RCC Series: 3. The Canon

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Sanktus, Sanktus, Sanktus Dominus Deus Sabaoth, Plenisu Caeli Etera, Gloria Tua.

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Amazing Grace, my chains are gone,

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I've been set free. My God, my

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Savior, has ransomed me.

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His mercy reigns, unending love, amazing grace.

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Hello and welcome back to the Roman Catholic Claims and Contradictions series. My name is Anthony Uvino and I'm with The Reform Rookie.

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And we are going through William Webster's book, Roman Catholic Tradition, Claims and Contradictions.

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All credit goes to William Webster for putting together this work. We are greatly indebted to him.

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I highly suggest everyone to get a copy of it. This week, we're going to be going over the canon, which is a very important issue because the

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Roman Catholic Church has a different set of books than the Protestant Church does. And in this session, we will learn why that is so.

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The Roman Catholic Church claims that it established the canon of Scripture. This is false.

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The New Testament books were already recognized in the Church prior to the Roman councils of Hippo and Carthage in North Africa in the 4th century.

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These were provincial councils which had no authority for the Church universally. And the decrees on the

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Apocrypha were never accepted in the Church as a whole. The Church adopted the views of Athanasius and Jerome that these writings were useful for reading in the

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Churches but were not to be counted as part of the canon of Scripture or to be used for the establishing of doctrine.

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Jerome states that the Apocrypha was not included in the Hebrew canon and that the

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Church did not view these writings as being canonical or authoritative for defining doctrine.

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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 for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the

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Church. I say this to show 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 fable of Bel and the dragon.

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Athanasius says, And so likewise, the third and fourth as one book.

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And again, the first and second of Chronicles are reckoned as one book. Again, Ezra, the first and second are similarly one book.

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After these, there is the Book of Psalms, then the Proverbs, next Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

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Job follows, then the prophets, the twelve being reckoned as one book. Then Isaiah, one book, then

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Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations, and the Epistle, one book. Afterwards, Ezekiel and Daniel, each one book.

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Thus far constitutes the Old Testament. Athanasius then would go on to give us a list of the twenty -seven

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New Testament books, which line up perfectly with what the Protestants hold to today. Athanasius would go on,

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These are the fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain.

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In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take aught from these.

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But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of necessity, that there are other books besides these not included in the canon, but appointed by the fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness, the wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of Sirach, Esther and Judith and Tobit, and that which is called the teaching of the apostles and the shepherd.

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But the former, my brethren, are included in the canon, the latter being merely read.

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So this is St. Athanasius, also known as Athanasius the Great and Athanasius the Confessor.

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He was a bishop and a doctor of the church. He is called the father of orthodoxy, the pillar of the church, and the champion of Christ's divinity.

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Athanasius became one of the most dedicated opponents of the heresy of Arianism. Much of his life was a testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

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He is a patron saint of theologians, the faithful orthodox, and Roman Catholics, and hailed to this day as a great defender of the faith.

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And you know what? And he rejected the Apocrypha as not being part of the canon.

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The reason for Jerome's rejection of the Apocrypha is that he learned from the Jews that these books were not part of the

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Hebrew canon, and never had been. The Hebrew canon used by the Jews of Palestine was comprised of the same 39 books accepted by the

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Protestant church. Jesus refers to the Old Testament scriptures as the Law of Moses and the

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Prophets and the Psalms, which was a convenient summation of the traditional books. It did not include the

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Apocrypha. Jesus and the New Testament authors never quote from the Apocrypha, though they quote extensively from the vast majority of the

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Old Testament canonical books. The 1st century Jewish historian Josephus tells us that the

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Hebrew canon consisted of 22 books, which corresponds to the 39 books of the

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Protestant canon. In addition to Jerome and Athanasius, numerous church fathers expressed the position of Josephus that the

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Old Testament canon consisted of 22 books omitting the books of the Apocrypha. These fathers include

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Melito of Sardis in the 2nd century, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Basil the

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Great, Gregory of Nazarenes, Hilary of Poitras, Raphinius, Amphiloxius, Anastasius of Antioch, Leontius of Byzantium, and John of Damascus in the 8th century.

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This demonstrates that the general consensus of the early church was not to include the Apocrypha in the canon of the

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Old Testament, though there were some fathers who did believe they were authoritative. From the time of Jerome, the church consistently held to the view that the

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Apocrypha, while useful for the purposes of edification, was not to be received as canonical.

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This was the predominant view of the major theologians of the Middle Ages. The Truling Council of 692

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AD, which is considered historically to be part of the 6th Ecumenical Council in 680

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AD, gave dogmatic sanction to the canons of Athanasius, Amphiloxius, and Basil the

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Great pertaining to the canon, all of whom numbered the Old Testament canonical books at 22, excluding much of the

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Apocrypha. But the statements of the Ordinary Gloss of the Bible, beginning in the 12th century, is even more telling.

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The Ordinary Gloss, known as the Glossa Ordinaria, became the standard authoritative biblical commentary for the

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Western Church as a whole. In fact, the New Catholic Encyclopedia describes its importance like this.

