I’ve always been fascinated with the history of how our scriptures came together. The canonization process and the determination of which books are scripture and which aren’t is a compelling part of church history.
Of course, we know that the early church considered the Tanakh, or what we call the Old Testament, to be scripture. The Torah (the Law or Pentateuch), the Nevi'im (the Prophets), and the Ketuvim (the Writings) were important to Jesus, His disciples, and the early church, and they’re important to us today. But when did the New Testament scriptures begin to come together? It might be earlier than you think.
In his second epistle, the Apostle Peter wrote about his fellow apostle Paul, and he made an interesting comment about Paul’s writings:
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
2 Peter 3:15-16 (ESV)
Pastor and apologist Mike Winger recently described this passage on Facebook in an inimitable way, and he showed how even the apostles anticipated false teaching and heretical conflict.
“I’ve always thought it was really cool that 2 Peter calls the writings of Paul ‘Scripture,’” he writes. “Actually, ‘cool’ is a bit of an understatement.”
Winger adds that Peter’s equating Paul’s writings with scripture demonstrates “that the church, very early on, believed the apostles to have written Scripture. Which pushes against some wrong, liberal theology views about the formation and nature of the New Testament.”
In the Logos Bible Software course “How We Got the New Testament,” the late Michael Heiser points out that by elevating Paul’s writings to the level of Old Testament scripture, Peter “makes that connection, that analogy, with things that were conceived of as Scripture and sort of links that to what Paul’s doing.”
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Another point that Winger makes from these two verses from the New Testament is “that Peter affirmed Paul’s apostleship. Which challenges a false view that many hold even today.” This echoes what the Lexham Context Commentary points out: “Peter mentions that Paul taught the same things that he is teaching in this letter because false teachers distorted what Paul taught.”
Winger adds that these verses demonstrate “that Peter and Paul were not in conflict, which can be shown elsewhere but is important especially for those who want to claim Peter while rejecting Paul (yep, that’s a real thing). This also pushes against another liberal view which teaches that Paul highjacked the gospel and has his own teachings which conflicted with Peter’s.”
What’s so amazing about what we can glean from just two verses across the canon of scripture is that even the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, built nuggets into their writings that withstand the things that heretics and others who try to tear down the Bible’s authority try to use against it.
“In the little phrase, ‘other Scriptures,’ the Holy Spirit was anticipating and addressing false teachings and unbelief in ways that would be needed even 2,000 years later,” Winger concludes. “God is smart like that. The Bible is good like that.”
I say “amen” to that!
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