An Argument For the Intellectual Acceptability of the Christian Belief in the Canon

The focus of this book is on answering the question of whether we, as Christians, can believe with intellectual honesty that we have the right twenty-seven books in the New Testament. In order to answer this question, the author organizes the book into two parts. Part one deals with the various approaches to Canon formation. Three models are evaluated: Canon as community determined, Canon as historically determined, and Canon as self-authenticating. In part two, he evaluates the models and concludes that both the community based and historically based models are insufficient to answer the question posed by the book. He concludes that the self-authenticating model is the most appropriate.

This book is very well written. The arguments are clear and the scholarship is evident. I believe the author is right in his summation that Christians do have sufficient evidence from the Canonical models, particularly the self-authenticating model, to justify the belief that the correct twenty-seven books are included in the New Testament. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the arguments surrounding Canonical authenticity. It is a particularly good book for students of the New Testament and written in such a way that it can be understood by a variety of readers.

I reviewed this book for Crossway: Canon Revisited by Michael J.Kruger