The canonicity of NT became necessary after the death of the apostles and the infiltration of heretical teachings into the doctrine of the apostles.
It took almost four centuries after the death of Christ before the canonicity of NT was completed. As in the case of the OT, there was an attempt to infiltrate a number of previously rejected writings into the canon of the NT. These included the Acts of Paul and Thekla, the Epistle of Barnabas, the gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Andrew, the gospel of Peter, revelation of Peter, the shepherded of Hermas etc. Therefore, some criteria had to be set up to specify once and for all which books were to be excluded and which were to be included in the NT.
There was an initial objection to the inclusion of some books in the canon of the NT. For instance, the style of 2Peter was seen to differ from that of 1Peter, so some scholars thought the writers might not be the same person. Also, the writers of James and Jude called themselves servants not Apostles. The writer of 2John and 3John called himself Elder. Questions were also raised about the style of revelation. Only twenty of the present twenty seven books were readily accepted.
CRITERIA FOR NT CANONICITY
- Apostolicity –Books written by an Apostle or someone closely associated with any of the Apostles were taken to be authentic. Mark was associated with Peter and Luke was associated with Paul.
- Reception by the churches – The book must have been universally received by the local churches as authentic at the time of their writing.
- Consistency –The book must be consistent with the doctrine that the church already possessed and with the OT and Apostolic teaching.
- Inspiration-Each book must give evidence, internally and externally, of being divinely inspired (compare I Cor.12: 10.)
- Internal -To be canonical, each book must contain exhortation to public exegesis of the word (compare Col. 4:16 I Thes 5:27; I Tim 4:13; Rev. 1:3:7; 3:6.).
In 336AD, the churches decided to meet together to finalize the NT canon based on the above criteria. The first council meeting rejected only the book of Revelation as being canonical but subsequent church council accepted Revelation and other books of our Canon. The first council met in Laodecia (336AD); Second council in Damascus (382 AD); Third council in Carthage (397 AD); Fourth council in Hippo (419AD) Thus concluded the canonicity of the NT as we have it today.
– gabriel ajibade