Prima Sciptura-a middle way that embraces Christian antiquity

[JohnnyReb]

I am most this to explain the theological position of Prima Scriptura-an alternative to SS and a position embraced by Anglicans, Methodists, and other Wesleyans, such as Wesleyan Pentecostals. I found this online and provided a link to the full article. I have provided my personal commentary in italics.

gbgm-umc.org/sunnyhills/sermons/wesleyatm.htm

John Wesley does use these specific terms as guidelines in his own theological work. A century or so before Wesley, Richard Hooker described the tenets of Anglican authority as a three-legged stool, consisting of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Hooker’s work responses to challenges from both Roman Catholic and Reformation points of view.

Protestants such as John Calvin in the Reformation churches attempted to return to a “scripture only” view of authority, moving almost violently from the Roman position that placed the traditions and dictates of the church as authoritative. **Hooker, like the later Wesley moved toward a middle way - sometimes a radically middle way, emphasizing grounding in scripture, illuminated by tradition and seen through the lenses of reason and experience. **

So why do Prima Scriptura Christians believe in the Trinity? Well with the practice of prima scriptura, our views are illuminated by church tradition, and the orthodox Christian faith accepts the belief of the Trinity, especially as given in the Nicene Creed.
You see, despite what some would have you believe - Methodism isn’t really a “believe anything you want” denomination. Neither is Protestantism a believe anything you want form of Christianity.

For John Wesley, like Paul in Athens, though the context has changed, **Scripture is primary **in everything he does. Scripture gives us the basis for who we are and whose we are. Biblical stories not only tell us about our God, but tell us about whom we are as God’s people.

Scripture informs us how as God’s people - from the time of the ancient Hebrews through comparatively recent 1st century times humanity has matured and changed, and our story with God has matured as well.

Perhaps the bottom line on scripture for Wesley is that scripture is authoritative because something indispensable is happening there: **God is speaking. **

The image of quadrilateral (scripture, tradition, reason and experience) fails if we expect some relative equality among the four sides. **For Wesley, tradition, reason and experience simply were not meaningful in a theological context except in the context of scriptural truth. **Wesley was clear that scripture carries deep truth: when the literal sense of scripture is bound in a cultural context, or is contradicted by other scripture, then its truth must be discovered beneath the literal surface.

Tradition: We live in a time of re-discovered tradition - my own children want to know about the countries - or tribes - of their fore fathers and mothers. Those of us with many generations on American soil look for European - or African, or Asian, or middle eastern roots.

As a church, return to tradition in the church has expressed itself in subtle and not so subtle ways. Several Lutheran Synods look to return to what Luther stood for, not what Lutheranism now stand for; Presbyterians look for a return to Calvin, not what Calvinists turned into the Presbyterian denomination. Many protestant churches - our own included, have returned to lectionary-based scripture cycles. And, our current discussion of John Wesley - trying to separate what is Wesleyan from what is United Methodist is only one of these strands of looking to tradition.

Wesley’s time had similar juxtaposition of recent vs. older traditions. Some were enlightened, some were “contaminated” sometimes the same “tradition” was viewed with a combination of contempt and veneration. The traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, were viewed by Protestants with suspicion and contempt (a view which may not have changed much in 300 years!)

There’s the rub: The Catholic Church believes that their traditions are protected from contamination because of the Holy Spirits act to guide the church to all truth. This is probably the main point to disagreement that the RCC is going to have with a Prima Scriptura point of view in relation to traditions in the church. Protestants have rejected traditions they see lacking in scriptural support-not just not contradicting the scriptures.

Wesley looked to two distinct strands of tradition: the primitive church of Christian antiquity,

*Of which the Catholic and Orthodox churches claim to be, but Wesley was influenced by both and considered both to have equal claim. He looked to antiquity to serve as his guide to what was to be believed. He steered away from theological innovations that were declared dogma outside the period of the ancient church. *

**
and the early** Church of England.

Say goodbye to liberal innovations from the TEC

Among Wesley’s most distinctive appeals to ancient and Anglican traditions were his insistence that the Methodist Movement was** a revival of apostolic faith that he found in Scriptural witness, continued in the ancient church**, and evident in the constitutional documents of the Church of England. His appeal to personal attitude - one of holiness - and corporate institution justice - can be traced to Christian antiquity. He claimed ancient precedents for his religious societies, agape, or love feasts and watch night vigils.

*This is another point of huge disagreement. I find that Catholics equate apostolic with what the Catholic church (and Orthodox do the same for their church) teaches. Wesley thought it to be in the witness of the scriptures and ancient traditions of the primitive-possibly, Ante-Nicene, church. *

 

[Belloc_Fan]

A few questions, based on what you’ve written:

1. 
   *]Is it your view, based on Prima Scriptura, and the promises of Christ in Scripture, that the Church must always have the full Truth in it? I’m not asking “Is the right answer always the popular one in the Church?” Instead, I’m asking, “at any given point in Church history, was there at least an orthodox camp? Or do you hypothesize that at various points in post-Nicene Christianity, there was a total apostasy, where all sides were heterodox or heretical?”
   *]Within “Prima Scriptura,” how do you determining which of two (or more) competing interpretations of Scripture is correct? I don’t just mean how do you individually, but how does the Church corporate settle theological disputes about Scriptural interpretation?
   *]Similar question, but how do you determine the canon of Scripture? The Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants each have different canons. The 66-book Protestant Bible cannot be found anywhere in the Early Church Fathers. While Rufinus and Jerome floated it as a hypothetical canon in the fourth century, it wasn’t one ever embraced before or after that (until after the Reformation). The majority view in the Early Church was the Catholic canon, and the Orthodox canon and a number of others were minority views. The pope declared the Council of Carthage correct in affirming the Catholic canon. Since Scripture is silent as to which books are canonical, and no one in antiquity used a 66-book canon, how can you defend this theological innovation on the basis of “Prima Scriptura”? And if your “Scriptura” isn’t even the right canon, what use is this system?

 

[JohnnyReb]

Thanks for your response. You raise valid questions. That is one reason I posted it, because I am looking for feedback. I will answer to the best I can.

