I covered how the New Testament has been extraordinarily preserved
and how this ensures that we have access to the original readings
and the original words of the apostles.
And last week, I spoke about the accuracy of the New Testament
and I covered how the New Testament is historically reliable,
how it's accurate, how it's true,
and how it can be corroborated by the historical record.
And this extends even to the deeds and words of Christ,
even to his miracles.
In fact, we talked about last week how non-Christians,
even ancient anti-Christians,
confessed that Jesus performed miracles.
And so because of all these things,
we can conclude that the New Testament claims are worthy of our trust
and especially so when it speaks about Jesus' resurrection.
So today we've got our final topic.
We're going to be talking about the canonicity of the New Testament.
And with this, I'm going to go over questions like
who decided what books were in the New Testament?
And how was the New Testament put together?
And what about those false gospels we hear about sometimes?
Why aren't those in the Bible?
If you're like me, you might have heard of a lot of questions
or even concerns about these things.
You might have wondered about those things yourselves.
You might wonder if someone messed up.
Maybe someone put something in there that shouldn't be there.
Maybe someone took something out that should be there.
So today I want us to consider these questions
and we'll look at the answers that we have for them.
And my hope is that after today,
you'll see a glimpse of how God has worked by His Holy Spirit
to not just inspire and preserve the New Testament,
but also to assemble it.
So before we talk about how the New Testament was assembled,
I need to tell you what the New Testament is.
The New Testament is a collection of 27 books and letters
that were written or supervised by Jesus' apostles.
And these apostles were the ones commissioned to have authority
to teach and preach the gospel of Jesus
and to explain Christian doctrine.
Now there's a lot of confusion and some false theories
about who decided what these apostolic documents included,
who assembled them into the New Testament.
You've likely heard some of these false theories.
You might even believe some of these false theories.
So I think that it would be good for me to start our time off
by going through these theories one by one.
Some of these mistaken theories are false theories.
So let's get started.
So the first false theory on how the New Testament got put together,
I call this one the Bible dropped down from heaven theory.
And people often don't put it in so many words,
but basically this theory assumes that the Bible,
the New Testament was created outside of history,
that it was done without human hands,
and that it was presented to us here on earth in complete form.
Now, of course, this is not how the Old Testament
and the New Testament were written or how they were put together,
and both of them are very clear on this.
If you just glance at it, you'll see how God fit to inspire humans
to write his word over many centuries and in many lands.
And as we'll see, he also inspired humans to put his word together.
So this Bible dropped down from heaven theory isn't true.
But there's another theory on how the Bible,
and especially the New Testament, was put together,
and I call this one the conspiracy theory.
This theory maintains that sometime in the 4th century,
300 years after Jesus, the Roman Emperor Constantine,
or an early pope, they plotted or colluded to manufacture the New Testament.
Constantine, of course, is known as the first Christian emperor.
He came to power in the early 300s A.D.
And the running assumption behind this theory is that
Constantine or an early pope were pretty bad guys,
and they took out stuff that should have been in the Bible,
and they put stuff in that shouldn't be there,
and they did all of this in some kind of smoke-filled back room.
They were committing all sorts of terrible crimes.
If you're familiar with the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown,
he posits this very theory.
But of course, neither Constantine nor an early pope
decided what was in the New Testament.
This theory, in fact, is so false,
it's hard to believe it has much currency today.
There's simply no evidence that Constantine or an early pope
ever decided what was in the New Testament.
And there's a whole lot of evidence that they didn't.
And even if they did decide what was in the New Testament,
their power only extended to the Roman Empire,
and by the 4th century,
Christianity was so widespread beyond the Roman Empire
that anything they did for the Roman Church
wouldn't have had any effect on all those Christian communities
outside of the Roman Empire.
And on top of that, we have biblical manuscripts
and Christian writings from before Constantine,
and they're consistent with the Bible we have today,
showing that our New Testament goes well back before them.
So, the conspiracy theory is also wrong.
But let's keep moving.
We've got some other theories to talk about.
The next one I call the ecumenical church council theory.
This one makes a lot more sense than the other two.
This one maintains that there was an ecumenical church council.
That is a worldwide, universal church council
sometime back in antiquity.
And this council had representatives from every church
all over the world.
And this council codified the contents of the New Testament.
Well, many Christians will be surprised to learn
that this is not true.
There was no ecumenical worldwide church council
that ratified the contents of the New Testament
or decided what books were in it.
There were, of course, various smaller regional councils
held in various geographical locations,
and they did issue New Testament lists,
but they had very limited influence.
They didn't have binding power or anything like that.
