I highly recommend this book. Kruger and Kostenberger hit a home run. This book is enjoyable to read, well documented, packed with helpful information, and is written for the blessing of Christians everywhere. This book is a gift to the modern Church. In a post-modern world, this book will stand tall like an ancient landmark keeping the believer encouraged that he is, in fact traveling the right path on his pilgrimage.

A Few Delicious Tidbits to Whet Your Appetite

With the rise of postmodernism came the notion that the only heresy that remains is the belief in absolute truth – orthodoxy.

Kruger, M. J. (2010). The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Crossway. p.39

Another striking instance of Paul’s drawing on antecedent theology is 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, where he applies the most foundational of all Jewish monotheistic texts to Jesus, inserting reference to Jesus into the “one God, one Lord” formula and connecting Jesus with the creative work of God the Father: “We know…that ‘there is no God but one.’ For although there may be so-called gods…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and through whom we exist.” As Richard Bauckham notes, “The only possible way to understand Paul as maintaining monothesim is to understand him to be inculuding Jesus in the unique identity of the one God affirmed in the Shema.”

Kruger, M. J. (2010). The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Crossway. p.78

Simply put, a covenant (berith) is an arrangement or contract between two parties that includes the terms of their relationship, covenant obligations (stipulations), and blessings and curses…the concept of covenant forms the overall structural backdrop to the entire redemptive story of the Scriptures. 

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The covenantal structure of the Old Testament is illuminated by the realization that it is patterned after the treaty covenants of the ancient near Eastern world from which it came.

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The final component of ancient Hittite treaty-covenants – and most important for our purposes here – was that a deposit of a written copy of the covenant documents would be given to each party to place in their holy shrines… Just as these ancient treaties created covenant documents as permanent witnesses to the covenant arrangement between the suzerain king and his vassal, so God supplies covenant documents to bear witness to the terms of the arrangement between him and his people. 

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The new covenant douments are no exception to this overall pattern. The religious world of Judaism had already anticipated the reality of another future covenant whereby Israel would be redeemed: “Behold the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Juday” (Jer 31:31)

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Thus, the New Testament canon, at its core, is a covenantal document.

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The canon is a concept that has been indelibly part of the life of God’s people from the very start of the nation of Israel, and thus continues to be part of his people in the life of the church. 

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The two main covenants of Scripture – the old (Sinaitic) covenant and the new covenant – are both established in written form after God’s special (and powerful) redemptive work was accomplished.

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Canonical books, therefore, are redemptive books. They are a “divine word of triumph.”

Kruger, M. J. (2010). The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Crossway. p.109-114

Early Christians did not conceive of themselves (or their communities) as those who created or determined canonical books, but merely as those who “received” or “recognized” them.

Kruger, M. J. (2010). The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Crossway. p.124