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 The Ganon of the Nev; Testament 
 
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The Canon 
 
 OF TH.'^ S 
 
 New Testament 
 
 ' BY THc 
 
 Rev. BENJ. B. WARFIELD, D.D., LL. D. 
 
 1892 
 

* POT ^ 1922 * 
 
 THE CANON 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW TESTAMENT: 
 
 HOW AND WHEN FORMED. 
 
 v/ BY THE 
 
 REV. BENJ. B. WARFIELD, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
 
 1 1 22 Chestnut Street; 
 
 New York : 8 & id Bible House. 
 
 [Copyright, 1892, by The American Sunday-School Union.] 
 
The Formation of the Canon of the 
 New Testaient 
 
 In order to obtain a correct understanding of what 
 is called the formation of the Canon of the New Tes- 
 tament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very firmly 
 in our minds one fact which is obvious enough when 
 attention is once called to it. That is, that the Chris- 
 tian church did not require to form for itself the idea 
 of a *' canon," — or, as we should more commonly 
 call it, of a ** Bible," — that is, of a collection of 
 books given of God to be the authoritative rule of 
 faith and practice. It inherited this idea from the 
 Jewish church, along with the thing itself, the Jewish 
 Scriptures, or the " Canon of the Old Testament." 
 The church did not grow up by natural law : it was 
 founded. And the authoritative teachers sent forth 
 by Christ to found his church, carried with them, 
 as their most precious possession, a body of divine 
 Scriptures, which they imposed on the church that 
 they founded as its code of law. No reader of the 
 
 (3) 
 
4 FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 
 
 New Testament can need proof of this ; on every 
 page of that book is spread the evidence that from 
 the very beginning the Old Testament was as cor- 
 dially recognized as law by the Christian as by the Jew. 
 The Christian church thus was never without a '' Bi- 
 ble" or a " canon." 
 
 But the Old Testament books were not the only 
 ones which the apostles (by Christ's own appointment 
 the authoritative founders of the church) imposed 
 upon the infant churches, as their authoritative rule 
 of faith and practice. No more authority dwelt in 
 the prophets of the old covenant than in themselves, 
 the apostles, who had been '*made sufficient as min- 
 isters of a new covenant;" for (as one of themselves 
 argued) *' if that which passeth away was with glory, 
 much more that v/hich remaineth is in glory." Ac- 
 cordingly not only was the gospel they delivered, in 
 their own estimation, itself a divine revelation, but it 
 was also preached " in the Holy Ghost " (i Pet. i : 
 12) ; not merely the matter of it, but the very words 
 in which it was clothed were " of the Holy Spirit " 
 (i Cor. 2: 13). Their own commands were, there- 
 fore, of divine authority (i Thess. 4: 2), and their 
 writings were the depository of these commands (2 
 Thess. 2:15). *' If any man obeyeth not our word 
 by this epistle," says Paul to one church (2 Thess. 3 : 
 14), " note that man, that ye have no company with 
 him." To another he makes it the test of a Spirit- 
 led man to recognize that what he was writing to 
 them was ** the commandments of the Lord" (i 
 Cor. 14: 37). Inevitably, such writings, making so 
 
FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 5 
 
 awful a claim on their acceptance, were received by 
 tlie infant churches as of a quality equal to that of 
 the old ''Bible;" placed alongside of its older books 
 as an additional part of the one law of God ; and 
 read as such in their meetings for worship — a prac- 
 tice which moreover was required by the apostles 
 (i Thess. 5 : 27; Col. 4 : i6; Rev. i : 2). In the 
 apprehension, therefore, of the earliest churches, the 
 "Scriptures" were not a closed but an increasing 
 *' canon." Such they had been from the beginning, 
 as they gradually grew in number from Moses to Mal- 
 achi ; and such they were to continue as long as there 
 should remain among the churches '' men of God 
 who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 
 
 We say that this immediate placing of the new ^ 
 
 books — given the church under the seal of apostolic 
 authority — among the Scriptures already established 
 as such, was inevitable. It is also historically evinced 
 from the very beginning. Thus the apostle Peter, 
 writing in a. d. 68, speaks of Paul's numerous letters 
 not in contrast with the Scriptures, but as among the 
 Scriptures and in contrast with ** the olher Scriptures " 
 (2 Pet. 3 : 16) — that is, of course, those of the Old 
 Testament. In like manner the apostle Paul com- 
 bines, as if it were the most natural thing in the 
 world, the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of 
 Luke under the common head of ''Scripture" (i 
 Tim. 5 : 18): " For the Scripture saith. Thou shalt 
 not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn 
 [Deut. 25 : 4;] and, The laborer is worthy of his 
 hire ' " (Luke 10 : 7). The line of such quotations is 
 
6 FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 
 
 never broken in Christian literature. Polycarp (c.12) 
 in A. D. 115 unites the Psalms and Ephesians in ex- 
 actly similar manner: ^'In the sacred books, . 
 as it is said in these Scriptures, ' Be ye angry and sin 
 not,' and 'Let not the sun go down upon your 
 wrath.' " So, a few years later, the so-called second 
 letter of Clement, after quoting Isaiah, adds (2 : 4) : 
 *' And another Scripture, however, says, ' I came not 
 to call the righteous, but sinners'" — quoting from 
 Matthew, a book which Barnabas {circa 97-106 A. 
 D.) had already adduced as Scripture. After this 
 such quotations are common. 
 
