L. Gaussen, The Canon of the Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of History, translated from the French and abridged by Edward N. Kirk (Boston: American Tract Society, 1862), 96-100.
[Note: Inspired Scripture evidences the marks of its Divinity. That Scripture came from God is through the Word and Spirit made historically conspicuous to the Church, the sheep that hear the voice of the Shepherd. Gaussen’s research makes a compelling case that inspired Scripture itself is its own guarantee of canonical authority in the Church and guided the method of early Church canonical collation. At the foundation of any historically accurate description of the collation of the canon of Scripture lies the self-attestation of the Word, the leading of the Holy Spirit and the recognition and reception of the inspired Word by the Church.]
Many, too, speak of the canon as if its definitive form had been fixed by the councils, — the act of the church pronouncing decrees. This, too, is a mistake; nothing indeed is more contrary to the real facts; and this we must show now, although we must resume this point when we come to treat of the veritable foundation of our faith in the canon of the scriptures.
No human authority interfered in this matter. It was the pure and simple product of the conscience, of research, of freedom. The churches of God, enlightened by the mutual testimony of their members, judged in this case only by their own wisdom, under the secret and powerful direction of that Providence which will always watch over the written word. The universal reception of the first canon preceded all the councils; and these when they came together were occupied with every other question but that o& the canon. “We shall yet show with more precision, that the general councils never passed a decree on this subject for fourteen centuries; as we have already shown that even the two provincial councils of Laodicea and Carthage, too often cited, can no more be regarded as authority on the question before us.
Lardner[1] has demonstrated, by long quotations from the fathers, that the canon of the New Testament has in no degree been formed by human authority. Basnage[2] has given three chapters of his church history to this point. John Le Clerc[3] has said, “There has been no need of a council of grammarians to declare magisterially which are the works of Cicero or of Virgil. So, too, the authenticity of the Gospels was established, and has continued without any decree of the rulers of the church. We may say’ the same of the apostolical epistles, which owe all their authority, not to the decision of any ecclesiastical assembly, but to the concordant testimony of all Christians, and to the very character of their contents.” Augustine, too, thirteen centuries before Le Clerc, said, “We know the writings of the apostles as we know those of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and others; and as we know the writings of different ecclesiastical authors, because they have the testimony of their contemporaries and of the men who lived immediately after them.”
Let us content ourselves with remarking here that the ancient fathers, in their judgments on the canon, appealed only to the free and uninterrupted testimony of the churches, at the same time making an attentive examination of the books proposed for their acceptance. When they give us a catalogue, it is never as the fruit of their discoveries, nor as the decisions of any authority whatever; they report to us only the thoughts of the preceding ages; the free testimony of the primitive churches; that which they have received from their predecessors, by a transmission continued from the days of the apostles.
When Origen, born 142 years before the council of Nice, gives us his catalogue of the canonical Scriptures (twn endiaqhkwn grafwn), he appeals to no decisions of any council, but merely to the ancient men of the church (oi apcaioi andreV) and to tradition (wV en paradosei maqwv). It is Eusebius who has preserved his words to us, and who adds, in reporting his testimony on the four Gospels: “Origen preserves tradition and the ecclesiastical canon;[4] and he attests that there are but four Gospels, alone received without any contradiction by all the church of God which is under the heavens.”
Also Eusebius himself, when giving his opinion on the collection of books in the New Testament and on the distinction between the books universally received and those which are contested, refers neither to any authority nor council, and declares that he receives the canon from ecclesiastical tradition (kata thn ekklhsiastikhn praradosin).[5]
Thus Athanasius, born in 296, in giving his canon completely conformed to ours, attributes it ” to the transmission to the fathers by those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word from the beginning;”[6] but he refers to no council, and gives us only what he calls books recognized as authoritative, transmitted and received as divine.
None of the authors, even of the centuries which followed, to the fourth, fifth, or sixth, ever appeals on this point to the decisions of any council. Thus, when Cyril, patriarch of Jerusalem, born twenty years after Athanasius, gives. us his catalogue of the theopneustic books (ai qeopneustoi Grafai), he refers to no council, and appeals only “to the apostles and ancient bishops who presided over the churches, and who have transmitted them to us.”[7] Thus, when Augustine, at the end of the same” century, or rather at the beginning of the fifth, wrote his directions to certain persons who had consulted him “on the books really canonical,” he appealed only” to the testimony of the different churches of Christendom, and referred to no council.[8] Thus when Rufinus, priest in Aquileia toward the year A. D. 340, gives us in his turn a catalogue (also exactly conformed to ours), he attributes it “only to the tradition of the ancients, who had transmitted them to the churches of Christ as divinely inspired;” and he declares that he gives it as he found it in the monuments of the fathers.[9]
And when Cassiodorus, Roman consul in the sixth century, gives us three catalogues of the New Testament (one of Jerome, one of Augustine, and one of an ancient version), he likewise makes no reference to any decree or any council.[10] Let us then hear no more about councils fixing authoritatively the canon of the Scriptures. This canon is undoubtedly fixed; but not by any authority of councils. God determined that Christians and churches, enlightened by the testimony of Christian generations, should form their own convictions on this subject, in complete freedom of judgment, in order that the authenticity of the sacred books might thereby be made the more manifest.
We shall hereafter examine this important fact from another point of view; but it should suffice us here to learn from these testimonies how erroneous and contrary to facts is the pretension of seeking the origin or the determination of the canon in any ecclesiastical decree.
[1] Supplement, 50-52; 2d part, torn, i.; edit. 8, torn. vi. pp. 325,381; torn, ii. pp. 325, 496, 529, 576; torn. viii. pp. 102, 225, 268; torn. x. pp. 193, 207, 208.
[2] Lib. viii. chap. v. vi. vii.
[3] In the years 29 and 100 of his Hist. Eccl
[4] Hist. Eccl. vi. 25.
[5] Hist. Eccl. iii. 25.
[6] Festal Epistle, xxxix.
[7] Catech. iv. 33.
[8] De Doct. Christ Lib. ii. vol. iii. part i. p. 47. Paris, 1836. (He began this book in 397, and finished it in 407.) See also Lardner, tom. x. p. 207.
[9] In Symbol. Apost. p. 26. “Quae secundum majorum traditionem per ipsum Spiritum Sanctum inspirata creduntur et ecclesiis Christi tradita, competens videatur in hoc loco evidenti numéro sicut ex Patrum monumentis accepimus designare.”
[10] Lardner, tom. xi. p. 303; Cassiod. De Instit. Divin. Litterar. cap. xi.
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