Sample Chapter

About

“Any scientific investigator of Scripture repeatedly confronts the issue of the character of the Bible’s authority,” writes Herman Ridderbos in the opening lines of this book. From there he goes on to examine the basis for the church’s acceptance of the New Testament as canonical. More than a merely academic question, the canonicity of the New Testament remains a vital concern for the church today. It is a question of whether these twenty-seven books are in fact God’s holy Word and therefore authoritative for our faith and life.

Dr. Ridderbos stresses that the foundation for the canon lies in the history of redemption itself, wherein Christ gave distinctive authority to His apostles. On that basis Ridderbos examines the authority of the New Testament as it is characterized in the content of the text itself—in terms of the redemptive-historical categories of kerygma (proclamation), marturia (witness), and didache (doctrine).

The Author

Herman N. Ridderbos

Herman Ridderbos has been professor of New Testament studies in the Theological Seminary at Kampen, the Netherlands, since 1943. He has become well known in America through his writings, including a volume on Galatians in the New International Commentary on the New Testament, Paul and Jesus, When the Time Had Fully Come, The Authority of the New Testament Scripture, Paul: An Outline of his Theology, Studies in Scripture and Its Authority, and a monograph on Bultmann in the Modern Thinkers Series of the International Library of Philosophy and Theology.

More by Herman N. Ridderbos