Corporate Testimonium

If the testimonium can reliably lead an individual to belief in the canon, there seems little reason why we should not affirm such reliability for the church as a whole. On the contrary, one might even argue that there are biblical reasons to be more confident in the role of the testimonium on a corporate level. After all, we have additional biblical testimony that we should heed “an abundance of counselors” (Prov. 11:14) and run the same path as the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) that have gone before us. Moreover, it is the church, and not just the individual, that is given the Spirit: the church is God’s house (1 Tim. 3:15), also called a “spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5), and is a body with one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). All of this suggests that if we doubt the testimonium on a corporate level, we would be compelled to doubt it equally on an individual level.

 

Michael Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 146