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The New Testament canon consists of those books,
which the Church came to regard as definitive expressions of its faith and
life as set forth in the earliest period of its existence.
The books were
by apostles or by disciples of the apostles, though the question of authorship
is not especially significant;
the Church itself was the Church of the apostles.
The existence and the nature of the canon thus implies the existence of
the Church.
This is to say that without the Church there would be no New Testament.
Just
as the New Testament expresses the response of the apostles and their disciples
to Christ,
so the Church expresses the same response;
but the New Testament is the product
of the Church while the Church is not the product of the New Testament.
The
Church could have proclaimed, and in fact did proclaim the gospel without
possessing the New Testament; but the New Testament could not have come into
existence apart from the Church.
Indeed, Helmut Koester has cogently argued that several of the Apostolic
Fathers (the earliest Christian writers outside the New Testament) did not
even make use of written gospels.
Instead, they relied upon oral traditions
of the same sort as those recorded by the evangelists.
This means that these
early Fathers differ from the evangelists in the degree of their closeness
to the earliest traditions, not in the kind of relationship to them.
The
proximity was recognized in the early Church by those who treated the writings
of the Apostolic Fathers as scripture or called their authors "apostolic
men" (apostolici).
Later on, however, it was recognized that
the concerns of the Apostolic Fathers were primarily related to the second
century, those of canonical writers to the first.
On some basis like this
the Apostolic Fathers were excluded from the canon.
But it is evident that
a very sharp dividing line could not and cannot be drawn, except in so far
as the New Testament writings reflect the apostolic age, as later writings
do not.
In dealing with the canon of the New Testament we must begin with some rather
negative statements.
First, the earliest Christian Bible was not, and did
not include, the New Testament.
Instead, it was the Old Testament, usually
read in Greek, and often interpreted in the light of a number of apocalyptic
documents that were not generally recognized as canonical.
Thus the Epistle
of Jude contains a quotation from the apocalypse of Enoch and an allusion
to a strange lost book known as the Assumption of Moses.
Until the middle
of the third century, Christian writers often regarded these documents as
authoritative.
The reason for regarding the Old Testament itself as canonical
scripture was, of course, that Jesus and his apostles had so regarded it:
they had believed that in Jesus the Old Testament, viewed primarily as prophecy,
had been fulfilled.
Second, no New Testament as such came into existence
for several centuries after the beginning of the Christian movement.
At an
earlier time there were oral traditions, along with books of varying authoritativeness:
but there was no New Testament.
It is a little hard to tell just at what point the idea that Christian documents
were scriptural arose.
If we can make a distinction between documents and
their contents,
we can say that the contents were always authoritative, though the form in
which they were expressed was not quite so important.
For instance, Paul
clearly regards his own letters as important and expects that what he says
will be heeded;
but he does not speak of them as scriptural.
On the other
hand, when the apostolic council at Jerusalem sends out an encyclical letter,
this letter is hard to differentiate from its contents; and the decree, which
it contains, begins with the words,
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.
Similarly, the Revelation of John is really a revelation of Jesus Christ
through his angel to John;
it contains a blessing upon those who ?keep? what
is written,
and a curse upon those who add to or subtract from its contents.
Clearly
the author of Revelation regards his book as the equivalent of scripture;
and the equivalent of scripture is scripture.
If we look for some early Christian
writer to whom the Pauline epistles have come to be scripture, we can find
him in the author of II Peter.
II Peter 3:15-16 says that we are to regard the forbearance of the Lord as
salvation?
as our beloved brother Paul,
in accordance with the wisdom given him, wrote to you -
as in all the epistles speaking about these matters -
epistles in which there are some things hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unsteady pervert,
as they do the other scriptures,
to their own destruction.
The remarkable thing about this sentence is not only its loose syntax but
its implicit meaning:
the Pauline epistles are regarded as addressed just
as generally as II Peter itself is;
they have been collected and are regarded
as scripture;
and among them are the Pastoral Epistles, for the forbearance
of the Lord as leading to salvation is mentioned in I Timothy 1:15-16 .
