Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Biblical and Theological Studies) [Paperback]

Herman N. Ridderbos (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Dutch (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 91 pages
• Publisher: P & R Publishing; 2 Rev Sub edition (June 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875524168
• ISBN-13: 978-0875524160
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Canon: The Only Rule Of Faith & Practice, October 14, 2008

By 

Jacques Schoeman (SA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Biblical and Theological Studies) (Paperback)

'That the canon was formed after a long ecclesiastical development is not necessarily incompatible with the special authority that the church has ascribed to it.' p 3

The apostolic developments in early church history are profound and Ridderbos captured the essence of the apostles' desire to create the church in response to Christ's demand of faithfulness to the apostolic task. The early church perpetuated this emphasis on the original apostolic eyewitness, and Ridderbos contributed historical fact when he deduced the three initial forms of proclamation in kerygma, marturia and didache. Ridderbos drew from his many years of experience as Professor of New Testament to extract an exact understanding in the relation between the received tradition and the later formation of the NT canon. He also sought to provide responsible scholarship recourse to a learned apologetic that would complement BB Warfield's concept of the 'concursive' operation of both the Holy Spirit and the human authors in the formation of the NT canon.

He briefly traced the new views of Scripture which had their existence just prior to the 1900s and so denounced textual criticism that sought to repudiate Scripture's origin. Developments of thought from German schools where ideas opposed to, or not in accordance with the Holy Scriptures, were born, were all processes meant to cast doubt on the formation of the canon. Inspiration, as held by the best theologians, had undergone heavy and sustained attacks from liberal critics who took in so many through their revisionist biblical history.

'It is evident, then, that the NT itself inseparably unites the central events of redemption on the one hand and their announcement and transmission on the other. The announcement of redemption cannot be separated from the history of redemption itself. That proclamation was left neither to chance, nor to human tradition or reporting nor to preaching, whether of religiously gifted individuals or of the church.' p 15

'This emphasis on the written Scriptures as themselves the product of a divine activity, making them as such the divine voice to us, is characteristic of the whole treatment of Scripture by Paul (Rom 4:23, 15:4; 1 Cor 4:6, 9:10; 1 Cor 10:11).' BB Warfield, The Inspiration & Authority Of The Bible p 318

Defining the Holy Scripture's divine origin and how it gained its historical authority apart from apostolic tradition, Ridderbos asserted the essential understanding that 'Those developments are not simply deduced a posteriori from the subsequent historical facts. The NT itself indicates that the apostolic tradition was intentionally given in a written form so that it could be accurately preserved. 1 Cor 15 is such a passage. There Paul extensively and intentionally establishes the apostolic tradition about Jesus' resurrection by putting it in writing. He has not written anything new (vs. 1). His concern is that the church retains the tradition in the words which he had proclaimed it, and for that reason he repeats those words in writing. Committing the apostolic tradition to writing settled once and for all the question of what had occurred, and it prevented further misunderstanding or falsification. This fixing of the apostolic tradition in written, ascertainable form finally led to a written canon.' p 22

Ridderbos justifiably had in mind a caution of a certain kind of Enlightenment phenomena: 'It is equally clear that by using the form-content schema, it is possible to end up with the most radical reductions of the kerygma and teaching of the NT.' p 74 As to charismatic illusions of grandeur: 'Against that charismatic understanding of authority in the early church, one can point to the historical, once-for-all character of the NT revelation of God. The various operations of the Spirit that occurred later in church history can never be substituted for or equated with the canon.' p 27 This being his introduction to general canonics, Ridderbos maintained his repetitious insistence on the inspired origin of the original autographs: 'We shall have to recognize, without abandoning our a priori of faith, that the decisions made with regards to the limits of the canon conform to the existence of the canon.' p 47

In his estimation of the NT being limited to only 27 books, Professor Ridderbos saw primarily two important problems that were solved by the early church as they were presented within the canonization process of the NT: the first factor was the growth of the ecumenical ties between the various parts of the world church. Books such as Hebrews and Revelation, which at first were hotly disputed in certain geographical locations, gained acceptance later through church consensus when doubts surrounding authorship and origin would finally be eliminated. Secondly, Ridderbos was resolute that the church placed an unusually high premium on content, which it was forced to do when it had to deflect the claims of pseudigraphea. This premise uprooted the contention of the Roman Catholic Church that it had assembled and approved the books of the NT, when in fact the core of the canon had already been settled on by the close of the 2nd century.

'The canon is neither the result of an ecclesiastical survey nor of the consistent application of one or more formal criteria of canonicity. In that connection we must always take into account the tremendous influence that the original canon, that is, the body of the canon that was never questioned within the church, must have had in shaping judgments of the church and its leading figures. In our recognition of the canon, therefore, we must ultimately adopt the standpoint of faith, that the church has, in fact, received its foundation secured by Christ.' pp. 46-47

Herman Ridderbos placed the revealed (and recorded) words on a par with the acts and work of the historical Jesus, thereby making the writings of the NT divinely exclusive and once-for-all, resulting in a closed canon. Ridderbos succeeded in establishing a sound basis for the reliability of the Scripture and his assertion of the a priori of the Christian faith is especially memorable.

'The activity of the church does not create the canon; the canon creates the church, and the church recognizes that canon (Gk for 'rule'). The viewpoint just expressed is sometimes called the a priori of faith.' Professor Richard B Gaffin, Whatever Happened to the Reformation? Ed. Gary LW Johnson p 138

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On authority and canonicty, September 30, 2010

By 

mtlimber (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Biblical and Theological Studies) (Paperback)

For the essence of the book, see Jacques Schoeman's fine review here on Amazon. I only want to make a few supplementary comments.

As a reading layman accustomed to theology and biblical studies, it still took me a while to work through this little book. Though it is thin, it is dense, and it is a translation from Dutch with many end notes (footnotes would have made it significantly easier to read, IMHO). In short, expect to do some work, not fly through an easy read.

Ridderbos makes some complicated arguments and interacts with mostly continental, liberal scholars in some detail. While I could see professionals or researchers might find this interaction to be welcome, for my purposes it was too much detail, though I did appreciate the general points made therein (e.g., his reasons for rejecting the subjectivism of an implicit or explicit "canon within a canon" approach).

Sometimes I wished he would expand on some particular claim, and I would often (but not always) find such later in the text. In these cases, a footnote like "see pp. nn-mm" would have been a helpful reading aid so I didn't labor over understanding a terse statement of what would be developed in a more explicit fashion later.

Not all of his arguments are equally convincing to me (e.g., his argument for the closing of the canon -- revelation always accompanies the big events in redemptive history; the coming of Christ was the consummation of redemptive history; therefore, the canon is also consummated by this once-for-all event), but all in all, it's a useful book for someone studying the issues of NT introduction, particularly canon and authority.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CORRECTION, NOT A REVIEW - MISSPELLED NAME, January 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Biblical and Theological Studies) (Paperback)

This is not a review but a correction - the translator should be "Gaffin", not "Graffin"