The Scope of the Biblical Canon

The canon of the New Testament — all twenty-seven books from Matthew to Revelation — is confessed universally across every historic branch of Christianity without exception (see Layer 2 document 11, The Canon of the New Testament). This is one of the most remarkable consensuses in the whole of Christian history: no serious Christian body disputes any of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. That the plurality of hermeneutical methods applied to these Scriptures (Layer 3 document 11) has not disturbed this consensus is itself evidence of the Spirit’s witness in the Church’s reception of its own Scriptures. What stands in dispute in this faultline is the Old Testament canon: specifically, whether the deuterocanonical books — Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel — belong to the canon proper or to a secondary class useful for edification but not for the establishment of doctrine. This dispute is inseparable from the question treated in Layer 4 document 5 — whether Scripture is formally sufficient and self-authenticating, or whether its identity as Scripture is received through the Church’s authority — and the two faultlines must be read together.

The Competing Claims

Roman Catholic

The Old Testament includes the deuterocanonical books — Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1-2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel — as fully canonical Scripture, equal in authority to any other biblical book. The Council of Trent defined this canon in its fourth session (8 April 1546), listing the books individually and declaring: “If anyone does not accept these books, entire with all their parts, as they have been customarily read in the Catholic Church and as they are found in the old Latin Vulgate edition, as sacred and canonical, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions: let him be anathema.”

Rome’s case rests on continuity. The Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, widely used by the apostles and the early Church — included these books. The New Testament quotes or alludes to the Septuagint far more frequently than to the Hebrew text. The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) listed the broader canon, and Pope Innocent I confirmed it in 405 [∗]. Augustine, the dominant theological voice of the Latin West, accepted the broader canon and argued against Jerome’s preference for the Hebrew (De Doctrina Christiana 2.8.13).

The books are not marginal to Catholic theology. 2 Maccabees 12:43-46 provides the clearest scriptural warrant for prayers for the dead: Judas Maccabeus “took up a collection… and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering… Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.” Wisdom 3:1-9 grounds the doctrine of the righteous dead at peace in God’s hand. Sirach provides extensive wisdom teaching that has shaped Catholic moral theology for centuries.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church treats the deuterocanonical books without any distinction of rank: “The Church’s Tradition has always regarded them as divinely inspired” (CCC §105, applied to the entire canon as listed in §120). To reject them is to reject part of the Word of God — not merely to set aside useful literature but to amputate a limb of the scriptural body.

Eastern Orthodox

Orthodoxy generally includes the deuterocanonical books in its Old Testament but with less dogmatic precision than Rome. The Orthodox canon is broader than the Roman in some traditions — the Greek Orthodox include 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 Maccabees; the Ethiopian Orthodox canon is broader still. The Slavonic Bible includes 2 Esdras (= 4 Ezra). There is no single council that has defined the Orthodox canon with the specificity of Trent.

The Synod of Jerusalem (1672), in its Confession of Dositheus, affirmed the broader canon against Calvinist influence, listing Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, the History of the Dragon (Bel and the Dragon), Susanna, Maccabees, and Sirach as canonical (Question 3 of the Four Questions appended to the Eighteen Decrees). But the later Longer Catechism of Philaret (1823; revised 1839), following Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, and John of Damascus, distinguishes between canonical and non-canonical books of the Old Testament, placing the deuterocanonicals in a secondary category.

This internal diversity reflects a characteristically Orthodox instinct: the canon is received through the Church’s liturgical life rather than defined by juridical decree. The deuterocanonical books are read in Orthodox worship, quoted by the Fathers, and treated with reverence. Whether they possess exactly the same authority as the protocanonical books is a question Orthodoxy has not felt compelled to answer with Western precision.

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware summarizes the Orthodox position with characteristic balance: “It can be said that the Orthodox Church accepts as canonical those books which are contained in the Septuagint… but there is some debate among Orthodox scholars about the precise status of certain books” (The Orthodox Church, 1963, revised 1993 [∗]). The liturgical criterion — what the Church reads as Scripture — takes precedence over the definitional criterion — what a council has declared to be Scripture.

Protestant

The Old Testament consists of thirty-nine books corresponding to the Hebrew canon — the books received by the Jewish community and preserved in the Masoretic tradition. The deuterocanonical books are classified as Apocrypha: useful for edification, valuable as historical and devotional literature, but not canonical — not part of the inspired Scripture from which doctrine may be established.