There were no worldwide councils
with any kind of binding power
that decided on the New Testament.
The closest we can come to something like this,
to a council of this nature,
is the Council of Trulot in Constantinople in 692.
This council ratified various New Testament lists
that were made by previous smaller councils or individuals.
But the problem with the Council of Trulot
is that it was not ecumenical.
Only Roman churches were invited.
Occasionally, you'll hear people call this an ecumenical council.
It wasn't.
We can say the same thing about the Second Council of Nicaea.
They did the same thing,
but again, only Roman churches were invited.
Everyone outside the Roman Empire
wasn't invited to this council.
So this ecumenical church council theory,
it's an attractive one,
but it's not true.
All right, so the next theory,
the next theory has even more merit to it.
This one, we'll just call it the Apostles Did It Theory,
and according to this theory,
the Apostles not only supervised
the writing of the New Testament,
they also helped collect the New Testament documents
and assemble them together.
So sometimes you hear, for example,
that John, the last surviving disciple of Jesus,
the author of Revelation,
you'll hear that he was responsible for doing this,
for sealing the New Testament.
And some people find evidence for this
with the last words of John
that he put in the final verses of the New Testament
in Revelation,
where he says,
if anyone adds to these things,
God will add to him the plagues
that are written in this book.
And if anyone takes away from the words
of the prophecy of this book,
God shall take away his part from the book of life.
This is Revelation 22, verses 18 through 19.
Now, we do have reason to believe
that John and the Apostles did help assemble
at least part of the New Testament.
For example, there's an ancient Christian writer
named Eusebius.
He's writing around the year 312, 311.
And he says that the Apostle John
took the three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
He bore witness to their truthfulness,
and he wrote his fourth Gospel,
the Gospel of John,
as a supplement to these other three.
And so certainly it seems probable
that the Apostles played a role
in gathering the New Testament documents.
For instance,
I can give you some other examples.
In 2 Peter,
Peter calls Paul's letters Scripture.
So he was probably aware
of a collection of Paul's letters,
and he approved of them.
He called them Scripture.
It also seems quite likely
that Paul and probably the other Apostles
collected their own letters to some extent,
or their followers did,
like Timothy or Silas and so on.
So it's reasonable to conclude
that the Apostles played a role
in collecting and assembling
the documents of the New Testament.
But we don't have any explicit evidence
that one or some of the Apostles
collected all 27 books in the New Testament.
And it would seem likely
that early Christian writings
would mention this if it had happened,
and they don't,
as far as I'm aware.
And so,
clearly the Apostles played a role
in deciding which documents
were authoritative,
but that's not the whole story.
So if this is the case,
who decided what was in the New Testament?
Most people,
when we get to this point,
they start scratching their heads
and wondering what other option
is even available
if those aren't true.
Well, the answer, I think,
is a wonderful testimony
in how God's guiding Spirit
works through history and the Church.
And here's the answer.
The New Testament
was not assembled
in one place or time,
or by one person or group.
Rather, the New Testament
was assembled
by various churches
throughout history
relatively independently
of one another,
and it was done so
many times.
And this all began
in the very early church
of the second century.
Back then,
when these early churches
were deciding
on the contents
of the New Testament,
they all had one
overriding factor.
They wanted to identify
the documents
that were published
by the apostles
or were published
with their supervision.
And from the very beginning,
there was broad agreement
over what these documents included.
And any disagreements
were met with
careful consideration
and prayer
and research
and the remarkable thing.
Perhaps the stunning result
in this
is that every church community
eventually came to use
the very same 27 book
New Testament
we have today.
In other words,
the same New Testament
remarkably emerged
in multiple churches
relatively independently
of one another.
Just like how God
used multiple people
over many countries
and languages
to write the Bible,
so he used many people
over many countries
to put it together.
Now you might be
a little skeptical
about all of this,
so I want to show you
what this process
of putting the New Testament
together looked like.
And to do this,
we're going to travel
back in time
about 2,000 years
to the very beginning
of the Christian church
to those first few decades
after the resurrection
of Jesus
to when the apostles
were traveling around the world
and preaching
the gospel of salvation.
So if we go to say
45 AD
to the ancient city
of Corinth
and if we peek in
on a church service
around this time,
we would notice
that the church
in Corinth
at this time
didn't have
a New Testament
and it's because
the New Testament
didn't exist.
These very first Christians
like those in Corinth,
they didn't have
the New Testament
because it hadn't
been written yet.
The earliest New Testament
documents date
from around the year 50,
give or take a few years.
So if we're in 45 AD
in Corinth,
15 years after
the resurrection of Jesus,
the only scriptures
that the Christian church
would have had
was the Old Testament.
