On Cannonization and Innerrancy

Apostolic Authority



When many people ask about how we arrived at the Bible we have, in length and books, we sometimes wonder what made the compilers of this collection of writings choose some books and hold others out, like the sensationalized gnostic gospels. There are many reasons for the inclusion and the exclusion of books.



One of the first and greatest reasons for inclusion was the necessity in Aposotolic authority in the writings. When we hear the word apostle in this setting we are reffering to the eleven disciples of Jesus (sorry Judas Iscariot!) and Paul. The thing that qualified them as apostles is that they had all seen Jesus after his ressurection. This apostolic authority is the reason why some epistles and writings, by godly men who meant well, were not added to the canon of New Testament verses.



Wrong kind of "cannonization"



In this we can see that these men whose writings were placed into what we now call the New Testament were not inherently special on their own, but it was their relationship with Jesus that allowed them to speak with this kind of authority. They essentially spent three years at the worlds greatest unaccredited seminary at the feet of the greatest theologian who has ever lived, Jesus Christ. This gives them great authority to write about God.





Innerrancy

Now the thing of the inerrancy is a sticky subject, many people refuse to give it any credence, because it is a difficult thing to unravel. One of the primary objections to this doctrine is that men could not have written something about God and it not be messed up. As written in 2 Timothy 3:16 it says "all scripture is God breathed", meaning this was not something concocted by psychos (no matter how many atheists would beg to differ) on a power trip.

One trip up of this doctrine for many people is that many do not realize that this state of innerrancy is usually preserved for the autographs, or the original writings. Many churches hold to this belief that the original writings are what is innerrant, the ones inspired by God. We can make the bible seem to have many errors by way of things like improper interpretations of scripture that cause contradications (like that of the Branch Davidians) or in the use of translations that do not fully communicate the Biblical truths conveyed in the original languages (especially in The Message translation).

Another thing to consider is that in the early times of Christianity much of the world was illiterate. They relied on spoken traditions that transmitted ideas and concepts accurately rather than unneccesary details that held no theological weight, like what color Jesus robe really was! It's like if your mom starts telling you a story about how a man who got into a car crash was wearing a brown hat. Does you knowing what color his hat was add depth to the story? No, because it doesn't contribute to what happened. It is merely a descriptor and at the end of the day if you lose this portion of a story, you will still know that a man crashed his car. Losing minor details is not necessarily bad when the essence and the main point of the teaching is intact. When a detail that contributes to the story is lost, then it is time to be worried. 

Checks and Balances

Now one of the checks and balances that many of the leaders of the early church was the use of councils. Now these councils didn't sit down in one chunk of time and set up the layout of the Bible in one sitting. It was a long ardous journey that lasted many years. The reason for this was that they wanted to keep scriptures from being canonized that were flawed and were not consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Some gospels were barely chosen as part of the Canon, even though we consider them to be integral to our Biblical regimen today. Even some books that were chosen took many years to gain universal recognition in the Christian church. These churches were clearly not haphazardly jumping at the new coolest gospel, but that they wanted what was true and consistent.

Is the Bible reliable?

One question I have heard many people say is that the Bible is not reliable. The logic goes that since the bible is over two thousand years old it could not be properly maintained in its true condition that it held at the beginning. What people who question this bring into question the "infallibility" of the Bible. Big word, I know. What infallible means is perfect. It means that it is untainted. To many, the idea of the Bible being infallible is crazy.

The main reason most people reject the Bible as a reliable document is that they do not believe that a book, that was written and canonized long after its original happenings sometimes even a decade after, can be right. There is a common belief that since it was not written down right away, that the Bible is automatically void of reliability  I remember on one of the first days of a intro to the bible class that a guy (who is a christian mind you) said that they cannot be correct. Clearly this is even an issue of belief for those who do the hold the bible as sacred.

What is the first problem with this thought process? We are thinking from the minds of a literal society. Even high school dropouts in the United States have some degree of literacy. This was not what it was like in the time of the Roman Empire. Most people were day laborers or farmers in this era, so reading books was low on their priorities. They had no real need for being ultra-literate, so instead the were an oral society. In fact many people in the Jewish faith memorized the Torah as their "education", rather than our standard education reading, writing and arithmetic (along with many other things that have been thrown in). For them telling stories about their forefathers, like Moses and David, were just normal for them. So when a person (Jew and non jew alike) converted to Christianity they would also be  likely to memorize the teachings that they had been passed on from other generations, including those who had seen Jesus in person. This wasn't something that they saw as an inconvenience, but as a necessity to understand their faith.

A good illustration to use for this is how when many people grow up they hear the same stories told many times by their parents. Your parents will tell it over and over and over and over and over until you knew the story inside and out. Much to your ire though, your parents keep telling it. The same idea is of what happened with the early church. Much of these teachings were taught frequently so they remembered it quite well, so like the child who remembers the story about their parent going to Yellowstone national park in 1974 and having a bear attack their truck (just a hypothetical story, unless this really happened to your parents), they remembered the stories of Jesus' life, death, and  Resurrection.

Another thing that makes people bring into question the authenticity of the Bible is the amount of heretics that there were at the beginning of the church. For many skeptics it is hard to believe what is true and what is false. This makes the validity of the bible that was canonized by the original church to come into question because they may see it as just political positions winning out. However, it was not so. The many councils, like the Council of Nicea and the Council of Ephesus, were done to make sure they were making the proper theological decisions in turning away heretics. They did this as a way to maintain the structure of a newly formed religion that could have been susceptible to internal attacks. To bring this into our context this is like how George Washington fought his own people in the little known Whiskey Rebellion of the late 18th century. His intent was not to cause problems in his own country, but to maintain the delicate balance that was present in the country. The rejection of Heretics has helped to maintain the integrity of the infallibility of the Bible over time and keep it as useful for readers today.