A few questions, based on what you’ve written:

1. 
   *]Is it your view, based on Prima Scriptura, and the promises of Christ in Scripture, that the Church must always have the full Truth in it? I’m not asking “Is the right answer always the popular one in the Church?” Instead, I’m asking, “at any given point in Church history, was there at least an orthodox camp? Or do you hypothesize that at various points in post-Nicene Christianity, there was a total apostasy, where all sides were heterodox or heretical?”

1. 
   No apostacy, because apostasy is the total falling away from or abandoning the Christian faith. In light of Christ’s promises, I do believe the Holy Spirit guided the church to all truth-that which is necessary for salvation, and made sure the Gospel message was perserved. We must distinguish between the truth and its interpretation. What is promised is that the church would be shown the entire truth-but nowhere are we promised that we as humans would always interpret it correctly.
   

   *]Within “Prima Scriptura,” how do you determining which of two (or more) competing interpretations of Scripture is correct? I don’t just mean how do you individually, but how does the Church corporate settle theological disputes about Scriptural interpretation?

   That is precisely why looking to Christian antiquity and tradition, reason and experience are so important. I don’t think that this guarentees that all Christians will agree on everything. It certainly depends on the nature of the dispute. Disputes about the Gospel, the nature of Christ and the Godhead are resolved in this fashion-such as at the council of Nicea. Ones more secondary in nature do not need to be, such as the debate between Arminianism and Calvinism. In essentials unity, in non-essentials, liberty, in all things, charity, comes to mind.
   

   *]Similar question, but how do you determine the canon of Scripture? The Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants each have different canons. The 66-book Protestant Bible cannot be found anywhere in the Early Church Fathers.

   To use scripture to determine the canon of scripture would be circular. The 66 book canon is based on the OT canon used by the Jews.
   

   While Rufinus and Jerome floated it as a hypothetical canon in the fourth century, it wasn’t one ever embraced before or after that (until after the Reformation). The majority view in the Early Church was the Catholic canon, and the Orthodox canon and a number of others were minority views. The pope declared the Council of Carthage correct in affirming the Catholic canon.

   Some do believe the Catholic canon was not established until Trent.
   

   Since Scripture is silent as to which books are canonical, and no one in antiquity used a 66-book canon, how can you defend this theological innovation on the basis of “Prima Scriptura”? And if your “Scriptura” isn’t even the right canon, what use is this system?

   We go to scripture first but not alone. The canon has never been uniform, as you point out. The Protestants not only hold to the Jewish canon, but the Catholic and Orthodox do not dispute the canonical nature of the books we hold Canonical. Its additional books held by those churches that are disputed. So without out OT canon established in antiquity, we can look to it with confidence.

 

[Belloc_Fan]

Thanks for a speedy response.

1. 
   *]On the first point, you reject apostasy. Good. Of course it’s true that nowhere are we promised that any given individual will have all of the truth. But what good is it to say that the truth exists, if no one knows what that truth is? I mean, on every SAT question, the right answer is right there in front of you, but if you don’t know which one it is, that’s not a lot of help. I’m trying to find out if you’re saying that it’s possible that at certain points in history, no individual or even the Church held to total orthodoxy? (Obviously, we mean here issues of faith and morals, not irrelevant incidentals like the age of the Earth).
   
   *]You admitted that under your view, there’s no way to get Christians to come to agreement on everything. But then you pointed out a Church Council which did just that – the Council of Nicaea. It effectively settled the Christological issues for orthodox Christians, and we can now use it as a litmus for orthodoxy. My point here is that we know Nicaea is right because it’s an ecumenical Church Council, and we know its authority is binding, just like the Council of Jerusalem, which famously declared, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and us…” (Acts 15:28). As Catholics, we’d say that Church Councils, as part of the Magisterium, provide an infallible answer to vexing moral questions, and provide a final answer to the disputes between Christians, on pain of excommunication (Matthew 18:17). In your view, is this correct, or are Christians free to subject Nicaea to their own personal interpretation of Scripture and Patristics? If the latter, how are theological disputes ever closed? This seems doomed to constant wheel reinvention.
   
   ] The reason I mention the canon of Scripture is clear: if you’re going to base all doctrines off of the word of Scripture (which both sola and prima Scriptura do) you absolutely have to have the right Scriptures. Having wrong Scriptures leads to wrong doctrines, and having incomplete Scriptures leads to incomplete doctrines. Within both sola and prima, the canon of Scripture is the meta-doctrine*: the doctrine that determines the truth of all the other doctrines. It’s logically the single most important doctrine, since even questions like the Divinity of Christ are based off of first knowing which Books to look to in order to answer that question.
   
   Given that, you rightly note that the canon of Scripture can’t really come from Scripture itself (this is at least true since Scripture never addresses the issue). As you say, “To use scripture to determine the canon of scripture would be circular.” This proves prima Scriptura wrong, since the single most important doctrine can’t be established using Scripture.. The fact that it’s prima rather than sola is of no consequence: whether you read Scripture through the eyes of the Fathers or on your own, it doesn’t change Scripture’s silence on this point.
   
   If you protest that we can know this from the Fathers instead, or Christian antiquity, you’re affirming the Catholic position that both Tradition and Scripture must be affirmed simultaneously, or they both fall apart. But in any case, you reject the views of every single Church Father, since not one of them held your canon of Scripture. So you can’t run to the Fathers for this. Instead, you’ve turned to non-Christian sources saying that “The 66 book canon is based on the OT canon used by the Jews.” But the Jews at the time of Christ had no closed canon, and I can think of no reason to take the word of non-Christian Jews over Christian Jews (or Christian Gentiles) in determining the canon, Old or New Testament. Certainly, the Church Fathers never based their canon off of the Jewish canon. If Prima Scriptura limits itself to Scripture and the ante-Nicene Fathers, I don’t think your answer is consistent.
   
   It’s true, as you say, that Catholics and Orthodox accept the 66 books you accept. But that’s not how the canon is determined. If we took the “lowest common denominator canon,” and considered Luther orthodox enough to listen to, we’d have to throw out James, Revelation, Jude, Hebrews and Esther, since he questioned or denied the canonicity of each of these books. But besides, like I said, an incomplete canon means incomplete doctrines, if all doctrines come from the canon.

 

[Brendan_McCabe]

Scripture did not come first so how can it be made first now?

 

[Nine_Two]

Scripture is part of tradition and cannot be removed from it. To say it must come before tradition is simply to give some forms of tradition precedence over others. If this is the case one needs to have a reason to justify this change.