But if we stick around
long enough,
there eventually
will come a day
when the Corinthians
get a letter
from a guy named Paul.
And we call this letter
1 Corinthians.
And because Paul
was an apostle
and commissioned
by Jesus
to have great authority
to preach and teach,
the Corinthians
start reading
Paul's letter
in their church services
alongside
the Old Testament.
And in fact,
Paul seems to instruct
his churches
to do this
in his letters.
The Corinthians
then start sending
this letter around
to their neighboring
churches in Greece,
to churches in
Philippi and Thessalonica.
And again,
this is something
Paul told his churches
to do.
And those churches
in Thessalonica
and Philippi,
they start sending
the Corinthians
their letters
from the apostles.
And we call these
1st and 2nd Thessalonians
and Philippians.
And all of a sudden,
perhaps without
even them realizing it,
the New Testament
is being born.
And over the next
30 or 40 years,
various apostles
wrote or supervised
the composition
of the New Testament
documents.
And over these decades
and also afterwards,
Christians began
exchanging and verifying
these documents
to make sure
they actually came
from the apostles.
And sometimes churches
would find that
someone had hoodwinked
them and a document
they had maybe thought
might be apostolic
really wasn't.
And they would reject it.
Now this process
of gathering
and evaluating
and verifying
documents as apostolic
it took a good deal
of time in part
because the Christian
church expanded
so rapidly
over so many
thousands of miles
that it was often
difficult to communicate
with one another.
For instance,
by 200 AD,
the Christian church
had spread from
the west coast
of Spain
to northwest Africa,
of course all the way
through western Europe
to Greece and Turkey
to Egypt
to the Caucasus
to Persia
to Afghanistan.
It even seems likely
that the church
had spread into
western China
and northwest India.
And churches back then
they didn't have
telephones or email
or things like that.
They didn't have
a quick way to travel
back and forth.
And on top of this
many churches
that you see here
didn't even speak Greek
and they needed
these documents,
these apostolic documents
to be translated.
And all this means
is that it took a while
for these early churches
to come to agreement.
They had broad agreement
early on
but it took some time
for things to settle down
and for complete agreement
to arise
about the New Testament.
And if you're curious
about this
we can even observe
this agreement
emerging for ourselves.
We can go back
and canvas
early Christian writings
in the second
through third centuries
and we can see
these discussions
over the New Testament
taking place
and we can watch
this general agreement
arising.
And we can do this
if we gather
some early Christian writings
and we scan their contents
to see
what their New Testament
looked like.
So for example
if we go to
180 AD
to Lyon's France
and we look at the
writings of a Christian
theologian
named Irenaeus
Irenaeus was a disciple
of a man named Polycarp
and Polycarp
was a disciple
of the Apostle John.
So Irenaeus
has good apostolic
connections.
And if we sift
through Irenaeus'
writings
we can see
which New Testament
books he quotes from
and we can get
a good idea
of what his
New Testament
looked like.
This would be
the equivalent
of someone
a thousand years
from now
going through
all the sermons
at Trinity
to see what was
in our New Testament
to see what
our pastors
quote from
and documenting
this to figure
out what books
we had.
And when we do
this with Irenaeus
we get the following
list of New Testament
books.
Now I know that
this font might be
a little hard to see
I wanted to get
everything on one slide
but what you see
here on the left
is the list
of the 27 books
of the New Testament
and then on the right
we can see if
Irenaeus included them.
The letter C
means he explicitly
cites from
that particular document.
Now Irenaeus'
New Testament
looks pretty similar
to ours.
He has all the
major books.
He has the four
Gospels, Acts,
most of the letters
of Paul which you
can see highlighted
in red.
He also has
1 John
and 2 John.
He has 1 Peter.
He has Revelation.
Some of the
differences however
are that he never
mentions Philemon
or 3 John
or Jude.
Now these are
extremely short
documents.
They're only a few
paragraphs long
so he probably
never had occasion
to quote from them.
Remember he wasn't
giving us a list
of New Testament
books.
He was just
writing a theological
work and quoting
from the New Testament
whenever it was
relevant.
And you have to
preach a lot of
sermons to quote
from 3 John
and Philemon
and things like that.
So it's not
surprising that he
never got around
to it.
Now notice this
chart also has
some question marks.
I've got a question
mark around
Hebrews.
Irenaeus definitely
does mention
Hebrews but we
don't know if he
thought of it
positively or not.
We just know he
knew about it.
There's a question
mark at James.
He does seem to
quote from James
but it's not
totally certain.
There's also a
question mark around
2 Peter.
It's unclear if he
quotes from it.
