If the Bible requires the Church for its Canon (list of Books to include), I would think that the decision process to decide on the Canon would have to be “inspired” by God. I think the same kind of Grace would be required to decide on what books to include in the Bible Canon as was required to write the books in the first place. To me there are 4 possibilities.
- God did not inspire the decision on the Canon.
- God gave the Jews that Grace in the 2nd century A.D. when they chose the Masoretic Canon (after they rejected his son, the Messiah)
- God gave the Reformation that Grace in 1546
- God give the Catholic Church that Grace at Carthage in 397 A.D.
I can’t imagine God being OK with there being two Canons floating around so I would rule out #1. I can’t imagine God waiting 1550 years until the Reformation to inspire a decision on the Canon. So I also would rule out #3. That leaves me with the option that either the Jews were given that Grace in the 2nd century A.D. or the Catholic Church was given that Grace at Carthage. I have difficulty believing God would give more grace to the Jews after they rejected his Son the Messiah than they would give the early Christians who used the Deuteros. So I believe that Grace was given to the early Christians who used the Dueteros and ratified their inclusion in the Canon in 397 A.D. at Carthage.
So that’s the Catholic reasoning for including those books. I’ve pulled a tremendous amount inspiration from them. I was particularly struck by books of Tobit, Suzanne, Wisdom, and Judith. If you haven’t read them, please give them a spin and judge for yourself. Martin Luther was totally into Tobit. It formed part of Luther’s Bible.
Timeline of the decisions on the books of the Bible (Canon)
AD 51-125: The New Testament books are written.
AD 140: Marcion, a businessman in Rome, taught that there were two Gods:
Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as Scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke’s gospel (he deleted references to Jesus’s Jewishness). Marcion’s “New Testament”, the first to be compiled, forced the mainstream Church to decide on a core canon: the four Gospels and Letters of Paul.
AD 200: The periphery of the canon is not yet determined. According to one list, compiled at Rome c. AD 200 (the Muratorian Canon), the NT consists of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter.
AD 367: The earliest extant list of the books of the NT, in exactly the number and order in which we presently have them, is written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Festal letter # 39 of 367 A.D…
382 --Council of Rome (whereby Pope Damasus started the ball rolling for the defining of a universal canon for all city-churches). Listed the New Testament books in their present number and order.
393 A.D. --the Council of Hippo, which began “arguing it out.” Canon proposed by Bishop Athanasius.
AD 397: The Council of Carthage, which refined the canon for the Western Church, sending it back to Pope Innocent for ratification. In the East, the canonical process was hampered by a number of schisms (esp. within the Church of Antioch). However, this changed by …
787 A.D. The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II, which adopted the canon of Carthage. At this point, both the Latin West and the Greek / Byzantine East had the same canon. However, … The non-Greek, Monophysite and Nestorian Churches of the East (the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Syro-Malankars, the Chaldeans, and the Malabars) were still left out. But these Churches came together in agreement, in 1442A.D., in Florence.
AD 1442: At the Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Pope Damasus I had published a thousand years earlier. So, by 1439, all orthodox branches of the Church were legally bound to the same canon. This is 100 years before the Reformation.
AD 1536: In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Luther removed 4 N.T. books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix saying they were less than canonical.
AD 1546: At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books. The council also confirmed the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books which had been a part of the Bible canon since the early Church and was confirmed at the councils of 393 AD, 373, 787 and 1442 AD. At Trent Rome actually dogmatized the canon, making it more than a matter of canon law, which had been the case up to that point, closing it for good.
The timeline section is by Mark Bonocore & Bob Stanley.