10/20/2026
The Apostle Peter considered the writings of Paul to be scripture as much as the Old Testament.
Did Peter consider Paul’s letters to be Scripture?
At the very end of 2 Peter, which we read today in Bible in One Year, Peter speaks about “our beloved brother Paul” and says that Paul “wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters” (2 Pet. 3:15–16).
We don’t know how many of Paul’s letters Peter had in mind, but he is clearly referring to a collection of the apostle's epistles, the same kind of letters we still read and study today.
And Peter adds, “There are some things in them that are hard to understand” (3:16). I think any student of Paul can appreciate that. We've all read something from Paul that left us scratching our heads!
But it's what Peter says next that grabs our attention. He says that the ignorant and unstable twist Paul’s writings “to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (3:16).
Note those three words: “the other Scriptures.”
The Greek word for "Scriptures" is γραφάς (graphas), the standard word used in the New Testament for the Old Testament. By speaking of people twisting Paul’s letters “as they do the other Scriptures,” Peter places Paul’s apostolic writings in the same category as the Scriptures Israel already possessed.
As Thomas Schreiner writes in his commentary on 2 Peter, “Peter classed Paul’s writings as Scripture, on the same level as the Old Testament Scriptures.”
In other words, Paul’s letters were not merely helpful correspondence from a traveling missionary to congregations in places such as Rome or Corinth. They were apostolic writings carrying the authority of God’s Word, then as now.
Already within the New Testament itself, therefore, we see evidence of what would become the New Testament canon taking shape.
Paul’s letters were being read, circulated, collected, and spoken of alongside “the other Scriptures.”
