The Canon: Why the Roman Catholic Arguments for the Canon are Spurious [Ecumenical]

Christian Truth.com ^ | January 2008 | William Webster

[raynearhood]

It is often asserted by Roman Catholic apologists that Protestants must rely on their tradition in order to know which books ought to be included in the Biblical Canon. The argument says that since there is no “inspired table of contents” for the Bible, then we are forced into relying upon tradition to dictate which books belong in the Bible, and which books do not. It was the church of Rome, these apologists alledge, which determined the canon at the Councils of Hippo (393 A.D.) and Carthage (397 A.D.), and it is only due to this, that Protestants know which books are inspired, and which are not. Consequently, it is the Roman Church which should be submitted to on issues of faith.

The argument of Roman Catholics for the Canon is spurious on a number of counts.

First of all, the Councils of Carthage and Hippo did not establish the canon for the Church as a whole. The New Catholic Encyclopedia actually affirms the fact that the Canon was not officially and authoritatively established for the Western Church until the Council of Trent in the 16th century and that even such an authority as Pope Gregory the Great rejected the Apocrypha as canonical:

St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture. The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries...For example, John of Damascus, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicolas of Lyra and Tostado continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Chruch at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Canon).

There are major fathers in the Church prior to the North African Councils who rejected the judgment of these councils such as Origen, Melito of Sardis, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Hilary of Poitiers, Epiphanius, Basil the Great, Jerome, Rufinus and a host of others. They hold to the view, generally speaking, that the Old Testament books were 22 in number or sometimes listed as 24 depending on how the books were grouped together. This corresponds to the Jewish canon which did not accept the books of the Apocrypha as being canonical. Jerome, who spent many years in Palestine and who had Jewish teachers, rejected the Apocrypha because those books were not recognized as canonical by the Jews. Some have suggested that the Septuagint included these books as canonical which is proof that the Alexandrian Jews had a broader canon than the Jews of Palestine but this is untrue. They make this assertion because the apocryphal books are included in some of the early manuscripts we have of the Septuagint. But all that tells you is that the Septuagint included the books of the Apocrypha along with the canonical books of the Old Testament for reading purposes, not that they were received as canonical. The only manuscripts we posses of the Septuagint are of Christian origin from the 4th and 5th centuries so they are not necessarily reflective of the Jews of Alexandria at all. Also, these Septuagint manuscripts contain works such as III Maccabees which were never received as canonical. In addition, Origen and Athanasius who were from Alexandria both reject the Apocryphal books as being canonical. There are a couple that Athanasius does receive such as Baruch but he mistakenly thought such a work was part of canonical Jeremiah.

Hippo and Carthage were provincial councils which did not have ecumenical authority. In addition, those councils actually contradict the Council of Trent on an important point. Firstly, Hippo and Carthage state that 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras are canonical. They are referring here to the Septuagint version of 1 and 2 Esdras. In this version 1 Esdras is the Apocryphal additions to Ezra while 2 Esdras is the Jewish verion of Ezra-Nehemiah from the Jewish canon. The Council of Trent however states that 1 Esdras is actually Ezra from the Jewish canon and 2 Esdras is Nehemiah from the Jewish canon. Trent omits the Septuagint version of 1 Esdras. Secondly, Hippo and Carthage state that Solomon wrote 5 books of the Old Testament when in actuality he wrote only 3.

A second major point that proves the Roman Catholic claims to be spurious is the fact that the universal practice of the Church as a whole up to the time of the Reformation was to follow the judgment of Jerome who rejected the Old Testament Apocrypha on the grounds that these books were never part of the Jewish canon. Those books were permissable to be read in the Church for the purposes of edification but were never considered authoritative for the establishing of doctrine. This is why I believe that the term canonical in the early Church had 2 meanings, one broad in the sense that it encompassed all the books which were permissable to be read in the Church and another narrow which included only those books which were authoritative for the establishment of doctrine.

Jerome's views are as follows:

These instances have been just touched upon by me (the limits of a letter forbid a more discursive treatment of them) to convince you that in the holy scriptures you can make no progress unless you have a guide to shew you the way...Genesis ... Exodus ... Leviticus ... Numbers ... Deuteronomy ... Job ... Jesus the son of Nave ... Judges ... Ruth ... Samuel ... The third and fourth books of Kings ... The twelve prophets whose writings are compressed within the narrow limits of a single volume: Hosea ... Joel ... Amos ... Obadiah ... Jonah ... Micah ... Nahum ... Habakkuk ... Zephaniah ... Haggai ... Zechariah ... Malachi ... Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel ... Jeremiah also goes four times through the alphabet in different metres (Lamentations)... David...sings of Christ to his lyre; and on a psaltry with ten strings (Psalms) ... Solomon, a lover of peace and of the Lord, corrects morals, teaches nature (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), unites Christ and the church, and sings a sweet marriage song to celebrate that holy bridal (Song of Songs) ... Esther ... Ezra and Nehemiah. You see how, carried away by my love of the scriptures, I have exceeded the limits of a letter...The New Testament I will briefly deal with. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ... The apostle Paul writes to seven churches (for the eighth epistle - that to the Hebrews - is not generally counted in with the others) ... The Acts of the Apostles ... The apostles James, Peter, John and Jude have published seven epistles ... The apocalypse of John ...I beg of you, my dear brother, to live among these books, to meditate upon them, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953, Volume VI, St. Jerome, Letter LIII.6-10).

As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes (Wisdom of Solomon and Eccesiasticus) for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church...I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon...(Ibid., Volume VI, Jerome, Prefaces to Jerome's Works, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; Daniel, pp. 492-493).

Let her treasures be not silks or gems but manuscripts of the holy scriptures...Let her begin by learning the psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon...Let her follow the example set in Job of virtue and patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels...the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles...let her commit to memory the prophets, the heptateuch, the books of Kings and of Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all these she may safely read the Song of Songs...Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt (Ibid., Letter CVII.12).

What the Savior declares was written down was certainly written down. Where is it written down? The Septuagint does not have it, and the Church does not recognize the Apocrypha. Therefore we must go back to the book of the Hebrews, which is the source of the statements quoted by the Lord, as well as the examples cited by the disciples...But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant...The apostolic men use the Hebrew Scripture. It is clear that the apostles themselves and the evangelists did likewise. The Lord and Savior, whenever He refers to ancient Scripture, quotes examples from the Hebrew volumes...We do not say this because we wish to rebuke the Septuagint translators, but because the authority of the apostles and of Christ is greater..."(The Fathers of the Church (Washington: Catholic University, 1965), Volume 53, Saint Jerome, Against Rufinus, Book II.27, 33, pp. 151, 158-160).

Rufinus who was a contemporary of Jerome's, a fellow student with him at Rome. He dies shortly after 410 A.D. He writes these comments on the Canon AFTER the Councils of Hippo and Carthage:

"And therefore it seems proper in this place to enumerate, as we have learnt from the tradition of the Fathers, the books of the New and of the Old Testament, which according to the tradition of our forefathers, are believed to have been inspired by the Holy Ghost, and have handed down to the churches of Christ. Of the Old Testament, therefore, first of all there have been handed down five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; then Jesus Nave, (Joshua the son of Nun), the Book of Judges together with Ruth; then four books of Kings (Reigns), which the Hebrews reckon two; the book of Omissions, which is entitled the Book of Days (Chronicles), and two books of Ezra (Ezra and Nehemiah), which the Hebrews reckon one, and Esther; of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; moreover of the twelve minor Prophets, one book; Job also and the Psalms of David, each one book. Solomon gave three books to the Churches, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles. These comprise the books of the Old Testament. Of the New there are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke; fourteen Epistles of the apostle Paul, two of the Apostle Peter, one of James, brother of the Lord and Apostle, one of Jude, three of John, the Revelation of John. These are the books which the Fathers have comprised within the Canon, and from which they would have us deduce the proofs of our faith. But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers call not 'Canonical' but 'Ecclesiastical:' that is to say, Wisdom, called the Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Syrach, which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of the Pastor of Hermas (and that) which is called the Two Ways, or the Judgment of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named 'Apocrypha.' These they would not have read in the Churches. These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their draughts must be taken" (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), Rufinus, Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 36, p. 557-558.).

Pope Gregory the Great, writing at the end of the 6th century states that the book of 1 Maccabees is NOT canonical. I give the exact quote below. And Cardinal Cajetan, the leading scholar in the Church of Rome at the time of the Reformation affirms that the Church of his day followed the authority of Jerome and he suggests that there were 2 concepts of the term canon as I have just explained. He gives the following counsel on how one is to properly interpret the Councils of Hippo and Carthage under Augustine:

"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage." (In ult. Cap. Esther. Taken from A Disputation on Holy Scripture by William Whitaker (Cambridge: University, 1849), p. 48. See also Cosin's A Scholastic History of the Canon, Volume III, Chapter XVII, pp. 257-258 and B.F. Westcott's A General Survey of the Canon of the New Testament, p. 475.)

