Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

The difficulties that are usually drawn from writers of a later age are resolved.

« If any ecclesiastical writers from the sixth century on, and scholastic doctors before the Council of Trent, still seem to reckon the deuterocanonical books outside the canon, they either merely report in a historical way the opinions of more ancient men; or distinguish the canon of the Hebrews from the complex of the sacred Scriptures in the Church; or, moved by the opinions of some ancient doctor, indicate that before the definitive judgment it was not yet certainly established among all that these books have authority equal to the protocanonicals. In general, however, the character of this whole question in its threefold stage is such as to demonstrate indeed the necessity of the Church's infallibility in guarding the deposit, but not (as the enemies of the Church have said) the necessity of a new revelation for constituting the Tridentine canon. »

Now that the difficulties that could be raised from the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries (with Gregory the Great added) have been cleared away, it remains to add a few remarks concerning the ecclesiastical writers of a later age. For among them some are found who merely reproduce the catalogues they had read in Athanasius, Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Jerome. But this is a historical report of the state of the question as it had been in the fourth and fifth centuries, rather than testimony of a dissension still persisting in the time of these writers — although we admit that even then the question had not yet been settled by a definitive sentence necessarily to be held by the whole Church, or rather had not yet become known to all as settled; whence it comes that even in a still later age, almost down to the Council of Trent, some traces of the ancient hesitation could survive among some doctors.

I. To these whom we call historical reporters belong Junilius Africanus of the sixth century (On the Parts of the Divine Law, bk. I, ch. 3–7; Galland, T. XII, p. 79); Leontius of Byzantium of the seventh century (On Sects, Act. 2; Galland, ibid., p. 627); John Damascene of the eighth century (On the Orthodox Faith, bk. IV, ch. 17); Nicephorus of Constantinople of the ninth century (in the Stichometry published after the Chronography by Goar, Paris 1652, p. 419, and by Pithou in the Code of Canons, p. 348).

Junilius learned his own material at Constantinople from a certain Paul, a Persian by nation, of the school of Nisibis. In the generic division he agrees with St. Jerome and the other Fathers of the fourth century cited above. He distributes all the books, with respect to authority, into three classes. In the first class are the books « of perfect authority, » which are received by unanimous consent — and as regards the Old Testament even by the Hebrews — and are called canonical. In the second class are placed the books « of middling authority » ¹, which are joined with the canonical by most, but are not held by all in equal authority, « since among the Hebrews too they were received with this difference, as Jerome and the rest testify. » Finally, the apocryphal books are « of no authority. » But in the special distribution of the individual books Junilius is so singular, and manifestly wrong, that he dissents not only from his own African Church but from all other doctors as well, nor did anyone ever, either before or after him, say anything of the sort. He places among the books of middling authority, i.e. among the ἀντιλεγομενους, not only Judith ², Esther, the two of Machabees, Wisdom, but also the two Paralipomena, Job, the two Esdrases, the Canticle of Canticles — all of which latter are in the Hebrew canon and among the ὁμολογουμενους. On the contrary, he numbers Ecclesiasticus of Jesus son of Sirach among the canonicals of the first rank, which is equally repugnant to the other authors of this division. Junilius, then, can be a witness concerning the division of the books into three classes among some Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, to whom he appeals, and concerning the sense of this division, which for the rest we know sufficiently from elsewhere; but as regards the distribution of the individual books he is of no use. Six books of Holy Scripture are not to be passed over in silence: the books of Wisdom, of Jesus son of Sirach, of Tobias, of Judith, and each of the two books of Machabees, which, although they could not attain to that sublime dignity of the preceding books (as regards the testimonies by which they are proved), yet on account of their praiseworthy and most necessary doctrine deserved to be received by the Church... but if — as Christ said to the Jews concerning Moses — you do not believe this Church, how will you believe my words? » (Peter of Cluny, Against the Petrobrusians, Bibl. Max. PP., T. XXII, p. 1044).

Peter of Riga in the handwritten metrical Paraphrase of the Old and New Testaments (in Hody, p. 655) says: « but although excepted (from the canon), yet these are authenticated by the use of the Church, the rule of faith, the writings of the Fathers. » Similarly John Beleth in the Explanation of the Divine Offices, ch. 60, fol. 339 (Venice ed. 1577, with the Rationale of Durandus) first numbers 22 books, which are held « authentic » by the Jews too, among which he also reckons Judith. Then follows: « finally they enumerate four apocrypha, namely the book of Tobias, of Machabees, of Philo whose beginning is Love justice (i.e. the book of Wisdom), and of Jesus son of Sirach, which is also called Ecclesiasticus. But these four some do not receive; yet the Church approves them, since they have nearly the same subject-matter as the books of Solomon, even though she does not know their authors for certain and truly ³. We believe Esdras composed two others » ⁴.

