So I’ve come to realize the Church does emphasise much on early Christian writings such as the Apostolic Father’s and also some other texts which aren’t in the Bible such as the Infancy Gospel of James, Apocalypse of Peter, and some traditions also come from non canonical Acts such as Peter and Paul. Actually I believe the Veronica tradition comes from the Gospel of Nicodemus aka The Acts of Pilate. My question in this regard is how do we know which early writings are considered okay to read by the Church and which are heretical or Gnostic in nature? Does anyone have a website about this, does the Church even have an official stance on this issue? Thanks.
In 382 A.D., a minor council at Rome met under Pope Damasus to discuss the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the canon of the Bible. Sometime betwen 492 and 496 A.D., when Pope Gelasius I was pope, the decree was circulated again, and they added three additional chapters about matters that were under discussion in their time. One of these additional chapters is about who counts as a Church Father, and another is about various apocryphal writings.
The whole document has been translated
here.
The chapter on the Church Fathers is subdivided into four sections. In the first section, they name the following people as “Holy Fathers” and say that their writings “are received in the Catholic Church”: St. Cyprian, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Theophilus of Alexandria, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Hilary of Poitiers, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Prosper of Aquitaine.
In the second section, they say that the writings of all the previous popes should be “upheld reverently,” especially the Tome of Leo. Still in this section, the phrase “[these] are to be read” is appended to the following category of authors: “the works and every treatise of all the orthodox fathers, who deviated in nothing from the common [teaching] of the holy Roman church, [nor were] separated from its faith or worship.” This seems to be the most broad category in the document, and I imagine that it is under this category that the majority of the Church Fathers fall, such as St. Irenaeus, St. Justin Martyr, and many, many others. It might seem unfortunate that they do not “name names” in this category, but a blessing is that if they had listed all names, we might have to exclude people who they did not know about.
The third section says that “the deeds of the holy martyrs” are reverently remembered, but, for certain ones, their “lives” are not read in the Church, because “[they] appear to have been composed by heretics.” They name the lives of Cyricus, Julitta, and Georgius as examples to be avoided. It does not say these people are not really saints, only that we should avoid reading their lives because their lives were composed by heretics. “[But] we venerate together with the aforesaid church…their glorious sufferings, which are well known to God and men, with every devotion.”
In this same section, it lists the lives of the saints we Ought to receive: “the lives of the fathers Paul, Antony and Hilarion…[and] Silvester.” It then has an interesting decree about novels and romances involving the saints: "when these come into the hand of Catholics, the saying of Paul the blessed apostle should be [considered] first: ‘prove all things, hold fast to what is good.’ "
This same section says to accept some of the translations of Greek writings translated by Rufinus, but only the translations accepted by Jerome, who was a critic of Rufinus. It also accepts “[the translations] of anyone whom [Jerome] often remembered…”
“some works of Origen, which the blessed man Jerome does not reject, we receive to be read, but we say that the rest with their author must be refused.”
This same section also recommends the Church History by Eusebius of Caesarea, the Church History by Orosius, the Paschal poem of Sedulius, and the Gospel poem of Juvencus. That’s it for the chapter on who counts as a Church Father.
The final chapter is about what books to definitely avoid as apocryphal. Some works that are popular today are on this list, including the Acts of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, “the book which is called the Assumption of holy Mary,” “the works of Tertullian,” “the works of Lactantius,” “the works of…Clement of Alexandria,” “the works of Arnobius,” Cassianus, and Victorinus.
Some of these people are counted among the Church Fathers today, such as Clement of Alexandria and Cassianus, who are also canonized saints.
Some people think the Protoevangelium of James is also included on this list, but it is not clear to me for several reasons, one of which is that there were several works with similar names that are condemned on this list and I’m not sure any of them can be identified with the protoevangelium. But the list condemns “the Gospel in the name of James the younger,” “the book on the infancy of the saviour,” and “the book of the nativity of the saviour and of Mary or the midwife,” any of which could be argued to refer to the Protoevangelium.
This is the most clear document from the Church I’ve seen on what books to count as apocrypha and what to count as authentic material from the Church Fathers. Some of it seems to have been walked back, and the Church has authority to do that since these condemnations and approvals are not doctrinal in character. But in general I think it’s a good guide. Let me know if that is helpful.
