Council of Rome lists a cannon Historically problematic

[BBAS 64]

Good day,

Often times we hear parroted from members of the Roman Catholic Church this claim in many different forms.

But is it true?

Snip.... The claim takes various forms. It is common to hear things like: the list was compiled in Rome in 382, then ratified by the councils of Carthage and Hippo in 397 and 393 and apologists often implicitly treat these councils as ecumenical. Others say the councils of Florence (1449) and Trent (1569) simply “reaffirm” a decision made at these earlier councils. None of these embellishments are true. Nor is it likely true that the Council of Rome in 382 even published such a list, as we’ll see.

Pope Damasus, the Council of Rome and the Canon of Scripture

It is often claimed that Pope Damasus defined and declared the canon of Scripture at the Council of Rome in 382. Is this true?

threepillarsblog.org

You will also Notice that Cajetan does not mention Rome in His list:

“And in this place [after Esther] we conclude the commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (i.e., Judith, Tobit, and the books of the Maccabees) are reckoned by divine Jerome as outside the canonical books and he places them among the apocrypha, with the book of Wisdom [of Solomon] and Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), as is clear in the Prologus Galeatus. Nor ought you be disturbed if you find somewhere those books reckoned among the canonical, whether in the sacred councils or among the sacred teachers. For the words of both councils and teachers ought to be brought back to the revision of Jerome, and according to his opinion expressed to bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, those books [today’s aprocrypha/deuterocanonical books] (and if there are any other similar in the canon of the Bible), are not canonical, i.e., [they] are not normative to confirm those things which are of the faith. But they can be called canonical (that is, normative) for the edification of the faithful, as received and authorized in the canon of the Bible. For with this distinction you can discern the things said by Augustine in book 2 of De doctrina christiana, and written in the Council of Florence under Eugene IV, and written in the provincial councils of Carthage and Laodicea, and by Popes Innocent and Gelasius.”

It seems that the distinction of "canon(s) that Cajetan said can be used to make the historical discernment is lost by the current day Roman Church and her members post Trent.

I also notice that in understanding their (Rome) own Canon that their members should use at Trent in a work about the Jewish people and their Canon .


Snip...Based on a time-honoured tradition, the Councils of Florence in 1442 and Trent in 1564 resolved for Catholics any doubts and uncertainties. Their list comprises 73 books, which were accepted as sacred and canonical because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, 46 for the Old Testament, 27 for the New.36 In this way the Catholic Church received its definitive canon. To determine this canon, it based itself on the Church's constant usage. In adopting this canon, which is larger than the Hebrew, it has preserved an authentic memory of Christian origins, since, as we have seen, the more restricted Hebrew canon is later than the formation of the New Testament.

The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible

The fourth session of Trent:

Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent

In Him,

Bill

 

[BBAS 64]

Good day,

Still at it:



The Council of Rome was a synod which took place in Rome in AD 382, under the leadership of Pope Damasus. Jerome went to Rome to serve as secretary to Damasus in 382. One would think he was at the Council or that he would have known about it.

The funny thing is that Jerome does not to my knowledge mention any thing about a Council at Rome producing a list of “canon” even though Rome would have been considered a local Council.


We see Jerome in 398 writing: Fourth Century Christianity » Jerome – Translation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon according to the Hebrew (c. A.D. 398)

Therefore, just as the Church also reads the books of Judith, Tobias, and the Maccabees, but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also one may read these two scrolls for the strengthening of the people, (but) not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas.





From Wikipedia: Council of Rome - Wikipedia.



Jerome mentioned the synod twice, but only in passing.[3]


The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church states:[1]

A council probably held at Rome in 382 under St. Damasus gave a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (also known as the 'Gelasian Decree' because it was reproduced by Gelasius in 495), which is identical with the list given at Trent.


The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church also notes that "according to E. von Dobschütz, the Gelasian Decree is not a Papal work at all, but a private compilation which was composed in Italy (but not at Rome) in the early 6th cent. Other scholars, while accepting this date, think it originated in Gaul".[1]


Catholic apologist and historian William Jurgens writes:[4]

The first part of this decree has long been known as the Decree of Damasus, and concerns the Holy Spirit and the seven-fold gifts. The second part of the decree is more familiarly known as the opening part of the Gelasian Decree, in regard to the canon of Scripture: De libris recipiendis vel non recipiendis. It is now commonly held that the part of the Gelasian Decree dealing with the accepted canon of Scripture is an authentic work of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. and that Gelasius edited it again at the end of the fifth century, adding to it the catalog of the rejected books, the apocrypha. It is now almost universally accepted that these parts one and two of the Decree of Damasus are authentic parts of the Acts of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D.