By
this time - whatever the time is - the Pauline epistles have formed at least
the nucleus of a New Testament.
Of course we cannot be certain that the "development" of the canon took
place everywhere in the same way at the same time.
We do not know enough to say more than that it is possible that
If we are willing to limit our inferences in this way, we shall perhaps
not find Marcion as striking a figure as church historians have often made
him to be.
It is true that Marcion, expelled from the Roman church in 144,
rejected the authority of the Old Testament and for it substituted three
volumes of his own:
Marcion was impressed by the newness of Christianity and he wanted to cut
it loose from its connection with the Old Testament and Judaism.
He admired
Paul as the one apostle who really understood Jesus, and Luke as the one
disciple who really understood Paul's gospel about Jesus.
He therefore rejected
the other gospels then in circulation, as well as a good deal of Luke, which
he viewed on literary grounds -
of some sort - as interpolated into the authentic
document.
Scholars have sometimes thought that Marcion created the canon of the New
Testament.
Certainly he gave impetus to the tendency to produce a list of
authoritative books from which those without authority were to be excluded.
But it is likely that we should give him credit not for the idea of a canon
but for the inclusiveness of the canon that the Church did produce.
There
are second-century analogies to his work and its effect.
For instance, before
the rise of Valentinian Gnosticism, Christological doctrine was not always
carefully formulated;
afterwards, Christian authors expressed their ideas
more carefully.
We should assume that Marcion, then, did not so much formulate
a canon as compel more orthodox Christians to use more carefully the authoritative
books, which they already possessed.
Even before Marcion's time we encounter Christian interest in the origins
of New Testament books.
Papias of Hierapolis tells us about Mark's intention
of preserving all the traditional materials he knew, as well as about Matthew's
compilation of "the dominical oracles", whatever they may have been.
It
is sometimes suggested that Papias's correlation of Mark with the apostle
Peter was due to his reading of I Peter, where Mark is mentioned as Peter's
"son".
We know that Papias knew I Peter.
But what we do not know is that
in speaking of Mark as Peter's interpreter Papias was restricted to what
he could get out of this epistle.
Presumably there were a few Christians
who could tell what had actually happened.
This interest in historical fact
may not have been the chief concern of early Christians;
it was a real concern,
however.
Actually, when we compare Marcion's ideas with those of Papias and other
contemporary Christians, it can be said that for the first time we encounter
the problem that has constantly recurred in Christian history.
On the one
hand, there is the rather matter-of-fact Papias with his rather simple notions
about the work of the evangelists as recorders or compilers;
on the other,
there is Marcion, with his view that the work of the evangelist Luke had
been interpolated by ingenious advocates of Jewish Christianity.
The true
and authentic gospel, in Marcion's view, was to be recovered only by deleting
from the Gospel of Luke, those passages, which the Judaizers had added.
Now
if one were to ask Marcion, "How do you know that these passages are interpolations"
-
he would tell you that the answer is rather complex.
First there was the
authentic, non-Jewish gospel of Jesus, not written but transmitted - and
corrupted - by the Jewish apostles.
Then, since this gospel was already being
corrupted, there was a reiteration of this gospel in the teaching of the
apostle Paul.
One might suppose that Paul was not altogether hostile to Judaism;
but this idea, Marcion would claim, is due to the form in which the Pauline
letters were transmitted.
Judaizers too interpolated them.
Only Marcion had
been able to recover that true, authentic gospel of Jesus and Paul, which
was to be found in his - i.e. Marcion's - writings.
The difference between Marcion and more orthodox Christians was not simply
that he was more dualistic than they were.
It was that he insisted upon a
uniform theological view to be derived from his picture of Jesus and his
picture of Paul, while the others were willing to face the difficulties presented
by a much more complex picture of both.
Around this time such Christian writers
as the apologist Justin were speaking of the gospels as reminiscences of
the apostles -
and recognizing four of them --
two by apostles, two by
disciples of apostles.
