The point at issue here is whether the church is the primary authority which invests these books with authority, or whether the Scriptures have the capacity to evoke a recognition of their own uniqueness. These books came to be recognized as Scripture and others did not. To say that they came to be recognized is not the same as saying that they came to be invested with authority. To invest the books with authority would mean to impose on them something which they did not possess before being so invested. It would entail that there was some already accepted authority in the community that could impose authority on these writings. That is not the sort of authority appropriate in the case of the Bible. Authority is not a property to be conveyed. These writings do not need authentication from without.
The important issue can be brought out by contrasting the very different meanings of the following two sentences:
The Bible is now to be recognized because it has been invested with authority
The authority which the Bible has has now been recognized.
The Church did draw up a list of books. By so doing it included some and excluded many. What was happening? Was the Church giving to, i.e. bestowing on these books a status which they did not already have? Or, was it recognizing a status they in fact already had? Even if one were to answer that the Church at a point (say in the fourth century) invested books with an authority they did not previously have, we would still have to ask how this came about and why it was done. Who approved the books and for what reasons? For what purposes were such books approved? Was the move an authentic one? If so how can it be authenticated? That pushes the question one stage further back. Before the books were formally declared, by being included on a list, to be ‘Scripture,’ to have authority, someone had already recognized them and approved them. What was the basis of such recognition and approval? The answer that the books gain authority for the reason that they are included on a list will not do. To get on the list they have already been recognized and approved.
The idea of a canon and of canonical authority is quite different from the idea of the authentication of the writings on the basis of what they themselves contain. To call a book or a set of books canonical is to invest them with authority. A book is not invested with a spiritual or a religious authority because it appears on a list of approved books. ‘Why are they approved and what for?’ That is the question which leads us to examine the facts of the case.
We might distinguish three stages in the formation of a canon of Scripture. First, the writings establish themselves on the score of their contents. Second, they establish themselves as authoritative on the score of their authors. Third, they are authoritative because they belong to an authoritative list. ‘Authoritative’ now means ‘canonical,’ and ‘canonical’ means ‘belonging to the canon.’ First, that is to say, a book commends itself, and holds its place because it makes profound religious sense, as in the case of the writings of Paul. This Evans calls ‘self-authentication,’ and sees it as the primary and decisive criterion. What that particular term means and whether it is satisfactory we shall have to inquire. At all events, to consider this as a criterion we must focus on the book itself and find the reason for its having authority by considering its content and its influence. Its authority is in itself and not in something else asserted of it or imposed upon it. The writing speaks for itself. The community responds to these writings, finding satisfaction in them and getting guidance from them. The community recognises them for the help they had provided and were providing. ‘These are the writings that build us up and give us guidance we can understand and act upon.’ That is sufficient reason for saying they have a special status. This is the way the community speaks about the writings after they have spoken for themselves. They have a special status because they perform a special function.
The Bible does not become something that it was not. It gets recognised for what it is. There are analogies. A great scientist does not become a great scientist only when he is recognised as such. He is then simply acknowledged for what he already is. It is not like the conferring of an academic degree. You were not a Doctor of Philosophy. But now you are. But you would not have been if the university had not conferred the degree upon you. With the Bible it is not like that. Rather the Bible is recognised for what it is. However this criterion of ‘self-authentication’ of the writings gets replaced. It is ‘speedily overtaken by that of authorship, and the writings are then on their way to becoming canonical on other grounds.’26 The idea is that these writings are canonical because they can be traced to particular authors. The authors have a special position of authority. So the writings which can be traced to these authoritative figures come to have authority. The writings are recognized as having authority because they were written by authors whose authority was already established, that is to say, recognized. If the writing of a book can be traced to some such authoritative figure then it has authority. If it cannot be traced to such an authoritative figure then it does not have authority. The authority of the apostle is original and primary. The authority of the Bible is thus a derived authority.
The process of tracing a book to a particular figure is an historical exercise. So, the authority of the New Testament book depends upon the success of an historical exercise. The process by which such a book came to be written was a complex one. It involved a telling and retelling by word of mouth, the activity of amanuenses who transcribe the verbal message, and of scribes who copy it, of the editor who puts it all together. Our historical evidence is debatable in many cases.
Let us consider a particular possibility, using the first category, ‘self-authentication,’ in a somewhat modified form, and relate it to the second, ‘authorship.’ Suppose there is a book widely read in the churches, valued because it edifies the congregation and helps the individual in understanding and living the Christian faith, but whose author is not known beyond doubt. Should it, or should it not, be accepted as Scripture? The problem of being able to identity the author might become more difficult as time passed. Origen in an interesting comment on the epistle to the Hebrews said ‘But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.’27 That was in the third century.
So apostolicity is a problem. This term assumes one can identify an apostle as the author of the book. Or, if an apostle is not himself the author of the book, at least an apostle was the source of the material of the book, or that the author was the disciple of an apostle. So Mark is a disciple of Peter and Luke a follower of Paul. On this account of the matter their books get included because they are connected with an apostle, not because of their intrinsic worth, nor because of their function in the churches.
This argument makes the important assumption, which again throws us into the midst of historical debate, that in the early church the figure of apostle was clearly distinguished, and so well recognized as to set aside the person from all others. It is a good question, whether even in the first century this accurately represents the real historical situation.
Another point concerns the meaning of the term ‘authentic.’ A book is authentic if, when it claims to have a particular author, it does in fact have that author. Obviously, a writing can claim to come from one author and not do so. In fact what was often done in ancient times was to write pseudonymously, that is, to write a book and associate it with someone else, well known. In that way, the real author hoped that the renown of the figure whose name attached to the book would guarantee it a wider and more favourable response than it would otherwise get, would guarantee it a kind of authority from the outset. That was a widespread practice at the time when the New Testament writings were being produced. So we call a writing ‘authentic’ if the author who claims to write it was the one who actually wrote it. It is one of the tasks of historical assessment to make judgments about the authenticity of particular books. But suppose we cannot be sure?28 Are we then going to stick by this criterion of apostolicity and follow out the logical consequences of so doing? That would mean that in every case acknowledgment of the authority of a book would depend upon a historical judgment about its author rather than experience of its influence in the Christian community. That would mean that it would be the historian who established its authority. But that is surely quite misguided.
Whether it is important to be able to identify the author of any New Testament book, and connect him with an apostle will depend primarily on whether we deem the figure of