...the record has plenty of people including my patron Saint expressing doubts about the "level of inspiration" of these 7 books. It also has plenty of people that apparently remained silent on it - making no comments. It also has people that defended against the opinion - inspiration from God is inspiration. Yet NO ONE until the protestors of the Reformation were insisting levels of inspiration was such a disparity that something needed to be done about it.
You mean NO ONE until the protestors of the Reformation were insisting levels of inspiration was such a disparity that something needed to be done about it by presenting a non-binding canon of the Bible, which Bible included apocryphal books in it, albeit separately as per ancient judgments? There was no dogmatic Prot. declaration until after Trent (Anglican in 1563; Calvinism in 1647), which itself was after the death of Luther.
BTW, apocryphal books were eventually dropped from English Prot. Bibles due to lack of demand, and to save money, and you can by them today with the deuteros, as in The Apocrypha: The Lutheran Edition with Notes.
Luther himself originally translated the Apocrypha (only not the third and fourth books of Ezra) singly, just as the Hebrew booksm, and included them in his Bible after the Hebrew canon, prefacing them by saying, "These are books which are not considered equal to the Holy Scripture, yet are profitable and good to be read." (Johannes Friedrich Bleek, "An Introduction to the Old Testament, Volume 2, p. 337)
But apocryphal books were eventually dropped from English Prot. Bibles due to lack of demand, and to save money, and you can by them today with the deuteros.
Meanwhile, concerning which Tridentine decree,
NO ONE until the protestors of the Reformation were insisting levels of inspiration was NOT such a disparity that disagreements could not longer be allowed, thereby issuing the first "infallible" definition of the canon, without the unanimous consent of the (so-called) fathers, infallibly making the deuteros Scripture, thereby negating previous classifications by many notable "fathers" which recognized the difference.
And a difference in the level of inspiration is more than a mere technicality, since "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God," not part of it. Thus for a writing to have anything less than that means it is not Scripture. God is uniquely the author of Scripture in a way that is not true of even so-called "infallible" papal statements.
Even Saint Thomas with his doubts, quotes from that collection of books along with the rest of the OT without making any distinction.
An invalid argument. Paul quoted pagans, Jude quoted Enoch, and Luther quoted from books he judged as not being Scripture, but which does not make them so. What you need is for inspired writers to quote from these as being Scripture, the authoritative word of God, or at least show that the greater weight of evidence indicates that the body of writings held to be Scripture by Christ and those who sat in the seat of Moses (who would have made any difference an issue) included the deuteros.
Way back when Saint Jerome felt compelled to write his prologue to the Vulgate commenting on "levels of inspiration" the Church had long before that ALREADY been using these seven books and it was known to be apart of Liturgies (as in verses from them read in Mass). That usage and the relative uniformity of East/West did not happen over night.
But which was not used for doctrine: In his preface to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs Jerome states,
“As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people,
not to give authority to doctrines of the Church.”
(Shaff, Henry Wace, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, p. 492)
In addition, the public reading of the First Epistle of Clement had spread to other churches by the 4th century this usage, and was included in the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus. And again, early Prot Bibles included apocryphal books. Usage simply does not mean these must be Scripture proper.
And even if they were regarded as such, when faced with non-infallible judgements to the contrary of Trent, RCs argue that only an infallible decree is definitive.
So this whole idea that ample evidence of people talking about levels of inspiration indicated the same dispute the Reformers were having with these books (and apparently more in some cases) is nonsense.
It is? A difference in the level of inspiration is the difference btwn what is Scripture and what is not. Thus
Cyril of Jerusalem (d. circa. 385 AD) exhorts his readers “Of these read the two and twenty books, but
have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings. Study earnestly these only which we read openly in the Church. Far wiser and more pious than thyself were the Apostles, and the bishops of old time, the presidents of the Church who handed down these books. Being therefore a child of the Church, trench thou not upon its statutes. And of the Old Testament, as we have said, study the two and twenty books, which, if thou art desirous of learning, strive to remember by name, as I recite them.”
(Cyril of Jerusalem on the Canon of Scripture)
Unlike the rather slanted view of many Protestants today, the Church does not insist on uniformity on every single thing, (young earth creationism would be another example).
Actually what the RCC insists on is itself a subject of dispute, from requiring implicit assent to leadership and basically all public papal teaching, to excluding social teachings and anything the RC judges is inconsistent with church teaching.
However the Church will suffer obstinate dissension only so long after first attempting correction. Wars had already been fought and were continuing (not all involving Rome) so it was clear these dissenters were not coming back anytime soon. This forces the Church to act on many issues to take a stand against all stated dissension at that time, the canon was only one issue.
