Chapter 28

The Councils and the Canon — Hippo, Carthage, Florence, and Trent

Introduction: Did Trent Add Books to the Bible?

One of the most common claims you will hear from Protestants about the deuterocanonical books goes something like this: "The Catholic Church added those books at the Council of Trent in 1546 — in reaction to the Protestant Reformation." I have heard this claim from pastors, from seminary students, from popular apologetics books, and from well-meaning church members who simply passed along what they had been told. And I understand why it persists. It sounds plausible on the surface. Trent did issue a formal decree on the canon of Scripture. Trent did include the deuterocanonical books. And Trent did happen after the Reformation had begun. So, naturally, people connect the dots.

But the claim is historically false. It is not just slightly misleading — it is flatly, demonstrably wrong. And in this chapter, I want to show you exactly why.

The truth is that the Council of Trent did not add a single book to the Bible. What Trent did was reaffirm what the church had already declared more than eleven hundred years earlier. The councils of Hippo (393 AD), Carthage (397 and 419 AD), and Florence (1442 AD) had all produced formal lists of the canonical books of the Old Testament — and every single one of those lists included the deuterocanonical books. Trent was not innovating. Trent was not reacting. Trent was simply stamping its approval on what had been the church's consistent, formal, conciliar position since the late fourth century.¹

In this chapter, we are going to walk through each of these councils in detail. We will look at what they said, why they said it, and what their decisions mean for the canon question today. We will also address the most common Protestant objections to these conciliar decisions — including the important objection that Hippo and Carthage were "only" regional councils, not ecumenical ones. And we will deal honestly with the deeper question that lurks underneath all of this: On what authority do we determine which books belong in the Bible?

That last question may be the most important one in this entire book. And the councils, I believe, give us the best answer the church has ever provided.

The Background: Why Did the Church Need to Define the Canon?

Before we look at the individual councils, we need to understand why the church felt the need to issue formal canon lists in the first place. After all, for the first three and a half centuries of Christianity, the church had no formal, universally binding list of Old Testament books. Does that mean the canon was undecided? Not at all. It means the canon was so widely agreed upon that no one felt the need to formalize it.

Think of it this way. The United States did not formally define what the American flag looks like until 1912, when President Taft issued an executive order specifying the proportions and arrangement of the stars and stripes. But no one would say that Americans didn't know what their flag looked like before 1912. The flag existed. Everyone recognized it. The formal definition came only when the growing number of variations made standardization necessary.²

Something similar happened with the biblical canon. For centuries, the church read the deuterocanonical books as Scripture. The church fathers quoted them as Scripture. They used them to establish doctrine, to refute heresies, and to instruct catechumens — people preparing for baptism. As we saw in Chapter 26, the overwhelming majority of early Christian writers treated the deuterocanonical books as part of the inspired Bible.³

So why did formal canon lists become necessary in the late fourth century? The answer, in a word, is Jerome.

As we explored in detail in Chapter 27, Jerome (347–420 AD) introduced a revolutionary idea into Western Christianity: the principle of Hebraica veritas — the "Hebrew truth." Jerome argued that only those Old Testament books found in the Hebrew canon of the rabbis should be considered truly canonical. Books like Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees — which were part of the Septuagint but not part of the rabbinic Hebrew Bible — should be classified as "ecclesiastical books" that could be read for edification but not used to establish doctrine.⁴

Jerome's position was, as we argued in the previous chapter, an innovation. No Western church father before Jerome had drawn this distinction based on the Hebrew canon. Jerome was importing a rabbinic criterion — the canon of the very rabbis who had rejected Christ — into Christian theology. And Jerome broadcast this opinion throughout the Latin-speaking world by including polemical prefaces in his Vulgate translation, the Latin Bible that would become the standard text of Western Christianity for a thousand years.⁵

The church responded. As Gary Michuta observes, "The Church normally doesn't define a doctrine unless a truth of the Faith has been denied or undermined." For centuries, while there had been varying opinions about exactly how the deuterocanonical books fit within the broader framework of Scripture, virtually no one had denied that they were inspired. It was Jerome's vocal rejection — and its rapid circulation through his Vulgate prefaces — that forced the church's hand.⁶

The clarification came from North Africa, from councils presided over by one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church: Augustine of Hippo. And the canon those councils produced included every one of the deuterocanonical books.