These statements by Catejan are a fair summary of the overall view of the Church in both the East and West from the time of Athanasius and Jerome up through the 16th Century. Jerome's opinion completely dominated that of the ensuing centuries in the Western Church as is seen in the testimony of Cajetan. The following is a brief documentation of some of the leading theologians and doctors of the Church throughout the centuries as confirmation of Cardinal Cajetan's views:

6th Century:

Gregory the Great - "With reference to which particular we are not acting irregularly, if from the books, though not Canonical, yet brought out for the edification of the Church, we bring forward testimony. Thus Eleazar in the battle smote and brought down an elephant, but fell under the very beast that he killed" (1 Macc. 6.46). (Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, (Oxford: Parker, 1845), Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, Volume II, Parts III and IV, Book XIX.34, p.424.)

Junilius - North African Bishop - States that the books that are canonical are those according to the Hebrew Canon - He follows Jerome.

Primasius - North African Bishop - Follows Jerome in his evaluation of the canonical OT books.

Anastasius of Antioch - States that there are 22 OT canonical books

Leontius - Follows the Hebrew Canon

7th Century

6th Ecumenical Council - "It has also seemed good to this holy Council, that the eighty-five canons, received and ratified by the holy and blessed Fatliers before us, and also handed down to us in the name of the holy and glorious Apostles should from this time forth remain firm and unshaken for the cure of souls and the hearing of disorders. And in these canons we are bidden to receive the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles written by Clement. But formerly through the agency of those who erred from the faith certain adulterous matter was introduced, clean contrary to piety, for the polluting of the Church, which obscures the elegance and beauty of the divine decrees in their present form. We therefore reject these Constitutions so as the better to make sure of the edification and security of the most Christian flock; by no means admitting the offspring of heretical error, and cleaving to the pure and perfect doctrine of the Apostles. But we set our seal likewise upon all the other holy canons set forth by our holy and blessed Fathers, that is, by the 318 holy God-bearing Fathers assembled at Nice, and those at Ancyra, further those at Neocesarea and likewise those at Gangra, and besides, those at Antioch in Syria: those too at Laodicea in Plirygia: and likewise the 150 who assembled in this heaven-protected royal city: and the 200 who assembled the first time in the metropolis of the Ephesians, and the 630 holy and blessed Fathers at Chalcedon. In like manner those of Sardica, and those of Carthage: those also who again assembled in this heaven-protected royal city under its bishop Nectarius and Theophilus Archbishop of Alexandria. Likewise too the Canons [i.e. the decretal letters] of Dionysius, formerly Archbishop of the great city of Alexandria; and of Peter, Archbishop of Alexandria and Martyr; of Gregory the Wonder-worker, Bishop of Neocaesarea; of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria; of Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia; of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa; of Gregory Theologus; of Amphilocius of lconium ; of Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria; of Theophilus, Archbishop of the same great city of Alexandria; of Cyril, Archbishop of the same Alexandria; of Gennadius, Patriarch of this heaven-protected royal city. Moreover the Canon set forth by Cyprian, Archbishop of the country of the Africans and Martyr, and by the Synod under him, which has been kept only in the country of the aforesaid Bishops according to the custom delivered down to them. And that no one be allowed to transgress or disregard the aforesaid canons, or to receive others beside them, supposititiously set forth by certain who have attempted to make a traffic of the truth. But should any one be convicted of innovating upon, or attempting to overturn, any of the aforementioned canons, he shall be subject to receive the penalty which that canon imposes, and to be cured by it of his transgression" (Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, The Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 361).

Roman Catholics apologists often assert that the canons of the council of Carthage were authoritatively received by the 6th ecumenmical council. What they never add is that this council also authoritatively received the canons of Athanasius and Amphilocius which also have to do with the canon. Both of these fathers rejected the apocrypha. The council did receive the canons of Carthage also which suggests that they are either in complete contradiction or they received the canons of Carthage with the understanding that the term canonical was to be interpreted in the sense that the books listed were the books authoritatively received for reading in the Church.

8th Century

John of Damascus - "Observe, further, that there are two and twenty books of the Old Testament, one for each letter of the Hebrew tongue. For there are twenty-two letters of which five are double, and so they come to be twenty-seven...And thus the number of the books in this way is twenty-two, but is found to be twenty-seven because of the double character of five. For Ruth is joined on to Judges, and the Hebrews count them one book: the first and second books of Kings are counted one: and so are the third and fourth books of Kings: and also the frirst and second of Paraleipomena: and the first and second of Esdra. In this way, then, the books are collected together in four Pentateuchs and two others remain over, to form thus the canonical books. Five of them are of the Law, viz. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. This which is the code of the Law, constitutes the first Pentateuch. Then comes another Pentateuch, the so-called Grapheia, or as they are called by some, the Hagiographa, which are the following: Jesus the Son of Nave, Judges along with Ruth, first and second Kings, which are one book, third and fourth Kings, which are one book, and the two books of the Paraleipomena which are one book. This is the second Pentateuch. The third Pentateuch is the books in verse, viz. Job, Psalms, Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes of Solomon and the Song of Songs of Solomon. The fourth Pentateuch is the Prophetical books, viz the twelve prophets constituting one book, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. Then come the two books of Esdra made into one, and Esther. There are also the Panaretus, that is the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Jesus, which was published in Hebrew by the father of Sirach, and afterwards translated into Greek by his grandson, Jesus, the son of Sirach. These are virtuous and noble, but are not counted nor were they placed in the ark" (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post-NiceneFathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), Series Two, Volume IX, John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Chapter XVII).

Bede - In his Commentary on Revelation he gives the number of OT Books in conformity with that given by Jerome.

9th Century

Alcuin - Writing against Elipantus, Bishop of Toledo, who made reference to Ecclesiasticus in defending a doctrine he rebuked him saying: ‘That the prophets of God failed him, whereof he had never a one to bring for the defense of his error; and then, that the book of the Son of Sirach, which he had produced, was, both by Jerome's and Isidore's undoubted testimonies, since it was apocryphal, and therefore a dubious scripture, having not been written in the time of the Prophets, but in the time of the priests only, under Simon and Ptolmey.'

Nicephorus of Constantinople - Lists the canonical books and those that were only received as ecclesiastical following the standard set by Athanasius.

Rabanus Maurus - Archbishop of Mentz - Greatly influenced by Alcuin - followed the teaching of Isisdore and numbered the OT canonical books at 22.

Agobard of Lyons - States expressly that the OT contains 22 conanical books.

12th Century

Zonaras - Eastern Theologian - Wrote Commentaries upon the Canons that were received in the Greek Church - He states that the best rule for knowing what ought to be read in the Eastern Churches is to have recourse to the Apostles' Canons, the Council of Laodicea, and the canonical epistles of Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen and Amphilochius, who had given their rules as they had received them from the Apostles and their successors.

Rupert of Tuits - Wrote concerning the book of Wisdom that it is not in the canon. In his discourse on the 24 elders in Revelation he makes mention of the 24 canonical books of the OT.

Petrus Mauritius - Abbot of Cluny and friend of Bernard of Clairveaux - In a treatise in which he refutes the writings of certain heretics who wrote against the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments he defends the integrity of each of the books of the Old Testament and lists them as does Jerome. He then mentions the apocryphal books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith and Maccabees as books ‘very useful and commendable in the Church' but then he adds ‘that they are not to be placed in the same sublime and equal dignity with the rest' that he had mentioned before; thereby plainly distinguishing between the Divine canon of Scripture, and those that were merely Ecclesiastical and used for the general edification of the Church.

Hugo of St. Victor - Abbot of St. Victor's in Paris - At least 5 times he sets forth a list of canonical OT books. He lists the 22 books of the Hebrew Canon as enumerated by Jerome and then lists Wisdom, Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus and Maccabees saying of them: ‘That though they be read and used in the Church, yet they are not written in the Canon.'

Richard of St. Victor - Is in complete agreement with the judgment of Hugo.

Peter Comestor - He wrote an abbreviated history of the Bible and called it the Scholastical History. In his preface on Joshua he gives the division of the Canonical OT books as the 5 books of Moses, the 8 books of the Prophets and the 9 books of the Hagiographa following the order of Jerome. When referring to Judith he explicitly states that it was not part of the canon.

John Beleth - Doctor of Divinity in Paris - In his book of Divine Offices he specifically says that Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit and Maccabees are apocryphal and states though the Chruch allows them to be read yet she does not receive them as being canonical.

John of Salisbury - Bishop of Chartres - Follows Jeorme in numbering the OT canon at 22 books. He states that neither Wisdom, nor Ecclesiasticus nor Judith, nor Tobit, nor the Pastor, nor either of the Maccabees are to be considered canonical.

13th Century

The Ordinary Gloss upon the Bible known as the Glossa Ordinaria - This became the standard authoritative biblical commentary for the Western Church as a whole. The New Catholic Encyclopedia describes its importance:

A designation given during the Middle Ages to certain compilations of "glosses" on the text of a given MS. The earliest glossa ordinaria is that made of the Bible, probably made in the 12th century...Although glosses originally consisted of a few words only, they grew in length as glossators enlarged them with their own comments and quotations from the Fathers. Thus the tiny gloss evolved into a running commentary of an entire book. The best-known commentary of this type is the vast Glossa ordinaria of the 12th and 13th centuries...So great was the influence of the Glossa ordinaria on Biblical and philisophical studies in the Middle Ages that it was called "the tongue of Scripture" and "the bible of scholasticism" (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Glossa Ordinaria; Glosses, Biblical, pp. 515-516).

