Canon of the New Testament

The Catholic New Testament, as defined by the Council of Trent,
does not differ, as regards the books contained, from that of all
Christian bodies at present. Like the Old Testament, the New has
its deuterocanonical books and portions of books, their canonicity
having formerly been a subject of some controversy in the Church.
These are for the entire books: the Epistle to the Hebrews, that
of James, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of John,
Jude, and Apocalypse; giving seven in all as the number of the New
Testament contested books. The formerly disputed passages are
three: the closing section of St. Mark's Gospel, xvi, 9-20 about
the apparitions of Christ after the Resurrection; the verses in
Luke about the bloody sweat of Jesus, xxii, 43, 44; the Pericope
Adulter�, or narrative of the woman taken in adultery, St. John,
vii, 53 to viii, 11. Since the Council of Trent it is not
permitted for a Catholic to question the inspiration of these
passages.

A. THE FORMATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON (A.D. 100-220)

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.

1. The witness of the New Testament to itself: The first
collections

Those writings which possessed the unmistakable stamp and
guarantee of Apostolic origin must from the very first have been
specially prized and venerated, and their copies eagerly sought by
local Churches and individual Christians of means, in preference
to the narratives and Logia, or Sayings of Christ, coming from
less authorized sources. Already in the New Testament itself there
is some evidence of a certain diffusion of canonical books: II
Peter, iii, 15, 16, supposes its readers to be acquainted with
some of St. Paul's Epistles; St. John's Gospel implicitly
presupposes the existence of the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and
Luke). There are no indications in the New Testament of a
systematic plan for the distribution of the Apostolic
compositions, any more than there is of a definite new Canon
bequeathed by the Apostles to the Church, or of a strong self-
witness to Divine inspiration. Nearly all the New Testament
writings were evoked by particular occasions, or addressed to
particular destinations. But we may well presume that each of the
leading Churches--Antioch, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Corinth,
Rome--sought by exchanging with other Christian communities to add
to its special treasure, and have publicly read in its religious
assemblies all Apostolic writings which came under its knowledge.
It was doubtless in this way that the collections grew, and
reached completeness within certain limits, but a considerable
number of years must have elapsed (and that counting from the
composition of the latest book) before all the widely separated
Churches of early Christendom possessed the new sacred literature
in full. And this want of an organized distribution, secondarily
to the absence of an early fixation of the Canon, left room for
variations and doubts which lasted far into the centuries. But
evidence will presently be given that from days touching on those
of the last Apostles there were two well defined bodies of sacred
writings of the New Testament, which constituted the firm,
irreducible, universal minimum, and the nucleus of its complete
Canon: these were the Four Gospels, as the Church now has them,
and thirteen Epistles of St. Paul--the Evangelium and the
Apostolicum.

2. The principle of canonicity

Before entering into the historical proof for this primitive
emergence of a compact, nucleative Canon, it is pertinent to
briefly examine this problem: During the formative period what
principle operated in the selection of the New Testament writings
and their recognition as Divine?--Theologians are divided on this
point. This view that Apostolicity was the test of the inspiration
during the building up of the New Testament Canon, is favoured by
the many instances where the early Fathers base the authority of a
book on its Apostolic origin, and by the truth that the definitive
placing of the contested books on the New Testament catalogue
coincided with their general acceptance as of Apostolic
authorship. Moreover, the advocates of this hypothesis point out
that the Apostles' office corresponded with that of the Prophets
of the Old Law, inferring that as inspiration was attached to the
munus propheticum so the Apostles were aided by Divine inspiration
whenever in the exercise of their calling they either spoke or
wrote. Positive arguments are deduced from the New Testament to
establish that a permanent prophetical charisma (see CHARISMATA)
was enjoyed by the Apostles through a special indwelling of the
Holy Ghost, beginning with Pentecost: Matth., x, 19, 20; Acts, xv,
28; I Cor., ii, 13; II Cor., xiii, 3; I Thess., ii, 13, are cited.
The opponents of this theory allege against it that the Gospels of
Mark and of Luke and Acts were not the work of Apostles (however,
tradition connects the Second Gospel with St. Peter's preaching
and St. Luke's with St. Paul's); that books current under an
Apostle's name in the Early Church, such as the Epistle of
Barnabas and the Apocalypse of St. Peter, were nevertheless
excluded from canonical rank, while on the other hand Origen and
St. Dionysius of Alexandria in the case of Apocalypse, and St.
Jerome in the case of II and III John, although questioning the
Apostolic authorship of these works, unhesitatingly received them
as Sacred Scriptures. An objection of a speculative kind is
derived from the very nature of inspiration ad scribendum, which
seems to demand a specific impulse from the Holy Ghost in each
case, and preclude the theory that it could be possessed as a
permanent gift, or charisma. The weight of Catholic theological
opinion is deservedly against mere Apostolicity as a sufficient
criterion of inspiration. The adverse view has been taken by
Franzelin (De Divin� Traditione et Scriptur�, 1882), Schmid (De
Inspirationis Bibliorum Vi et Ratione, 1885), Crets (De Divin�
Bibliorum Inspiratione, 1886), Leitner (Die prophetische
Inspiration, 1895--a monograph), Pesch (De Inspiratione Sacr�,
1906). These authors (some of whom treat the matter more
speculatively than historically) admit that Apostolicity is a
positive and partial touchstone of inspiration, but emphatically
deny that it was exclusive, in the sense that all non-Apostolic
works were by that very fact barred from the sacred Canon of the
New Testament They hold to doctrinal tradition as the true
criterion.

