Can the New Testament Canon be Defended? My Interview with Derek Thomas
Reformation 21, the website of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, just posted my interview with Derek Thomas on my new book, Canon Revisited. I appreciate Derek’s invitation to do this interview–it was an interesting discussion on a number of important topics related to canon.
Here is an excerpt:
…[DT] What are the most crucial issues relating to a conservative/reformed defense of the canon today?
[MK] I think one of the critical weaknesses in modern canonical studies is that Christians often have no theology of canon. We have a lot of historical facts–anyone who has read the fine works of Metzger and Bruce will have plenty of patristic
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Were the Earliest Christians Only Concerned About Oral Tradition?
I’ve spent the last week or so diving deeply (again) into the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. The Apostolic Fathers are an informal collection of early Christian writings, roughly 95-150 AD, which include books like the Didache, 1 & 2 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and letters from Polycarp and Ignatius.
In recent years, scholars have expressed increased skepticism about whether these writings can inform our understanding of the development of the canon. What appear to be citations of and allusions to New Testament books are not that at all, we are told, but instead are best explained by these authors drawing upon oral tradition. This preference … Continue reading...
10 Misconceptions About the NT Canon: #3: “The NT Authors Did Not Think They Were Writing Scripture”
Note: This is the third installment of a new blog series announced here.
Sometimes, even in the academic world, things get said so many times that people assume they are true. And when that happens, no one bothers to look at the historical evidence in a fresh way. This has certainly been the case when it comes to this third misconception about the New Testament canon. It is routine these days to assert that the New Testament authors certainly did not think they were writing Scripture, nor had any awareness of their own authority. Mark Allan Powell, in his recent New Testament introduction, affirms this view plainly, “The … Continue reading...
10 Misconceptions about the NT Canon: #2: “Nothing in Early Christianity Dictated That There Would be a Canon”
Note: This is the second installment of a new blog series announced here.
Contemporary challenges to the New Testament canon have taken a number of different forms over the years. For generations, scholars have mainly focused upon the problem of the boundaries of the New Testament. The perennial question has usually been “How do we know we have the right books?” But, in recent years, a new challenge has begun to take center stage (though it is really not new at all). While the validity of the canon’s boundaries is still an area of concern, the attention has shifted to the validity of the canon’s very existence. The … Continue reading...
Canon Revisited Is Now Available on Kindle
I just discovered today that my forthcoming book, Canon Revisited, is now available on Kindle. Perhaps this has been true for a while, but I hadn’t noticed. The hard copy is due out by April 30th.… Continue reading...