The Decree of Damasus and the Council of Rome (c. 382 AD)

Before we turn to Hippo and Carthage, we should briefly mention an important precursor. Around the year 382, a list of canonical Scriptures was compiled that contained the deuterocanonical books. This list is found in a document known as the Decree of [Pope] Damasus. Some scholars believe it was a papal pronouncement; others argue it was part of a decree from the local Council of Rome held that same year. The exact origin is debated, but the content is clear.⁷

The decree states: "Likewise, it has been said: now indeed we must treat of the divine scriptures, what the universal Catholic Church accepts and what she ought to shun. The order of the Old Testament begins here" — and then it lists all of the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books without distinction.⁸

The Anglican scholar H.H. Howorth noted that "this pronouncement, as we have seen, does not profess to enunciate any new views on the matter, but merely to declare what the Universal Church accepted as divine Scripture."⁹ This is a crucial observation. The decree was not creating a new canon. It was formalizing what the church already practiced. And that practice included the deuterocanonical books.

If this decree does indeed come from 382 — roughly a decade before Hippo — then it means the Roman church had already formally listed the deuterocanonical books as Scripture before the North African councils even convened. Jerome's innovation was being answered almost as soon as it appeared.

The Council of Hippo (393 AD)

The Council of Hippo Regius, held on October 8, 393 AD, is the first council known with certainty to have produced a formal list of canonical books. This was a regional council — a gathering of bishops from the Roman province of North Africa. And while regional councils did not have the same authority as ecumenical (universal) councils, their decisions carried significant weight, especially when they reflected the broader practice of the church.¹⁰

Unfortunately, the original acts of the Council of Hippo have been lost. But we know what it decided because its canon was incorporated into the later Council of Carthage (397 AD), which explicitly states that it is reaffirming what Hippo had already decreed. The canon list from Hippo included all thirty-nine protocanonical books of the Old Testament plus the deuterocanonical books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Daniel and Esther.¹¹

The significance of Hippo cannot be overstated. This was not some obscure gathering of minor bishops making an arbitrary decision. This was a council held in the intellectual heartland of Western Christianity, in the very city where Augustine — the most influential theologian in the history of the Western church — served as bishop. Augustine was almost certainly present at or directly involved in the deliberations of this council, and his influence on its canon decision is widely acknowledged by scholars.¹²

Augustine's Criteria for the Canon

To understand why Hippo and Carthage included the deuterocanonical books, we need to understand Augustine's methodology. How did Augustine determine which books belonged in the canon? He laid out his approach with remarkable clarity in his treatise On Christian Doctrine:

Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority.¹³

Let's unpack Augustine's method, because it is both elegant and powerful. He identified three criteria for determining canonicity:

First, universality (or ubiquity). Which books are accepted by the greatest number of churches? If virtually every church in the Christian world reads a particular book as Scripture, that near-universal acceptance is powerful evidence that the book was part of the original deposit of Scripture handed down by the apostles.

Second, apostolicity. Special weight is given to churches that had direct historical ties to the apostles — churches that were "the seat of an apostle" or that "received epistles" from an apostle. These churches would have received their collection of sacred books directly from apostolic hands. If the apostolic churches agreed on a book's canonical status, that agreement was especially weighty.¹⁴

Third, authority (or quality of witness). When there was disagreement, Augustine weighed not just the number of churches but the authority — that is, the historical prestige and apostolic connection — of the churches in question.

Notice what Augustine did not use as his criterion. He did not say, "Check what books the rabbis include in their Hebrew Bible." He did not say, "Determine which books were originally written in Hebrew." He did not appeal to the Jewish canon at all. His method was thoroughly Christian. He asked: What did the apostles hand down to the churches? And how do we know? By looking at what all the churches — especially the apostolic ones — actually received and read as Scripture.¹⁵

And when Augustine applied this method, the result was a canon that included the deuterocanonical books. He listed the Old Testament books in On Christian Doctrine, and the list is identical to the Catholic Old Testament canon — including Tobias (Tobit), Judith, two books of Maccabees, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus (Sirach).¹⁶

This is, I believe, one of the most powerful arguments in the entire canon debate. Protestants trust Augustine's process for the New Testament. They accept every one of the twenty-seven books he listed. But they reject his Old Testament canon — even though he used the exact same criteria to establish both. That is an inconsistency that deserves a very good explanation, and I have never heard one that is fully satisfying.