Catholic champions of Apostolicity as a criterion are: Ubaldi
(Introductio in Sacram Scripturam, II, 1876); Schanz (in
Theologische Quartalschrift, 1885, pp. 666 sqq., and A Christian
Apology, II, tr. 1891); Szekely (Hermeneutica Biblica, 1902).
Recently Professor Batiffol, while rejecting the claims of these
latter advocates, has enunciated a theory regarding the principle
that presided over the formation of the New Testament Canon which
challenges attention and perhaps marks a new stage in the
controversy. According to Monsignor Batiffol, the Gospel (i.e. the
words and commandments of Jesus Christ) bore with it its own
sacredness and authority from the very beginning. This Gospel was
announced to the world at large, by the Apostles and Apostolic
disciples of Christ, and this message, whether spoken or written,
whether taking the form of an evangelic narrative or epistle, was
holy and supreme by the fact of containing the Word of Our Lord.
Accordingly, for the primitive Church, evangelical character was
the test of Scriptural sacredness. But to guarantee this character
it was necessary that a book should be known as composed by the
official witnesses and organs of the Evangel; hence the need to
certify the Apostolic authorship, or at least sanction, of a work
purporting to contain the Gospel of Christ. In Batiffol's view the
Judaic notion of inspiration did not at first enter into the
selection of the Christian Scriptures. In fact, for the earliest
Christians the Gospel of Christ, in the wide sense above noted,
was not to be classified with, because transcending, the Old
Testament It was not until about the middle of the second century
that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were
assimilated to the Old; the authority of the New Testament as the
Word preceded and produced its authority as a New Scripture.
(Revue Biblique, 1903, 226 sqq.) Monsignor Batiffol's hypothesis
has this in common with the views of other recent students of the
New Testament Canon, that the idea of a new body of sacred
writings became clearer in the Early Church as the faithful
advanced in a knowledge of the Faith. But it should be remembered
that the inspired character of the New Testament is a Catholic
dogma, and must therefore in some way have been revealed to, and
taught by, Apostles.--Assuming that Apostolic authorship is a
positive criterion of inspiration, two inspired Epistles of St.
Paul have been lost. This appears from I Cor., v, 9, sqq.; II
Cor., ii, 4, 5.

3. The formation of the Tetramorph, or Fourfold Gospel

Iren�us, in his work "Against Heresies" (A.D. 182-88), testifies
to the existence of a Tetramorph, or Quadriform Gospel, given by
the Word and unified by one Spirit; to repudiate this Gospel or
any part of it, as did the Alogi and Marcionites, was to sin
against revelation and the Spirit of God. The saintly Doctor of
Lyons explicitly states the names of the four Elements of this
Gospel, and repeatedly cites all the Evangelists in a manner
parallel to his citations from the Old Testament From the
testimony of St. Iren�us alone there can be no reasonable doubt
that the Canon of the Gospel was inalterably fixed in the Catholic
Church by the last quarter of the second century. Proofs might be
multiplied that our canonical Gospels were then universally
recognized in the Church, to the exclusion of any pretended
Evangels. The magisterial statement of Iren�us may be corroborated
by the very ancient catalogue known as the Muratorian Canon, and
St. Hippolytus, representing Roman tradition; by Tertullian in
Africa, by Clement in Alexandria; the works of the Gnostic
Valentinus, and the Syrian Tatian's Diatessaron, a blending
together of the Evangelists' writings, presuppose the authority
enjoyed by the fourfold Gospel towards the middle of the second
century. To this period or a little earlier belongs the pseduo-
Clementine epistle in which we find, for the first time after II
Peter, iii, 16, the word Scripture applied to a New Testament
book. But it is needless in the present article to array the full
force of these and other witnesses, since even rationalistic
scholars like Harnack admit the canonicity of the quadriform
Gospel between the years 140-175.

