Orthodoxy and Scripture the Christian Canonical Books Essay

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Orthodoxy and the Establishment of the Canon

The fact that the early leading churches, from Antioch to Alexandria to Rome, were separated by many miles and had their own issues and problems that were directly addressed in letters (that would go on to be recognized as part of the Sacred canon of Scripture) surely played a part in the difficulty that arose when the Gnostics and other heretical sects began to interact with the looseness of the organization. It was, however, this challenge that established the need for a Church-recognized official canon of Scripture. Identifying the precise "principle" that went into the "selection of the New Testament writings and their recognition as Divine" is one challenge that even theologians throughout history have been divided upon.[footnoteRef:1] Some early Church Fathers based the divine source of Scriptures upon their Apostolic origin, recognizing their writers as being in the same vein as the Old Testament prophets and suggesting that the writings of the Apostles were produced by the same divine inspiration. [1: George Reid, "Canon of the New Testament," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3 (NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1908).]

Irenaeus, for example, writing in the late 2nd century AD in his treatise "Against Heresies" posited that there was already in the hands of the Church a Tetramorph (four-fold Gospel -- an allusion to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) which had been dictated by the Word in unity with the single Spirit of God -- and that, moreover, anyone who denied the Sacredness of this Gospel was committing a sin against the Spirit of God and His manifest revelation. At the same time, Irenaeus described how various persons diluted or edited the Gospel in order to effect a teaching more to their own liking -- and these he warned against in the same treatise: men such as Marcion of Pontus, who "advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself."[footnoteRef:2] Therefore, by the year (circa) 185 AD when Irenaeus wrote these words, the concept of Sacred Scripture was already manifested within the Church. Still, Justin Martyr made references to the "memoirs of the Apostles, which are called gospels" -- and both Marcion and Basilides of the Gnostic sect penned commentaries/criticisms of these memoirs/gospels -- and each participated in the creation of apocrypha according to the various historians of the time.[footnoteRef:3] [2: Irenaus, "Against Heresies," Gnosis.org. Web. 1 Jun 2016.] [3: George Reid, "Apocrypha," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 1 (NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1908).]

The methodology employed by the individuals and councils who would go on to officially decree and identify the Sacred canon is difficult to tell precisely; however, as Metzger notes, "despite the silence of patristic writers as far as explicit accounts of the canonization process are concerned, there is general unanimity among modern scholars as to what must have been some of the factors that brought about the recognition of the New Testament canon."[footnoteRef:4] Metzger observes that to a large degree, the recognized authorities of the early Church were the most influential in establishing the fixed canon; thus Paul's Epistles were circulated and cherished alongside the spoken and remembered Word of God, Jesus Christ Himself. By the end of the first century, Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch were both quoting the Epistles, thus establishing a chain of orthodoxy within the historical Church; and as Justin Martyr indicated, the writings of the Apostles and the Word of the Lord were shared in churches by the faithful, suggesting that a Sacred Canon had developed organically out of tradition and respect for "the Lord and the apostles" -- a reverent phrase often used in the early Church to show respect for the authority of the writings of the disciples of Our Lord and for the Apostle Paul, whose zeal catapulted him alongside Peter, even if he had not been one of the original disciples of Christ.[footnoteRef:5] It would not be until the 4th century AD, however, that the "limits of the New Testament canon as we know it were set forth for the first time in a Festal Letter" by none other than Athanasius of Alexandria, who would wage a nearly solitary battle against the wave of Arianism that almost swamped the entire Church in the same century.[footnoteRef:6] [4: Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), vi.] [5: Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), xi.] [6: Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), xii.

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Thus, through a combination of internal organic growth and devotion to "the Lord and the apostles" and to the strict adherence (and development of orthodoxy) by early Church Fathers, from Irenaeus to Athanasius, the establishment of Christian orthodoxy in the early Church came into existence -- and the impact of the heresiarchs (from Marcion to the Gnostics to the Arians) also played a significant role in the sense that their deviations from orthodoxy/tradition and inventions brought pressure to bear on the Church and its leaders to meet (at councils such as Nicea and Constantinople) in order to consider and express an official pronouncement of authority upon individual texts and how the Canon of Scripture should be depicted. As Bradley Green states, it was Irenaeus who "appealed to several sources of knowledge as authoritative, but clearly saw them as one larger revelation of God." These sources were the traditions established by the apostles, as passed on to the churches and combined "with the Scripture read and studied in the churches to establish a rule of doctrine" -- the very same doctrine that Irenaeus viewed "as uniting all true believers everywhere."[footnoteRef:7] Therefore, it was not so much a matter of sifting documents and writings as identifying and affirming those which were celebrated and honored collectively by the faithful adherents of the Church (comprised of the widely spread and spreading churches) over time -- decades and, indeed, centuries. It was this faith that was contested by men over the same period, whether Marcion or Arius -- and it was the defense of the faith that ultimately prevailed and cemented the orthodoxy/authority of the Church at the same time -- much in the same manner that a giant tree that weathers a mighty storm and comes out still standing tall at the end of it produces awe and respect for its roots. [7: Bradley Green, Shapers of Christian Orthodoxy (IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2010), 27.]

This was the sense with which Hegesippus, "the first writer known to us to examine the problem of heresy with close attention," spoke of the Church of Jerusalem -- with the utmost respect and admiration: Hegesippus stated, "They call the Church a virgin because she had not yet been corrupted by vain teaching" though he went on to describe the corruption of Thebutis, who sprang from the "seven sects among the people to which he himself belonged."[footnoteRef:8] Tertullian's method of identifying orthodoxy was essentially to identify the apostolicity of the teachings -- that is, the origin of ideas, writings, and doctrines in traditions and deeds handed down by "the Lord and the apostles": "What is sacrosanct," wrote Tertullian, "in the Churches of the Apostles is that which is handed down from them."[footnoteRef:9] And Irenaues notes that every heresy is the wayward child of orthodoxy: for example, "Tatian was originally the pupil of Justin. After the martyrdom of his teacher he broke away from the Church, and formed a scholl with a distinctive character of its own. Before Valentinus there were no Valentinians, nor Marcionites before Marcion."[footnoteRef:10] [8: H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth (OR: Wipf & Stock, 1958), 3.] [9: H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth (), 4.] [10: H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth (OR: Wipf & Stock, 1958), 4.]

As heresies continued to mount throughout the 3rd and 4th centuries and the Church continued to grow, it became a conscientious program of Church Fathers to openly discuss orthodoxy with more vigor and to begin the period of discussion about the Canon. Two Fathers who framed the discussion were Origen and Eusebius, and the Carthaginian Church served as the backdrop for these discussions. As Origen traveled widely and came to know the various traditions of the churches in their respective locales, he was able to divide cherished texts into three categories: books that were universally accepted among the churches, books whose apostolicity was in doubt, and works which were apocryphal (likely invented in order to "fill in" gaps left by universally accepted texts). And as Michael Kruger notes, Origen's list of 27 books of Sacred Scripture "indicates that a concept of a closed canon was prevalent over a century before Athanasius'….....

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