Hunter-Kilmer 1

Meg Hunter-Kilmer

Brad Gregory

May 1, 2005

The Reformation Rejection of the Deuterocanon:

An Action Not Without Foundation

For nearly 500 years, despite debates doctrinal and practical, Christians have been united

by, among other things, their reliance on the Bible. The Old and New Testaments, written by

human authors but inspired and guided by God Himself, have largely been a source of unity in

the Christian community. Yet this point of agreement is, in reality, another point of contention,

however much it may be minimized. Despite a modern ecumenical desire to treat this difference

as a minor matter, hardly worthy of discussion, rhetoric on each side can be bitter, with

Protestants calling the deuterocanonical books “spurious uncanonical books”1 and Catholics

accusing Protestants of heresy for desecrating Scripture. Certainly the issue is an important one,

whose relevance reaches not only to debates on those doctrinal issues attested in the

deuterocanon (such as purgatory and free will) but also to the source of the authority of

Scripture. Yet despite the gravity of rejecting what was at least commonly accepted as Scripture,

the rejection of the deuterocanon was not one of the main debates of the Protestant Reformation;

indeed, only one Protestant work over the course of the sixteenth century was devoted to it.2 The

bulk of the debate was carried out in confessional statements, the prefaces to translations of

deuterocanonical books, and as seemingly inconsequential asides to sola scriptura arguments.

For those who recognize the significance of the rejection of the deuterocanon, the near

silence of the reformers on the topic is shocking. In order to understand the almost immediate

1
J. Theodore Mueller, “Luther’s Canon Within the Canon,” Christianity Today 6.2 (Oct. 27, 1961): 9.
2
Karlstadt, De Canonicis Scripturis Libellus in 1520.
 Hunter-Kilmer 2

Protestant acceptance of such a bold move, the rationales of the reformers must be examined

along with the history of the deuterocanonical books, whose reception in the Christian

community was never as definitive as either Protestant or Catholic apologists would like to

believe. Despite a common Catholic conviction that Luther disposed of those books that were

inconvenient to his theology for no other reason than that they contradicted him, the reality is

that this rejection was neither sudden nor without foundation. The authority of these books was,

in fact, debated from patristic times.

While many Christians know nothing of the differing canons, most who do have been

taught poorly. The majority of Catholics with any knowledge of the subject would repeat the

lesson they learned in grade school: we use the same Bible Jesus did and Protestants took out the

books that contradicted their heresy in the sixteenth century. Unfortunately for Catholics,

Protestants make the same claim, many of them having been taught that the Old Testament

existed in its Protestant form at the time of Jesus. According to this argument, the Church later

added “certain later writings of inferior quality and existing only in Greek”3 to the Bible, books

that were questioned by the Fathers and rightly rejected by the reformers. Each group has

limited arguments supporting its position. Catholic apologists make reference to the fact that

300 of the 350 Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are quoted directly from the

Septuagint,4 the Greek version of the Old Testament in which the deuterocanon is found.

Protestants counter with the fact that not one of those citations is an explicit citation of a

deuterocanonical book. Rather, they claim that the Old Testament canon was officially closed by

the prophet Ezra in the fifth century BC at a convocation known as the Great Synagogue, a myth

whose origins have been traced to Elias Levita, a Jewish contemporary of Luther.5 Not only is

3
J. M. Ross, “The Status of the Apocrypha,” Theology 82 (May 1979): 183.
4
John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1965) 787.
5
W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1892) 169.
 Hunter-Kilmer 3

this Great Synagogue myth unmentioned before the second century,6 the concept of an explicitly

closed canon makes little sense given the understanding of ongoing prophesy that Ezra would

have had. Protestants, like those Jews who address the issue, argue that the deuterocanonical

books were written in Greek, not Hebrew, and therefore do not belong among those books that

make up the Hebrew Scriptures. In the light of recent discoveries of Hebrew texts of

deuterocanonical books at Qumran, this argument has lost much of its force but many assert that

these Hebrew texts are merely translations of the Greek originals and ought to have no bearing

on the canonical status of the books. More than anything, however, it is the question of what

books were in use at the time of Christ that is crucial to the argument surrounding the

deuterocanonical books

The unfounded belief that a fixed group of books made up the accepted Scriptures at the

time of Christ is common ground for Christians. Central to the Catholic argument of the

Septuagint being the Bible of Jesus is the notion that the canon of the Septuagint was fixed at the

time of Christ, a theory that is disproved by the fact that the existing copies of the Septuagint

(dating from well after the first century) contain varying numbers of books.7 Unfortunately for

those who would base the canon of Scripture on the books used by Christ, the Protestant

understanding of a fixed Hebrew canon before the destruction of the Temple is no better attested

and seems unlikely given the evidence. As we have seen, the idea of Ezra and the Great

Synagogue officially closing the canon is an early modern innovation. Moreover, the New

Testament itself testifies to an open canon at the time it was written. “Nothing outside the Law,

Prophets, and Psalms is ever quoted in the New Testament as ‘Scripture,’”8 and mention of the

6
Joseph T. Lienhard, The Bible, the Church, and Authority: The Canon of the Christian Bible in History and
Theology (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier Books, 1995)
7
Albert C. Sundberg, Jr, “The Protestant Old Testament Canon: Should it be Re-examined?” The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 28.2 (April 1966): 198.
8
Ross, 186.
 Hunter-Kilmer 4

Scriptures is limited to “the Law and the Prophets,” excluding the Writings9 that would later be

included in the Hebrew Canon. It seems, then, that the Hebrew Scriptures at the time of Christ

consisted of “a closed collection of Law, a closed collection of Prophets, and an undefined body

of literature that included the ‘Writings.’”10 While they may have been regarded as Scriptural,

none of these writings were officially part of the canon until it was closed at the end of the first

century at the Council of Jamnia.

