Reformation21 on the Church
Fathers
Earlier,
in my post on the United Methodist Church and homosexuality, I remarked
briefly about the inerrancy of Scripture and the difficulty of establishing the
canon, something which has been challenged recently in public opinion. At the time, I did not have time to make an
argument myself (nor do I now), but the Reformation21 web
magazine has an interesting post on the subject, available at: http://www.reformation21.org/Window_on_the_Past/158/. It is not a conclusive argument on the
subject, but they do show that the earliest church fathers accepted most of the
books of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, even though officially the
canon was not established until relatively late in church history.
Most
of the arguments in favor of the canon rely on the concepts of apostolicity,
meaning that the books were written by an apostle, and catholicity, meaning
that the books were always accepted by the Church (Calvin’s invisible church,
the group of truly saved Christians) throughout all time. Now, there are some difficulties here. Apostolicity is broader than simply THE
twelve apostles who walked around with Christ- for example, remember Paul is an
apostle. Thus, it’s rather difficult to
argue who is and who isn’t an apostle, which is important because some books of
the Bible are disputed, such as Hebrews.
Furthermore, as in the case of several of the Gnostic gospels, we have
reason to believe they weren’t actually written by the person they claim to
have been written by. Secondly,
catholicity is difficult because it is hard to determine who constitutes the
Church. Between the Catholic, Orthodox,
and Protestant churches today, it’s difficult to tell if the entire Church is
proclaiming things, and some smaller churches do have different canons, in
addition to the issues of the apocrypha.
Additionally, something that the Church proclaims is not necessarily
something that every single believer accepts.
This is why a third criterion, inspiration, is important. As a good Presbyterian, I agree that the
Scriptures themselves, because they are the word of God, have a powerful nature
that can be discerned by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Thus, one can tell what is and is not the
Word of God by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, BUT since we are fallible
humans who are easily misled, we especially need to rely on the testimony of
the Church, which is guided by the Holy Spirit, in recognizing the mark of
inspiration. The Church testifies to the
world, and to us as believers, what the Holy Spirit has revealed to it is the
Word of God, and the Holy Spirit affirms to us that what they testify is
correct by revealing to us the power of Scripture that is included in the canon.
I
also particularly like the article because it refers to the early Church
fathers and their writings, which I feel like often times Protestants (myself
included) ignore because of the Catholic Church’s interpretation of their roles
in Church history. However, they can be
helpful, and their writings are especially helpful in arguing for the canon of
Scripture.