After a few years of studying the history of the New Testament canon, the spread of the church through the world, the teachings of the Fathers, and of course the New Testament itself, this paragraph from Robert Jenson wonderfully focused all my thoughts about mission, gospel, and apostolicity. One of my favorite paragraphs ever written on the subject. We have the canon because the church needed a litmus test for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the tradition by which we judge tradition. Reading it is the experience by which we judge experience. And the gospel on its pages is the gospel we are to preach.
Although the history is complex and its complexities are disputed, the canonical event can for theological purposes be very simply described: becoming aware that the apostles were gone, the community collected and certified documentary relics of the apostolic message. The church did this because she is to bring the same message she brought while the apostles guided her. Not all books in the canon were written or used by apostles. As the church gathered and commended apostolic writings, the criterion of apostolicity was simultaneously material and historical: a document was apostolic from which could be heard the teachings of the apostles. There is nothing viciously circular here; if the church had forgotten the teaching of the apostles, she could not anyway have assembled a canon. - Robert Jenson. Systematic Theology Volume 1: The Triune God. (Oxford University Press 1999), 27.
0 comments:
Post a Comment