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In historical Christian writings, when using the term canonicity, men applied that to books. For a book to be canonical means that it has a true, right, and authoritative place in the collection of inspired writings. To put it simply, if it is canonical then it is God’s Word, or it’s Bible. However, the Bible itself does not speak of the canonicity of books, such as “this book is inspired” or “this book belongs in the Bible as part of God’s Word.” The Bible treats words as canonical, such as words inspired or every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The Bible speaks of inspired writings or scripture. A book belongs in the canon because all of its writings belong in the canon.
All the principles or doctrine from scripture that apply to the canonicity of books first apply to the canonicity of words. One cannot argue books from scripture without starting with words. Books are inspired because words are inspired.
In the book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, published by our church in California, which is also Pillar and Ground Publisher, in 2001 (second edition, 2003), I wrote an important chapter, Chapter 19, entitled, “Test of Canonicity as Applied to Words.” This came over 10 years before Michael Kruger wrote, Canon Revisited, a theological dealing with the canon of scripture. In light of my test of canonicity argument, I listened to James White and Michael Kruger discuss canon at the 2018 G3 conference.
The principles I elucidated in my chapter do reflect how true believers or churches thought and believed about both the doctrine of canonicity and the doctrine of the preservation of scripture. Before I wrote that chapter, I had not read anything saying what I wrote, but since then, many have written on canon as related to the doctrine of preservation. Perhaps they read my chapter or articles on the blog here (also here and here). I hear identical language being expressed in the following video with James White and Michael Kruger.
Starting at about 5:30, James White says:
The issue of the canon is a theological for us first and foremost because of the nature of scripture.
That statement ought to get your attention on every bibliological doctrine, including preservation. The nature of scripture makes every issue with the Bible a theological one. He continued:
If you just put canon into Amazon, what’s going to come back are going to be books that are going to direct you to, well, this early church father had this list, this early church father had that list, and then you have this development here, and you have that development there, why does there need to be a different approach? I mean you’re taking a different approach.
Kruger answered:
I take a quite a different approach actually than the standard models. . . . I’m teaching a class on the New Testament canon years ago, and we’re talking about the question of “how you know,” and I realized no one ever answered the question. Uh, ya know, I’m assigning Metzger. I’m assigning some of the other classic sort of texts on canon, and they’re what I sort of call ‘data books’ and they do a great job collecting together, sweeping together, a bunch of factoids about when, aaah, books began to be used as scripture and how long it took . . . and they’re basically just history books. . . . and my students kept asking . . . but that doesn’t answer my question. . . . why should we think the results of all that mean anything?. Ummmm, And so you have to back up and say, oh, wait a second, you can’t just look at the data. You have to have a worldview. You have to have a theological system in which you can absorb that data and interpret it and understand what it means. If you do that, then you need a theology of canon.
White responded:
So when you speak of a theological view of scripture. Ummm, certainly if you, if you have the modern view in the academy of scripture, you’re going the wrong direction. But you’re talking about from a confessional, believing, scriptural perspective. If you start with what scripture is that’s going to impact how you look at how God made sure his people had what He had given supernaturally in inspiration. So flesh that out, how does that differ from most normal approaches?
James White does have the modern view in the academy of scripture on the doctrine of preservation, and he is going the wrong direction. He should be talking about preservation from a confessional, believing, scriptural perspective and he does not. He contradicts himself here, really puts his foot in his mouth and he doesn’t even know it.
Kruger answered that the other approaches say they’re taking a neutral point of view. He says this isn’t a Christian worldview. Kruger is asserting that no one is neutral, just letting the evidence lead them to the truth. Everyone functions according to presuppositions. Kruger and White are saying that the determination of the canon is not naturalistic from some false neutrality, but divine. Again, both of them put their feet in their mouths because they treat textual criticism, which is naturalistic, like it is neutral. They say this presupposition is not a Christian worldview. They are saying that their bibliology is naturalistic and not Christian.
