Before beginning. The treatise on the inspiration and inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures has shown us that there exist Sacred Books which have God as their author, inasmuch as they were written under the motion of the Holy Spirit. God is the principal author of these books and, consequently, they can contain no error. In this section the treatise on the canon is studied, which makes known to us which and how many are the inspired books. The treatise on the canon tends to prove the existence of the sacred catalogue of the inspired books, which has been transmitted to us by the Magisterium of the Church, and, at the same time, it sets out to expound the history of the formation of the canon, that is, the evolution and vicissitudes through which it had to pass before the Church officially determined its canon. The Church took great care, from the very beginning, to distinguish the inspired books from those that were not, for apocryphal books soon began to appear which claimed to pass as inspired.

In this treatise we shall study the slow formation of the canon of the Sacred Scriptures and the causes that contributed most directly to its fixation.

2. Etymology and meaning of “canon”. The word canon, which comes from the Greek “kanón”, originally meant a straight reed used for measuring, a rule, a model. The Greek term “kanón” is akin to the words “káne”, “kánne”, “kánna” = reed, which probably come from the Semitic languages, in which we find the same root. Thus we have in Hebrew “qaneh” = “measuring rod”[1], in Assyrian “kanú”, in Sumerian-Akkadian “qin”[2]. Consequently, the word “kanón”, transcribed into Latin under the form canon, designated in its proper sense a straight wooden rod, a rule used by carpenters. In a metaphorical sense it indicated a certain measure, law or norm of acting, of speaking and of proceeding. This is the reason why the Alexandrian grammarians called “kanón” the collection of classical works which, for their purity of language, were worthy of being considered as models[3]. The grammatical canons also constituted the models of declensions and conjugations and the rules of syntax. According to Pliny, there existed the so-called canon of Polyclitus, by which name was designated the statue of the Doryphoros, by the sculptor Polyclitus (5th century B.C.), which for its perfection was considered the rule of the proportions of the human body. Epictetus designated with the epithet “kanón” the man who could serve as a model to others because of his rectitude of life. The ancients also speak to us of the “chronikoi kanónes” of Plutarch, which were principal dates or epochs of history serving as points of reference for human events.

The word “kanón” is found four times in the New Testament. But it is employed only in the writings of Saint Paul. On three occasions it is used in the passive sense of a thing measured: it concerns the field of apostolate assigned by God to the Apostle of the Gentiles[4]. In another place it is used in the sense of a rule of life, of action[5].

The ancient ecclesiastical authors gave the word canon very varied meanings. From the middle of the second century, “kanón” is used in a moral sense to designate the rule of faith (“ho kanón tes písteos”), the rule of truth (“ho kanón tes alethéias”), the rule of tradition (“ho kanón tes paradóseos”), the rule of Christian life or of ecclesiastical discipline (“ho kanón tes ekklesías”, “ho ekklesiastikós kanón”)[6].

The Latin Fathers also employ formulas identical to those of the Greek Fathers: regula fidei, regula veritatis, as can be seen as early as the third century in the writings of Tertullian and Novatian.

In this same sense, the decrees of the councils were called canons, inasmuch as they were the norms, the rules that the Church established for the more perfect regulation of her life. Perhaps this name was given to them in contrast to the laws (“nómoi”) of kings and emperors, just as later the ecclesiastical laws were also called canons, to distinguish them from the civil laws.

The faith, that is, revealed doctrine, is the rule that must serve to judge everything; it is the norm to which the faithful must conform their lives[7]. And since Sacred Scripture was considered, from the very origins of the Church, as the book containing Revelation, the rule of faith and of life, it came naturally to speak of the canon of the Scriptures to designate this written rule, and the name canon began to be given to the collection of the inspired books.

The word canon, applied to Sacred Scripture, begins to be used in the third century. The first to employ it is perhaps Origen, who affirms that the Assumption of Moses “in canone non habetur” (“is not in the canon”)[8]. The Monarchian Prologue, which some attribute to the third century and others to the fourth, affirms that the canon begins with Genesis and ends with the Apocalypse. The first who with certainty applies the term canon to Sacred Scripture is Saint Athanasius (around the year 350), who observes that the Shepherd of Hermas does not form part of the canon (“kaítoi me on ek tou kanónos”)[9]. After Saint Athanasius, the term becomes common among Greek and Latin writers[10].

