Canon Ratified at Trent

Yves Congars writes:" "...an official, definitive list of inspired writings did not exist in the Catholic Church until the Council of Trent..."Congars, Tradition and Traditions, p.38

The English translator of the Council of Trent, H.J. Schroeder: "The Tridentine list or decree was the first infallible and effectual promulgated declaration on the Canon of Holy Scriptures." The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, footnote #4, p.17

“The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.” Old Catholic Encyclopedia

The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent.” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967

The Canon: Fallible Certainty

Ellen has written a great post on the biblical canon - please read it.

The fallibility/infallibility argument is the smokescreen of Catholicism. In other words, Catholics cannot know with infallible certainty that the Roman Catholic Church is infallible. In the end, we are all making fallible decisions as fallible humans.

Early Canon Witness: Melito, Bishop of Sardis

Melito, Bishop of Sardis, identified the Old Testament canon around 180 AD as not including the deuterocanonicals (and also Esther). An extract of Melito’s letter regarding the OT canon was recorded by Eusebius, Bishop Caeserea in his Church History (IV, 22;).

“ ‘Melito to his brother Onesimus, greeting: Since you have often, in your zeal for the word, expressed a wish to have extracts made from the Law and the Prophets concerning the Saviour and concerning our entire faith, and hast also desired to have an accurate statement of the ancient book, as regards their number and their order, I have endeavored to perform the task, knowing your zeal for the faith, and your desire to gain information in regard to the word, and knowing that thou, in your yearning after God, esteemest these things above all else, struggling to attain eternal salvation.

Accordingly when I went East and came to the place where these things were preached and done, I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament, and send them to you as written below. Their names are as follows: Of Moses, five books: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Jesus Nave, Judges, Ruth; of Kings, four books; of Chronicles, two; the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, Wisdom also, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job; of Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah; of the twelve prophets, one book; Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. From which also I have made the extracts, dividing them into six books.’ Such are the words of Melito.”

Cajetan and the Oracles of God

"...the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." Romans 3:2

"All Christians receive a double benefit by the apostacy and obstinacy of the Jews: one is, to know which are the true books of the Old Testament; for if all the Jews had been converted to the faith of Christ, then would the world have suspected that the Jews had invented those promises which are of Christ the Messiah: but, now, forasmuch as the Jews are enemies unto Christ, they bear witness unto us that there are no books canonical but those only which the Jews themselves acknowledged to be canonical."
-Cardinal Cajetan, source

"The papal legate, Cajetan, and Luther met face to face for the first time at Augsburg on 11 October. Cajetan (b. 1470) was "one of the most remarkable figures woven into the history of the Reformation on the Roman side . . . Surely no better qualified man could be detailed to adjust the theological difficulties."
-Catholic Encyclopedia

Canon Witness: Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem

Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem and Doctor of the Church, identified the Old Testament canon as that of the 22 book Hebrew canon in his Catechetical Lecture (IV, 33) written around 350 AD (prior to the Councils of Hippo/Carthage and prior to Jerome’s Vulgate translation).

“Learn also diligently, and from the Church, what are the books of the Old Testament, and what those of the New. And, pray, read none of the apocryphal writings: for why do you, who know not those which are acknowledged among all, trouble yourself in vain about those which are disputed?... Of these read the two and twenty books, but have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings. Study earnestly these only which we read openly in the Church. Far wiser and more pious than yourself were the Apostles, and the bishops of old time, the presidents of the Church who handed down these books. Being therefore a child of the Church, trench thou not upon its statutes. And of the Old Testament, as we have said, study the two and twenty books, which, if you are desirous of learning, strive to remember by name, as I recite them. For of the Law the books of Moses are the first five, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And next, Joshua the son of Nave, and the book of Judges, including Ruth, counted as seventh. And of the other historical books, the first and second books of the Kings are among the Hebrews one book; also the third and fourth one book. And in like manner, the first and second of Chronicles are with them one book; and the first and second of Esdras are counted one. Esther is the twelfth book; and these are the Historical writings. But those which are written in verses are five, Job, and the book of Psalms, and Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, which is the seventeenth book. And after these come the five Prophetic books: of the Twelve Prophets one book, of Isaiah one, of Jeremiah one, including Baruch and Lamentations and the Epistle; then Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel, the twenty-second of the Old Testament…But let all the rest be put aside in a secondary rank. And whatever books are not read in Churches, these read not even by yourself, as you have heard me say.”

