Do you mean CANNONS or CAnON???

So last night after church we were hanging out talking and the canon of scripture came up; I think it came up because we were talking about subjects about the church that would be good to research, anyways; I said that there are two canons, and immediately I was ganged up upon with questions of confusion. The idea does sound a little weird at first; but two canons totally makes sense, and hopefully I can do the idea justice, but I’m not making any promises. This is how it’s going to go; I’m going to define what canon actually is and how it relates to scripture; then define the two TYPES of canon and then show the importance of how canon1 and canon2 relate to each other. So lets begin.

1) What is canon? The term canon originally referred to a stick by which a measurement was made. By extension it came to mean a rule or a standard that things would follow. Finally the canon was applied to an authoritative list of something, like all the books written by a certain author. The canon in relation to scripture is like the canon of an authors work. A table of contents but way more important and meaningful, I mean it is God’s words.

2) What are the two types of canon? To simply answer that canon1 is created by God’s own inspiration and canon2 is the canon passively recognized by God’s people.

a. Canon1: God creates canon one because he has inspired some writings but not others. Canon1 happens immediately, as soon as God has breathed his word there is a canon. Even if there is no written contents of Gods writing is still exists. Canon1 is known infallibly by God and only God, he knows what he has inspired and what he hasn’t. Let me try to make this a little clearer. You may have written papers for school and turned them in, they are your own writings and they are part of your canon. One day you decide to be dishonest and have someone write a paper for you and pass it off as your own. Even though your name is on the paper and no one may find out that paper is not a part of your canon because you did not write it, it belongs to the canon of the person who wrote it. You alone have infallible knowledge of your own work

b. Canon2: is the canon passively recognized by God’s people. The reason it’s passive is because man does not create can but rather recognizes canon. Canon2 is the human knowledge and understanding of canon1. This is where most of people’s objections to the Bible come from. How do we know that we have the right, full, unmistakable, correct books in the Bible?

3)Is a clear knowledge of God’s canon important to the function of Scripture in the church? Of course it is, so wouldn’t God providentially preserve the scriptures and lead his people to have a functional, sufficient knowledge of the canon? YES he would. God inspired the scriptures and his intent when he did that was to guide the church. The scriptures are for our edification and for his people not to have the fullness or have incorrect things in the Bible would make God out to be a pretty small god and not very powerful. The reason I say this is because if the scripture were made for our edification and to guide HIS church; why would he just give us the scriptures and say “here you go, hope you don’t lose them, hope you can hold onto them” and not divinely guard them for our benefit? He is a much more powerful god than that. To say that we have lost books and books that are incorrect to me seems silly and to say that God is not all that he says he is, but God is all He says he is . But there still is the question of are there other books out there that God has yet to reveal to us? Are there book on canon1 that canon2 has yet to recognize. Is the canon still open for more to be added? In the book Scripture Alone(where I heard the idea of two canons)has a good answer for this question. It’s in the context of whether modern revelation is a possibility and it says,

One would have to hold a view of the church that allows for a complete revision of its purpose beyond that envisioned by the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the revelation of God in Christ, at best, would have to be considered either partial or liable to further future elaboration. This is not what the apostles themselves taught.

Some might suggest that the change in times require God to give new revelation, but the scriptures teach that God is eternal and had infallible knowledge of the future so I’m sure God was planning for future events when he was inspiring the scriptures. I don’t know if I did my argument any justice or if everyone is just more confused. Read Scripture Alone and I’m sure that will clear some things up if I just messed you up for life.