Canon Inspiring Quotes

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life: 1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day. 2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself. 3. Never spend your money before you have it. 4. Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you. 5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves. 6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold. 7. We never repent of having eat too little. 8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly. 9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened. 10. Take things always by their smooth handle. 11. Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes. 12. When angry, count 10. before you speak; if very angry, 100.

We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world—indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states—the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities.

Vision is defined as a program for restoring the human.

What Emily Dickinson does not rename or redefine, she revises beyond easy recognition.

Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. No doubt an obscure truth of economics is at work here: societies appear to become considerably less productive whenever large numbers of people stop making widgets and begin killing their customers and creditors for heresy. The first thing to observe about the moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written.

I feel so honored to be able to say "What I do is for my son" without that being an excuse to do stupid things (like what I've heard from some moms over the years, doing lazy, stupid things and then saying it's all for their children). No, I will not say that everything I do, I do for God! And no, I will not say that everything I do, I do because I am a sacrificial saint who is in love with people and should be canonized one day! I've had enough of those lines! Overkill already! It will take the love of a mother to change the world.

She was lionized, canonized, Nobel Prized (and was wonderfully inspirational, as disinterested in acclaim as in her ostracism, working until her nineties).

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. [...] The first thing to observe about the moderate’s retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God’s utterances difficult to accept as written.

We have gone sick by following a path of untrammelled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, bottom-line-ism. We have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body, when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies, or strategies for overcoming the condition of dis-ease. And the 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomena as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common? They represent various styles of rejection of linear values. The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival, by a reversion to archaic values. So when I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to syncopated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary canons of sexual behaviour, I applaud all of this; because it's an impulse to return to what is felt by the body -- what is authentic, what is archaic -- and when you tease apart these archaic impulses, at the very centre of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling. And at the centre of that impulse is the shaman: stoned, intoxicated on plants, speaking with the spirit helpers, dancing in the moonlight, and vivifying and invoking a world of conscious, living mystery. That's what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment -- these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise. And our culture has killed that, taken it away from us, made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that; and the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body -- and that means sexually empowering ourselves, and it means getting loaded, exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation. The hour is late; the clock is ticking; we will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now the challenge passes to us, the living, that the yet-to-be-born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under; and that's what the psychedelic experience is about, is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honours the past, honours the planet and honours the power of the human imagination. There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet, as the human imagination. Let's not sell it straight. Let's not whore ourselves to nitwit ideologies. Let's not give our control over to the least among us. Rather, you know, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination. Thank you very, very much.

The only canons I formed in my mind were filled with the writers with whom I felt a soul inspiring resonance, the writers whose works were great to me because they gave me words, wisdom, and visions powerful enough to transform me and my world.

The initial response the Buddha intends to arouse in us is an ethical one. By calling our attention to our bondage to old age and death, he seeks to inspire in us a firm resolution to turn away from unwholesome ways of living and to embrace instead wholesome alternatives.

Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others.

The modern conservative movement was inspired by Barry Goldwater’s canonical text from 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative.

We conventionally associate dream inspiration with the creative arts, but the canon of scientific breakthroughs contains many revolutionary ideas that originated in dreams.

First, it is largely unknown just how the Holy Spirit interacted with the author of an original Biblical manuscript- 'passive' vs. 'active' (I contend that it was both/and). Secondly, it is also widely unknown just what the 'process' involved in 'canonization' was. Additionally, I see little evidence of the injection of personal bias if any by the Biblical authors.

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small, benefits from considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom.

...A canonical leader is someone whose exemplary rule might have appeared to be for the alleviation of the pains and miseries of a particular group, but which in reality is for the advancement of humanism...

As for my faith: I've become my father's son-that is, I've become the kind of believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the next-sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who's alive whom I love? Good question-one that can bring you back to life. These days, I love Dan Needham and the Rev. Katherine Keeling; I know I love them because I worry about them-Dan should lose some weight, Katherine should gain some! What I feel for Hester isn't exactly love; I admire her-she's certainly been a more heroic survivor than I've been, and her kind of survival is admirable. And then there are those distant, family ties that pass for love-I'm talking about Noah and Simon, about Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred. I look forward to seeing them every Christmas.

To show how a text fits into its whole canonical context, then, is to show how it points to Christ and gospel salvation, the big idea of the whole Bible. Every time you expound a Bible text, you are not finished unless you demonstrate how it shows us that we cannot save ourselves and that only Jesus can. That means we must preach Christ from every text, which is the same as saying we must preach the gospel every time and not just settle for general inspiration or moralizing.