Augustine and Councils: One Testimony

“The explicit testimonies to the canon of the Old Testament in the catalogues of Christian councils and Christian fathers of the first four centuries have now been examined. And it has been found that, with the exception of three catalogues at the close of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, all the remainder, with slight and unimportant variations, unanimously and unambiguously sustain the Protestant canon. And the other three emanate from one region, and were issued under one influence; so that they are virtually one testimony, and this demanding an explanation which brings it, too, into harmony with the united testimony of the rest of the catalogues. There was a strict canon, limited to books inspired of God, which is witnessed to from all parts of the Church during these early ages, and is identical with the canon of Jews and with that of Protestants. But the term canon was also used in a more lax and wider sense by Augustin and the councils in his region, who embraced in it not only the inspired word, but in addition certain books which had gained a measure of sanctity in their eyes from their connection with the Greek and Latin Bible, and from their having been admitted to be read in the churches on account of their devotional character and the noble examples of martyrdom which they recorded. These supplementary volumes, however, were not put upon a level with the canon strictly so-called in point of authority. They were to be read and heard soberly in the exercise of Christian discretion, and with this caution they were commended to Christian people.”

William Henry Green(1898)
General Introduction to the Old Testament

Catholic Quotes on the Canon

Pope Gregory the Great (604 AD) in quoting a passage from 1 Maccabees says:

"We adduce a testimony from books, though not canonical, yet published for the edification of the Church." Source

"Even in the sixteenth century, shortly before the assembling of the Council of Trent, Cardinal Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo in Spain, in the preface to his Complutensian Polyglott, dedicated to Pope Leo X., and approved by him, states that the books of the Old Testament there printed in Greek only, viz., Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the Maccabees, with the additions to Esther and Daniel, were not in the canon, but were received by the Church rather for the edification of the people than for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines." Source

"they are not in the canon; and that the Church readeth them rather for edification of the people than to confirm any doubtful points of doctrine; and that, therefore, they are not canonical." Cardinal Ximenes

Augustine Canon Distinction

Roman Catholic apologists maintain that the canon of Scripture was decided on during the Councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) even though it wasn’t until the Council of Trent (1546 AD) that an infallible, binding decision was made for the Roman Catholic Church. The uncertainty over the exact canon of Scripture between the time of Hippo/Carthage and Trent goes against the assertion that the biblical canon, although not infallibly defined, was a consistent teaching in the Church that was only reaffirmed by Trent.

As the quote from Cardinal Cajetan shows, there appears to have been a dual-nature to the use of the word “canonical”. Cajetan maintains a difference between books which are to be used in confirming matters of faith and those which are simply to be read for edification. He goes on to say that understanding this distinction will help one to better understand the position of Augustine and the Council of Carthage.

In support of this idea we can look to Augustine’s own words with regards to the canon:

“Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (though this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as equal.

Now the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised, is contained in the following books…”
-Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Ch. 8

It is interesting to note that prior to giving his list of canonical books, Augustine outlines how one should decide which books are canonical. There are three main issues here.

First, it does not seem that Augustine was establishing what IS canonical since he is providing a method to determine canonicity to the reader. Second, it appears there was not a consensus of canonicity at the time of Augustine’s writing since he is providing a method for determination of such. And third, after advising the reader how to determine canonicity, Augustine goes on to describe “the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised” (which is the canon lists of Hippo/Carthage) meaning that the canon list of those Councils is still up for discussion.

Taking the quotes of Cardinal Cajetan and Augustine together, it appears that the canon lists of the early councils led by Augustine were establishing a list of Scriptures from which the canonical Scriptures could be determined based on the consensus of Church usage (using the method outlined by Augustine). Effectively, Augustine and the Councils had narrowed the list of potentially canonical books without strictly defining the exact nature of the biblical canon. This would explain why discussion and doubts about the canonical books continued from the time of Augustine until the time of Trent.

