For Christians struggling to understand the development of the New Testament canon, one of the most confusing (and perhaps concerning) facts is that early Christian writers often cited from and used non-canonical writings.   In other words, early Christians did not just use books from our current New Testament, but also read books like the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Epistle of Barnabas.

Usually Christians discover this fact as they read a book or article that is highly critical of the New Testament canon, and this fact is used as a reason to think that our New Testament writings are nothing special.  The literary preferences of the earliest Christians were wide open, we are told.  Or, as one critic put it, early Christians read a “boundless, living mass of heterogenous” texts.[1]     

Because this fact is used to criticize the integrity of the New Testament canon, then all Christians should be keen to learn it.   While the fact itself is true—early Christians did read and use many writings not in the canon—the conclusions often drawn from this fact are often not.

When scholars mention the Christian use of non-canonical writings, two facts are often left out:

1.       The manner of citation.  It is important to note that while Christians often cited and used non-canonical literature, they only rarely cited them as Scripture.  For the most part, Christians were simply using these books as helpful, illuminating, or edifying writings.  This is not all that different than practices in our modern day.  A preacher may quote from CS Lewis in a sermon, but that does not mean he puts Lewis’s authority on par with Scripture itself.

A good example of this phenomenon is the use of the Gospel of Peter by the church at Rhossus at the end of the second century.  Scholars often appeal to this story as evidence that early Christians had no established gospel canon.  However, there is no evidence that the church there used the book as Scripture. 

When we ask the question about which books early Christians cited most often as Scripture, then the answer is overwhelmingly in favor of the books that eventually made it into the New Testament canon.

2.       Frequency of citation.  Another often overlooked factor is the relative degree of frequency between citations of New Testament books and citations of non-canonical books.   For example, scholars often appeal to Clement of Alexandria as the standard example of an early Christian that used non-canonical literature equally with canonical literature.   But, when it comes to frequency of citation, this is far from true. 

J.A. Brooks, for instance, has observed that Clement cites the canonical books “about sixteen times more often than apocryphal and patristic writings.”[2]  When it comes to gospels, the evidence is even better.  Clement cites apocryphal gospels only 16 times, whereas, he cites just the gospel of Matthew 757 times.[3]

In sum, Christians need to memorize this simple fact about the New Testament canon: early Christians used many other books besides those that made it into our Bibles.  But, this should not surprise us.  For, indeed, we still do the very same thing today even though we have a New Testament that has been settled for over 1600 years.

This is certainly one of the most common objections to Christians who confront homosexuality.  But, I think there are a number of problems with it.  Let me mention just a few:

1.  This objection can be a distraction from the real issue.  When someone is confronted with sin, one of the most common defenses is to “accuse the accuser.” Maybe they weren’t compassionate enough.  Maybe they weren’t gentle enough.  Maybe the confrontation wasn’t executed precisely right.

While these reverse accusations might even be true, they are often made in order to deflect attention from the main issue, namely the sin in a person’s life.  There is no better way to avoid repentance than to say to one’s accuser, “Oh, yeah? Well you sin too.” The best defense is a good offense.

It would be like complaining to the police officer about getting a speeding ticket simply because he didn’t give everyone in your lane a speeding ticket.

Thus, when Christians have the courage to confront a sin like homosexuality in our culture (and yes, it does take courage), I am not sure the main focus needs to be on how poorly they confront other sins.

2.  This objection is not entirely accurate.  I think it is substantially misleading to suggest that Christians are not busy confronting sins like divorce, adultery, and fornication.  Sure, there are plenty of churches out there that are unwilling to address these issues (just like there are many churches that don’t even preach the gospel).  But, for the most part, evangelical churches are quite willing to speak out on these matters. Youth groups encourage sexual chastity, church’s offer sexual addiction seminars, and ministries offer help to save troubled marriages that are headed for divorce.

