With the growth of New Testament writings, there were a number of councils of Churches that also played a part in deciding what was to be used by the Church in a particular place. It must be noted that these councils did not prescribe what was to be used by the whole Church. The decisions made had local rather than a universal effect.
According to Raymond Brown and Raymond Collins, there seem to have been a Church Council held in Laodicea, a Hellenistic city of the Roman province of Asia, in c.AD360.
At this meeting the idea of a list of books for use in the Church was mooted and the sixth
148 Ibid. p.529.
149 F. W. Beare, Op.cit. p.531.
canon of the Synod of Laodecia (c.AD367) provided a list of all the present twenty-seven books of the New Testament except the Apocalypse.150 However according to F. L. Cross , there is nothing definite known of the Council of Laodicea.151 The historicity of this Council is shrouded in lack of facts with some historians such as F.L.Cross doubting its reality. However, the list of books that was put together at this Council and finally made into a canon in (c.AD367) was also adopted at other councils such as Hippo (AD393), and Carthage (AD397/ 419).
According to F. L. Cross, the Council of Hippo was held by non-Donatist Catholic Church in Latin Africa on 8 October AD393.152 Another Council at Carthage followed this in AD397, at which the church in Roman North Africa held a Synod which accepted the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and in AD419 this decision was ratified.
According to David. G. Dunbar, these two Councils at Carthage prescribed as canonical the current New Testament corpus153. At these two councils, Augustine of Hippo was present and it is likely that his views were probably decisive for the definition of the canon after these two councils.
After the third century with a canon of between twenty-two and thirty New Testament books, one can say that the canon was in a state of flux. It was only during the fourth century that major changes occurred. The council of Nicaea (AD325) did not deal with the canon. It left it open to speculation by different religious centers. People such as Eusebius made fresh contributions to the New Testament canon. However, this did not change much since twenty-two books remained significant to the Church with the rest
150 Raymond Brown and Raymond Collins, Op.cit, p.1036.
151 F. L. Cross, Op.cit, p.950.
152 Ibid. p.950.
being doubted. However, during the same century, Jerome, a Biblical scholar and monk who lived in Bethlehem, made a significant mark on the canon of scripture. It was Jerome who moved away from the categories of Clement, Origen, and Eusebius and accepted the twenty-seven books which from the current New Testament canon. History has it that in AD382, Eusebius influenced the Synod of Rome to accept the twenty-seven books that are in the current New Testament section of the Bible. The bishops of Rome who attended this synod where convinced by Eusebius’ position and they decided to take it.
However there was need to lobby other churches and regions to accept this decision.
The council at Ephesus did not resolve the issue of the canon of Scripture. However, the Council of Chalcedon (AD451) did so. This council was held in the city of Chalcedon in Asia Minor. According to F. L. Cross, it was convoked by the Emperor Marcian to deal with the Eutychian heresy. This meeting was attended by between 500 and 600 bishops, all of them Easterns except two Bishops from the Province of Africa.154 This council drew up a statement of faith, which turned up to be called the Chalcedonian Definition.
This council also agreed to accept the canon of twenty-seven books that Rome and Carthage had adopted earlier on. This means that the debate was finally closed with both the Eastern and the Western church using the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament canon. Even the later councils such as Florence (1442) accepted the twenty- seven books as Scripture. This debate was reopenned during the Reformation when Luther questioned the letter of James. For him this letter was worth throwing in the fire.
He also questioned Revelation.
153 David G. Dunbar, ‘The Biblical Canon’ in D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (eds.), Hermeneutics, Authority & Canon. (Michigan: barker Books, 1995) p.317.
154 F. L. Cross, Op. cit. p.315.
At the Council of Florence, the tradition of forty-six Old Testament Books and twenty- seven New Testament books was entrenched in the Bull Contante Domino. This was promulgated as a document of union between Rome and the Coptic Christians.155 The same list of twenty-seven books is still in circulation today. In this case, councils only made official that which communities had accepted as inspired.