Irenaeus he also
might have an
additional document
in his New Testament
called the Shepherd
of Hermas but again
it's unclear.
We're not sure.
There's some other
things we can glean
from Irenaeus.
For example he
tells us very
clearly that all
Christians accept
the four Gospels
and only the four
Gospels.
And he seems to be
right about this
because all
Christians before him
as far as we can
tell and those
contemporary with him
accepted the four
Gospels and only the
four Gospels.
Irenaeus also tells us
that Christians only
accept documents that
have an apostolic
connection.
So just from
Irenaeus alone
we can see that
even at this very
early date his
New Testament is
almost identical to
ours and perhaps
if he were to have
given us a list of
New Testament books
it would have been
identical but we
just are unclear.
We can't totally
verify that.
And we can continue
doing the same kind
of study with other
writers around the
same time as well.
Remember we've been
with Irenaeus in
France I mean and
in 180 AD we can
go to Northwest
Africa to around
200 AD we can
canvas the writings
of a Christian named
Tertullian we can do
the same thing we can
make a list and we
can see what he had
in his New Testament
and in fact the only
things Tertullian
doesn't quote from are
2nd and 3rd John and
also James and 2nd Peter
but again he may have
never had occasion to
quote from them he's
not making a list here
he's just writing some
theology.
He also tells us that
there's only four
Gospels Matthew Mark
Luke and John.
He also says the New
Testament is made up of
documents stemming from
the apostles.
Interestingly Tertullian
rejects the Shepherd of
Hermas explicitly as
being part of scripture.
So if you're wondering
about this document the
Shepherd of Hermas we
have good evidence that
it was written in Rome
probably around the year
150.
It was not written by an
apostle.
There were some early
Christian writers that may
have thought it was
apostolic but eventually
everyone agreed that it
wasn't.
Now we can keep doing
this.
We can keep canvassing the
writings of the ancient
world.
For example around the year
200 the first full scale
translation of the New
Testament happened that we
know of.
It's called the Old Latin
Translation and it seems to
have included all 27 books
of the New Testament.
And if around this time we
can go to a guy named
Origen of Caesarea in
Palestine.
He's writing around the year
240 and he includes all
27 books.
In fact he's the first one
to give us a complete New
Testament list and it
seems to have all 27.
Some scholars believe that
his list may have been
altered by later scribes or
translators but if we go
through Origen's writings he
quotes from all 27.
So we know he knew about
them.
And like I said we can keep
doing this through decades
and centuries and if we did
we would see all the
churches eventually cluster
around the 27 documents we
have today.
And like I said the most
remarkable maybe the most
wonderful thing about this
process is twofold.
Firstly even the very early
church had brought agreement
on the contents of the New
Testament as we just saw.
And secondly all Christian
churches eventually settled on
using the very same New
Testament.
And they did this though
speaking different languages
and sometimes living thousands
of miles apart sometimes in
communities that were at war
with one another.
Despite this every church
eventually came to use the
same exact 27 book New
Testament.
Now this did take a very
long time in some places.
For instance the Roman
Catholic Church did not
technically authorize the
27 book New Testament until
the Council of Trent in the
1500s.
But it I know I know but in
practice in practice the Roman
Catholic Church had always
adhered to a 27 book New
Testament since before the
year 200 when the old Latin
translation happened.
Even some of our Protestant
reformers questioned New
Testament books.
For example Martin Luther
didn't like the book of
James.
He wanted to throw it out.
But eventually all churches
agreed and began using the
27 book the 27 apostolic
documents in the New
Testament even if they never
formally ratified a New
Testament list a New
Testament canonical list.
So to sum up on how the New
Testament was assembled we can
say the following.
It did not fall out of
heaven.
There was no conspiracy
theory.
There was no political
subversion by a Roman
emperor or a pope or anything
like that.
There was no single ecumenical
council.
And while the apostles did help
assemble the New Testament
there was no single uniting
factor in this process except
the Holy Spirit.
He led churches to
independently investigate and
test which documents were
apostolic to verify this and
the wonderful result is that they
all eventually zeroed in on the
27 book New Testament we have
today relatively independently
of one another.
So.
All right.
The early church they carefully
went through these materials.
They decided on the New Testament
but let's be skeptical here.
What if they were wrong?
What if they messed up?
What about those heretical
Christians like those Gnostics that
we hear about?
What about them and their
Gospels like the Gospels of Mary
and Judas and Peter and the
Gospel of Truth?
What if those heretical groups
were right?
What if those documents really
are from the apostles?
What if our New Testament should
include them?
In fact what if those Gnostics
were the true Christians and
were the ones who are wrong?
