Jimmy Akin

<RULE 15 SUSPENSION>

Ed Peters writes:

Jimmy, I’m a simple man, talk to me as you would to a simpleton, and tell me, A) the basic canon of Scripture is closed (pace finding better versions of accepted texts) or B) the canon is NOT closed, or C) we don’t know.

Following which, Quasimodo writes:

The Jimmy of Akin,
The Quasimodo asks the same question as the Ed Peters. Quasimodo thought Trent (and Florence?) closed the canon. Infallibly. No?

Following which, Adam D writes:

Um, Ed Peters is a simpleton? Okay, I’m a downright babbling idiot. Don’t even bother trying to explain anything to me, Jimmy. I won’t understand it.

(I mean seriously, Ed P? A simpleton? 🙂

RESPONSES:

To Ed:

Since Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologiae with simplicity in mind, and since he included many distinctions in it, let me begin with a distinction.

First, we must distinguish between whether the canon has been closed by God and whether it has been closed by the Church.

Regarding whether the canon has been closed by God, I answer that it has. This seems evident from what would be meant by a divine "closing" of the canon–that is, a cessation of the writing of new books of public revelation to be collected by the Church in her Bibles. Since the Church has established (see the Catechism on this point) that the era of public revelation is over until the Second Coming, it would seem that there are to be no new books of public revelation written and thus no new books can be composed for inclusion by the Church in her Bibles. The canon is thus closed from God’s perspective.

This does not, however, guarantee that we currently have in our possession all books of public revelation that God has previously inspired.

In regard to whether the canon has been closed by the Church, this question would seem to resolve to whether the Church has defined a particular list of books for inclusion in its Bibles that is incapable of further admission, even if new books of apostolic origin and/or divine inspiration were to be discovered.

To answer this question, we must introduce a second distinction: Whether the matter has been infallibly decided by the extraordinary Magisterium of the Church and whether it has been decided infallibly by the ordinary Magisterium of the Church.

To answer the first question, we must look at the texts where the Church has infallibly addressed the question of the canon.

The first such text seems to be found in the Bull of Union with the Copts (Session 11) of the Council of Florence, which says:

It [the holy Roman church] professes that one and the same God is the author of the old and the new Testament — that is, the law and the prophets, and the gospel — since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, whose titles are as follows.

This establishes that certain books (the ones named) are accepted and venerated by the Church as Scripture at the books of the Old and New Testament. However, there are two difficulties with regarding this as an irreformably exclusive list:

1. The text is of debatable infallibility since it does not use terms like "define" or "anathema." (It is a decree of an ecumenical council imposed on a people as a condition for unity with the Roman church, but it does not use the language the Church has elsewhere used to trigger infallibility.)
2. Even granting that the text is infallibly, every infallible utterance must be interpreted strictly regarding what question is being decided, and in this case it would seem that the question would be "What books–of those currently known–belong to the Old Testament and the New Testament?" It does not appear that the questio was "What books–of those currently known or ever to be discovered in the future–belong to the Old and the New Testament?" Since the latter question was not addressed, it does not preclude a futurely-discovered book from belonging to the New Testament.

Thus this decree does not seem to represent a closing of the canon by the Church.

The second text is the Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures by the Council of Trent, which states:

Following, then, the examples of the orthodox Fathers, it [the Council of Trent] receives and venerates with a feeling of piety and reverence all the books both of the Old and New Testaments, since one God is the author of both; . . .

It has thought it proper, moreover, to insert in this decree a list of the sacred books, lest a doubt might arise in the mind of someone as to which are the books received by this council.

They are the following:

<SNIP>

If anyone does not accept as sacred and canonical the aforesaid books in their entirety and with all their parts, as they have been accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate Edition, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be anathema.

From this it is seen that the Council of Trent "accept[ed] as sacred and canonical" certain books without saying anything one way or the other regarding additional books. Thus it did not close the canon in the sense of excluding any future books from acceptance as sacred and canonical.

Since these seem to be the two instances on which one can argue (plausibly in the first case, certainly in the second case) the extraordinary Magisterium of the Church has dealt with the canon in an infallible manner, it would seem that the extraordianry Magisterium of the Church has not closed the canon.

