I just found a Lutheran discussion of canon that raises an interesting question for this class. The source is http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/thinking-about-the-canon-a-lutheran-view
The Lutheran approach to Scripture begins with faith in Jesus and confession of belonging to the apostolic church. This implies two basic premises:
1. It is the apostolic witness to Jesus that tells us who he is as opposed to secret oral traditions of gnostic communities (thus we accept the four canonical Gospels, and not spurious gnostic texts).
2. “Scripture” is whatever Jesus pointed to as authoritative (which according to the Gospel records is apostolic teaching and the Old Testament).
Now the fact is you have to begin somewhere. So this is where Lutheranism begins, and if you look at the records we have, this is where many in the early Church began as well. The problem is that these two rules don’t immediately define a list of books, but push us to revisit which books are in fact part of this confession. After all, what did Jesus mean by “Scripture?” Which NT books are actually apostolic? Thus the canon is for us primarily a historical question rather than a doctrinal question. But when you look at the early history of the Church, while some NT books are universally attested as apostolic testimony to the Gospel, some, such as Revelation, James, and Philemon, were heavily disputed. There is little evidence that Palestinian Jews in Jesus’ day would have understood the Old Testament Apocrypha to be included when Jesus referred to “Scripture,” and acceptance of these books as divinely inspired by later Christians was hardly universal, even in the century before the Reformation. An authoritative, absolutely reliable, Scripture requires an authoritative, absolutely reliable table of contents, but there is no easy way around the historical question. Rome answers by asserting that the Holy Spirit guided the Council of Trent to vote correctly on the truth, and Protestants tend to look for earlier, divinely guided events
leading to canonization.
The Lutheran approach to this problem is surprising in that we don’t seek to establish such a table of contents. We hold that the lack of definitive historical evidence cannot simply be eliminated by properly consecrated people getting together and taking a Spirit-guided vote, and so there ultimately isn’t anything we can do about it. In other words, no amount of voting, liturgical development, or theological reflection can answer for us whether Hebrews was written by an apostle or at least a close associate. The evidence just isn’t there.
So what’s our answer? Well, go back to that word, “canon.” “Canon” means “rule.” So the point of a canon isn’t to just have some final Table of Contents on which to draw up a dogma and so that we can excommunicate everyone who refuses to stop asking the historical questions, it’s to have a rule of faith for settling doctrinal disputes and the like. Thus the Lutheran approach to the canon is to have a rule of interpretation essentially defined by the certainty to which we can establish a book’s origin:
1. A dogma must be established by the universally attested books (homolegomena).
2. Dogma may be corroborated by the contested books (antilegomena), and they may be read for historical background, advice, and other edifying purposes, but no dogma can be established from the antilegomena alone, nor can the antilegomena be pitted against the homolegomena.
An example of the application of this is that Lutherans will never make some particular interpretation of Revelation a church-defining issue. Yes, we preach from it, write commentaries in it, and read it in our lectionaries, but because the early church witness to the origin of this book is divided, our confessional principles on eschatology are ultimately drawn from the Gospels and Epistles. This principle also leaves the door open to textual criticism, which is why we have no trouble with including the longer ending of Mark in our Bibles or the story of the adulterous woman. Textual criticism is always a problem for people who insist on an inerrant canon of divinely inspired texts. Does your inspired canon of inspired texts include the longer ending of Mark or not?
The conservative principle fuels the Lutheran belief that the entirety of the Gospel is repeated again and again throughout Scripture. While some readers, both Protestant and Catholic, may feel that the conservative principle eliminates their ability to proof-text their favorite doctrines, I challenge you to question yourself along the following lines:
Do I really believe that an essential truth of the Christian faith was only ever referred to by one person in the entirety of the Biblical witness? Do I really believe that a whole multitude of biblical writers were so ineffective and communicating the essential truths of the faith, despite many of them overtly setting out to do this, that only only one writer in one book ever managed to nail it on this issue?
Finally, I would ask the following rhetorical questions: Is not the conservative principle truly the most “catholic” in that it listens to the entirety of the early Church when dealing with the canon rather than trying to vote the first three centuries out of existence, forbids nothing traditionally used by Christians in teaching and worship, and seeks to avoid unnecessarily dividing the Church? Is it not the most “protestant” in that it upholds Scripture as the source and norm of faith and scrupulously avoids establishing binding dogmas upon things that may in fact not be Scripture at all? In my opinion, it is those things and more. I think it is the most manifestly reasonable and unobjectionable approach to Scripture, yet few churches in the world seem to think so.
Thinking About The Canon: A Lutheran View | internetmonk.com
This second post in our discussion of canonization is from a frequent Internet Monk guest, Lutheran blogger Josh Strodtbeck. Josh will tell us about the Lutheran concept of the Canon, which is quite different from what many may assume.
www.internetmonk.com
- "Do I really believe that an essential truth of the Christian faith was only ever referred to by one person in the entirety of the Biblical witness? Do I really believe that a whole multitude of biblical writers were so ineffective and communicating the essential truths of the faith, despite many of them overtly setting out to do this, that only only one writer in one book ever managed to nail it on this issue?" I do not know what to think about the above paragraph. Specially when the context before it talks about the book of Revelation. It seems to me that the original message giver (from God's reality) was Jesus Christ Himself, so is one of the most authoritative books in the Bible in my perspective. It clearly depicts one appointed Judge: Jesus Christ, to do what He must: grant eternal life to those that had faith in Him and accepted Him as Lord and Savior. Lake of fire to those whose names were not in the book of life. Simple, to the point, directly from God. Are we going to ask God to help us be hot, or will we be lukewarm, and spit into the tribulation? What makes christianity different is prophecy: that has come to pass, that is happening, and that will happen. Revelation is the ultimate revelation so to speak. God out of love let us know what to expect so we do not fail the test. Blessings.