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The New Catholic Encyclopedia says, With regards to the Glossa Ordinaria, a designation given during the

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Middle Ages to cert compilations of glosses on the text of a given manuscript, the earliest

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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

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Fathers. Thus, the tiny gloss evolved into a running commentary of an entire book. The best known commentary of this type is the vast

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Glossa Ordinaria of the 12th and 13th centuries. So great was the influence of the

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Glossa Ordinaria on the biblical and philosophical studies in the Middle Ages that it was called the

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Tongue of Scripture and the Bible of Scholasticism. The Glossa Ordinaria states in the preface that the

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Church permits the reading of the apocryphal books only for devotion and instruction in manners, but they have no authority for concluding controversies in matter of faith.

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It goes on to state that there are 22 books of the Old Testament. Enlisting those 22 books, it uses the testimonies of Origen, Jerome, and Rephinius as support and when commentating on the apocryphal books, it prefixes an introduction to them all saying

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Here begins the book of Tobit, which is not in the canon. Here begins the book of Judith, which is not in the canon.

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And so forth for Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, and Maccabees. This historical evidence clearly demonstrates that the councils of Hippo and Carthage did not establish the canon for the

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Church for their decrees on the Old Testament were not accepted. It was the view of Jerome that generally prevailed all the way up to the 16th century.

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While it is true that some theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, held to a canonical status for the apocryphal books, their views were very much in the minority.

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Cardinal Cajetan, the great opponent of Luther, in his commentary on the Old Testament, which was dedicated to Pope Clement VII in 1532, reflects the attitude of the

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Church historically and of the Roman Catholic Church towards the Apocrypha just before the Council of Trent when he states that the books of the

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Apocrypha are not received as canonical. In addition,

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Cardinal Gimenez, the Archbishop of Toledo, was responsible for producing an edition of the

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Bible called the Biblia Complutensia in the early 16th century and which was officially sanctioned by Pope Leo X.

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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

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Apocrypha. It states that the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the

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Maccabees, the additions to Esther and Daniel, which were given there in Greek only, were not canonical scripture.

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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

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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.

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Bruce Metzger provides additional evidence for the view of the Western Church in the 16th century in these observations.

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He says the earliest Latin version of the Bible in modern times, made from the original languages by the scholarly

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Dominican Sanctus Pagnini and published at Lyons in 1528, with commendatory letters from Pope Adrian VI and Pope Clement VII, sharply separates the text of the canonical books from the text of the

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Apocryphal books. Still another Latin Bible, this one, an edition of Jerome's Vulgate published at Nuremberg by Johannes Petreus in 1527, presents the order of the books as in the

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Vulgate, but specifies at the beginning of each Apocryphal book that it is not canonical.

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The first general council of the Western Church to definitively settle the question of the Apocrypha and the

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Canon was the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Contrary to the Hebrew Canon and their near universal practice of the

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Church up until that time. While the Council of Florence in the mid -15th century passed a decree on the

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Canon similar to that of Trent, the actual practice of the Church as a whole was to exclude the

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Apocrypha from the Canon until the Council of Trent 100 years later. The Protestant Reformation, by rejecting the decree of Trent, was simply remaining true to the

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Hebrew Canon and to the historic practice of the Church. The New Catholic Encyclopedia affirms the fact that the

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Protestant Church follows the Hebrew Canon and that it was not until the Council of Trent that the

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Old Testament Canon was for the first time definitively and officially determined for the

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Western Church and not at Hippo and Carthage in the late 4th century. For the

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Old Testament however, Protestants follow the Jewish Canon. They have only the Old Testament books that are in the

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Hebrew Bible. St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books called the

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Apocrypha. The later he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative scripture.

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According to the Catholic Doctrine, the proximate criterion of the Biblical Canon is the infallible decision of the

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Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent.

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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 until the time of Trent.

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In addition to the historical reasons for rejecting a canonical status for the Apocrypha, there are also heresies, inconsistencies, and historical inaccuracies in the writings themselves which conclusively prove they are not inspired and therefore are not scripture.

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For example, Bruce Metzger gives the following evaluation of the book of Judith. The consensus, at least among Protestant and Jewish scholars, is that the story is sheer fiction.

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The book teems with chronological, historical, and geographical improbabilities and downright errors.

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The opening words of the book involve the most astonishing historical nonsense for the author places

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Nebuchadnezzar's reign over the Assyrians. In reality, he was king of Babylon at Nineveh, which fell seven years before his ascension at a time when the

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Jews had only recently returned from the captivity. Actually, at this time, they were suffering further deportations.

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Nebuchadnezzar did not make war on Media, nor Catia Ecbatana. The rebuilding of the

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Temple is dated by a glaring anachronism about a century too early. Moreover, the

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Jewish state is represented as being under the government of a high priest and a kind of Sanhedrin, which is compatible only with a post -exilic date several hundred years after the book's presumed historical setting.

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The Roman Catholic Church has not only decreed the books of the Apocrypha to be canonical in blatant disregard to the historic practice of the

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Church, but has made this an issue of dogma by placing under anathema all who reject this teaching.

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They say, If anyone does not accept as sacred and canonical the aforesaid books in their entirety, and with all their parts, as they have been accustomed to be read in the

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Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the Old Latin Vulgate edition, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be anathema.

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When one examines the issues of Scripture, Tradition, and the Canon, the facts reveal that it is not the

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Roman Catholic, but the Protestant teaching, which is consistent with both Scripture and the teaching of the truly historic

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Catholic Church of the East and West. Well friends, that ends our session on the

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Canon. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you in the next session. Please also subscribe to the channel and check out more great videos on Reformed Theology.