But against Harnack we are able to trace the Tetramorph as a
sacred collection back to a more remote period. The apocryphal
Gospel of St. Peter, dating from about 150, is based on our
canonical Evangelists. So with the very ancient Gospel of the
Hebrews and Egyptians (see APOCRYPHA). St. Justin Martyr (130-63)
in his Apology refers to certain "memoirs of the Apostles, which
are called gospels", and which "are read in Christian assemblies
together with the writings of the Prophets". The identity of these
"memoirs" with our Gospels is established by the certain traces of
three, if not all, of them scattered through St. Justin's works;
it was not yet the age of explicit quotations. Marcion, the
heretic refuted by Justin in a lost polemic, as we know from
Tertullian, instituted a criticism of Gospels bearing the names of
the Apostles and disciples of the Apostles, and a little earlier
(c. 120) Basilides, the Alexandrian leader of a Gnostic sect,
wrote a commentary on "the Gospel" which is known by the allusions
to it in the Fathers to have comprised the writings of the Four
Evangelists.

In our backward search we have come to the sub-Apostolic age, and
its important witnesses are divided into Asian, Alexandrian, and
Roman:

�  St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and St. Polycarp, of Smyrna,
had been disciples of Apostles; they wrote their epistles in the
first decade of the second century (100-110). The employ Matthew,
Luke, and John. In St. Ignatius we find the first instance of the
consecrated term "it is written" applied to a Gospel (Ad Philad.,
viii, 2). Both these Fathers show not only a personal acquaintance
with "the Gospel" and the thirteen Pauline Epistles, but they
suppose that their readers are so familiar with them that it would
be superfluous to name them. Papias, Bishop of Phrygian
Hierapolis, according to Iren�us a disciple of St. John, wrote
about A.D. 125. Describing the origin of St. Mark's Gospel, he
speaks of Hebrew (Aramaic) Logia, or Sayings of Christ, composed
by St. Matthew, which there is reason to believe formed the basis
of the canonical Gospel of that name, though the greater part of
Catholic writers identify them with the Gospel. As we have only a
few fragments of Papias, preserved by Eusebius, it cannot be
alleged that he is silent about other parts of the New Testament.

�  The so-called Epistle of Barnabas, of uncertain origin, but of
highest antiquity (see BARNABAS, EPISTLE), cites a passage from
the First Gospel under the formula "it is written". The Didache,
or Teaching of the Apostles, an uncanonical work dating from c.
110, implies that "the Gospel" was already a well-known and
definite collection.

�  St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, and disciple of St. Paul,
addressed his Letter to the Corinthian Church c. A.D. 97, and,
although it cites no Evangelist explicitly, this epistle contains
combinations of texts taken from the three synoptic Gospels,
especially from St. Matthew. That Clement does not allude to the
Fourth Gospel is quite natural, as it was not composed till about
that time.

Thus the patristic testimonies have brought us step by step to a
Divine inviolable fourfold Gospel existing in the closing years of
the Apostolic Era. Just how the Tetramorph was welded into unity
and given to the Church, is a matter of conjecture. But, as Zahn
observes, there is good reason to believe that the tradition
handed down by Papias, of the approval of St. Mark's Gospel by St.
John the Evangelist, reveals that either the latter himself of a
college of his disciples added the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptics,
and made the group into the compact and unalterable "Gospel", the
one in four, whose existence and authority left their clear
impress upon all subsequent ecclesiastical literature, and find
their conscious formulation in the language of Iren�us.

4. The Pauline Epistles

Parallel to the chain of evidence we have traced for the canonical
standing of the Gospels extends one for the thirteen Epistles of
St. Paul, forming the other half of the irreducible kernel of the
complete New Testament canon. All the authorities cited for the
Gospel Canon show acquaintance with, and recognize, the sacred
quality of these letters. St. Iren�us, as acknowledged by the
Harnackian critics, employs all the Pauline writings, except the
short Philemon, as sacred and canonical. The Muratorian Canon,
contemporary with Iren�us, gives the complete list of the
thirteen, which, it should be remembered, does not include
Hebrews. The heretical Basilides and his disciples quote from this
Pauline group in general. The copious extracts from Marcion's
works scattered through Iren�us and Tertullian show that he was
acquainted with the thirteen as in ecclesiastical use, and
selected his Apostolikon of six from them. The testimony of
Polycarp and Ignatius is again capital in this case. Eight of St.
Paul's writings are cited by Polycarp; St. Ignatius of Antioch
ranked the Apostles above the Prophets, and must therefore have
allowed the written compositions of the former at least an equal
rank with those of the latter ("Ad Philadelphios", v). St. Clement
of Rome refers to Corinthians as at the head "of the Evangel"; the
Muratorian Canon gives the same honour to I Corinthians, so that
we may rightfully draw the inference, with Dr. Zahn, that as early
as Clement's day St. Paul's Epistles had been collected and formed
into a group with a fixed order. Zahn has pointed out confirmatory
signs of this in the manner in which Sts. Ignatius and Polycarp
employ these Epistles. The tendency of the evidence is to
establish the hypothesis that the important Church of Corinth was
the first to form a complete collection of St. Paul's writings.