These sorts of things are missed because they are not as public.  The reason that Christians are speaking out against homosexuality publicly is because they are being forced to do so by the aggressive homosexual agenda in this country.  Christians are simply responding to the issue incessantly raised by the media and by popular culture. If the media kept pounding away on the issue of adultery, I am confident Christians would respond to that issue as well.

3. This objection is theologically misinformed.  Piper’s concern that Christians prosecute all sins equally is based on the fact that he sees all sins as the same.  He states, “What we fail to recognize is that every sin from the mildest gossip to the wildest orgy is a mark of the fall, proof of sins twisting God’s good creation.”  Yes, every sin is a mark of the fall.  And any sin is worthy of God’s eternal condemnation.  But, and this is key, that does not mean every sin is equally heinous.

Missing in Piper’s analysis is a careful discussion about how some sins are more grievous than others and therefore warrant a more vigorous Christian response. I appreciate Robert Gagnon’s fine response to this problem:

Some sins, by virtue of being more foundational violations of God’s ethical standards, are more severe than others. Saying this does not excuse any sin nor justify hateful reactions to those who commit greater sins. It simply underscores the absurdity of claiming that all sin is equal in all respects before God. Cutting in line is not the moral equivalent of Hitler’s killing of 6 million Jews, and anyone who argues that it is has lost his or her moral compass. Having sex with one’s mother is worse than gluttony or slight gossip. Is this not obvious?

Homosexual practice is a direct violation of what Jesus understood to be the foundation for all intra-human sexual ethics—“male and female he [God] created them” (Genesis 1:27).

If the sin of homosexuality hits at the core of what it means to be human, and thus hits at the core of our being made in the image of God, and is the very issue being raised perpetually in our culture, then Christians ought not to be chided for challenging it more than other sins.

Part of the reason that urban ministry is regarded as more relevant is because of the belief that it is filled with minority poor that have been neglected by the mainstream church.  While this is no doubt still true in some places, it is a vast oversimplification. In my original article I wrote:

Suburbia is not as rich and racially monolithic as you think.  People’s impression of the suburbs is that everyone is wealthy and white.  Although there is a lot of truth in that impression, it is not as accurate as you might think.  Samuel Atchison has written a helpful article that highlights the recent trend in the past few years where young professionals are moving into the city centers, while the poor are fleeing to the suburbs!  In fact, I see this in my own city.  One of the most racially diverse areas I see regularly is the suburban parks where I take my kids to play.  There, all playing together, are folks who are Asians, Indians, African Americans, Hispanics, and more.

My own experience with the suburbs seems to be more widespread than I even realized.  In a recent article, Anthony Bradley points out that recent studies have shown that urban areas are no longer than location for poor minorities that they once were.  He highlights the opportunities this creates:

This current shift also provides wonderful new opportunities for suburban churches and other cultural institutions to remain in the suburbs and adjust their vision and activities to receive this new cohort of suburban poor. Words like “urban” and “inner-city” can no longer be associated with racial minorities and the underclass. In the coming years, as is the case today in cities like New York, “urban” and “inner-city” will be the home of cultural elites who are rearranging the market and pricing out the poor. In the near future, the inner city will be the place to find trendy coffee shops, Whole Foods, and artist enclaves. The suburbs may not be where all the “cool” innovators and culture makers will live to raise their children but it is the place where poverty is exploding.

In the end, this whole issue raises an important lesson for evangelicals. We have an unfortunate tendency to chase what is cool in our culture and make it the centerpiece of our ministry (often denigrating other ministries that don’t share our vision).   Meanwhile, we don’t realize that we are really about 10 years behind the cultural trends anyway.  We are perennial late-comers to what our world thinks is hip.

It is time to abandon the evangelical quest to be “relevant”.  We need to be more cautious about letting cultural trends determine and dictate our ministry choices (and attitudes).  God’s word is sufficient to fill that role.

