Participants 149
Discussion Questions
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In your own words, give a brief explanation of how the New Testament came to be.
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God-inspired as well. Talking about Jesus Christ the Messiah; His adult life here on earth in His early thirties; what Jesus did, said, prophesied, and verified what occurred and what is yet to come. The New testament (in the end) completed the bible in conjunction with the Old Testament (in the beginning of creation).
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During his life on earth, Jesus taught orally to the crowds, but he gave special coaching to his twelve apostles. Sometimes, when they did not understand the parables he spoke in public, he would explain to them in private. He promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to remind them of what he taught, and to guide them into the truth (John 14:26; 15:26). Thus, after his death, resurrection and ascension, the apostles were able to teach the early church by word of mouth. As persecution mounted and many disciples died, and yet Christ had not returned, it must have become clear that the sound teaching must be written down to be passed on to future generations. The rise of Gnosticism was also an impetus to preserve sound teaching. Thus, it is believed, Mark wrote his gospel, followed by Matthew and Luke later. Similarly, Paul wrote as he went about evangelizing Asia Minor and Europe. His imprisonment gave him a lot of time to write his letters. Church leaders would read out these writings to their congregations. What we have today as the corpus of the New Testament was written over a 50-year period from ca. A.D. 50 to A.D. 100. Paul was responsible for penning about two-thirds of this corpus.
By the mid-second century, lists of books considered to be authoritative for faith began to emerge. Eusebius helped to classify early Christian works into universally accepted, disputed, and spurious. Athanasius wrote a letter in which he recommended 27 books as a guide to his churches; this list tallies with the corpus of our New Testament. Although these books had been circulated among the earliest Christians, it wasn’t until the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393) that this corpus was officially recognized by the Orthodox Church. Since then, there were ecumenical councils, some of which sought to deliberate on the canon (accepted standard) of Scripture to counter the emerging waves of heresy.
#Canon
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During the early church, Jesus’ teaching / apostolic teaching were mainly by word of mouth. Therefore, the Holy Spirit inspired chosen men to write the teaching down so that it can be accurately passed on e.g. the life of Jesus as in the Gospels. Some of the documents were correspondences of the early apostles. These were also widely spread and acknowledge for their authority and authenticity. The compilation of the New testament was a gradual process that ranges a few century where early church leaders chosen these books / epistles based on the 3 criteria of Consistency, Catholicity and Apostolic Authority.
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The New Testament came to be through God who breathed the contents to the disciples of Jesus Christ or those who were associated with him inspired by the Holy Spirit to write them down. The contents written were subject of rigorous vetting before being considered worthy of being included in the New Testament.
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The events that transpired were God’s will, and the apostles were inspired by God to record them. The writings had to meet the 3 criteria as discussed in the previous post to be included.
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Describe in your own words, the three major criteria the twenty-seven books of the New Testament had to meet to be included in the New Testament.
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For the 27 books to be recognized as the New Testament, they have to meet the following criteria:
– Consistency – whether they were consistent with the earlier Scripture
– Catholicity – whether they were widely accepted
– Apostolic Authority – whether they were written by Jesus’ apostles or someone closely related to them.
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The book had to meet the following categories. 1. Consistency 2. Catholicity and 3.Apostolic Authority.
In the first place, the book had to be consistent with the contents of the Old Testament. Secondary, It had to be universally accepted by all Christians. Lastly, with Apostolic Authority is a reference to the fact that the author of the book has to an Apostle or anyone who is associated with an Apostle.
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In order to be included in the New Testament, these books had to meet three criteria. They had to be consistent with the previous scripture teachings. They had to be deemed accurate and accepted by a widespread group of those studying and evaluating (called Catholicity). They also had to concrete evidence that these books were either written by Apostles or associates of the Apostles (called Apostolicity).
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The book or epistle had to align with the existing canon of the Old and new testaments. It had to show wide acceptance across the broader body of believers and have some link to apostolic authority. In other words, it had to demonstrate teaching from the original church fathers taught by Christ.
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The three major criteria for the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are Consistency, Catholicity, and Apostolic Authority. Consistency meant that anything written in the New Testament could not contradict anything in Scripture that had previously been written. Catholicity is understood as the Scriptures included would have had to have been widely communicated throughout the first Christians. Apostolic Authority ensures that each of the books was written by an apostle or someone close to that apostle.