Kruger said:
Let me back up and follow up on one of the things that you (James White) said there, I think is very important, and that is, uh, this idea of seeing canon from a divine perspective. That’s another way to say what you’ve articulated. If you look at it from a purely historical perspective, it looks like a manmade thing, something that the church constructed, but what if we ask the question about, not so much what books Christians recognized, but what books did God give. And when you ask it that way, now you’re asking more of a theological question, and theoretically the books that belong in the canon are the books God gave the church. They may take awhile to recognize those books, but we can still talk about canon as a theological idea in the mind of God.
Kruger continues by talking about defining canon from the divine perspective or from a theological perspective, which he calls an “ontological canon,” which then James White calls canon with a subscript 1, which is the canon as it is known to God. White says:
We need to talk about God’s purpose in leading people to understand these things. . . . . If God extends His divine power to inspire scripture, does He have a purpose? And is there a consistency between what His purpose is in inspiring scripture and leading His people to know what that is? And obviously there are a number of texts of scripture that address that. But this is all theological.
And it drives me insane when I read, uh, people attacking this subject, and they, they want to deny that these documents are theopneustos, they are God-breathed, they are inspired, which is a theological concept, but they will only allow you to use historical, naturalistic, uh, methodology and information to defend the spiritual nature of these books. And people fall into it. We fall into the trap. It’s happening this very day in university classrooms all across America. Our young people are sitting there, and they’re getting slapped upside the head by a naturalistic professor who is demanding that they give naturalistic evidence for what is in fact a supernatural reality.
Kruger agrees. He says, “Right.” I want you to read all of what these men said. I transcribed it. Especially, however, read that last paragraph of White and compare it to what White does on the doctrine of preservation, which is in essence a doctrine of canonicity of words. Preservation is the canonicity of the writings of the words, which is what theopneustos is. All scripture, which is graphe, writings, are God breathed. It isn’t, “All books are God breathed.” Kruger then says:
No surprise. If you start with a naturalistic assumption, you end up with naturalistic conclusions.
Later he says: “Your worldview, your theological grid, ends up affecting your historical conclusions.”
Bingo.
White answers:
And the naturalistic professor, who is slapping our students upside the head has presuppositions. They just don’t allow them to be expressed or examined, uh, fairly in any meaningful fashion.
White asks:
What would you call the churches recognition of the canon over time? How would you des, what terminology would you use to describe that?
Kruger answers:
That’s what I call the exclusive definition, which is you, you, you don’t, well, it depends on what part you mean. So the final sort of settling of the canon is what I call the exclusive definition, which is if the church finally reaches a consensus around these books.
Read those words: a “settling of the canon” and “the church finally reaches a consensus.” Why would it be the canon based upon settling and consensus? There are biblical principles around these related to the witness or testimony of the Holy Spirit. The unity of the Spirit is the guiding of the Holy Spirit. This comes by faith. In scripture this all relates to words.
I’m going to stop here for now, and you can hear more from White or Kruger, but you need to see that White believes and practices completely inconsistent on the text of scripture from the canon. This is not because of what the Bible says. This is because of naturalistic presuppositions, where White thinks of himself as neutral as he looks at the evidence and discovers what has been lost. These men would be lying to you if they said something different on the text. It is exactly the same. Every believer needs to be consistent on the text and on the books. We know what they are in an identical way.
I think there is a general reluctance today among many, and maybe this is because there is an attachment to the world, but there is a reluctance to admit that there has always been a lot of spiritual blindness in the world at large, even in periods where many people identify as Christians. What I mean is, they want to accept on the surface every claim or profession by every person of being a Christian, they want to incorporate everything into that, they don’t want to entertain the idea that there have been wolves in sheep’s clothing or that some people have been spiritually blind. This leads them to be forced into a naturalistic point of view, because they have to follow whatever the majority wants in order to maintain that idea. They can’t admit to their audience that there have been false doctrines and false teachers and actually call them out when/where said teachers were wrong. If the majority wants critical text they have to come up with ways to justify it. And if the common narrative was that people were confused about Hermas or whatever, they have to come up with ways to justify it. That’s where the terminology like “consensus” seems to come from. Because by using such terms, it gives the sense that they value everyone’s opinion. For better or worse, it’s avoiding coming off as dogmatic which would lose audience. Of course there are plenty of teachers and preachers who do take a firm stand, but they have lost some amount of audience by doing so.