5. The remaining Books

In this formative period the Epistle to the Hebrews did not obtain
a firm footing in the Canon of the Universal Church. At Rome it
was not yet recognized as canonical, as shown by the Muratorian
catalogue of Roman origin; Iren�us probably cites it, but makes no
reference to a Pauline origin. Yet it was known at Rome as early
as St. Clement, as the latter's epistle attests. The Alexandrian
Church admitted it as the work of St. Paul, and canonical. The
Montanists favoured it, and the aptness with which vi, 4-8, lent
itself to the Montanist and Novatianist rigour was doubtless one
reason why it was suspect in the West. Also during this period the
excess over the minimal Canon composed of the Gospels and thirteen
epistles varied. The seven "Catholic" Epistles (James, Jude, I and
II Peter, and the three of John) had not yet been brought into a
special group, and, with the possible exception of the three of
St. John, remained isolated units, depending for their canonical
strength on variable circumstances. But towards the end of the
second century the canonical minimum was enlarged and, besides the
Gospels and Pauline Epistles, unalterably embraced Acts, I Peter,
I John (to which II and III John were probably attached), and
Apocalypse. Thus Hebrews, James, Jude, and II Peter remained
hovering outside the precincts of universal canonicity, and the
controversy about them and the subsequently disputed Apocalypse
form the larger part of the remaining history of the Canon of the
New Testament However, at the beginning of the third century the
New Testament was formed in the sense that the content of its main
divisions, what may be called its essence, was sharply defined and
universally received, while all the secondary books were
recognized in some Churches. A singular exception to the
universality of the above-described substance of the New Testament
was the Canon of the primitive East Syrian Church, which did not
contain any of the Catholic Epistles or Apocalypse.

6. The idea of a New Testament

The question of the principle that dominated the practical
canonization of the New Testament Scriptures has already been
discussed under (b). The faithful must have had from the beginning
some realization that in the writings of the Apostles and
Evangelists they had acquired a new body of Divine Scriptures, a
New written Testament destined to stand side by side with the Old.
That the Gospel and Epistles were the written Word of God, was
fully realized as soon as the fixed collections were formed; but
to seize the relation of this new treasure to the old was possible
only when the faithful acquired a better knowledge of the faith.
In this connection Zahn observes with much truth that the rise of
Montanism, with its false prophets, who claimed for their written
productions--the self-styled Testament of the Paraclete--the
authority of revelation, around the Christian Church to a fuller
sense that the age of revelation had expired with the last of the
Apostles, and that the circle of sacred Scripture is not
extensible beyond the legacy of the Apostolic Era. Montanism began
in 156; a generation later, in the works of Iren�us, we discover
the firmly-rooted idea of two Testaments, with the same Spirit
operating in both. For Tertullian (c. 200) the body of the New
Scripture is an instrumentum on at least an equal footing and in
the same specific class as the instrumentum formed by the Law and
the Prophets. Clement of Alexandria was the first to apply the
word "Testament" to the sacred library of the New Dispensation. A
kindred external influence is to be added to Montanism: the need
of setting up a barrier, between the genuine inspired literature
and the flood of pseudo-Apostolic apocrypha, gave an additional
impulse to the idea of a New Testament Canon, and later
contributed not a little to the demarcation of its fixed limits.

B. THE PERIOD OF DISCUSSION (A.D. 220-367)

In this stage of the historical development of the Canon of the
New Testament we encounter for the first time a consciousness
reflected in certain ecclesiastical writers, of the differences
between the sacred collections in divers sections of Christendom.
This variation is witnessed to, and the discussion stimulated by,
two of the most learned men of Christian antiquity, Origen, and
Eusebius of C�sarea, the ecclesiastical historian. A glance at the
Canon as exhibited in the authorities of the African, or
Carthaginian, Church, will complete our brief survey of this
period of diversity and discussion:-

1. Origen and his school

Origen's travels gave him exception opportunities to know the
traditions of widely separated portions of the Church and made him
very conversant with the discrepant attitudes toward certain parts
of the New Testament He divided books with Biblical claims into
three classes:

�  those universally received;

�  those whose Apostolicity was questions;

�  apocryphal works.