 What needs emphasis at present about these facts is 
 that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually- 
 heightening estimate of the New Testament books, 
 originally received on a lower level and just begin- 
 ning to be tentatively accounted Scripture ; they are 
 conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the 
 New Testament books from the* very beginning as. 
 Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the 
 other Scriptures already in hand. The early Chris- 
 tians did not, then, first form a rival ''canon" of 
 "new books" which came only gradually to be ac- 
 counted as of equal divinity and authority with the 
 "old books"; they received new book after new 
 book from the apostolical circle, as equally " Scrip- 
 ture " with the old books, and added them one by 
 one to the collection of old books as additional Scrip- 
 tures, until at length the new books thus added were 
 numerous enough to be looked upon as another .$-^^//^« 
 of the Scriptures. 
 
FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. f 
 
 The earliest name given to this new section of 
 Scripture was framed on the model of the name by 
 which what we know as the Old Testament was then 
 known. Just as it was called "The Law and the 
 Prophets and the Psalms " (or '* the Hagiographa "), 
 or more briefly "The Law and the Prophets," or 
 even more briefly still " The Law ; " so the enlarged 
 Bible was called " The Law and the Prophets, with 
 the Gospels and the Apostles " (so Clement of Alex- 
 andria, Strom, vi. ii : 88; TertuUian, De Frees, 
 Hcer. 36), or most briefly " The Law and the Gos- 
 pel " (so Claudius Apolinaris, Irenseus); while the new 
 books apart were called ' ' The Gospel and the Apos- 
 tles," or most briefly of all "The Gospel." This 
 earliest name for the new Bible, with all that it in- 
 volves as to its relation to the old and briefer Bible, 
 is traceable as far back as Ignatius (a. d. 115), who 
 makes use of it repeatedly {e. g., ad Philad. 5 ; 
 ad Sinyrn. 7). In one passage he gives us a hint of 
 the controversies which the enlarged Bible of the 
 Christians aroused among the Judaizers {ad Philad. 
 6). "When I heard some saying," he writes, 
 " '• Unless I find it in the Old {_Books\ I will not be- 
 lieve the Gospel,' on my saying, 'It is written,' they 
 answered, 'That is the question.' To me, however, 
 Jesus Christ is the Old [Books] ; his cross and death 
 and resurrection, and the faith which is by him, the 
 undefiled Old [Books] — by which I wish, by your 
 prayers, to be justified. The priests indeed are good, 
 but the High Priest better," etc. Here Ignatius ap- 
 peals to the " Gospel " as Scripture, and the Judaizers 
 
8 FORMATION OF N. T. CANON 
 
 object, receiving from him the answer in effect which 
 Augustine afterward formulated in the well-known 
 saying that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old 
 and the Old Testament Is first made clear in the 
 New. What we need now to observe, however, is 
 that to Ignatius the New Testament was not a dif- 
 erent book from the Old Testament, but part of the 
 one body of Scripture with it ; an accretion, so to 
 speak, which had grown upon it. 
 
 This is the testimony of all thp early witnesses — 
 even those which speak for the distinctively Jewish- 
 Christian church. For example, that curious Jewish- 
 Christian writing The Testaments of the XII. Patri- 
 archs (Benj. ii) tells us, under the cover of an ex 
 post facto prophecy, that the ^* work and word " of 
 Paul, i. e., confessedly the book of Acts and Paul's 
 epistles, ** shall be written in the Holy Books," /. <?., 
 as is understood by all, made a part of the existent 
 Bible. So even in the Talmud, in a scene intended 
 to ridicule a *' bishop " of the first century, he is rep- 
 resented as finding Galatians by " sinking himself 
 deeper " into the same ** Book " which contained the 
 Law of Moses {Babl. Shabbath, ii6 a and b). The 
 details cannot be entered into here. Let it suffice to 
 say that, from the evidence of the fragments which 
 alone have been preserved to us of the Christian 
 writings of that very early time, it appears that from 
 the beginning of the second century (and that is from 
 the end of the apostolic age) a collection (Ignatius, 
 2 Clement) of *'New Books" (Ignatius), called the 
 "Gospel and Apostles " (Ignatius, Marcion), was 
 
FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 9 
 
 already a part of the '^ Oracles " of God (Polycarp, 
 Papias, 2 Clement), or *' Scriptures " (i Tim., 2 
 Pet., Barn., Polycarp, 2 Clement), or the *' Holy 
 Books" or ''Bible" (Testt. XII. Patt.). 
 
