great period or revelation so that it ought to be treated and judged as a part of church history. And yet this is only a half-truth. The formation of the canon as a closed collection of twenty-seven writings undoubtedly belongs to church history and not to the redemption of history. The question, however, is whether or not the same thing is true of the canon in the qualitative sense of the word. In other words, is what makes the canon the sacred authority to which the church has bound itself and