2 Cents

Another important issue in the make-up of our present day Bibles is why certain books are excluded from the New Testament when -on the surface - they appear to be much like our current NT books.

Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code made this question wildly popular upon its release in 2006 (I believe?).

Why do we include the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John but not the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter?

Why are other books such as the Shepherd of Hermas or the Acts of Paul or 1 & 2 Clement excluded while others are included?

Who made that call and what authority did they have?

Two Arguments

Well there are a couple issues at the heart of this in my opinion.

The first is the idea that Dan Brown puts forth - namely that the collection of books we have today was decided upon by a select few at councils which took place centuries after the time of Jesus.

The argument goes like this:  there were many different versions of Christianity around at the time of Christ and, as the centuries went on, the people with the most power and influence caused their version to win out.  This left certain books that they disliked excluded from the NT and other books they liked included.

In essence, our modern version of orthodox Christianity and our collection of the 27 books of the NT is really just the product of one human opinion that was once a single voice among many.

The second argument is that the books of the Bible, and the NT in particular, are completely 100% human.  They have no divine qualities at all.  Their words and authors were not inspired by God nor did he oversee the process of including and excluding certain books.

Because of this - so the argument goes - what claim of authenticity to the current NT books have over the ones that were excluded?

Valid question, if the premise were true.

So what's the story?

First we need to understand that men did not arbitrarily decide which books they wanted to have included in the NT.  Rather they recognized the divine qualities that were already there.

The canon of the NT was not formed by human beings.  It was decided by God.  The 27 books of the Bible were not set in a council in 325 A.D.  They were set by God himself.

Christians argue that God himself decided which authors to inspire to write certain books and after those books had been written human beings began the process of recognizing the fingerprints of God, including books that clearly were divine and excluding books that clearly were not.

The Criteria

The criteria for a book's inclusion in the NT were the following:

• Was it written by an Apostle or someone with direct association with an Apostle?
• Was it written within the time of Jesus' life and the lives of the Apostles?
• Is it theologically consistent with the rest of the OT and the other NT books seen as authoritative?
• Is it theologically consistent within itself (i.e. does it contain contradictory statements?)
• Was it widely accepted and used in the early church?