Here's something that has perplexed me:
One of the confessions of the Reformed Church is The Westminster Confession of Faith. The first article is "Of Holy Scripture." Among other things it lists the 66 books of the canon in an effort clearly to define the canon against Roman Catholicism's inclusion of the Apocrypha. From my reading, this essentially does away with F.F. Bruce's "canon within a canon" (homolegomena and antilegomena). In other words, historically the Church distinguished between books that were accepted by all and books that were "spoken against" (like James, 2 Peter, Hebrews, Revelation, etc.) They established their doctrines on the books that were accepted by all and not the books that were spoken against. They used the ones spoken against for support. The Reformed confession seems to equate them all.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Second, the confession also essentially says that God ONLY speaks through Scripture. At least that's how it looks to me. It lists all the ways God used to speak before He spoke in Scripture and then says, "those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased."
So, does God speak outside the Bible and, if so, what does it say about The Westminster Confession?
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3 comments:
Thoughts? Shoot, I've got a whole 20+ page packet on the canon! I'll email it to you and you can post whatever you find helpful - none of it is original to me, just a packet of resources.
And great idea for a blog: instead of pontificating asking for discussion on questions!
+HRC
I've been fascinated by the canon thing ever since a high school discussion with a Roman Catholic friend (who R. also knows - now a well-connected RC priest who also has a law degree). One point he made was that Protestants, seeing the Church as founded on the Bible, easily forget that we only have the Bible because of the [early] Church.
e.g. - did Paul write letters with the thought that his personal correspondence would one day be set on the same pedestal as the Torah, perhaps the longest and most meticulously revered canon in human history, not to mention the pillar of his own faith? Interesting.
Anyway, a thought on your post: Books "spoken against" by whom? A general consensus, obviously, I guess, but it's interesting to think of the church leaders of the time doing the selecting and eventually deciding which yea and nay votes got to matter and which didn't. It's kind of fun to picture a present-day pastors' convention, even from a single denomination, grappling with that process. This is an old question, of course, but then, I'm relatively undereducated, and easily amused. :)
Thanks to pr. h. r. for emailing me a great little packet on the canon. It’s more than I’m able to describe here (lack of energy to complete the task really). The short of it is this:
Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were questioned by some. Who? Don’t know with certainty. A few church fathers only mention that “some” questioned/doubted the apostolic authorship/authority of these books. Lutherans receive the distinction/tradition while confessing that these books don’t contain any false doctrine or doctrine that goes beyond the unanimously received books of the early church.
So, what does the distinction mean? Here’s the best I can tell: “The distinction under discussion seems to have little of a major theological import.” (Gary Baumler, “The Canon – What Is The Import of The Distinction Between The Canonical and Deuterocanonical (Antilegomena) Books?”)
Having said that, maintaining the tradition is important. The Lutheran tradition doesn’t make the extent of the Canon an article of faith (like Rome which includes the Apocrypha and the Reformed which definitively defines the Canon and obliterates the distinction/tradition between homolegomena and antilegomena).
Rome anathematizes anyone who doesn’t accept homolegomena, antilegomena, and apocrypha as canonical and the Reformed make the 66 books an article of faith. Lutherans, in line with the historic tradition, leave the canon question open.
And I agree, the thought of a bunch of pastors sitting down trying to decide “in” or “out” is amusing – our church body can scarcely agree to use the same hymnal (imagine if we were arguing over the books of the Bible)!
But I’m still wondering about the Westminster’s confession on God not speaking outside Scripture. What are we to make of that?
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