In the same way others explain the name of apocrypha, which is read in the Helmeted Prologue of St. Jerome, e.g. Peter Comestor in the Scholastic History: « they are apocrypha because their author is unknown; but since there is no doubt concerning their truth, they are received by the Church. » See above, pp. 433, 434. The very words of Comestor are used in the thirteenth century by Hugh of St. Cher in the explanation of the Helmeted Prologue (at the beginning of the Postil on the books of Kings) and elsewhere, and with the same words by John of Genoa (in Hody, p. 657). From the manuscript Postil of Hugh on the book of Josue, Hody reports the lines: « These, since they are doubtful (in the explained sense as regards the name of the writer), are not numbered under the canon; but since they sing true things, the Church receives them. » In the same sense must be explained Hugh of St. Victor (twelfth century), who in the book On the Scriptures and Sacred Writers, ch. 6 (among the Works of Richard of St. Victor, T. I, fol. 156), simply recites the words of St. Jerome, but for the rest uses the deuterocanonical books without distinction as sacred Scripture.

2nd. It cannot be denied, however, that some of the scholastic masters, on account of St. Jerome's opinions, wavered in doubt before the definition of the Council of Trent, and seemed to attribute to these books a lower grade of authority than to those which are in the Hebrew canon: as in the twelfth century John of Salisbury, ep. 172 (Bibl. Max. PP., T. XXIII, p. 468); Ralph of Flavigny on Leviticus, bk. XIV, preface (ibid., T. XVII, p. 177), in many things closely following Junilius Africanus; in the fourteenth century Ockham in the Dialogue, Part III, Treatise I, bk. 3, ch. 16, in which in other respects there are many errors (in Goldast's Monarchy, T. II, p. 834). Lyra speaks ambiguously in the preface to Tobias, where however he seems capable of being explained thus, that he judged these books to have been written only under a lower grade of inspiration, as the Jews teach concerning the hagiographers. Equally difficult are the things still found in the fifteenth century in St. Antoninus in the Theological Summa, Part III, title 18, ch. 6, § 2. Tostatus in Matthew, preface, q. 2, denies indeed the irrefragable authority of the deuterocanonical books; elsewhere, however (on II Kings, preface, qq. 28, 29), where he expressly explains the Helmeted Prologue of St. Jerome, he hands on most clearly the sound doctrine. Finally Cajetan in the sixteenth century, shortly before the Council of Trent, at the end of the Commentary on the book of Esther has things which after the Council no Catholic would be permitted to hold or teach ⁵.

The sum, then, of the whole case is this. The medieval doctors held all these books among the Holy Scriptures, and saw them received without distinction in ecclesiastical use and in the very catalogues which they knew at least from Augustine and the collections of canons. But while the opinions of some Fathers, especially St. Jerome, concerning the difference of the Hebrew canon confronted them, some indeed, and they the majority, as the matter itself required, resolved the difficulty from the sufficiently manifested sense of the Church herself; to others, however, down to the solemn definition of the Church, it did not yet seem sufficiently certain that those books which they saw called outside the Hebrew canon and apocryphal by so great a doctor had authority equal to the protocanonicals. And indeed from the concession of even the gravest doctors of that age it appears that the matter had not yet been so clear and sufficiently proposed to all that it could not be called into doubt without risk to faith. Thus St. Thomas, I, q. 89, a. 8, ad 2, says that the apparition of Samuel (1 Kings XXVIII. 12 ff.) can be explained in the proper sense from divine operation and revelation, as appears from Ecclesiasticus XLVI. 23; « or that apparition, » he says, « was procured through demons, if however the authority of Ecclesiasticus is not received, for this reason, that it is not held among the canonical Scriptures with the Hebrews. » Cf. Augustine, On the Care to Be Taken for the Dead, ch. 15, n. 18.

III. From all that has been said in this and the preceding theses, the threefold stage is manifest which can be distinguished in the explication of the dogma concerning the divinity of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament: a) of simple faith and reception of the books in the use and practice of the Church down to the beginnings of the fourth century; b) then, arising from the comparison of the Church's Scriptures with the Hebrew canon, of inquiry and hesitation among the doctors, especially in the Greek Church of the fourth and fifth centuries, which gradually — with the decrees of the African Councils and of Popes Innocent I and Gelasius added to the persevering use of the Church — issued indeed in a morally universal agreement, yet not so that in the Middle Ages there did not still remain traces of the earlier controversy; c) there follows finally the solemn definition and judgment by which every controversy is terminated and dissension among Catholics excluded. To this must be transferred entirely what we said, with Augustine going before, concerning the threefold stage in the explication of certain dogmas in the Treatise on Tradition, th. XXIII, n. IV.

From what has been demonstrated it is also sufficiently clear that no new revelation was needed for defining the divine inspiration and authority of these books; but that the judgment turned upon the apostolic Tradition, of which the indications, monuments, and documents stand forth in great number from the apostolic age or the age next to the Apostles. Nevertheless such is the ambiguity among some Catholic doctors through many centuries that, although the Protestants rejecting these books can be convicted of intolerable rashness even from the monuments of Tradition alone, yet our full security and the exclusion of every doubt rests upon the Church's infallibility in discerning the genuine apostolic Tradition.

In the theses of this whole chapter we have endeavored not only to establish the principles, but also to set forth the special declarations for the solution of all the difficulties which the Protestants, and above all Humphrey Hody (On the Original Texts of the Bible), have heaped together against the apostolic Tradition of the deuterocanonical books. It is strange, indeed, that Leibniz was not ashamed to refurbish the same things as demonstrations in ep. 31 to Bossuet (Works of Leibniz, Dutens ed., T. I, p. 626 ff.). A compendious reply of Bossuet may be seen in the same volume, ep. 37, p. 657 ff.