Unfortunetly it is inevitable that in a literate culture people are going to start to believe that those things which are documented in central locations are more correct than that which is not gathered there or that which exists orally, however this is a rather modern innovation.

 

[JohnnyReb]

Scripture is part of tradition and cannot be removed from it. To say it must come before tradition is simply to give some forms of tradition precedence over others. If this is the case one needs to have a reason to justify this change.

Unfortunetly it is inevitable that in a literate culture people are going to start to believe that those things which are documented in central locations are more correct than that which is not gathered there or that which exists orally, however this is a rather modern innovation.

Thanks for contributing. I was hoping an Orthodox poster would. As I understand it, the OC doesn’t dichotomize between scripture and tradition the way western Christians do. Its all part of the Orthodox/Christian tradition. Also, Catholics seem to embrace tradition and scripture as two seperate but equal bodies of truth, from the same wellspring, that communicate with each other.

 

[fhansen]

There’s the rub: The Catholic Church believes that their traditions are protected from contamination because of the Holy Spirits act to guide the church to all truth. This is probably the main point to disagreement that the RCC is going to have with a Prima Scriptura point of view in relation to traditions in the church. Protestants have rejected traditions they see lacking in scriptural support-not just not contradicting the scriptures.

*This is another point of huge disagreement. I find that Catholics equate apostolic with what the Catholic church (and Orthodox do the same for their church) teaches. Wesley thought it to be in the witness of the scriptures and ancient traditions of the primitive-possibly, Ante-Nicene, church. *

For the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, their tradition is a continuous lived one, not an interpreted one from a perspective centuries removed-it’s the story of their lives.

 

[JohnnyReb]

Thanks for a speedy response.

1. 
   *]On the first point, you reject apostasy. Good. Of course it’s true that nowhere are we promised that any given individual will have all of the truth. But what good is it to say that the truth exists, if no one knows what that truth is?

1. 
   That’s not what I am saying. I said that the Church would be lead to all the truth. Christ’s words were fulfilled.
   

   I mean, on every SAT question, the right answer is right there in front of you, but if you don’t know which one it is, that’s not a lot of help. (Obviously, we mean here issues of faith and morals, not irrelevant incidentals like the age of the Earth).

   What’s total Orthodoxy? Besides, I’m pointing to the total opposite, that in light of all the erroneous beliefs and heresies floating around, the Gospel was perserved by Christians (which include Catholics, Orthodox) That is the truth that matters.
   

   *]You admitted that under your view, there’s no way to get Christians to come to agreement on everything. But then you pointed out a Church Council which did just that – the Council of Nicaea. It effectively settled the Christological issues for orthodox Christians, and we can now use it as a litmus for orthodoxy.

   In fact we do. When I say everything, I mean that Christians may not agree on every minor point of doctrine, (ie Calvinism vs Arminianism, Pre mill vs post mill, age of the earth), doctrines that belong to the realm of theological speculation.
   

   My point here is that we know Nicaea is right because it’s an ecumenical Church Council, and we know its authority is binding, just like the Council of Jerusalem, which famously declared, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and us…” (Acts 15:28). In your view, is this correct, or are Christians free to subject Nicaea to their own personal interpretation of Scripture and Patristics? If the latter, how are theological disputes ever closed? This seems doomed to constant wheel reinvention.

   No. That would be putting the cart before the horse. Tradition/antiquity, reason, experience, are aids in arriving at proper understanding of the scriptures, not the other way around.
   

   ] The reason I mention the canon of Scripture is clear: if you’re going to base all doctrines off of the word of Scripture (which both sola and prima Scriptura do) you absolutely have to have the right Scriptures. Having wrong Scriptures leads to wrong doctrines, and having incomplete Scriptures leads to incomplete doctrines. Within both sola and prima, the canon of Scripture is the meta-doctrine*: the doctrine that determines the truth of all the other doctrines. It’s logically the single most important doctrine, since even questions like the Divinity of Christ are based off of first knowing which Books to look to in order to answer that question.

   Agreed.
   
   G
   

   iven that, you rightly note that the canon of Scripture can’t really come from Scripture itself (this is at least true since Scripture never addresses the issue). As you say, “To use scripture to determine the canon of scripture would be circular.” This proves prima Scriptura wrong, since the single most important doctrine can’t be established using Scripture..

   Its not that simplistic. Any advocate of either SS or PS fully well knows that the scriptures do not come with an inspired table of contents. Most Protestant scholars generally hold that the most important criteria in determining the NT canon was Apostlic origin of the book.
   

   If you protest that we can know this from the Fathers instead, or Christian antiquity, you’re affirming the Catholic position that both Tradition and Scripture must be affirmed simultaneously, or they both fall apart. But in any case, you reject the views of every single Church Father, since not one of them held your canon of Scripture. So you can’t run to the Fathers for this. I

   That is incorrect. There is evidence that some early fathers embraced the Protestant canon.
   1. The church fathers. The church fathers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. The only exception was Augustine (A. D. 400) who included the books of the Apocrypha (those “extra” books that some Bibles include between the books of the Old and New Testaments). However, he did acknowledge that they were not fully authoritative. The books of the Apocrypha were not officially recognized as part of the canon until the Council of Trent (A.D. 1546) and then only by the Roman Catholic church.67
   Source: Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology, Victor Books, Wheaton, IL, 1987, electronic media.
   

   It’s true, as you say, that Catholics and Orthodox accept the 66 books you accept. But that’s not how the canon is determined. If we took the “lowest common denominator canon,” and considered Luther orthodox enough to listen to, we’d have to throw out James, Revelation, Jude, Hebrews and Esther, since he questioned or denied the canonicity of each of these books. But besides, like I said, an incomplete canon means incomplete doctrines, if all doctrines come from the canon.

   I have provided evidence that the early church accepted the Protestant version of the canon, as well as the Jews. Luther was one man, and later he changed his mind about the books he doubted. Certainly his followers included them.
   
   I think that I get that the gist of your critique of my position is that it does not adequately answer the question of how we get the canon, and that nature of that canon is of supreme importance for those who embrace that position. I appreciate the feedback.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Also, Catholics seem to embrace tradition and scripture as two seperate but equal bodies of truth, from the same wellspring, that communicate with each other.