The council of Trent (1545-63) is another Council that helps one to understand the contribution of Councils of Churches in the canonisation of the New Testament. Trent was held under the backdrop of the Protestant threat that came with the questioning of certain books such as those referred to as Apocryphal books as well as some New Testament books such as James and Revelation. At its fourth session, it promulgated a bull that had to do with scripture De Canonicis Scripturis. This bull was promulgated to curb any doubt, as to which books should be recognised as scriptural. According to Raymond Brown and Raymond Collins, Trent listed as sacred and canonical ‘with all their parts’ and as inspired by the holy Spirit seventy-three books, including the Old Testament that were not accepted by many Jews and Protestants.156 This council entrenched the Catholic canon of scripture.
There was also the Vatican I Council (1870) that spoke of ‘sacred and canonical books…
written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit’157 but left the identity of those books to the enumeration of Trent (1545-63). In this way, one can see that canonicity involved the Church’s acknowledging the inspired quality of the books. If the Church did not acknowledge the book as inspired, it would automatically be left out.
155 Raymond Brown and Raymond Collins Op.cit. p.1036.
156 Ibid. p.1036.
Vatican II (1965) followed the first one. In its pronouncements (72:13-16), it stated that
‘by means of the same (apostolic) tradition the full canon of the sacred books is known to the church’ Also, ‘Holy Mother Church relying on the faith of the apostolic age accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old Testament and the New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts on the ground that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit … they have God as their author and have been handed on to the Church itself’.158 This stance has characterised the Roman Catholic Church up to this day. Their Bible is therefore bigger than the Protestant Bible since it includes the seven books that are referred to as deutrocanonical by the Protestants. These books include Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1and 2 Maccabees and parts of Esther and Daniel. The Protestant Bible finds its roots in M. Luther who broke with the church tradition that believed that the doctrine of purgatory was scriptural.
The Church’s scripture was 2 Maccabees 12: 46. This led Luther to reject not only Maccabees, as scripture but also Jude, Wisdom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch and potions of Esther and Daniel as apocrypha. This means books which are not held equal to the sacred scriptures and yet are useful and good for reading. Such books continued to be grouped separately and this has brought a difference in the number of books found in the Catholic
Bible and those found in the Protestant Bible.
Despite the work of all the above Councils and synods, the subject of canon of Scripture has continued to be a source of disunity amongst Christians up to this day. This can be seen in the manner Roman Catholics and Protestants continue to use different canons of Scripture. Raymond Brown and Raymond Collins maintain that the early reformers were not eager to reject the Apocrypha altogether. As a compromise they relegated these books
157 Ibid. p.1036.
158 Ibid. p.1036.
to a secondary status as an Old Testament appendix in Zwingli’s Zurich Bible (1529), the Calvinist Olivetan Bible (1534-1535), and the English Bibles such as Coverdale (1536), Matthew (1537), and the second edition of the Great Bible, (1540), Bishops (1568) and the King James Version (1611).159 This shows that they still valued these books although they did not want to accord them the same status with those that they considered to be inspired.
However, hard line Reformers excluded the Apocrypha totally from their Bibles.
According to Raymond Brown and Raymond Collins, examples of such a stance can be found in the Gallican Confession (1559), Belgian Confession (1561), the Anglican Confession (1563) and the second Helvetic Confession (1566). The Puritan Confession also declared the Apocrypha to be of a merely secular nature. Indeed, the Westminster Confession (1648) stated that ‘the books commonly called apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are not part of the canon of scripture; hence no authority to the church of God’.160 This means that they were not to be approved or used in worship or in religious instruction in these Protestant areas. However, the Roman Catholic Church through its councils of Trent (1545-63) and Vatican I (1869-70) and Vatican II (1962-65), endorsed the apocrypha and maintained that it should be used just like any other Scripture. To this end the Catholic canon contains seventy-three books whereas the Protestant Bible contains sixty-six books.