Cardinal Cajetan on the Biblical Canon

Cardinal Cajetan was a contemporary of Luther and held with high regard in the Roman Catholic Church.

"The papal legate, Cajetan, and Luther met face to face for the first time at Augsburg on 11 October. Cajetan (b. 1470) was "one of the most remarkable figures woven into the history of the Reformation on the Roman side . . . a man of erudition and blameless life" (Weizacker); he was a doctor of philosophy before he was twenty-one, at this early age filling chairs with distinction in both sciences at some of the leading universities; in humanistic studies he was so well versed as to enter the dialectic arena against Pico della Mirandola when only twenty-four. Surely no better qualified man could be detailed to adjust the theological difficulties."
-Catholic Encyclopedia

Writing prior to the canon decision at the Council of Trent, Cajetan wrote:

"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."
-Cardinal Cajetan (16th century)

Cajetan recognized that though the deuterocanonicals may be called canonical, they were not recognized as canonical in the same sense as the other Old Testament books.

Catholic Scholars on the Trent Canon

Here is another excerpt from the Jerome Biblical Commentary on the canon decision at Trent. This touches on the inconsistency of using "historical church usage" as a method for determining the canon at Trent.

Even at Trent, however, the Council Fathers did not specifically attempt to press the detail of Church usage back beyond the period of Jerome, for the used the Vulgate as the norm for Church usage, condemning “anyone who does not accept these books in their entirety, with all their parts, according to the text usually read in the Catholic Church and as they are in the ancient Latin Vulgate”. There are many difficulties here that demand investigation. First, in the period before the Vulgate there was no consistent Church usage, as we have seen. Ironically, Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, was very clear in his preference for the same short canon that Trent rejected in the name of the Vulgate. The Vulgate was introduced into the West over many protests (including that of Augustine) asserting that Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew was an innovation against the Church’s usage of translating form the LXX. Second, from Jerome's time on, the Vulgate has not been a perfect witness of Church usage, for it was several centuries before the Vulgate won acceptance in the Church. And even then, the Vulgate was a norm only in the Western church usage. Although Trent was an ecumenical council, the constituency of the Fathers was Western; and perhaps insufficient attention was given to the usage of the Eastern Churches. Third, if Church usage was the norm for selecting the books of the canon, then several books that had been used in the Church were omitted. For instance, 1 Esdras was used by the Fathers more than was canonical Ezr/Neh, and the requiem liturgy cites 2 Esdras. Copies of the Vulgate often contained 1-2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh – books not accepted at Trent. (pg 523-524)

More on the Esdras confusion in the future.

Catholic Scholars on the Canon

Here are some excerpts from the Jerome Biblical Commentary, a book produced by the contributions of a large group of Catholic scholars as outlined in the editor's preface:

"The question of the Catholic interpretation of the Bible constantly reappears. It seemed to the editors that the best way to expose the misunderstanding implicit in this question was to produce a commentary written entirely by Catholics. This would allow readers off all persuasions to see a representative group of Catholic scholars at work – not the isolated and allegedly liberal mavericks, but some fifty contributors teaching in the Catholic colleges and seminaries in the United States, Canada, and abroad."

The Jerome Biblical Commentary
Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy
Imprimatur: Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, Archbishop of Baltimore

In the section entitled Canonicity, the issues surrounding the acceptance of the deuterocanonicals into the canon is discussed:

"Doubts about the deuterocanonical books keep recurring in the history of the Church among those who are aware of the Jewish canon. Those who prefer the shorter canon or express some doubt about the full canonical status of the deuterocanonicals include Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Rufinus, Gregory the Great, John Damascene, Hugh of St. Victor, Nicholas of Lyra, and Cardinal Cajetan.

