A reader writes

A reader writes:

I wonder if you would be willing to recommend books that might be helpful for an evangelical friend of mine who is starting to ask me questions about the formation of the canon of the Bible.

A little more on his situation: I’m a tutor at Oregon State University, and he started as one of my students in his sophomore year. (He was a physics student; he’s now entering grad school in engineering.) I helped him off and on for several years, and we became friends. He grew up in a small non-denom church, but went to a Catholic school, which didn’t make much of an impression on him. He wasn’t particularly devout when I met him, and was living with a girl. The Lord really started nudging me to pray for him and talk to him about faith. We did a little Bible study and prayer together, and that, plus a much healthier relationship with another girl, plus a lot of grace, have him now on fire to get closer to God. He’s getting very involved in a local evangelical church, and wants to learn all he can. (He’s also talking about taking some leadership and ministry classes from a different – rather anti-Catholic – church in town, which worries me a little. Still, he’s aware of their… issues… and has assured me that he sees it as a blind spot on their part.)

Anyway, in multiple conversations with me, he’s gotten to a point where he doesn’t think the Catholic Church is reflexively wrong. 🙂 Even where he doesn’t agree, he disagrees respectfully. And as I said, he’s now asking me about the canon of Scripture. (And the “lost books”. I’ve already warned him against the Gnostic stuff.) Naturally, this raises all sorts of other issues about authority, Tradition, and so forth, though I don’t think he’s seen that yet.

I am unsure what to recommend because:

1) His historical ignorance is pretty much complete. To give you an idea, when I mentioned the Councils of Carthage and Hippo in the late 4th century, he was puzzled that the participants were bishops and wanted to know why Martin Luther wasn’t involved. In other words, the book(s) can’t assume he knows ANYTHING already.

2) My own reading is mostly of Catholics, and I think he would probably find a non-Catholic author, or at least a Catholic author with a lot of sympathy for where he’s coming from, more approachable for starters. Hence why I thought of you! (I’ve read some of your books, but haven’t seen one on this topic.) I think it would be a lot harder for him to shake off assertions by a Protestant author than one he could see as being biased from a Catholic perspective.

If you can find the time to suggest a few books and/or authors, I would be much obliged. And if you and yours would send a few prayers his way (his name’s Christopher), that would be most welcome too!

Probably the best starter discussion of the issue for him would be my own By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition. It takes apart the Evangelical assumptions about Sacred Tradition (particularly concerning “How do we know what books belong in the Bible?”) and then give the sort of “Big Picture” explanation of how the canon was settled upon.

The very short answer to the question “What gives the Church the right to decide what goes in the Bible?” is “What gives you the right to decide what goes in your family photo album?” Cuz that’s what the Bible is: the Christian family photo album. It reflects what it was canonized to reflect: the faith of the Holy Catholic Church.