The Glossa ordinaria states in the Preface that the Church permits the reading of the apocryphal books only for devotion and instruction in manners, but that they have no authority for concluding controversies in matters of Faith. It goes on to state that there are 22 books of the OT. In listing those 22 books it uses the testimonies of Origen, Jerome and Rufinus as support and when commenting on the apocyphal books it prefixes an introduction to them all saying: ‘Here begins the book of Tobit which is not in the canon; Here begins the book of Judith which is not in the canon' and so forth for Ecclesiaticus, Wisdom, and Maccabees etc.'

Johannes de Columna - Archbishop of Messina - Author of the book The Sea of Histories. In this work he names all six apocryphal books and states that they are not to be numbered within the canon of divine Scriptures, though otherwise allowed by the Church. He qualifies what he means by use in the Church when he says they are to be used for edification in good life and manners, although insufficient for the resolution of any doubts in matters of faith.

14th Century

Nicholas of Lira - He was converted from Judaism to Christianity. He wrote commentaries on all the books of the Bible which were highly regarded by the Churchmen of his day. In his preface to the Book of Tobit he states that by the favor of God assisting him he had already written upon all the canonical books of Scripture from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation. He then declared his further intention to write upon those books which he said were not canonical, namely, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, and the Maccabees. He distinguished the apocrypah from the canonical books in the following way: the canonical books were not only before them in time, but in dignity and authority; while those that are not in the canon, were received into the Church, to be read there for men's instruction in manners, but not for any establishment of their Faith, while the others which were canonical were the prime source of doctrine of the true religion and contained nothing in them but what is true. In his Commentary on Ezra he states that he passed by the histories of Tobit, Judith and the Maccabees because they were not in the canon of Scripture, either with the Jews, or with Christians.

William Occham - He states that ‘neither Judith, nor Tobit, nor the Macabees, nor Wisdom nor Ecclesiasticus, are to be received ‘into any such height of honour' (as compared to Scripture), since the Church did not number them among the canonical Scriptures.'

15th Century

Antoninus - Archbishop of Florence - Specifically states that the canon of the Old Testament consists of 22 books. He holds this view he says on the authroity of the Hebrews themselves as well as the common judgment of the Latin Church for which he appeals to Jerome, Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Lira. The apocryphal books while held in high esteem are not considered to be on the same level as those which are truly canonical and inspired.

Alphonsus Tostatus - Bishop of Avila - He follows the judgment of Jerome in excluding the apocrypha from the canon of the Old Testament stating that the Church of his day did not receive these books as canonical but allowed them merely to be read in the Churches for the purpose of edification.

Francis Ximenius - Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo - Was responsible for producing an edition of the Bible called the Biblia Complutensia. In producing this work he collaborated with the leading theologians of his day. In the Preface of this work there is an admonition given regarding the apocrypha. It states that the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, the Maccabees, the additions to Esther and Daniel (which were given there in Greek only), were not canonical Scripture. The Preface goes on to say that the Church did not receive the apocryphal books for confirming the authority of any fundamental points of doctrine, though the Church allowed them to be read for purposes of edification. This Bible and its Preface was published by the authority and consent of Pope Leo X, to whom the whole work was dedicated.

Jacobus Faber Stapulensis - Doctor at the University of Paris - Likewise states that the apocryphal books were not reckoned as part of the canon by the Church. They were not considered to be Scripture.

Erasmus - In his Explication of the Apostles' Creed, and the Decalogue he deals with the question as to the number of canonical books in the Old Testament. He states that the number is precisely that as given by Rufinus in which he enumerates the specific books listed by him and he concludes by saying that ‘the ancient Fathers admitted no more, of whose authority it was not lawful for any man to doubt.' He goes on to say that the Church did not grant the same authority to books like Tobit, Judith and Wisdom which it did to the canonical Scriptures.

In light of this history it is understandable how BF Westcott could make the following judgment regarding the decree of Trent relative to the Canon of the Old Testament:

‘This fatal decree in which the Council...gave a new aspect to the whole question of the Canon, was ratified by fifty-three prelates, among whom there was not one German, not one scholar distinguished for historical learning, not one who was fitted by special study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only be determined by the voice of antiquity. How completely the decision was opposed to the spirit and letter of the original judgments of the Greek and Latin Churches, how far in doctrinal equalization of the disputed and acknowledged books of the Old Testament it was at variance with the traditional opinion of the West, how absolutely unprecedented was the conversion of an ecclesiastical usage into an article of belief, will be seen from the evidence which has already been adduced' (BF Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (MacMillan: Cambridge, 1889), p. 478).

The claims of Rome for the Canon are historically bankrupt. She suggests that we should receive her as supreme authority because of this issue of the canon. This would be equivalent to the Pharisees demanding that Jesus receive their teaching as supreme authority simply because as Jews they had determined which books were truly the word of God. Even if the claims of the Roman Church were true with respect to the canon, and they aren't, it doesn't follow that this makes them automatically authoritative in every area and are to be blindly followed any more than the Jews and Jesus should follow the Pharisees. The teachings of Rome contradict Scripture and much of its teaching, such as that on Tradition, the Papacy, Mary, the sacraments, purgatory, in addition to that of the Canon is patently contradictory to much of the teachings of the early Church. More importantly, its gospel message is a perversion of the teaching of the Scriptural gospel.

Rome is guilty of misrepresenting history and the teachings of the Reformation and has misinterpreted Scripture. It is a false system which has become corrupted over time, just as the Jewish system did in the Old Testament.

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Before anyone gets too heated up, take a deep breath, calm down, and abide by the Ecumenical Guidelines.

Mr. Webster's tone gets a bit harsh at the end, but, I believe this a part of back and forth. Anyhow, he was rebutted HERE and rebutted back HERE.

A couple discussions on this forum over the past week has relit a passion in me to study the history of the canon. The last I was involved in was Beginning Catholic: Books of the Catholic Bible: The Complete Scriptures [Ecumenical] posted on July 17th.

This is not intended to be a hit piece or a "Catholic-hating" post. Anyone that has had Catholic v. Protestant discussions with me in the past knows that I try to be as kind as possible, and will often end a discussion once it starts heading south. I confront with facts and honey... usually.

Here's hoping this spurs lively and learned discussion.

God Bless.

[raynearhood]

I would try to make this as ecumenical an answer as I can, but anyone who end his polemic as he does deserves a pole up his emic.

Yeah, I understand that reaction, but, like I said, this article is part of a series. It gets more heated than that, too. Read the rebuttals I linked to see.

Anyhow, did you read the entire article? What do you make of the arguments?

[Admin Moderator]

#2 was a bit salty for the Religion Forum. Let’s try to keep it G-rated. Thanks.

[qwertyz]

I guess I’m missing something in his argument. Jerome, et al., proposed their views, and lost, as part of the discussion hosted and concluded within the Roman Catholic Church. Simply aggregating the views of some pre-Trent voices shows a discussion had been going on. The Protestants knew a Catholic consensus had been reached. That’s why they created a new one by dusting off the dissident views.

I’m speaking as one of those former Evangelical Protestants now a Catholic.

[Mad Dawg]

The first paragraph is bogus. I will underline the part where it goes south:

It is often asserted by Roman Catholic apologists that Protestants must rely on their tradition in order to know which books ought to be included in the Biblical Canon. The argument says that since there is no “inspired table of contents” for the Bible, then we are forced into relying upon tradition to dictate which books belong in the Bible, and which books do not. It was the church of Rome, these apologists alledge [sic], which determined the canon at the Councils of Hippo (393 A.D.) and Carthage (397 A.D.), and it is only due to this, that Protestants know which books are inspired, and which are not. Consequently, it is the Roman Church which should be submitted to on issues of faith.

The grossest error is in the word "Consequently". I think what he calls "the Roman Church" should be "submitted to" in matters of faith and morals.

But I do not think that it the duty of submission is in any way a consequence of decisions taken at the councils of Hippo or Carthage.

Further, I do not think that the church teaches that "it is only due" to those Councils that protestants know or should know which books are inspired.

A skimming of a few following paragraphs reveals other errors of reason and disproportion.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia actually affirms the fact that the Canon was not officially and authoritatively established for the Western Church until the Council of Trent in the 16th century...

No kidding? It not only affirms, but ACTUALLY affirms? Who is it, which Catholic apologist affirms otherwise? Next he'll be saying that we ACTUALLY affirm the Doctrine of the Trinity.

The article's beginning so badly excuses me, I think, from a careful reading of the rest of it, and disqualifies the article for serious discussion, though some of the research seems interesting.

[LurkingSince'98]

Sirs,

why I thought it was just a cute play on words - granted “salty”, however no different than the authors bilge, which is insulting.

I you would like to have Catholics engage you in debate - maybe you could try not insulting them right out of the box and as you said the finale is even better: “It is a false system which has become corrupted over time..”

If some of my more patient and thick-skinned Catholic apologists care to take the bait, more power to them...