After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the Jewish people were left with no nation,

no temple, nothing to distinguish them from other peoples except their scripture. Scripture began

to take on a more central role in the formerly sacrifice-centered religion and the closing of the

canon was an essential move to protect Sacred Scripture from being abused. Rabbis gathered at

Jamnia took it upon themselves to deal with the matter, defining the canon narrowly by rejecting

all books not considered to be ancient,11 in a move inspired by the notion that prophecy had

ended in the fourth century BC.12 This automatic rejection of those books not originally written

in Hebrew and those believed to be recent could explain the fact that there is no record of any

deuterocanonical book being debated at the Council,13 whose enumeration of the books of the

Hebrew Scriptures is the first written account of a fixed canon and is widely regarded as the

official closing of the previously fluid Hebrew canon a full sixty years after the life of Christ.

The fact that the Hebrew canon was not closed at the time of Christ, does not, however,

indicate a widespread first century acceptance of all books in the Septuagint as Scripture.

Certainly, the deuterocanonical books were widely read at the time. Indeed, despite being

9
The Writings consist of (in Septuagint order) Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Job,
Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Sirach, Lamentations, Baruch, and Daniel.
10
Albert C. Sundberg, Jr, “The ‘Old Testament’: a Christian Canon,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30.2 (April
1968): 147.
11
Ross 186f.
12
Bruce M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957) 9.
13
Robert C. Newman, “The Council of Jamnia and the Old Testament Canon,” Westminster Theological Journal
38.3 (Spring 1976): 349. Newman interprets this as being indicative of a long-standing canon prior to the Council.
 Hunter-Kilmer 5

banned by Jewish authorities, who made it a sin to study them,14 the books of the deuterocanon

are believed to have been read by Jews for centuries after being excluded from the Hebrew canon

(a fact attested to by their citation in the Talmud).15 Yet, Protestant theologians argue, no

deuterocanonical book is ever explicitly quoted in the New Testament. This would certainly be

significant, indeed would condemn every deuterocanonical book, if every book of the Old

Testament had been quoted in the New. This is not, however, the case.16 Moreover, a number of

deuterocanonical books are alluded to in the New Testament,17 and the fact that New Testament

citation does not canonize a book is duly evidenced by the express citation of the apocryphal

book of Enoch in Jude 14-15.18

There is no doubt that proponents of each side claim the agreement of Christ, or at least

the Apostles, with their canon but the evidence is sparse and unconvincing either way. The use

of the deuterocanon by the early Church, however, is much more substantiated though only

slightly less debated. After the Council of Jamnia, whose purpose was largely to define Judaism

in the face of the Christian heresy, the Christian community could hardly have been expected to

follow the newly established Hebrew canon. Even had Christians desired to do so, the

Septuagint had effectively become the official sacred text of the majority of Christians due to the

inability of the increasing number of Gentile Christians to read Hebrew.19 Thus the books

included in most versions of the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Canon were widely recognized

14
Smith, 167.
15
Sundberg, “The ‘Old Testament,’” 151f.
16
Sundberg, “The Canon,” 200. Joshua, Judges, 1 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of
Solomon, Obadiah, Zephaniah, and Nahum are not quoted in the New Testament.
17
Metzger, 158-170. See, for example, Hebrews 11:35, a reference to 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42; Ephesians 6:13-17, a
reference to Wisdom 5:17-20; Luke 2:52, a reference to Sirach 10:14.
18
Metzger, 171f.
19
Metzger, 175.
 Hunter-Kilmer 6

as authoritative and scriptural by the early fathers. By the end of the second century, almost all

of these were treated in the same way as the protocanonical books.20

Around the end of the second century, however, a few of the fathers seem to have

become concerned by the fact that the Jewish canon and the generally accepted Christian canon

differed. Melito of Sardis, writing around 170-180, describes traveling East to determine the

exact canon of Scripture and proceeds to list the Hebrew canon (excluding Esther).21 A short

time later, Origen wrote of the Hebrew canon as well, which did not include a number of the

deuterocanonical books that Origen himself cited as Scripture.22 Origen, however, referred to

this canon as “their Scriptures,” as opposed to “our Scriptures,”23 by which he presumably meant

to include the deuterocanon that he seems to have considered Scripture. This differentiation

seems to indicate that Origen’s list, at least, was promulgated “as a list of books, not a canonical

text,”24 whose purpose was to instruct Christians as to what books of the Old Testament could be

used when debating with Jews.25

During the third and fourth centuries, the majority of the fathers accepted the Septuagint

canon as opposed to the Hebrew canon.26 The only dissenters seem to have been those who

knew Hebrew, which knowledge could only be obtained at the time through study with Jews,

who not only used the shorter canon but also argued that the deuterocanonical books had no

place among the Hebrew Scriptures at all, having been written, they asserted, not in Hebrew at

all but in Greek. Those early Christians who spent substantial amounts of time with Jewish

communities were often convinced by these two arguments. In fact, close relationship with Jews

