What Is the New Testament?

The New Testament is the apostolic, self-evidencing, covenantal testimony to the New Covenant established by Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

Apostolic Testimony

Jesus himself called the apostles
1. Matt 16:16-18: What is the rock? Peter in his role as spokesman for the apostles confessing Jesus to be the Christ
2. John 14:26: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
Paul commissioned to be an apostle directly by Christ
1. Galatians 1:1, 11-17: “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead … 11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.”
2. Rom 1:1-2:
  1. “Paul, servant of Christ Jesus”
  2. “Apostle by divine calling”
  3. “Set apart for the gospel of God”
  4. “Which he promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy Scriptures”
Pentecost and the apostolic preaching
1. Ascension and Pentecost make the apostles Spirit-empowered witnesses
  1. Acts 1:8: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
  2. Acts 2:32: This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.
  3. Acts 3:15: and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.
  4. Acts 5:32: And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.
  5. Acts 10:39-41: And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
  6. Acts 13:31: and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.
2. Formation of NT canon flows from this
3. If Ascension and Pentecost are part of redemptive history, then so is the apostolic witness, which was empowered by the Spirit that the ascended Lord poured out on his church.
The New Testament as eschatological revelation
1. “Fulfillment” as the controlling category.
2. The kingdom of God inaugurated in Christ’s death and resurrection.
The apostolic word as the form of the realized eschaton.
1. The apostolic office and the formation of NT scripture
2. Their eyewitness authority and the role of the Spirit.
3. The closing of the canon as the cessation of foundational revelation.
4. Eph 2:20: The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
Vos, Biblical Theology
1. Special revelation: Word + Deed + Word
2. The explanatory word is part of the history of redemption
Herman Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures - Canon belongs to the history of redemption.
1. The NT canon arises from its place within God’s unfolding plan of redemption.
2. The canon is the written witness to the saving acts of God in Christ and is therefore authoritative because it belongs to the history of redemption itself.
Christ gave authoritative commissioning to the apostles.
1. The foundation for canonical authority lies in Christ’s commissioning of the apostles.
2. Because Christ endowed the apostles with authority to proclaim God’s redemptive acts, their spoken testimony carried divine authority.
3. When that testimony was intentionally recorded in writing, those writings were invested with the same authority, and thus became canonical.
The canon was not created but was recognized.
1. The process of recognition of the canon was not the church creating authority in those texts but rather the church recognizing the texts that had already functioned with apostolic authority.
2. Early acceptance of most New Testament writings reflects their inherent redemptive-historical authority rather than arbitrary ecclesial endorsement.
Apostolic proclamation, witness, and teaching.
1. The proclamation (kerygma), witness (marturia), and teaching (didache) of the apostles are themselves part of redemptive history and thus inherently authoritative.
2. Scripture’s authority is tied to God’s saving acts in history, in the following way:
  1. Christ did many things to accomplish redemption (earthly word-and-deed ministry, saving death and resurrection).
  2. One of the things he did as the Messiah was to call and commission the apostles to be his witnesses.
  3. The apostles were appointed by Christ to bear authoritative witness to his person and work so that his saving work might be believed on by others for their salvation.
3. The apostolic witness is thus an essential part of the saving history of redemption.