Lurking’

[Salvation]

Not another Catholic post from a non-Catholic source.

Lord have mercy.

[Salvation]

Thanks for posting.

[Salvation]

Catholic Truth -- Code of Canon Law

[thefrankbaum]

Leaving his last few paragraphs aside (maybe in the future it would make sense to bracket such comments and just summarize his 'points' without the acrimony?), there are a few things I think require comment.

This is why I believe that the term canonical in the early Church had 2 meanings, one broad in the sense that it encompassed all the books which were permissable to be read in the Church and another narrow which included only those books which were authoritative for the establishment of doctrine.

Huh? So he has an opinion with no support? I have never seen any evidence supporting such an assertion, and I imagine someone would've clarified such an important distinction in antiquity.

He is correct that the Synod of Hippo and the Councils of Carthage were not infallible, but that doesn't mean they were spurious - a lot of the leaders of the Early Church thought the deuterocanon was part of Scripture.

Third, his entire argument seems to rest on the fact that there were some prior to Trent who were not sure about the deuterocanon. Great, but it is a red herring - no one in the Church claims these men were capable of teaching infallibly. Such a line of argument is comparable to those who try and justify abortion because St. Thomas Aquinas wasn't sure when "ensoullment" occurred, and thought it may have been during quickening. Even some of the most learned and holy men can get it wrong.

Lastly, he still doesn't discuss how we know the New Testament canon. Why not add the Gospel of Thomas or the Acts of Peter? Or is that somehow different than the Old Testament?

Anyways, just my thoughts at a read.

[LurkingSince'98]

by not rejecting this bilge out of hand you ascribe a certain pseudo-ligitamacy that the author and his devotees are yearning for.

What do you get out of giving even the time-of-day to these insults to our faith?

Lurking’

[Apercu]

Where is the “Aw Jeez”...guy when you need him.

[CdMGuy]

As boring as arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Let the Catholics have their Bible Canor and the Protestants have their version. As a Catholic, I could care less.

[Frank Sheed]

Everyone knows that the Bible fell from heaven already assembled as one complete book into the arms of the Reformers. That is my personal interpretation anyway. Those monks dutifully copying Scripture from 400 A.D. until 1580 A.D. were copying comic books or some other stuff probably.

F

[raynearhood]

Simply aggregating the views of some pre-Trent voices shows a discussion had been going on.

But, that is the point of the article. This is rebuttal to an argument by someone (whomever he is answering here) that the Catholic Church, thus the church as a whole, always accepted the Apocrypha as canon. He challenges that notion by presenting the words of church leaders leading up to the Council of Trent. The fact is, as Webster is showing here, that the Church did not accept the Apocrypha as canon, but for use in edification and teaching. The testimony of Church leaders long past (Popes included) attest to it.

The Protestants knew a Catholic consensus had been reached. That’s why they created a new one by dusting off the dissident views.

If Webster is correct that the Church did not accept the Apocrypha as cannon before the Reformation then that statement is incorrect. The counter-argument would be: The Roman Church accepted the Apocrypha prejudicially, in order to develop arguments against Luther and his followers on certain subjects concerning tradition. This is evidenced by the fact that 1&2 Edras was dropped, though a reason given for accepting the Apocrypha is it's inclusion in the LXX.

[Salvation]

By posting the link to the Catholic Code of Canon Law I consider that I did reject the post.

[Admin Moderator]

Play on words understood, though as I said, a bit salty for the Religion Forum. No objection otherwise to a forceful defense of your faith.

[LurkingSince'98]

sorry I had not seen that by the time I posted.

Regards,
Lurking’

[Frank Sheed]

Whose Bible is it anyway? (Karl Keating)

Sigh...

[Dan Middleton]

"Not another Catholic post from a non-Catholic source."

This is like saying, "Not another post about Democrats from a non-Democrat source" or "Not another post about Republicans from a non-Republican source."

For such things as criticism, discourse, and debate to exist, one kind of has to accept the other side talking about you.

[narses]

+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.

As a faithful Catholic, I am placing this thread on IGNORE If you are Catholic, be aware that this thread contains slanders about the Catholic Church. We should not reward invincibly ignorant anti-Catholic bigots by engaging them in futile debate. Therefore, please do not respond to any of the lies about the Catholic Church contained on this thread. Saint Paul pray for those who hate the Church.

[dighton]

With apologies for a swerve off-topic, and kicking myself in advance of the answer (no doubt someone obvious), the painter?

[narses]

Unsure. I think etienne parrocel.

[andysandmikesmom]

I took note of your tagline, and it piqued my interest....

I am not a Catholic, not yet anyway...one of the very finest men I ever met, was a Catholic Chaplain, who served at a major Military Medical Center....I dont know that he ever served in combat, for the whole time I knew him, he served at the Medical Center and I never really inquired about his past...

His office and the Chapel, were right next to the pediatrics unit....and being as it was a Military Medical Center, rather than a Military Hospital, the sickest of the sickest children were patients there....

And this magnificent Catholic Chaplain, was of the greatest comfort to all of us moms, he supported us in any way he could, he would spend time with us and our children when he was off duty, he would travel to other hospitals, if our children needed to be in them(as mine did for his bone marrow transplant)....this wonderful Catholic Chaplain, was just the favorite of everyone, parents and children alike...

You could stop by his office, and often sick children would be seen in there with him, in their wheelchairs, hooked up to IV’s, and in various stages of their diseases...he welcomed them, talked with them, and soothed their tears...

He was a true blessing to everyone who ever knew him...he would often sit at my sons bedside and read to him from the Bible....my son, aged 15, decided to become a Catholic, and this fine Catholic Chaplain, confirmed him, while my son was on his deathbed....

This Catholic Chaplain may never be a Saint, but in my book he was one, to me, to my son, to my whole family...this chaplain died several years ago, and I am sure, he was truly ones of God’s finest servants...

[Religion Moderator]

The thread tag was changed from "ecumenical" to "open."

For a thread to qualify for "ecumenical" status, the article must not be antagonistic. From the end of the article:

Rome is guilty of misrepresenting history and the teachings of the Reformation and has misinterpreted Scripture. It is a false system which has become corrupted over time, just as the Jewish system did in the Old Testament.

[windsorknot]

That is a very inspiring story. I am also not a Catholic....yet.

[dighton]

Thank you. To my great relief, not “someone obvious,” here anyhow. A striking image.

[windsorknot]

We should not reward invincibly ignorant anti-Catholic bigots by engaging them in futile debate.

Roger that.

[raynearhood]

Whoa, hold on. I tried to have a good discussion with you on your thread. Remember, the same thread that said that Martin Luther first invoked the term “Apocrypha” to cast a bad light on the disputed books. Shoot, I even linked to your thread in the beginning of this thread, along with a link to a rebuttal of this article.

That thread fizzled, ending, I believe, with you saying that you would leave the arguments to someone more expert than you. I am simply trying to draw those experts from the woodwork.

I don’t give any support to the tone of this article, as I said, I just thought the arguments presented were well constructed. I was attempting to spur discussion. Geez, can’t win for losing, can I?

[Salvation]

Welcome home!

[raynearhood]

Yeah. I really wasn’t trying to be antagonistic though. Sorry about that.

No objections here.

[LurkingSince'98]

I was attempting to spur discussion. Geez, can’t win for losing, can I?

Yeah, one sure fire good method to “spur discussion” is to insult the person you are trying to engage in dialogue.

Try “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. I may help your ‘win for losing’ conundrum.

Lurking’

[raynearhood]

Click here and scan my comments. I am neither invincibly ignorant nor an anti-Catholic bigot. I don't agree with Catholicism, but, I am neither invective nor hate-mongering. I thought that my disclaimer at the beginning where I said that Webster was a bit harsh, as well as linking to a rebuttal of the article, would have cleared that up. I guess not.

[LurkingSince'98]

I = It

Dr. Sippo utterly refutes Webster on the Canon

{Once again, the perfidy and gross dishonesty of Protestant anti-Catholic bigots rears its ugly head. About 11 years ago, I answered an e-mail inquiry about the assertions made by the apostate William Webster concerning the Old Testament Canon in the Catholic Church. This was an off-hand note in a private correspondence done in between patients at my medical office that was never intended to be published openly on the Internet. Nevertheless Webster got hold of it and made a scathing attack on me. He had some valid critques of the content, but basically, he failed to answer any of the significant points I had raised and continue to perpetuate his lies and errors about matters of fact.

In response, I sent a rebuttal directly to Webster correcting the mistakes in my e-mail and definitively refuting his errors. In fact over the last decade I have sent this response to him 3 times, but he has never done me the courtesy of acknowledging it. Instead, he is still harping on that original e-mail and posts it on his bulletin board while refusing to deal with any of the points that I raised in my rebuttal to him.

Someone over on the Surprised by Truth Apologetics Board is now throwing this same old e-mail back in my face. I am therefore placing the full text of my rebuttal here on my blog for the whole world to see. This will prove that Mr. Webster is neither a scholar nor a man of integrity.

It is my sincere wish that he will openly acknowledge his errors and admit them to himself as well as to the world to the glory of Jesus Christ.