20
Ross, 187.
21
Ross, 187.
22
Ross, 186f.
23
Sundberg, “The ‘Old Testament,’” 148.
24
Sundberg, “The ‘Old Testament,’” 149.
25
Ross, 188.
26
H. H. Howorth, “The Canon of the Bible Among the Later Reformers,” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1909):
205.
 Hunter-Kilmer 7

seems almost to have been a prerequisite of acceptance of the Jewish canon. St. Jerome, for

example, only became a proponent of the Hebrew canon after moving to Bethlehem; Rufinus, on

the other hand, rejected the Hebrew canon upon relocating to the West and became an advocate

of both the Septuagint and the deuterocanonical books.27 Jerome’s hypothesis, however, seems

to be based entirely on the faulty assumption that the canon of Jesus and the Apostles was, in

fact, the Hebrew canon28 and must be considered in that light. Not even all those who believed

this to be true, however, concluded by rejecting or even questioning the deuterocanon. St.

Augustine hypothesized that the deuterocanonical books were not written by Hebrew authors but

rather by those who translated the Septuagint; nevertheless, he believed those authors to have

been divinely inspired and accorded the texts the same authority as all other scriptural books.29

Despite questioning of the deuterocanon by significant Patristic figures, however, the

universal Church continued to accept it as Scripture. Those who accepted the Hebrew canon

spoke on their own authority outside the tradition of the Church and “were so small in number

that they were unable to shake the universal belief in the complete Canon of the Old

Testament.”30 Their arguments did have an effect on the Church’s canon, however. As with

most issues, the early Church had chosen not to define the issue of the canon until it was

questioned. The forceful speculation of Jerome, who had been called upon to translate the

Scriptures into Latin, was instrumental in bringing about a conciliar decision on the matter.

While the regional council at Laodicea in 363 promulgated the Hebrew canon,31 the Council of

Rome prompted Pope St. Damasus I to settle the matter conclusively by issuing the Decree of

Damasus in 382. In this document, the Pope definitively listed the canonical books that were to
27
Sundberg, “The ‘Old Testament,’” 150.
28
Sundberg, “The Canon,” 201. Jerome seems to have been unaware of the actions of the Council at Jamnia.
29
Augustine of Hippo, City of God, book xviii, chapter 43.
30
John E. Steinmueller, A Companion to Scripture Studies Volume I: General Introduction to the Bible (New York:
Joseph F. Wagner, Inc, 1941) 78.
31
Sundberg, “The ‘Old Testament,’” 149.
 Hunter-Kilmer 8

be recognized as authoritative and Scriptural by the Christian community from that point forth.

This document lists every one of the deuterocanonical books as scriptural with the exception of

Baruch, which was most likely grouped with the book of Jeremiah as was often done in the early

Church.32 This was echoed by local councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397 and 419), which

included the deuterocanonical books as well,33 and universally affirmed once more at the

ecumenical Council of Florence in 1441.34 The inclusion of the deuterocanon in the Christian

Old Testament canon, then, was firmly established well before the Reformation, but only after

having been questioned throughout the Patristic period. Influenced by Origen, Jerome, and

Melito, some scholars persisted in a belief that the Hebrew canon was the canon of Jesus but

most chose to view the deuterocanonical books as being scriptural because of the authority of the

Church, not because they were used by Jesus. Naturally, authority derived from the Church was

a position that the reformers could not be expected to accept. This resulted in Catholic certainty

of the canonicity of the deuterocanon and concurrent Protestant certainty that it was apocryphal.

This unquestioned conviction on the part of reformers and their opponents would result in a

Reformation debate that was predominantly superficial and rarely theological, each side having

little sympathy for the other.

Although not one of the central tenets of the Reformation (and arguably an unintended

consequence), the sixteenth century Protestant rejection of the deuterocanon was almost

universal. The reasons behind its rejection and the subsequent treatment of the texts varied

widely among and even within reform traditions. Justifications were theological, spiritual, and

historical, but only the historical remains prevalent among Protestant theologians, with the result

32
“The Decree of Damasus” in Faith of the Early Fathers Volume I, ed. William A. Jurgens (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 1970) 406.
33
Sundberg, “The ‘Old Testament,’” 151.
34
Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm, “The Old Testament Canon in the Catholic Church,” The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 28.2 (April 1966): 189.
 Hunter-Kilmer 9

that since the sixteenth century, those attempting to rediscover authentic Christianity have used

“a Bible which no Christian had ever known until that moment.”35

The popular Catholic understanding that Luther disposed of the deuterocanon because

certain passages it contained contradicted his theology is not entirely incorrect. What Catholics

are unaware of is the fact that Luther admitted as much. In fact, his test for the authority of a

book was whether or not it fit with his theology. It is uncertain, however, whether Luther held

this position from the beginning of his rebellion against Rome. His position was revealed during

his debate at Leipzig with Johann Eck. While debating purgatory, Eck tried to beat Luther at his

own game by using 2 Maccabees 12:46 as a proof text for the disputed Catholic doctrine. Sure

of a victory, Eck stood by shocked as Luther suddenly changed the rules. In what some have

called “an argument of desperation,”36 Luther claimed that 2 Maccabees was not canonical,

quoting the authority of Jerome. Even if it had been authentically received by the Church as part

of the canon, however, Luther asserted that “the Church cannot accord to a book any more

strength or authority than it possesses by its own virtue.”37 Without warning, Luther had called

into question not only the book of Maccabees but every book in the Bible. If authority was

based on internal witness rather than tradition or the decrees of the Church, then no book was

safe from the excising hands of Martin Luther.

