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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John 14:25-26
25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
While the acceptance of the 27 books of the New Testament by man has been described within the lesson as involving a rigorous process of authentification, it is my contention that the New Testament came to be through the will of God. Jesus instructed his disciples to carry forward with his teachings.
2 Peter 1:21 “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
This is how the New Testament came to be.
Convening councils and setting out criteria for the acceptance of writings, this is just man being man. The Word is the Word.
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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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all the books had to be able to support and be supported by other scripture and teachings, the teachings and documents also had to be able to be universally accepted by Christians ie, there could not be writings that were only accepted by small groups of believers and lastly they had to be able to be attributed to those writers who personally knew Jesus or very closely associated with those who personally knew Jesus.
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The three major criteria for the 27 books of the New Testament had to meet were: 1) Consistency – means each book of the New Testament had to have the theme of consistency in there message throughout the 27 books . 2) Catholicity – means each book of the New Testament had to be universally accepted throughout the Christian world. 3) Apostolic Authority – means each book of the New Testament had to be written by an Apostle or companion of an apostle.
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The three major criteria the 27 books of the New Testament had to meet were: 1) Consistency – means each book of the New Testament had to have the theme of consistency in there message throughout the 27 books . 2) Catholicity – means each book of the New Testament had to be universally accepted throughout the Christian world. 3) Apostolic Authority – means each book of the New Testament had to be written by an Apostle or companion of an apostle.
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The three criteria were consistency, catholicity, and apostolic authority. The books needed to have similar themes and carry out on the same message. The books also needed to be universally accepted throughout the who of Christianity. Finally, they each needed to be written by an apostle or someone with a close connection to an apostle or Christ himself.
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I can only imagine what that must have been like for the early church fathers to make this determination! Together they would decide if the new revelation was consistent, or not contradictory to, the Old Testament or any documents which they had already accepted into the New Testament. A second criteria which helped them in this decision would be that the new revelation had already been circulated among the early Christians and been accepted by them. And the final criteria was that the book had to have been written by either one of the 12 apostles or someone who knew the apostles directly.