The Canon of Scripture

This is (yet again!) one of my papers. This one is from my Church History class on the Canon of Scripture.

In Proverbs 30:5, we read that, “Every word of God proves true”. Psalm 119:142 says, “Your righteousness is righteous forever, and your law is true.” Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul”. With truth as the standard for every word God speaks as set up by the Old Testament, how were New Covenant believers to know which “divine words” they could really trust? How could “New Testament” Christians know which “gospels” were really the true accounts of Jesus’ life and words? There had to be a line drawn somewhere, or Christians might be led astray to believe heresy as “gospel truth”. These are the problems that the Christians of the first few centuries AD had to face. What solutions did the leaders of the Church offer to the early Christians? Before looking at solutions, it would be wise to lay the foundation of problems that needed to be solved by the early Church leaders.

One of the major belief systems which seemed to contradict the teaching of the apostles was known as Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a system of belief built on a dualistic view on the human nature. This view states that the spiritual nature of man is separate from the physical nature of man. The spiritual nature of man is inherently good, but the physical nature of man is inherently flawed. This impacts the Gnostic view of Adam’s fall into sin. They viewed the fall as actually propagated by a god or goddess who gave birth to the god of this world. This god then created this world in an attempt to recreate the perfection created by the perfect high-god, Plorema, who exists completely afar and away from the universe. This perverted deity is often associated with the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jehovah. Man, consequently, is not at fault for his fallen physical state. Edwin Yamauchi notes, “for the Gnostics man was not a transgressor but a victim. The Fall was not man’s but rather Sophia’s. Man was alienated from a true knowledge of himself and fettered to earth by malevolent ignorance, which is described as sleep, drunkenness, forgetfulness. Man experiences a nostalgia, a homesickness for a lost paradise.” (Yamauchi, 33) This also affects the Gnostic view of salvation. Yamauchi notes that salvation for the Gnostic came “through gnosis or esoteric knowledge.” (Yamauchi, 30) He also notes that “salvation for the elect pneumatics consisted of a recognition of their true celestial origin.” (Yamauchi, 33) Man is not therefore in need of salvation of his spiritual nature, he simply needs to realize his true spiritual nature. This leads to a Jesus who is not the one portrayed by the New Testament Apostles. He was not a true “God-man” as the Apostles portrayed Him. His nature was split, and the Christ nature was separate from the physical nature, so that His Christ nature was not contaminated by the physical flesh of man. Christ also did not actually die on the cross, as the Apostles taught. His Christ-nature separated from His physical nature before He was placed on the cross, so that He didn’t actually suffer and die on the cross in His spiritual nature. The purpose of Christ coming to earth was so that He could enlighten us about our true spiritual nature and lead us back to our true spiritual enlightenment. The Gnostics attempted vehemently to oppose the Gospels put forth by the Apostles of Jesus Christ, and they wrote many “Gospels” about Jesus’ life on earth themselves. With all of these “Gospels” about Jesus’ life, how was the Church of Jesus Christ to know which of these Gospels told the real purpose for Jesus’ earthly ministry? How would the early church discriminate between the true Gospels of Jesus’ life and the false “gospels” being put forth by false teachers?

Another teaching that the early church had to deal with was that of Arianism. Arianism was a teaching that dealt with the Trinity and Christ’s relationship with the Father. This teaching was put forth by a man named Arius who lived in the fourth century. He was a presbyter of Alexandria, and he put forth as a teaching that Christ was not inherently of the same nature as God the Father. Larry R. Helyer explains, “At the heart of the debate lay Arius’ denial of the full deity of Christ and, subsequently, of the Holy Spirit. What emerged was a triadic view of the three Persons in which only the Father was acknowledged as truly God.” (Helyer, 60) Arius’ view stemmed from the fact that he viewed God as necessarily “un-begotten”. God necessarily has no beginning—it is inherently a part of His nature. Therefore, since texts such as Colossians 1:15 refer to Jesus as being “firstborn over all creation,” Arius contended that this meant that Christ was not intrinsically God. After all, if Christ is “firstborn,” this means that He must have had a beginning. Arius’ view, according to Helyer, says that “though predicated as Son of God and even God in Scripture, and though adored by Christians, the Logos enjoys this status either by participation in grace or by adoption. In either event the Logos is clearly a creature alien and dissimilar in all things from the Father, a perfect creature and immensely above all other created beings, but a creature nevertheless.” Arius said of Christ that “there was when he was not.” Arius teaching began to spread across the Christian world when it was picked up by some leaders within the early church. This view also opposed the teaching of Christ’s apostles, who claimed that Jesus was both God and man. John 1:1 states, speaking of Jesus that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This teaching was fought by the early Church Father Athanasius, and was eventually deemed as heresy at the Council of Nicaea.

Another event which played largely into the need for a canonization of the New Testament Scriptures was the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity.

Apparently, that is where my paper ends.... I apologize for the inconvenience...