Over the course of a number of years, Luther’s judgment for canonicity became clearer.

Using the Pauline epistles as the foundation of his theology, Luther determined the worth of each

book of the Bible by weighing it against what he viewed as the fundamental Christian principle

of salvation by faith alone. Rather than studying Scripture in order to develop a theology, Luther

formed a theology from which to develop Scripture. In comparing all of the word of God to his

35
Barton, 81.
36
Sundberg, “The Canon,” 195.
37
Ross, 189.
 Hunter-Kilmer 10

own theological innovation, Luther rejected the authority of tradition and established himself as

the supreme Christian authority. Despite his initial appeal to St. Jerome, Luther’s more fully

developed test of Scripture gave no weight to date or language of a work, spurning Esther and

the Song of Songs38 along with the deuterocanon and denying the authority of a number of New

Testament books as well.39 This strategy resulted in an understanding of authority that seemed to

non-Lutherans to be directly contrary to the Lutheran principle of sola scriptura. “If,” Luther

says, “in the debates in which exegesis brings no decisive victories, our adversaries press the

letter against Christ, we shall insist on Christ against the letter.”40 Just as sola scriptura leaves

authority to the individual interpreter, this notion of judging Scripture “seems to place the criteria

of canonicity upon the internal self-witness of a writing to its own worth whereas, in fact, the

judgment is made by the person arguing this case. Canonicity is thus made to depend entirely

upon subjective judgment.”41

The very next year, one of Luther’s followers published the only work devoted to the Old

Testament canon in the entire Reformation period. Andreas Bodenstein, better known as

Karlstadt or Carlstadt, published De Canonicis Scripturis Libellus, a treatise on the canonical

books of Scripture. Karlstadt was concerned that Luther’s distinction would result in the need

for each Christian either to “become an infallible Pope to himself or else accept Luther as an

infallible Pope.”42 Accepting Luther’s conclusion, he ignores Luther’s argument for the

determination of Scripture in favor of the familiar Protestant argument: the protocanon is the one

that was used by Jesus and passed down to the Church. Ironically, this most vehement of all

38
Edward Reuss, History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Church (New York: Wilbur B.
Ketcham, 1887) 314.
39
Reuss, 331 and 325. Luther rejected James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.
40
Reuss, 332.
41
Sundberg, “The Canon,” 200.
42
H. H. Howorth, “The Origin and Authority of the Bible Canon According to the Continental Reformers: Luther
and Karlstadt,” Journal of Theological Studies 7 (1906): 334.
 Hunter-Kilmer 11

advocates of the sole authority of Scripture bases his argument for the authority of Scripture on

tradition. He discusses the opinions of Jerome and Augustine on this issue and chooses to side

with Jerome in defending the Hebrew canon on the basis of its being attested by the Jewish

tradition. Influenced by the popularity of the study of Hebrew among 16th century humanists,

Karlstadt joined those Church Fathers who studied Hebrew, accepting the Hebrew canon because

it seemed authentic in the light of the testimony of first century Jews.

Karlstadt then divides the Scriptures into three groups: the Pentateuch and the Gospels,

which he calls “the most brilliant lamps of divine Truth;”43 the prophets and the uncontested

epistles (13 Pauline epistles and the first letters of St. Peter and St. John), which are also

accepted as Scripture; and the Old Testament deuterocanon (except Baruch) in combination with

the epistles of James, Jude, and 2 and 3 John.44 The books in this last grouping are viewed as

instructional but not authoritative. Of them, Karlstadt says, “What they contain is not to be

despised at once; still, it is not right that a Christian should slake his thirst with them.”45 Baruch,

Hebrews, and Revelation, on the other hand, are to be viewed as inferior even to these, Baruch

because Karlstadt finds it ridiculous and Hebrews and Revelation merely because of their date.

All this he derives from the teachings of dissenting Church fathers and the witness of the Hebrew

canon, quoting Augustine and saying that “it is by the recognition and the testimony of the

Church that we know what books are genuinely evangelical, and how many epistles there are by

Apostles.”46 Through this ironic line of reasoning, Karlstadt set a precedent for Protestant

rejection of the Apocrypha that gained ground because of its propagation by Luther and Calvin

but was first articulated in Karlstadt’s work.

43
Reuss, 336f.
44
Reuss, 337.
45
Metzger, 182, quoting Karlstadt.
46
Reuss, 338.
 Hunter-Kilmer 12

Following Karlstadt, Lutheran theologians continued to reject the deuterocanonical

books; like Karlstadt, however, they ignored Luther’s dangerous argument from internal witness

for the simpler (albeit less Protestant) argument based on the testimony of the early Church.