In the first class, the Homologoumena, stood the Gospels, the
thirteen Pauline Epistles, Acts, Apocalypse, I Peter, and I John.
The contested writings were Hebrews, II Peter, II and III John,
James, Jude, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and
probably the Gospel of the Hebrews. Personally, Origen accepted
all of these as Divinely inspired, though viewing contrary
opinions with toleration. Origen's authority seems to have given
to Hebrews and the disputed Catholic Epistles a firm place in the
Alexandrian Canon, their tenure there having been previously
insecure, judging from the exegetical work of Clement, and the
list in the Codex Claromontanus, which is assigned by competent
scholars to an early Alexandrian origin.

2. Eusebius

Eusebius, Bishop of C�sarea in Palestine, was one of Origen's most
eminent disciples, a man of wide erudition. In imitation of his
master he divided religious literature into three classes:

�  Homologoumena, or compositions universally received as sacred,
the Four Gospels, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, Hebrews, Acts, I
Peter, I John, and Apocalypse. There is some inconsistency in his
classification; for instance, though ranking Hebrews with the
books of universal reception, he elsewhere admits it is disputed.

�  The second category is composed of the Antilegomena, or
contested writings; these in turn are of the superior and inferior
sort. The better ones are the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude,
II Peter, II and III John; these, like Origen, Eusebius wished to
be admitted to the Canon, but was forced to record their uncertain
status; the Antilegomena of the inferior sort were Barnabas, the
Didache, Gospel of the Hebrews, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd,
the Apocalypse of Peter.

�  All the rest are spurious (notha).

Eusebius diverged from his Alexandrian master in personally
rejecting Apocalypse as an un-Biblical, though compelled to
acknowledge its almost universal acceptance. Whence came this
unfavourable view of the closing volume of the Christian
Testament?--Zahn attributes it to the influence of Lucian of
Samosata, one of the founders of the Antioch school of exegesis,
and with whose disciples Eusebius had been associated. Lucian
himself had acquired his education at Edessa, the metropolis of
Eastern Syria, which had, as already remarked, a singularly
curtailed Canon. Luician is known to have edited the Scriptures at
Antioch, and is supposed to have introduced there the shorter New
Testament which later St. John Chrysostom and his followers
employed--one in which Apocalypse, II Peter, II and III John, and
Jude had no place. It is known that Theodore of Mopsuestia
rejected all the Catholic Epistles. In St. John Chrysostom's ample
expositions of the Scriptures there is not a single clear trace of
the Apocalypse, which he seems to implicitly exclude the four
smaller Epistles--II Peter, II and III John, and Jude--from the
number of the canonical books. Lucian, then, according to Zahn,
would have compromised between the Syriac Canon and the Canon of
Origen by admitting the three longer Catholic Epistles and keeping
out Apocalypse. But after allowing fully for the prestige of the
founder of the Antioch school, it is difficult to grant that his
personal authority could have sufficed to strike such an important
work as Apocalypse from the Canon of a notable Church, where it
had previously been received. It is more probable that a reaction
against the abuse of the Johannine Apocalypse by the Montanists
and Chiliasts--Asia Minor being the nursery of both these errors--
led to the elimination of a book whose authority had perhaps been
previously suspected. Indeed it is quite reasonable to suppose
that its early exclusion from the East Syrian Church was an outer
wave of the extreme reactionist movement of the Aloges--also of
Asia Minor--who branded Apocalypse and all the Johannine writings
as the work of the heretic Cerinthus. Whatever may have been all
the influences ruling the personal Canon of Eusebius, he chose
Lucian's text for the fifty copies of the Bible which he furnished
to the Church of Constantinople at the order of his imperial
patron Constantine; and he incorporated all the Catholic Epistles,
but excluded Apocalypse. The latter remained for more than a
century banished from the sacred collections as current in Antioch
and Constantinople. However, this book kept a minority of Asiatic
suffrages, and, as both Lucian and Eusebius had been tainted with
Arianism, the approbation of Apocalypse, opposed by them, finally
came to be looked upon as a sign of orthodoxy. Eusebius was the
first to call attention to important variations in the text of the
Gospels, viz., the presence in some copies and the absence in
others of the final paragraph of Mark, the passage of the
Adulterous Woman, and the Bloody Sweat.