As mentioned earlier, the Council of Trent accepted definitively the deuterocanonicals, and it did so directly in opposition to the Protestant preference for the Jewish canon. Although as Catholics we accept the statement of the Council as binding in faith, it is wise for us to know some of the difficulties that surround this statement. Even on the eve of the Council the Catholic view was not absolutely unified, as the mention of Cajetan in the preceding paragraph clearly indicates. Catholic editions of the Bible published in Germany and in France in 1527 and 1530 contained only the protocanonical books. The Fathers of the Council knew of the 4th century African councils that had accepted the deuterocanonical books, and they knew the position taken at Florence; but at the time of Trent, there were insufficient historical tools to reconstruct the real picture of the canon in the 1st century." (pg 523)

As with the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the authors of The Jerome Biblical Commentary outline some of the uncertainty that existed within the Catholic Church throughout history with regards to the OT canon. They have also provided us with additional names to add to the list in the previous post: Gregory Nazianzen (4th), Hugh of St. Victor (12th) and Cardinal Cajetan (16th).

We will look at more excerpts from this book in the next post.

Canon Discussion: Terms and Definitions

I realized my posts on the canon use a lot of terms that people who are not familiar with the topic may find confusing. Below are some excerpts from Wikipedia to help define things – follow the link to Wiki for a full explanation.

Canon
-A biblical canon is a list of Biblical books which establishes the set of books which are considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular Jewish or Christian community. (Protestants and Catholics disagree on the biblical canon).

Deuterocanonical Books
-The Deuterocanonical books of the Bible are books considered by the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity to be canonical parts of the Christian Old Testament but are not present in the Hebrew Bible, which is often described as protocanonical….Protestant Christians usually do not classify any texts as "deuterocanonical"; they either omit them from the Bible, or include them in a section designated Apocrypha. (these books are the difference between the Catholic and Protestant bibles).

Council of Trent
-The Council of Trent is the Nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. It was convened three times between December 13, 1545 and December 4, 1563 in the city of Trent (modern Trento, Alto Adige) as a response to the theological and ecclesiological challenges of the Protestant Reformation. It is considered one of the most important councils in the history of the Catholic Church, clearly specifying Catholic doctrines on salvation, the sacraments, and the Biblical canon.

Ecumenical Council
-An Ecumenical Council (also sometimes Oecumenical Council) or general council is a meeting of the bishops of the whole Church convened to discuss and settle matters of Church doctrine and practice. (only the decrees of an ecumenical council are infallible and binding)

Vulgate
-The Vulgate is an early 5th century version of the Bible in Latin which is largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. The Vulgate was a substantial improvement over these earlier translations. Its Old Testament is the first Latin version translated directly from the Hebrew Tanakh rather than from the Greek Septuagint. It became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

Septuagint (LXX)
-The Septuagint, or simply "LXX", is the name commonly given in the West to the Koine Greek version of the Old Testament, translated in stages between the 3rd to 1st century BC in Alexandria. (The Septuagint was used by early Christians and contained the deuterocanonicals)

Masoretic Text (MT)
-The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study. The MT is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent decades also for Catholic Bibles.

Apocrypha
-The biblical apocrypha includes texts written in the Jewish and Christian religious traditions that either: 1) were accepted into the biblical canon by some, but not all, Christian faiths, or 2) whose canonicity or lack thereof is not yet certain, or are frequently printed in Bibles despite their non-canonical status.


I will add to this list as needed.

The Canon: Historical Uncertainty

I had noticed a quote online from the New Catholic Encyclopedia on the canon that read a bit differently than the online Encyclopedia so I checked things out at the library. Here is what the print version of the Catholic Encyclopedia says about the Old Testament Canon:

“St. Jerome (340-420AD) 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. St. Augustine, however, did not recognize this distinction. He accepted all the books in the LXX as of equal value, noting that those designated as apocryphal by Jerome were of either unknown or obscure origin. Augustine’s point of view prevailed and the deuterocanonical books remained in the Vulgate, the Latin version that received official standing at the Council of Trent.

The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries, although the the tendency to accept the disputed books was becoming all the time more general. In spite of this trend some, e.g. John Damascene, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicholas of Lyra and Tostado, continued to doubt the canoncity of the deuterocanonical books…The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent.”

New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967
Imprimatur: Patrick A. O’Boyle, D.D.
Archbishop of Washington, August 5, 1966

Again, the Catholic Encyclopedia seems to give a more balanced view of the development of the canon than most Catholic apologists/e-pologists. Up until the time of Trent there was clearly some uncertainty about which OT books were canonical.