Many also espoused the view that the validity of a book was proven by being referenced in the

New Testament. As we have seen, this test has the disastrous result of excluding such widely

attested Old Testament books as Joshua and Ezra while leaving room for 1 Enoch. A preface in

a later Lutheran Bible explains the lesser status of the deuterocanonical books by citing four

reasons: they were written after the time of Malachi; they were not written in Hebrew; they were

unknown to the Jews and to the Church of the New Testament; and their contents are adverse

and partially unjustifiable.47 Although the fourth is similar in nature to Luther’s objection to the

deuterocanonical books, it seems more likely that the contents with which the author of the

preface takes issue are not doctrinal in the sense Luther proposes. Rather, the author is likely

objecting to the “inferior” language of the books and the historical and geographical inaccuracies

contained therein (the presence of which in protocanonical books does not serve to exclude them

from the Protestant canon).

Even if this fourth criterion were evidence of a lasting Lutheran objection to the

deuterocanon based on doctrine, its subordinate place to arguments of history and traditions

signifies its unimportance in Lutheran thought after Luther. Despite the claim of all reformers to

discern the canon without reference to tradition, the majority of Luther’s followers seem to have

come to the same conclusions as the Jews, Origen, and Jerome, among others. Each argument

for the exclusion of the deuterocanonical books cites their absence from the Hebrew canon as a

reason for removing them from the Christian canon.48 The irony of the rejection of the authority

47
Howorth, “The Canon,” 210.
48
Howorth, “The Canon,” 214.
 Hunter-Kilmer 13

of the Catholic Church in favor of the authority of a group of Jewish rabbis is evident. Yet the

alternatives, accepting Luther’s reasoning or accepting the books that support the Catholic

teaching of salvation by grace through faith and works, seem even less palatable. Protestant

departure from early Reformation thought, which claimed that “the Bible required no external

evidence or certifying witness to uphold its authority,”49 is demonstrative of the difficulties

presented by the early view. The idea of the worth of Scripture being self-evident was too much

for most of Luther’s followers, and they fell back instead on the simpler reasoning from

tradition. After Luther and Karlstadt, Lutheran arguments about the deuterocanon were merely

repetitions of what had already been said and were usually limited to addressing fellow

Lutherans rather than trying to convince Catholics of what seemed clear to those who so readily

accepted it.

For John Calvin, the question of including the deuterocanon among the Sacred Scriptures

was equally clear. Calvin, who quotes Scripture more than four thousand times in his Institutes

of the Christian Religion, makes only ten references to deuterocanonical books. In that same

text, he made his opinion of the texts more than clear when he denied their having been included

in the canon at any council and declared them apocryphal, again arguing from tradition.50 In his

Antidote to the Council of Trent, his argument from tradition is even more evident: “[the

deuterocanonical books] depart from the consensus of the early Church. For it is known what

Jerome reports is the common judgment of the ancients.”51 Calvin fails to explain why he

believes Jerome’s opinion to be a reflection of the belief of the Fathers, rather than the opinions

of the majority of the Fathers who accept the deuterocanon. Neither does he attempt to justify

his belief that the authority of Jerome, or even the authority of all the Church Fathers, supersedes

49
Howorth, “The Canon,” 224.
50
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion IV, 9, §14.
51
Smith, 31, quoting Calvin.
 Hunter-Kilmer 14

the authority of the Church as expressed by Pope St. Damasus I. For Calvin, however, these

points are not central to his argument concerning the deuterocanonical books.

Despite his use of tradition to make his point, Calvin denies the Church the authority to

canonize Scripture, arguing instead that the validity of Scripture can be known by the promptings

of the Holy Spirit, who makes it quite clear. “As to their question, how are we to know that the

Scriptures came from God, if we cannot refer to the decree of the Church” he asserts, “we might

as well ask how we are to learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, bitter from

sweet.”52 Calvin is thus moving away from the easier traditional argument to a spiritual

argument that claims that “the Holy Spirit working within them teaches men how to distinguish

what is the true word of God from what is spurious.”53 The subjectivity of this process of

canonization, of course, became evident quite quickly, causing Calvin to assert that “it was only

when a man was converted by the Scripture that he became sufficiently illuminated to

discriminate between the legitimate and the spurious in professed Biblical books.”54 Thus Calvin

established a spiritual test for canonicity that was different from Luther’s theological test but no

less subjective. Nor was Calvin’s test adopted by his followers any more than Luther’s was by

his. Much as they believed and professed that the authority of Scripture was revealed to each

believer, they too cited the example of the ancients in rejecting the deuterocanonical books. As

the years progressed, Calvin’s argument for canonization by the Spirit fell to the wayside for the

simpler traditional arguments.

In the Anglican Church, too, the deuterocanonical books were rejected on the basis of

tradition. The preface to the Matthew Bible rejects the canonicity of the deuterocanon based on

52
Reuss, 295, quoting Calvin.
53
Howorth, “The Canon,” 185.
54
Howorth, “The Canon,” 218
 Hunter-Kilmer 15

language, the Hebrew canon, and the testimony of St. Jerome.55 Yet while Anglican theologians

have more of a claim to arguments from tradition than their Protestant counterparts, their choice

to reject the traditional view of the Church whose doctrines they claimed to accept is in no way

in keeping with their intent of being “based on the practices and theories of the primitive

Church.”56 Rather than continuing to proclaim the canon of Scripture that it had held for

centuries, the Church of England “accepted, or rather allowed to have forced upon it by the

entirely private and irresponsible men who first translated its Bible, a Bible Canon which had

no adequate warrant from antiquity, but had been devised and accepted by the German

reformers, and was defended by them on grounds entirely inconsistent with its own

theories.”57 Yet the Anglican Church joined the Calvinist and Lutheran churches in rejecting the

deuterocanon almost without a second thought.