3. The African Church

St. Cyprian, whose Scriptural Canon certainly reflects the
contents of the first Latin Bible, received all the books of the
New Testament except Hebrews, II Peter, James, and Jude; however,
there was already a strong inclination in his environment to admit
II Peter as authentic. Jude had been recognized by Tertullian,
but, strangely, it had lost its position in the African Church,
probably owing to its citation of the apocryphal Henoch. Cyprian's
testimony to the non-canonicity of Hebrews and James is confirmed
by Commodian, another African writer of the period. A very
important witness is the document known as Mommsen's Canon, a
manuscript of the tenth century, but whose original has been
ascertained to date from West Africa about the year 360. It is a
formal catalogue of the sacred books, unmutilated in the New
Testament portion, and proves that at its time the books
universally acknowledged in the influential Church of Carthage
were almost identical with those received by Cyprian a century
before. Hebrews, James, and Jude are entirely wanting. The three
Epistles of St. John and II Peter appear, but after each stands
the note una sola, added by an almost contemporary hand, and
evidently in protest against the reception of these Antilegomena,
which, presumably, had found a place in the official list
recently, but whose right to be there was seriously questioned.

C. THE PERIOD OF FIXATION (A.D. 367-405)

1. St. Athanasius

While the influence of Athanasius on the Canon of the Old
Testament was negative and exclusive (see supra), in that of the
New Testament it was trenchantly constructive. In his "Epistola
Festalis" (A.D. 367) the illustrious Bishop of Alexandria ranks
all of Origen's New Testament Antilegomena, which are identical
with the deuteros, boldly inside the Canon, without noticing any
of the scruples about them. Thenceforward they were formally and
firmly fixed in the Alexandrian Canon. And it is significant of
the general trend of ecclesiastical authority that not only were
works which formerly enjoyed high standing at broad-minded
Alexandria--the Apocalypse of Peter and the Acts of Paul--involved
by Athanasius with the apocrypha, but even some that Origen had
regarded as inspired--Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the
Didache--were ruthlessly shut out under the same damnatory title.

2. The Roman Church, the Synod under Damasus, and St. Jerome

The Muratorian Canon or Fragment, composed in the Roman Church in
the last quarter of the second century, is silent about Hebrews,
James, II Peter; I Peter, indeed, is not mentioned, but must have
been omitted by an oversight, since it was universally received at
the time. There is evidence that this restricted Canon obtained
not only in the African Church, with slight modifications, as we
have seen, but also at Rome and in the West generally until the
close of the fourth century. The same ancient authority witnesses
to the very favourable and perhaps canonical standing enjoyed at
Rome by the Apocalypse of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas. In the
middle decades of the fourth century the increased intercourse and
exchange of views between the Orient and the Occident led to a
better mutual acquaintance regarding Biblical canons and the
correction of the catalogue of the Latin Church. It is a singular
fact that while the East, mainly through St. Jerome's pen, exerted
a disturbing and negative influence on Western opinion regarding
the Old Testament, the same influence, through probably the same
chief intermediary, made for the completeness and integrity of the
New Testament Canon. The West began to realize that the ancient
Apostolic Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, indeed the whole
Orient, for more than two centuries had acknowledged Hebrews and
James as inspired writings of Apostles, while the venerable
Alexandrian Church, supported by the prestige of Athanasius, and
the powerful Patriarchate of Constantinople, with the scholarship
of Eusebius behind its judgment, had canonized all the disputed
Epistles. St. Jerome, a rising light in the Church, though but a
simple priest, was summoned by Pope Damasus from the East, where
he was pursuing sacred lore, to assist at an eclectic, but not
ecumenical, synod at Rome in the year 382. Neither the general
council at Constantinople of the preceding year nor that of Nice
(365) had considered the question of the Canon. This Roman synod
must have devoted itself specially to the matter. The result of
its deliberations, presided over, no doubt, by the energetic
Damasus himself, has been preserved in the document called
"Decretum Gelasii de recipiendis et non recipiendis libris", a
compilation partly of the sixth century, but containing much
material dating from the two preceding ones. The Damasan catalogue
presents the complete and perfect Canon which has been that of the
Church Universal ever since. The New Testament portion bears the
marks of Jerome's views. St. Jerome, always prepossessed in favour
of Oriental positions in matters Biblical, exerted then a happy
influence in regard to the New Testament; if he attempted to place
any Eastern restriction upon the Canon of the Old Testament his
effort failed of any effect. The title of the decree--"Nunc vero
de scripturis divinis agendum est quid universalis Catholica
recipiat ecclesia, et quid vitare debeat"--proves that the council
drew up a list of apocryphal as well as authentic Scriptures. The
Shepherd and the false Apocalypse of Peter now received their
final blow. "Rome had spoken, and the nations of the West had
heard" (Zahn). The works of the Latin Fathers of the period--
Jerome, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Sardina, Philaster of
Brescia--manifest the changed attitude toward Hebrews, James,
Jude, II Peter, and III John.

