Why I believe the Canonicity of Scripture

I wasn't sure whether canonicity was a word but it seemed to do make sense!

In his Replies on Canon, Richard responds to some of my earlier thoughts on chapter 3 and addresses most of them. He is quite right to point out the footnote reference to Donal Guthrie - I had seen it but I think I was looking for a bit more in the main text.

In his last paragraph he asks me why I am convinced that the books we have today are the complete canon - which is a very fair question!

Its not actually something I had thought about much until a few years ago. From before I can remember I was living in an environment where my parents, family and many of the people around me had no doubt that the Bible we read was the complete revealed word of God and so it was an assumption I was brought up with and never really questioned.

It was only a few years ago when in conversation with others who were challenging this that I started looking into it and reading books / articles on the subject. I actually think that the points which Richard towards the end of his reply are key when he refers to the way in which the early church came to a position on the canon. He says that:

'But while the "contents page" of the Bible wasn't written until then, I think the books themselves were widely available which is how we have such a good idea of what the originals say and where and how errors were introduced. Is it also possible that the early church knew which books were Scripture but didn't bother writing the list down?'

I think that the people best placed to determine what was canonical were the early church leaders and congregations and many of these decisions would have been taken based on what became 'accepted' in those first couple of centuries. This is referred to in Grudem's book but it doesn't get the weight that I would have expected.

(My comments above refer to the New Testament books, I think his comments on the Old Testament are very useful).

But going back to my earlier 'easy acceptance' of canonicity, while it wasn't something I had particularly questioned I am also aware that I have been reading this book for nearly 40 years. During that time I have been struck by its consistency and power as in no other book and have heard God speak through it. So, in addition to the position of the early church, my own experience over many years has left me confident that what we have in our current Bible is the complete revealed word of God.