The Council of Carthage (397 AD, Reaffirmed 419 AD)

Four years after the Council of Hippo, on August 28, 397 AD, the Third Council of Carthage convened and confirmed the canon list that Hippo had produced. Augustine was present and was one of the most influential participants. The council's canon decision reads:

[It has been decided] that nothing except the canonical scriptures should be read in the Church under the name of the divine scriptures. But the canonical scriptures are [lists the protocanon and deuterocanon]. Moreover, of the New Testament … [it has been decided] that the Church beyond the sea may be consulted regarding the confirmation of that canon; also that it be permitted to read the sufferings of the martyrs, when their anniversary days are celebrated.¹⁸

Several things stand out in this decree. First, notice that the council lists the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books together, without any distinction in status. There is no separate category for "ecclesiastical books" versus "canonical books." There is no hierarchy of first-class and second-class Scripture. The deuterocanonical books are listed as canonical Scriptures, full stop.¹⁹

Second, notice the clause about consulting "the Church beyond the sea" — a reference to Rome. The council was not acting in isolation. It was seeking confirmation from the broader church, particularly the Roman see. This demonstrates that the North African councils understood their canon decision as reflecting the universal practice of the church, not as a regional innovation.

Third, notice that the council draws a sharp distinction between "canonical scriptures" and other types of literature (like the "sufferings of the martyrs"). The deuterocanonical books are placed squarely in the "canonical scriptures" category, not in some intermediate zone.

The Protestant theologian F.F. Bruce — no friend to the Catholic position on the canon — was nevertheless honest enough to acknowledge what the evidence shows. Bruce stated that the formal pronouncements of these African councils "did not impose any innovation on the churches; they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches of the West and of the greater part of the East."²⁰ This is a remarkable admission. Even a Protestant scholar of Bruce's stature conceded that Hippo and Carthage were not inventing a new canon. They were formalizing the existing consensus. And that consensus included the deuterocanonical books.

Michuta drives the point home: "Jerome's insistence that Christians abandon the deuterocanon was the innovation."²¹ The councils were not doing something new. Jerome was.

The Council of Carthage IV (419 AD)

Twenty-two years later, the canon was reaffirmed yet again. As the Protestant theologian Henry R. Percival noted, "Councils were nowhere more frequently called in the primitive times than in Africa." In the year 418–419, all canons formerly made in sixteen councils held at Carthage, one at Milevis, one at Hippo, that had been approved were read and received a new sanction from a great number of bishops meeting in synod at Carthage. This collection became known as the African Code — and it was, in Percival's words, "always in greatest repute in all churches next after the Code of the Universal Church."²²

The 419 council issued what is perhaps the most solemn affirmation of the canon up to that point. With Faustinus, bishop of Pontentia, present on the pope's behalf, the council declared:

It is decreed that nothing but the canonical Scripture may be read under the name of divine scriptures. The canonical scriptures are the following … [lists the protocanon and deuterocanon of the Old and New Testaments]. This decree shall be made known to our brother and fellow priest Boniface, the bishop of Rome, or even to the other bishops for its confirmation; for we have received from the Fathers, that thus should be read in the Church.²³

Notice the last phrase: "we have received from the Fathers, that thus should be read in the Church." The council fathers were not claiming to have invented or constructed a canon. They were claiming to have received one — from the Fathers before them, stretching back to the apostolic age. This is the language of tradition, of inheritance, of custodianship. The council understood itself as a guardian of the canon, not its creator.²⁴

Pope Innocent I and the Confirmation from Rome (405 AD)

The canon of the North African councils did not remain a purely regional affair. It was confirmed by Rome — specifically, by Pope Innocent I in a letter dated February 20, 405 AD.