From the noun canon is derived the adjective canonical (“kanonikós”). The first to use it seems to have been Origen[11], who wished to designate with this adjective the books that were the regulators of the faith, the rule properly speaking of the faith, and constituted a collection well determined by the authority of the Church. The term canonical also appears with certainty in canon 59 of the Council of Laodicea (around the year 360), in which it is established that in the Church “non-canonical books should not be read, but only the canonical ones of the New and Old Testament”[12]. From the middle of the fourth century it becomes common to call the Sacred Scriptures canonical (“kanonikai”)[13]. And since at that time there already existed many apocryphal books, which constituted a grave danger for the Church and for the faithful because they presented themselves as inspired, it was necessary to fix the catalogue of the Sacred Books so that the faithful could distinguish the inspired books from those that were not. This gave rise to the formation of other expressions derived from canon, such as to canonize (“kanonízein”), canonized (“kanonizómenos”), which in the ecclesiastical language of that time meant that a book had been “received into the catalogue of the Sacred Books”[14]. And, by contrast, “apokanonízein” designated a book “excluded from the canon”.

Finally, from the adjective canonical was formed the abstract term canonicity, which expresses the quality of a book that by its authority and origin is divine and, as such, has been introduced by the Church into the canon of the Sacred Books.

3. Canonicity and inspiration. – Although the terms canonical and inspired are equivalent in many respects, nevertheless canonicity and inspiration are formally distinct. In fact, all the canonical books are inspired, and it seems that no inspired book exists that has not been received into the canon of the Sacred Scriptures. However, a book is inspired by the fact of having God as its author, and canonical inasmuch as it was recognized by the Church as inspired. Consequently, canonicity supposes, in addition to the fact of inspiration, the official declaration by the Church of the inspired character of a book. This declaration of the Church adds nothing to the internal value of the book, whose canonical value proceeds precisely from its inspiration, but it confers on the sacred book an absolute authority from the point of view of faith and makes it an infallible rule of faith and morals. But a book cannot for that reason be called, without further ado, canonical except after the declaration of the Church, made implicitly or explicitly. According to this, the deuterocanonical books (we treat of them in the next point), which were inspired and had true regulative virtue, were not recognized by all as canonical until a second period, after the Church received them into the canon[15].

This is the doctrine taught by the First Vatican Council: “The Church holds the (books of the Old and New Testament) as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry alone, they were afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and as such they have been entrusted to the Church herself”[16]. The same is affirmed by Leo XIII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus (18 November 1893) and by Pius XII in the encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu (30 September 1943).

4. Protocanonical and deuterocanonical books. – The distinction of the Sacred Books into protocanonical and deuterocanonical brings to mind the memory of controversies that arose in antiquity concerning the canonicity of certain books of the Bible. But it does not thereby intend to establish a distinction of canonical and normative value, nor from the point of view of dignity, between the proto- and deuterocanonical books. Under this aspect, all the Sacred Books contained in the Bible have the same value and dignity, for all equally have God as their author. The distinction is legitimate only from the historical point of view, that of time, inasmuch as the deuterocanonical books were received into the canon of the Sacred Scriptures only later, because of certain doubts that arose concerning their divine origin.

The Greek ecclesiastical writers usually designate the protocanonical books with the term “homologoúmenoi”, that is, books “universally accepted”, and the deuterocanonical ones with the words “antilegómenoi”, that is, “disputed” books, or also with “amphiballómenoi”, namely, “doubtful” books[17]. However, in the sixteenth century it was Sixtus of Siena (+ 1596) who first employed the terms protocanonical to designate the books that from the beginning were received into the canon, since all considered them canonical, and deuterocanonical, to signify those books which, although they enjoyed the same dignity and authority, were received into the canon of the Sacred Scriptures only at a later time, because their divine origin was called into question by many[18].