Justin did nothing to solve the difficulties raised
by the existence of various gospels, but at least he was willing to take
the risk involved.
Similarly, other Christians were accepting not only the
Pauline letters, which Marcion had recognized, but in addition, four more
-
to the Hebrews, to Timothy, and to Titus.
It is not necessary for us,
and as we shall see it was not necessary for early Christians, to maintain
that all of these were actually written by Paul. We can now see that when
they were included with the other, more genuine Pauline letters, one result
was that just as Jesus could not be pin-pointed (since there were four gospels),
so Paul could not be pin-pointed either.
A Marcion could not say that "just
exactly this and this is what Paul taught" and proceed to construct a dynamic
but thoroughly one-sided theology.
The inclusiveness of the early Christian
canon, as it was coming into existence, meant that Christian theology had
to be inclusive too.
To be sure, sometimes the orthodox became alarmed when minority-groups
made use of one or another of the canonical books, and they were tempted
to remove them from the canon.
For instance, Montanus, founder of the "new
prophecy"
in the middle of the second century, taught that he himself was the Paraclete
promised in the Gospel of John.
Christian critics then compared John with
the synoptics and denied its apostolic origin.
Their view, however, was not
widely accepted.
The Church as a whole resisted the temptation to shrink
the canon because of the use being made of some parts of it.
On the other hand, there were limits beyond which inclusiveness could not
go.
The second century saw the production of apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles
and apocalypses, usually written in the names of various apostles and almost
always reflecting special points of view.
Christians hesitated to reject
such works if they were close to books regarded as canonical.
In the case
of such a treatise as the Gospel of Thomas, recently recovered in a Coptic
version, they did not hesitate at all.
They could recognize that everything
in this gospel, no matter how close it might seem to be to authoritative
tradition, had been given a special Gnostic twist.
By the end of the second century, there was no longer any question about
the core of the New Testament, at least among those writers, who in their
time and later, were regarded as orthodox Christians.
There were four gospels,
neither more nor less.
To be sure, the arguments of Irenaeus (c. 180)
on this subject are not very convincing.
He says there should be four because
there are four beasts in the Apocalypse and because there are four corners
of the earth.
But the very weakness of the argument - to us - may suggest
that it was not really necessary to prove the point.
Again, in the writings
of Irenaeus we encounter the first extensive use of Acts and the Pastoral
Epistles.
When these books were used, a more balanced picture of Paul and
of the early Church could he drawn;
it was not necessary to rely solely on
Romans and Galatians, and to fall into the jaws of Marcion.
Because a more
inclusive New Testament was being used, it was possible to produce a more
inclusive theology, one which took into account the materials and viewpoints
provided in such books as I Peter and I John and Revelation. Irenaeus made
considerable use of Revelation and reported that John saw the visions "practically
in our own times, towards the end of Domitian's reign".
In his view, therefore,
the New Testament reflected a wide range of Christian insight, even in regard
to time, for it included a book written at the very end of the first century.
In addition Irenaeus regarded the Shepherd of Hermas (certainly) and
I Clement (possibly) as scripture. The fact that he neither mentioned nor
alluded to James, Jude and II Peter, then, suggests that he did not know
them, for he wanted as wide a range of books as possible, though within the
limits of the apostolic faith.
Irenaeus's silence about these books, and his problematic use of Hebrews,
brings us to consider the varying views held about Hebrews, the Catholic
epistles, and the book of Revelation in the early Church.
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The "canonical" history of Hebrews is somewhat confused by the fact that
while it was used by many early Christian writers, some of them were aware
that as it stands it cannot have been written by the apostle Paul (see Chapter
xix).
We first encounter clear traces of Hebrews in the letter of Clement
to the Corinthians, written at the end of the first century;
but Clement
does not say what he is quoting from. On the other hand, the teaching of
the Roman Hermas (early second century) contradicts that of Hebrews, and
Hermas therefore cannot have regarded the letter as absolutely authoritative.