This leaves us with the issue of whether the ordinary Magisterium of the Church has settled the question. In this regard, while it appears that there are enormous reasons why the Church would never add anything to the canon at this date, it nevertheless appears that the ordinary Magisterium of the Church has not entertained the question of what would happen if an unknown apostlic book were discovered.

Since no matters are infallibly defined that have not been entertained, it would seem that it has not been defined that a newly discovered apostolic book could not be included in the canon. Hypothetically, therefore, it could be included, despite the overwhelmingly unlikelihood of this.

It thus would seem that the canon remains theoretically open on the supposition of the discovery of an unknown apostolic book.

Since we do not have (and are overwhelmingly unlikely to ever have) a previously unknown book of demonstrably apostolic origin, we are unlikely to find ourselves in the above situation. In the absence of that circumstance, we must regard the canon as practically closed. The Church considered numerous works purporting apostolic origin and found them lacking. They are thus not to be considered canonical.

Thus all known extra-canonical works are to be regarded as non-canonical: Those that were known in antiquity are to be regarded as non-canonical on the grounds of rejection by the Magisterium, and those written after the apostolic age (e.g., Joseph Smith’s forgeries) are to be regarded as non-canonical on the grounds that public revelation is closed.

Works that were written in the first century (before the ban on public revelation) and that were lost before the Church began to pronounce on the canon could theoretically be included given what the Magisterium has thus far determined, but practically they could not.

To Quasimodo:

The Quadimodo has obviously been paying attention to the rules regarding the use of the definite article in the New Testament Greek. Therefore, the kudos to the Quasimodo regarding the use of "the"!

To Adam D:

We are all simpletons (Latin, simplicii) here. Now, if you can get the real Benedict XVI (and not a combox faker) to participate in the blog, we’ll have to revise that.

Till then, we’re all just folks.

Got it? ;-D

</RULE 15 SUSPENSION>

Earlier I suggested that the only way a significant movement to include a new document in the New Testament would get started was if we found something that looked like an authentic, first century apostolic epistle, gospel, or proto-gospel.

Let me clarify what I mean by the latter.

It is standardly assumed that there are lost sources behind the four gospels as we have them. The most talked about is a source called "Q," which is allegedly where a bunch of the material in Matthew and Luke comes from. It is not clear whether Q was an oral source or a written source, but many assume the latter. It also is not clear if Q even existed (there are other ways to account for the material besides positing Q and there are arguments against Q), though this is the standard claim these days. (Personally, I’m not convinced, though I’m open.)

Luke, at any rate, mentions that he used written sources in composing his gospel, and unless he’s referring exclusively to Matthew and Mark, that means there’s a lost source.

If we turned up Q or something else that looked like it might be a source behind the canonical gospels, that would be what I’m calling a "proto-gospel," and it would really set the cat among the pidgeons. The scholarly debates would be endless.

And it would be one of the few things that could conceivably spartk a New Testament inclusion movement.

How would that play out?

First, there’d be a buncha folks going "Ooo! Aaaah!" over the document in an uncritical manner and it would sell a bazillion copies.

Then there’d be a buncha folks going "I’m very favorably impressed, but we mustn’t be hasty."

Then there’s be a buncha folks going "Hey, let’s reserve judgement on this thing."

Then there’d be a buncha folks going, "This looks fake to me."

And finally there’d be a buncha folks going "This new document is of the devil!"

There’d be a big fight that would remain inconclusive for some time, probably generations.

Eventually, some publisher might decide to stick the document in Bibles it’s printing. Then there would be another huge controversy over this. (To mitigate it, the publisher might print the document as an appendix, not claiming it to be authentic or inspired but merely "useful," but that would still start a huge controversy.)

In the end, though, standard Bible would continue to outsell the ones that had the document in it. A few Christians (in newly-created denominations following denominational divides over the new book) might use it, but traditional Christians–who would be and would remain the great majority–would not include it in their Bibles, however fascinated or perplexed they might be by it.

What would the Catholic Church do?

Nothing.

Certainly in the beginning.

In our lifetimes we might get a few cautionary statements, but the attitude of the Church would very much be a "Let’s wait and see" attitude. The Church is not about to preemptorially endorse a work of such a sensitive nature if it might turn out to be fake. Neither is it about to preemptorially condemn such a work if it might turn out to be genuine. We’d get cautionary statements telling Catholics not to regard it as Scripture but to otherwise reserve judgement on it, and that would be about it.

