Scripture and God in Christianity

and the second and third Epistles of John. These are accepted by the majority and rejected by a
minority. A subset of the "disputed" ones is not accepted by the majority. They are the Acts of
Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Letter of Barnabas, the Didache and
"if it seems correct" Revelation; (3) The atopa pante kai dusebe, "the altogether absurd and impious
works". Most of the apocryphal gospels are listed under this category. 159 It was Athanasius's
Easter letter of 367 that settled the discussion of the internal limits of the New Testament canon
within the Eastern church yet not with absolute success. In the fourth century Hebrews was generally
accepted in the East and rejected in the West. The Apocalypse was generally accepted in
the West and rejected in the East.
The canon in the West was closed in the fifth century under the influence of St. Augustine and
Jerome. For the Greek church in the East the question was settled by Constantine. He ordered
Eusebius to prepare 50 copies of the Scriptures to be used in the new capital. In this way the 27
New Testament books included in these copies obtained a semi-official recognition. The Syrian
church still had some reservations about 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude, and Revelation. The fifthcentury
Syrian Jacobite manuscript Peshitta contained only 22 books. In the sixth and seventh
century the influence of the Vulgate and Constantinople prevailed and all 27 books of New Testament
were recognized in the church. The Western Syrian Bible of the sixth and seventh century,
the Philoxenian and Harklian versions, contained the same twenty- seven books accepted in
the East as well as in the West though the Eastern Syrian Church, observes Metzger, "having lost
contact with the rest of Christendom, continued much longer to hold to the shorter canon." 160
Though the issue of New Testament canon was settled in the fifth century, Eusebius's distinction
between "homologoemena" and "antilegomena" did not disappear completely from the Church.
During the middle ages Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles except 1 Peter and 1 John were still
the subject of some controversy. Luther, for instance, severely censured Hebrews, Jude, 2 Peter
and called James "a straw epistle". He relegated some other canonical books to second place. In
spite of these differences, all the Catholic as well as Protestant New Testament copies contain all
27 canonical writings.
It is important to note here with Kelly that "The main point to be observed is that the fixation of
the finally agreed list of books, and of the order in which they were to be arranged, was the result
of a very gradual process...By gradual stages, however, the Church both in East and West arrived
at a common mind as its sacred books. The first official document which prescribes the twentyseven
books of our New Testament as alone canonical is Athanasius's Easter Letter for the year
367, but the process was not everywhere complete until at least a century and a half later." 161
Now when we read the New Testament as a book we are reading, as R.L. Fox puts it, "a list of
books which some of the Christian's bishops approved and asserted more than three hundred
years after Jesus's death...Three centuries are a very long time: do these late listings really create
a unity with such an authority that it directs our understanding?" 162 Obviously, it would be implausible
to cite the protection, guidance and comforting work of the Holy Spirit to the exclusion
of human beings with all their human limitations behind the very letters of the New Testament
books. Fox argues that "Even an atheist can see the difference between one of the turgid or most
sectarian alternative Gospels and one of the recognized four: as for the others, even early Christians
who respected our four could quote sayings from some of the other Gospels too. As for the
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