3. Fixation in the African and Gallican Churches

It was some little time before the African Church perfectly
adjusted its New Testament to the Damasan Canon. Optatus of Mileve
(370-85) does not used Hebrews. St. Augustine, while himself
receiving the integral Canon, acknowledged that many contested
this Epistle. But in the Synod of Hippo (393) the great Doctor's
view prevailed, and the correct Canon was adopted. However, it is
evident that it found many opponents in Africa, since three
councils there at brief intervals--Hippo, Carthage, in 393; Third
of Carthage in 397; Carthage in 419--found it necessary to
formulate catalogues. The introduction of Hebrews was an especial
crux, and a reflection of this is found in the first Carthage
list, where the much vexed Epistle, though styled of St. Paul, is
still numbered separately from the time-consecrated group of
thirteen. The catalogues of Hippo and Carthage are identical with
the Catholic Canon of the present. In Gaul some doubts lingered
for a time, as we find Pope Innocent I, in 405, sending a list of
the Sacred Books to one of its bishops, Exsuperius of Toulouse.

So at the close of the first decade of the fifth century the
entire Western Church was in possession of the full Canon of the
New Testament In the East, where, with the exception of the
Edessene Syrian Church, approximate completeness had long obtained
without the aid of formal enactments, opinions were still somewhat
divided on the Apocalypse. But for the Catholic Church as a whole
the content of the New Testament was definitely fixed, and the
discussion closed.

The final process of this Canon's development had been twofold:
positive, in the permanent consecration of several writings which
had long hovered on the line between canonical and apocryphal; and
negative, by the definite elimination of certain privileged
apocrypha that had enjoyed here and there a canonical or quasi-
canonical standing. In the reception of the disputed books a
growing conviction of Apostolic authorship had much to do, but the
ultimate criterion had been their recognition as inspired by a
great and ancient division of the Catholic Church. Thus, like
Origen, St. Jerome adduces the testimony of the ancients and
ecclesiastical usage in pleading the cause of the Epistle to the
Hebrews (De Viris Illustribus, lix). There is no sign that the
Western Church ever positively repudiated any of the New Testament
deuteros; not admitted from the beginning, these had slowly
advanced towards a complete acceptance there. On the other hand,
the apparently formal exclusion of Apocalypse from the sacred
catalogue of certain Greek Churches was a transient phase, and
supposes its primitive reception. Greek Christianity everywhere,
from about the beginning of the sixth century, practically had a
complete and pure New Testament Canon. (See HEBREWS, EPISTLE TO;
ST. PETER, JAMES, JUDE, JOHN, EPISTLES OF; APOCALYPSE.)

D. SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON

1. To the Protestant Reformation

The New Testament in its canonical aspect has little history
between the first years of the fifth and the early part of the
sixteenth century. As was natural in ages when ecclesiastical
authority had not reached its modern centralization, there were
sporadic divergences from the common teaching and tradition. There
was no diffused contestation of any book, but here and there
attempts by individuals to add something to the received
collection. In several ancient Latin manuscripts the spurious
Epistle to the Laodiceans is found among the canonical letters,
and, in a few instances, the apocryphal III Corinthians. The last
trace of any Western contradiction within the Church to the Canon
of the New Testament reveals a curious transplantation of Oriental
doubts concerning the Apocalypse. An act of the Synod of Toledo,
held in 633, states that many contest the authority of that book,
and orders it to be read in the churches under pain of
excommunication. The opposition in all probability came from the
Visigoths, who had recently been converted from Arianism. The
Gothic Bible had been made under Oriental auspices at a time when
there was still much hostility to Apocalypse in the East.