The occasion was a question from Exsuperius, the bishop of Toulouse, who was — interestingly — a personal friend of Jerome. Jerome had even dedicated his Commentary on Zechariah to Exsuperius. Perhaps having encountered Jerome's opinions on the canon, Exsuperius had become confused and sought an authoritative answer from Rome. Innocent's response was unequivocal. He provided a list of canonical books that mirrors the Decree of Damasus and the decrees of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage. The deuterocanonical books are listed without qualification.²⁵

Think about the irony here. Jerome's own friend went to the pope to ask about the canon — presumably because Jerome had raised doubts in his mind. And the pope's answer contradicted Jerome. Innocent I's letter, as Michuta puts it, "corrects Jerome's mistaken theories and re-affirms the traditional Christian canon in contradistinction to his novel opinions."²⁶

This is important because it shows that Jerome's position was not just a minority view — it was a corrected view. The highest authority in the Western church responded to it and contradicted it. The pope sided with Augustine, not with Jerome.

Other Witnesses Between Carthage and Florence

Before we jump ahead a thousand years to the Council of Florence, we should note that the canon including the deuterocanonical books did not sit dormant during the intervening centuries. It was repeatedly affirmed, practiced, and defended.

The acceptance of the deuterocanonical books was widespread throughout the Christian world. It was present in the Ethiopian Church, the Armenian Church, and the churches of the East. John Cassian (360–426) accepted the deuterocanon as inspired Scripture. So did Theodoret of Cyrus (393–466), Vincent of Lerins (d. c. 450), and many others.²⁷

The so-called Decree of Gelasius (fifth century) also listed the deuterocanonical books among "the true divine Scripture" that is "universally received" by the church.²⁸ Churches that broke away from the main body of Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries — over Christological disputes at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon — nevertheless retained the deuterocanonical books as part of their Old Testament. These include the Chaldean Nestorians, Jacobites, Copts, and Monophysites. Even Islam, which arose in the seventh century and rejected the divinity of Christ entirely, has Muslim jurists who quote from the deuterocanonical books, sometimes attributing them to the books of Moses.²⁹

The point is this: the deuterocanonical books were not some contested, marginal collection that a later council had to fight to include. They were the common property of the Christian church throughout the world, from the earliest centuries through the medieval period. The councils merely formalized what everyone already practiced.

The Council of Trullo (Quinisext, 692 AD)

We should briefly mention the Council of Trullo, also called the Quinisext Council, held in 692 AD. This council met to provide disciplinary canons that were lacking from the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils. Among other things, Trullo adopted the decrees of the Council of Carthage regarding Scripture. However, the situation is complicated because Trullo also adopted the decrees of the Council of Laodicea and the eighty-fifth decree of the so-called Apostolic Canons, which contained different lists that are not entirely harmonized.³¹

It should be noted that Trullo's decrees were never fully sanctioned by the pope, and their exact status remains debated. However, the important point for our purposes is that the council gave primacy to the canon of Carthage — the canon that includes the deuterocanonical books. As the Protestant scholar Osterley argues, Trullo accepted the deuterocanon because it gave primacy to the canons of the Council of Carthage.³²

Moreover, the canons of Trullo received what Henry Percival called "quasi-ecumenical authority" from the subsequent general imprimatur given them by the Seventh Ecumenical Council — the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD). So while the details of Trullo are complex, the overall trajectory is clear: the church's conciliar tradition consistently pointed toward the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books.³³

The Medieval Period: Jerome's Shadow

Despite the clear conciliar decisions of the fourth and fifth centuries, Jerome's opinion on the canon did not die. And we need to be honest about why.

Jerome was not just any theologian. He was the translator of the Vulgate — the Bible that the entire Western church used for a thousand years. And Jerome had embedded his canon opinions into the prefaces of his translation. Every time a monk or scholar opened the Vulgate and read Jerome's preface to a particular book, they encountered Jerome's view that the deuterocanonical books were not truly canonical.³⁴

This created a strange tension. The church's official conciliar position — affirmed at Hippo, Carthage, and by multiple popes — included the deuterocanonical books as canonical Scripture. But the church's standard Bible came with prefaces that said otherwise. It was as if the church's official hymnal came with a foreword saying the hymns weren't really appropriate for worship.

