If you open a Catholic Bible and hold it side-by-side with a Bible you might find in the pew of your church, you’ll notice that they are different. The Catholic Bible includes seven books that are not in the Protestant tradition. These seven books are known as deuterocanonical books. But why are they there and why don’t Protestant Bibles include them?
The question beneath this inquiry is simple: How do we know which books should be included in the Canon of Scripture? Canon is a term that refers to a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine. When we talk about the Canon of Scripture, we mean the books that have historically been understood as the inspired Word of God.
So, how do we know which books those were?
The Rule of Faith
In the early church, as the first generations of Christians were working through theological debates about the divinity of Christ and the nature of the Trinity, they relied on the Rule of Faith to govern what religious writings could credibly be considered Scripture.
Dr. Michael Horton explains that, in examining the documents of the early church, it is clear that there was a consensus on what was considered inspired from the beginning. He says, “How did they use Scripture? What had the final say in their debates? What did they appeal to? And what you find is that not only the church fathers themselves, but the heretics recognize that there’s a Canon.”
Dr. Horton describes how Heracleon wrote the first commentary on the book of John. “Why didn’t he write a commentary on the Gospel of Thomas? Because it wasn't authoritative,” said Horton. “Everyone knew they had to appeal to Scripture.”
This general consensus of what was authoritative began to become known as the Rule of Faith and influenced the creation of creeds and confessions still used by Protestant and Catholic churches today, including the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed.
Is the Tradition of Scriptural Canon Binding?
You might ask, if Scripture is the highest authority and we cannot bind anyone to traditions that are not included within God’s Word, how can we tell Christians that the Rule of Faith—which was formed outside of Scripture—is authoritative?
It’s an important question. Dr. Horton points out that the Rule of Faith isn’t an alternative tradition to the Canon, it’s a summary of the Canon.
“They were summarizing the consensus of what the constitution taught that church courts were able to exclude who didn’t accept the Rule of Faith,” he explains. “We only include in the Rule of Faith that which can be proved from Scripture.”
A helpful parallel can be found in the constitution and the American judicial system. When judges make decisions, they aren’t amending the constitution, they’re interpreting it. They have been trained in law and in case precedent. Dr. Horton explains that there is something analogous here to what happened in the Ancient Church. They attested to what was already considered and accepted as inspired writings and each of the positions the church took against heretical theologies can be defended by that accepted canon of Scripture.
In his commentary on Ephesians, John Calvin writes: “The church is the common mother of all the godly, which bears, nourishes, and governs in the Lord both kings and commoners; and this is done by the ministry.” He then quotes an early church Father, Cyprian of Carthage, in saying: “That he who would have God as his father must have the church as his mother.”
The Christian church, then, uses creeds and confessions to serve as a subordinate authority that govern the interpretation of Scripture.
“The creeds are not authoritative to the extent that they are faithful summaries of Scripture, they’re authoritative because they’re faithful summaries of Scripture,” says Dr. Horton. “It’s not like there’s an alternative authority here.” The church courts reach a consensus about the main teachings of Scripture, and then the church itself acts as a teacher.
“The person who says, ‘Just listen to me—I’m the bearer of the truth about what the textbook is teaching’ is not a very good teacher,” says Dr. Horton. “Just exercising arbitrary power is not a good way to teach. A good teacher is one who submits to the textbook and says, ‘As best as I can and following the precedent of other teachers in this same field, I am going to do my best to teach you what the textbook is communicating.’”
The Apocrypha and the Council of Trent
So, if there was an early and attestable consensus to what was considered the inspired Word of God, why are there two different versions of the Bible?
These deuterocanonical books—which means Second Canon—are the books of Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, First and Second Maccabees. They are found in the Septuagint—the Greek Old Testament—and were added to the biblical canon by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Their addition, more than a thousand years after the Rule of Faith attested to the scriptural canon, was largely in response to the Protestant Reformation.
Although these books have been included in the appendixes of various printings of the Bible, they are not considered canonical by the Protestant church. And though they may be helpful or edifying to read or to study, they need not bind one’s conscience as they are not the inspired words of God.
Ultimately, Scripture is meant to point us to Christ, who alone is the way to God and eternal life. Jesus himself says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). If you do not find Christ and his perfect atoning work for you, you are reading the Scriptures in vain, for it is Christ who is the Word. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
If you would like to listen to the entire discussion between Dr. Horton and Richard Ackerman, a former atheist turned Reformed Christian, you can watch it on YouTube: “Why Gen Z is Converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism with Redeemed Zoomer”
