The New Testament Canon (Part 3)

Last week we saw that the divine authority Jesus gave to the apostles extended not only to their personal ministry and office but also to their words. But what about their writings? Are they too given divine authority?

It is clear that apostles believed that their authority extended to their written words. For example, in 1 Corinthians 14:37 the apostle Paul writes “If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command.” Notice that Paul is directly and unequivocally claiming that his letter to the Corinthians church is the Lord’s command. What Paul wrote was not his word, but the very Word of God; it was not filled with just his insight and authority but with the inerrant clarity and authority of the words of Jesus Himself.

Even more impressively, we see that New Testament writers call other New Testament writings “scripture.” For example, in 2 Peter 3:15-16 we read “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. ¹⁶ He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” Notice that Peter says Paul wrote with the wisdom God gave to Him, not from his own wisdom. Even more importantly, he says people distort Paul’s writings “as they do the other Scriptures”. Note that Peter is calling Paul’s writings Scripture. They are of the same nature and authority as the Old Testament writings. And thus, to distort them brings the same penalty – destruction. 

Paul also accepts the Gospels as the Word of the Lord. For example, in 1 Timothy 5:17–18 Paul writes to Timothy ‘The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. ¹⁸ For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”’ We might pass by this until we ask “What Scripture contains the phrase “The worker deserves his wages”? When we study, we discover that Paul is quoting the words of Jesus in Luke 10:7 “Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.” Furthermore, he also quotes the Old Testament (“Do not muzzle the ox – see Deuteronomy 25:4). Thus, the Gospel of Luke is given equal authority with the Torah, the writings of Moses!

From this it is clear that the apostles themselves considered the writings of other apostles, and also the Gospels, to be the very of God, equal in stature and authority with the words of the Old Testament.

Next week we will look at some early Church leaders’ writings to show that the early Church clearly accepted the writings of the apostles as the Word of God, on equal footing with the Old Testament.

In Christ,

Bret