Question: Hey pastor, how did they figure out which books belonged in the Bible? There were a lot of other books floating around back then. Who decided what got in and what got left out?
Answer: Great question! Let's get into it.
I get some version of this question a lot, and I love it, because it usually means someone is taking the Bible seriously enough to ask where it came from. That's a good thing. Our faith doesn't ask us to turn our brains off.
A lot of people have picked up the idea (thanks to The Da Vinci Code) that sometime in the fourth century, a group of powerful bishops sat in a room, sorted through a pile of books, kept the ones that helped their agenda, and burned the rest. Usually, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea get the blame. It makes for a great movie plot. It just isn't what happened. The Council of Nicaea in AD 325 dealt with the deity of Christ and the Arian controversy. It never voted on which books belonged in the Bible.[1]
So what did happen?
The Church Didn't Create the Canon. It Recognized It.
This is the single most important thing to understand. The word *canon* comes from a Greek word for a measuring rod or standard. When we talk about "the canon," we're talking about the books that function as the church's standard for faith and life.
Bruce Metzger, one of the great textual scholars of the last century, put it this way: the canon is "a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books."[2] In other words, these books didn't become authoritative because the church put them on a list. The church put them on a list because they were already authoritative. The early Christians weren't deciding what God had said. They were recognizing what God had said.
Start With the Old Testament
Jesus didn't hand His disciples a blank slate. He handed them a Bible. When He taught after the resurrection, He opened up "the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms" to show them that everything was about Him (Luke 24:44). That threefold description matches the way the Jewish Scriptures were arranged.
The Jewish historian Josephus, writing near the end of the first century, said the Jews had a fixed set of sacred books and that no one had dared to add to them or take away from them.[3] So when the first Christians talked about "the Scriptures," they meant a body of books that was already known and received. If Jesus trusted those Scriptures, we can too.
The New Testament Was Recognized Early
Here's what surprises a lot of people: the New Testament writers themselves were already treating apostolic writings as Scripture.
Peter puts Paul's letters right alongside "the other Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:15-16). Paul, in 1 Timothy 5:18, quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 and then a saying of Jesus found in Luke 10:7, and he calls both of them "Scripture." That's remarkable. Within a generation, the words of Jesus and the writings of His apostles were being placed on the same level as Moses.
By around AD 180, Irenaeus of Lyons was arguing that there are four Gospels, no more and no less, and he named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.[4] He wasn't introducing a new idea. He was defending what the churches already used. Charles Hill has shown in detail that these four Gospels held a unique place in the church long before any council met.[5]
So, How Did They Tell the Difference?
As the church faced false teachers and competing books, a few questions kept coming up. These weren't a checklist invented by a committee, but they show how the early church thought.
1. Is it connected to an apostle? The apostles were Christ's appointed witnesses (Acts 1:21-22; Ephesians 2:20). A book needed to come from an apostle or someone closely connected to one, like Mark with Peter or Luke with Paul.
2. Does it match the faith that was handed down? Jude talks about "the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). A book that contradicted the gospel the churches had received from the apostles was rejected, no matter whose name was on it.
3. Was it received and used by the churches broadly? A book that was read and treasured by churches all across the Roman world, not just one region or one group, carried weight.
Michael Kruger adds an important point here. Behind all of these questions is something deeper: God's people recognize God's voice. Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice" (John 10:27). Kruger argues that the canonical books bear the marks of their divine origin, and the Spirit led the church to recognize them.[6] The church's role was to receive, not to rule.
What About All Those Other Books?
This is the heart of the question, so let's be honest about it. Yes, there were other books. They generally fall into two groups.
Good books that were never considered Scripture. Writings like the Didache, 1 Clement, and The Shepherd of Hermas were read and respected in the early church. Think of them like a great Christian book on your shelf today. Helpful? Absolutely. Scripture? No. The Muratorian Fragment (an early list of New Testament books, usually dated to the late second century) actually says The Shepherd could be read, but not publicly in church as Scripture, because it was written "very recently, in our times," not by an apostle.[7] Notice how careful they were.
Books that were rejected outright. This is where the "lost gospels" come in: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Judas, and others. These were generally written in the second century or later, long after the apostles were gone, and many reflect Gnostic ideas that contradict the Bible's teaching about creation, the body, and Christ Himself.
One of my favorite stories here involves a bishop named Serapion around AD 200. A church in his area was reading the Gospel of Peter. At first, he let it slide. Then he actually read it, found teaching that didn't line up with the faith, and wrote to tell them to stop.[8] That's not a power grab. That's a pastor doing his job.
Didn't Some Books Take a While?
Yes, and I think that's actually encouraging. A handful of books, like Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, were questioned in some regions for a time. Eusebius, writing in the early fourth century, sorted books into those universally accepted, those disputed by some, and those rejected.[9]
The church took its time and asked hard questions. That's what you'd hope for. These weren't people grabbing whatever book sounded spiritual.
When Was the List Finalized?
In AD 367, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote a letter to his churches listing the twenty-seven books of our New Testament, exactly as we have them today.[10] Regional councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) affirmed the same list. But F. F. Bruce makes an important point: those councils didn't give these books any authority they didn't already have. They simply put on record what the churches had already recognized.[11]
Bottom Line- Can We Trust It?
Yes. The story of the canon isn't a story of political scheming. It's a story of God's providence and God's people listening carefully for God's voice over generations.
Isaiah tells us, "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever" (Isaiah 40:8). God didn't speak and then leave His people guessing about what He said. He spoke, He preserved His word, and He led His church to recognize it.
So here's my encouragement. Don't just trust that we have the right books. Open them up and read them. The best evidence that these books are God's word is what happens when you actually sit with them.
Sources and Further Reading
[1]: Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Metzger's account of the fourth century shows the canon discussion moved through bishops' lists and regional synods, not Nicaea.
[2]: Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, 282.
[3]: Josephus, Against Apion 1.38-42.
[4]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8.
[5]: Charles E. Hill, Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[6]: Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012). See also Kruger, *The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate* (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013).
[7]: The Muratorian Fragment, lines 73-80. For the text and discussion, see Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, 191-201, 305-307.
[8]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.12.
[9]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.25.
[10]: Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (AD 367).
[11]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988).
