The canon and revelation

Damian at Castle of Nutshells, one of the most thoughtful bloggers I read regularly, has recently written on the topic of the canon. Specifically, he asks (without answering), is the canon closed? Is the authority of Scripture in the books individually or in their compilation as canon? I had a few thoughts on these ideas that got to be too long for a comment, so I decided to post it here. But please note that Damian’s posts were only a starting point: nothing I say is necessarily representative of his thoughts. It’s more me arguing with myself.

The title and topic of the first post of Damian’s that I’m considering here is “Ongoing revelation: should the canon be open?” While reading it I wondered whether there were some disconnect on either side of the colon: is there not any way to entertain the notion of an open canon apart from “ongoing revelation”? What if guidance or practical insight were continuing, while revelation of new truths was complete? As I thought through this, I came to a different conclusion.

One crucial point at the heart of this is that I believe we have seriously exaggerated the amount of actual revealing that God participates in. He certainly didn’t reveal much to the OT saints. “Just trust Me”: isn’t this why the saints were lauded in Hebrews 11? And lest someone should respond, “Well, that’s before the Holy Spirit was given in the New Covenant,” I must point out that we even have an instance recorded in which God actually speaks, but declines Paul’s repeated impassioned requests without any further explanation than “My grace is sufficient for you.” I think our focus on revelation of truth corresponds with our inverted focus on the “believing” side of faith in neglect of the more characteristic “trusting” aspect of faith. This aspect of faith that God is the most interested in is the least dependent on revelation, either of new esoteric truths or of more practical guidance. Right we are to view the faith of Job and Abraham who groped about despite a lack of revelation explaining their situations and yet remained faithful (N.B. “faith-ful”) as the ideal sort of faith. And what good is all the wisdom the Old Testament advocates if we’re supposed to be given turn-by-turn directions by the Holy Spirit?

Strictly speaking, of course, the biblical canon is simply a list of writings considered by the Church at one time in history to be authoritative. Damian notes in a more recent, related post that this list itself is now considered authoritative by many Christians on a level equaling or even supplanting the authority of the individual texts that compose it. This is a remarkable development, it seems, but it seems we need to settle the nature of biblical “authority” in order to really evaluate it.

I think it’s evident that the community of faith plays a vital role throughout redemptive history. This is why I believe that whatever “authority” the books have is only recognized because of the fact that they were first recognized by the Church long ago. The Bible isn’t itself revelation, but a compilation of the testimony of witnesses to revelation, so that whatever use God intended the Scriptures to have He designed to implement through the testimony of believers – the authors themselves as well as those believers who canonized and thereby preserved these Scriptures we have. This doesn’t necessarily make the entire canon error-free any more than the Bible is error-free (I, like Luther, personally look askance at Revelation more than, say, the Gospel of Mark); it does, I think, make the canon sufficient as a source of faith and practice.

Each book of Scripture was written to mean something. Indeed, many of the books bear clear signs that they were composed of smaller bits of material that each ostensibly meant something different originally. Likewise, it’s not hard to see that the individual books themselves were compiled to create a work that means something unique as well. So if the canon communicates something specific as an integral unit, making it open-ended would certainly seem problematic.

The canon was not conceived by its creators as a list of texts intended to give us personal revelation, and so I don’t expect we would need more canon in order to receive it (the classical view of how God guides the individual believer is through the Holy Spirit). Since a record of personal revelation isn’t what the canon is about per se, I see no need to posit an open canon as a running record of new revelation. Its purpose must be something different.

As it was the Church universal that created it, it seems clear that the purpose of the canon was more for universal usage than for personal insights. This is not to question whether God guides us personally through various ways, even using Scripture to do so, but I don’t think it’s at all the same thing as canon when He does. I am convinced that the Scriptures of the canon are much broader and more generally applicable in focus: the testimony of believers who experienced God’s redemptive works in history as a common inheritance for the saints that have followed. The way I view the Bible is as Heilsgeschichte, start to finish. The curtain opens and there is desperate man separated from God; a recurring climax of God’s judgment and salvation of His people fills the middle, and it closes after a climactic scene in which Jesus liberates the good guys from oppression by the bad guys. Of what God set out to reveal to the Church, which part has He yet to “publish” for mass consumption?

If, as I contend, the canon is a complete record of God’s plan for redeeming humanity presented through the testimony of its participants culminating in the work of Christ, it seems the most we could have left to be recorded is denouement, or perhaps the resounding echo of such divine liberation throughout history. But how much do we need a canon to record it? Do we need to add more to the one we have in order to testify to how we each live out our lives in faith? Or perhaps it is the lives of the faithful that serve as unwritten canon, a never-ending epilogue to the history book of salvation, which, as history is wont to due, repeats itself.

I suffer considerable indigestion with the idea of an “open canon” due especially to bad examples of crackpot charismatic “revelation” of which I’m aware. I don’t know how it does any good to claim divine inspiration or revelation when most of what people claim to hear is manifestly nonsense – how are we expected to recognize or benefit from the part that’s supposedly actual divine revelation? I also feel sick when I see believers chasing after every chance for a new revelation or mystical insight, usually leaving what we know good and well He wants us to do unfinished or even untouched. So the idea that the next new revelation from God may be around the corner would seem to be counterproductive.

So I must conclude that I can see no reason why – or how – we should regard the canon of Scripture we received to be “open”. The Bible sufficiently shows us the prototype for salvation; anything else is just an adaptation for the local theater.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. The canon conversation continues My conversation with Damian continues in his post Inspiration, Fallibility and Canon and in the comments of that post. If you are unaware of why we even feel...
2. Progressive revelation I’ve not got much to say about this, but please check out Cliff Martin’s post that describes his thinking on the unchanging nature of God,...
3. The authority of Scripture This is the sixth of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. Preliminary Remarks The purpose of these next few posts is to...
4. The Fallout This is the eighth and final post in a series on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. So anyway what about the Fall? If no one human...
5. Contextual interpretation in Genesis: Cain’s mark I suppose it goes without saying that approaching the Bible as contextually bound literature leaves you asking different questions and giving different answers. In the...