“They really ought to be few lest what ought to be famous for religion become cheapened by multitude; yet there ought not be so few that we must not wonder at their harmony.” (St. Augustine, De civ. Dei)
The last few months of my systematic theology devotional time has been devoted to the study of the canon; what books ought to be included in the canon and which should not be included. Pages upon pages of Gerhardt’s Loci Communes detail the arguments between the Catholic bishops and the Lutheran reformers over the inclusion of, or exclusion of apocryphal books from the canon of Scripture, as well as other arguments that many might consider to be minuscule details, but ones, nonetheless, that are of the essence to the Christian perspective and faith.
Two questions really struck me as I read through paragraph 109 of Gerhard’s Loci. Do we have all the books that were considered to be God’s Word? There are several occasions in Scripture, especially in 2 Chronicles, where the Jews, in their mistreatment of the Word of God and their unbelief and syncretistic practices, allowed certain important collections of information to be lost – many of them burned in the Chaldean invasion. But does that mean that we are without the full testimony of God? What about the “Book of the Wars of the Lord” from Numbers 21:14, or “The Book of the Just” from Joshua 10:13? What about the prophetic books of Nathan and Gad (1 Chron. 29:29) and Ahijah and Iddo (2 Chron. 9:29), Shemaiah and Iddo (2 Chron 12:13), Jehu (2 Chron 20:34) and Hosai, otherwise known as the “Chronicles of the Seers” (2 Chron 33:19)?
An excellent point was cited, one by St. Augustine in paragraph 109 of the Loci. Even though we cannot be sure that every single holy book has survived into the canon this day, we can be sure that everything that is necessary for the salvation of man, everything a person must hold dear to to enter eternal glory is in our canon today. Gerhardt speaks of quantitative perfection of the canon, of which we can never be sure. But superseding it all is the objective perfection of the canon, that everything that we need to know and believe unto everlasting life is revealed in absolute clarity and harmony in the Bible.
What man creates through disobedience and mistreatment, namely fear that we do not have all of God’s communicated Word, (a fear that is both unfounded and miscalculated), God stifles through absolute harmony of the canon. Nothing more needs to be added. Nothing can be taken away. For “The Word of the Lord stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:8)