I’m not exactly sure this is true. I agree that we often tend to differentiate between scripture based and non-scripture based reasoning, but I have always been under the impression that this was to make it easier to argue certain points with the Sola or Prima crowd and/or because while there is occasionally some debate over what constitutes Tradition (what teachings are infallible, etc), there is no debate the Scripture is included (so for a tricky question, an appeal to Scripture will always be certain, while an appeal to something whose authenticity is still being decided may not).

I, at least, tend to agree exactly with Nine_Two.

It also does not make sense to me that the first principle of faith would appear so long after the actual Word Himself is no longer incarnate. Obviously, while He was here, anyone on earth could use Him as a first rule, and then we would use His teachings (however they are remembered - in writing or not).

But after the Word walked among us, I cannot see how it would be necessary or even possible for anything else to take “first place”, only for something to either be in agreement with Him or not to be.

 

[Contarini]

I am most this to explain the theological position of Prima Scriptura-an alternative to SS and a position embraced by Anglicans, Methodists, and other Wesleyans, such as Wesleyan Pentecostals.

http://www.gbgm-umc.org/sunnyhills/sermons/wesleyatm.htm

John Wesley does use these specific terms as guidelines in his own theological work.

The specific terms are “Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience”–just for those who may not have looked at the link!

The point is that Wesley never spoke of a “quadrilateral” as many modern Methodists do, but he did speak of the four things that make up the quadrilateral. Modern Methodist scholars are divided as to whether it’s a good idea to lump these together as a “quadrilateral.” My wife adheres to the school of thought that says that the “quadrilateral” should just be abandoned, but the article you’re linking to does a good job of framing it in reasonable ways.

A century or so before Wesley, Richard Hooker described the tenets of Anglican authority as a three-legged stool, consisting of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.

No, Hooker didn’t speak of a “stool” any more than Wesley spoke of a quadrilateral, as this article points out. Again, this is a modern formulation based on concepts that certainly occur in Hooker. However, I question how distinctive this really is. Roman Catholic theologians of Hooker’s era–not to mention the medieval scholastics on whose work Hooker built in so many ways–certainly used reason and had no problem admitting the fact. So I find the whole idea of a distinctively Anglican “threefold method” rather bogus. Because Anglicans reject the idea of an infallible Magisterium, we necessarily find ourselves balancing these three things in a somewhat different manner than RCs do. But I don’t think the use of these three things is distinctively Anglican.

Hooker’s work responses to challenges from both Roman Catholic and Reformation points of view.

Protestants such as John Calvin in the Reformation churches attempted to return to a “scripture only” view of authority, moving almost violently from the Roman position that placed the traditions and dictates of the church as authoritative.

I think that we should be careful about contrasting Calvin as a “sola scriptura” theologian with Hooker. Certainly Calvin’s view of the value of human reason in grasping the nature of God was a lot less optimistic than Hooker’s. Both Calvin and Hooker (and the Christian tradition as a whole) believed that God is fundamentally unknowable, but Hooker was more like Aquinas in saying that reason shares to some degree in the eternal law that is God’s nature, while Calvin saw the gap between God and creatures (let alone fallen creatures) as far too great for that. So yes, in that sense there’s a real difference. However, Calvin’s view, while extremely influential, was not the only one in the “Reformation churches.” Indeed, Hooker would have been surprised to hear that he wasn’t a Protestant and didn’t belong to a “Reformation church” himself. So I see Hooker and Calvin as two points on a spectrum rather than as representing radically different traditions. The same applies to tradition, but I’d say that if anything the difference between them is less on that point.

Wesley looked to two distinct strands of tradition: the primitive church of Christian antiquity,

*Of which the Catholic and Orthodox churches claim to be, but Wesley was influenced by both and considered both to have equal claim. He looked to antiquity to serve as his guide to what was to be believed. He steered away from theological innovations that were declared dogma outside the period of the ancient church. *

And the mature Wesley only considered the first three centuries to be the “primitive Church.” He had certain selected theologians from the fourth century and later–Ephrem the Syrian and Pseudo-Macarius are the two I remember him mentioning–whom he considered as equally valid representatives of primitive tradition. But generally he thought that from Constantine on the tradition had become corrupted. He didn’t give Augustine much authority, for instance.
**

and the early

Church of England.

I’m not quite sure what “early” means here. Wesley thought quite highly of some fairly recent (for him) figures.

*This is another point of huge disagreement. I find that Catholics equate apostolic with what the Catholic church (and Orthodox do the same for their church) teaches. Wesley thought it to be in the witness of the scriptures and ancient traditions of the primitive-possibly, Ante-Nicene, church. *

Agreed.

My big problem with all this is that Wesley himself would have been surprised to hear that he believed in something called “prima” as opposed to “sola” scriptura. He used some strongly “sola scriptura” language, while not thinking that this excluded an appeal to antiquity or to reason. And in this he’s fairly typical of historic Protestantism.

Edwin**

 

[Belloc_Fan]

JR,

You’ve admitted that (a) the canon of Scripture is the meta-doctrine from which all other doctrines flow for* sola Scriptura *or prima Scriptura, and (b) all doctrines (including the most important one, obviously) must come from Scripture. The difference between prima and sola is that sola looks at Scripture’s bare text, while prima claims to look through the lens of the Fathers. I have two problems.

[1] The Fathers don’t claim that Scripture implies the canon. The canon doesn’t come from a bare reading of Scripture, and it doesn’t come from a Patristic view of Scripture. The canon just doesn’t come from Scripture at all.

You say in response to this, "Its not that simplistic. Any advocate of either SS or PS fully well knows that the scriptures do not come with an inspired table of contents. Most Protestant scholars generally hold that the most important criteria in determining the NT canon was Apostlic origin of the book. "

But** that’s my point**. How do we know which books are Apostolic and which aren’t? Tradition. So you’re saying we should base the canon off of Protestant scholarship, or Tradition. At this point, you’re conceding that your most important doctrine, from which all your other doctrines are derived, isn’t a doctrine derived from Scripture.

If the most important doctrine can come from Tradition, why not any other ones? So prima Scriptura is as self-refuting as sola.