Self-evidencing Testimony

It demonstrates itself to be the Word of God by
1. Its inherent dignity and majesty
2. Its claims to be from the very mouth of God
3. Its moral authority
4. Its infinitely great and glorious Triune God
5. Its unveiling of a way of salvation that no human mind could have conceived - incarnation
Contra the Roman Catholic view that the authority of Scripture depends on the teaching magisterium of the church
1. Thereby placing church above Scripture
2. But church ought to be accountable to Scripture and continually reforming itself in accord with Scripture.
3. Just as the OT people of God heard God’s Word, received it, “Amen,” and reformed themselves.
1 Corinthians 2:12–14: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God… they are spiritually discerned.”
1. The natural person is spiritually blind.
2. To recognize Scripture’s divine authority requires spiritual discernment.
3. The Holy Spirit enables us to perceive Scripture’s divine qualities.
John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
1. Christ’s voice, heard in Scripture, is recognized by his sheep.
2. Just as sheep recognize the shepherd, so the regenerate recognize the divine voice in Scripture.
Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword…”
1. The inherent power of Scripture to penetrate the heart and conscience, testifying to its divine origin.
Luke 24:32: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
1 Thessalonians 2:13: “You received the word of God … not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”
1. The Thessalonians recognized the divine nature of the Word instinctively
  1. Not by argument but by experiencing its spiritual power
  2. “The word, which is at work in you believers.”
Rom 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
1. All believers can testify that they have experienced its saving power in their own lives.
2. Through the gospel, God has …
  1. reconciled us to himself
  2. counted us righteous
  3. made us his children
  4. put his Spirit within us
  5. begun to transform us
  6. introduced us into his new community
3. Leon Morris: “When the gospel is preached, this is not simply so many words being uttered. The power of God is at work. When the gospel enters anyone’s life, it is as though the very fire of God had come upon him.”

Covenantal Testimony

Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority
1. Scripture as covenant document
2. Suzerainty treaties with vassals
  1. Preamble: “I am the LORD your God”
  2. Historical Prologue
  3. Stipulations
  4. Sanctions
  5. Documentary clause (Deut 4:2)
3. “The formation of the canon … was a divine work by which the authoritative words of God were through the mystery of inspiration inscripturated in document after document, the canon being formed by the very appearance of these God-breathed Scriptures” (SBA 23).
4. “The origin of the OT canon coincided with the founding of the kingdom of Israel by covenant at Sinai … Canon is inherent in covenant” (SBA 43).
5. The OT writings “issued ultimately from the throne room of Israel’s heavenly King and that all its literary forms possess a functional unity as instruments of Yahweh’s ongoing covenantal oversight of the conduct and faith of his vassal people” (SBA 46).
The Old and the New Covenants (or Testaments)
1. 2 Cor 3:12-14: “Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, 13 not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. 14 But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.”
The Significance of the Order of the NT Books Core of NT: Gospels + Paul’s Epistles After adding Acts (after Gospels and before Paul) and Revelation (as capstone at end), we get the final order:
The Fourfold Gospel
The Acts of the Apostles
The Epistles
1. Pauline Epistles
2. Hebrews
3. Catholic Epistles
The Apocalypse
What this order means theologically
1. Primacy of the fourfold Gospel (record of establishment of the new covenant)
2. Doctrinal and practical exposition of the fourfold Gospel (epistles) comes after
  1. In actual historical fact, most of the epistles were the earliest NT documents, and the four Gospels were written later.
  2. However, the Gospels are based on earlier oral traditions.
  3. The canonical sequence (Gospels, then Epistles) is theological
This wholistic reading of the NT canon affects how we interpret the various parts of the NT
1. Recurring problem in NT scholarship:
  1. Reading books of NT in isolation from rest of NT
  2. Positing multiple unique Christian communities
  3. Viewing different NT books or collections as having distinct and even contrasting theologies.
  4. Sometimes even Paul’s letters are read in conflict with one another (“development”).
2. We won’t pit Paul against Jesus (as if Jesus were merely a moral teacher not interested in soteriology and theology, or as if Paul had no interest in the earthly Jesus and his teaching).
3. We will interpret the epistles in light of the Gospels, seeing the epistles as commentary on and explanation and application of the Gospel (e.g., Paul’s atonement theology as consistent outworking of Jesus’ own teaching on the meaning of his death).
4. We won’t pit the so-called low functional Christology of the synoptic Gospels against the high divine-identity Christology of John.
5. We will read all of the authors of the NT as fundamentally on the same page - same apostolic orthodoxy.
6. We will read John’s Gospel as presupposing and expanding on the Synoptic Gospels.
7. We won’t pit the eschatological teaching of the epistles against that of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse or of Revelation, but read them all in harmony (which leads to an amillennial reading of Rev 20, and which keeps us from taking preterism too far).