DAY 262
CHALLENGE
“Your claim that Tradition determines the canon of Scripture (see Day 247) is false. The books of the Bible witness to one another as Scripture.”
DEFENSE
There are several problems with this view.
Various biblical books do refer to other books as Scripture. For example, Matthew 21:42 quotes Psalm 118:22–23 as being among “the scriptures.” Other passages in Matthew use the formula “it is written,” which commonly introduces Scripture quotations, to refer to Micah 5:2 (Matt. 2:5), Deuteronomy 8:3 (Matt. 4:4), Isaiah 56:7 (Matt. 21:13), and Zechariah 13:7 (Matt. 26:31). From this one may build a case that Matthew acknowledged the Psalms, Micah, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Zechariah as Scripture.
This is actually a useful technique for determining what the biblical authors regarded as Scripture. However, it has several major limitations that create problems.
First, it won’t give you the complete Old Testament, for there are multiple books that the New Testament either never quotes or never quotes as Scripture (see Day 288).
Second, the test is of very little help with the New Testament canon. There are only two places where the New Testament refers to other New Testament books as Scripture. One is 1 Timothy 5:17, which appears to refer to Luke 10:7 as Scripture, and 1 Peter 3:16, where Peter refers in a general way to Paul’s letters as Scripture. The trouble is: He doesn’t name the letters, so we don’t know which ones he’s acknowledging.
Third, although one can use internal references to build a partial knowledge of which books the biblical authors considered Scripture, there is an even more fundamental problem: You must know some books are apostolic to get the process off the ground.
For example, it does no good to know that Matthew’s Gospel treats Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, and so on, as Scripture unless you first know the Gospel of Matthew is apostolic in the sense needed to make it part of the canon. Without that knowledge, you can’t begin applying the technique.
Consequently, we must still appeal to Tradition to know which books are apostolic and thus Scripture. Internal biblical references can play a clarifying and supporting role, but Tradition is still fundamental for identifying Scripture.