There were three stages of the New Testament canon, first there was the stage that the NT writings became scripture, secondly the conscious groupings of such literature into closed collections such as the four Gospels and the writings of the Apostle Paul and then finally the formation of a closed grouping of NT writing as authoritative literature. The early Christian community did not have a Christian canon however it did adopt the OT scriptures as its bible. From the beginning the Christian message was proclaimed orally that is the death and resurrection of Jesus as well as His life and teachings. As late as the second century, for example, Papias said in about 90-130AD he preferred the oral tradition. The early use of the Gospels and of Paul’s writing in the early church did not mean they were immediately received as scripture at the level of the OT; it does show they were useful in the life of the early church. This is the first step in a long process of Christian writing becoming scripture and eventually becoming part of a fixed collection. When the NT writings were placed alongside the OT and were used with the OT authoritatively in the life and worship of the church, they functioned as scripture even if the church did not call them scripture. From the beginning of the church the words of Jesus had a scripture like status. Clement of Rome acknowledges Jesus’ words as authority for the church. The epistle of Barnabas uses some of Jesus’ sayings known in the gospels and claims it as scripture by using the words "as it is written." As for the Apostles Paul’s writings being classed as scripture many of the early church fathers quote the Apostle Paul, such as Polycarp, in his letter to the Philippians he quotes Ephesians 4:26 and Psalms 4:4 and calls them scripture. By 200 AD a collection of Christian writing had developed which had at its core, one or more of the canonical gospels and the writings of Paul, which had reached in many churches the level of scripture. At this point the early church had not reached the completion of a closed canon; however Irenaeus had argued that only four Gospels were to be accepted. In the late second century, it seems that Irenaeus was the first to promote a fixed four gospel canon and he also refers to the NT writings as scripture, from the time of Irenaeus onward it seems common practice to call Christian writings scripture. The next step of the canon was the compilation of lists that the church believed were inspired, one such list was by Tertullian who lived around 180AD, he included the four Gospels, thirteen letters of Paul, Acts, 1John, 1Peter, Jude and Revelation. Another such list was by Origen who included the four gospels, fourteen letters of Paul including Hebrews, 1Peter, 1John and Revelations.