2. The New Testament and the Council of Trent (1546)

This ecumenical synod had to defend the integrity of the New
Testament as well as the Old against the attacks of the pseudo-
Reformers, Luther, basing his action on dogmatic reasons and the
judgment of antiquity, had discarded Hebrews, James, Jude, and
Apocalypse as altogether uncanonical. Zwingli could not see in
Apocalypse a Biblical book. (OEcolampadius placed James, Jude, II
Peter, II and III John in an inferior rank. Even a few Catholic
scholars of the Renaissance type, notably Erasmus and Cajetan, had
thrown some doubts on the canonicity of the above-mentioned
Antilegomena. As to whole books, the Protestant doubts were the
only ones the Fathers of Trent took cognizance of; there was not
the slightest hesitation regarding the authority of any entire
document. But the deuterocanonical parts gave the council some
concern, viz., the last twelve verses of Mark, the passage about
the Bloody Sweat in Luke, and the Pericope Adulter� in John.
Cardinal Cajetan had approvingly quoted an unfavourable comment of
St. Jerome regarding Mark, xvi, 9-20; Erasmus had rejected the
section on the Adulterous Woman as unauthentic. Still, even
concerning these no doubt of authenticity was expressed at Trent;
the only question was as to the manner of their reception. In the
end these portions were received, like the deuterocanonical books,
without the slightest distinction. And the clause "cum omnibus
suis partibus" regards especially these portions.--For an account
of the action of Trent on the Canon, the reader is referred back
to the respective section of the article: II. The Canon of the Old
Testament in the Catholic Church.

The Tridentine decree defining the Canon affirms the authenticity
of the books to which proper names are attached, without however
including this in the definition. The order of books follows that
of the Bull of Eugenius IV (Council of Florence), except that Acts
was moved from a place before Apocalypse to its present position,
and Hebrews put at the end of St. Paul's Epistles. The Tridentine
order has been retained in the official Vulgate and vernacular
Catholic Bibles. The same is to be said of the titles, which as a
rule are traditional ones, taken from the Canons of Florence and
Carthage. (For the bearing of the First Vatican Council on the New
Testament, see Part II above.)

3. The New Testament Canon outside the Church

The Orthodox Russian and other branches of the Eastern Orthodox
Church have a New Testament identical with the Catholic. In Syria
the Nestorians possess a Canon almost identical with the final one
of the ancient East Syrians; they exclude the four smaller
Catholic Epistles and Apocalypse. The Monophysites receive all the
book. The Armenians have one apocryphal letter to the Corinthians
and two from the same. The Coptic-Arabic Church include with the
canonical Scriptures the Apostolic Constitutions and the
Clementine Epistles. The Ethiopic New Testament also contains the
so-called "Apostolic Constitutions".--As for Protestantism, the
Anglicans and Calvinists always kept the entire New Testament But
for over a century the followers of Luther excluded Hebrews,
James, Jude, and Apocalypse, and even went further than their
master by rejecting the three remaining deuterocanonicals, II
Peter, II and III John. The trend of the seventeenth century
Lutheran theologians was to class all these writings as of
doubtful, or at least inferior, authority. But gradually the
German Protestants familiarized themselves with the idea that the
difference between the contested books of the New Testament and
the rest was one of degree of certainty as to origin rather than
of instrinsic character. The full recognition of these books by
the Calvinists and Anglicans made it much more difficult for the
Lutherans to exclude the New Testament deuteros than those of the
Old. One of their writers of the seventeenth century allowed only
a theoretic difference between the two classes, and in 1700
Bossuet could say that all Catholics and Protestants agreed on the
New Testament Canon. The only trace of opposition now remaining in
German Protestant Bibles is in the order, Hebrews, coming with
James, Jude, and Apocalypse at the end; the first not being
included with the Pauline writings, while James and Jude are not
ranked with the Catholic Epistles.

4. The criterion of inspiration (less correctly known as the
criterion of canonicity)

Even those Catholic theologians who defend Apostolicity as a test
for the inspiration of the New Testament (see above) admit that it
is not exclusive of another criterion, viz., Catholic tradition as
manifested in the universal reception of compositions as Divinely
inspired, or the ordinary teaching of the Church, or the
infallible pronouncements of ecumenical councils. This external
guarantee is the sufficient, universal, and ordinary proof of
inspiration. The unique quality of the Sacred Books is a revealed
dogma. Moreover, by its very nature inspiration eludes human
observation and is not self-evident, being essentially
superphysical and supernatural. Its sole absolute criterion,
therefore, is the Holy inspiring Spirit, witnessing decisively to
Itself, not in the subjective experience of individual souls, as
Calvin maintained, neither in the doctrinal and spiritual tenor of
Holy Writ itself, according to Luther, but through the constituted
organ and custodian of Its revelations, the Church. All other
evidences fall short of the certainty and finality necessary to
compel the absolute assent of faith. (See Franzelin, "De Divin�
Traditione et Scriptur�"; Wiseman, "Lectures on Christian
Doctrine", Lecture ii; also INSPIRATION.)

GEORGE J. REID
Transcribed by Ernie Stefanik


http://www.knight.org/advent

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this  worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For  more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.

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