And that’s probably the way it would stay.

Forever.

Hypothetically, the Church could use its infallibility to make a determination that the document falls into one of the following classes:

1. Fake
2. Authentic but not inspired
3. Authentic and inspired but not to be included in the New Testament
4. Authenatic and inspired and to be included in the New Testament

But the odds of any such determination at any date, even long after our lifetimes, would be very, very low.

The reason is that not making a determination would be so much easier than making one. It would be hard to prove it fake since, per supposition, we’ve already said that it appears authentic.

It would be hard to prove it authentic but not inspired since (a) we have no independent test for inspiration besides Tradition (which is absent here) and (b) we have no precedent for an authentically apostolic work that is non-inspired.

It would be hard to prove it authentic and inspired but not to be included among the Scriptures because of (a) the lack of a test for inspiration apart from Tradition and (b) we have no precedent for an inspired work that is not to be included in the Scriptures.

It would be hard to prove that it should be put in Scripture because (a) again, no independent tst for inspiration and (b) we have no precedent for including new works in Scripture.

The Church would thus find it much easier to simply downplay the matter, to be open to what value the document might have historically, but not to do anything to encourage folks to think of it on the same plane as the known Scriptures.

The only way I can see an infallible determination being made would be if, probably after centuries, a huge controversy was tearing the Church apart and one was needed for pastoral reasons.

In that case the likelihood would be that the decision would come down this way:

While this document may have many useful and instructive things to tell us, the Holy Spirit did not choose in His providence to shepherd it into the New Testament at the time it was codified. He did not choose to have it be part of the patrimony of Christendom down through the ages. Consequently, since the Scriptures as they have been historically known form the patrimony of the Church that God intended it to have uniquely in all ages of its development, it is hereby infallibly defined that the new document–whatever value it may have–is not to be placed in the canon of Scripture.

Only it’d be said more flowery than that.

The recent and ongoing decipherment of the Oxyrhynchus papyri raises a question of what the Christian community would do if we found a new Christian document purporting to be from the first century, say a new letter of St. Paul or a "lost gospel."

The paramount question in folks minds would be: Should this be added to the New Testament?

There are parallels for this already.

In the 20th century we found a whole slew of early Christian and semi-Christian documents. In particular, the Nag Hammadi find gave us a bunch of Gnostic gospels dating from the second and third centuries.

Did those get added?

Nope. We got a bunch of breathless documentaries on The History Channel and A & E, and a bunch of folks got confused by them, but there was no serious move to add them to the New Testament. Not even the Jesus’ Seminar’s publication of the Gospel of Thomas alongside the four canonical gospels caused any serious move to add it to the New Testament in the broader Christian community.

The reason is that these documents have almost no historical value and were written way after the apostolic age, automatically disqualifying them from New Testament inclusion in the eyes of traditional Christians.

If Oxyrhynchus turns out to have more of the same, expect more of the same.

But what if we find something from the first century?

Again: It’s already happened.

We’ve long had Clement’s epistle, which dates from the late first century. We’ve also got things like the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas and the Didache, both of which are first century texts.

There has been no move to include these in the New Testament either. While Clement was a pope, he wasn’t closely enough associated with the apostles for his epistle to make it in. It also contains material that, to modern eyes, would make it problematic to include (e.g., his seeming treatment of the phoenix as if it were a real bird).

Pseudo-Barnabas is even worse in that regard (he gets his biology demonstrably wrong regarding rabbits–saying that hares develop a new bodily orifice [apparently on their posteriors] for each year of life, kind of the way trees get rings).

And the Didache, despite its presentation as "the teaching of the twelve apostles" was demonstrably late and not clearly written by apostles or their associates, however much useful info it may have on first century Christianity.

So the mere find of a first century document would not create a mass movement to stick it in the New Testament.

The only way that would even conceivably get started would be if we found what appeared to be a first century gospel, proto-gospel, or epistle of an apostle.

If we found something that looked like the epistle to the Hebrews, for example, that contained lots of neat doctrine but doesn’t claim to be written by an apostle, no mass inclusion movement would begin.

Even if we got something by a known New Testament figure, like Timothy or Sylvanus or Apollos, there wouldn’t be a big inclusion movement.

Only if we got an apostolic epistle, a gospel, or a proto-gospel would a significant inclusion movement even get started.

What would happen then?

See next blog post.