Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our
dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes
the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters
contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable
people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:15-16
The Greek
word for “scripture” appears 51 times in the New Testament. Most of the time it is referring to the Old
Testament. One time, in 2 Peter 3:16,
Peter referred to Paul’s writings as scriptures, using the same word as the
other 50 times when it referred to the Old Testament.
It seems
in the lifetime of the apostles, that the apostles saw their writings as “God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16) Once they felt certain writings came directly
from God and helpful for humans to live a more godly life, then it was called
scripture.
In the
next generation after Peter’s, church leaders began to assemble the New
Testament we have today and four hundred years later all twenty-seven books
were solidly accepted.
I found this helpful to understand
how the New Testament finally came together.
The formation of
the New Testament canon began in the early part of the second century A.D. The
earliest list was drawn up in Rome, in A.D. 140, by the heretic Marcion.
Although his list was not authoritative, it did demonstrate that the idea of a
New Testament canon was accepted at that time.
The concept we
have today of a completed Bible was formulated early in the history of the
church. By the end of the second century all but seven books (Hebrews, 2 and 3
John, 2 Peter, Jude, James, and Revelation) were recognized as apostolic, and
by the end of the fourth century all twenty-seven books in our present canon
were recognized by all the churches of the West. After the Damasine Council of
Rome in A.D. 332 and the third Council of Carthage in A.D. 397 the question of
the Canon was closed in the West. By the year 500 the whole Greek-speaking
church had also accepted all the books in our present New Testament. https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/canon.cfm