The views of Irenaeus (c. 180) are not altogether clear.
He certainly alludes to Hebrews (1:3) when he says that the Father created
everything "by the Word of his power" (Adv. haer. 2, 30,
9);
but this is the only clear allusion in his writings, and he speaks
of the Christian "altar in the heavens" (4, 18, 6) in such a way as to
show that he is not relying on what Hebrews has to say on the subject.
According to Eusebius (H.E. 5, 26) he made use of Hebrews in a book
of "various discourses": according to Stephen Gobarus (sixth century)
he held that Paul did not write the letter.
This was also the Roman view:
Hebrews is absent from the Muratorian list and was not accepted by Hippolytus,
Gaius or Novatian.
It was also the African view.
Tertullian quoted Hebrews
only once and ascribed the quotation to Barnabas (De pudic. 20).
Indeed,
the first Western writer to regard Hebrews as canonical was Hilary of Poitiers
(d. 367).
On the other hand, Hebrews was highly valued at Alexandria and elsewhere
in the East. Pantaenus (late second century) argued that Paul wrote it anonymously
because he was addressing Hebrews who might be suspicious of him.
This theory
does not explain the stylistic differences between Hebrews and the Pauline
epistles, and Clement therefore suggested that Paul, wrote the letter in
Hebrew while Luke translated it into Greek.
Origen further developed this
view by maintaining that either Luke or Clement of Rome - both, in Origen's
opinion, disciples of Paul - relied on Paul's ideas but expressed them in
his own style and provided his own arrangement.
Origen was unwilling to reach
a definite conclusion.
Only God, he said, really knew who wrote Hebrews.
This lack of precision is reflected in Origen's writings.
In addressing
another scholar he criticized those who "reject the epistle as not written
by Paul", but in his own treatises he sometimes ascribed the letter to Paul
and sometimes did not. Later Eastern writers regarded the letter as Paul's.
There was considerable confusion in the West at the end of the fourth century.
Philastrius of Brescia (d. 397) regarded Hebrews as written by Paul but not
canonical;
on the other hand, African synods held in 393 and 397 accepted the canonicity
of "thirteen letters of the apostle Paul" and "of the same, one to the Hebrews",
thus maintaining a distinction without a difference.
Augustine quoted Hebrew's
as Paul's in what he wrote before 409, but after that year he cited it simply
as "the Epistle to the Hebrews".
Pelagius, who published his commentary
on the Pauline epistles about this time and did not include Hebrews among
them, may have influenced him.
Considerations of simplicity seem finally
to have carried the day, for a council held at Carthage in 419 spoke of "fourteen
letters of the apostle Paul", and thereafter the question was not discussed.
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In the earliest period for which we have evidence - the second century -
Christian writers made use of only I Peter and I John (though II John was
sometimes treated as part of I John).
This usage is reflected in the third
century by Hippolytus, Novatian and Cyprian, and by Origen, who mentions
doubts about other Catholic epistles but not about these (so also Eusebius
in the early fourth century).
Still later, only these two Catholic epistles
were accepted by Diodorus of Tarsus (d .c. 394) and Nestorius (d.
451).
The Cheltenham list, reflecting North African usage about 360, goes
somewhat beyond early practice by including I-II Peter and I-II-III John.
The Muratorian list (c. 200) includes Jude and I-II
John;
it says that 2some among us wish to have the Revelations of John and
Peter read", but makes no mention of I Peter.
On the other hand, both Clement
and Tertullian, writing at about the same time, accept Jude, I Peter, and
I-II John.
A much more complete list can be derived from the writings of Origen, who
accepted all seven Catholic epistles but expressed his doubts about James,
Jude, and II Peter, as did his admirer Eusebius.
Most of the Greek writers
of the fourth century, however, had no doubts about any of the letters, and
their view came to be current in East and West alike, except in Syria.
The Syrian view, a reaction against the growth of the canon, is reflected
in the DOCTRINE OF ADDAI and the writings
of Aphraates and Ephraem, all in the mid-fourth century.
