The Confession of Faith, having stressed the wisdom of God's action in committing the revelation of His will to writing, goes on to define what is meant by the 'Holy Scripture' which is so necessary for salvation. This it does in two ways.

It first defines the canon ex­tensively, by listing the con­tents of Scripture. Positively, the statement is made that the books of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in two Testaments, are the constitutive books of Scripture; and nega­tively, that the books of the Apocrypha are ex­cluded. This latter fact is a direct polemic against Roman Catholic teaching.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Q. 120) states that "It was by the apostolic tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament and 27 for the New.

The recognition of which books were to be regarded as inspired and, therefore, canonical, in­volved the church in a long process of discussion and debate. The authority of the Bible as a whole derives from the imprimatur and seal of Christ Himself. In connection with the books of the Old Testament, Jesus regarded these Jewish scriptures as from God. And although there were often ten­sions between Christ and the Pharisees with re­garded to the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures, there was no tension regarding the identification of these same Scriptures. The claim of Christ is that the Pharisees had negated the Scripture with their tradition, and that He was Himself the sum and substance of these holy and sacred writings.

Regarding the New Testament, Christ prom­ised that the Holy Spirit would lead the apostles into all truth, and bring to their remembrance whatever He had said to them. Nothing else could account for the detail with which the sayings of Jesus and their context are recalled and written by the evangelists. Nor could anything short of the Spirit's power explain the impulse and dynamic of apostolic evan­gelism, and the insights of apostolic doctrine. But neither authorship nor acceptance of these books were of themselves sufficient criteria for canonicity. Only the recognition that these were divinely in­spired of God could constitute the canon. So Merrill Tenney is correct to state: "The church did not determine the canon; it recognized the canon" (New Testament Survey, p. 406).

The process of recognition is traceable in the informal writings of the early church fathers, as well as in the formal lists and canons, such as that of Marcion in AD 140, and the Muratorian Canon of AD 170. The Council of Carthage in AD 397 listed the 27 books of the New Testament in the canon, just as they are now. The Council of Trent (1545-63), however, pronounced an anathema on those who rejected the Apocrypha, and placed Scrip­ture and tradition on an equal footing. For these reasons, both the sayings of the fathers and the Apocryphal writings are fundamental today to Roman Catholic theology.

The Confession states the canonical lit­erature, without detailing the principles of canonicity by which it identifies these books which it lists with sacred Scripture. The rejection of the Apocryphal books is based soundly on valid principles. Wayne Grudem points out, for example, "their exclusion from the Jewish canon, as well as the lack of their citation in the New Testament, led many to view them with suspi­cion" (Systematic Theology, pp57-8).

And, as William Cunningham puts it, The internal evi­dence against the canonical authority of the apocryphal books is clear and conclusive. It consists of fabulous and contradictory narra­tives, statements both of doctrine and fact op­posed to what is found in those Scriptures uni­versally admitted to be canonical, and countenance given to some practises which the word of God condemns.Theological Lectures, p.421

To put it otherwise, the seal of the Lord is not upon them.

It is interesting that the Confession does not say that the Apocryphal books are of no value. The Confessional position is that they are of no more authority than any other human writings. The implication of this is clearly that the Apocry­phal literature is itself subject to the authority of the canonical literature, and the use we make of it must be no different to the use we make of any merely human composition.

The canon is also defined with respect to the fact of inspiration. The 66 books of the Holy Scripture derive their authority over faith and life by virtue of the divine action which resulted in their production. The nature of inspiration is not defined; the fact of inspiration is stated and as­sumed.

Inspiration is not dictation. God neither dictated to the writers of the Bible what they were to write; nor did He breathe spiritual life into something that was written already. Nor is it accurate to say that the Bible is a joint production, God and man co-operating in the venture.

Peter tells us (2 Peter 1:21) that the proph­ets were carried (lit. ferried) as they wrote. In the activity of writing there was no suspension of the natural talents and critical faculties of the holy men who spoke. The point is rather that as they spoke and committed the revelation of God to the words of human language and speech, God acted sovereignly, guiding and ferrying the writers to the destination that was eventually to result in a complete and closed canon.

And it is from the fact of inspiration that the Bible's authority is derived. We may apply critical apparatus to Scripture to make compari­sons and contrasts (of style, not of matter), and to understand the diversified witness of Scripture to Christ. But we may never forget that this is no human book. Its outstanding characteristic is that, like Christ Himself, it is both wholly human and wholly divine simultaneously.