it with others as well. Thank you so much! Remember, you can always sign up to receive new episodes at bitesizeseminary.com. You can connect with me on the website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook. That's it. Thank you so much! And we'll see you next time.