M
Maccabee
Guest
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get back to this forum, but I do appreciate this comment, Randy, and wanted to reply. You are perhaps correct that availability of doctrine is not the specific criteria for canonicity, though the doctrine of love is pervasive in the three books mentioned. Some would question whether love is a doctrine, but it certainly is a defining characteristic of Christ’s followers according to John 13:35 and the examples of the books cited certainly help to further define it.
Having said that, I do think you have a valid point. Perhaps what should be more at issue here is a question of genre. This is more easily seen in the Old Testament. For example, many have tried to use the book of Proverbs as a book of promises. But the genre is proverbs, not promises. There is great wisdom here about how life generally works, but not necessarily promises one can lay claim to. Also, one should be cautious when extracting doctrine from the Psalms, for while they often show intimate and honest cries to God and are often quite emotional, they demonstrate relationship much more than they do divine doctrine. Then there are the historical books. For example, what doctrine does one pull from Esther? So you have a point.
All this makes me wonder whether or not maybe Luther started out just setting the Apocrypha apart as a specific genre (which affects how we use it), but it later developed into something more. To use Newton’s law “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” I can imagine how things developed. The Catholic church reacted and cried foul to what Luther had done. Luther in turn reacted and went a step further. And so the gap continued to widen. It might be similar to what I believe happened with the advent of the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They didn’t suddenly come on the scene out of a vacuum. Their legal fanaticism came in reaction to the hellenizers. The Sadducees likewise became further confirmed in their secular mindset in reaction to them. Both sides were wrong at least to a degree. Much as a pendulum swings toward the point of gravity where it should rest, it is moved by inertia away from that point. The inertia of our reactions does the same in our own understanding of truth. I firmly believe there is some element of truth in both positions in what is being discussed here, but we have a difficult time overcoming our biases and starting at zero so as to find it.