But which is simply not the issue here. Disagreements on the canon were not seen as dissension, much less were those who engaged in such treated as obstinate, and were not subjects of magisterial censure, but disagreements were treated as something theologians were allow to have. Luther's dissent was not even listed as one of the charges in Exsurge Domine.
And indisputable canon became about due to some degree of problematic support for certain Roman traditions, in the light of challenges to them from the Reformers, not because it was held as indisputable before.
With ZERO evidence in almost 1200 years of historic record of any one getting even a slap on the wrist for talking about "levels of inspiration", to suggest then that all of sudden it becomes a major issue after such a long time is a rather dim view of the Church.
But that is history. While early Reformers held the deuteros as notable men before them did, edifying but not Scripture, nor for doctrine, it was reactionary Rome which made such a position intolerable, and contrary to 1400+ years of her history.
Rome did not need to presume to infallibly define the deuteros as Scripture, since the weight of Scriptural warrant is not the basis for the veracity of RC teaching, and whatever support the deuteros as a whole offers to any Cath traditions is offset by the errors taught in some of the books. The most principally invoked text, 2 Mac. 12, does not teach RC purgatory, and while it teaches prayer and offerings for the dead, it does so for those who were suddenly executed for mortal sin, with idolatrous amulets even being found on their bodies, resulting in special pleading from RC apologists, reading into the text a presumption of possible repentance.
But reactionary Rome, which in Trent even damned some things which the Reformers did not even teach, reacted to Luther's non-binding judgment that conflated with notable RCs scholars in the deuteros by affirming the larger canon as an article of faith with its anathemas on those who dissent from after a
vote of 24 yea, 15 nay, with 16 abstaining (44%, 27%, 29%) to do so.
And if conformity with the RC canon was really the big deal, then EOs would be attacked for not doing so, or they would attack Rome for removing books, if only 2 or 3.
We had and will have our share of obstinate knuckleheads among us as all groups of human do, but people should give the smarter Catholics a little more credit than that.
Men like Jerome were not considered obstinate knuckleheads for rejecting the deuteros, part or full, and there is no reason to hold Luther as one due to his non-binding judgment, and who died before there even was an "infallible" RC canon.
And while you want to call Reformers "obstinate knuckleheads" for agreeing with men like Cyril of Jerusalem on the OT and thus rejecting Trent, this presumes the very premise which needs to be proved, that Rome is infallible.
That a Protestor today would want to view the Church that way I would not doubt. Been there done that most of my life. People often find what they are looking for approaching history that way.
Actually it is you who is conforming history to your argument, as if certain ECFs did not also reject the deuteros as Scripture, and that Rome would have defined the canon as indisputable of the Reformers only disagreed on that.
But in making a fallible decision to trust in a self-proclaimed infallible church you apparently you chose Roman history as conflating with the only wholly inspired history of the NT church, in which
the distinctives of church of Rome are not seen, and contrary to it.
Saying to us, ah there see you are lying about it, we have people talking about level of inspirations going back to Saint Jerome....What goes unsaid in all the cherry picking of various Church records is an equal voice from either silence on the matter or direct defense from essentially saying inspiration is inspiration, what do levels matter, especially when in practice we all treat these books the same as any other. Which was also mentioned in my posts.
If levels do not matter, then even certain ECFs would not have excluded books as Scripture and or for doctrine, even if some who did treated some as Scripture in usage. And as for silence, we have only a small portion of what ECFs wrote, and which could favor one side or the other.
What the Church cannot tolerate would be some one holding that opinion (that there are levels of inspiration) and wanting to force that opinion on everyone else when obviously the Church had long allowed both opinions to stand without any practical distinction in usage.
What? Take the beam out of your own church, which is the one that first forced all to hold to the opinion that the deuteros were Scripture!
That equality in usage means regardless of their level of inspiration view, the Spirit was leading no one to abandon equal usage of these books in the Bible.
Which simply is contrary to the evidence. There is little of substance to show that all the deuteros were treated by all dissenters as Scripture, and to hold that they were makes them contrary to such statements that they are excluded for doctrine, or even "have nothing to do with them.."
So declaring again after 1200 years that the canon remains untouched, unchanged and is actually now will forever more be ONLY these 73 books, was only done because of the obstinance of the protestors against the Church.
Obstinance? You mean presuming to hold a view that certain other RCs were allowed to have before there was any indisputable canon is obstinance, or that refusing to allow what was allowed for 1400+ years is obstinance? It was Trent, not Luther and Reformers who first dogmatically defined the canon.
Personally I actually kind of wish they had not closed the canon, not because some books need to be tossed but with a hope that more might one day be uncovered. But with years that hope would have to be a very faint one, unless some aliens visited and return copies to us I guess.
While Trent excluded any removal, whether the language excluded more being added to it is actually a matter of debate among RCs.