All those books…which the church regards as sacred and canonical were written with all their parts under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now, far from admitting the coexistence of error, Divine inspiration by itself excludes all error, and that also of necessity, since God, the Supreme Truth, must be incapable of teaching error.

As for my faith: I’ve become my father’s son—that is, I’ve become the kind of believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the next—sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who’s alive whom I love? Good question—one that can bring you back to life.

I had never heard of it, but then I do not clutter my mind with trivialities such as tales of ancient sunken cities and such. They take up room that might be more usefully occupied by facts and theories related to solving crimes. I recall how Watson was shocked when he learned that I could not name the planets, and had no idea that they numbered eight. But really, of what use is such information? None.

Suffice it to say I was compelled to create this group in order to find everyone who is, let's say, borrowing liberally from my INESTIMABLE FOLIO OF CANONICAL MASTERPIECES (sorry, I just do that sometimes), and get you all together. It's the least I could do. I mean, seriously. Those soliloquies in Moby-Dick? Sooo Hamlet and/or Othello, with maybe a little Shylock thrown in. Everyone from Pip in Great Expectations to freakin' Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre mentions my plays, sometimes completely mangling my words in nineteenth-century middle-American dialect for humorous effect (thank you, Sir Clemens). Many people (cough Virginia Woolf cough) just quote me over and over again without attribution. I hear James Joyce even devoted a chapter of his giant novel to something called the "Hamlet theory," though do you have some sort of newfangled English? It looks like gobbledygook to me. The only people who don't seek me out are like Chaucer and Dante and those ancient Greeks. For whatever reason. And then there are the titles. The Sound and the Fury? Mine. Infinite Jest? Mine. Proust, Nabokov, Steinbeck, and Agatha Christie all have titles that are me-inspired. Brave New World? Not just the title, but half the plot has to do with my work. Even Edgar Allan Poe named a character after my Tempest's Prospero (though, not surprisingly, things didn't turn out well for him!). I'm like the star to every wandering bark, the arrow of every compass, the buzzard to every hawk and gillyflower ... oh, I don't even know what I'm talking about half the time. I just run with it, creating some of the SEMINAL TOURS DE FORCE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. You're welcome.

Why would God have inspired the words of the Bible if he chose not to preserve these words for posterity? Put differently, what should make me think he had inspired the words in the first place if I knew for certain (as I did) that he had not preserved them? This became a major problem for me in trying to figure out which Bible I thought was inspired. Another big problem is one that I don’t deal with in Misquoting Jesus. If God inspired certain books in the decades after Jesus died, how do I know that the later church fathers chose the right books to be included in the Bible? I could accept it on faith—surely God would not allow noninspired books in the canon of Scripture. But as I engaged in more historical study of the early Christian movement, I began to realize that there were lots of Christians in lots of places who fully believed that other books were to be accepted as Scripture; conversely, some of the books that eventually made it into the canon were rejected by church leaders in different parts of the church, sometimes for centuries. In some parts of the church, the Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) was flat out rejected as containing false teaching, whereas the Apocalypse of Peter, which eventually did not make it in, was accepted. There were some Christians who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John. There were some Christians who accepted a truncated version of the Gospel of Luke (without its first two chapters), and others who accepted the now noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, which eventually made it in, and others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas, which did not. If God was making sure that his church would have the inspired books of Scripture, and only those books, why were there such heated debates and disagreements that took place over three hundred years? Why didn’t God just make sure that these debates lasted weeks, with assured results, rather than centuries?1

God directly inspired the writers of the New Testament canon and so the words recorded by them in the autographs are God’s Word absolute, inerrant and infallible in all they affirm. This inspiration extends down to the Greek equivalent of jots and tittles—Jesus was emphatic about that (Matt. 5:18). And if inspiration is applied to the smallest pen strokes, it certainly should also apply to sentences, paragraphs, pericopes, and more. The relevance of the doctrine of inspiration extends into all the corners.

The four gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen, more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus, Philip, Bartholomew and Mary Magdalen.51 Some of these gospels, the known Apocrypha of the time, were the additional gospels that Thomas Jefferson was referring to in his letter to his nephew: I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics.

