SIDEBAR 3: THE EVIDENCE POINTS TO THE TRUTH
Kruger’s view (part of his model, as he calls it) is that the sheep heard the Shepherd’s voice as spoken through the canonical books: the sheep (the early Christians) accepted the correct books of the New Testament canon through the working of the Holy Spirit, recognizing the Divine Truth when they read it. Thus, the early Church’s “corporate reception” of Apocrypha as part of its Old Testament would defeat his model by proving that the early Church accepted the “wrong” Books.
Kruger also firmly believes that his model should be used to correct errors—by which he means the errors of others: “For example, the Syriac church has a twenty-two-book canon. Those twenty-two books are sufficient for supplying the individual components of the self-authenticating model and if applied properly would show the Syriac church that they are out of step with biblical principles and have an incomplete canon.” (p. 116, footnote 92)
But apparently, Kruger has no desire to follow his own model. He refers to the Old Testament canon issue as only a “potential objection” to his model—i.e., he would rather throw out the model than consider the idea that the Apocrypha should be canon. So he ever-so-humbly suggested that those foolish Syriacs should abandon their own ancient Church’s history and slavishly follow the dictates of the model that he, personally, will now reject out of hand.
I believe Kruger was on to something with his model. I just think that he should consider whether the model should determine the proper Old Testament as well (i.e., the sheep heard the voice of the Shepherd through the Apocrypha too), rather than presupposing the validity of his own personal Old Testament. That is essentially what I did, although I was less formal and never called it a model. I simply thought of it as following the evidence, wherever it leads.
