Bible Canon

No inspired table of contents

The New Testament does not contain an inspired list identifying all and only the books of the New Testament. The canon therefore raises a historical and ecclesiological question: how did Christians identify which writings belonged to the Church’s canonical Scriptures?

Sources: Catechism of the Catholic Church 120; compare the historical canon lists below.

Early reception and genuine disputes

The core books of the New Testament were widely received early, while some books remained disputed in particular regions. St. Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 (AD 367) is a major witness to the twenty-seven-book New Testament, while his Old Testament categorization also reminds us that early lists do not all use later Catholic categories in exactly the same way.

Sources: St. Athanasius, Festal Letter 39; St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, II.8.12–13.

Hippo and Carthage: important regional witnesses

The North African councils at Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397/419) provide important evidence for the canon received in those churches. They should be described as regional ecclesial witnesses, not as though they themselves were ecumenical councils issuing the same kind of dogmatic definition later made at Trent.

Rome and Innocent I

Pope Innocent I’s letter to Exsuperius of Toulouse in AD 405 gives an important Roman witness listing the sacred books. This contributes to the picture of a canon increasingly received across the Latin Church without pretending that every local list instantly ended all discussion everywhere.

Sources: Pope Innocent I, Consulenti tibi to Exsuperius.

Florence and Trent

The Council of Florence listed the canonical books in Cantate Domino (AD 1442). In the context of Reformation controversy, the Council of Trent’s Session IV in AD 1546 solemnly defined the canonical books for the Catholic Church. Trent therefore did not invent previously unknown books; it gave a dogmatic definition in response to a controversy that had become acute.

Sources: Council of Florence, Cantate Domino; Council of Trent, Session IV, Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures.

What changed in the Reformation?

Reformation treatment was not perfectly uniform. Some Reformers distinguished the Deuterocanonical books from the Hebrew-canon books and printed them in a separate Apocrypha section, while denying that they could establish doctrine in the same way as canonical Scripture. The historical argument is therefore stronger when it describes the actual diversity of Reformation practice rather than reducing it to a single moment of deletion.