Art Sippo}



Dr. Sippo Answers "Billy Burro"*
OR
Mr. Webster's Errors on the Canon Refuted

“A burro can ask more questions than a wise man can answer.”
(Old Mexican Proverb)


(* For those lacking in a knowledge of “reformation” polemical literature, this title is shamelessly based on the treatise “Dr. Luther replies to Goat Emser.” Turnabout is fair play.)


I note with dismay the response that Mr. William Webster made to my critique of his position paper on the Catholic Canon of Scripture. Mr. Webster is a well-known anti-Catholic author who writes books misrepresenting the Catholic Church and her history in order to impress uneducated Protestants. He specializes in taking known facts from history and then "explaining" them in novel ways that support his prejudices while ignoring the interpretations of serious historians. He refuses to accept the conclusions of normative historians when they conflict with his own and fails to appreciate the legitimacy of interpretations other than his own.

Webster is not a serious student of Church history and has no real desire to understand the sitz im leben of the pre-Reformation Church. He commits numerous errors and yet is very defensive about his opinions. He is not open to correction about his mistakes. His personal hatred of the Catholic Church blinds him to the possibility that we Catholics may have a rationale for our position even if he does not agree with it. Consequently, he needs to be constantly engaged in tenacious ad hominem personal attacks against anyone with the temerity to challenge his views. I for one wish he would appreciate the complexity of Church History and stop trying to interpret it in “black and white” terms using anachronistic Protestant presuppositions.

The sources of his "arguments" usually come from the works of Protestant controversialists of the 19th and early 20th Centuries many of which have been found wanting by subsequent scholarship. There is no appreciation of the wider context of Church History or of studies done apart from an anti-Catholic fortress mentality. He has no familiarity with the more genteel and exacting ecumenical work in Church History that has been done since World War II that cuts across denominational lines. He also has no idea what to make of modern religious studies. The significance of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls is lost on him. He also cannot understand the diversity of opinions among believing Christians throughout history. Like other ‘Low Church’ types, he thinks that Christianity was meant to be static and unchanging so that any development in doctrine or practice over the millennia must necessarily represent corruption.
(For some reason, he fails to see that the rapid and unrestrained “changes” in Christian teaching and practice during the Reformation must -- in light of his stasis theory -- be even more problematic.)

He has no appreciation for the historic Catholic Church and its body of teaching as works in process under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit. In short, he wants to invent his own better Church in competition with the one that Jesus founded.

My previous comments on Mr. Webster's position paper on the Catholic Canon of Scripture were written off the cuff and relied on my memory alone as a source of information. They were written in private correspondence in response to an e-mail inquirer. They were not meant for publication. There were some minor lapses in areas of fact that I will attempt to rectify. I apologize for these inaccuracies. In substance though, I agree with the bulk what I wrote and will demonstrate once again that Mr. Webster has not been telling the truth. There are both specific faults in Mr. Webster's position and more general methodological ones. I will deal with the latter first as an aid to specifically refuting each of the points he tried to defend in his response to my first critique.

A) What is official Catholic teaching?

Mr. Webster likes to decide for himself which historical documents represent official Catholic teaching. His criteria for this are simply whatever he thinks will support his conclusions. As such, he dismisses the Canons of the Council of Hippo and the Bulls promulgated by Pope Eugene IV during the Ecumenical Council of Florence as unofficial. Meanwhile he raises to infallible and ecumenical status the Commentary on Job by St. Gregory the Great, the 12th Century Glossa Ordinaria on Scripture, the 102 Canons of Quinisext, and the opinions of individual Christian scholars such as St. Jerome. Let us clear up the confusion.

Let us define what the Catholic Church means by its Magisterium:

Magisterium (Lat. magister, a master): The Church's divinely appointed authority to teach the truths of religion, "Going therefore, teach ye all nations... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matt. xxviii, 19-20). This teaching is infallible: "And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (ibid.). The solemn magisterium is that which is exercised only rarely by formal and authentic definitions of councils or popes. Its matter comprises dogmatic definitions of ecumenical councils or of the popes teaching ex cathedra, or of particular councils, if their decrees are universally accepted or approved in solemn form by the pope; also creeds and professions of faith put forward or solemnly approved by pope or ecumenical council. The ordinary magisterium is continually exercised by the Church especially in her universal practices connected with faith and morals, in the unanimous consent of the Fathers (q.v.) and theologians, in the decisions of Roman Congregations concerning faith and morals, in the common sense (q.v.) of the faithful, and various historical documents in which the faith is declared. All these are founts of a teaching,
which as a whole is infallible. They have to be studied separately to determine how far and in what conditions each of them is an infallible source of truth.

A CATHOLIC DICTIONARY (THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPÆDIC DICTIONARY)
Edited By Donald Attwater
New York, The Macmillan Company, 1962.
(Copyright 1958, Third Edition)


The only documents that are considered Magisterial by the Catholic Church are those that are promulgated by the Pope (with or without an Ecumenical Council) and directed towards the Universal Church as definitive teaching. In some cases, the Popes have acknowledged the unique contribution of a particular author or local synod in setting forth the teaching of the Church. In such cases, documents originating from sources other than the Pope or an Ecumenical Council have been promulgated by the Popes as Magisterial. This includes the Council of Hippo, the Councils of Carthage, and the Council of Orange II. A collection of magisterial documents can be found in the compendium known as the Denzinger Enchiridion Symbolorum. It contains excerpts from the most important documents in chronological order. If a document is in Denzinger, it is considered to represent official Church teaching. If it is not in Denzinger, it can still represent magisterial teaching if it meets the criteria noted above. Many important Christian documents -- including some written by the Popes - do not meet the criteria to be considered official Church teaching. Many divergent opinions were held by the Church Fathers even on matters of doctrine.

Many Protestant controversialists think that this disproves the truth of the Catholic faith. Strangely, they claim that an infallible teaching authority ought to lead to a static, dictatorial, and unanimous agreement in theological matters from Apostolic times up to the present. (I find this odd since their own system of interpretation - which they claim to be infallible - has not resulted in any such uniformity.)

The Catholic Church has never claimed this nor has she sought such uniformity. As the Catholic Church matured from the 1st Century onwards, there has always been open discussion of controversial matters within the community of faith. On occasion, the Magisterium has stepped in to authoritatively assert the correct solution to a dispute. In some cases it has intervened to tell both sides that they cannot condemn their opponents as heretics because the matter was not clearly decidable. The policy has been unity in what is essential, tolerance in what is not, and charity in everything.

The writings of the Fathers are therefore not considered “official” teaching per se. Rather, they are witnesses to the periods in which they lived and to the ideas and traditions that were then current. The Council of Trent taught that the consensus of all the Fathers on any matter of doctrine would render it infallibly taught (e.g., the divinity of Christ, the necessity of the atonement, baptismal regeneration, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, and the substantial presence of Christ’s body & blood in the Eucharist). In those matters where there was less than full consensus, disputes sometimes arose and it often would take an act of the Magisterium to settle the issue. Ultimately, it was neither the opinion of any particular Father nor the overwhelming majority of Fathers which decided the case but the superintendence of the Holy Spirit acting through the hierarchy.

Therefore, despite Mr. Webster’s heartfelt desire, the mere fact that a document had been written by a Church Father does not automatically raise it to magisterial status no matter how popular it might have been at one time. By a strange coincidence, all of the documents Mr. Webster dismisses in his reply are recognized in Denzinger as magisterial. Meanwhile none of the ones he supports are even quoted. Yet he claims that the Catholic Church officially followed St. Jerome’s critical attitude towards the Deuterocanonical material of the Old Testament up until the Council of Trent. Since none of the works he quoted meets the criteria for magisterial status, we can see that Mr. Webster has created a phony “straw-man” Catholic Church whose teachings are not those of the real Catholic Church. He has done this to flimflam the unwary. As we will find that is not the least of his prevarications.


B) What does the term “infallible” mean when used by Catholic authors?

Mr. Webster has taken exception to my claim that the Canon of Scripture was infallibly defined by the Magisterium long before the Council of Trent. He rests his opinion in part on the use of the term “infallible” by some Catholic authors with regard to this question. In particular he alleges that Fr. Schroeder states in his translation of the documents of the Ecumenical Councils that the Council of Trent was the first instance in which the Canon of Scripture was declared infallibly by the Magisterium. He also quotes the New Catholic Encyclopedia to this effect as well. I think we can extend to Mr. Webster some leeway for his error here. Not being a Catholic scholar, he is not familiar with the conventions used in our literature. For many Catholic an author, saying that a teaching was “infallibly” taught was the equivalent of saying that it was taught by the Extraordinary Magisterium: either by a canon in an Ecumenical Council or by an ex cathedra statement of the Roman Pontiff.

Unfortunately, this use of terminology is seriously flawed and does not represent a precise understanding of defined Catholic teaching. The First Vatican Council taught the following with regard to the infallibility of the Church’s teaching:

Vatican I, Session 3,
Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith,
Chapter 3, Section 8

Wherefore, by divine and catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium. Infallible statements are therefore not restricted solely to the Extraordinary Magisterium (i.e., “solemn judgment”), but extend also to the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium of the Popes, the Hierarchy in union with him, or of a General Council.