Of all the Reform traditions that emerged in the first half of the sixteenth century, only

the Anabaptists failed to remove the deuterocanonical books from their canon. Simons and

Riedemann both cite extensively from the deuterocanon and Hätzer goes so far as to say that the

deuterocanonical books do “give a righteous testimony of how one can and must return into the

One, just as with the other books.”58 It has been conjectured that the Anabaptist decision to

maintain the deuterocanon is rooted in an attachment to the free will of man proclaimed in Sirach

15:14-17.59 Despite almost universal acceptance of the deuterocanon, however, no Anabaptist

confession of faith made any decrees on the matter of the canon of Scripture, preferring, it

seems, to trust in the guidance of the Spirit within Anabaptist communities.60

55
H. H. Howorth, “The Origin and Authority of the Biblical Canon in the Anglican Church,” Journal of Theological
Studies 7 (1906): 11.
56
Howorth, “Anglican,” 38.
57
Howorth, “Anglican,” 38f.
58
Jonathan Seiling, “Solae (Quae?) Scripturae: Anabaptists and the Apocrypha,” academic paper retrieved from
<http://www.mcusa-archives.org/jhorsch/jhorsch2004/seiling_essay.htm> on April 29, 2005.
59
Seiling.
60
Seiling.
 Hunter-Kilmer 16

In response to this widespread Protestant rejection of the deuterocanonical books, the

Council of Trent undertook to reaffirm the already established canon. The Council fathers in

1546 declared the deuterocanonical books to be canonical in a dogmatic decree, affirming the

goodness of the Vulgate in a decree that was merely disciplinary.61 While this action taken by

the Council was in no way surprising or innovative, the records of the proceedings reveal that the

discussion surrounding the books was quite unusual. While those present agreed that the

deuterocanon must be affirmed as being canonical, based on the “undeniable testimonies that

from the very beginning all the sacred books were accepted in the Church, though very soon

difficulties arose against some of them,”62 there was much discussion as to whether the decrees

ought also to differentiate between the proto- and deuterocanonical books of the Bible. Some

sided with the more conservative reformers, distinguishing between “authentic” and

“ecclesiastical” books63 and claiming, likely influenced by the humanist study of Hebrew as seen

above, that the protocanonical books were doctrinal while the deuterocanonical books were

merely inspirational. Rather than discussing the matter, the Council fathers chose to leave the

question to posterity.64 The presence of this dispute and its inconclusive resolution are

demonstrative of the widespread distrust of the deuterocanonical books in the sixteenth century.

It was not only Protestants who rejected their authority, but some orthodox Catholics as well.

In response to this official decree on the part of the Catholic Church, a number of other

churches included their revised canons in their confessions of faith. While Lutherans and

Anabaptists made no statements, the Belgic (1561), Helvetic (1561), and French (1559)

61
Peter G. Duncker, O.P., “The Canon of the Old Testament at the Council of Trent,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly
15.3 (July 1953) 278f. It is to be noted that other books were common in Catholic Bibles at the time, having been
translated by Jerome, that were not include in the canon listed by Trent, namely the Prayer of Manasseh and 1 and 2
Esdras (also called 3 and 4 Esdras). In excluding these books, the Council was acting to affirm the canon set by
Pope St. Damasus I, not rejecting any traditionally accepted books (Metzger, 189).
62
Duncker, 283.
63
Duncker, 279.
64
Duncker, 286.
 Hunter-Kilmer 17

Reformed Confessions of Faith listed the Old Testament books without the deuterocanon. The

French Reformed Confession of Faith specifically attributed knowledge of the canon to have

been received “not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church, as by the

testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit,”65 as did the Helvetic in similar language.

The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church list the protocanonical books as Scripture but

also recommend the reading of the deuterocanon “for example of life and instruction of

manners” but not for any doctrinal purpose.66 The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) was

even more explicit in its rejection of the deuterocanon, not just omitting them from the list of Old

Testament books but stating, “the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine

inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the

Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.”67

While Protestant Churches made no official moves to reform the canon until after Trent

had affirmed its status, Protestant Bibles began indicating a shift much earlier. The first Bible to

be published with a separate deuterocanon was Jan Van Liesveldt’s Dutch version published in

1526,68 which placed it at the end of the Old Testament. Luther’s Bible followed suit in 1534,

noting in prefaces to the deuterocanonical books that they were not in Hebrew and therefore not

to be treated as Scripture,69 as did most Protestant Bibles over the course of the sixteenth century.