[2] The trouble with relying on Protestant scholarship (the other basis for your canon besides a Tradition affirming Apostolic authorship) is that the scholarship you’re citing to is factually wrong on the canon question. You cite Ryrie as follows:

1. The church fathers. The church fathers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. The only exception was Augustine (A. D. 400) who included the books of the Apocrypha (those “extra” books that some Bibles include between the books of the Old and New Testaments). However, he did acknowledge that they were not fully authoritative. The books of the Apocrypha were not officially recognized as part of the canon until the Council of Trent (A.D. 1546) and then only by the Roman Catholic church.67

Source: Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology, Victor Books, Wheaton, IL, 1987, electronic media.

This is absolute nonsense. Ryrie doesn’t point to a single Church Father who affirms the Protestant canon, and he can’t, because there isn’t one. He’s also absolutely wrong on Augustine, who affirmed unambiguously the authority of the full Catholic canon. For a breakdown of the Fathers, one by one, go here: catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2009/10/protestantism-and-early-church-fathers.html
and Jerome specifically: catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2010/06/st-jerome-on-deuterocanon.html

The point is simple. You can’t rely on Scripture to provide the Protestant canon, so prima Scriptura is self-refuting. Even if it weren’t self-refuting to rely on the Fathers, you can’t rely on them either, since not a single one affirms the 66-book canon. If you’re wrong on the canon, the rest of your conclusions are untrustworthy, since you consider it the meta-doctrine from which all your other beliefs stem.

 

[Contarini]

T

No. That would be putting the cart before the horse. Tradition/antiquity, reason, experience, are aids in arriving at proper understanding of the scriptures, not the other way around.

The problem with this position is that it’s very different from the way the “primitive Church” (to use Wesley’s language) thought about it. They spoke rather of the “Rule of Faith” or the apostolic tradition, and pointed to Scripture as a deposit of that tradition. Now I think a case can be made that they did this because the canon had not yet been fully settled and because they were close enough to the apostles that tradition meant something. But I’m not sure that this case is convincing. As soon as you find a fixed canon and a concept of Scripture’s sufficiency (4th century), you also start to see appeals to tradition alongside Scripture (as in the famous passage from Basil). Yes, some of these appeals seem ahistorical–but then modern scholars question traditional views of the authorship and accuracy of Scripture as well!

At any rate, while I respect the view that tradition is simply the Church’s ongoing understanding of revelation rather than revelation itself (Jerry Walls has argued that the perspicuity of Scripture requires Protestants to trust tradition, because a Scripture that has been consistently misunderstood is not perspicuous!), I am not sure that I accept it.

Its not that simplistic. Any advocate of either SS or PS fully well knows that the scriptures do not come with an inspired table of contents. Most Protestant scholars generally hold that the most important criteria in determining the NT canon was Apostlic origin of the book.

Yes, conservative Protestants do often argue this. But then when they come to discuss the question of whether a book like 2 Peter is really apostolic, they clearly start with a strong presupposition that it is, and then try to show that the historical evidence doesn’t preclude this possibility. But if you don’t start with the assumption that it is, the evidence against seems a lot stronger than the evidence for. And in the case of 2 Peter we aren’t even talking about a strong early Christian tradition pointing to apostolicity–it took quite a while to be accepted. So why do we find conservative Protestants so determined–one could even say desperate–to defend its apostolicity? Clearly there’s no question of first determining apostolicity by purely historical grounds (including appeal to early Christian tradition where that’s historically plausible) and then building the canon on that basis.

That is incorrect. There is evidence that some early fathers embraced the Protestant canon.

1. The church fathers. The church fathers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. The only exception was Augustine (A. D. 400) who included the books of the Apocrypha (those “extra” books that some Bibles include between the books of the Old and New Testaments).

That’s not true. The deuteros were not always included or excluded as a group. Athanasius’ canon, for instance, includes Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, while excluding Esther. (Admittedly, his intention seems to be to include the books used by the Jews–he probably excludes Esther because of the Greek additions and includes Baruch and the Epistle because he mistakenly thinks they’re in the Hebrew canon; but then you have to count on the other side Origen’s defense of the LXX additions to Daniel.) This Catholic article also points out that Cyprian and Hippolytus cited deuterocanonical books in a manner indistinguishable from Scripture. And then we have those early Christians who thought Enoch was Scripture, which is certainly evidence against a uniform adoption of the “Protestant canon” early on. Finally, there are of course the local councils of the late fourth century, which endorsed the “Catholic canon.”

However, he did acknowledge that they were not fully authoritative.

Where did Augustine acknowledge this?

The books of the Apocrypha were not officially recognized as part of the canon until the Council of Trent (A.D. 1546) and then only by the Roman Catholic church.

Not true–the Eastern Orthodox also acknowledge them, even though Greek writers seem to have held to the Hebrew canon for quite a while. I’m unclear as to how the Orthodox position changed.

I believe that the “Oriental Orthodox” actually have a somewhat larger canon than Catholics.

Edwin

 

[JohnnyReb]

The specific terms are “Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience”–just for those who may not have looked at the link!

The point is that Wesley never spoke of a “quadrilateral” as many modern Methodists do, but he did speak of the four things that make up the quadrilateral. Modern Methodist scholars are divided as to whether it’s a good idea to lump these together as a “quadrilateral.” My wife adheres to the school of thought that says that the “quadrilateral” should just be abandoned, but the article you’re linking to does a good job of framing it in reasonable ways.

No, Hooker didn’t speak of a “stool” any more than Wesley spoke of a quadrilateral, as this article points out. Again, this is a modern formulation based on concepts that certainly occur in Hooker. However, I question how distinctive this really is. Roman Catholic theologians of Hooker’s era–not to mention the medieval scholastics on whose work Hooker built in so many ways–certainly used reason and had no problem admitting the fact. So I find the whole idea of a distinctively Anglican “threefold method” rather bogus. Because Anglicans reject the idea of an infallible Magisterium, we necessarily find ourselves balancing these three things in a somewhat different manner than RCs do. But I don’t think the use of these three things is distinctively Anglican.

I do not hold that the use of scripture reason and tradition is strictly Anglican. Protestants for the most part refer to tradition whether they admit it or not. In reading the responses from the Catholic and Orthodox posters here, I get the impression that Protestants generally speaking define tradition differently, and for us it plays a different role. Instead of quibbling over the differing understandings of the particulars of theological methods, I want to focus on the point of Prima Scriptura being a middle way-one that is often forgotten in Catholic and Protestant debates today, mostly because most Evangelicals are shy about holding anything other than the Bible alone as an authority.

