Tradition and Authority in Reformed Protestantism

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oral and written, and not written only. Anyone could have, and did ask the Apostles questions concerning the new message they were proclaiming, and they were able to discuss and debate with them openly and in private. 1 The Apostles did not simply write letters which they delivered to churches, churches who were then left to themselves to make sense of their writings; they taught and explained the gospel to them, and at times wrote letters, if they could not be there in person. The Apostle John even said that he would not write a lengthy letter to the church, preferring. to address them in person! (see: 3 John 13-14). In short then, the entire foundation of the Protestant movement presupposes not only a Reformed theological paradigm through which to read the Bible, but it presupposes the complete and closed canon of Bible itself.

The Canon of Scripture: Challenged and Presupposed

The Reformed Protestant of today presupposes a closed (protestant) canon of Scripture in order to have his theology at all. But the NT Church, and the Church of the first and second centuries had no defmed, closed canon of apostolic writings as we have today. As we saw above, the practice of the Apostles was personal teaching and letter writing; not writing letters only. The Apostles were part of a living Church which had within herself, along with the Apostles, those men which the Apostles had appointed as elders and bishops, along with the holy writings. To the Reformed Protestant, I would say: "You can't tell me (for example) that you know more than the Corinthians did about Paul's theology simply because you have two of Paul's letters to that church, when Paul himself was with the Corinthians in person for 18 months (see Acts 18:11), and who also had two additional letters from Paul which you do not possess . .8_ The simple truth is that the first and second century church did not have the complete NT as we have it today. The whole idea of sola scriptura is impossible on the grounds that the complete and closed canon did not exist during the period immediately following the deaths of the Apostles. It took many years for the entire canon of the NT to be defmed (some of the NT books we have in our Bibles today were in doubt), collected and distributed amongst all the churches during the second and third centuries. Churches, let alone each and every individual, did not have a complete Bible as we do today, and so the doctrine of sola scriptura was quite impossible. Protestant scholar F.F. Bruce says: "[I]t is not quite accurate to say that there has never been any doubt in the Church of any of our New Testament books. A few of the shorter Epistles (e.g., 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude) and the Revelation were much longer in being accepted in some parts than in others; while elsewhere books which we do not now include in the New Testament were received as canonical." .2 (emphasis in the original). How was the Church able to discern which books were truly inspired and which ones were not? They were able to discern the inspired books because they already had the Apostolic truth of God's Revelation apart from the writings of the NT. The Church held the Gospel as it was taught her by the Apostles themselves and those whom they appointed as bishops and elders. The Church had oral, personal instruction along with an
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