WHO DETERMINED THE BOOKS THAT MAKE UP THE BIBLE?

By Nana Yaw Aidoo

If you were to ask a Roman Catholic dogmatician, the answer to the question that makes up the title of this article, you would unequivocally receive the answer, “the Roman Catholic Church.” Take for example these comments:

… the Bible as a whole was not officially compiled until the late fourth century, illustrating that it was the Catholic Church who determined the canon—or list of books—of the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit… (Nash).

Far from being hostile to the Bible, the Catholic Church is its true Mother…

It is simply amazing to discover how few of our non Catholic friends have ever stopped to inquire: Where did we get our Bible? Who assembled its various parts? Who determined which books were inspired by God and which were not? Who vouches for it as the authoritative and inspired word of God? The answer to all these queries is: The Catholic Church (O’Brien 138)

Underlying the foregoing claims is the idea that since the Catholic Church gave the world the Bible, then the Catholic Church is an authority in addition to the Bible. As one Catholic priest put it, “You can’t accept that Bible and reject the authority from which it came.” The problem however is that not only did the Catholic Church not determine the books that make up the Bible [the big “C” Catholic Church as we know it today didn’t even exist in the 4th century, the claim of Catholic theologians that Peter was the first pope, notwithstanding], the Bible is not authoritative because of the Catholic Church also. The books that make up the Bible were determined by God when He inspired them, and thus, the Bible is authoritative because of God.

In actual fact, there was never a time when the church was without a canon or a Bible for the simple reason that canonicity is based on a book’s inspiration and its imposition on the church by the apostles. Right from the beginning, the church recognized the Old Testament as Scripture. An example is 1 Corinthians 10:7, where Paul used the Old Testament as his basis for proscribing idolatry. Throughout the New Testament, it is abundantly clear that the apostles imposed the Old Testament as an authoritative body of divine Scriptures on the early church. However, the apostles did more than just impose the Old Testament on the church as authoritative, they also imposed their writings on the church as equally authoritative as the Old Testament. When Paul wrote, “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37), he was putting his writings on the same pedestal as that of the Old Testament prophets, who claimed to have written nothing but a “Thus says the Lord.” And when in another place he said, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, he meant not only the books from Genesis to Malachi but also the New Testament writings for in 1 Timothy 5:18 he placed Luke 10:7, beside Deuteronomy 25:4 and called both “Scripture.” This act of placing the Old Testament next to the New Testament and calling both Scripture is proof that the early church considered the Scriptures an increasing canon with the number of books growing till there were no longer men in the church who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21).

The canon was therefore closed when the last book of the Bible was written. While there is historical proof that some of the books were not universally received till later, the extant patristic writings nonetheless leave no room for doubt that about 200 years before the councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage, there was “a collection (Ignatius, II Clement) of ‘New Books’ (Ignatius), called the ‘Gospel and Apostles’ (Ignatius, Marcion), [which] was already a part of the ‘Oracles of God’ (Polycarp, Papias, II Clement), or ‘Scriptures’ (I Tim., II Pet., Barn., Polycarp, II Clement), or the ‘Holy Books’ or ‘Bible’ (Testt. XII. Patt.)” (Warfield Appendix II). Even Robert Louis Wilken who is a Roman Catholic historian of first rank noted that by the middle of the second century, the church “accorded the early Christian writings an authority, if only implicitly, that was not unlike that of the sacred books of the Old Covenant” (42-3). This they did by “pairing the apostolic writings with the Septuagint” (Wilken 42). Then after studying the writings of Irenaeus, Wilken further noted that:

In his [Irenaeus] view Christ’s life and teachings were accessible in authoritative books that went back to the earliest period of Christian history. These writings, along with the Jewish Scriptures, the Septuagint, made up the Christian Bible. Accordingly, Irenaeus presents his case against the gnostics by appealing both to the apostolic Christian writings, what came to be called the New Testament, and to the Septuagint, the Jewish Scriptures—that is, the Old Testament (43-4).

Tertullian also spoke of the Old and New Testament as we do today, and he did that two centuries before the councils of the 4th century (Warfield Appendix II). Hence, the suggestion that there was no canon or authoritative set of books until the 4th century or that the Bible was given to the world and made authoritative by the Catholic Church would sound strange to a person like Irenaeus were he to resurrect from the dead. The controversies of the 2nd and 3rd centuries should not be seen as making the church “form” the canon. Rather, the controversies forced the church “to examine their own presuppositions and to state more clearly what they already believed” (“Marcion and the Marcionites”). 

As a matter of fact, 13 years before the Council of Rome, 26 years before the Council of Hippo, and 30 years before the Council of Carthage, the councils that supposedly gave the world the Bible, Athanasius of Alexandria, as part of his 39^th Festal Epistle, which he wrote in A.D. 367, recognized all 66 books of the Bible and called them “the Divine Scriptures” which are necessary “for salvation” (“Athanasius on the Canon of Scripture”). All the above councils did, was simply reaffirm what the church already believed. A much better way of looking at what the councils of the 4^th century did is to view their actions as excluding heretical texts from the already existing canon rather than forming a canon from the ground up. The canonicity of the books of the Bible was based not on any selection or “vouching” done by the Catholic Church but on the inspiration of the books and their imposition on the church by the apostles.

To illustrate what I am saying, imagine that three football journalists have been tasked with making a list of the greatest footballers of all time. Imagine also that Lionel Messi ends up on all three lists. Notice that this would not mean that Messi’s greatness was determined by the journalists who put him on their lists. Rather, Messi found himself on their lists because he was already great. All the journalists did by putting him on their lists, was recognize the greatness he already had. In like manner, the books of the Bible are not canon or authoritative because they were put on an official list by certain ecclesiastical councils. Rather, the books were on the list because they were canon or authoritative. After all, they were inspired by God and then imposed on the church by the apostles. The councils merely recognized that canonicity by putting the books into an “official” list or rather, they stated, “more clearly what they already believed.”

Of all we have said this is the sum. The Catholic Church neither determined the books that make up the Bible nor made the Bible authoritative. Canonicity never depended on the Catholic Church or the councils. It has always been dependent on inspiration and apostolic imposition. Thus, the canon was closed when the last apostle imposed the last book on the church. The books that make up the Bible were determined by God because He inspired them and thus the Bible is authoritative not because of the Catholic Church but because of the Almighty God. 

Work Cited

“Athanasius on the Canon of Scripture.” Bible Researcher, https://www.bible-researcher.com/athanasius.html. Accessed 26 May 2024.

“Marcion and the Marcionites.” The Development of the Canon of the New Testament, www.ntcanon.org/Marcion.shtml#Gospel_of_Luke. Accessed 5 September 2022.

Nash, Tom. “Who Compiled the Bible and When?” Catholic Answers, 17 Mar. 2023, https://www.catholic.com/qa/who-compiled-the-bible-and-when.

O’Brien, John Anthony. The Faith of Millions: The Credentials of the Catholic Religion. 6^th ed., Our Sunday Visitor, 1988.

Warfield, B.B. Revelation and Inspiration. Monergism Books, 2021. PDF file.

Wilken, Robert Louis. The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. Yale University Press, 2012.