For the Catholics whom are Christian, it’s closed yet we still are at an impasse about the Deutocanonical idea…
Here’s a little bit of further information in relation to how the Lutheran Church has traditionally treated the DC books. I’m not going to get into their supposed errors. It really isn’t beneficial and doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. Yes, Luther had problems with them because of some historical errors and inability to reconcile discrepancies.
One thing you notice about canon, is that until after Trent there really was no disputing over it. I believe Martin Luther was right in the mainstream of belief of the Roman Catholic Church, indeed I believe there was no real disagreement by that time. But that revisionist historians have tried to make it look like there was a dispute or that Martin Luther was an innovator concerning canon and just threw out certain books.
Now I don’t have the citation handy but Schaff lists the resources that Martin Luther used for his translation, one thing that is really interesting is that every resource he had agreed completely on the canon. And what they taught was exactly how Martin Luther treated the books.
First we turn to the Vulgate. Jerome is clear in such places as his introduction to Kings which books are and are not Scripture, he even calls the DC books apocryphal.
Secondly, Martin Luther had a copy of the Glossa Ordinaria, given him by his bishop, this standard textbook was used by the Roman Catholic church in all it’s training of theologians. It spelled out how many unlearned thought all the book were Scripture but how the learned knew the difference. It enumerated what was and what wasn’t Scripture in perfect agreement with Luther. In order to make certain there was no misunderstanding, at the start of each DC book it was carefully noted that they were not Scripture. Erasmus’ Greek text did not of course deal with the DC, but in his other works which Luther was familiar with, he too agreed on the canon.
There were also Latin translations being produced. One was quite noteworthy. Produced in 1528 by the Dominican, Sanctes Pagnimi, and complete with letters of commendation from two Popes was the first translation to set off the DC books in a separate section (which means Luther was not the first to do so).
Slightly earlier we have the great Complutensian Polyglot Bible produced by Cardinal Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo, and by scholars from the university in his city in 1520. It states the DC books are not canonical scripture, it also says the Church did not receive the DC books for confirming any fundamental point of doctrine, that they were permitted to be read for edification.
And that brings us to the real answer, scripture was used in two senses. One was authoritative for doctrine, the other was if it was read in the church. Cardinal Cajetan, that great opponent of Luther in 1532, just a couple of years before Luther’s complete bible was published, gives us a rosetta stone type of statement from his commentary on the Old Testament.
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (Judith, Tobit, Macabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed among the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclsiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus (Jerome’s preface to Kings). Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned canonical. For the words as well as of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome.”
I think the best understanding of “canon” would be “rule of use.” This is how Chemnitz uses it and expounds it in his Examination of the Council of Trent. He effectively argued that the Christian canon is defined by how a book is actually used, not by an authoritative master list. Another Lutheran theologian, Piepkorn states: “The term ‘canonical’ in Christian tradition is always relative; it refers to the actual canon in use in a given diocese or province at a given time. The content of the canon varies from time to time and from place to place. The canon was never fixed for the whole Church by an ecumenical council.” (Sacred Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, p. 4)
This is just fact. Athanasius’ list disagrees with Nazianzus’s list disagrees with Augustine’s list. It’s not even clear that the Lutheran Symbols agree with each other over the list. If you take out the DC, you’ve not lost a single dogma of the Church; if you add them in, you’ve not added to a single dogma of the Church. God is good and wise!
Please; give me a break. You have already answered the question to my satisfaction anyway.