Canon

A measuring rod

The word comes from the Greek kanōn (κανών), a straight rod for measuring, and so a rule or standard. Paul uses it in that sense when he blesses "all who walk by this rule" (Galatians 6:16). Second-century writers called the summary of the faith received from the apostles the ‘rule of truth’, and by the fourth century the word had come to mean the list of books the church received as Scripture. The canon is the rod by which the church measures its faith and teaching.

Jesus already had a Bible. After his resurrection he described it:

Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.

Luke 24:44

Many take this as the three parts of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Soon the apostles' writings stood beside those Scriptures. Second Peter speaks of people who distort Paul's letters "as they do the rest of the Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:16).

How the church recognised it

No council sat down one day and chose the New Testament. The churches read the apostles' letters in worship and passed them on (Colossians 4:16), and over generations they asked of each writing: does it come from an apostle or someone close to the apostles, have churches in many places received it, and does it agree with the faith handed down from the beginning? The Easter letter of Athanasius of Alexandria in 367 is the earliest surviving list to name exactly our twenty-seven books Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, and the Council of Carthage in 397 confirmed the same New Testament for the African churches Council of Carthage.

The Belgic Confession (1561), after listing the books, confesses:

We receive all these books, and these only, as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation, and confirmation of our faith; believing, without any doubt, all things contained in them

Belgic Confession, Art. 5

It adds that we believe them "not so much because the Church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Ghost witnesseth in our hearts that they are from God". Most churches hold that, since the age of the apostles is over, the canon is closed.

Where the traditions differ

Catholics, the Orthodox and Protestants all share the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, but not the same Old Testament. Protestants hold that the Old Testament Jesus and the apostles received was the Hebrew Bible entrusted to Israel (Romans 3:2), and count it as thirty-nine books. The Catholic Church receives, as deuterocanonical, books found in the Greek Old Testament widely used in the early church (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel), defined as canonical at the Council of Trent in 1546 Council of Trent, Decree on the Canonical Scriptures. The Orthodox receive a few more. Protestants call these books the Apocrypha. Some churches, such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, have a wider list still.

The traditions also describe the church's part differently. Protestants usually say the church recognised a canon God had given: Scripture's authority "dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God" Westminster Confession 1.4, and the church is likened to sheep who know their shepherd's voice (John 10:27). Catholics and the Orthodox agree that the church did not invent the canon, but teach that the church, guided by the Spirit, also received authority to discern and define it. See also the lesson The canon: which books are Scripture and How did we get the Bible?