How do we know?
Well those are great questions.
So let's for the sake of
argument let's stop trusting the
early church.
Let's look and see what those
heretics thought.
In fact let's go one step
further.
Let's just not look at what
those heretical groups thought
about the New Testament.
Let's figure out the contents of
the New Testament on our own.
Let's do this for ourselves and
see what documents really are
apostolic and what conclusions we
come to.
So we're going to do two things
now.
We're going to examine the early
Christian heretical sects to see
what their New Testaments
contain.
And then while we're doing this
we're going to figure out which
writings truly come from an
apostle so that we can create our
own New Testament and we see what
we come up with.
All right.
So there's a few things we need to
know before we start.
First, the early heretical sects
made up a small minority of
Christians.
Our evidence clearly shows that the
vast majority of Christians in the
early centuries followed the
mainstream church that you and I
all would have been a part of
because their core beliefs, their
theology, match our own.
And this mainstream church spanned
thousands of miles, dozens of
cultures, many languages and
countries.
And secondly, it was directly
linked to the apostles.
And we know this through various
lines of evidence.
But, you know, deciding on what the
New Testament is, it's not a
popularity contest.
Who cares about the apostolic
connections?
We're being skeptical here.
Let's go with the heretics for a
moment.
They claimed like they had
apostolic connections as well.
Let's see if they're right.
So the most influential heretical
sects in the second through fourth
centuries were the following groups.
It was the Montanists in Asia Minor,
the Novationists in Rome, the
Donatists in North Africa, the
Arians there in Egypt and Western
Europe.
These were the largest heretical
sects outside of the mainstream
church.
They flourished between the second and
fourth centuries.
But the interesting thing about
these folks is that all the
evidence points to the fact that
they accepted the very same New
Testament as the mainstream church.
Their dispute had nothing to do
with the contents of the New
Testament, but it had everything
to do with its interpretation.
So from this, we conclude most
heretics accepted the New Testament
of the mainstream church.
That wasn't the issue.
But let's look at those oddball
groups that didn't do this.
Perhaps the largest sect with a
different New Testament was the
Marcionites.
They flourished in the mid-second
through third centuries.
But the problem with them is their
New Testament.
Their whole Bible actually was
different because they rejected
every biblical writing that was
Jewish.
Now, if you think about that, that's
everything except for the Gospel
of Luke.
Luke was the only Gentile writer.
And they also accepted Paul because
Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles.
But that still wasn't enough.
They had to go through and change all
the verses because they're constantly
quoting from the Old Testament.
So they had to take all that stuff
out.
Now, I have to say that these
Marcionites don't seem like a very
reliable group to trust.
If we know anything about Jesus and
the apostles, they were Jewish.
They believed the Old Testament.
So it seems like a silly group to
trust on which documents are
apostolic.
So remember, we're trying to see if
heretics were right about the New
Testament.
And what we found so far was that
they either agree with us or they
maintain an absurd position like the
Marcionites do.
So we only have one group of heretics
remaining, the big bad Gnostics.
Now, these guys, they had all sorts of
additional New Testament documents.
Gospel of Thomas, Peter, Philip, Mary,
Judas, Gospel of Truth, Acts of John,
Acts of Andrew, Revelation of Paul.
And they claimed that these were from
the apostles.
Now, one of the curious things, though,
is that the Gnostics don't seem to have
rejected the New Testament of the
mainstream church.
They just added to it.
So they acknowledged the authoritative
status of the New Testament of the
mainstream church.
Hmm.
But even so, what about all these
additional Gnostic Gospels?
Sometimes people are troubled by
these things.
Sometimes people are wondering if
these should be in our New Testament
too.
They wonder why they're not.
So, like I said, we're going to
figure this out right now.
I want to do to these Gnostic
documents what I did to the
documents of the New Testament last
week.
I want to subject these Gnostic
texts to historical investigation,
to historical scrutiny, to see if we
can verify their contents and their
claims.
And when we do this, when we go through
these Gnostic documents, we quickly
find that we can't verify their
historical contents.
None of the false Gospels, the false
Acts, the false Epistles can have their
contents historically verified, except
only in the vaguest of ways.
They're totally disconnected from
history, and frankly, they seem just
made up.
They have none of the fine-grained
historical anchors that exist in our
New Testament.
And this is precisely what we would
expect from something that was
fictitiously crafted after that
point.
And secondly, they not only seem
disconnected from history, they seem
disconnected from Judaism.
They have no idea about Jewish culture
in Palestine.
Our New Testament is filled with
information like this.
In fact, the Gnostic documents have
much more in common with Greek
philosophy and culture and tradition.
