Sometimes this has been called the "exclusive" definition. No question there has been much confusion over how modern scholars define and use the term "canon." Most scholars use the term to describe the historical end point of recognizing inspired books: a closed canon. The second is on point but I want to probe a bit further. Reply DeleteĮric, thanks for these comments. When we're speaking about canonical questions in a context where we impose on ourselves the requirement that we consider the questions in a purely historical way, then we should follow the rule of saying "canons" rather than "The Canon." The only way in which we can talk about a single The Canon that has been closed is when we're talking about the God's-eye-view canon that was closed the moment he finished inspiring the books that belong to it. When we're looking at the historical question of different people's view of the delimitation of Scripture, we have no choice but to admit that there never has come a point in time when that question was finalized, and it still hasn't been finalized today. And this approach fails to account for the delimitation of Scripture that clearly already existed, and was recognized by Christians (even if they were only going through a process of trying to discover what the delimitation of those books was with an openness to the possibility of learning there were more than they yet knew about), before we see evidence of them talking about it. When people pick out various data points of history and try to connect the dots between them as though there was a linear development of The Canon that can be traced from these points, they can only do that if they selectively privilege certain data points, exclude others, and overstate the importance of local councils and mere personal opinions as if they were representative of The Church. And when people try to do that, the inevitably not only commit a fallacy of equivocating the term, but they also inevitably misrepresent the historical facts. It's fallacious to reify these varying opinions and speak about the development of The Canon, or the closing of The Canon. When we're doing history, and we look back at different views of the delimitation of books of Scripture by different people at different points in history (as well as the differences that still exist today and always will exist), there is no single The Canon we can point to, but only different canons, or different views about The Canon. But our role is one of discovering what those are, not authoritatively delimiting them ourselves by any decree. And in this, we recognize that God has a delimited set. We Christians should strive to make sure that the books we use as Scripture are the same ones God intends us to. This canon seen from a God's-eye-view is not the same thing as canons seen from a historian's-eye-view. If we want to speak about The Canon, in the sense of the true delimitation of books of the Bible, then the only thing we can mean is something that exists in the mind of God. I like their distinctions of definitions in this video, and I believe that a lot of fallacious beliefs about canon that I encounter all the time result from equivocating different senses of canon. Here is the link to the video: The Canon (G3 conference). If I remember correctly, this topic arose near the beginning of the discussion on the video. Also, I would be interested to know what you all think about the distinction between the “ontological” canon and the “exclusive” canon (Kruger) or White’s Canon 1 and Canon 2. For example, around the 45:00 minute mark, there is a good discussion of the relationship between the canon and individual text forms of books, which will probably interest many of you. I would encourage you to watch the video (link below sorry, it’s currently available only on Facebook), and if you are interested, please comment on some of the more salient points. Yesterday morning, at the G3 conference in Atlanta, GA, James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Michael Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte held a good discussion of the canon of scripture (mostly the New Testament canon), and often times their conversation drifted toward matters of textual criticism.
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