According to it
none of the Catholic epistles was acceptable, and the same opinion was expressed
in a canon list about 400 and in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (d.
428).
Even in the sixth century the Greek traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes
shared this view.
A mediating position was held by John Chrysostom, patriarch first
of Antioch and later of Constantinople (d. 407) and by Theodore's pupil
Theodoret (d. 458):
the Catholic letters were James, I Peter, and I John.
The same view as reflected in the Syriac version known as the Peshitto and
is mentioned by Cosmas.
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Revelation of John was highly regarded by nearly all the second-century
writers whom we know, although when the Montanists used it in support of their
ideas about the imminent coming of the kingdom, some Christians in Asia Minor
and at Rome tried to get it rejected. In the Fast, Clement of Alexandria
and Origen accepted it as canonical Origen "demythologized" it by treating
it allegorically.
His disciple Dionysius found the book hard to deal with,
since millennarians were making use of it.
He therefore analysed it by means
of literary criticism, noting the differences in style, vocabulary and thought
between it and the Gospel and "the Epistle" of John.
The literary differences
proved that two authors were involved, and since the apostle John wrote the
Gospel.
Someone else wrote Revelation.
He was willing to retain Revelation
in the canon.
He claimed, however, that since its author was not an apostle
his work therefore did not possess the apostolic authority of the Gospel
of John.
Similarly, Dionysius would probably have said that Hebrews was inferior
to the Pauline epistles and Mark and Luke to Matthew and John.
This kind
of distinction means that an apostolic canon is being set up within the
New Testament canon.
All New Testament books are authoritative, but
some are more authoritative than others.
Not all Christians were willing
to make such subtle analyses.
In the fourth century, all Eastern writers
outside Alexandria rejected Revelation;
West Syrian writers did not accept
it until the fifth century;
East Syrians, as far as I know, never accepted
it.
Even in the ninth century, many Greek-speaking Christians still had doubts
about the book.
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We have thus seen that in the cases of Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles, and
Revelation, there was a long process of hesitation that preceded acceptance.
In other words, for many Christians as late as the fourth and fifth centuries
the New Testament was considerably smaller than ours is.
On the other hand,
especially at Alexandria, a good many books were read in the early days,
which later were not regarded as belonging to the New Testament. Books that
we usually classify as among the Apostolic Fathers were especially prominent,
usually because they were regarded as written by persons mentioned in the
New Testament.
Thus Clement regarded the DIDACHE or
Teaching of the Apostles as scriptural;
both he and Origen viewed the author
of I CLEMENT as the Clement mentioned by
Paul in Philippians 4:3 and the author of the SHEPHERD as
the Hermas of Romans 16:4. Apocryphal books were also sometimes read in church
or otherwise regarded as authoritative.
About 190, Serapion of Antioch had
some difficulty in displacing the so-called "Gospel of Peter", and a mysterious
fragment recently discovered by Professor Morton Smith shows Clement claiming
that at Alexandria there was a "secret gospel of Mark".
Both Hippolytus
and Origen made use, of the "Acts of Paul".
With the passage of time and the development of some critical sense, most
of these documents were kept out of the New Testament.
Towards the end of
the second century it was recognized that Hermas, for example lived long
after New Testament times, and that the "Acts of Paul" had been composed
not as history but as edifying fiction.
One criterion, therefore, was historical
authenticity.
Another was orthodoxy, not in a rigid sense but in the sense
that most of the apocryphal documents had special axes to grind, axes different
from those ground in the central New Testament writings.
Related to both
these criteria was that of apostolicity.
In addition, there was the criterion
of traditional usage;
similarly, this criterion was both historical and theological
in nature.
It was historical in that it was related to investigations into
the books that early Christians had actually employed;
it was theological
in that it was assumed that these early Christians would not have used unorthodox
books.
Perhaps the most important single figure in the history of the New Testament
canon was Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine early in the fourth century.
His basic principle was the same as that of some of his predecessors:
church
usage implies canonicity.
