This is the second installment in a two-part series taking a look at the biblical canon. Last week, we took a look the formation of the Old Testament canon.

Throughout biblical history, the God of the Bible used ordinary means to achieve His purposes just as often as miraculous means. God did not supercharge the Assyrians when He used them to enact judgement on the northern kingdom of Israel, nor did he give Ruth magical powers to integrate into Israelite society. God commands every aspect of life, whether that comes in the form of geopolitics or keeping the Messianic line of David alive.

So it is with the formation of the New Testament canon. The God of heaven did not give Peter or John a tidy list of the divinely inspired texts that would outline the New Covenant. Rather, God used regular human processes to organize and relay the Gospel message to the entire world.

Let’s see how He did that.

At its core, Truth Remains exists to foster a greater love and understanding for God, who reveals himself through Scripture. If the Bible serves as direct revelation from God, then the following question takes on an eternal importance: Who decided what would go in the Bible?

While at the very least interesting to the curious secular observer, understanding how the Biblical canon was formed should be of special interest to Protestants. The Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura (Latin for “by Scripture alone”) falls apart if we can’t trust the Scripture itself.

With that in mind, Truth Remains will take a brief look at the formation of the Old and New Testaments in separate blog posts. This first post, as you might have already suspected from reading the title, will be about the Old Testament.