The Protestant position appeals to Jerome, the greatest biblical scholar of the patristic age, who distinguished sharply between the books found in the Hebrew canon (hebraica veritas) and those found only in the Septuagint. Jerome wrote in his Prologus Galeatus (c. 391): “Whatever falls outside these must be set apart among the apocrypha.” In the Vulgate prefaces to the books of Solomon (Proverbs / Ecclesiastes / Song of Songs) he added that the Church “reads [the apocryphal books] for edification of the people, not for the authoritative establishment of doctrine” — the single clearest patristic precedent for the Protestant two-tier distinction.

Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles states: “And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” The Westminster Confession is more categorical: “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” (WCF 1.3).

The Reformers argued that the Hebrew canon represents the canon Jesus and the apostles used. When Jesus speaks of “the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 5:17) or “the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44), he is referring to the tripartite Hebrew canon. No New Testament author introduces a quotation from the deuterocanonical books with the formula “as it is written” or “Scripture says” — the formulas reserved for canonical authority.

Roger Beckwith’s The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) provides the most thorough Protestant argument that the Hebrew canon was closed at least two-and-a-half centuries before AD 90 and that the Septuagint’s broader collection reflects scribal inclusion of edifying literature alongside canonical books, not a rival canonical tradition. The argument is contested but substantial.

The 1647 Westminster Assembly debated the matter and concluded definitively. The Belgic Confession (Art. 6) lists the canonical books; the deuterocanonicals are absent. The Reformed tradition’s position is not one of ignorance — the books were well known — but of deliberate exclusion from the canon of doctrine.

Scriptural Warrant

This faultline is unusual in that the dispute is about the boundary of Scripture itself, making “scriptural warrant” recursive. Nevertheless:

For the broader canon:

• The New Testament shows extensive contact with the deuterocanonical literature. Hebrews 11:35 (“Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life”) closely parallels 2 Maccabees 7, the martyrdom of the seven brothers. Hebrews 1:3 (“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”) echoes Wisdom 7:26 (“She is a reflection of eternal light… and an image of his goodness”). James 1:19 (“swift to hear, slow to speak”) reflects Sirach 5:11.
• Romans 1:19-32, Paul’s argument about the knowledge of God available through creation, parallels Wisdom 13:1-9 closely enough that a near-universal scholarly consensus (Dunn, Jewett, Fitzmyer, Moo) treats it as a direct allusion.
• The apostolic Church used the Septuagint as its Bible. The broader canon was part of the Scriptures the early Church received and read.

For the narrower canon:

• Jesus’ reference to “from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah” (Luke 11:51; Matthew 23:35) spans Genesis to 2 Chronicles — the first and last books of the Hebrew canon in its traditional ordering — suggesting he recognized a defined collection that did not include the deuterocanonical books.
• Paul’s statement that the Jews were “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2) implies that the Jewish community’s canon — the Hebrew canon — is the authoritative Old Testament. The stewardship of the oracles belonged to Israel, and Israel’s canon was the Hebrew Scriptures.
• No deuterocanonical book is ever quoted with an introductory formula indicating canonical status (“it is written,” “Scripture says,” “as the prophet says”). Allusion is not citation, and the New Testament also alludes to pagan poets (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12) without treating them as Scripture.
• The internal witness of the deuterocanonical books themselves is invoked by some Protestant scholars: 1 Maccabees 9:27 laments that “there was great distress in Israel, such as had not been since the time that prophets ceased to appear among them,” suggesting the author did not consider himself to be writing prophetic Scripture.

Historical Development

The history of the canon is more complex than either side’s polemical summary suggests. Neither the Protestant claim (“the Hebrew canon was always fixed and clear”) nor the Catholic claim (“the broader canon was always received”) does full justice to the evidence.

The canon question was not sharply defined in the early centuries. The Church inherited from Judaism a situation more fluid than later polemics suggest. The Hebrew canon was likely stabilized by the late first or early second century CE, but the boundaries were still debated — the status of Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Esther was questioned in rabbinic discussions, while some Jewish communities (notably in Alexandria) used a broader collection.