You did all this,” I breathe heavy with awe. “You gave them the courage to take a stand.” He shakes his head. “No. You did. You started all this,” he leans in, his lips hot and warm breath tickling against my ear. “You gave me the strength,” he sucks in a quick breathe and lets out a laughing exhale. “You gave me the strength to break free of all these ridiculous canons of public behavior.” I smile, partly because I find his sophisticated speech funny, but mostly because he makes my heart bounce. I don’t believe it was me who inspired all these people. It’s obvious it was David. But I did manage to inspire. I inspired David and that’s all it takes. It takes for just one person to make a stand, and another to be moved and inspired by that one brave act. Gravity takes care of the rest as the word spreads and everything falls into place.

As individuals, we also are apt to use the canon as a cannon. We invoke the stripling warriors of Helaman and the iron rod of Lehi’s vision to ground our own version of unflinching obedience. Or we invoke the lessons of the Liahona to support our more spontaneous and flexible approach to gospel living. In America, some Mormons find Jesus’ ministry to the downtrodden and King Benjamin’s words about withholding judgment but not relief from the beggar to be apt endorsement of their preferred political policies. At the other end of the spectrum, some invoke the war in heaven fought over agency and consider the Mormon ethic of self-reliance to be adequate support for a different political outlook. Or, sometimes individuals even employ the cannon against the canon, citing inconsistencies and imperfections in the record as grounds for nonbelief in the principle of inspiration, one’s faith tradition, or even God.

Books are admitted to the canon by a compact which confesses their greatness in consideration of abrogating their meaning; so that the reverend rector can agree with the prophet Micah as to his inspired style without being committed to any complicity in Micah's furiously Radical opinions. Why, even I, as I force myself; pen in hand, into recognition and civility, find all the force of my onslaught destroyed by a simple policy of non-resistance. In vain do I redouble the violence of the language in which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theistic credulity of Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Even atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by this brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen, knowing that an author who is well spoken of by a respectable newspaper must be all right, reads me, as he reads Micah, with undisturbed edification from his own point of view. It is narrated that in the eighteen-seventies an old lady, a very devout Methodist, moved from Colchester to a house in the neighborhood of the City Road, in London, where, mistaking the Hall of Science for a chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Bradlaugh for many years, entranced by his eloquence, without questioning his orthodoxy or moulting a feather of her faith. I fear I small be defrauded of my just martyrdom in the same way.

In other words, the canon is inspired; the community is illumined to understand, embrace, interpret, and obey it. Jesus taught that there is a qualitative distinction between the prophets and the tradition of the elders who were Israel’s teachers after the Old Testament canon was closed (Mt 15:2, 6). Similarly, Paul distinguishes between the foundation-laying era of the apostles and the building-erecting era of the ordinary ministers who follow after them (1Co 3:11 – 12). Although Paul could appeal to no human authority higher than his own office, he encouraged Timothy to recall the gift he received at his ordination, “when the council of elders [presbyteriou] laid their hands on you” (1Ti 4:14). None of us, today, is a Moses. None is a Paul or a Peter. We are all “Timothys,” no longer adding to the apostolic deposit, but guarding and proclaiming it (1Ti 6:20). The apostolic era has now come to an end; the office was a unique one, for a unique stage of redemptive history, a period of time used by God for the drafting of the new covenant constitution.

...the prose tradition had died two centuries before and the recreation of a full canon of all-purpose Scots was beyond even Scott's skill, nor did he attempt it, except, perhaps in the magnificent Wandering Willie's Tale. He took the only course open to him, of writing his narrative in English and using Scots only for those who, given their social class, would still be speaking it: daft Davie Gellatley in Waverley, the gypsies and Dandie Dinmont in Guy Mannering, the Headriggs in Old Mortality, Edie Ochiltree and the fisher-folk of Musselcrag in The Antiquary, Andrew Fairservice in Rob Roy, the Deanses in The Heart of Midlothian, Meg Dods in St. Ronan's Well, and so on. The procedure gave reality to the Scots characters whose ways and ethos it was Scott's main purpose to portray, and the author in his best English, which lumbered along rather badly at times, did little more than lay out the setting for the action and act as impressario for the characters as they played their roles... ...Scott's felicity in conveying character and action through their Scots speech inspired his imitators for the next hundred years - Susan Ferrier, Hogg, Macdonald, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Alexander, George Douglas, and John Buchan. The tradition of narrative in standard English and dialogue in various degrees of dialect has been the usual procedure since.