Following a scheme apparently used by Origen, Eusebius
classified the books that had any claim to be canonical as
Obviously the first and third categories
were more easily settled than the second.
The first included the four gospels,
and Acts, fourteen epistles of Paul (including Hebrews), I John, I Peter.
and Revelation.
The third included the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas,
the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Didache.
These
writings, though earlier used at Alexandria and elsewhere, were rejected
in Eusebius's time.
As for the "disputed" books, they consisted of James,
Jude, II Peter, and II-III John.
Eusebius knows that various views are held about the book of Revelation:
"
Some reject it, while others reckon it among the "acknowledged" books."
Again, some accepted the Gospel according to the Hebrews (he may be referring
to Origen).
He himself does not accept it, any more than the gospels ascribed
to Peter, Thomas, Matthias, and others, or the Acts of Andrew and John.
Eusebius's difficulties arise in part from his deficient conception of
church history;
in his view the Church was semper eadem, and this
theory did not prepare him to deal with the variety found not only among
various early Christians but even within the thought of individuals.
The
fact that at Caesarea Origen's canon was somewhat smaller than it was at
Alexandria escaped his notice.
At the same time, he was an important and influential witness to the gradual
stabilization of the canon.
Though he made no use of Jude, II Peter, or II-III
John, he referred to a collection of "the seven so-called Catholic epistles"
and frequently quoted from the letter of James.
Though he himself did not
regard I Clement as canonical, he knew that some churches so regarded it,
and he accepted Hebrews as Pauline in substance, though in his view it was
actually written by Clement of Rome.
The books that finally came to be generally regarded as canonical are those
that Eusebius treated as "acknowledged" and "disputed".
They constitute
the New Testament as listed by Athanasius in another influential document,
the Easter letter of 367.
And even though differing opinions as to the relative
importance of the various books have been expressed and continue to be expressed,
from the fourth century onward the canon has been fixed - with the exceptions
we have noted.
Some questions obviously arise.
Athanasius lists the books, but his grounds of judgement were apparently
much the same as those of Eusebius, and we do not know that anyone but
Eusebius thoroughly investigated the question of early usage.
What, then,
are we to make of the nature of early usage?
No one reading the Church
History of Eusebius can fail to be impressed by the gaps in his information
about the early Church.
Did he actually have information sufficient to
make a judgement as to whether or not the New Testament books were read
in the early second century (for example)?
This question is probably unanswerable;
and because it is probably unanswerable we are driven to seek for some
ground of canonicity other than early usage, important though this is.
We have already seen that early Christians themselves did not use the criterion
of apostolicity in any rigid sense.
And certainly those New Testament books
which view the apostolic age as past (e.g. Hebrews and Jude), or on other
grounds seem to come from a later period (e.g. II Peter), cannot be viewed
as precisely apostolic.
Perhaps we must be content with a less exact definition of what the New
Testament consists of;
and a definition in which historical and theological
concerns are blended.
What is it of which all the New Testament books speak?
Who is it to whom they bear witness?
If we ask these questions, involving the intentions and purposes of the
New Testament writers, we may be able to say that the New Testament books
are those which bear witness to Jesus Christ and to God?s act of revelation
and redemption in him.
Once more, we must go a little beyond such a general
definition; we must consider the question of time, of closeness to the event
and events of which the authors speak.
The New Testament writers are those
witnesses to Christ and to these acts of God who stand closest in time to
the events.
This is not to say that earliness is all-important.
Had Pontius
Pilate written a report on subversive activities in Palestine, his report
would not be part of the New Testament.
But it is to say that the New Testament
cannot contain writings that are addressed primarily to situations in the
second century and later.
The sub-apostolic age was obviously a time of much
New Testament writing.
From it came certainly the Gospels of Mark and Luke
and the Epistle to the Hebrews and the book of Revelation probably a good
deal more.
But the Christians who preserved the New Testament books and compiled
the canon were finally unwilling to include such a letter as I Clement, addressed
primarily to a situation at the very end of the first century.
