How Do We Determine Which Books Are Inspired?

The difficult question would be where do you draw the boundaries of the canon? Which books are inspired and which ones are not inspired? And there the boundaries are blurry. It's hard to know exactly where to draw the boundaries. But in the New Testament already we see that the Gospels and Acts were accepted as authoritative Scripture and that the letters of Paul were being treated on a par with Old Testament Scripture and having a similar authority. So for the real core of the New Testament it's clear that very, very early on these were regarded as inspired of God and therefore authoritative to the early church. Now, beyond that, what you do with books like, say, 2 Peter or Jude, there it becomes more disputed. But I think what we can say very safely is that there is no Christian doctrine that is uniquely taught by those other books. Anything that they teach only goes to confirm what is taught in the indisputable canonical books, and therefore there is nothing uncertain in Christian doctrine because it's in these books whose canonical status is debated. The final thing I would say is that down through the centuries Christians of all confessions have sensed God's speaking to us through the New Testament books, including 2 Peter, Jude, Hebrews, and some of these other disputed writings. They are sensed as being God's Word to us. God speaks to us through this. And I don't think that we should lightly disregard that universal testimony of our brothers and sisters down through the ages across a multiplicity of cultures and nations. So I think that gives grounds for thinking that these other books whose apostolic origin is more difficult to establish are indeed properly part of the canon of inspired writings.