You did all this,” I breathe heavy with awe. “You gave them the courage to take a stand.” He shakes his head. “No. You did. You started all this,” he leans in, his lips hot, warm breath tickling against my ear. “You gave me the strength,” he sucks in a quick breathe and lets out a laughing exhale. “You gave me the strength to break free of all these ridiculous canons of public behavior.” I smile, partly because I find his sophisticated speech funny, but mostly because he makes my heart bounce. I don’t believe it was me who inspired all these people. It’s obvious it was David. But I did manage to inspire. I inspired David and that’s all it takes. It takes for just one person to make a stand, and another to be moved and inspired by that one brave act. Gravity takes care of the rest as the word spreads and everything falls into place.

Like most Christians, I have my own canon, in which I hear God speaking most directly to me, but I also like the parts in which God sounds like an alien, since those parts remind me that God does not belong to me. I do not pretend to read the Bible any more objectively than those who wrote it for me. To read it literally strikes me as a terrible refusal of their literary gifts. I will keep the Bible, which remains the Word of God for me, but always the Word as heard by generations of human beings as flawed as I. As beautifully as these witnesses write, their divine inspiration can never be separated from their ardent desires; their genuine wish to serve God cannot be divorced from their self-interest. That God should use such blemished creatures to communicate God's reality so well makes the Bible its own kind of miracle, but I hope never to put the book ahead of the people whom the book calls me to love and serve. I will keep the Bible as a field guide, which was never intended to be a substitute for the field.

Paradoxically, our imperial global Anglo-American language is dull with the glitter of its own decay. In response, the new meta- physical poet might consider the following cleansing strategies: keep faith with the canonical writers of the past, study Homeric Greek, excavate etymologies, embrace threatened languages, practice the fine art of translation, listen regularly to the musical flow of the breath and the beat of the heart, switch off the television, become a votary of silence. Here lies the beginning of freedom.

Hildegard von Bingen, an 11th-century nun who saw apocalyptic visions and was later canonized, had a cipher alphabet which she claimed came to her in a flash of inspiration.

I slung my Canon over my shoulder and strode into the empty Jetway. It felt natural, that motion, that walk through the tunnel, to the waiting plane. I felt like I was in the right place. I hear a voice, my own voice say: Welcome to your life.

Another classic case in point is the reconstructive origins of the canonical Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, which is attributed to the seventh-century Chinese Zen master Huineng but in fact seems to have first appeared around 780 ce, "over a century after the events it describes were supposed to have taken place." The earliest versions of the autobiography and teachings of Huineng included in this text were in fact composed by Shenhui and other purported successors in the Southern School in order to differentiate their teachings from, and elevate them over, those of Shenxiu and other teachers of the rival Northern School. While the teachings presented in the Platform Sutra— the only Zen text to be audaciously designated a "sutra"—are indeed a "brilliant consummation" and "wonderful mélange of early Chan [i.e., Chinese Zen] teachings," they can hardly be attributed verbatim to the historical person Huineng. However spiritually inspiring and philosophically rich such classical texts of the Zen tradition may be, we cannot read them as unbiased and unembellished historical records or as innocent of sectarian politics and other mundane motives.

We find happiness in a kaleidoscope of stories: in books, in comics, in dance, in podcasts, in film and TV shows and video games. We find happiness in cosplaying as our favorite characters, and going to meet-and-greets with our favorite celebrities, and Dimension Door-ing onto the back of an Ancient Black Dragon, and finger-gunning Magic Missiles with our murder-hobo friends in a weekly session of Dungeons and Dragons. We all deserve to be happy, and love what we love, and be unironically enthusiastic about it. There is a magic in fandom that there rarely is anywhere else—where you can raise a TV show from the dead, and un-fridge a favorite character, and write fanfic that becomes canon. It is the kind of magic that brings our far corners of the world together.

It has been long known by scholars that the letter of Jude not only quotes a verse from the non-canonical book of 1 Enoch (v. 14 with 1 Enoch 1:9),[39] but that Jude 6-7 and 2 Peter 2:4-10 both paraphrase content from 1 Enoch, thus supporting the notion that the inspired authors intended an Enochian interpretation of “angels” called the Watchers (sons of God) having sexual intercourse with humans. 1 Enoch extrapolates the Nephilim pre-flood story from the Bible as speaking of angels violating their supernatural separation and having sex with humans who bear them giants.[40]

