When Did We Receive the Books of the Bible?

Many people claim that centuries passed between when the New Testament was written and when it was recognized as God’s Word. But when we examine the books themselves, we discover a very different picture. In this brief clip, Michael Kruger explains that the New Testament authors knew they were writing Scripture from the very beginning. Learn more in his new teaching series, The New Testament Canon, available now from the Ligonier store.

We were arguing very plainly that we think the New Testament writers did know what they were doing when they wrote, that they wrote consciously as people delivering authoritative apostolic content. And therefore, their books would have had the highest possible authority right from the start. Why does all this matter for canon? Because if that's true, then that affects our understanding of how early the canon emerged, right? Now we can recalibrate our sense of dating.