Traditional Catholic Teaching

Appendix to Supplement A of Lesson 6

Appendix:
THE FORMATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

From the very earliest times the question must have arisen: Which are the Books of the New Testament? We can perhaps discern a trace of such disputes in St. Peter’s words about St. Paul’s Epistles. (2 Pet. 3: 15 –16). But the Church must have speedily made up her mind as to the principles which must decide any dispute on the point. The guiding principle was of course that for writings to be canonical, or the norm of faith, they must be divinely inspired. . . . But there still remains the further question: What proof is there that any Book claiming to form part of the Scriptures is really inspired and therefore an integral part of the Canon?

In the formation of the Canon a double process can be traced: the process of accumulation of Apostolic writings, since individual Churches received, for example, St. Paul’s various Letters and only gradually made them known to the rest of the world; and the process of elimination of what was not inspired and was therefore not canonical. We have only to examine the formidable list of Apochryphal writings claiming Apostles for their authors to see how vast was the mass of material, and to reflect on the other hand on the seemingly trivial character of such an Epistle as that of St. Paul to Philemon to see how minute was the care taken by the Church in preserving the veriest fragment of Apostolic writings. . . . The Church. . . must have based her decision on no mere critical grounds, but on her own subjective certainty as to her Divinely-bestowed knowledge on the point.

But in another sense the Church’s judgment was a critical one. Her pronouncements were not authoritative declarations which disregarded evidence. But the evidence she weighed was the authoritative voice of her representatives scattered throughout the world. In other words she took the votes of those who in the various Apostolic Sees were in a position to declare what was the tradition they had received. Thus, while our knowledge of the contents of the Canon is derived from the Church’s authoritative pronouncements, i.e. from the official lists of the Canonical Books drawn up by the Pontiffs or by the Councils, it is also true that these latter, viz, the various Pontiffs or Councils, derived their knowledge from the declarations of various Fathers who collectively represented the volume of Apostolic tradition. And it was only by slow degrees that the Church entered into her inheritance in the full Canon of Holy Scripture. For in the first place it is clear that so long as any Apostle survived the deposit of written revelation it could not be said to be definitely completed. Hence it was not till the first century had closed and St. John was dead that the Church could arrive at a knowledge of the fullness of her deposit. And to this knowledge the Churches of Asia, of Europe, and of Egypt had each to contribute their quota. When a Catholic, then, desires to know what are the contents of the Canon he consults the Church’s official Decrees, e.g. those of the Councils of Florence, Trent, and the Vatican. When, however, he desires to learn on what the Church based these Decrees he consults the writings of the various Fathers of the Church who, either by the use they made of various Books, or by the lists which they drew up, e.g. in the case of St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, showed what was the tradition they received and handed down…..

The important point to note in reading the statements of various Fathers regarding the canonicity, or the opposite, of the New Testament writings are that

we never find any Father saying that some writing which the Church now accepts is no part of the Canon. Thus no Ecclesiastical writer rejects the Apocalypse (1) or the Epistle to the Hebrews. They may, it is true, throw doubt on the authenticity of such Books, but it is one thing to question their authenticity, quite another to question their canonicity. Thus no one ever wrote more critically of the Apocalypse than did Denis of Alexandria; but while he has very strong doubts as to St. John’s authorship of it, he has no doubts whatever regarding its inspired character.

On the other hand we have no instance of an Ecclesiastical writer insisting on the canonicity of some writing which the Church subsequently repudiated.

THE REV. HUGH POPE, O.P. (1918)

(1) Footnote
Also known as (The book of) Revelation.

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