Why These 66 Books and No More? How We Received the Bible

Have you ever looked at your Bible and wondered, “How do we know that these 66 books, and no others, comprise the inspired Word of God?”

That is a critically important question, since there are many today who would deny that these 66 books truly make up the complete canon of Scripture.

The Roman Catholic Church, for example, claims that the Apocryphal books which were written during the inter-testamental period (between the Old and New Testaments) ought to be included in the Bible. Cult groups like the Mormons want to add their own books to the Bible—like the Book of Mormon, The Doctrines and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. And then there are popular books and movies, like The Da Vinci Code, that claim centuries after these books were written Christians (like Constantine) determined what was in the Bible.

So, how do we know that “all Scripture” consists of these 66 books? How do we know that the Bible we hold in our hands is the complete Word of God?

There are a number of ways we could answer such questions; in fact, we could spend weeks studying the doctrine of canonicity, carefully walking through the relevant biblical and historical details. And there are many helpful books that can guide you through that wealth of information.

But in this article, I would like to offer a simple answer that I hope will be helpful – because it gets to the heart of the matter.

It is this: We believe in the 39 books of the Old Testament, because the Lord Jesus Christ affirmed the Old Testament. And we believe in the 27 books of the New Testament, because the Lord Jesus Christ authorized His apostles to write the New Testament.

The doctrine of canonicity is grounded in the lordship of Jesus Christ. If we believe in Him and submit to His authority, then we will simultaneously believe in and submit to His Word. Because Jesus affirmed the Old Testament canon, we affirm it with Him. Because He authorized His apostles to write the New Testament, we also embrace it.

Dual Authorship in Matthew 1:22 and 2:15

"Although God is ultimately the source of Scripture (2 Tim 3:16), He chose to use human authors as the instruments through which He set forth His written revelation. In using these men to record His Word, God did not suppress the individual personalities or writing styles of the human writers, but rather He used them to communicate precisely what He was pleased to reveal through them. The Bible, then, has a divine author and a human author.

Commonly known as the dual authorship of Scripture, this doctrine is most clearly taught in Peter’s second epistle, where the apostle describes the writing of Scripture as the process in which “men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21b). According to Peter, human prophets spoke or wrote the Scriptures, but as they did so, they were superintended by the Holy Spirit in such a way that their very words were from God Himself.

This same understanding of dual authorship is also seen in the Gospel of Matthew, specifically where the apostle introduces quotations from the OT in Matthew 1:22 and 2:15, describing them as “what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.” In this description, Matthew uses two prepositional phrases to modify the verb “was spoken.” According to Matthew 1:22 and 2:15, these OT prophecies were spoken “by [hupo] the Lord,” and they were spoken “through [dia] the prophet.” Both prepositions in these verses (hupo and dia) are used to indicate the personal means by which the action of the verb is accomplished, often referred to as agency. There is, however, a subtle but significant distinction between the use of these two prepositions, and this distinction makes a helpful contribution to our understanding of the dual authorship of Scripture.

Sola Scriptura: The Heart of the Reformation (and the True Christian Faith)

"Within a year of posting his Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther was summoned to appear before Cardinal Cajetan to be examined for his accusations against the Roman Catholic Church’s theology and practice. When the Cardinal pressed him on the issue of the church’s authority, Luther responded, “The truth of Scripture comes first. After that is accepted one may determine whether the words of men can be accepted as true.”[i] Now, Luther was not discrediting the words of men completely, rather, he was claiming that, far and above anything or anyone else, Holy Scripture was first and foremost. This led to the development of Sola Scriptura—“Scripture alone.” But in order to examine this principle within the context of the Reformation, we first need to explore the doctrine of Scripture itself. For the rest of this article, we will examine four foundational claims regarding the Word of God: its inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency.

The Issue of Inspiration- The most dynamic and explicit passage in all of Scripture about the nature of the Bible’s own divine inspiration comes in 2 Timothy 3:16-17. The Apostle Paul writes:  “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

In the Greek, the word theopneustos is used to describe how Scripture came to be; it was literally “God-breathed”. It was as if the Lord took a deep breath in, and then exhaled Holy Scripture. Further, the means by which God brought Scripture about was through the pens of human writers—“men [who] spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformers did not disagree about divine inspiration. What was and is still contested, however, is the content of the revelation.

Paul’s use of the word “all” in 2 Timothy 3:16 leads us to examine: What books of the Bible are contained in the “all” of Scripture? This is the question of the canon. The word “canon” comes from the Greek word kanōn, meaning “measuring rod”, which came to be used in speaking of a “rule” or “standard”. And in the most general sense, the canon is “the authoritative books that God gave his corporate church.”[ii] Historically, the accepted canon consists of 66 books—39 Old Testament books (Genesis to Malachi) and 27 New Testament books (Matthew to Revelation).

During the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church asserted that there were additional books inspired by God, which belonged in the canon. What came to be known as the Apocrypha consisted of the books of Tobit, Judith, the Additions to Esther, the Additions to Daniel, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach), Baruch (Hebrew for Blessed), the Letter of Jeremiah, and 1st and 2nd Maccabees. In response to the Reformers’ claims that many of the Catholic Church’s practices were unbiblical, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) canonized the Apocrypha, thus deeming it to be the inspired and authoritative Word of God. But after 1,500 years of being absent from the canon, did the Apocrypha suddenly deserve to be included? Certainly not.

Expository Preaching: the Natural Overflow of Biblical Inerrancy

 

What is biblical inerrancy and how does this doctrinal conviction impact one’s pulpit ministry? 

An inerrantist is someone who believes that the holy Scriptures are divinely inspired and that the original manuscripts of Scripture are free from error.[1] 

 “Inerrancy is the claim that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be without error in all that they affirm to the degree of precision intended, whether that affirmation relates to doctrine, history, science, geography, geology, etc.”[2]

Because the ultimate author of Scripture is the Spirit of truth (see John 16:12-15) we can have complete confidence that God’s Word is pure and perfect (see Psalms 19; 119).  The apostle Peter put it like this, “And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:19-21).  A perfect God could only produce a perfect revelation.