Well, it's been a while! Not much blogging action on my end - and not many folks checking in, either! I'll continue to post now and again, perhaps serving nothing more than the vanity of my "blego" (blog-ego).
I recently had an email exchange with someone who had a question about the canon. Here are some excerpts of my comments. Hope someone finds them helpful!
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...Are there particular questions you have, or is it more a general interest? Is your interest mainly in the NT canon?
Short
answer (kind of): the NT books were in wide circulation & use from
the first century forward, and were recognized as having apostolic
authority (either directly, or an understood "sanction" by apostolic
association - i.e., Mark=Peter, Luke=Paul). There were heretics who
either selectively excluded certain authoritative books (i.e., Marcion)
or who circulated later fraudulent books beginning in the mid-2nd
century (i.e., the Gnostics with stuff like the Gospel of Thomas). The
Church was finally forced to declare those books that were
authoritative / apostolic contra heretical versions - and used the
language of 'we receive,' acknowledging the God-given authority inherent in those books (rather than the way the RC church
declares that they authoritatively created the canon - as in, the
church made the Bible when in fact it is God's Word that creates God's
Church!). 
It is also helpful to think about the canon from the
perspective of the covenant - that is, God has always bound His people
to Himself by His written Word through His authorized representatives,
i.e., the prophets & the apostles. The "canon" (which means the
authoritative measure) is a function of the covenant - the covenant
Lord who speaks and who "inscripturates" that revelation as the
authoritative basis of His relationship with His people.
Hope that helps a little...
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...Ultimately, we rest on Christ's promise to us - "Heaven and earth will
pass away, but My Word will by no means pass away" (Mt 24:35). That
promise is not dependent upon the church, or compromised by the
intrigue of man & the threat of heretics - but it depends solely
upon the living Christ who speaks and preserves His Word. How do we
know we have the right books / the "right" Bible? Because Christ the
King keeps His promises, and providentially preserves His Word.
The most widely recognized / authoritative evangelical Protestant work is FF Bruce's The Canon of Scripture
(IVP). That will give you a very comprehensive study of the history of
the canon of Scripture, Old and New Testaments. His implied apologetic
approach is evidentialist - which has its weaknesses (the main one
being what Van Til and Bahnsen called the "myth of neutrality"). It's
very much worth reading, but keep in mind that the idea of looking at
the evidence with supposed neutrality is actually already a skeptical
assumption. Fact is, none of us are neutral - we're either biased
against God's truth by our sin, or bent towards God's truth by His
grace.
Evidence
has it's place - but it must always be subordinated to the ultimate
authority of God's Word. The evidentialist says, "Understand in order
to believe" (reason is king), while the presuppositionalist says,
"Believe in order to understand" (revelation is king). By its very
nature, evidentialism must be forever tentative / skeptical - because
new "evidence" may emerge which overturns our previous conclusions.
Sproul summarizes the evidentialist view of the canon when he compares the different views in this way: 1) the RC church declares they have an infallible collection
of infallible books (b/c of their assumption that Rome
has the ultimate authority to determine which books are canonical); 2)
the "classical" Protestant view is that we have a fallible collection
(!) of infallible books; 3) the liberal view is that we have a fallible
collection of fallible books. I agree that 1 & 3 are accurate, but
2 I reject.
I love and respect Sproul and benefit greatly
from his stuff, but I part ways with him on issues like this. The
presupp Prot view is we have an infallible collection of infallible
books because God is our sovereign, covenant King who governs us by His
Word - and who therefore providentially preserves His Word for His
glory and the good of His church. I think this is consistent with the
Westminster Confession, which after listing the canonical books of the
OT and NT simply says, "All which are given by inspiration of God to be
the rule [i.e., canon] of faith and life." God doesn't speak and "waste
His breath" as it were. If His Word is written to govern the faith and
life of His people, He will omnipotently superintend its preservation.
A lesser known, hard to find, sometimes difficult to read, but excellent work is Meredith Kline's The Structure of Biblical Authority. He
is presupp, and works out the canon question from the perspective of
the covenant. He interacts with history (especially the covenant
treaties prevalent in the Ancient Near East, contemporary with the
Patriarchs & Moses), but always with the assumption that the
sovereign covenant God binds His people to Himself by His Word, which
He preserves to that end.
