Right books placed in the New Testament

HOW WE CAN BE CERTAIN THE RIGHT BOOKS WERE PLACED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Christians should have no doubts on the canon of the NT, meaning which books should be in it and which ones shouldn't be.

The quality of the apocryphal (so-called "missing") books, such as "The Gospel of Peter," "The Gospel of Thomas," and "The Shepherd of Hermas," is so much lower and/or their teachings at such variance with the canonical books that they can be eliminated from consideration easily.

As M.R. James commented in The Apocryphal New Testament: "There is no question of any one's having excluded them from the New Testament: They have done that for themselves."

In evident reaction against the heretic Marcion's (c. 140 A.D.) attempt to edit the canon, lists of the canonical books were made in the late second century onwards. These lists, which even from the beginning, contain most of the books we find in the NT today, were made by the author of the Muratorian fragment (170 A.D.), Irenaeus (180 A.D.), and Clement (190 A.D.).

Furthermore, despite its claims to the contrary, the Roman Catholic Church did not choose the canon, and then impose it from the top down.

The Sunday observing Church before the time of emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) was hardly a tightly controlled, highly organised, monolithic group, and had suffered terrible persecution itself during the rule of Diocletian and earlier emperors.

The canon came from the traditional practices of average members and elders--from the bottom up.

As scholar Kurt Aland noted: "It goes without saying that the Church, understood as the entire body of believers, created the canon . . . it was not the reverse; it was not imposed from the top, be it by bishops or synods."