Discussion - Do we have a Closed Canon?

We had a debate in my church history class a few weeks ago. The question ran something like this: "Paul wrote letters to churches that have been lost, i.e. Third Corinthians or The Letter to the Church of Laodocea. If one of these letters were to be recovered, are they to be added to the Bible?" Brian's paraphrase understanding of the question is, do we believe in a closed canon of Scripture or can the right book still make it in?



I liked this question as a fun hypothetical. Thoughts?


O.T.
My reasoning breaks down like this. No books can be added to the Old Testament, sorry Council of Trent. The O.T.  Scriptures have multiple affirmations that inspiration stopped after Malachi. Evidence for this can be seen in Josephus' view of the prophetic histories being superior in quality compared to the deuterocanonical (Apocryphal) writings, the consistency of the canonical books verses the self-contradiction found in the latter works, and the rabbinic traditions to never include the Apocrypha in the Torah. There's also Christ who quotes most of the O.T. books and even references a closed canon in Luke 24:44. The O.T. is closed, but what about the New?


N.T.
Here things begin to get a little more interesting with Dr. Hallam's question. Certainly there were guiding rubrics for selection of canonicity of New Testament works. Eusebius and others worked hard on the principles of message, authorship, usage, and other criteria to determine whether or not a book should be viewed as inspired. However, how do we evaluate a work the would have passed all those tests, but has been lost till modern times? Do we allow something like a Third Corinthians in, or is there something else that needs to be considered?


There were many reasons for and against adding this book to the canon put forward in class. There was one case though that sealed the deal for me, Jude 3. 

"The faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."

If a new book was discovered, even if it was a genuine Pauline epistle, I would contend that it had no place in Scripture. First and foremost, if there was anything new being introduced in the book then we have Christians today living under a different standard than the ones that came before. Some might say that it is 'new revelation' for our times, but to me that seems to violate a 'faith once delivered'. Now we have believers blessed with greater revelation, so are they held to a greater judgement? There seems to be many gray areas around this idea of new revelation.

Secondly, why was the book not preserved better? It is truly remarkable the care put into the preservation of the books we now have in our Bible. Divine protection really is quite evident looking at the history. Why then would this book be lost for so long? What about it made it useless to early Christians, but vital to us? To me there is no theological reason to add new books to the Scriptures. Practically speaking as well, how could you add a book? The protestant movement is so diverse that it would be hard, although not impossible, to imagine a single council today having enough authority to change our Scriptures.

Just some fun food for thought.

2 Tim. 3:16