The deuterocanonical books are seven in the Old Testament and seven also in the New Testament:

In the Old Testament: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees. And the last seven chapters of Esther: 10:4-16:24, according to the Vulgate; as well as the chapters of Daniel 3:24-90; 13; 14.

In the New Testament: the Epistle to the Hebrews, the epistle of James, the 2nd epistle of Saint Peter, the 2nd-3rd epistles of Saint John, the epistle of Saint Jude, and the Apocalypse. It is also quite frequent to consider as deuterocanonical the following fragments of the Gospels: Mk 16:9-20; Lk 22:43-44; Jn 7:53-8:11. However, the doubts about these texts have arisen only in our days among the critics, owing to the fact that these passages are missing in some ancient codices and versions.

Protestants employ a nomenclature somewhat different from that of Catholics when speaking of the deuterocanonical books. Among them, the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament receive the appellation of apocrypha, which we give to the books that, while having certain resemblances to the inspired books, were never received into the canon. And Protestants call pseudepigrapha the books that we designate with the term apocrypha. As regards the deuterocanonical books of the New Testament, Catholics and Protestants coincide in their designation.

5. The criterion of canonicity. – Of the criterion of canonicity we can say almost the same as of the criterion of inspiration (treated elsewhere). The difference lies only in the fact that the criterion of inspiration regards Sacred Scripture in general, whereas the criterion of canonicity regards each book in particular. Just as, in order to know the fact of inspiration, the only sufficient and efficacious criterion was the testimony of the Magisterium of the Church, likewise the only proper criterion of canonicity is the testification of the Church. For the Church is the only legitimate authority that can determine with infallible certainty whether a given book is canonical or not. This is doctrine already taught by the ancient Fathers, such as Origen[19] and Tertullian[20] and others. Well known are the words of Saint Augustine: “Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae Ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas… In locum autem traditoris Christi quis successerit, in Actibus legimus: cui libro necesse est me credere, si credo evangelio, quoniam utramque Scripturam similiter mihi catholica commendat auctoritas” (“I would not believe the gospel did not the authority of the Catholic Church move me to it… We read in the Acts of the Apostles who succeeded the betrayer of Christ; and I must believe this book, if I believe the gospel, because it is Catholic authority that commends to me both Scriptures alike”) [21].

The testimony of the Church has been manifested to all the faithful through various channels: by the explicit testimonies of ecclesiastical writers, by synodal decisions, by the solemn proposition of the universal or ordinary Magisterium of the Church, by liturgical reading, and by all those means the Church customarily employs to propose Christian doctrine to the faithful.

And since the canonicity of a book constitutes a supernatural fact, which we can only know by divine revelation, through the tradition of the Church, the testification of the ecclesiastical Magisterium is therefore necessary in order to know with certainty whether a given book is canonical and inspired. Mere liturgical reading does not seem to be a sufficient criterion, for we know from the testimony of various ancient Fathers that other writings were also read in the liturgical assemblies which never formed part of the canon of Sacred Scripture[22]. Nor is it enough that the doctrine of a book agrees with the doctrine of the apostles to determine its canonicity, because many books can be found that agree perfectly with revealed doctrine and yet are not inspired. Not even the apostolic origin of a book seems to be a sufficient criterion, since in the New Testament there are books that were not written by the apostles themselves, but by their disciples.

The Jews also possessed the canon of the Sacred Books of the Old Testament. Which among them was the authority competent to distinguish the Sacred Books from those that were not? It was probably the priestly college, embodied principally in the chief priests, who were the ones who exercised vigilance over religious matters. Other authors think it would have been the prophets who enjoyed the authority to judge whether a book was inspired. But it must be borne in mind that there were not always prophets in Israel. And precisely at the time when the canon of the Old Testament was fixed, the highest religious authority was held by the priesthood, as we shall see later in this work.