This means that any teaching promulgated in a definitive way to the Catholic Church with the consent of the Popes is formally infallible. Some Catholic authors have been reticent about acknowledging infallibility in any document that was not formally an act of the Extraordinary Magisterium.


Note this section from the article on Infallibility in The Catholic Encyclopedia on the New Advent Web-Site:

As to the organ of authority by which such doctrines or facts are determined,three possible organs exist. One of these, the magisterium ordinarium, is liable to be somewhat indefinite in its pronouncements and, as a consequence, practically ineffective as an organ. The other two [Papal ex cathedra teaching & Ecumenical Councils], however, are adequately efficient organs, and when they definitively decide any question of faith or morals that may arise, no believer who pays due attention to Christ's promises can consistently refuse to assent with absolute and irrevocable certainty to their teaching.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm


The authors whom Mr. Webster quoted were following this scruple. They considered a teaching only to be clearly infallible when given by the Extraordinary Magisterium. In the light of Church Tradition and the teachings of Vatican I, they were technically in error. If you understand that they were using a common convention of their time, you realize that they were pointing the faithful to those sources of teaching that they thought were most unequivocal and “adequately efficient” in teaching Catholic doctrine infallibly. This unfortunate literary convention has confused many people so we can’t blame Mr. Webster for being among them.

This matter was a hot issue during the Modernist controversies in the middle of this century. Many theologians wanted to dismiss the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium as contained in Papal teaching such as encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, and other official documents.

Pope Pius XII responded to this in the encyclical Humani Generis (1949) paragraph 21:

Nor must it be thought that the things contained in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves require assent on the plea that in them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For these things are taught with the ordinary Magisterium, about which it is also true to say, 'He who hears you, hears me.' [Lk 10. 16]. . . If the Supreme Pontiffs, in their acta expressly pass judgment on a matter debated until then, it is obvious to all that the matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be considered any longer a question open for discussion among theologians.

There was further refinement on this matter by Vatican Council II in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, paragraph 25:

In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the
faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking…

And this infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals extends as far as the deposit of revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded. And this is the infallibility which the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops, enjoys in virtue of his office, when as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (cf. Lk 22:32), by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals. And therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable, since they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, promised to him in blessed Peter, and therefore they need no approval of others, nor do they allow an appeal to any other judgment. For then the Roman Pontiff is not pronouncing judgment as a private person, but as the supreme teacher of the universal Church, in whom the charism of infallibility of the Church itself is individually present, he is expounding or defending a doctrine of Catholic faith.

I want to present a recent case in point. In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued a document Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in which he reaffirmed the constant teaching of the Catholic Church that women are not valid matter for the sacrament of Holy Orders.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith made the following statement in response to a request for clarification on this matter:

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned
Cardinal Prefect, approved this Reply, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published.
Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the Feast of the Apostles SS. Simon and Jude, October 28, 1995.
+ Joseph Card. Ratzinger, Prefect

What these quotations prove is that infallibility extends beyond the Extraordinary Magisterium and includes any definitive Papal teaching on the content of the Catholic Faith as such. The Canons of Ecumenical Councils are considered to be Extraordinary Magisterial teaching. The other published material (i.e., the exposition preceding the canons and other documents promulgated in accordance with the Council’s decisions) are not considered part of the Extraordinary Magisterium, but part of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium. In practical terms, whatever these documents affirm is considered infallible and must be acknowledged as such.

The entire corpus of quotations in Denzinger meets the above criteria for infallibility. That is why this is an appropriate source for determining what is and isn’t Catholic doctrine. Hopefully, Mr. Webster will now appreciate how important Denzinger is to an understanding of real Catholic teaching.


Having addressed these two methodological issues, I would now like to proceed to comment on specific claims by Mr. Webster:

1) The Councils of Carthage and Hippo did not establish the Canon for the Church as a whole…

The Council of Hippo (393 AD) was one of a series of important local councils in North Africa held in the late 4th and early 5th Centuries. This series of councils was held to bring about reform and renewal in the North African Church and to deal with the Donatist and Pelagian heresies. Each council issued canons on matters of doctrine and discipline while reaffirming explicitly the canons of the other councils in the series that had preceded them.

This is the actual canon from the Council of Hippo according to Archbishop Hefele’s History of the Councils of the Church (vol. II, page 400). This canon was reaffirmed at every subsequent Carthaginian council in the series:

Canon 36.
ITEM, that besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in church under the name of divine Scripture. But the Canonical Scriptures are as follows:

THE OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis.
Exodus.
Leviticus.
Numbers.
Deuteronomy.
Joshua the Son of Nun.
The Judges.
Ruth.
The Four books of Kings.
The Two books of Parlipomena. [Chronicles]
Job.
The Psalms of David.
The Five books of Solomon.
The Twelve Books of the Prophets.
Isaiah.
Jeremiah.
Ezekiel.
Daniel.
Tobias.
Judith.
Esther.
The Two Books of Esdras.
The Two books of Maccabees.

THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Four Gospels.
The Acts of the Apostles.
The Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul
The One Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews.
The Two Epistles of St. Peter, the Apostle.
The Three Epistles of St. John the Apostle.
The Epistles of St. James the Apostle.
The Epistle of St. Jude the Apostle.
The Revelation of St. John.

Concerning the confirmation of this canon, the Transmarine Church shall be consulted. On the anniversaries of Martyrs, their acts shall also be read.

(N.B., The term “Transmarine Church” means literally “the Church over the sea” and is clearly a reference to Rome, which was directly on the opposite side of the Mediterranean Sea. The four books of Kings include the two books of Samuel and the two books of Kings from the Hebrew Bible. The books of Baruch and Lamentations were considered part of Jeremiah. The five books of Solomon were the wisdom books: Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, and Sirach.)

Explicit confirmation was given to this list by Pope St. Innocent I in 405 AD and 414 AD. The ultimate conclusion of the series was the Council of Carthage held in 418 AD. This was a major synod involving 200 bishops in which the North African Church presented its brief against the Errors of Pelagius and his disciple Coelestius who had appealed their case to Rome.

In his History of the Christian Church, Protestant Philip Schaff makes the following comment about the canons promulgated by this council:

Volume III
Chapter IX
Section 149

…These things produced a change in the opinions of [Pope] Zosimus, and about the middle of the year 418, he issued an encyclical letter to all the bishops of both East and West, pronouncing the anathema upon Pelagius and Coelestius (who had meanwhile left Rome), and declaring his concurrence with the decisions of the council of Carthage in the doctrines of the corruption of human nature, of baptism, and of grace. Whoever refused to subscribe the encyclical, was to be deposed, banished from his church, and deprived of his property.

The canons of the council of Carthage (418 AD) were thus declared by Popes Zosimus to represent authentic magisterial teaching to the whole Church. For this reason they were numbered among the 50 synods considered authoritative in the Western Church and the 85 Synods considered so in the East.

Mr. Webster insists that the decision of the Council of Hippo was unimportant and ignored by the Church as a whole. This position is rejected by virtually every major scholar -- Protestant or Catholic -- who has reviewed the evidence.

For example, Philip Schaff says:

History of the Christian Church
Vol. II
138. The Holy Scriptures and the Canon
The first express definition of the New Testament canon, in the form in which it has since been universally retained, comes from two African synods, held in 393 at Hippo, and 397 at Carthage, in the presence of Augustin, who exerted a commanding influence on all the theological questions of his age. By that time, at least, the whole church must have already become nearly unanimous as to the number of the canonical books; so that there seemed to be no need even of the sanction of a general council…

Soon after the middle of the fourth century, when the church became firmly settled in the Empire, all doubts as to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and the Antilegomena of the New ceased, and the acceptance of the Canon in its Catholic shape, which includes both, became an article of faith.

Vol. III
118. Sources of Theology. Scripture and Tradition.
In the Western church the canon of both Testaments was closed at the end of the fourth century through the authority of Jerome (who wavered, however, between critical doubts and the principle of tradition), and more especially of Augustine, who firmly followed the Alexandrian canon of the Septuagint, and the preponderant tradition in reference to the disputed Catholic Epistles and the Revelation; though he himself, in some places, inclines to consider the Old Testament Apocrypha as deutero-canonical books, bearing a subordinate authority.

The council of Hippo in 393, and the third (according to another reckoning the sixth) council of Carthage in 397, under the influence of Augustine, who attended both, fixed the catholic canon of the Holy Scriptures, including the Apocrypha of the Old Testament…

This canon remained undisturbed till the sixteenth century, and was sanctioned
by the council of Trent at its fourth session.

Another Protestant scholar F. F. Bruce in his book The Canon of Scripture (page 97) says:

In 393, a church council held in Augustine’s see of Hippo laid down the limits of the canonical books along the lines approved by Augustine himself. The proceedings of this council have been lost but they were summarized in the proceedings of the Third Council of Carthage (397) a provincial council. These appear to have been the first Church Councils to make a formal pronouncement on the canon. When they did so they did not impose any innovation on the churches; they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches of the west and the greater part of the east.

