I don’t think we need to go looking for revelation to put into the new new testament, and I don’t think we need to go looking for some wise sage to write us off some meaningful message from God.

Good comment. And this is part of what’s behind my statement that we need the elevation of non-canon less than we need to lower our expectations of even the Bible. In large part, we know where the Church came from and what’s it’s supposed to be doing now. So isn’t it presumptuous to be continually looking for new revelation in between the lines of Scripture or from the lips of a modern day “prophet” when we’re not doing so hot at what we know good and well what we’re supposed to be up to?

I think that there is a great possibility, through some major event that what we know of the world will change. Be it a natural event, a man made war, or something incredible that will change the sociological basis of humanity.

Even given this scenario, the most that would probably happen would be a reevaluation of our existing “edition” of the Bible. Think of it: there have been a number of major, world-shaking events that have transpired in the last two thousand years (the Black Plague for one; maybe even WWII). And yet the same old Bible keeps trucking on, it seems, albeit with some new understandings of what the authors were trying to convey. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

This is all a wild guess of course. But as we change, and we grow to understand things different, we need to have different means for something to reach us.
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Peter alluded to this himself when speaking of Paul’s writings in 2 Pet 3:16

“He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Peter knew that Paul was inspired by God and although he called Paul’s writings “letters”, he also considered Paul’s writings on a par with the “other scriptures” No doubt this would have included old testament gems such as Isaiah, and I believe perhaps the new testament writings of Matthew and the other gospel writers too!

Is it such a stretch to believe that these apostles knew their times were short and that something had to be done for future generations to hear the story of their faith? Perhaps this was the reason God spared the life of John on Patmos. Besides penning the apocalypse, was it possible that he was entrusted with the care of other scriptures? It is well known that Polycarp was a disciple of John, and maybe he was entrusted with these parchments which would later be copied and re-copied by faithful men of God down through time.

We know that Paul, as he was nearing the end of his life, carried documents that he considered even more important than the clothes on his back. He wrote to Timothy in 2 Tim 4:13

” The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.”

We can’t know for sure what those parchments were, but they had to have some great value to Paul. I think this was “code” between Paul and Timothy for scripture, but of course I can’t prove that.

It just strikes me as odd that it seems easier to believe in some kind of “inspired” councils that convened hundreds of years after the fact to decide what was and what wasn’t considered canonical. Could it not be that by the time of these so-called councils that this issue had been settled already by the authors of the events themselves? The only reason for the councils perhaps would have been for God to use them to PUBLISH what had already been decided. After all, I do believe that God used many generations of monks huddled behind castle walls in monasteries during the dark ages to copy down what had been passed on to them. Without this kind of care, we would have nothing for King James to translate. So instead of thinking that this or that book is inspired or not, later generations were simply entrusted with passing on that which they received – not deciding whether or not what they had was the word of God.

My main point, stated as concisely as I should have stated it above, is that if our canon is an overview of God’s redemptive dealings with man, written as individual books by the redeemed and later compiled by the redeemed, it is a complete, cohesive work — or at least a complete first volume. This is not predicated on full preterism; even if the consummation and completion of redemption is yet future, it’s already described in Scripture; and if the futurists are right, there’s not going to be much of a chance to write about those events after they occur.

You’re probably right that ‘opening’ the canon is a bad idea; but the truth is, crackpots will find their crackpot ideas within our current bible.

Well yes, but at least serious scholars and theologians will be able to use sound tools of analysis and exegesis to debunk crackpot doctrines. How do you debunk anything that someone says he heard from God, and is now canon?

But I still feel a little like we denigrate a lot of inspired writings by using a Canon.

I heartily agree, and we are greatly amiss not to make generous use of early extracanonical literature in our interpretation of canonical literature. The solution for me lies not only in elevating the Church’s opinion of the extracanonical but in reining in our expectation of canonical authority. If we view the canonical books as divinely influenced rather than as divinely authored literature, I think the need for examining extracanonical literature becomes apparent. Classic example: your latest post on 1 Clement. Good stuff!