Protestants, by rejecting Tradition, found themselves obliged to judge the canonicity of the Sacred Books by properly internal criteria. For Calvin this criterion would be “the secret testimony of the Spirit”[23]; for Luther, the agreement of a book’s teaching with the doctrine of justification by faith alone[24]. Later orthodox Protestants, in addition to the internal criteria, also admit subsidiary external criteria, such as the prophetic or apostolic charism of the author, the testimony of the ancient Church, and the critically studied history of the canon. For liberal Protestants, since they practically do not admit inspiration, the question of the canonicity of the biblical books holds no interest either. The books the Church has preserved would be only those that imposed themselves in practice in public reading as the most apt for the edification of the faithful. From this fact one would have passed to the affirmation of inspiration.

The modern Protestant theological renewal has led some of its principal exponents to adopt new positions. One of those deserving greatest attention is that of O. Cullmann[25], who declares himself “absolutely in agreement with Catholic theology in the affirmation that it was the Church herself that constituted the canon”. But he sees in this decision of the Church the explicit and definitive manifestation of the awareness she was acquiring of the inspiration of the Sacred Books. This ecclesiastical decision was directed at clearly distinguishing the apostolic tradition from the others that might be joined to it. Among all the Christian writings circulating in the primitive Church, those that were to form the canon imposed themselves by their intrinsic apostolic authority. The Old Testament was accepted into the canon inasmuch as it was the testimony of the history of salvation that had prepared the incarnation. In this the Church followed the mind of Christ and of the apostles.

The position of O. Cullmann is rather similar to that of certain modern Catholic authors, such as Karl Rahner, Norbert Lohfink, etc.

6. Present-day importance of the question of the canon. – In present-day theology, of marked ecclesiological tendency, the problem of the canon of the Sacred Scriptures has acquired great importance. Several have dealt with the question; but we are especially interested in the ideas of K. Rahner and N. Lohfink because of the relative novelty they represent. I say relative, because in part they follow the ideas already expounded by O. Cullmann and some other Protestant author.

a) Karl Rahner defines the inspiration of Sacred Scripture in the following manner: “Inspiration of Scripture is that absolutely singular causality by which God becomes author of the Church, inasmuch as such causality has for its object the constitutive element of the apostolic Church, which is Scripture”[26].

The Sacred Books proceed in a vital manner from the intimate life of the nascent Church. And as such they constitute a manifestation of the life of the Church. When the apostolic Church sets down in writing her faith, her spirit, her tradition, her intimate life, she creates Sacred Scripture. And this is, according to Rahner, a constitutive element of the Church.

From the very fact that the Sacred Books are a product of the intimate life of the primitive Church, it can be deduced that the Church is in the best possible position to know their inspiration. The Church, by a certain connaturality, perceived that these writings were in perfect conformity with her nature and that they were at the same time “apostolic”, that is, like a piece of the life of the primitive Church. The Church, as custodian of the deposit of faith, received from the Holy Spirit the gift of discerning what really belongs to that deposit. And this act of discernment, according to Rahner, could be made even after the apostolic age, without the need to admit a new revelation or an explicit affirmation of the apostles. But the Church could only do this with absolute certainty inasmuch as she was guided by the Holy Spirit. In fact, only in the fourth century did the Church recognize as inspired and canonical all the books of the Bible, which would be difficult to explain if one admitted an explicit revelation about the inspiration of each sacred book transmitted by the apostles.

As regards the Old Testament, Rahner admits that the Church received from the synagogue a certain canon. But the synagogue did not possess an infallible doctrinal authority to determine the canon with absolute certainty. Moreover, the canon of the Old Testament could not be considered definitively closed before the birth of the Church. The latter, as heir and legitimate continuator of the chosen people, whose history she regarded as her own prehistory, could continue and conclude the official formation of the canon of the Old Testament. This would explain why the Church could accept into the canon of the Old Testament the deuterocanonical books and why she introduced into the canon various books of the New Testament about whose authenticity and canonicity grave doubts had arisen in the first centuries of the Church.

b) Norbert Lohfink, in an article published in the review Stimmen der Zeit[27], presents some ideas of importance for a better understanding of the question of the canon. For him the process of canonization of the Sacred Books is of great importance. The canon presupposes a long process of formation, for the various books are only integral parts of the whole complex. Once these integral parts were joined to form the total complex of the Bible, they can no longer have a separate and independent existence, but condition one another mutually. This means that the final and decisive sense of each book and of each of the teachings they contain depends on the total context into which they have been introduced. This context is that of the whole of revelation, which was in continuous progress and reached its end only with the promulgation of the canon of Sacred Scripture. The New Testament is the last stage of this progress and it is what gives the key to the perfect understanding of the whole complex and of each of its parts.

