“In The Question of Canon, Michael J. Kruger, president and professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, systematically addresses five assumptions about the formation of the canon that have resulted in the dominant “extrinsic model.” In such an extrinsic approach, scholars think of the canon as something imposed from without (e.g., by the institutional church or imperial processes) rather than as the result of an organic process inherent to early Christianity’s faith and practice.”

Evangelical Christians are sometimes a bit embarrassed when discussing the New Testament (NT) canon. We hesitatingly admit that not until the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius (A.D. 367) do we find an undisputed 27-book list that matches our own. And not until a bit later did church councils recognize this canon in official decrees (Hippo Regius, A.D. 393, and Carthage, A.D. 397).

Is the NT canon the Achilles heel of evangelicalism? If the canon is indeed the creation of the early church, are we not left to some endless circular argument about authority—or must we evangelicals abandon sola scriptura and acknowledge some dual authority of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition?

In The Question of Canon, Michael J. Kruger, president and professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, systematically addresses five assumptions about the formation of the canon that have resulted in the dominant “extrinsic model.” In such an extrinsic approach, scholars think of the canon as something imposed from without (e.g., by the institutional church or imperial processes) rather than as the result of an organic process inherent to early Christianity’s faith and practice.

Five Key Corrections

Kruger’s book is organized into five chapters, each addressing a faulty assumption of the extrinsic model. His arguments are summarized below.

(1) We should not think of canon solely in terms of an extrinsic ecclesiastical pronouncement that resulted in a final closed list of books. Rather, we should think of the category of canon overlapping with “Scripture”—an ontological and functional reality in which we see certain books being treated as uniquely authoritative and inspired from the earliest post-NT days.

(2) While later ecclesiastical needs or crises helped to crystallize the canon in historical recognition, earliest Christianity contained an inherent impetus that resulted in the canon. Because early believers viewed the Christian proclamation about Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s prior written revelation and considered the apostles as authoritative spokesmen for God, a closed canon of written apostolic teaching emerged naturally from these conditions.

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