The early Christian Church adopted the Septuagint as its Old Testament. The great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries — Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus — include deuterocanonical books, though not always the same ones and not always in the same order. Vaticanus includes Wisdom and Sirach but omits 1-2 Maccabees. Sinaiticus includes Tobit and Judith but adds 4 Maccabees and the Epistle of Barnabas. Alexandrinus includes all the standard deuterocanonicals plus 3-4 Maccabees. The fluidity of these manuscripts suggests that the boundaries of the canon were not yet rigid.

The patristic evidence is similarly divided. Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 (367) lists the canonical books of both testaments in a form close to the Protestant canon, placing the deuterocanonical books in a separate category of books “appointed by the Fathers to be read” [∗]. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechetical Lectures 4.35, c. 350) lists only the books of the Hebrew canon for the Old Testament. On the other hand, the regional councils of Hippo and Carthage, and the usage of the Roman liturgy, included the broader collection.

Jerome (c. 347-420) was the pivotal figure. Commissioned by Pope Damasus I to produce a standard Latin Bible, Jerome learned Hebrew, traveled to Palestine, and concluded that the hebraica veritas — the Hebrew original — should be the basis of the Old Testament canon. He translated the protocanonical books from Hebrew but only reluctantly translated some of the deuterocanonical books, noting that they were not in the Hebrew canon. His position was clear: the deuterocanonical books were edifying but not canonical.

Augustine (354-430) disagreed. In De Doctrina Christiana (2.8.13), he listed the broader canon and argued that the Church’s usage, not Jerome’s Hebrew scholarship, should determine canonicity. The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419), at which Augustine was the dominant influence, listed the broader canon. Pope Innocent I confirmed this list in his letter Consulenti tibi to Bishop Exsuperius of Toulouse (20 February 405).

The medieval West followed Augustine on usage but not uniformly on rationale. The deuterocanonical books were included in the Vulgate and read as Scripture in the liturgy throughout the Middle Ages. But the Glossa Ordinaria, the standard medieval commentary, perpetuated Jerome’s prefaces — marking Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, and Maccabees as “not in the canon… read for edification, not for confirming doctrinal authority.” The Glossa was, in fact, the main channel by which Jerome’s two-tier distinction was transmitted to medieval readers; the hard-edged Tridentine formulation of 1546 is in one sense a Western innovation against the medieval-Western mainstream, not merely a continuation of it.

Yet the Jeromian dissent was never entirely silenced. Hugh of St. Victor, Cardinal Cajetan (Luther’s opponent at Augsburg), and other medieval theologians expressed reservations about the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books, following Jerome’s distinction [∗]. The matter was not settled beyond dispute even within medieval Catholicism. This internal diversity matters: when the Reformers appealed to Jerome, they were not importing an alien principle but retrieving a position that had always had advocates within the Western tradition.

The Reformation reopened Jerome’s case. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in an appendix to his German Bible (1534), calling them “books which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures, and yet are useful and good for reading.” Luther also questioned the canonical status of several New Testament books — Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation — placing them at the end of his New Testament without numbering. His canonical instincts were broader in their revisionary scope than later Protestantism was willing to follow. The Reformed tradition, while retaining the full New Testament, followed Jerome’s line on the Old: the Westminster Confession denied the deuterocanonicals any canonical authority.

The Catholic response at Trent (1546) was to define the broader canon dogmatically, listing each book by name and attaching an anathema to those who reject them. The timing was not accidental: Trent defined the canon in direct response to the Reformation’s appeal to the Hebrew canon. The polemical context of the definition is part of the historical record, and it colors how the definition is received outside Rome. A dogma defined in the heat of controversy, in a council from which Protestants were absent, carries a different weight from one defined in the ecumenical context of the first millennium.

The Precise Point of Incompatibility

The canon is binary. A book is either canonical Scripture — inspired by God, authoritative for doctrine — or it is not. There is no half-canonical status that satisfies all parties.

If 2 Maccabees is canonical, then prayers for the dead have clear scriptural warrant, and the Protestant objection that purgatory lacks biblical support is weakened. If the Wisdom of Solomon is canonical, then its sophisticated theology of the afterlife (Wisdom 3:1-9; 5:15-16) and its personification of Wisdom (Wisdom 7:22-8:1) belong to the Church’s scriptural inheritance with the same authority as Proverbs or Isaiah.

