South Highway Five Church of Christ

Certainty regarding the Bible as God's word to us today involves the question of "canonicity." We learned at an early age that the Bible is a library of sixty-six books. These books constitute what Bible students call the "canon" of Scripture. This word comes from a Greek word that means "measuring rod," "ruler," "standard," or "norm." It denoted a straight-edge tool for determining the straightness of an object. Over time this word came to be used to identify those books that comprised the rule of faith for Christians. And so "the canon" denotes those inspired books which make up the Bible which is the authoritative rule (standard, norm) for Christian faith and practice.

The making up of the canon of Scripture was not the result of "church councils" in formal meetings deciding which books to include and which to exclude from the Bible. Books that came from prophets and apostles and bore the marks of inspiration were immediately accepted and regarded as authoritative. The apostle Paul said what he wrote was the commandment of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 14:37), and that he expected his letters be read among the churches (Colossians 4:16). These writings were copied and as they circulated among the churches collections of the books of Scripture began to accumulate. The concept of canon of Scripture existed among the Jews and later among Christians long before a word was adopted to express it.

Sometimes it is said that the early Christians didn't have a Bible (a collections of the sixty-six books) until many years after the church began. That is not true. It is certainly the case that the New Testament books were not available right away as they were written from about 49 to 95 A.D. But the church certainly had the collection of the Old Testament books. The thirty-nine books of the Old Testament were accepted and available well before the time of Jesus. He referred to these books when he spoke of matters "written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms" (Luke 24:44). There were some other books known during the time of Jesus which we know today as "The Apocrypha" (e.g., Baruch, First and Second Esdras, Judith, First, Second, Third, and Fourth Maccabees, The Prayer of Manasseh, Susanna, Tobit, and others). Roman Catholic editions of the Bible include The Apocrypha. However, the Jews never accepted these books as inspired Scripture and never at any time included them in the Hebrew cannon. The Old Testament books used by the early church did not include these apocryphal books.

It is true that church councils later convened to discuss disputes regarding the New Testament canon. For example, about A.D. 150, a man named Marcion denied canonicity to some of the New Testament books and thus some found it necessary to convene and declare the exact content of the New Testament. However, these efforts were not to create nor decide the canon but rather to recognize and affirm what had already been accepted as the inspired and authoritative books of the New Testament. (For further study see the chapter: "The Canon of the Scriptures" in Neil Lightfoot's How We Got the Bible, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1988.)

Christ said, "My word shall never pass away." We can be sure our Bibles contain all the word of God to us and contains all we need to become and be a Christian and have the assurance of a home in heaven.