The result was that some medieval theologians — those who were particularly devoted to Jerome as the supreme biblical authority — adopted Jerome's view. As Michuta explains, the prestige of Jerome caused some of his devotees to place him "as the norm that sets all norms in all things biblical." These "Jeromists," as we might call them, represented a minority position within the church, but their voices grew louder during the Renaissance, when the study of Hebrew and Greek languages revived interest in Jerome's scholarship.³⁵

The most notable of these Jeromist figures was Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio), who in the early sixteenth century openly questioned the authority of the deuterocanonical books. Cajetan's position was later cited at the Council of Trent as evidence that "one of our own people" had been "not ashamed to dispute the authority of many of our books and reject them as apocryphal."³⁶

But it is crucial to understand that the Jeromist position was always the minority view. The mainstream of the church — represented by the councils, the popes, and the majority of theologians — consistently maintained the fuller canon. Jerome's opinion was tolerated but never endorsed. And when the time came for the church to speak definitively on the matter, Jerome lost — again.

The Council of Florence (1439–1445 AD)

The Council of Florence is one of the most important ecumenical councils in the history of the church, and its canon decree is often overlooked in Protestant treatments of the canon question. That is a serious oversight, because Florence changes the entire landscape of the debate.

Florence began as the ill-fated Council of Basel and was moved to Florence in January 1439, when an opportunity for reconciliation between the Western and Eastern churches presented itself. The temporary reunion of East and West occurred on July 6, 1439, with the approval of a Decree on Reunion with the Greeks. Other decrees were issued concerning reunion with the Syrian, Armenian, Coptic, Bosnian, Chaldean, and Maronite churches.³⁷

On February 4, 1442, Pope Eugene IV promulgated a bull titled Cantate Domino — also known as the Decree on the Unification of the Jacobites — which was adopted as part of the Council of Florence. This decree included a formal list of the books of Sacred Scripture:

Most strongly it [the Church] believes, professes, and declares … one and the same God as the author of the Old and New Testament, that is, of the law and the prophets, and the gospel, since the saints of both testaments have spoken with the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, whose books, which are contained under the following titles it accepts and venerates: the five books of Moses … Josue, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemias, Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, the Psalms of David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel, twelve prophets … and the books of Maccabees.³⁸

This is enormously significant. Let me highlight several things about this decree.

First, Florence was an ecumenical council — a gathering of the universal church, not merely a regional synod. This is the first time an ecumenical council had promulgated a formal list of inspired Scriptures and raised the issue of the canon to this level of solemnity. The Protestant objection that Hippo and Carthage were "only" regional councils — and therefore not binding — does not apply to Florence.³⁹

Second, the deuterocanonical books are intermixed with the protocanonical books without any distinction. There is no separate category. There is no second tier. Tobit is listed alongside Joshua. Judith appears next to Esther. Wisdom and Sirach are listed with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The council treated them all as equally inspired Scripture — exactly as the most ancient Christian Bibles (the great codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus) had always done.⁴⁰

Third, the wording of the decree is emphatic. The council states that "all" the books of the Old and New Testaments, including the deuterocanon, were written "with the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit" and are to be "accepted and venerated." There is no hedging, no qualification, no suggestion that some books are more inspired than others.

Fourth, Florence used the deuterocanonical books authoritatively within its own proceedings. Sirach 18:23 was quoted as Scripture in session 21. Wisdom 10:19 was quoted with the formula "It is written" in session 3. Tobit 12:20, Susanna (Daniel 13:9), and Wisdom 5:21 were quoted elsewhere by the council without qualification.⁴¹ The council practiced what it preached — it treated the deuterocanonical books as fully canonical Scripture in its own deliberations.

