Not Closed, but Fixed
Rethinking How We Talk About the Biblical Canon
“So, you don’t believe God speaks to us anymore?”
I was confused how we jumped to that conclusion from sola Scriptura, but we did.
“No,” I assured him, “God still speaks in things like His creation, the conviction of the Spirit, and the gathered wisdom of the church. And ‘the word of God is living and active,’ but the canon of scripture is closed.”
That’s when the look came, not angry or anything. Just puzzled. As if to say, Why would you shut heaven like that?
To him—as to other Latter-day Saints—a closed canon sounds like closed heavens. As if God’s voice is sealed behind old, unreliable manuscripts and the best we can do is re-read what might be His last words.
But maybe the problem isn’t so much the idea of a closed canon.
Maybe it’s how we talk about it.
And maybe the solution is tucked in the word canon itself.
Let’s Take a Step Back
The biblical canon refers to the recognized collection of writings through which God has revealed Himself definitively to the church. The question isn’t whether God still speaks today, but how He speaks and with what authority.
It seems to be a common concern among Latter-day Saints that traditional Christians believe the biblical canon is closed. If God spoke in the past, they reason, why wouldn’t He continue speaking today?
To many Latter-day Saints, a set list of scriptures—complete and untouchable—feels like an artificial limitation on God’s voice. They point to the ongoing revelation in their own tradition, especially through living prophets and modern scripture like the Book of Mormon, as evidence that God still speaks in expansive and authoritative ways.
Part of the Latter-day Saint concern stems from Mormonism’s theology of restoration. If the universal church fell into apostasy and divine authority was lost, then God’s voice must return, not only through inward illumination, but through new revelation. In this paradigm, a closed canon seems to imply that heaven is closed, as if God stopped speaking, stopped guiding, or even stopped caring altogether.
This theme finds one of its clearest expressions in 2 Nephi 29, where the Lord chastises those who say, “A Bible, a Bible, we have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.” According to this LDS scripture, God continues to speak across nations and peoples, and to deny further revelation is to deny His global work and ongoing voice.
But that’s not how most traditional Christians understand it. In fact, it’s a misunderstanding to equate a “closed” canon with the closed mouth of God. A better image is not a locked vault, but a fixed compass, one that always points true north because God has provided an enduring guide.
This isn’t to dismiss the desire to hear God’s voice in fresh ways. After Christ’s ascension, the early church remained alive to the reality of the Spirit’s ongoing work and the possibility of new guidance. But they also recognized the need for careful discernment, to guard the faith once delivered to the saints while remaining attentive to the Spirit’s leading.
Early Christians recognized that the voice of God had been decisively revealed in Christ, providing a completed foundation for the church’s faith and life. When new prophetic movements arose, such as Montanism in the second century, the church wrestled carefully with whether such claims preserved or distorted the apostolic testimony. Ultimately, they concluded that Montanism, despite its zeal, departed from the gospel-centered foundation entrusted to the apostles as seen in the Holy Bible.
But which writings belong in the Bible? And why?
The answer leads us to the concept of canon, a term derived from the Greek kanōn, which means “measuring stick” or, metaphorically, “ruler.” To speak of the biblical canon, then, is to speak of the rule or standard by which Christian doctrine, life, and worship are measured.
One Canon, Three Lists
Across different Christian traditions, there has always been remarkable unity about the heart of the canon, i.e., the saving work of the Triune God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Debates about canonicity have taken place at the margins, but never the core.
There are three broad approaches:
The Protestant canon, shaped by the Reformation, recognizes 66 books: 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament, aligned with the content of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh.
The Roman Catholic canon includes these books but adds others known as the Deuterocanonicals, like Tobit and 1–2 Maccabees, affirmed at the Council of Trent in the 1500s.
The Eastern Orthodox churches often accept even more books, like 1 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, mainly for liturgical rather than dogmatic use.
Yes, there are variations, but the core remains stable: the four Gospels, no more, no less, no other testimonies of Jesus Christ.
Some Latter-day Saints might see this diversity as proof that early Christians lacked certainty and needed ongoing revelation. But notice: even where debates existed, the testimony to Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection—the center of the gospel—was never in doubt. The canon wasn’t invented to limit God’s voice; rather, it was recognized to preserve what God had already completed. In this view, Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection aren’t open to addendums. As Hebrews puts it, God has “spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:2), in a decisive, climactic revelation that surpasses all previous ones and leaves no need for a new gospel.
Some might respond that Hebrews 1 doesn’t say revelation has ceased, only that a new mode has begun. And that’s true, as far as it goes. But the mode is the point. God’s full self-disclosure came not through many partial voices, but through one Son; not through an endless chain of prophets, but through the Prophet, Priest, and King Himself.
Thus, for traditional Christianity, the canon is closed not because God has ceased to speak, but because He has already spoken fully in His Son. And the Bible bears unfading witness to that final Word.
Not Closed, but Fixed
Back to the conversation.
What my Latter-day Saint friend heard in the word closed was something final in the worst way—rigid, obsolete, lifeless.
And honestly, that got me thinking. Maybe the problem isn’t the conviction behind a closed canon; rather, it’s the way we talk about it. Maybe we need a better word, one that holds the strength of the idea without losing its warmth.
I’ve landed on fixed canon. Not in the sense that it was broken and needed repair, but fixed as in anchored, i.e., secure, steady, unchanging. Like a measuring stick, the canon provides a standard: it’s the rule by which all doctrines, spirits, and experiences are tested (see 1 Thess. 5:21; 1 John 4:1).
A canon that expands and contracts would be like the most unreliable ruler, useless for measuring anything at all. Remember, that’s essentially what kanōn means: “measuring stick,” or “ruler.” A ruler isn’t ‘closed,’ but it is reliably set. So it is with the canon: not dead, but dependable, faithfully preserving the living Word of God.
Even in the early church, this idea was taking shape. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, affirmed the Spirit-ordained ‘length’ of the fourfold Gospel witness by declaring the impossibility for them to “be either more or fewer in number than they are” (Against Heresies 3.11.8). His words reflect not mere preference but conviction: that the Spirit had spoken through these four and no others.
Augustine likewise described the sacra Scriptura canonica as being “contained within its own fixed boundaries” (certis suis terminis contineri) and distinguished it from later ecclesiastical writings. His point was not that God stopped speaking, but that the measuring rod of revelation had been graciously given.
In other words, a fixed canon does not mean a silent God. It means a faithful God, one who continues to speak not by adding new words to the foundation, but by bringing His once-for-all “living and active” Word to life in every generation (Heb. 4:12).
But how?
The same Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible illuminates them anew to believers. The Spirit works in individual hearts and through the gathered wisdom of the church across the ages. As John Calvin wrote, scripture “seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the Spirit,” said Calvin (Inst. 1.7.5). Teachers, preachers, and scholars can help open the treasures of the Bible, but they never rise above it.
So, it’s not that God is done speaking; rather, He now speaks through a fixed canon, by the inward illumination of the Spirit and the outward testimony of the Bible. His voice is living, not because the text expands, but because the Spirit is active.
📘 Coming Soon: 40 Questions About Mormonism
If you’ve appreciated this essay, you’ll love my forthcoming book, 40 Questions About Mormonism (Kregel Academic, this coming winter). It’s written for traditional Christians who want clear, charitable, and biblically faithful answers to the most common questions about the Latter-day Saint faith and tradition.
So good, yet again. Thank you!