Thread by @potamopotos

THE PROTESTANT VIEW OF THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE - VINDICATED - a thread 🧵

As one of the central principles of the Protestant reformation of the church was sola scripture, an object of major criticism has been the Protestant Canon of Scripture. It is accused of being a novel

rupture with Church Tradition, the result of a violent and unprecedented move of Luther, who singlehandedly ripped out 7 books of the Bible because they refuted his new doctrines.

This resulted, critics say, in Protestants having a maimed Bible, handicapped and amputated, and

thus setting the Protestants firmly outside the confines of the historic church and bereft of sources of revealed doctrine, e.g. the 7 missing books.

But this is not so. The Lutheran view of the canon was a conservative solidification of the patristic view and of the view of

many of the Medievals.

In their excellent book “The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity” Professor Gallagher and Professor Meade goes through the witnesses of the early church regarding the extend of the canon. One such early voice is St. Melito, bishop of Sardis,

died ca. 180. In his work “Extracts” detailing the messianic prophecies about Christ in the Old Testament he provides a “catalogue of the recognized writings of the Old Testament” after which he proceeds to provide the reading with the Old Testament of the Protestant

Canon, though excluding Esther.

Another early witness is Origen, who in his commentary to Psalm 1, written ca. 220, provides an exhaustive canon of the Old Testament, he, like Melito, excludes the Deuterocanon and presents the canon as affirmed by the Protestants.

St Cyril of Jerusalem, bishop and patriarch, concurs, and also provides his catechumens with the Protestant canon, and with a firm warning against the deuterocanonical books!

Notice how strong St Cyril’s affirmation of the Protestant Canon is, and how he confesses this to be the canon “handed down (paradosis, in Latin, tradition) from the bishops of old”

Interesting how the community of bishops with apostolic succession again vindicates the Lutheran

claims, but I digress.

Further confirmation of the catholicity of the Protestant view is found within the pastoral letter of St. Athanasius the Great, bishop and patriarch of Alexandria, who confesses the same truth as his brotherly bishop Cyril. In his Pascal Letter 39,

written 367, St. Athanasius provides his flock with a full presentation of the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures and thus affirms the Protestant Canon.

Notice how he explicitly rejects the Deuterocanon as being part of Scripture.

Neither was this the view point expressed solely by individuals, for in the Synod of Laodicea it also found a conciliar expression.

This council took place ca. 380, though it is hard to date it exactly.

It would be too tedious to go through the whole choir of witnesses affirming the Protestant canon, but it would also be wrong to omit these witnesses who confess the same. Such as did St Gregory Nazianzus’

canon list in his carmina theologica I:I, 12, and Amphilochius of Iconium, in his letter to Seleucus, line 251-320, Epiphanius of Salamis, Against all Heresies, 8.6.1-10. Also the Western Fathers must be mentioned, and the same truth is affirmed by St. Hilary of Poitiers in

Instructio Psalmorum 15, written ca. 364, and by Rufinius of Aquileia in his commentary on the apostolic creed, ca. 404 AD. An honorable mention of Jerome must also be made, as he translated the Old and New Testament into Latin ca. 380-400, and included all of the Deuterocanon

though he explicitly rejected their canonical standing.

Now those steeped in church history will rightly point toward St. Augustine and the councils of Hippo and Rome/the canon list of bishop Innocent I of Rome. For these, it is claim, includes the whole Deuterocanon and

affirms the same canon of Scripture as was later received by the infallible Council of Trent.

But this is not so. They do indeed affirm the canonical status of the deutorocanon, over and against the Protestant view, yet they did not receive the same canon as Trent did. For,

interestingly enough. These ancient documents affirmed the text of the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament (an interesting topic and object of a book of mine) which differs quite strongly with the Hebrew Masoretic Text-type used by Jerome and affirmed by Trent. Sometimes these

differences result in wildly different readings and text-types of the same books, e.g. Proverbs and Jeremiah, and in one case they result in the total exclusion of a whole book. We’re properly all familiar with Ezra and Nehemiah of the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament, but most are

properly not aware that these books are combined into a single composition in the Septuagint, a work called 2nd Esdras, which is a rewritten version of Ezra-Nehemiah. 1st Esdras, then, is a book wholly unknown and absent in the Hebrew Masoretic Text, and naturally therefore also

absent from the Roman Vulgate and the canon of Council of Trent.
Thus, ironically, when Roman Catholics appeal to the Council of Hippo or Rome/Innocent’s canon list they appeal to lists canonizing a book as divinely inspired which Trent’s canon excluded. 1st Esdras is simply

gone.
This means that when St. Augustine quotes 1st Esdras and its inspired prophecy about Christ, 1st Esdras 3:4-23 in the City of God 18.36.1, he quotes a passage from a book absent from the Roman canon of Scripture.

LET US CONCLUDE

The great value of the Lutheran view of the canon, and from this the later Protestant views, is the genius by which it is able to affirm the witness of the ancient church in its whole.

When Luther translated the canon, he included BOTH the canonical

and the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. As can be seen here.

Thus affirming the witness of the later Western Church. Yet by differentiating them from the canonical books of the Old Testament, he also affirmed the view of the early fathers and preserved catholicity.

These deuterocanonical books are good and useful, and can present *supportive* evidence and *probable* arguments in favor of the doctrines of faith, which are firmly established solely by the holy, canonical books of the Old and New Testament.

ADDENDUM, of the Medievals famous men like Cardinal Ximenes of Spain (died 1517) and cardinal Cajetan (died 1534) also firmly affirmed the exclusion of the deuterocanon from the canonical Scriptures.