The word of God is under attack today in various ways. Skeptics have always attempted to find alleged contradictions, improbabilities, or what they regard to be moral defects or "primitive" elements not in keeping with modern science. It is also under attack at the ethical level, where the sexual revolution and progressivist ideology recasts the biblical worldview to the unsuspecting and then many biblical concepts are re-interpreted through that lens.

What can get lost in what is unique to the modern assaults on Scripture is a debate that was reopened at the Reformation, but which we would say was settled well before the Council of Nicaea. I am speaking of what books are rightly included in the canon of Scripture.

Canonicity is that quality of the biblical books whereby one comes to know that they are from God and to be considered his word for the church. The word “canon” comes from the Hebrew word qanah, meaning “rod,” which were eventually used for measurements. So a “canonical” thing is that which “measures up” to some standard.

We do not possess the original manuscripts (or “autographs”) directly written by the prophets and apostles, whether of the Old or the New Testament. If we approach this problem from the perspective of divine providence, there are a number of straightforward reasons for their absence: 1. They were written on material that was perishable, whether parchment or papyri; 2. the leveling of Jerusalem and persecution of the church in the earliest centuries virtually guaranteed that a great many MSS would be burned or otherwise destroyed; and 3. in some cases they were being regarded as objects of worship. The study of textual criticism is where we derive the reasonable conclusion that what we have in our modern English Bibles is precisely what was communicated in those originals. It is a vast but very rewarding study.

The Background and Criteria for Canonicity

Contrary to popular conception, there was an early consensus about the New Testament canon. Most of the books were universally accepted, with almost no one of any real authority doubting their Scriptural status. Where there was doubt, it is most likely that it was because the status was later assaulted in the Marcionite controversy of the mid-second century. Books that leaned heavily on the Old Testament (such as Hebrews and Revelation) had to be reaffirmed. Jude and 2 Peter not only resemble each other, but borrow from Jewish Apocalyptic books of the era. Modern critics read back into those early centuries their exceedingly dubious assumptions about authorial form. In reality, the controversies of that time are what forced lists of the canon to be more universally stated, just as heresy about other doctrines did in the Ecumenical Councils. 

Stated concisely, criteria for canonicity has always included:

(1) Authorship of an apostle, or one in the “apostolic circle.”

(2) The book’s spiritually transformative character.

(3) Its orthodoxy and consistency with the rest of the canon.

(4) That it was received by the universal church.

It is important to note that such are objective qualities. That is to say, they were recognized by the early church and thus received. The church was not the acting subject, but the receiver. Put another way, the Word creates the church—not the other way around. 

It is also important to note that these criteria have a cumulative effect and it is not necessary that a biblical book’s author be known in all cases. The Old Testament book of Job and the New Testament book of Hebrews, while differing on a spectrum of what we know of their author, at least share this in common. 

By the middle of the fourth century A.D., the church had settled on the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, and the Protestant Reformers affirmed this canon just as the catholic tradition previously had. It was not until the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century that Rome officially endorsed the Apocryphal books. All sixty-six books are reaffirmed by the Westminster Confession, just as they were in the earliest lists that we find in the Muratorian Canon (late second century), Iraneaus’ list in Against Heresies (ca. 180), and the list of Athanasius in his Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter of 367.

The Objective and Subjective Elements

In his book, Canon Revisited, Michael Kruger discusses “canonical models,” which are essentially a set of fundamental assumptions that one has about what gets to count as canonical and what does not.1 Robert Letham seems to agree and shows us what is often thought to be at stake:

“Indeed, if there was a criterion to determine canonicity, that criterion would take precedence over the canonical books and be a tool in the hands of the church over the Word of God.”2

For this reason, Kruger prefers the word “attributes” over “criteria” when describing objective elements of a book’s canonical status. While I disagree with Kruger’s and Letham’s overall presuppositional approach, where one is simply stuck within these circles of assumptions, the focus is still very helpful for this reason: The question of canon is first theological. In other words, no one gets to say “This is a decisive criteria” and “This is not,” unless they mean that X is the kind of thing that qualifies as divinely inspired.

But this cries out for theological explanation. And it already eliminates any naturalistic account. It is a reminder to the classical, presuppositional, evidential, Roman Catholic, and Neo-Orthodox models that authorities that allegedly trump other authorities are all a cheat. So I take a different lesson from this than Kruger and Letham do. We must do the work of evaluating our criteria and applying it to the texts. And we can do so both by looking at evidence and our theologizing.

Now where does self-authentication fit into this? All the Reformed adhere to this concept. Calvin wrote:

“These words [of Scripture] will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted.”3

So the subjective and objective are not opposed to each other. Evidence and reason makes intelligible what is before us, and the Spirit removes our own sinful and irrational roadblocks to belief in God’s word. There is both the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit and the objective “signs,” or reasons to conclude that the books we have in our English Bibles are indeed what was once for all delivered to the church at first. 

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1. Michael Kruger, Canon Revisited (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012)

2. Robert Letham, Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 189.

3. John Calvin, Institutes, I.7.4.