B.B. Warfield – We’ve Never Been Without a Canon

25 Oct

In order to obtain a correct understanding of what is called the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very firmly in our minds one fact which is obvious enough when attention is once called to it. That is, that the Christian church did not require to form for itself the idea of a “canon,”—or, as we should more commonly call it, of a “Bible,”—that is, of a collection of books given of God to be the authoritative rule of faith and practice. It inherited this idea from the Jewish church, along with the thing itself, the Jewish Scriptures, or the “Canon of the Old Testament.” The church did not grow up by natural law: it was founded. And the authoritative teachers sent forth by Christ to found his church, carried with them, as their most precious possession, a body of divine Scriptures, which they imposed on the church that they founded as its code of law. No reader of the New Testament can need proof of this; on every page of that book is spread the evidence that from the very beginning the Old Testament was as cordially recognized as law by the Christian as by the Jew. The Christian church thus was never without a “Bible” or a “canon.”


~B.B. Warfield~




The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: The Canon of the New Testament: How and When Formed (Philadelphia, PA; American Sunday-School Union; 1892) p. 3-4.

Books by B.B. Warfield

More Warfield Quotes at The Old Guys

3 Responses to “B.B. Warfield – We’ve Never Been Without a Canon”

  1. lacykitkat October 25, 2013 at 5:46 am #

    Reblogged this on HE STILL SPEAKS!.

  2. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert October 25, 2013 at 11:54 am #

    Reblogged this on Irishanglican's Weblog.

  3. mydelightandmycounsellors October 25, 2013 at 1:00 pm #

    Reblogged this on My Delight and My Counsellors.

Leave a comment