The Church’s Role in the Forming of the New Testament Canon
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the early Church. Being a nerd about history I tend to invest a lot of time in such things. As anyone versed in early Church history would know, you cannot avoid running into the formation of the New Testament canon. Growing up, I never really thought about how the canon was formed. I kind of thought that God told all of the authors of the Bible to write their letter or letters and then get together and compile it into one book and tell everyone that this is God’s inspired word. This is incorrect. I don’t think that a great many Christians, even if they can see this as a silly and naive notion, can, in fact, offer up a more accurate account of the formation of the canon. The canon, or the 27 books that make up the New Testament, was a collection of books written between AD 49 through as late as AD 95 (depending on your dating of Revelation). However, these were not the only Christian books/letters in circulation at this time. In fact the boo