If we compare this quotation from the printed Catholic Encyclopedia to the quotation from the online Catholic Encyclopedia, we find a growing list of Catholic theologians who had doubts about the canonicity of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books.

Online Catholic Encyclopedia:

“In this period [4th-5th century] the position of the deuterocanonical literature is no longer as secure as in the primitive age…Following the precedent of Origen and the Alexandrian tradition, the saintly doctor [Athanasius] recognized no other formal canon of the Old Testament than the Hebrew one; but also, faithful to the same tradition, he practically admitted the deutero books to a Scriptural dignity, as is evident from his general usage. At Jerusalem there was a renascence, perhaps a survival, of Jewish ideas, the tendency there being distinctly unfavourable to the deuteros. St. Cyril of that see, while vindicating for the Church the right to fix the Canon, places them among the apocrypha and forbids all books to be read privately which are not read in the churches…St. Epiphanius shows hesitation about the rank of the deuteros; he esteemed them, but they had not the same place as the Hebrew books in his regard. The historian Eusebius attests the widespread doubts in his time; he classes them as antilegomena, or disputed writings, and, like Athanasius, places them in a class intermediate between the books received by all and the apocrypha….

The influence of Origen's and Athanasius's restricted canon naturally spread to the West. St. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus followed their footsteps, excluding the deuteros from canonical rank in theory, but admitting them in practice. The latter styles them "ecclesiastical" books, but in authority unequal to the other Scriptures. St. Jerome cast his weighty suffrage on the side unfavourable to the disputed books…“

Catholic Fathers/Theologians who doubted the deuterocanonical books later canonized by Trent (century): Origen (3rd), Athanasius (4th), Eusebius (4th), Jerome (4th), Epiphanius (4th), Hilary of Poitiers (4th), John Damascene (8th), Gregory the Great (6th), Walafrid (9th), Nicholas of Lyra (14th) and Tostado (15th)…more to come.

Response to Canon Comments

I would like to do some posts on Sola Scriptura and the canon as Catholic e-pologists promote false statements about these things, but don’t have the time right now to give it the proper attention.

For now I will just refute a few of the comments made here regarding these topics:

The Church was founded in 33 AD. While the apostles and disciples were spreading the faith throughout the world, they began to write. The Church finished writing the bible in about 100 AD, and the Church finally decided which books belonged in about 397AD. jswranch

Long before Jerome assembled the first Bible, timothy

When I look at Church history I find councils of Bishops at Hippo and Ephesus deciding these matters. timothy


Wrong. The Roman Catholic canon was not decided until the Council of Trent in 1546.

“The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.” Catholic Encyclopedia

The fact is, the canon of the old testament remained in dispute through the years before Trent made its decision. Jerome was strongly against the idea of the deuterocanonicals as inspired scripture (those 7 books Luther supposedly through out of Protestant bibles) as were other members of the early church such as Origen, Athanasius, Cyril, and Epiphanius and others.

The doubts about the OT canon continued through the middle ages.

“In the Latin Church, all through the Middle Ages we find evidence of hesitation about the character of the deuterocanonicals. There is a current friendly to them, another one distinctly unfavourable to their authority and sacredness, while wavering between the two are a number of writers whose veneration for these books is tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among those we note St. Thomas Aquinas. Few are found to unequivocally acknowledge their canonicity. The prevailing attitude of Western medieval authors is substantially that of the Greek Fathers. The chief cause of this phenomenon in the West is to be sought in the influence, direct and indirect, of St. Jerome's depreciating Prologus. The compilatory "Glossa Ordinaria" was widely read and highly esteemed as a treasury of sacred learning during the Middle Ages; it embodied the prefaces in which the Doctor of Bethlehem had written in terms derogatory to the deuteros, and thus perpetuated and diffused his unfriendly opinion.” Catholic Encyclopedia

The Roman Catholic canon was not ratified until 1546 at Trent, the time of the Reformation (not at Hippo or Ephesus as Timothy and jswranch tried to claim). The Protestant Bible is compatible with Jerome’s (and others) view of the OT canon, while the Catholic Bible is not.

