Like a Thermometer, Not a Thermostat

Michael Kruger on the proper role of the church in the authentication of the canon of the New Testament:  

The books received by the church inform our understanding of which books are canonical not because the church is infallible or because it created or constituted the canon, but because the church’s reception of these books is a natural and inevitable outworking of the self-authenticating nature of Scripture. Viewing the role of the church in the context of a self-authenticating Bible can bring fresh understanding to the complex church-canon relationship … . The Catholic model [of the canon] insists that the church’s reception of these books is the sole grounds for the canon’s authority. In the self-authenticating model, however, the church’s reception of these books proves not to be evidence of the church’s authority to create the canon, but evidence of the opposite, namely, the authority, power, and impact of the self-authenticating Scripture to elicit a corporate response from the church. Jesus’s statement that “my sheep hear my voice … and they follow me” (John 10:27) is not evidence for the authority of the sheep’s decision to follow, but evidence for the authority and efficacy of the Shepherd’s voice to call. After all, the act of hearing is, by definition, derivative not constitutive. Thus, when the canon is understood as self-authenticating, it is clear that the church did not choose the canon, but the canon, in a sense, chose itself… . [T]he role of the church is like a thermometer, not a thermostat. Both instruments provide information about the temperature in the room—but one determines it and one reflects it.

Quoting from Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.

Other quotations from this book:

• A Canon Based on Probability
• Canonical Bookends