I think that we should be careful about contrasting Calvin as a “sola scriptura” theologian with Hooker. Certainly Calvin’s view of the value of human reason in grasping the nature of God was a lot less optimistic than Hooker’s. Both Calvin and Hooker (and the Christian tradition as a whole) believed that God is fundamentally unknowable, but Hooker was more like Aquinas in saying that reason shares to some degree in the eternal law that is God’s nature, while Calvin saw the gap between God and creatures (let alone fallen creatures) as far too great for that. So yes, in that sense there’s a real difference. However, Calvin’s view, while extremely influential, was not the only one in the “Reformation churches.”

The only thing that I will say in disagreement is that Calvins view is probably the one that has shaped modern Evangelical thinking the most.

Indeed, Hooker would have been surprised to hear that he wasn’t a Protestant and didn’t belong to a “Reformation church” himself. So I see Hooker and Calvin as two points on a spectrum rather than as representing radically different traditions. The same applies to tradition, but I’d say that if anything the difference between them is less on that point.

I can’t disagree with any of that.

My big problem with all this is that Wesley himself would have been surprised to hear that he believed in something called “prima” as opposed to “sola” scriptura. He used some strongly “sola scriptura” language, while not thinking that this excluded an appeal to antiquity or to reason. And in this he’s fairly typical of historic Protestantism.

Edwin

Wesley was said to be a man of one book. Those of us who understand historic Protestantism could see what you are saying. I am not sure of modern Evangelicals. I think that is the target audience I had in mind when writing this, Evangelicals and Catholics. Likewise, it certainly would depend on what definition of sola scriptura one is referring to. While some Protestants are good at admitting their reliance of these elements to illuminate the scriptures, others would not and do anything to show that they get their beliefs from the “Bible alone”.

 

[JohnnyReb]

JR,

You’ve admitted that (a) the canon of Scripture is the meta-doctrine from which all other doctrines flow for* sola Scriptura *or prima Scriptura, and (b) all doctrines (including the most important one, obviously) must come from Scripture. The difference between prima and sola is that sola looks at Scripture’s bare text, while prima claims to look through the lens of the Fathers. I have two problems.

First of all, I never admitted that the canon of scripture must come from scripture.

[1] The Fathers don’t claim that Scripture implies the canon. The canon doesn’t come from a bare reading of Scripture, and it doesn’t come from a Patristic view of Scripture. The canon just doesn’t come from Scripture at all.

I guess I am failing to see how that is problematic for my position. But not only does it look through the lens of the primative church, but also reason and experience. I think Edwin below shows that using reason and experience is not uniquly Protesant-that Catholic Theologians such as Aquinas, did the same. So I guess I am looking for a further explaination on your first problem.

You say in response to this, "Its not that simplistic. Any advocate of either SS or PS fully well knows that the scriptures do not come with an inspired table of contents. Most Protestant scholars generally hold that the most important criteria in determining the NT canon was Apostlic origin of the book. "

But** that’s my point**. How do we know which books are Apostolic and which aren’t? Tradition. So you’re saying we should base the canon off of Protestant scholarship, or Tradition. At this point, you’re conceding that your most important doctrine, from which all your other doctrines are derived, isn’t a doctrine derived from Scripture.

This only goes for the books who do not have an author explicitly written in them. For those that do, such as Paul’s letters, its easy to follow because an Apostles name is directly written in the book of scripture. The Apostles name on the works is a direct testimony to their Apostolic origin. The Church certainly has the right to examine which books maintain doctrinal integrity and represent what the church as a whole believes. The Church has looked for Apostolicity, Orthodoxy, Universal Acceptance, and Antiquity. The books in our canon are accepted by Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians. They are universally accepted.

[2] The trouble with relying on Protestant scholarship (the other basis for your canon besides a Tradition affirming Apostolic authorship) is that the scholarship you’re citing to is factually wrong on the canon question. You cite Ryrie as follows:

So if I understand you correctly…Protestant scholarship cannot be right because it does not agree with Catholic teaching. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but did you actually read his work sometime this afternoon or evening, or just making assumptions based on what you believe to true about the extent of his work and what it provides and does not?

The point is simple. You can’t rely on Scripture to provide the Protestant canon, so prima Scriptura is self-refuting. Even if it weren’t self-refuting to rely on the Fathers, you can’t rely on them either, since not a single one affirms the 66-book canon. If you’re wrong on the canon, the rest of your conclusions are untrustworthy, since you consider it the meta-doctrine from which all your other beliefs stem.

I do not have to rely on scripture to provide a list for the canon. That is why tradition is so important. All books accepted by Protestants-the 66s-are universally accepted by the body of Christ as inspired. The disputed books are found in the Catholic and Orthodox canons. I posted scholarship that showed you to be wrong, and it was dismissed. There is not much more I can do.

 

[JohnnyReb]

The problem with this position is that it’s very different from the way the “primitive Church” (to use Wesley’s language) thought about it. They spoke rather of the “Rule of Faith” or the apostolic tradition, and pointed to Scripture as a deposit of that tradition. Now I think a case can be made that they did this because the canon had not yet been fully settled and because they were close enough to the apostles that tradition meant something. But I’m not sure that this case is convincing. As soon as you find a fixed canon and a concept of Scripture’s sufficiency (4th century), you also start to see appeals to tradition alongside Scripture (as in the famous passage from Basil). Yes, some of these appeals seem ahistorical–but then modern scholars question traditional views of the authorship and accuracy of Scripture as well!

At any rate, while I respect the view that tradition is simply the Church’s ongoing understanding of revelation rather than revelation itself (Jerry Walls has argued that the perspicuity of Scripture requires Protestants to trust tradition, because a Scripture that has been consistently misunderstood is not perspicuous!), I am not sure that I accept it.

It sounds like Walls view is similar to mine. I would add the caveat that tradition is the Church’s understanding of revelation of universally accepted truths.