The collection or gathering of all the Sacred Books into the canon, whereby it was constituted as the norm of the Church, conferred on these books a new orientation, a new finality and intentionality, which were considered definitive for the community of the faithful. Christ and the apostles gave the Old Testament its last and definitive sense.

The inspiration of the Scriptures presupposes a long process that began in the Old Testament and ended in the New. This long process was always ordered to the composition of the whole complex of the Bible. Within this complex, the particular books and doctrines receive their definitive sense from the context of the whole.

Indeed, the inspiration and interpretation of Sacred Scripture came to an end with the last book of the New Testament and with the inclusion of all the inspired books in the canon. From then on it can be affirmed that inerrancy belongs to Sacred Scripture as an indivisible whole forming an intrinsic unity.

7. Has any inspired book been lost? – Through the testimony of Sacred Scripture itself we know of some writings coming from some prophet or apostle that have not reached us. In the Old Testament there is repeated mention of the “book of the Just” (cf. Jos 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18), of the “book of Samuel, the seer”, of the “chronicles of Nathan, the prophet, and of those of Gad, the seer” (cf. 1 Chron 29:29), of the “prophecies of Iddo, the seer” and of “the books of Shemaiah, the prophet” (2 Chron 9:29; 12:15). The New Testament also speaks of an epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians (cf. 1 Cor 5:9)[28] which seems to have been lost, and of another to the Laodiceans (cf. Col 4:16)[29]. If we consider these writings as inspired, we would have to admit that inspired books have in fact been lost. But in order to know their inspiration one would have to possess the testimony of the Church, which is the only sufficient criterion for knowing it. The Magisterium of the Church, however, has said absolutely nothing about the inspiration of these books. And since the criterion of the prophet or of apostleship is not sufficient to know the inspiration or canonicity of a given book, we are therefore not in a position to affirm that some inspired books have in fact been lost.

Some Catholic authors firmly deny the possibility that certain inspired books have been lost. Their reasoning is as follows: biblical inspiration is not a private charism, given for the good of an individual, but a social charism, destined for the good of a society, which is the Church founded by Christ. Consequently, the destination of the inspired writing for the Church would enter into the essential elements of biblical inspiration, as the First Vatican Council clearly teaches[30]. Bearing this principle in mind, it does not seem possible to affirm that there was an inspired book lost before reaching the Church. Nor could it be said that the loss took place after being received by the Church, since that would be to accuse the Church of infidelity to her divine mission as guardian of the sources of revelation. However, in our opinion, a distinction must be made in this question between a book that is merely inspired and a book that is inspired and canonical. As regards the latter, it does not seem possible that a book recognized and declared as inspired by the Church should have been lost. In that case one would have to admit that the Church was not the faithful guardian of the revealed deposit. On the other hand, it could be admitted that an inspired book was lost before the official and universal recognition of the Church. It is true that inspiration, as a charism, was given to the human author with a view to the religious good of the community, but it is quite possible that an inspired book was destined exclusively for a particular religious community of the first centuries, and, once its purpose was fulfilled, disappeared before the recognition of the universal Church arrived.

It could also be admitted that in the course of the centuries some fragments of the inspired books may have been lost. But on condition that these fragments are not of substantial importance for revelation. Moreover, the history of the text clearly demonstrates that the sacred text has reached us substantially intact.

Authors: Manuel de Tuya – José Salguero
Source: Introducción a la Biblia, Vol. I, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid, 1967, pp. 323-334.

