In my search for quality Christian media for my kids, friends recommended the series What’s in the Bible? with Buck Denver (WITB). It features a collection of memorable puppet characters and the ever-skillful Phil Vischer, creator of this series and of VeggieTales. WITB is an excellent resource, albeit one with clearly Protestant ideas.
What I enjoy most about watching these new videos with my kids is the curious experience of seeing Phil and his band of puppet friends unknowingly support Catholic doctrine. For example, Protestants—I used to be one—can’t seem to untether themselves from tradition. Nowhere are they stauncher in their traditionalism than on the canon of Scripture.
One thing I have found particularly neat about the series is its depth; they talk about Church history. And when questions related to Church history arise, Phil turns to his pirate friend Captain Pete for a lesson. In the series’ second video, Captain Pete gives a pretty decent outline of the formation of the New Testament Canon. In his words, “the New Testament canon [was determined] by the leaders of the early Christian church.” Captain Pete goes on to explain that every New Testament writing was completed by about A.D. 95, but new writings kept popping up.
These leaders, the pirate explains, set about their task of determining which writings were part of Scripture and which weren’t by establishing a test with three criteria:
1. Was the writing from an apostle or close friend of an apostle?
2. Did the writing agree with what the apostles and the early Church leaders taught?
3. Was the writing already accepted and used by the whole Church?
Evaluating Protestant criteria for a canon
Why these three criteria and not others? What we can see in the criteria is a desire to draw from sources close to Jesus Christ and to avoid deviating from what those sources were known to have taught. Simply put, the criteria are reducible to tradition.
The first and third criteria are rather clear in their logic. We trust the apostles, hence criterion one and the first half of criterion two. And we trust that the whole Church hasn’t been fooled into accepting novel teachings, hence criterion three. The second half of criterion two is where this gets interesting. How is it that the teachings of early Church leaders would constitute a test for canonicity? Apparently, it wasn’t enough to test a writing only against the apostolic epistles. Even if the writing of an apostle’s friend were in accord with the apostles’ teachings and widely accepted, it still needed to be measured against the teachings of the Church leaders. These teachings were not in letters that might have been included in the canon; rather they were traditions—both traditional tenets of the Faith and traditional practices.
The early Church leaders taught what to believe and how to live the Faith, and those teachings had been handed down for centuries by the time the canon was taking shape. The burden was on the written texts to comport with the earlier, traditional teachings.
In short, Phil and his friends are acknowledging that defining a New Testament canon was the codification of Tradition. It turns out that the men who performed this important responsibility were traditionally regarded as having authority by their ordination as bishops— successors of the apostles—and would therefore be authoritative recipients of their teachings, both written and oral, capable of determining canonicity.
The Bible supports this
I don’t think we should find it at all surprising that this history is supported by the Bible. We see St. Paul commending the church in Corinth for maintaining traditions he had given them (1 Cor. 11:2), and likewise exhorting Timothy to pass on the same (2 Tim. 2:2; cf. 2 Thess. 2:15). If anyone were to wonder why the bishops who formulated the canon would use Tradition as a criterion, it seems they got the idea from St. Paul. All of this also happens to explain why there was never a need—even among the Protestant Reformers—to revisit the New Testament canon in order to add or remove texts. The canon came from authority that was divinely protected from error in such matters, and to revise it would be to deny Tradition.
Imperfect, but refreshing ecumenism
Phil and Captain Pete might not have fully understood what they were defending in their Church history lesson, but I’m glad they did it. Sure, it was an imperfect retelling, but they shared why they cling so tightly to the New Testament canon. They accept that ancient canon of Scripture as did countless generations before them, and thank God for it.
In Jesus, we pray for and desire unity, and “Sacred Scriptures provide for the work of dialogue an instrument of the highest value in the mighty hand of God for the attainment of that unity which the Savior holds out to all” (Unitatis Redintegratio). So, God bless Phil Vischer. If he and the rest of our Protestant brethren weren’t such staunch traditionalists, they might not have been our brethren at all.