A netfriend wrote:

I’m uncomfortable with this notion of infallibility, as I’ve said. I’m even uncomfortable with the idea of the closed canon, for several reasons. Perhaps this is heresy. Let me give you just one of these reasons.

It’s a scenario, a thought experiment. I don’t expect it will ever happen, any more than Einstein expected us to ever build a train that travelled at almost the speed of light when he designed the thought experiments that helped many to understand something about Relativity.

We know that there were at least three letters by Paul to the Corinthians, possibly four. Let’s just imagine another turns up, written between the two we have, and that the evidence is overwhelming that it is authentic. Let us further imagine that this letter says something really surprising and really helpful about a current hot issue… homosexuality, for example. Something that leads people on both sides of the debate to say hey, we need to think and pray about that, perhaps our actions haven’t been Christlike up until now, and we’d better think again.

That’s the end of the scenario. Now I’m going to speculate a little about what I think would happen.

Personally, I’d want to include this letter in my Bible. Shock, horror! The process of accepting it would be long and involved, no doubt. But, I’d want to do it.

I suspect not many would at first. But I also think that regardless of who initially supported its inclusion, it would happen anyway, in God’s time. It might be a long time, remembering the Dead Sea Scrolls fiasco. First, it would be suppressed. Eventually it would be published as a separate book. The next step would be to include it in an edition of the Bible, possibly an illegal one as the copyright flames burned, as an appendix, similar to the treatment some now give the Appocrypha. Eventually, someone would publish a Bible with the letters restored to their original sequence. This would at first be banned in most churches, but some would use it anyway. After a period of debate, during which new churches would open and old ones expire (as is happening right now), the new canon would replace the old.

Now, it doesn’t matter whether my reconstruction (preconstruction?) of these events is accurate or not. That’s just to get the thoughts flowing. The experiment is to consider our own attitudes if the letter turned up and was authenticated.

If, in the scenario I’ve described, we’d want to add the newly-dicovered letter to the Bible, that means that the canon is not really closed at all. As I believe. I have other problems with the closed canon, but this seems to me to be the best argument against it.

So my question is, would anybody else even want it included? Why and why not?

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