This is a point that cannot be repeated enough. The Protestant apologist Norman Geisler argued that Trent's pronouncement on the deuterocanon was "an obvious polemic against Protestantism" and that "the official infallible addition of books that support prayer for the dead is highly suspect."⁴³ But this argument collapses under the weight of chronology. Florence affirmed the identical canon in 1442 — generations before Luther was even born. The idea that the church's canon was invented in reaction to the Reformation is not just wrong; it is anachronistic. As Michuta points out, "A reaction never precedes the thing it is reacting to."⁴⁴

The Council of Trent (1545–1563; Canon Decree, April 8, 1546)

Now we come to Trent — the council that looms largest in Protestant consciousness when it comes to the canon question. The Council of Trent is often portrayed as the moment when the Catholic Church "added" the deuterocanonical books to the Bible in a desperate attempt to bolster its position against the Reformers. As we have already seen, this portrayal is historically indefensible. But let us look at Trent's canon decree in detail, including the deliberations behind it, to see exactly what happened.

The Council of Trent decided early on to address questions of Scripture and Sacred Tradition because both were prerequisites to all discussions of doctrine. This was the nineteenth ecumenical council of the church, and it was responding to the crisis created by the Protestant Reformation. But as we will see, its handling of the canon was remarkably conservative.⁴⁵

The Decree Itself

On April 8, 1546, the fourth session of the Council of Trent issued a dogmatic decree titled The Sacred Books and the Traditions of the Apostles (often referred to by its Latin incipit, Sacrosanctis). The council fathers declared:

The sacred and holy ecumenical and general Synod of Trent … following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and holds in veneration with an equal affection of piety and reverence all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament, since one God is the author of both, and also the traditions themselves, those that appertain both to faith and to morals, as having been dictated either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession. And so that no doubt may arise in anyone's mind as to which are the books that are accepted by this Synod, it has decreed that a list of the sacred books be added to this decree.⁴⁶

The decree then lists all of the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books of both the Old and New Testaments, again without any distinction in status. And it concludes with a striking statement:

If anyone, however, should not accept the said books as sacred and canonical, entire with all their parts, as they were wont to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition, and if both knowingly and deliberately he should condemn the aforesaid traditions let him be anathema.⁴⁷

The addition of the anathema — a formal canonical penalty — was new. Previous councils had affirmed the canon, but none had attached an anathema to their decisions. This was the element that gave Trent's decree its particular force and finality. But we need to understand why the anathema was added.

The Deliberations Behind the Decree

The official Acts of Trent, along with unofficial diaries and letters from participants, give us remarkable insight into how the council reached its decision. And what they reveal is a council that was determinedly conservative — even more conservative than some of its own members wanted.

The first general congregation (February 8, 1546) discussed whether a decree on the canon was even needed. Cardinal Pacheco argued that the Church Fathers and previous councils had already settled the question. He suggested that Trent merely collect and confirm these decrees without any additional deliberation. This idea won the approval of several council members. Others thought any discussion of the canon was superfluous, assuming that even the Lutherans shared the same views. The majority, however, voted to consider the issue.⁴⁸

In the first particular congregation (February 11), the key question was asked: should the canon of Scripture be received "pure and simple" (pure et simpliciter), or should there be preliminary discussion of objections? The answer was decisive. It was decided "to receive the books simply and entirely as the Church had done in other councils, and especially in the Council of Florence."⁴⁹

That night, the cardinal legates wrote that all three particular congregations had agreed on accepting the books "pure and simple," as was done by "many of the ancient Fathers, by the Third Provincial Council of Carthage, by that of Pope Gelasius, by Innocent I, and lastly by the Council of Florence."⁵⁰ Notice what the council fathers were doing. They were not conducting a fresh investigation of the canon. They were not weighing new evidence. They were looking backward — to Carthage, to Gelasius, to Innocent I, to Florence — and simply saying, "We agree with what the church has already decided."

Two council fathers — Pietro Bertano and Girolamo Seripando — proposed that a distinction be made between the deuterocanon and the protocanon, following Jerome's distinction in his Helmeted Prologue (the Prologus Galeatus). This proposal was offered to the congregation but "failed to win acceptance."⁵¹ The council explicitly considered and explicitly rejected the Jeromist position. Jerome lost at Trent, just as he had lost at Hippo and Carthage.