And like I said, if we know anything
about Jesus and the Apostles, it's
they were Jewish and living in
Palestine.
On top of this, though, the content of
these Gnostic documents has all sorts
of ridiculous things.
They have a giant walking cross that
comes out of the tomb of Jesus and
talks to people.
They have the Apostles doing things
like sham miracles, like resurrecting
fish and taming bedbugs.
And they've got Simon the Magician, he's
mentioned in the book of Acts, flying
around in the air in some kind of
wizard's duel with Peter, and people
are paying money to see it, according
to the Acts of Peter anyway.
It's crazy stuff.
It totally lacks versimilitude,
authenticity.
It strains credulity.
But none of this is the case with the
27 documents of the New Testament.
They are anchored in history.
They are steeped in Jewish background.
And we can verify them from many
angles.
But we've got more reasons for rejecting
the Gnostic writings.
And this is because none of them can be
reliably dated to the first century.
Every single one of them is most likely
dated to the second or third centuries
or later.
None of them can be placed in a first
century context.
Every once in a while you hear someone
say the Gospel of Thomas can come from
the first century.
There's no hard evidence for this.
In fact, there's good evidence against it.
But all 27 documents of the New Testament
can be dated to the first century.
With great certainty or at least a great
amount of plausibility.
And this gives us a final reason to
reject the Gnostic writings.
And this is that none of them can be
reliably attributed to apostolic
authorship or oversight.
Not a single scholar that I'm aware of
actually believes that these Gnostic
writings come from the Apostles.
And not only did the early Church agree
with this, but even most ancient
heretics agreed with this.
We saw this.
The Donatists, the Montanists, the
Novationists, the Arians.
They rejected the Gnostic writings too.
And if that's not enough for you,
even ancient non-Christian writers
claimed the same thing.
Some of the most famous Neoplatonic
philosophers named Plotinus,
Amelius, Porphyry, they were aware of
the Gnostics.
They attacked the Gnostics.
And Porphyry explicitly accuses the
Gnostics of forging documents in other
people's names.
And the most amazing thing about all of
this is that when Porphyry turns to
attack the early Church, the mainstream
Church, he acknowledges that their
writings did come from the Apostles.
So, let me summarize.
We reject the Gnostic writings because
none of the Gnostic writings can have
their contents verified.
None of them engage with Judaism.
None of them can be reliably dated to
the first century.
Many of them have ridiculous content.
And most importantly, none of the Gnostic
writings can be reliably attributed to
the Apostles.
And even ancient heretics and non-Christians
agreed with this.
On the other hand, the 27 books of the
New Testament can be historically
verified.
They can be reliably dated to the first
century.
They can be reliably indexed back to an
Apostle through various lines of
evidence.
And in fact, the 27 documents of our
New Testament are the only documents in
the entire world that can be linked to
an Apostle.
And these apostolic connections are
something confessed by the ancient
mainstream Church, ancient heretical
Christians, and even ancient non-Christians.
Therefore, if we were constructing a
New Testament from scratch, these 27
documents are precisely the documents we
would put in.
But we can keep adding to this.
As we saw earlier in this talk, it so
happens that these same 27 New Testament
documents happen to exactly match the
earliest complete New Testament list that
exists.
from 245 AD, from origin.
And they also match the earliest full-scale
New Testament translation, the Old
Latin, around the year 200, maybe
earlier.
And lastly, these 27 books are the very
documents that every church eventually
chose to put in their New Testament.
Therefore, for all these reasons, we can
be confident that our New Testament includes
all apostolic documents and that it excludes
all non-apostolic documents.
So, in brief, no one person decided what was in the
New Testament.
Rather, many churches decided independently, and we
accept their decisions because when we do the same
research, it does in fact seem that our New Testament
contains only apostolic documents and all the
apostolic documents.
We didn't leave anything out.
So, to sum up this three-part series we've been talking about, we have good
reason to trust that our New Testament indeed has been well-preserved.
We also have good reasons that it's accurate and true, and that it contains all documents
connected with the apostles and only documents connected with the apostles.
But if you're like me, you might still be wondering a couple things here.
You might be wanting a little more assurance, maybe some more guarantees.
In fact, why stop at the apostles and their writings?
Because I'll tell you what I'd really like to see in my New Testament.
I'd like to have a letter directly from Jesus, delivered by the apostles.
That's what I want in my New Testament, and I'd like to know why we don't have it.
Well, if you're wondering about this, if you're like me, I want to invite you to read the
New Testament, and then you'll find your answer.
Paul writes to the Corinthians, he says this,
You are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink,
but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart.
