Bruce Metzger: It may be concluded, therefore, that, while the New Testament canon should, from a theoretical point of view, be regarded as open in principle for either the addition or the deletion of one or more books, from a practical point of view such a modification can scarcely be contemplated as either possible or desirable. To say that the canon may be revised is not the same as saying it must be revised. The canon by which the Church has lived over the centuries emerged in history, the result of a slow and gradual process. To be sure, in this canon there are documents less firmly attested by external criteria than others. But the several parts have all been cemented together by usage and by general acceptance in the Church, which has recognized, and recognizes, that God has spoken and is speaking to her in and through this body of early Christian literature. As regards this social fact, nothing can be changed; the Church has received the canon of the New Testament as it is today, in the same way as the Synagogue has had bequeathed to it the Hebrew canon. In short, the canon cannot be remade"”for the simple reason that history cannot be remade. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, third, enlarged ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 275.
Bruce M. Metzger writing on the NT canon: In most discussions of the canon of the New Testament little or no attention is paid to the basic question whether the canon should be described as a collection of authoritative books or as an authoritative collection of books. These two formulations differ fundamentally and involve totally different implications. (A third formulation, that the canon is an authoritative collection of authoritative books, is merely a modification of the second formulation, and may be set aside in the present discussion.
The word "˜canon´, whether in Greek, Latin or English, conveys many different meanings. In Greek, among the several major meanings which the word ï«ï¡ï®ï·ï¶ï® bears, these are two uses that, for the sake of clarity, must be distinguished when considering the development of the New Testament canon. The word ï«ï¡ï®ï·ï¶ï® has an active sense, referring to those books that serve to mark out the norm for Christian faith and life; it has also a passive sense, referring to the list of books that have been marked out by the Church as normative. The two usages may be succinctly designated by two Latin tags, norma Normans, that is, "˜the rules that prescribes´, and norma normata, that is, "˜the rule that is prescribed´, i.e. by the Church. According to these two senses of ï«ï¡ï®ï·ï¶ï® the New Testament can be described either as a collection of authoritative books, or as an authoritative collection of books.
In the former case, the books within the collection are regarded as possessing an intrinsic worth prior to their having been assembled, and their authority is grounded in their nature and source. In the latter case, the collection itself is regarded as giving the books an authority they did not possess before they were designated as belonging to the collection. That is to say, the canon is invested with dogmatic significance arising from the activity of canonization.
If the authority of the New Testament books resides not in the circumstance of their inclusion within a collection made by the Church, but in the source from which they came, then the New Testament was in principle complete when the various elements coming from this source had been written. That is to say, when once the principle of the canon had been determined, then ideally its extent is fixed and the canon is complete when the books which by principle belong to it have been written. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, third, enlarged ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 282-283.
Bruce M. Metzger: There are, in fact, no historical data that prevent one from acquiescing in the conviction held by the Church Universal that, despite the very human factors (the confusion hominum) in the production, preservation, and collection of the books of the New Testament, the whole process can also be rightly characterized as the result of divine overruling in the providentia Dei. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, third, enlarged ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 285.
I just wanted to get some other perspectives on this. One of the things that's really confusing to me and others is that this particular crowd basically will just say that James White is wrong and go on to say why without demonstrating why. An answer isn't given asking them to exegete a passage of Scripture, but they will say how wrong White and the rest of us are.
