Let us remember that throughout Church history, many Christians did not hold things like the apocrypha (Deutero-canonicals) to be sacred Scripture. In the 16th Century Catholic men like Erasmus, Luther, and the great Catholic scholar Cajetan expressed doubts on some of the New Testament books as well. These men all share one thing in common. They formed their opinions on the canon previous to the council of Trent. The liberty these men had was simply the liberty as allowed by the Roman Catholic Church. If the New Catholic Encyclopedia is correct, Erasmus, Cajetan, and Luther, and a host of others previous to them had every right within the Catholic system to engage in Biblical criticism and debate over the extent of the Canon. In the case of Luther, Cajetan, and Erasmus, theirs was not a radical higher criticism. The books they questioned were books that had been questioned by previous generations. None were so extreme as to engage in Marcion-like canon-destruction. Both Erasmus and Luther translated the entirety of Bible, and published it.
Catholic apologist robert Sungenis has stated:
…it is true that only at the council of Trent did the canon finally become infallible and irreformable, and that is because Trent made it crystal clear it was doing so. The Council of Florence did not use the key words in its formulation that Trent finally used. Granted, Catholics during the time of Florence had to give their assent to what Florence decreed, but this did not mean, for sake of conscience, that a Catholic could not contest what Florence said about the canon. This is why even Cardinal Cajetan contested Florence’s canon list. So yes, Luther could contest the canon prior to Trent and do so quite legitimately. But this would only force the Church to make the final decision, and it did so in 1563, after which Luther would have been bound to obey it. If not, he would have been excommunicated, just as he was in 1520.
James Swan
Let me suggest that those individuals who were perplexed or did not accept the deuterocanonical books did not represent the whole or those of the Magisterium. Hence, even if individuals throughout History were unsure of whether they were divinely inspired, councils throughout time always affirmed the septuagint, the Church Fathers also reaffirm the belief in the deuterocanonicals has they were remarked or quoted in correspondence, in a way that suggested/stated they were already accepted as inspired.
The Council of Trent put an end to any questioning (due to the threat that Luther posed) there may have been on the part of some by stating definitively the canon of the Bible, that is, to say that henceforth, no one could speculate or argue against the divinely inspired deuteros.
“At the Council of Trent the Church put the matter to rest by listing
definitively the accepted books, which included the deuterocanonicals, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms this list (CCC 120).”
This was written by Steve Ray, a Catholic apologist. James Akin, another Catholic apologist also writes:
“It is thus a complete myth that, as Protestants often charge, the Catholic Church “added” the deuterocanonicals to the Bible at the Council of Trent. These books had been in the Bible from before the time canon was initially settled in the 380s. All the Council of Trent did was reaffirm, in the face of the new Protestant attack on Scripture, what had been the historic Bible of the Church—the standard edition of which was Jerome’s own Vulgate, including the seven deuterocanonicals!”
"The early acceptance of the deuterocanonicals was carried down through Church history. The Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes: “It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was . . . the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. . . . most of the Scriptural quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than the Hebrew… . . In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accept all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture.”
Also,
“aside from the absence of Machabees from the Codex Vaticanus (the very oldest copy of the Greek Old Testament), all the entire manuscripts contain all the deutero writings.”
Also,
“Protestant author Paul Achtemeier tells us, “Eastern and Roman Catholic tradition
generally considered the Old Testament ‘apocryphal’ books to be canonical. It was not until the Protestant Reformation that these books were clearly denied canonical status (in Protestant circles). The Roman church, however, continues to affirm their place in the canon of Scripture” (Harper’s Bible Dictionary, 1st ed. [Harper & Row, c1985], 69).”
Also,
“The group of Jews which met at Javneh became the dominant group for later Jewish history, and today most Jews accept the canon of Javneh. However, some Jews, such as those from Ethiopia, follow a different canon which is identical to the Catholic Old Testament and includes the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).”
It’s funny that Luther wanted to take out not only the deuterocanonical books from the Bible but Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelations as well.
