The Danger of a Canon Within the Canon
The Bible is a big collection of books (66 in the Protestant canon and more in the Eastern and Roman Churches) and as someone who believes that all of them are inspired (I’m not going to define my view beyond that), it can be a weighty endeavor to keep them in order. Because the Bible is so diverse, people can and likely do focus on certain books and passages without giving similar time to others. Such a phenomenon appears to be the natural result of trying to digest so much writing as well as the likelihood that God will use certain texts to affect us more than others. This tendency can turn dangerous, however, when we emphasize certain books to the exclusion of others, of saying certain books are more important than others, or of developing a “canon within the Canon.”
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