ABSTRACT
The formation of the Christian canon of scripture took place very unevenly, over a long time, in different places, and always in a context of contention. While I cannot rehearse its details here, I want to focus on a central irony of that complex process. Although in many instances those who strove to establish the Christian canon of scripture aimed to deny authority and legitimacy to a wide variety of innovative teachers who were competing with emerging orthodoxies, in the end canonization has done at least as much to promote religious innovation as to discourage it.