You see, we do have this letter from Jesus, and it is delivered by the apostles,
but it's written on something better than paper.
It's written on something better than pen and ink.
It's written on your heart, and it's written by the Spirit of God.
What a wonderful privilege and gift that we've been given.
A few verses after this, Paul explains something very profound about this letter from Jesus,
and something very profound about the nature of the New Testament.
This is just three verses later, 2 Corinthians 3.6.
He says,
Now the Greek words behind the phrase New Covenant are
and they can just as well be translated New Testament.
And with this understanding, Paul is making a statement about the very nature of the New Testament.
He says it's not ultimately written in pen and ink.
It's ultimately written by the Spirit.
And this all points to the fact that the New Testament is more than just pen and ink and letters and a bunch of words.
It's a spiritual document.
It's of the Spirit.
And what this means is that for you to have a complete New Testament,
you need more than just the pen and ink apostolic documents and letters.
You need that letter from Jesus written on your heart.
And if you're missing that letter, then you don't have the whole New Testament.
And when you put that spiritual letter from Jesus together with the writings of the apostles,
then each one are like self-authenticating witnesses that declare the truthfulness of one another.
I remember when I was 18 years old and I was caught up in my sins and I encountered Jesus.
And He caught me up and He cleaned me up and He wrote me this living letter on my heart saying,
forgiven.
And the remarkable thing for me was that for the first time in my life,
the Scriptures came alive to me.
I'd heard them every week in church for 18 years.
But once that letter was delivered,
every word of Scripture had new and profound meaning for me.
And you know, this is the same way the apostolic documents of our New Testament
were independently gathered by various churches throughout history.
People filled with the Spirit of God,
carrying that letter of Jesus in their hearts,
they met with these apostolic documents,
and they all fit together.
And they testified to each other.
And this was prophesied centuries before in the prophet Jeremiah.
He said this about the New Testament.
I guess I don't have it in there.
He said,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant, a new testament,
with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
Not like the covenant, the testament,
that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
My covenant, my testament that they broke,
though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
For this is the testament that I will make with the house of Israel after those days.
I will put my law within them.
I will write it on their hearts.
And I will be their God.
And they shall be my people.
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother,
saying, Know the Lord.
For they all shall know me.
From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquity.
And I will remember their sins no more.
If you're here today and you're still looking for that letter from Jesus,
I want to invite you to pray with me right now.
Let's pray together.
Father in heaven, we thank you that you sent your son Jesus.
We thank you that you inspired your apostles to write letters and documents for us by your Holy Spirit.
And we thank you that you've also written on our hearts.
Father, I pray now for anyone who's longing to know you,
who's longing to be forgiven in your name,
who's longing for that letter of Jesus.
And I pray, Lord, you write on their hearts right now.
And I pray for all of us, Lord, if we're doubting or struggling,
if we have questions about the faith,
that you would affirm your truth to them now.
You'd comfort them.
And you would make the scriptures come alive for them.
And we pray all this in the holy and mighty name of Jesus.
Amen.
We've got some questions.
That was a lot.
A lot of names and dates and places.
So the question's about the book of Hebrews.
If you guys read the book of Hebrews, it doesn't say who wrote it.
And it doesn't say in the title.
It just starts out.
So this is the early church really wondered this too.
And they had the very same question.
You see these debates over the epistle of Hebrews.
And what we can say is if we go back to the second century and the third century,
everybody claims that it came from an apostle.
Many of them said it was Paul, but that he had help,
that Luke translated it from Hebrew into Greek,
or that someone else translated it,
or someone else helped him write this letter.
And when we read Hebrews, if you're very careful,
you'll see that the author says that he received this message from the apostles.
There's a line in there in the beginning when he says,
this was declared to us by the apostles.
And then you also have the historical evidence that he seems to be writing before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
So the apostles are still alive.
They're still around.
The whole epistle is structured around temple worship.
So if that thing had been destroyed, I mean, there's no way he would have mentioned this.
So you put all those together.
And it's written in the apostolic times.
It's written by someone connected with the apostles.
And the early church explicitly testifies that it had,
either it was written by apostles or had apostolic oversight.
So we would class Hebrews in the same way that we class the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Mark.
These were not apostles, but they wrote with apostolic supervision,
that there was apostolic help and commissioning in their documents.
So that's where we would put the Gospel of Hebrews.
The final thing with the Gospel of Hebrews is that it just sings to you.
I mean, you just read this thing and it just comes alive.
And I've read a ton of early Christian writings,
and the only writings like that are in the New Testament.
I've never encountered any even remotely close to that.
So that's what I'd say about the Gospel of Hebrews.
