What is the difference between inspiration and canonization

You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Study Questions pgs 1. Distinguish between the meaning of inspiration and canonization. Furthermore Jesus was not an accommodator by any means. Why ought one conclude that there are thirty-nine books in the old testament cannon?

Paul quotes from the Gospel of Luke and calls it Scripture, putting it on the same level as Deuteronomy compare 1 Tim. He holds these words up as the divine standard. John held up the teaching of the apostles as the absolute standard of Truth 1 John Conclusion That the Bible is the infallible Word of God is foundational to every aspect of the Bible text-version issue. The Bible cannot be treated merely as another book. It must always be treated as something holy and supernatural, something set apart from all other writings.

When it comes to Bible texts and versions we must be concerned with the words and details because it is verbally, plenarily inspired. We cannot accept the modern text position that thousands of words are somehow of no consequence. Our goal at all times is to have the very words that the Spirit of God gave to holy men of old. The New Testament was completed and sealed. The New Testament Scripture was finished in the days of the Apostles. The saints, are, secondly, the holy brethren in the New Testament churches who received the revelation as the word of God 1 Th.

The New Testament Scripture was sealed in the final chapter with a solemn warning against adding to or taking away from it Rev. In such a business, nothing would be more important than collecting the newly-written Scripture.

This was probably done at Ephesus under the direction of John, who wrote the final five books of the New Testament and outlived the other apostles. The Roman Catholic Church claims that it gave us the Bible, but we know that this is not true, not only because the Bible was completed in the days of the apostles long before there was a Roman Catholic Church, but also for the following two irrefutable reasons: Roman Catholic doctrine and practice is not found in the Bible.

The churches described in the New Testament are nothing like the Catholic Church. Not only is Roman Catholic doctrine and practice not found in the Bible, it contradicts the Bible , so it cannot be its source.

Catholic dogmas such as the papacy, Mariolatry, the Saints, the Priesthood, the Mass, and Purgatory are not only not found in the New Testament, they contradict plain New Testament teaching and practice. Consider a few examples: The papacy contradicts 1 Pet. Mariolatry and the Saints contradict 1 Tim. The Mass contradicts 1 Cor. Purgatory contradicts 2 Cor. There is not one example in the New Testament of a priest being ordained and performing the type of ministry that we see in the Roman Catholic Church.

The N. The New Testament was received. We see this in John ; ; Acts ; ; ; ; 1 Thess. Though the record of this history is not extant beyond the pages of Scripture, we know that the reception and canonization of the New Testament books was not the haphazard thing that is described in most books on Bible history. The same Holy Spirit that gave the New Testament Scriptures by inspiration guided the churches in receiving them.

We have already seen evidence from Scripture that the New Testament books were accepted as the Word of God in the apostolic churches. We have further evidence from the writings of church leaders from the first years after the apostles. Clement of Rome. Clement quoted Psalm and Heb. Polycarp , in his letter to the Philippian church in about A. The only NT writer not included is Jude! For neither I, nor anyone like me, is able to rival the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who, when living among you, carefully and steadfastly taught the word of truth face to face with his contemporaries and, when he was absent, wrote you letters.

He was martyred in A. Justin Martyr died A. Athenagorus in A. Theophilus , who was ordained pastor of the church at Antioch in about A. Irenaeus died in A. Their translation into English covers between pages in the Ante-Nicene Library.

He quoted from every chapter of Matthew, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians, from all but one or two chapters of Luke, John, Romans, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus, from most chapters of Mark including the last twelve verses , Acts, 2 Corinthians, and Revelation, and from every other book except Philemon and 3 John. One such disclaimer is Rev. John Shelby Spong, who says, Can modern men and women continue to pretend that timeless, eternal, and unchanging truth has been captured in the words of a book that achieved its final written form midway into the second century of this common era?

Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism. How does one determine if the Bible we hold in our hands is really God's Word or not? How were these early writings compiled and on what basis? In addition, how do we know that the Bible we purchase from the shelf of a Christian bookstore is the same as when it was first penned?

We will attempt to answer these questions in the following study. Inspiration is how God gave His Word to man. Canonization is how man collected God's Word. Transmission is how man transmitted that word to succeeding generations. Inspiration is the first and most important part of this study. Furthermore, Canonization and Transmission are hinged upon Inspiration. Without Inspiration, not only would it be pointless to go on in our study, but the other two parts would not even exist.

Inspiration, simply defined, tells us how God gave us His Word. The Webster's Dictionary defines inspiration this way concerning sacred revelation, a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation.

A better definition of Inspiration is found in the Scriptures, particularly in 2Ti , where it says, All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. The idea is that the Scriptures originate from God and comprise His inerrant Word.

Definitions for Inspiration are:. Inspiration God-breathed , emphasizes the exhalation of God, hence, spiration would be more accurate since it emphasizes that Scripture is the product of the breath of God The Scriptures are not something breathed into by God, rather, the Scriptures have been breathed out by God Moody Handbook of Theology. Inspiration is God's superintending of human authors so that, using their own individual personalities, they composed and recorded without error in the words of the original autographs His revelation to man.

Ryrie, Basic Theology. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the verbally inspired Word of God, the final authority for faith and life, inerrant in the original writings, infallible and God-breathed 2Tim.