Still another Protestant, Harry Y. Gamble, says the following in his book The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (page 55-56) –

The final resolution of the many variations [in the New Testament canon] we have noted began to take place in the late fourth century, primarily through the actions of ecclesiastical councils… In the west, two North African synods of the late fourth century promulgated lists of authoritative books. The Council of Hippo (393) and the Council of Carthage (397) both named the 27 books of our New Testament….

A broad uniformity of usage which closely approximates our [New Testament] canon cannot therefore be dated before the close of the fourth century… The canons of Hippo were recognized in later Church history for their orthodoxy and importance.

The Western Church had formally accepted all of the canons from Carthage as normative as we had noted earlier. With regard to the Eastern Church, Canon II of the Quinisext (Trullan) Council included explicit affirmation for all of the canons from Council of Carthage in 418 AD including the one on the Canon of Scripture from Hippo.

The Ecumenical Council of Nicea II (787) formally reaffirmed the following:

Anathema 4: If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the Church, let him be anathema…
Canon I : …We joyfully embrace the sacred canons and we maintain complete unshaken their regulation, both those expounded by those trumpets of the Spirit, the apostles worthy of all praise, and those from the six holy universal synods and from the synods assembled locally for the promulgation of such decrees, and from our holy fathers…

It is the universal opinion of all scholars whose work I consulted (i.e., Hefele, Schaff, Percival, & Tanner) that this affirmation was intended to extend to all of the canons of the Council of Carthage including the one from Hippo on the Canon of Scripture.

In summary, the Council of Hippo was a significant turning point in Church history. Prior to it, there was extensive debate as to the limits of both the Old and New Testament Canons. Afterwards, the limit of the NT Canon was fixed definitively for the Church and this list has become the universal norm. Its OT Canon became the norm in the Church as well but some reservations continued among certain Fathers concerning the exact status of the Deuterocanonical books within the Canon. While it did not have the status of an Ecumenical Council in itself, the decision of the Council of Hippo with regard to the Canon of Scripture was recognized by the Popes and subsequent Patriarchs and Bishops to be the norm of the Catholic Church. It has remained so to this day.

In my previous comments, I indicated that ‘the Council of Lyon’ had also affirmed this. I was in error. Neither of the Councils of Lyon deal with this matter. What I actually had in mind was an explicit quotation of the book of Sirach as scripture used by the Council of Basle/Florence. Such a usage implicitly reaffirms the authority of the Deuterocanon. I apologize for the oversight.

When I went back to the recent work of Fr. Norman Tanner SJ, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, I found that in fact there had been 14 separate instances where an Ecumenical Council held between 787 AD and 1440 AD had quoted authoritatively from the Deuterocanonicals. In 3 cases the book in question (i.e., Sirach) was explicitly referred to as Scripture. In two instances (i.e., one each for Sirach and Wisdom) the equivalent phrase “it is written” was used.

The details are:
Deuterocanonical Quotations from the Ecumenical Councils:

Nicea II:
Canon 16 (787) - Sirach 1:32 (scripture)

Constantinople IV:
Canon 10 (869) - Sirach 11:7 (scripture)

Lateran IV:
Section 70 (1215) - Sirach 2:14, 3:28 (it is written)

Vienne:
Section 14 (1311) - Sirach 24:23
Section 24 (1311) - Wisdom 5:6
Section 38 (1312) - Sirach 24:41-42, 1:5; Susannah/Daniel 13:42

Basle/Florence:
Session 21(1435) - Sirach 18:23 (scripture)
Session 3 (1438) - Wisdom 10:19 (it is written)
Session 6 (1439) - Tobit 12:20
Session 7 (1439) - Susannah/Daniel 13:9
Session 9 (1440) - Wisdom 5:21


This means that for a period of over seven hundred years prior to the “reformation,” the Magisterium of the Catholic Church had been quoting from the Deuterocanonical books as Scripture in its highest level of authoritative teaching. All five of the above councils gave their implicit witness to the inspired and canonical status of these books and used them on an equal footing with the rest of Scripture. This would not have been possible if – as Mr. Webster has tried to claim - it had been “the practice of the Church as a whole from the time of Jerome up to the eve of the Reformation ” not to give the Deuterocanonical books “status on a par equal with the inspired Scripture.”

We then also have the history of the Deuterocanonical material is its use by the Fathers and the Scholastics. Here is what Protestant Bruce Metzger says in his book An Introduction to the Apocrypha, page 178ff:

Whether it was owing to the influence of Origen, or from some other reason, from the fourth Century onward, the Greek Fathers made fewer and fewer references to the Apocrypha as inspired…In the Latin Church, on the other hand, a much higher estimate was accorded to the books of the Apocrypha. Following the example of Tertullian and Cyprian, Augustine frequently quoted from them as if they were not different from the canonical books of the Hebrew Old Testament.

Furthermore, more than one Synodical Council justified and emphasized their use. Jerome, standing in this respect almost alone in the West, spoke out decidedly for the Hebrew Canon, declaring unreservedly that books, which were outside that canon, should be ranked as Apocryphal… But St. Jerome - critic as he was of the Deuterocanon - continued to use these books and to quote them as Scripture long after registering his objections.

As J. N. D. Kelly has written in his book Jerome: His Life Writings and
Controversies (page 160-1):

Since Origen’s time it had been recognized that there was a distinction to be made between the Jewish canon and the list acknowledged by Christians, but most writers preferred to place the popular and widely used Deuterocanonical books in a special category (e.g., calling them ‘ecclesiastical’) rather than to discard them. Jerome now takes a much firmer line. After enumerating the “twenty-two” (or perhaps twenty-four) books recognized by the Jews, he decrees that any books outside this list must be reckoned ‘apocryphal’: “They are not in the canon.” Elsewhere, while admitting that the Church reads books like Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] which are strictly uncanonical, he insists on their being used solely for ‘edifying the people, not for orroboration of ecclesiastical doctrines.” This was the attitude which, with temporary concessions for tactical or other reasons, he was to maintain for the rest of his life - in theory at any rate, for in practice he was to continue to cite them as if they were Scripture.”

{In a footnote, Kelly refers to the book San Girolomo by A. Penna (pages 387-9) which documents a large number of such quotations made by St. Jerome up to the very end of his life. Many of the quotations were preceded with comments such as “it is written,” “Scripture says,” etc. The same thing is documented in Jay Braverman’s monograph Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel.}

This pattern of using the Deuterocanonical books as Scripture holds true for virtually all of the Church Fathers, including the ones who - like St. Jerome - voiced some objection to their place in the Bible. All you need to do to see this is to check the Scripture index in the back of the volumes of The Ante-Nicene Fathers and The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers in the Edinburgh patristic collection edited by Schaff and Wace. This fact is also clear in the works of the Great Church Fathers such as St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Bonaventure, St. Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard and the majority of the Scholastics.

With regard to the Eastern Church Bruce Metzger wrote in his book on the Apocrypha page 192ff:

The position of the Eastern Orthodox Church regarding the canon of the Old Testament is not at all clear. On the one hand, since the Septuagint version of the Old Testament was used throughout the Byzantine Period, it is natural that the Greek theologians, such as Andrew of Crete, Germanus, Theodore the Studite, and Theophylact of Bulgaria, should refer indiscriminately to Apocryphal and canonical books alike. Furthermore certain Apocrypha are quoted as authoritative at the Seventh Ecumenical Council held at Nicea in 787 and at the council convened by Basil at Constantinople in 869. On the other hand, writers who raise the issue regarding the limits of the canon, such as John of Damacus and Nicephorus, express views which coincide with those of the great Athanasius, who adhered to the Hebrew canon… At the time of the Reformation…. [by] way of reaction, other leaders of Eastern Orthodoxy found it expedient, in confessions of faith and in decrees of synods, explicitly to place the Apocryphal books on level with the canonical books… What was perhaps the most important synod in the history of the Eastern Church was convened at Jerusalem in 1672. Chiefly directed towards the continuing influence of Cyril [Lucar of Constantinople] and ‘the party of the Calvinists,’ the Synod expressly designated the books of Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, Bel and the Dragon, Susanna, the Maccabees and Ecclesiasticus as canonical.

We can see that the extremely critical view of St. Jerome was never in the majority in the Church - either in the East or in the West - though there were always some scholars who accepted his position. Those who gave unqualified support to the Deuterocanon were more numerous. As time went on, while a significant number of scholars began to raise issue with the Deuterocanon, virtually every author in the pre-“reformation” period quoted from these books as Scripture. It is clear though that anyone who objected to the canonicity of the Deuterocanon after the triumph of the North African Councils was out of touch with Christian history, the mainline of Christian scholarship, and with the teaching of the Magisterium.

In summary, the use of the Deuterocanonical books as Scripture can be traced to the earliest times of the Apostolic Church. It continued in the Church up to the time of the “reformation” and beyond that to the present day. When we review the facts of history and the way that the majority of scholars in this area have interpreted them, clearly Mr. Webster is not telling the truth.