Rob Bell’s recent book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God (HarperOne, 2013), brings up many memories of Bultmann.  While Bell is not trying to take away the supernatural elements of the faith, he is trying to purge it of elements that he thinks will make God out of date. Unfortunately, these happen to be core doctrines of Christianity–sin, God’s wrath, the cross, atonement.

When the dust settles, Bell has given us a God that is no longer distinctively Christian.  We are left with just vague spiritualism. Whereas Bultmann demythologized Christianity, Bell has detheologized Christianity.

Reformation 21 has just posted my full review of Bell’s book (see here).  Here are my closing paragraphs:

In the end, my overall concern about this volume is a simple one: it is not Christian. Bell’s makeover of Christianity has changed it into something entirely different. It is not Christianity at all, it is modern liberalism. It is the same liberalism that Machen fought in the 1920′s and the same liberalism prevalent in far too many churches today. It is the liberalism that teaches that God exists and that Jesus is the source of our happiness and our fulfillment, but all of this comes apart from any real mention of sin, judgment, and the cross. It is the liberalism that says we can know nothing for sure, except of course, that those “fundamentalists” are wrong. It is the liberalism that appeals to the Bible from time to time, but then simply ignores large portions of it.

Bell’s book, therefore, is really just spiritualism with a Christian veneer. It’s a book that would fit quite well on Oprah’s list of favorite books. What is Rob Bell talking about when he is talking about God? Not the God of Christianity.

This series is designed to introduce lay Christians to the basic facts of how the New Testament canon developed.  One of the key data points in any discussion of canon is something called the Muratorian fragment (also known as the Muratorian canon).  This fragment, named after its discoverer Ludovico Antonio Muratori, contains our earliest list of the books in the New Testament.  While the fragment itself dates from the 7th or 8th century, the list it contains was originally written in Greek and dates back to the end of the second century (c.180).

Some have argued that the list should be dated to the fourth century (e.g., Sundberg and Hahneman), but the consensus of scholars today still places the list in the second century. Joseph Verheyden sums up the modern debate, “None of the arguments put forward by Sundberg and Hahneman in favour of a fourth-century, eastern origin of the Fragment are convincing.”[1]

What is noteworthy for our purposes here is that the Muratorian fragment affirms 22 of the 27 books of the New Testament.  These include the four Gospels, Acts, all 13 epistles of Paul, Jude, 1 John, 2 John (and possibly 3rd John), and Revelation.  This means that at a remarkably early point (end of the second century), the central core of the New Testament canon was already established and in place.

Of course, it should be acknowledged that the Muratorian canon also seems to affirm the Apocalypse of Peter.  However, the author of the fragment immediately expresses that some have hesitations about this book.  Those hesitations eventually won out, and the Apocalypse of  Peter was never widely affirmed by the early church, and never earned a final spot in the canon.

The fact that there was some disagreement during this time period over a few of the “peripheral” books should not surprise us.  It took some time for the issue of the canon to be settled.  This occasional disagreement, however, should not keep us from observing the larger and broader unity that early Christians shared regarding the “core” New Testament books.

If there was a core canon from an early time period, then there are two significant implications we can draw from this.  First, this means that most of the debates and disagreements about canonical books in early Christianity only concerned a handful of books.  Books like 3 John, James, 2 Peter and so on.  Early Christianity was not a wide open literary free for all, where there was no agreement on much of anything.  Instead there was an agreed-upon core that no one really disputed. 

Second, if there was a core collection of New Testament books, then the theological trajectory of early Christianity had already been determined prior to the debates about the peripheral books being resolved.  So, regardless of the outcome of discussion over books like 2 Peter or James, Christianity’s core doctrines of the person of Christ, the work of Christ, the means of salvation, etc., were already in place and already established.  The acceptance or rejection of books like 2 Peter would not change that fact.

Thus, the Muratorian fragment stands as a reminder of two important facts.  First, Christians did disagree over books from time to time. That was an inevitability, particularly in the early stages.  But this list also reminds us of a second (and more fundamental) fact, namely that there was widespread agreement over the core from a very early time.