If these books are not canonical, then the doctrines that depend most heavily on them — prayers for the dead, the theology of merit, certain aspects of angelology and demonology — lose their scriptural footing and must be grounded elsewhere or reconsidered.

The incompatibility is sharpened by the fact that the canon determines the boundary of inscripturated revelation itself. To disagree about the canon is to disagree about what God has said. And unlike many other faultlines, this one does not admit of degrees. The Filioque can be discussed in terms of “from the Father through the Son”; justification can be explored through complementary metaphors. But the canon is a list. A book is on it, or it is not. Sirach is either the Word of God or it is not.

There is a secondary incompatibility, less often noticed: the canon dispute undermines the possibility of sola Scriptura as a shared principle. If the two sides cannot agree on what Scripture is, they cannot agree to let Scripture adjudicate their disputes. The Protestant says, “Let us go to Scripture.” The Catholic replies, “Gladly — including 2 Maccabees.” The conversation stalls before it begins.

Convergence Already Achieved

Convergence on this question has been modest. The issue is structurally resistant to compromise because of its binary nature.

The publication of common Bibles that include both canons represents a practical convergence. The RSV-CE (1966), the NRSV (with Apocrypha), and the Common English Bible (2011) make the deuterocanonical books available to Protestant readers alongside the protocanonical books. The New Oxford Annotated Bible includes them in all editions. These publishing decisions do not resolve the canonical question, but they reduce the practical distance between the traditions.

Scholarly consensus across confessional lines recognizes the historical value of the deuterocanonical books. Protestant scholars study 1-2 Maccabees as essential sources for the intertestamental period; Catholic scholars acknowledge the historical complexity of the canon’s formation. The polemical heat has diminished considerably since the sixteenth century.

The Anglican position has served as a modest bridge. Article VI’s formula — the books may be read “for example of life and instruction of manners” but not used “to establish any doctrine” — gives the deuterocanonical books a dignified secondary status that neither fully includes nor fully excludes them. The original 1611 King James Version included the Apocrypha between the Testaments, and many Anglican lectionaries continue to include readings from the deuterocanonical books. Some ecumenical proposals have explored whether this intermediate category might be generalized.

The Revised Common Lectionary (1992), used across many Protestant denominations, includes optional readings from the deuterocanonical books, suggesting a practical softening of the Protestant position that has outpaced the dogmatic one. Many Protestants hear Sirach and Wisdom read in worship without knowing — or caring — that these books are classified differently in their confessional standards.

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) demonstrated that the soteriological disputes connected to the canon question (e.g., merit, prayers for the dead) can be addressed on grounds other than canonical status alone, reducing the doctrinal pressure on the canon question itself [∗].

It should be noted that the convergence, such as it is, has been largely practical and scholarly rather than dogmatic. No bilateral commission has produced an agreed statement on the canon of the Old Testament. The question is treated as too binary — too resistant to the usual ecumenical technique of finding complementary formulations — to yield to dialogue in the way that justification or even Eucharistic theology has.

What Reconciliation Would Require

Reconciliation on the canon is not a matter of one tradition simply accepting what the others already hold. It is a matter of each tradition receiving from the others what each has preserved that the others have not: Rome has preserved the broader canon continuously read in the Church’s liturgy for two millennia; Protestantism has preserved the critical humility that knows the canon was received from God by the Church, not created by the Church; Orthodoxy has preserved the liturgical and ecclesial primacy from which both these insights grow. The costs named below are therefore not calls to abandonment but to fuller reception of what the Body, together, has been given.

What it would cost Protestantism: An elevation of the deuterocanonical books beyond their current status as “other human writings” (WCF 1.3). The Anglican position — authoritative for edification but not for establishing doctrine — represents the minimal Protestant concession and has deep roots in Jerome himself. A more generous step would be to recognize the deuterocanonical books as “secondary canonical” — inspired in a derivative sense, authoritative for the Church’s life and worship, read in public liturgy, studied with reverence, but not bearing the full weight of doctrinal definition. This would require Protestantism to acknowledge that its appropriation of Jerome’s position was selective: Jerome himself submitted to the Church’s broader usage even when he disagreed with its rationale. The cost is the clean simplicity of a single-tier canon. It feels like compromising the sufficiency of the Hebrew Scriptures before it feels like receiving a broader inheritance.