Or the epistle of Hebrews.
Did I say Gospel of Hebrews?
Epistle of Hebrews.
Gospel of Hebrews is a different topic.
Anything else?
So I realize that in this presentation you've been focusing on the New Testament,
but some of these lists generated by the councils would have included lists of the Old Testament.
It seems like there's substantial more variance in those lists.
Are there any quick comments?
Yeah.
Yeah, so the questions about the Old Testament
and variations between the Old Testaments of churches.
Some of you may know that while churches agree on the contents of the New Testament,
they don't agree on the contents of the Old Testament.
If you go to a Catholic Bible, they've got some few extra books.
And if you go to an Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, they've got some few extra books.
So the short answer is that Protestants, Evangelicals,
accept the Hebrew-Jewish canon, the Hebrew-Jewish Old Testament.
We believe this is the Old Testament of Jesus and the Apostles.
This is the stuff written in Hebrew.
That extra stuff, this stuff ends around the year 400 BC.
So there's a 400-year gap between our Testaments.
The Old Testaments of the Catholics and the Orthodox,
they fill in that gap with other Jewish writings that were mostly written in Greek, not in Hebrew.
And if we go back to the earliest Jewish lists,
it seems to be our list, the one that we have,
whereas the other churches, the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox,
they follow the Greek Jews in Egypt, whereas we follow the Hebrew Jews in Palestine.
Now, there are lots of debates about this.
I mean, the early church talked about this extensively again and again.
The other thing I'll add is that the first Christian list of Old Testament documents
is by Melito of Sardis around the year 170, very early.
And it appears to agree with us.
And so I think we're on good, firm ground for that,
that we go with the Old Testament that seems like was the Old Testament of Jesus and the Apostles.
We don't add the Greek stuff that later Greek Jews added in.
This is books like 1st Maccabees, 2nd Maccabees, stuff like that.
So that's the short answer that I would say.
Other questions?
All right.
Great.
It's been awesome being with you folks.
Oh, one more.
Could I just ask, do you really write Greek and other languages?
I mean, how did you do all this stuff?
This is my dissertation.
So my dissertation is on the reception of the Book of Revelation
into the New Testament all throughout church history.
And so I went through all the writings and all the council lists
and anything anyone said about the contents of the New Testament.
Some of the stuff you've heard is pretty new stuff.
It hasn't been published before, and I'm hoping to do that in the future.
It's Greek and Latin and languages.
So my program, they make you learn a ton of languages.
We just have to keep taking languages.
So Greek and Latin, Syriac, Coptic, I mean, there's a lot.
And we have to study them.
I can't, they get you to the point where you can kind of muddle through something with a dictionary.
To get to the point of like fluently reading something takes, you know, years of efforts.
So I can kind of do that with Greek, but the other ones I can't, I can't really do that.
But so these, most of what I quoted from are from Greek and Latin writings,
but we could go to Syriac and Armenian and Arabic and Coptic and stuff like that too,
if people were interested.
Those writings are usually after the Greek and Latin writings.
And Syriac's about the same time.
Syriac's just as early.
But the other writings are a little later.
And these are professors at the Divinity School that...
They are, yes, some of them, most of them are in the Religious Studies Department.
Some of them are in the NALC Department, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
They have lectors that teach languages.
Sometimes you have to do independent studies or you go somewhere else and take these languages.
Could you put the comments, since Luther was mentioned on that?
Yeah, yeah.
Are you...
Yeah, James...
Correct me, correct me.
No, no, no, no, no, no correction.
James is an official of straw.
Yeah.
You know, one of the things with Luther you got to watch out is, you know,
he's just quick to make these statements.
Yeah.
A lot of stuff's from table talk and, you know, like, well, strictly off the record,
this is what I really think about the Anabaptists.
Hey, you spell that with one B or two.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But a dissertation's been done that looks to see, if even, say, as the Epistle of Strahd,
James, he cites that no less.
Oh, really?
And in his theological treatises, he cites James no less than any other book.
It's perfectly proportional.
Oh, great.
In terms of his practice...
Yeah, yeah.
That's fantastic.
I'd love to see that dissertation.
And, in fact, you can find similar phenomenon with some of the early church.
I mentioned a writer, Eusebius.
He is suspicious about the book of Revelation.
But if you look at his writings, he quotes from it.
And he'll use it, even though he's a little suspicious of it.
And so we find similar things, too.
And there are actually churches today, I mentioned,
that don't technically have a ratified canonical list of New Testament.
But if you go to their church, the New Testament that they have printed
is the 27-book New Testament.
All right, thank you guys so much.
Thank you.