The Old Testament would be supplemented by what Jesus taught and did.

The challenge is open then for the early church, how to limit what is inevitably opened

by the coming and teaching of Jesus.

So then the question became not, will we add to the Old Testament?

That's a given. The Messiah is here. We got to add because he's here, and he's talking.

He's teaching. He's sending. We got to add, but now we can't have everything. We can't just say everything is new revelation. So the issue of canon becomes utterly crucial.

Which books form the New Testament and how are they recognized as Scripture? In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper traces the development of the New Testament canon,

emphasizing how the early church, under God's providence,

identified authoritative texts. This seminar was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church

in September 2001.

The New Testament assumed the existence of canonical scriptures.

The concept was not foreign to them.

So I'm just going to set the stage with a series of arguments here for how we move towards the concept of a New Testament canon,

and then how we move towards the 27 books that are in it and know others, even though you have the same

phenomenon with New Testament, Apocrypha. The word apocrypha comes from the word secret

and means books that were written later and some people thought they should be added or not add.

Just like there were Old Testament books written after the prophets, there were New Testament claims written after the apostles

and the question is should they get in. So I'm going to start by just saying in the early church they

started with a concept of a closed canon namely the jewish canon so for example luke 24 27

beginning with moses and with all the prophets he explained to them the things concerning himself

in all the scriptures.

So here have Jesus talking about all the scriptures, and he walks them through them, as it were, to explain himself.

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