Yes, conservative Protestants do often argue this. But then when they come to discuss the question of whether a book like 2 Peter is really apostolic, they clearly start with a strong presupposition that it is, and then try to show that the historical evidence doesn’t preclude this possibility. But if you don’t start with the assumption that it is, the evidence against seems a lot stronger than the evidence for. And in the case of 2 Peter we aren’t even talking about a strong early Christian tradition pointing to apostolicity–it took quite a while to be accepted. So why do we find conservative Protestants so determined–one could even say desperate–to defend its apostolicity? Clearly there’s no question of first determining apostolicity by purely historical grounds (including appeal to early Christian tradition where that’s historically plausible) and then building the canon on that basis.

Well they do because the book itself claims Petrine authorship. I do hear what you are saying though. Of course Apostolicity is not the only criteria that went into determining the canon, and likely it made in on grounds of univeral acceptance by the church and its orthodoxy as much as Apostolicity.

That’s not true. The deuteros were not always included or excluded as a group. Athanasius’ canon, for instance, includes Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, while excluding Esther. (Admittedly, his intention seems to be to include the books used by the Jews–he probably excludes Esther because of the Greek additions and includes Baruch and the Epistle because he mistakenly thinks they’re in the Hebrew canon; but then you have to count on the other side Origen’s defense of the LXX additions to Daniel.) This Catholic article also points out that Cyprian and Hippolytus cited deuterocanonical books in a manner indistinguishable from Scripture. And then we have those early Christians who thought Enoch was Scripture, which is certainly evidence against a uniform adoption of the “Protestant canon” early on. Finally, there are of course the local councils of the late fourth century, which endorsed the “Catholic canon.”

Certainly the disputes haven’t settled. Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox do not agree to this day!

 

[Belloc_Fan]

First of all, I never admitted that the canon of scripture must come from scripture.

True. But what I’m trying to say is that either:
(a) the doctrine of the canon of Scripture need not come from Scripture, in which case you affirm some form of extra-Scriptural Tradition as a source of core doctrines [since we already established the canon is a core, even the most core, doctrine]; or
(b) the doctrine of the canon of Scripture does need to come from Scripture, which it doesn’t.

To be clear, the criticism wasn’t that the argument was circular, but that it was self-refuting. It’s circular when you say that 2 Peter is written by Peter (since you’re basing its authenticity off of its apostolic origin, and its apostolic origin off of its authenticity). It’d be self-refuting to say that *Revelation *was written by Peter (since it actually affirms the opposite of what you’re saying, by saying, “I, John…” in Revelation 1:9). A circular argument isn’t well-supported logically, but it can still be right. A self-refuting argument can’t be right.

I guess I am failing to see how that is problematic for my position. But not only does it look through the lens of the primative church, but also reason and experience. I think Edwin below shows that using reason and experience is not uniquly Protesant-that Catholic Theologians such as Aquinas, did the same. So I guess I am looking for a further explaination on your first problem.

Sure. We both affirm reason and Tradition as lenses through which to view Scripture. But you stop short – as I understand it – of saying that Tradition can be a **source **of doctrine, rather than a lens (as an aside, the Orthodox view of Scripture and Tradition, as articulated by Nine_Two, agrees with what the Church teaches). That’s what I disagreeing with.

This only goes for the books who do not have an author explicitly written in them. For those that do, such as Paul’s letters, its easy to follow because an Apostles name is directly written in the book of scripture. The Apostles name on the works is a direct testimony to their Apostolic origin. *
But there’s still the question of false gospels. The “Gospel of Thomas,” for example, was not written by St. Thomas. In any case, I think we agree on the problem for the non-self-attesting Scriptures.

JohnnyReb:

So if I understand you correctly…Protestant scholarship cannot be right because it does not agree with Catholic teaching.

No, I’m not saying that Ryrie is wrong because he’s Protestant, or even because he’s attacking Catholicism. He’s wrong because he makes a sweeping claim that “The church fathers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament” with the sole exception of Augustine, and this claim is easily disproven.

The link I included last time (catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2009/10/protestantism-and-early-church-fathers.html) quoted Melito of Sardis, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Rufinus, the Council of Laodicea, and the Third Council of Carthage, as well as St. Augustine. None of them affirmed the Protestant Old Testament. If he claims all the Church Fathers have a Protestant Bible, and all the Church Fathers say they don’t, how is there any question as to who’s right??

Read the Church Fathers yourself. Let me know if you find* any* of them using an exact 66-book Protestant canon, much less all of them, like Ryrie claims.

I do not have to rely on scripture to provide a list for the canon. That is why tradition is so important. All books accepted by Protestants-the 66s-are universally accepted by the body of Christ as inspired. The disputed books are found in the Catholic and Orthodox canons. I posted scholarship that showed you to be wrong, and it was dismissed. There is not much more I can do.

My point, same as above, is that none of the Fathers affirmed the 66-book canon, even if most of them had the 66 books amongst the rest of the canon.

My point was that you’re adopting a position (the 66-book canon) found in neither Scripture itself (obviously) or the writings of any of the Church Fathers. It’s true that we all affirm those 66, but so what? By that logic you could reject everything but the Book of Job, since all of us agree that it’s canonical. You rightly the notion of a lowest-common denominator canon in the context of Luther, so why should either of us embrace that idea here?

 

[JohnnyReb]

True. But what I’m trying to say is that either:
(a) the doctrine of the canon of Scripture need not come from Scripture, in which case you affirm some form of extra-Scriptural Tradition as a source of core doctrines [since we already established the canon is a core, even the most core, doctrine]; or
(b) the doctrine of the canon of Scripture does need to come from Scripture, which it doesn’t.

To be clear, the criticism wasn’t that the argument was circular, but that it was self-refuting. It’s circular when you say that 2 Peter is written by Peter (since you’re basing its authenticity off of its apostolic origin, and its apostolic origin off of its authenticity). It’d be self-refuting to say that *Revelation *was written by Peter (since it actually affirms the opposite of what you’re saying, by saying, “I, John…” in Revelation 1:9). A circular argument isn’t well-supported logically, but it can still be right. A self-refuting argument can’t be right.

Sure. We both affirm reason and Tradition as lenses through which to view Scripture. But you stop short – as I understand it – of saying that Tradition can be a **source **of doctrine, rather than a lens (as an aside, the Orthodox view of Scripture and Tradition, as articulated by Nine_Two, agrees with what the Church teaches). That’s what I disagreeing with.
But there’s still the question of false gospels. The “Gospel of Thomas,” for example, was not written by St. Thomas. In any case, I think we agree on the problem for the non-self-attesting Scriptures.