One possible source of inspiration for contemporary sociologists seeking to engage with environmental topics is the canon of classical social theory, notably that bequeathed to us by Durkheim, Weber and Marx. Each of these founders of the sociological field had something significant to say about nature and society, although this was often more implied than direct, and was embedded in the philosophical controversies and scholarly debates of the era in which they were writing. Some commentators have been downbeat about the potential usefulness of this canon. Goldblatt (1996: 1–6) advises that we be wary of the legacy left to us by classical sociological theory insofar as it lacks an adequate conceptual framework with which to understand the complex interactions between societies and environments. As

How did we come to think that if we just did things “right” we would have a model family? Perhaps this illusion has come, in part, because we have heard erroneous teaching on the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs, like every book in the biblical canon, is divinely inspired, but we must understand its genre. A proverb is a maxim that we should follow because it leads us in the wisest path. But it is a probability, not a promise. For example, we are told:   A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. (Proverbs 10:4) This is a maxim, which means it is generally true that the lazy person will be poor and the diligent person will have plenty. But a lazy person can win the lottery and a diligent person can have a tornado destroy his crops. That does not disprove the proverb, because a proverb is simply a probability. As we looked at before when we considered God's use of metaphor, when we do not interpret Scripture according to its genre, we misinterpret Scripture. Yet many teachers quote proverbs as if they are in the genre of promises, and so we are disappointed in God when we experience an exception to what our Christian community may have promoted as a “promise.” One of the most misunderstood verses in our Christian communities is Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. This is generally true, but it is not a promise. In other words, a child who departs from the truth may still have been trained in the way he should go. Likewise, it is possible that if you are an excellent wife, your children and husband will rise up and call you blessed (Proverbs 31:28). But they might not. It's not up to us to decide what happens; it's up to us to be faithful.

We must not allow the academic prejudices bred by Hegelian ideology, anti-clericalism, anti-Semitism and nineteenth-century intellectual fashions to distort our view of these texts. All the internal evidence shows that those who set down and conflated these writings, and the scribes who copied them when the canon was assembled after the return from Exile, believed absolutely in the divine inspiration of the ancient texts and transcribed them with veneration and the highest possible standards of accuracy, including many passages which they manifestly did not understand. Indeed, the Pentateuch text twice gives solemn admonitions, from God himself, against tampering: ‘Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish aught from it.’25

The canon is an artifact of revelation, not an object of revelation itself. It is known infallibly to God by necessity and to man with a certainty directly related to God's purpose in giving the Word to the church. The canon exists because God has inspired some writings, not all writings. it is known to man in fulfillment of God's purpose in engaging in the action of inspiration so as to give His people a lamp for their feet and a light for their path.

Canon: The authoritative list of inspired biblical books. Within a short time after Jesus’ death, the New Testament canon was affirmed by evaluating the Apostolicity, reception, and teachings of books, but ultimately, the canon is self-authenticating, as the voice of Christ is heard in it (John 10:27; WCF 1:5).

During the first centuries of the Church, there were hundreds of other writings besides those which the Church later determined were to be included in the inspired canon of Sacred Scripture

On the other hand, inspiration - a criterion for canonization we might expect to play a great role - is not a factor. The Shepherd of Hermas and many writings either claimed inspiration or had it claimed for them, yet were neither universally nor ultimately accepted as canonical. In contrast, no NT writing claims inspiration for itself. The statement in 2 Tim. 3:16 that all Scripture is inspired by God (theopneustos) refers to Torah. Second Peter 3:16 refers to Paul's letters as though they were Scripture but does not say they were 'inspired.' In Revelation, 'inspiration' is certainly implied but not explicitly claimed. No doubt there was an increasingly widespread conviction that the NT writings were divinely inspired, but that notion did not appear to factor in as a criterion for canonization.

The biblical writings have an inherent authority as works uniquely inspired by God. Canonization is the process of recognizing that inherent authority, not bestowing it from an outside source.

The suggestion is made from time to time that the canon of scripture might be augmented by the inclusion of other ‘inspirational’ literature, ancient or modern, from a wider cultural spectrum.947 But this betrays a failure to appreciate what the canon actually is. It is not an anthology of inspired or inspiring literature. If one were considering a collection of writings suitable for reading in church, the suggestion might be more relevant. When a sermon is read in church, the congregation is often treated to what is, in intention at least, inspirational literature; the same may be said of prayers which are read from the prayerbook or of hymns which are sung from the hymnbook. But when the limits of the canon are under consideration, the chief concern is to get as close as possible to the source of the Christian faith. By

The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the written word of God. Inspired by God’s Spirit speaking through their authors, they record and announce God’s revelation centering in Jesus Christ. Through them, God’s Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world.