We can debate over who currently has the correct canon, but the fact remains that the Catholic Church did not give the world the Bible back in 397AD.

Whose Book Is It?

In discussions here about Catholicism and on other blogs/forums that I visit, it never seems too long in a discussion with a Roman Catholic before the following statement is made in some form or other: “The Catholic Church gave you your Bible”.

No matter how many times I hear it, it still makes me cringe. Not only is the statement inaccurate, but the arrogance that often permeates that statement makes me fearful for the person saying it. I wonder if any Catholic would dare say such a thing when standing before the judgment seat.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

It will be seen, therefore, that though the inspiration of any writer and the sacred character of his work be antecedent to its recognition by the Church yet we are dependent upon the Church for our knowledge of the existence of this inspiration. She is the appointed witness and guardian of revelation. From her alone we know what books belong to the Bible.

(Church = Roman Catholic Church, not the invisible body of believers)

Actually, that statement is pretty mild compared to what I have heard out of the mouths of laypeople, but misleading nonetheless.

As I have time I will search around for some of the comments I have seen online that have made me shudder…but in the meantime let me just clear up the general confusion. God wrote the Bible, it is HIS book.


Example comments:

“The church came before the bible. The church wrote the bible, then the church decided which books belong based on tradition.” source

“I'm not sure why you laugh when the Catholic Church gave the Bible to the world.” source

“As I and others have often said, the Catholic Church did not come out of the Bible; rather, the Bible came out of the Catholic Church! Jesus didn't leave us an instruction book; He left us a Church as our teacher. The Church produced the Bible and is its only rightful interpreter.” source

Biblical Canon - Dialogue with a Catholic

I thought this comment thread was too important to not bring to the forefront.

Here is an exchange that occurred in a comment thread from a post on Sola Scriptura:

At 8/21/2006, Tony
The authority of Scripture is based on the authority of those who decided the Canon.
--
At 8/21/2006, Ellen
Tony, we are so far apart on our views of our final authority - you can know nothing outside of the church.

I can know nothing outside of God's Word - given by Him, not the church
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At 8/21/2006, Carrie
The authority of scripture is based on God.

God's Word was not null until it was decided on by men.
--
At 8/22/2006, Tony
The authority of scripture is based on God.

So God gave you your Bible? When did this happen?
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At 8/22/2006, Carrie
When he wrote it.
--
At 8/22/2006, Tony
Do you have a copy of the Bible in God's original handwriting?
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At 8/22/2006, Carrie
No, do you?
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At 8/22/2006, Tony
No, do you?

Nope, that's why I have to rely on 2000 years of unbroken apostolic succession :)
--
At 8/22/2006, phd4jesus
Nope, that's why I have to rely on 2000 years of unbroken apostolic succession

Merely opinion!
--
At 8/22/2006, Tony
Merely opinion!

phd4jesus, do you have a copy of the Bible written in God's original handwriting?
--
At 8/22/2006, Carrie
Tony, you know none of us has a Bible in God's handwriting and we don't need that in order to recognize the inspired Word of God.

We believe that God could use men to put the canon together. Certainly Jesus didn't come to the earth to suffer and die to pay the penalty for our sins and yet God can't put the canon together for us to proclaim this fact.

What is or is not God-breathed scripture is self-authenticating. Men did not establish what is scripture, they simply recognized it as what it already was - God's Word. God did not need his Word to be approved by men to "make it official".

If, as you said, "the authority of Scripture is based on the authority of those who decided the Canon", then the only authority that could decide on the canon is God.

-------------------------------------------------

I can not even tell you how important this topic is to me. I have bolded my last sentence because the question and my answer are so hugely important.

The authority of Scripture is based on God and God alone. God wrote the Bible and God chose the canon. If you are going to give any of the credit for the content of the Bible to men (words and/or table of contents) you are wrong.

I follow the Bible. I believe it is God’s holy, infallible, perfect Word and no traditions of men can be placed before it. To God be all the glory. If you do not have the same reverence for God’s Word that I do and you cannot support your own beliefs from the Bible, then we don’t have much to talk about.