 The number of books included in this added body 
 of New Books, at the opening of the second century, 
 cannot be satisfactorily determined by the evidence 
 of these fragments alone. The section of it called 
 the ''Gospel" included Gospels written by " the 
 apostles and their companions" (Justin), which be- 
 yond legitimate question were our four Gospels 
 now received. The section called "the Apostles" 
 contained the book of Acts (The Testt. XII. Patt.) 
 and epistles of Paul, John, Peter and James. The 
 evidence from various quarters is indeed enough to 
 show that the collection in general use contained all 
 the books which we at present receive, with the pos- 
 sible exceptions of Jude, 2 and 3 John and Philemon. 
 And it is more natural to suppose that failure of very 
 early evidence for these brief booklets is due to their 
 insignificant size rather than to their non-acceptance. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind, however, that the extent 
 of the collection may have — and indeed is historic- 
 ally shown actually to have — varied in different local- 
 ities. The Bible was circulated only in hand-copies, 
 slowly and painfully made ; and an incomplete copy, 
 obtained say at Ephesus in a. d. 68, would be likely 
 to remain for many years the Bible of the church to 
 which it was conveyed ; and might indeed become 
 the parent of other copies, incomplete like itself, and 
 thus the means of providing a whole district with in- 
 
10 FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 
 
 complete Bibles. Thus, when we inquire after the 
 history of the New Testament Canon we need to dis- 
 tinguish such questions as these : (i) When was the 
 New Testament Canon completed? (2) When did 
 anyone church acquire a completed canon? (3) 
 When did the completed canon — the complete Bible 
 — obtain universal circulation and acceptance ? (4) 
 On what ground and evidence did the churches with 
 incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books when 
 they were made known to them ? 
 
 The Canon of the New Testament was completed 
 when the last authoritative book was given to any 
 church by the apostles, and that was when John 
 wrote the Apocalypse, about a. d. 98. Whether the 
 church of Ephesus, however, had a completed Canon 
 when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would de- 
 pend on whether there was any Epistle, say that of 
 Jude, which had not yet reached it with authenti- 
 cating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for 
 historical investigation here. Certainly the whole 
 Canon was not universally received by the churches 
 till somewhat later. The Latin church of the second 
 and third centuries did not quite know what to do 
 with the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Syrian 
 churches for some centuries may have lacked the 
 lesser of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But 
 from the time of Irenseus down, the church at large 
 had the whole Canon as we now possess it. And 
 though a section of the church may hot yet have been 
 satisfied of the apostolicity of a certain book or of 
 certain books j and though afterwards doubts may 
 
FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 11 
 
 have arisen in sections of the church as to the apos- 
 tolicity of certain books (as e. g. of Revelation): yet 
 in no case was it more than a respectable minority of 
 the church which was slow in receiving, or which 
 came afterward to doubt, the credentials of any of 
 the books that then as now constituted the Canon of 
 the New Testament accepted by the church at large. 
 And in every case the principle on which a book was 
 accepted, or doubts against it laid aside, was the his- 
 torical tradition of apostolicity. 
 
 Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was 
 not exactly apostolic authoi^ship which in the estima- 
 tion of the earliest churches, constituted a book a 
 portion of the "canon." Apostolic authorship was, 
 indeed, early confounded with canonicity. It was 
 doubt as the apostolic authorship of Hebrews, in the 
 West, and of James and Jude, apparently, which un- 
 derlay the slowness of the inclusion of these books in 
 the "canon" of certain churches. But from the be- 
 ginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity 
 was not apostolic authorship, but wipositton by the 
 apostles as " /aw.^' Hence TertuUian's name for the 
 *' canon " is " instrumentimi " ; and bespeaks of the 
 Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and 
 New Testament. That the apostles so imposed the 
 Old Testament on the churches which they founded 
 — as their " Instrument," or " Law," or "Canon " — 
 can be denied by none. And in imposing new books 
 on the same churches, by the same apostolical author- 
 ity, they did not confine themselves to books of their 
 own composition. It is the Gospel according to 
 
12 FORMATION OF N. T. CANON. 
 
 Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul 
 parallels in i Tim. 5 : i8 with Deuteronomy as 
 / equally *' Scripture " with it, in the first extant quo- 
 tation of a New Testament book as Scripture. The 
 Gospels which constituted the first division of the 
 New Books, — of ''The Gospel and the Apostles," — 
 Justin tells us, were " written by the apostles and 
 their companions." The authority of the apostles, as 
 by divine appointment founders of the church, was 
 embodied in whatever books they imposed on the 
 church as law, not merely in those they themselves 
 had written. 
 
 The early churches, in short, received, as we re- 
 ceive, into their New Testament all the books histor- 
 ically evinced to them as given by the apostles to the 
 churches as their code of law ; and we must not mis- 
 take the historical evidences of the slow circulation 
 and authentication of these books over the widely- 
 extended church, for evidence of slowness of ''can- 
 onization " of books by the authority or the taste of 
 the church itself. 
 
 Princeton, N. J. 
 
Date Due 
 
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