No, I’m not saying that Ryrie is wrong because he’s Protestant, or even because he’s attacking Catholicism. He’s wrong because he makes a sweeping claim that “The church fathers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament*” with the sole exception of Augustine, and this claim is easily disproven.

The link I included last time (catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2009/10/protestantism-and-early-church-fathers.html) quoted Melito of Sardis, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Rufinus, the Council of Laodicea, and the Third Council of Carthage, as well as St. Augustine. None of them affirmed the Protestant Old Testament. If he claims all the Church Fathers have a Protestant Bible, and all the Church Fathers say they don’t, how is there any question as to who’s right??

Read the Church Fathers yourself. Let me know if you find* any* of them using an exact 66-book Protestant canon, much less all of them, like Ryrie claims.

My point, same as above, is that none of the Fathers affirmed the 66-book canon, even if most of them had the 66 books amongst the rest of the canon.

My point was that you’re adopting a position (the 66-book canon) found in neither Scripture itself (obviously) or the writings of any of the Church Fathers. It’s true that we all affirm those 66, but so what? By that logic you could reject everything but the Book of Job, since all of us agree that it’s canonical. You rightly the notion of a lowest-common denominator canon in the context of Luther, so why should either of us embrace that idea here?

Thank you for your clarifications. Like I said all along I appreciate the feedback. I will be back later today or tomorrow with more thoughts. Sundays tend to be real busy for me.

Blessings.

 

[Belloc_Fan]

Thank you for your clarifications. Like I said all along I appreciate the feedback. I will be back later today or tomorrow with more thoughts. Sundays tend to be real busy for me.

Blessings.

Sounds good. This has been a worthwhile debate/conversation so far, and I look forward to seeing your follow-up whenever you get the chance. God bless!

 

[JohnnyReb]

Sure. We both affirm reason and Tradition as lenses through which to view Scripture. But you stop short – as I understand it – of saying that Tradition can be a **source **of doctrine, rather than a lens (as an aside, the Orthodox view of Scripture and Tradition, as articulated by Nine_Two, agrees with what the Church teaches). That’s what I disagreeing with.

Exactly right. When one embraces a middle way, its not going to agree completely with the Catholic position, nor the definition of Sola Scriptura that is often embraced by Evangelicals today.

But there’s still the question of false gospels. The “Gospel of Thomas,” for example, was not written by St. Thomas. In any case, I think we agree on the problem for the non-self-attesting Scriptures.*

Agree.

No, I’m not saying that Ryrie is wrong because he’s Protestant, or even because he’s attacking Catholicism. He’s wrong because he makes a sweeping claim that "The church fathers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament

" with the sole exception of Augustine, and this claim is easily disproven.

The link I included last time (catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2009/10/protestantism-and-early-church-fathers.html) quoted Melito of Sardis, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Rufinus, the Council of Laodicea, and the Third Council of Carthage, as well as St. Augustine. None of them affirmed the Protestant Old Testament. If he claims all the Church Fathers have a Protestant Bible, and all the Church Fathers say they don’t, how is there any question as to who’s right??

Read the Church Fathers yourself. Let me know if you find* any* of them using an exact 66-book Protestant canon, much less all of them, like Ryrie claims.

My point, same as above, is that none of the Fathers affirmed the 66-book canon, even if most of them had the 66 books amongst the rest of the canon.
My point was that you’re adopting a position (the 66-book canon) found in neither Scripture itself (obviously) or the writings of any of the Church Fathers. It’s true that we all affirm those 66, but so what? By that logic you could reject everything but the Book of Job, since all of us agree that it’s canonical. You rightly the notion of a lowest-common denominator canon in the context of Luther, so why should either of us embrace that idea here?

I found this chart that demonstrates a diversity of views of the canon among early Christians.It seems to me that the later we go in time, the more and more the Apocrypha are accepted. Early on they were not as much. By the 4th or 5th century they become widely accepted. So my thoughts are that the acceptance of the Apocrypha are tied to ones view of church authority.

bible-researcher.com/canon4.html

The chart would not neatly reproduce itself here, so I will just include the link.

Here is a quote from Origen from that site on his view of the canon:

When expounding the first Psalm he gives a catalog of the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament as follows: “It should be stated that the canonical books, as the Hebrews have handed them down, are twenty-two, corresponding with the number of their letters.” Farther on he says: “The twenty-two books of the Hebrews are the following: That which is called by us Genesis, but by the Hebrews, from the beginning of the book, Breshith, which means ‘in the beginning’; Exodus, Welesmoth, that is, ‘these are the names’; Leviticus, Wikra, ‘and he called’; Numbers, Ammesphekodeim; Deuteronomy, Eleaddebareim ‘these are the words’; Joshua the son of Nun, Josoue ben Noun; Judges and Ruth, among them in one book, Saphateim; the first and second of Kings, among them one, Samoel, that is, ‘the called of God’; the third and fourth of Kings in one, Wammelch David, that is, ‘the kingdom of David’; of the Chronicles, the first and second in one, Dabreiamein, that is, ‘records of days’; Esdras, first and second 1 in one, Ezra, that is, ‘an assistant’; the book of Psalms, Spharthelleim; the Proverbs of Solomon, Meloth; Ecclesiastes, Koelth; the Song of Songs (not, as some suppose, Songs of Songs), Sir Hassirim; Isaiah, Jessia; Jeremiah, with Lamentations and the Epistle 2 in one, Jeremia; Daniel, Daniel; Ezekiel, Jezekiel; Job, Job; Esther, Esther; And outside of these there are the Maccabees, which are entitled Sarbeth Sabanaiel.” 3

This is from Melito, 170 AD

I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament, and I send them to you as written below. These are their names: Of Moses five, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Joshua the son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, four of Kingdoms, 1 two of Chronicles, the Psalms of David, Solomon’s Proverbs or Wisdom, 2 Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job; of the Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, 3 the Twelve [minor prophets] in one book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. 4 From which also I have made the extracts, dividing them into six books." Such are the words of Melito.

Likewise, Cyrian of Carthage seems to affirm a canon similar to the Protestant one according to his writings reproduced on the site.