Source: Apologetica.org

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NOTES

  1. Cf. Ez 40:3, 5. The LXX translate, in this place, qaneh by “kanón”. ↩
  2. Cf. W. Gesenius-F. Buhl, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch17 (Leipzig 1921). ↩
  3. Cicero, in a letter addressed to his friend Tiro, tells him: “Tu, qui ‘kanón’ esse soles meorum scriptorum” (Epist. ad famil. l. 16, epist. 17). See also Aristotle, Ethica ad Nicomachum 3.4.5. ↩
  4. Cf. 2 Cor 10:13, 15-16. ↩
  5. Cf. Gal 6:16. ↩
  6. Cf. St. Clement of Rome, St. Polycrates (according to Eusebius), St. Irenaeus. There are authors who tend to give the term canon the sense of catalogue, list, index, and it is customary to cite as examples the “kanón basiléon” of Claudius Ptolemy (around the year 150 A.D.), which is a catalogue of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian kings, and the “chronikoi kanónes” of Eusebius, which comprise synchronized tables of the various peoples of antiquity. Nevertheless, even though these “kanónes” of Ptolemy and Eusebius are lists, they have rather the meaning of rule, for they were dates, chronological measures, which served as the basis of chronological systems. If canon now has in ecclesiastical language the sense of list, catalogue, this is relatively recent and, moreover, a secondary meaning. The formal meaning is that of rule, norm, model. ↩
  7. In this sense Saint Irenaeus says: “Having as rule the truth itself,” “the truth, which is preached by the Church” (Adv. Haer. 2,28,1; 1,9,5) ↩
  8. In Iosue hom. 2,1. But of this work of Origen we possess only a Latin translation; hence we do not know whether he used the term “kanón” or rather “endiáthetos”. ↩
  9. Decr. Nic. Syn. 18. ↩
  10. Council of Laodicea, St. Amphilochius, Origen, Rufinus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, etc. ↩
  11. In Cant. Prol. We possess only the Latin translation made by Saint Jerome. ↩
  12. Cf. Enchiridion Biblicum (EB), 4th edition (Rome 1961), n. 11. ↩
  13. Cf. St. Jerome, Praef. in libr. Salom.; Priscillian, Lib. Apol. 27, etc. ↩
  14. Cf. Origen, In Matth. 28. ↩
  15. The declaration of the Church on the canonicity of a book need not be made solemnly or explicitly; it is enough that the Church in practice has always held them as inspired. ↩
  16. EB n. 77. ↩
  17. Cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3,25,4; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 4,33. ↩
  18. Cf. Bibliotheca Sancta ex praecipuis catholicae Ecclesiae auctoribus collecta (Naples 1742) vol. 1, 2f. ↩
  19. In Lc. Hom., 1; cf. in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6,25,35. ↩
  20. Adv. Marc. 4,5. ↩
  21. Contra Epist. Manichaei 5,6. ↩
  22. Through St. Dionysius of Corinth we know that the epistle of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians was read in the liturgical assemblies (cf. in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4,23,11). In the churches of Asia the letter of St. Polycarp was read (cf. St. Jerome, De viris illustribus, 17). ↩
  23. Cf. J. Calvin, Institutio religionis christianae, l. 1, c. 6-8 (Basel 1536). ↩
  24. Cf. O. Scheel, Luthers Stellung zur hl. Schrift (Tübingen 1902), p. 42-45; M. Meinertz, Luthers Kritik am Jakobusbriefe nach dem Urteile seiner Anhänger: BZ 3 (1905) 273-286. ↩
  25. La Tradition (Paris-Neuchâtel 1953) p. 41-52. ↩
  26. Cf. K. Rahner, Über die Schriftinspiration. Quaestiones disputatae I (Herder, Freiburg im Br. 1958) p. 58. ↩
  27. Über die Irrtumslosigkeit und die Einheit der Schrift, Stimmen der Zeit 174 (1964) 161-181. ↩
  28. Certain authors claim to discover vestiges of this lost letter of St. Paul in 2 Cor 6:14-7:1. ↩
  29. The epistle to the Laodiceans should be identified, according to many authors, with the epistle to the Ephesians, which originally would have borne in its opening greeting “en Laodikéia”. These words would have been suppressed — according to Fr. J. Vosté — because of the terrible rebuke launched against the church of Laodicea by the author of the Apocalypse (Rev 3:14ff). ↩
  30. EB n. 77. ↩