Why Christian Scripture is Christian Scripture
Stephen Curkpatrick

Early Christian Scripture consisted of Jewish writings and the first Christian writings, such as Paul’s epistles and the gospels, which were being read alongside Jewish Scripture with equal status. The writings of Christian Scripture, received or newly written, were ultimately affirmed as Scripture through significant community use in the spirit of Christ. This phenomenon raises a question concerning the relationship between Scripture and Church.

Did Scripture precede the Church or did the Church precede Scripture? If Scripture preceded the Church, then Scripture is the definitive point of reference for the Church. If the Church preceded Scripture, then the Church is the definitive interpreter of Scripture. Both these assertions are true, yet they are also inadequate.

Gospel precedes Scripture and Church. The Church exists because it is called into life by the gospel, to which it continues to give testimony. Scripture gives testimony to gospel, which in turn is the Church’s source of life. If the Church interprets Scripture as testimony to gospel, it is a truthful interpreter of Scripture. If the Church forsakes gospel to which Scripture bears testimony, it stands under the judgment of Scripture’s testimony to gospel as the vocative call to faith in response to God’s grace. Scripture’s testimony gives the integral character of Church, while only the Church can interpret Scripture as testimony to gospel.

Scripture preceded the Christian Church as the writings of Israel, which in Christian use was predominantly the Septuagint (Greek translation). Church preceded Christian Scripture as the congregation or qahal of Israel before the lord. Yet the lord’s call in loving-kindness preceded both the congregation and writings of Israel, including and especially, Israel dispersed. The qahal of Israel is the community gathered to hear the word of the lord. This is also true of the gospel of grace in the Christian Church.

The word of God precedes Scripture that, written by faithful hearers in the Spirit, continues to speak the word of God to those with ears to hear. The word of God always precedes the congregation that is called to distinction as saints for faithful testimony in the world.

Christian writings were written because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Being heard as Scripture is a phenomenon of Pentecost as the birth of a unique community in Christ through the Spirit. The canon of Christian Scripture is shaped by gospel focused in Jesus Christ, by reference to gospel in Israel, even in exile, as the sovereign and gracious reality of God anticipated. For Christians, this anticipation is fulfilled in Jesus Christ and is continually informed by the Holy Spirit within a new community in the midst of creation.

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When did early Christian Scripture finally become Christian Scripture? From early in the second century, the writings of Paul were quoted alongside the Septuagint. By mid century, the gospels were also widely used and quoted. Use in worship and proclamation preceded their formal identification as canonical. Within the second century, a list of writings was identified, most of which were later affirmed as the New Testament.§

While various collections of writings were used, Marcion constructed the first deputed canon of Christian Scripture (c 150). This canon excluded everything explicitly Hebrew. Marcion’s selection of writings for Christian Scripture only consisted of edited Pauline letters and an edited version of Luke. His severe reduction of recognised writings made it imperative to define which writings were to be considered Christian Scripture.

Marcion advocated radical discontinuity between the two testimonial sources that Christians were already using as Scripture. Marcion’s writings were selected according to a theological perspective. He articulated a theology of two gods—one of law and wrath in Jewish Scripture and the other of grace and love in gospel, within a form of Christology in which Jesus merely appeared to be human, like an angel (Docetism).

Marcion’s canon represented a fundamental challenge to the nature of Christian faith. Does Christian faith affirm the goodness of creation or is dualism, in which salvation represents an escape from the bonds of matter, its theological focus? Marcion challenged Christian testimony to incarnation and therefore the ethical basis of Christian life. If human embodiment does not figure in redemptive transformation, the incarnation must be interpreted as something other than the Word becoming flesh—therefore docetic or only seeming to appear as incarnate.

Christian use of the Septuagint as Scripture affirmed the goodness of creation and the humanity of persons as unique bodies. This was crucial in the face of Gnostic threats that interpreted salvation in an idealist and disembodied sense. The tension between letter and spirit related to having ears to hear rather than any distinction between matter and spirit. The Septuagint also narrated the human capacity for idolatry, comprise of the good and therefore the necessity of God’s redemptive initiative in grace, which was everywhere anticipated in these writings of Israel.

By recognising Jewish Scripture as an “Old Testament,” even with variation on the number of writings, and Christian writings as a “New Testament,” early Christians sustained both as Scripture. This recognition was based on Christological focus, testimony to gospel and confirmed by use in Christian worship. Through the citation of its hints, resonances, even its enigmas, the Old Testament was referred to as everywhere anticipating Christ, to whom the New Testament gives explicit testimony.

With its horizon of fulfilment in the New Testament, second and third century Christians asserted that the Old Testament had always been Christian Scripture.

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From a Christian perspective, Scripture emerging from Israel’s experience of the lord’s call to unique vocation and the testimony of its variegated responses is referred to as a First or Old Testament. The Old Testament is referred to as “old” because it anticipates the “new” in its prophetic testimony. It is “Christian” or messianic in anticipation of Christ as the fulfilment of messianic anticipation in Israel.

Does the New Testament represent anything new? From a Christian perspective, this can only be a decisive “yes,” otherwise it is pointless to speak about Christian faith as such; the Old Testament would remain an enigma, lacking a point of reference for its variegated trajectories. New Testament testimony affirms God’s disclosure in a unique story of the first hearers of God’s word. By this word, the lord’s righteousness, loving-kindness and call to distinction and testimony were disclosed, while demonstrating human fallibility, yet without religious flight from creation.

Christian Scripture completes a sustained focus on the future in God anticipated and becoming present in constant memory of anticipation in Israel. Diverse trajectories of response to and trust in the lord cohere, astonishingly, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As the human face of God and always present to Christian faith, Jesus Christ gives retrospective and specific shape to the character and meaning of anticipation by the word of God.

Christian Scripture is not merely a collection of cultural writings. Scripture’s testimony is eschatological—of the reality of God becoming present—in which Jesus Christ is its definitive expression through the unique reality of Easter, to which Christian Scripture must always makes reference. It is seamlessly one with the prophetic recognition that God writes Scripture on the heart or the Paraclete who leads into all truth in testimony to Jesus Christ.

 

§ The Muratorian list (c. 180): apart from some small variations (excluded—Hebrews, James, I&II Peter; included—Wisdom of Solomon, Apoc. of Peter) remained the list finally identified by Athanasius (mid 4^th C) and Augustine (late 4^th C) as the New Testament. Any variation is incidental compared to what was affirmed.