2) The New Catholic Encyclopedia actually affirms the fact that the Canon was not officially and authoritatively established for the Western Church until the Council of Trent…


The New Catholic Encyclopedia is a wonderful compendium, but it has its limitations and it certainly is not a magisterial document. I am under no obligation to agree with its conclusions. Based upon the above analysis of the North African Councils, I submit that the Canon of Scripture was fixed both de facto and de jure when the Popes formally accepted the canons of Hippo and Carthage. I stand on the clear history of the Church and its constant use of the Deuterocanonicals. This was an immemorial tradition confirmed by local synods, promulgated by the Popes to the Universal Church, and in constant use by Catholic Pastors, scholars, and teachers.

I have already mentioned the problem with the improper use of the term “infallible” by some Catholic authors. As I noted earlier, some authors use this to refer only to acts of the Extraordinary Magisterium, whereas defined Catholic doctrine extends infallibility to the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium as well. I apologize to Mr. Webster for the confusion caused by the poor use of terminology by Catholic authors, but what I am insisting upon is the correct interpretation. The fact that the canons from the Council of Hippo are included in Denzinger along with other similar material bears that out.

The questions concerning the extent of both the NT and OT canons resurfaced in the 15th Century with the rise of the Humanist movement. The Humanists mistrusted the received wisdom of tradition and wanted to get “back to the sources” of art, music, science, philosophy, rhetoric, and religion. They were obsessed with critically establishing the true content of ancient texts and of purging them from corruptions, bowdlerized editing, and forgeries. The criticism of the Deuterocanonicals by St. Jerome was quite appealing to them ideologically since he insisted that the authentic OT was the original Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint (LXX) Greek OT generally came on rough times in this environment. A preference was shown for the Hebrew text. The best Hebrew texts of this time were based on the Masoretic Text (MT) which was thought to be authentic. (We now know that it originated in the 8th Century AD.) The MT had added nikudot (i.e., vowel marks) to the Hebrew consonantal text as a way of ‘clarifying’ the meaning of the text. There were some significant differences between the LXX and the MT, which the Humanists usually chalked up to corruptions that had crept in with the translation from Hebrew into Greek.

Based on studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now believe that there was a Western Palestinian variant of the Hebrew text of the Bible which was used during the time of Christ and which is closer to the meaning of the LXX than the MT in many places where they differ. (See Frank Moore Cross’s book Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text.) On this point at least, it appears that the assumptions of the Humanists were wrong.

The Humanists also assumed that the biblical canon of the ancient Church must also have been the same as that of the Jews at least initially. It is now widely accepted that there was no clearly closed ‘canon’ among the Jews until the 3rd Century AD. While the Pharisees had a canon formed in the mid-2nd Century BC, it was not held as normative by all Jews. According to the Talmud, the Sadducees only accepted the authority of the Pentateuch. The Qumran sectaries had their own view of the canon, which apparently included Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, 4QMMT, and possibly some others. Even in the mainstream of Pharisaic thought, there were disputes about the canon as late as 90 AD. The canonicity of Ezekiel, Song of Songs, Chronicles, and Ecclesiastes were questioned at the end of the 1st Century AD and there were strong moves to include Sirach and Wisdom. There was a text of Sirach found in the Cairo Genizah that dates from the 2nd-3rd Century AD which used several of the textual conventions reserved only to Scriptural books . There was no clear consensus among the rabbinical schools until well into the Christian era.

There have been recent attempts by Protestant fundamentalists such as Roger Beckwith to claim that the Jewish canon was closed definitively in the 2nd Century BC. Unfortunately, there are several problems with this scenario. First of all, Beckwith relies heavily on the existence of a mythical Great Sanhedrin (or some other official body), which would have had the authority to close the Canon. There is no evidence that this Sanhedrin ever existed. Beckwith claims that the prophetic voice was stilled in Israel after the Babylonian Exile so that any books written subsequently could not be inspired. He also assumes that Jews of all differing parties would have accepted this closure of the Canon. This puts him at odds with what the Talmud explicitly says about the Sadducees, and with the evidence from Qumran, the Cairo Genizah, and Jewish tradition. Finally, he cannot answer for certain who closed the canon, where it was closed, when, why, or by what authority. He proposes answers to these questions, but his answers are merely speculative. It all ends up looking overly simplistic and is not terribly convincing.

Besides if Beckwith is correct and the prophetic voice was silenced in Israel, then Jesus and St. John the Baptizer could not have been considered real Prophets by their contemporaries. That would have undermined their missions to say the least. There is also evidence form Josephus that there was genuine prophecy going on in Israel up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (See Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine by Rebecca Gray).

And if the Canon of Scripture had been closed before the coming of Christ, then there could have been no NT. The very existence of the NT proves that the Canon of Scripture in the objective sense was not yet completed before the time of Jesus.

In the 1960’s, Protestant A. C. Sundberg did his doctoral dissertation at Harvard on the origin of the Canon of the OT in the Early Church. His conclusion was that the long OT Canon - including the Deuterocanonicals - was a product of the Christian Church in the 2nd Century. He debunked the idea of a longer ‘Alexandrian’ biblical canon among Greek speaking Jews. His work is very important because it shows that the long OT canon is distinctively Christian and was not dependent upon Jewish opinion.

Mr. Webster also asserts that the listing of the Canon of Scripture in the Bull of Union with the Copts written by Pope Eugenius IV was not an infallible document. Again he bases this on his quotation of ‘experts.’ If we actually look at the Bull it says the following:

[The Holy Roman Church] professes that one and the same God is the author of the Old and the New Testaments - that is the Law, and the Prophets, and the Gospels - since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books whose titles are as follows: [the long Canon of the OT and the 27 books of the NT]… After all of these explanations the aforesaid abbot Andrew, in the name of the aforesaid patriarch and of himself and of all the Jacobites, receives and accepts with all devotion and reverence this most salutary synodal decree with all of its chapters, declarations, definitions, traditions, precepts, and statutes and all the doctrine contained therein, and also whatever the holy apostolic see and the Roman Church holds and teaches.

This is a strong statement concerning a profession of faith in the Roman Church’s teaching. It was intended to be definitive and to represent the requirements of union between the Jacobites and the Roman Church. As such it qualifies as an act of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium and so is considered formally infallible.

The following is taken from the article on the Canon of the Old Testament from the New Advent Online Catholic Encyclopedia:

In 1442, during the life, and with the approval, of this Council, Eugenius IV issued several Bulls, or decrees, with a view to restore the Oriental schismatic bodies to communion with Rome, and according to the common teaching of theologians these documents are infallible states of doctrine.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm

So I rest my case on this point. The inspiration and canonicity of the long Old Testament Canon was accepted by the Magisterium for over 1100 years before the “reformation” and whenever the Magisterium was confronted with this question down through the centuries, it always gave the same answer.


3) … even such an authority as Pope Gregory the Great rejected the Apocrypha as canonical:

As I stated in my original comments, St. Gregory made no magisterial pronouncements on the Canon of Scripture. The comment quoted by Mr. Webster was from his Commentary on Job also known as his Magna Moralia, which was a private work of interpretation and not a Magisterial document. Mr. Webster refuses to accept this conclusion because it does not suit his desired conclusions. Let me make my case clear.

By Mr. Webster’s own admission, the Moralia was started in 578 AD while St. Gregory was in Constaninople and he completed the last section (Book XXXV) in 595 AD. According to Protestant Rev. James Barmby DD (in NPNF 2nd Series volume XII, St. Gregory, page xxxi) it was “in a great measure written during his residence in Constantinople.” St. Gregory was Pope from 590 to 604 AD. Hence this work was started twelve years before he was Pope and was mostly composed before he assumed that office. In no way could this be considered an official magisterial document. It is a work of private speculation and has no authority beyond the
scholarship used in its composition.

Mr. Webster alleges that St. Gregory, “would never have purposefully expressed a view contrary to that which he knew had been authoritatively established by the Church.” I commend Mr. Webster on his faith in St. Gregory’s orthodoxy, especially since St. Gregory was an ardent champion of the jurisdictional primacy of the Roman See! But I don’t think Mr. Webster can really speak to St. Gregory’s state of knowledge when he wrote book XIX of the Moralia while in Constantinople. What he knew or did not know at that time concerning the teaching of the Church on the Canon is a matter of speculation. Regardless this was a private work of theology written long before he was Pope and so it has no bearing on the official status of the Deuterocanon within the Church.

Let us review that quote of Pope St. Gregory the Great more carefully:

With reference to which particular we are not acting irregularly, if from the books, though not Canonical, yet brought out for the edification of the Church, we bring forth testimony. Thus Eleazar in the battle smote and brought down an Elephant, but fell under the very beast that he killed.” (1 Macc 6:46)

[Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, (Oxford: Parker, 1845),
Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, Volume II, Parts III and IV,
Book XIX.34, p. 424]

So St. Gregory did not subscribe to St. Jerome’s extreme view of the Canon. He accepted the moderate view that the Deutrocanonicals were ‘ecclesiastical.’ But notice that he is apologizing for using 1Maccabees. He is not saying that it is of no value but rather that he felt the necessity of using this book despite doubts about its canonicity. This is very significant. The inspired character of 1Maccabees showed through despite the doubting of mere men. St. Gregory sensed it and was drawn to use it. Thus he is witnessing again