What it would cost Rome: An acknowledgment that the canonical status of the deuterocanonical books is not as straightforward as Trent’s anathema suggests. The concept of deuterocanonical — a term coined by Sixtus of Siena in 1566 — already implies a distinction within the canon, a recognition that these books entered the Church’s canonical consciousness by a different path than the protocanonical books.

Rome might develop this distinction more explicitly, acknowledging that while the deuterocanonical books are genuinely canonical, they occupy a different position in the history of canonical reception — and that this historical difference is theologically significant, not merely accidental. The patristic disagreement between Jerome and Augustine is a fact of history, and Jerome was not a heretic. A tradition that honors both men cannot pretend they agreed on this question.

The cost is the impression of weakening Trent’s definitive settlement. It feels like conceding ground to the Reformers before it feels like theological honesty about a complex history.

What it would cost Orthodoxy: A more precise articulation of its own canonical boundaries. The current situation — in which different Orthodox churches use slightly different canons, and the status of certain books (3 Maccabees, 2 Esdras, Psalm 151) varies by tradition — may reflect a healthy tolerance for diversity, but it makes ecumenical dialogue on the canon difficult. If Orthodoxy cannot specify its own canon with precision, it cannot fully participate in a conversation about what the Church’s canon should be.

The Orthodox might respond that the question itself is wrongly framed — that the canon is a living reality received in the Church’s worship rather than a list to be juridically defined. This is a coherent position, but it creates a practical difficulty: when two traditions disagree about whether a text is Scripture, someone must adjudicate, and “the liturgical life of the Church” does not speak with one voice when the churches in question have different liturgical traditions. The cost is the loss of a certain comfortable imprecision. It feels like Western legalism before it feels like necessary clarity.

The shared cost, beneath the specific costs, is the admission that the canon question has never been resolved by the undivided Church. The councils of Hippo and Carthage were local African councils, not ecumenical. Trent was a Western council, without Eastern or Protestant participation. No ecumenical council of the undivided Church defined the Old Testament canon. This means that every position on the canon — broader or narrower — is a tradition, not a conciliar dogma of the universal Church in the strictest sense. Acknowledging this historical reality would be painful for all sides but might also be the precondition for honest conversation.

The deepest question beneath the canon dispute is the question of who decides. If the canon is determined by the Church’s conciliar authority (Rome, Orthodoxy), then the Church precedes the canon and in some sense constitutes it. If the canon is determined by the intrinsic qualities of the books themselves — their apostolic origin, their internal witness, their reception by the people of God (Protestant) — then the canon precedes the Church’s decision and the Church merely recognizes what God has already given.

This is a microcosm of the sola Scriptura dispute itself, and reconciliation on the canon may require prior reconciliation on authority. But it is also worth noting that the two questions can be partially decoupled: one might agree on the scope of the canon without agreeing on why it has that scope. A shared canon arrived at by different rationales would be a genuine achievement, even if the underlying theories of canonicity remain different.

The canon faultline, among all the Layer 4 wounds, is the one where the scriptural evidence itself does not decide the question — because what counts as scripture is precisely what is in dispute. The traditions cannot appeal to Scripture to settle what Scripture is. This is not an embarrassment; it is the shape of the problem, and it points the Body toward the only direction in which reconciliation on this point can ever come: a fuller reception, by each tradition, of what the others have preserved. Rome preserves the broader canon read in the Church’s liturgy for two millennia. Protestantism preserves the critical humility that knows the canon was received, not invented. Orthodoxy preserves the liturgical primacy from which both insights grow. The canon is not a list one side got right and the others got wrong. It is a gift the Body has not yet finished receiving together.

The Spirit who led the early Church to the New Testament canon in the first four centuries — against every humanly reasonable expectation that such a decision could ever be made — is not finished with the Old Testament question. Whether the Body converges on a list or learns to live with a differentiated canon, the work belongs to the Lord of the Church and to the assemblies that receive his voice. The faultline is named here not as a wall but as one of the places still waiting for the sound of marching in the treetops.

For Further Study

• Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (1987)
• F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (1988)
• Albert C. Sundberg Jr., The Old Testament of the Early Church (1964)
• Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (2007)
• Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979)