These considerations are important in determining what the canon of the
New Testament contains and why its contents were chosen.
It must also be
stated, once more, that the canon was and is the creation of the Church.
If there were no Church there would be no canon, for the canonical books
are those which the Church chose to preserve as reflections and representations
of its faith, life and work in the earliest period of its life.
The New Testament
therefore contains testimony not to a "pre-Christian" Jesus but to the Jesus
to, whom the Church was the response.
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... at which he was present and so he set them down.
The third book of the gospel - According to Luke.
This Luke was a physician whom, after the ascension of Christ, Paul took
with him, since he was a student of the law (?).
He wrote in his own name
and according to his own view,
though he did not himself see the Lord in
the flesh
and therefore [described events] as far as he was able to ascertain
[them].
He began his story from the nativity of John.
The fourth of the gospels -
of
John: one of the disciples.
When his fellow disciples and bishops exhorted him, he said,
"Fast today with me for three days, and what will be revealed
to any of us, let us tell one another."
The same night it was revealed to
Andrew, one of the apostles, that they were all to certify but that John
should write everything down under his own name.
And therefore, though various
beginnings are taught in the several books of the gospels,
it makes no difference
to the faith of believers,
since by one guiding Spirit all things are declared
in all of them,
concerning the nativity, the passion, the resurrection,
the
life with his disciple and his double advent, the first in humility
and lowliness, which has taken place,
and the second in royal power ... and
glorious, which is to come.
Why, then, is it remarkable if John so constantly
sets forth each item in his epistles, saying of himself;
"What we have seen with our eyes and heard
with our ears and our hands have handled, these things we have written to
you" "
For thus he professes himself not only an eye-witness and hearer but
also a writer of all the miracles of the Lord, in sequence.
And the
Acts of all the apostles are written in one book.
Luke briefly intimates
to "most excellent Theophilus" that the
several events took place in his own presence,
as he plainly shows by leaving
out the passion of Peter and also the departure of Paul from the city on
his journey to Spain.
And the Epistles of Paul themselves make plain,
to those who wish to understand,
what epistles he sent and from what place and for what reason.
He wrote first of all to the Corinthians, forbidding schisms and heresies;
then to the Galatians, forbidding circumcision;
then at greater length to the Romans, setting forth the plan of the
scriptures and showing that Christ is their first principle.
It is not necessary for us to discuss these individually, since the blessed
apostle Paul himself;
following the order of his predecessor John, writes
by name only to seven churches, in the following order:
to the Corinthians,
to the Ephesians,
to the Philippians,
to the Colossians,
to the Galatians
to the Thessalonians,
and to the Romans.
And while for the sake of admonition
there is a second
to the Corinthians
and also to the Thessalonians,
yet one Church is recognized as spread throughout the
world.
For John too, in the Apocalypse,
though writing to seven churches yet speaks
to all.
But to Philemon one
and to Titus one
and to Timothy two
were written
down from affection and love,
to be in honour with the catholic church
for the ordering of ecclesiastical discipline.
There are current one to
the Laodiceans and one to the Alexandrians,
both forged in Paul's name
for the heresy of Marcion,
as well as many others which cannot be received
into the catholic church;
for it is not right for gall to be mixed with honey.
Certainly the epistle of Jude and the two bearing John's
name are accepted in the Catholic [Church],
as well as the Wisdom written
by the friends of Solomon in his honour.
We also accept the Apocalypses
of John and of Peter only, which some of us will not have read in the church.
But
Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our own times, in the city
of Rome
while his brother Pius the bishop was occupying the episcopal chair
of the church of the city of Rome;
and therefore, while it ought to be
read,
to the end of the ages it cannot he read publicly in church to the
people,
either among the prophets (whose ranks are complete) or among the
apostles.
But we receive nothing at all of the Arsinoite (Egyptian)
Valentinus or of Miltiades,
who have also composed a new book of Psalms
for Marcion,
and, along with Basilides, the Asiatic founder of Cataphrygians
(?).
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