he maintained that the Scriptures were the one sole basis of Reformation; that neither from tradition, however venerable, nor from custom, however long established, were the doctrines of the Church's creed or the order of her government to be deduced; that neither Councils nor Fathers could infallibly determine anything; that apostolic practice, as recorded in the inspired canon that is to say, the Word of God – alone possessed authority in this matter,

Dostoevsky is a literary titan, and in some ways this can be the kiss of death, because it becomes easy to regard him as yet another sepia-tinted Canonical Author, belovedly dead. His works, and the tall hill of criticism they’ve inspired, are all required acquisitions for college libraries … and there the books usually sit, yellowly, smelling the way really old library books smell, waiting for somebody to have to do a term paper. Dahlberg is mostly right, I think. To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

Popery inspires the same feeling in regard to the Romish queen of heaven, and leads its devotees to view the sin of Eve in much the same light as that in which Paganism regarded it. In the Canon of the Mass, the most solemn service in the Romish Missal, the following expression occurs, where the sin of our first parent is apostrophised: "O beata culpa, quae talem meruisti redemptorem." "Oh blessed fault, which didst procure such a Redeemer!" The idea contained in these words is purely Pagan. They just amount to this: "Thanks be to Eve, to whose sin we are indebted for the glorious Saviour.

Literature is the spirit of the Culture, the lifeblood. They’re one and the same. Words are everywhere. Storytelling is everywhere. Stories have been essential to human survival since prehistory: at their most base, they are how we communicate both threats and opportunities. They are how the subconscious sorts through problems as we rest; through the narratives that are dreams, we can go on and address life’s travails. Literature refines these functions, elevates them to the spiritual realm. That’s why words are so important, why literature is the highest art. Visual artworks, if not directly inspired by literature or telling their own stories, are still described in words. Dance is often performed as part of a story, and if not, is still described in words. The only thing that could conceivably rival it, as something unrelated, would be classical music, but even the masters in that field were often inspired by works in the Canon, and titled their compositions in words. Words give all things meaning. Stories are fundamental to the human experience.

For some inexplicable reason, Trump supporters hanging out in political chatrooms began using a green cartoon frog named Pepe as their symbol, pumping out pro-Trump memes with the image. Many of them were also World of Warcraft fans who have long used the word “kek” in place of “lol” for reasons too obscure and nerdy to go into. Then, oddly enough, they found out that there actually was an Egyptian god named Kek who was depicted as a man with a frog’s head. Some thought it was a mystical coincidence that shouldn’t be ignored, or at least should be made into a delightfully kooky storyline. They decided that Trump was a living version of Kek, hence the nickname “God Emperor.” Mostly for fun, a canon was created around the Cult of Kek. Adherents claim heritage to an ancient kingdom called “Kekistan” that was overtaken by “Cuckistan” and “Normistan.” They created their own flag, inspired by the German Nazi war flag, which is sometimes spotted at pro-Trump events.

In so far as prophecy has been already fulfilled, that fulfillment has been a literal one. Take the predictions regarding the Messiah. His being born of the house of David; of a virgin; at Bethlehem; being carried down to and brought out of Egypt; His healing diseases; His entering Jerusalem on an ass; His being betrayed by one of His disciples; His being left by all His familial friends; His being smitten, buffeted, spit upon; His side being pierced; His bones being unbroken; His raiment divided by lot; His receiving vinegar; His being crucified between two thieves; His being buried by a rich man; His lying three days in the tomb; His rising on the third day; His ascending up on high, and sitting at the right hand of God; these and many others, have all been fulfilled to the very letter; far more literally than we could ever have conceived. And are not these fulfillments strong arguments in favor of the literality of all that remains behind? Nay, do they not furnish us with a distinct, unambiguous, and inspired canon of interpretation.

The word “canon” is derived from a Hebrew word signifying “reed” (qaneh) and by extension “measuring stick.” It enters into the Greek language as “canon” (kanon) with a wider semantic range signifying exemplary standards in relation to literary works, grammatical rules, and even certain human beings. The word was coined in the early church to indicate an absolutely authoritative, complete list of God-inspired books, which was the standard of truth (Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter). Although such a list was considered closed, it is clear that the creation of the canon did not happen in an instant. It had a long and complex history before such closure occurred. The historian Josephus (AD 95) describes a closed list of inspired books that had been authoritative for all Jews for centuries (Against Apion 8).