Page History

Scanned PDF Version of this Document

According to Lee M. McDonald, in a paper presented to the Jesus Seminar in October 1997 ("The Origins of the New Testament Scripture Canon"), "the first Christian canon" was Jesus himself. "Long before there was an authoritative biblical canon in the Church, Jesus was the final authority for the earliest community of Christians. His life, death, and resurrection, as well as his teachings, functioned as the absolute or final canon for the early believers." McDonald also argues in the same paper that there were four criteria used to determine the contents of the New Testament canon -- namely, (1) apostolicity; (2) orthodoxy; (3) antiquity; and (4) use. (He also considers "inspiration" as a fifth possible criterion, only to conclude that it "does not appear to have played a major role in the decision making process for any of the early churches so much as serving as a basic assumption or corollary.... [A] study of the early Christian writings through the fifth century shows that generally speaking whatever was believed to be true and faithful was also believed to be inspired of Wiki MarkupAccording to Lee M. McDonald, in a paper presented to the Jesus Seminar in October 1997 ("The Origins of the New Testament Scripture Canon"), "the first Christian canon" was Jesus himself. "Long before there was an authoritative biblical canon in the Church, Jesus was the final authority for the earliest community of Christians. His life, death, and resurrection, as well as his teachings, functioned as the absolute or final canon for the early believers." McDonald also argues in the same paper that there were four criteria used to determine the contents of the New Testament canon \-\- namely, (1) _apostolicity_; (2) _orthodoxy_; (3) _antiquity_; and (4) _use_. (He also considers "inspiration" as a fifth possible criterion, only to conclude that it "does not appear to have played a major role in the decision making process for any of the early churches so much as serving as a basic assumption or corollary.... \[A\] study of the early Christian writings through the fifth century shows that generally speaking whatever was believed to be true and faithful was also believed to be inspired of God.")

McDonald's arguments for both points, however, suffer from his failing to make -- in fact, showing not the least awareness of -- certain crucial relevant distinctions.

...