Gradually, however, the deuterocanonical books were removed entirely; the first English Bible to

be published with no deuterocanon was in Geneva in 1599.70 Despite the reaction of those

65
Article IV.
66
Article VI. The Archbishop of Canterbury in 1615 forbade the publishing of any Bibles without the deuterocanon
(Metzger, 197).
67
Chapter I section 3.
68
H. H. Howorth, “The Origin and Authority of the Biblical Canon According to the Continental Reformers,”
Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1908): 205.
69
Howorth, “Continental,” 215.
70
Howorth, “Anglican,” 32.
 Hunter-Kilmer 18

Protestants who called Bibles without the deuterocanon “mutilated and impious,”71 this practice

became increasingly common among Reformed Protestants, although Lutherans tended to

maintain the separated deuterocanon.

The inclusion of the deuterocanon in early Protestant Bibles is an interesting

phenomenon. The majority of Bibles have notes preceding each book or the group as a whole

testifying to their inferior nature and recommending that they be read for edification and

inspiration but not for theological or doctrinal purposes; The Puritan Genevan Bible thus

prefaces the deuterocanon with the assertion that the books “nether yet serued to proue any point

of Christian religion.”72 But despite these precautions, the books remained in the Bibles, these

interesting but fallible texts bound up with the very Word of God. The books were preserved as

though they were Scripture but explicitly demoted every time they were published. It seems

either that they ought to have been excluded from the Bibles entirely (as later became the case)

or that other important spiritual texts ought to have been included as well. Certainly, this action

of including the deuterocanon at the end of the Old Testament could have been done out of a

desire to mollify those Protestants who might have been shocked at the removal of books from

Scripture (and indeed were, as seen above) but were able to accept their relegation to merely

inspirational status. However, the continued presence of the deuterocanonical books in a

separate section in Lutheran Bibles for centuries, and even today, seems to be indicative of a

reluctance to eliminate the texts. If they truly were additions to the Scriptures of Christ, they are

not inspired and have no place between Malachi and Matthew. If they are merely pleasant

spiritual texts, they are certainly no more worthy of being included in the Bible than the Didache

or the Creeds. No, their retention stems from a collective consciousness that these books are

71
Howorth, “Anglican,” 37.
72
Howorth, “Anglican,” 20.
 Hunter-Kilmer 19

different from other spiritual writings, that they, above all other texts, deserve special status,

even if not a status as lofty as that of the canonical Scriptures.

For the early reformers, the definition of the canon was an essential issue; having

elevated Scripture to the status of unique religious authority, they needed to define their terms.

While the canon had been fixed more than a millennium before, popular acceptance of that canon

was variable, leaving a window of opportunity for those with a desire to reform it. The method

of reform, however, testifies just as much to implicit acceptance of the canon as it does to

widespread uncertainty about the deuterocanon. There is no evidence that any of the reformers

examined apocryphal books (such as 1 Enoch or 1 and 2 Esdras) to discern possible inclusion in

the canon; the established canon was regarded as the maximum, outside which no book could be

regarded as scriptural. While this is entirely logical for those working from a traditional

argument, Luther’s theological argument and Calvin’s spiritual argument ought to have been

applied to all ancient Jewish texts, not just the ones that had been handed down as sacred. In

respecting the closed canon in this way, the reformers “in fact conceded the position that the

Bible as it stood had been originally certified by the Church . . . . When they were content

without further enquiry to treat the Church’s Bible as containing all the inspired works which are

of authority among Christians, they really abandoned their objection to tradition as having any

voice in the matter at all.”73 If it were only the testimony of the Spirit that canonized Scripture or

the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, both Calvin and Luther ought to have sat down with all

the pre-Christian works available to the Jewish community and prayed over or studied each text

to discern its inspiration. The fact that they did not do so calls into question the authenticity of

their approaches.

73
Howorth, “The Canon,” 186.
 Hunter-Kilmer 20

The rationale of the reformers who followed Luther and Calvin likewise weakens the

Protestant claim to reject tradition. Nearly every description of the deuterocanonical books

describes them as the Zürich Bible did: “the Books which are not reckoned as Biblical by the

ancients, nor are found among the Hebrew.”74 Certainly, this approach is largely influenced by

humanism. The call to return to the sources of Christian theology was powerful in the early

modern period and the study of Hebrew became more popular than ever before among

Christians; it is this study of Hebrew (which, as we have seen, often led to an acceptance of the

Hebrew canon among the Fathers) in combination with a faulty understanding of the Hebrew

canon (inspired by the myth of the Great Synagogue) that led early modern Christians to believe

that the Hebrew canon was their spiritual heritage and that the deuterocanon was a later addition.

This inaccurate conviction, by which Jewish tradition was elevated above Christian, resulted in

an attempted return ad fontes that led to a canon that had never been sanctioned by the Church,

nor even seen before by Christians.

The rejection of the deuterocanon was not an immediate event nor was it universal. It

progressed gradually from a treatment of the deuterocanonical books as lesser but still inspired to

their outright rejection by a number of reformed traditions. While some Bibles separate the

deuterocanon but still highly recommend the books it contains to readers, others remove it

entirely, viewing the books as abominable additions to Scripture. While the subjectivity of many

Protestant tests for canonicity may seem almost absurd to the modern mind (as it did to the

sixteenth century Catholic mind), it was precisely this subjectivity that indicated the moving of

the Spirit to many Protestants. Searching for spiritual truth, Calvin and some of his followers

largely rejected academic arguments (despite still using them against Catholics); “arguments

purely historical and the testimonies of the Fathers lost all value and had to give place to what
74
Metzger, 183.
 Hunter-Kilmer 21

the apostle long ago had called ‘demonstration of spirit and power.’”75 They, like Lutherans who

espoused Luther’s test of compatibility with the principle of sola fide, believed the discernment

of the canon not to be arbitrary or subjective but led by the Spirit. For Calvinists, the belief that

those of right Spirit would conclude the same things about the canon was as easily accepted as

the Lutheran understanding that those of right mind would. As with the conviction that believers

would all be able to come to the one true interpretation of Scripture without the guidance of

tradition, these criteria for defining the canon were fundamentally rooted in faith in the power of

the Spirit.