References

Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (2005-01-01). "canon of Scripture". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 282. doi:10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.

Sinclair, W. M. (1911). "Nectarius, archbp. of Constantinople". In Wace, Henry; Piercy, William C. (eds.). Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (3rd ed.). London: John Murray.

Hahneman, Geoffrey Mark (1992). The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon. Clarendon Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-19-826341-8.

Jurgens, William (1970). The Faith of the Early Fathers. Liturgical Press. p. 404. ISBN 978-0-8146-0432-8.

Further reading

Geoffrey Mark Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 158−161. ISBN 9780198263418



IN Him

Bill

 

[The Liturgist]

This is a very good post!

I have some additional information I wish to share with you in felloewship (a part of me wishes you had posted this in General Theology since I agree with you and would in that manner be more able to participate), but I understand why you did not, as the trolling by some Roman Catholic members has recently gotten frustrating, to the point where I am no longer as willing to assist them in defending against unfair criticism as I once was. I was particularly annoyed by the large number of RC members who defended Pope Francis over Fiducia Supplicans, which has caused horror both among traditional Catholics (including the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which publicly condemned it, and indeed they can get away with it since Pope Francis is good enough about PR to avoid messing with that particular Sui Juris church, even though we can readily assert that Catholic claims that the sui juris Eastern Catholic churches are autonomous are not accurate; considering that only recently were the Eastern Catholic churches in North America allowed to have married priests, which was the norm for Byzantine Rite Catholics since their inception following the Union of Brest that created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). And clearly that would not protect their bishops from being removed if a Pope felt threatened by them. But I digress.

As supporting information to your post, all that Archbishop Damasus* did that is currently accepted by the Roman Catholic Church was to introduce into the Roman church the New Testament canon that was promulgated by Pope** Athanasius of Alexandria in his 39th Paschal Encyclical, and Athanasius is widely respected by most Christians for his role in defending the faith against the Arian heresy and promoting the doctrine of the Incarnation and of the Holy Trinity. The canon he prescribed furthermore is a refinement of what we find in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea.

The Old Testament canon of Pope Athanasius was much less influential, however, in that it aligns with neither the current Old Testament canon shared by the Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox churches of Alexandria (the Coptic Orthodox Church is the only Oriental Orthodox church whose canon is basically the same as the Greek Orthodox canon), nor with the Old Testament canon adhered to by most Reformed churches and other Protestant churches, with the prominent exception of Anglicanism (and Lutherans have an open canon, meaning they do have the option of using the deuterocanonical material), which reads the books they call The Apocrypha for edification, except in the case of the Episcopal Church and certain Continuing Anglican churches in the US which no longer follow the 39 Articles, and so in the case of those churches the books labelled as Apocrypha that one will find in a complete Authorized Version (KJV) and in the Anglican lectionary might well be usable as sources of doctrine.

That being said, historically the Anglican lectionaries provided alternate lessons from the 66 book canon for use by low church parishes, and I would be very surprised if the Reformed Episcopal Church (which is currently affiliated with ACNA) uses them at all.

The earliest document issued by Rome where I recall seeing the Deuterocanonical books mentioned as being permitted for reading was the Decretum Gelasianum issued towards the late fifth century.

* I say Archbishop Damasus because the Bishops of Rome were not styled Pope until the 6th century, so at the time only the Patriarchs of Alexandria were called Papem, which is the Greek word of which Pope is an Anglicization.

** The Popes of Alexandria, including Pope Athanasius of antiquity, and the Greek Orthodox Popes and Coptic Orthodox Popes that have coexisted since some time in the aftermath of the Chalcedonian schism, do not claim Papal Supremacy or Papal Infallibility, but rather are First Among Equals (Primus Inter Pares) among the bishops of the Holy Synods of their respective churches. Indeed there is an amusing story the Copts tell to underscore this point, in which one of their Popes failed to wait for the diocesan bishop to arrive before beginning the Divine Liturgy they had planned to concelebrate (the DIocesan Bishop was unavoidably detained, most likely because that tended to happen to Christians in the Ottoman Empire), and this is a violation of numerous ancient canons in that it represents intruding on the diocese of another bishop, and so when the diocesan bishop arrived, he stomped and flattened the Pope’s mitre (which at the time was a turban-shaped head dress, which is still used by Coptic bishops other than the Pope), and the Coptic Pope accepted this rebuke. If a bishop in the Roman Catholic church had done that around the year 1500, I think it would not only be a career-limiting move but a life-limiting move.

 

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