Yet despite disagreements as to the consequences of, rationale behind, and extent of the

rejection of the deuterocanonical books in the Reformation, rejection itself is rarely disputed.

While many reformers briefly explain their justifications, only one writes extensively on the

topic. This treatment of the division of Scripture seems inappropriately compliant. Why were

Catholics not outraged at the mutilation of God’s word? Why were Protestants not rejoicing at

having purified that on which their faith was based? As we have seen, the fact that this

alternative canon was not entirely unheard of aided its incorporation into Protestant communities

and mitigated the responses of Catholics, some of whom had long believed the deuterocanonical

books to be slightly inferior to the rest of Scripture. The appeal to tradition satisfied those who

would have seen this development as an innovation. Conversely, Protestants initially saw the

redefining of the canon not as a rejection of additions heretically added to the Bible, but merely

as a distinction between infallible and excellent texts. It was only later that the conception of

these texts as foreign and devious became prevalent in Protestant communities. Above all,

however, the minimal nature of the controversy surrounding the new canon can be attributed to

the matters with which it was competing.

At a time when men's minds and hearts were all on fire about concrete issues that
were very practical, the introduction of a Bible Canon, which had been upheld by at
least one Doctor of the Church in early times and by several individual scholars at
various times afterwards and did not superficially seem to sacrifice much of real
importance, should have been treated as of academic interest and ignored. 76

When the Eucharist was being desecrated and morality spurned, Catholics could hardly be

expected to rail against the de-emphasis of a group of books that many had already

considered questionable. Likewise, Protestants who witnessed hordes of people worshipping

a piece of bread and claiming to achieve their own salvation were unlikely to devote great

time and attention to the treatment of these inspired books as canonical.

Despite the simplicity of modern Catholic and Protestant arguments in support of the

Septuagint or Hebrew canons, then, the rejection of the deuterocanonical books was neither

unfounded nor inevitable. The question of which books were used by the New Testament

Church has been debated for centuries, with each side making circumstantial points but no

incontrovertible evidence on either side. The Protestant reformers, coming from a tradition that

had officially accepted the deuterocanon but not fully appropriated it, were not unreasonable in

their decision to reject it. Reasoning ranged from the historical and traditional to the theological

and spiritual, but other than the Anabaptists, nearly all reformers agreed on the resultant denial of

canonical status to the deuterocanon. Yet while this reasoning varied and the consequences of

these judgments changed over the course of the century, the rationales used by reformers did not

evolve. From the beginning, the strength of the Protestant argument against the deuterocanon

was rooted in a misunderstanding of the reception of the canon in the early Church. Because the

resultant argument seemed simple and incontrovertible, and not all that far from the status quo,

little was made of it by reformers and Catholic controversialists alike. The result was an almost

76
Howorth, “Anglican,” 2.
 Hunter-Kilmer 23

universal rejection of the deuterocanon by Protestants, establishing a division among Christians

that has lasted to the present day and seems likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

It is evident that neither the Protestant argument that the 39 book Old Testament was the

Bible of Christ nor the Catholic assertion that it was the 46 book text is entirely accurate. More

than likely, Jesus used the Septuagint, but whether that Bible contained the deuterocanonical

books cannot be determined by modern research. As neither Luther’s theological argument nor

Calvin’s spiritual one has really stood the test of time, Christians attempting to determine which

books belong in their Bible are really presented with two choices: the canon of the early Church

or the canon of first century Judaism. The natural inclination of Protestants is not, and ought not

to be, to accept doctrines on the authority of the Catholic Church. When examining the doctrines

of Protestantism, however, one discovers that many central teachings of Protestantism are not

entirely scriptural. The doctrine of the Trinity can never be found explicitly in Scripture; rather,

it was hotly debated in the Church until it was explicitly defined at the Council of Nicaea in 325.

Likewise, heresies surrounding the dual natures of Christ raged until they were dampened by the

definition of the hypostatic union by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. These two central

teachings of all of Christianity find their authority in the determination of the early Church.

Whether one proclaims the infallibility of those councils or merely respects the intelligence of

the Fathers and trusts the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in these essential matters, it is clear that

the proclamations of the early Church have some bearing on the teachings of the modern Church.

Prior to the Decree of Damasus in 382, the canon of the New Testament was even more fluid

than that of the Old Testament. Yet despite Martin Luther’s desire to remove certain books from

the New Testament canon, there is no question among Protestants as to which books belong in

the second part of their Bible. If the early Church had the authority to define the Trinity, the
 Hunter-Kilmer 24

natures of Christ, and the books that composed the New Testament, on what grounds can any

Christian reject the authority of the Church in regard to the Old Testament canon?