The second general congregation (February 12) confirmed the findings: the sacred books were to be accepted just as they had been at Florence. By the end of this session, the adoption of these decrees appeared to have gained the assent of all but one of the council fathers.⁵²

The third general congregation (February 15) addressed three final questions. The first: Should Trent approve all the books approved at Florence? Yes. The second: Should a distinction be made in the authority of one book over another? No — the council had already resolved to give the canon "pure and simple without any additional distinctions." The third: Should the objections of the adversaries be discussed and answered? The council debated this at length. Some thought it would be beneficial to address Protestant objections. Others believed this would only invite more dispute. In the end, it was agreed that any objections should be answered by consulting theologians outside the council, not as part of the decree itself.⁵³

The Addition of the Anathema

The next major issue was whether the decree should include an anathema. Cardinal Pacheco proposed its inclusion, arguing that it would remove all doubt about the authority of the canonical lists of the past. Cajetan was specifically mentioned as "one of our own people who was not ashamed to dispute the authority of many of our books and reject them as apocryphal."⁵⁴ The anathema was intended not just to address Protestant challenges but to correct the Jeromist tendencies within the Catholic Church itself.

The vote was close: twenty-four in favor of the anathema, fifteen against. But it carried. And its inclusion gave Trent's decree a force that previous pronouncements had lacked.⁵⁵

As the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) describes it, "The Tridentine decrees from which the above list is extracted was the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the canon, addressed to the Church universal."⁵⁶ This is an important distinction. Trent was not the first pronouncement on the canon — Hippo, Carthage, and Florence had all preceded it. But Trent was the first that was both infallible (by Catholic standards) and fully effective in ending internal debate within the Catholic Church.

The Esdras Question

One objection that sometimes arises is the claim that Trent contradicted Carthage because Trent's list does not include the book of Esdras (1 Esdras or Esdras A), which — some argue — was included in Carthage's "Esdras, two books." This is a complex question that Michuta addresses in detail.⁵⁸

The short answer is that Carthage's "Esdras, two books" almost certainly refers to Ezra and Nehemiah — not to the apocryphal book of Esdras and Ezra-Nehemiah combined. Jerome himself noted that all Christians, both East and West, divided the single book into two. Origen made similar observations. The claim that Trent rejected a book Carthage accepted rests on a misunderstanding of the numbering systems used for the Esdras literature in different manuscript traditions.⁵⁹

Moreover, the Acts of Trent reveal that the council fathers were asked specifically whether books not included in the official list (such as the book of Esdras) should be explicitly rejected by name or simply passed over in silence. Only three fathers voted for explicit rejection. Forty-two voted that these books should be passed over in silence (libri apocryphi sub silentio). So Trent did not reject Esdras; it simply chose not to address the question.⁶⁰

Addressing the Protestant Objections

Now that we have surveyed the conciliar evidence, we need to address the most common Protestant objections to these canon decisions. I want to present these objections fairly and respond to them honestly.

Objection 1: "Hippo and Carthage Were Only Regional Councils"

This is probably the most common objection. The argument goes like this: Hippo and Carthage were local councils of the North African church. They did not have the authority of ecumenical councils. Therefore, their canon decisions are not binding on the universal church.

There is a kernel of truth here. Hippo and Carthage were indeed regional councils, not ecumenical ones. But the objection fails for several reasons.

First, the canon lists from these councils were received and accepted by the universal church. They were confirmed by Pope Innocent I (405 AD), incorporated into the African Code (which Percival says had "quasi-ecumenical authority"), and endorsed by the Decree of Gelasius. The decisions of Hippo and Carthage did not remain regional; they became the accepted position of the entire Western church and much of the East.⁶¹

Second, the ecumenical Council of Florence (1442) confirmed the identical canon. Even if one dismisses Hippo and Carthage as merely regional, one cannot dismiss Florence. Florence was an ecumenical council by any standard, and it listed the deuterocanonical books as inspired Scripture. The "regional councils" objection simply pushes the argument back one step — and then Florence answers it.⁶²

Third, even if the councils were regional, the practice they reflected was universal. As we have seen, Augustine's method for determining the canon was based on the universal practice of the churches. The North African councils were not inventing a canon; they were formalizing what the entire Christian world already practiced. F.F. Bruce conceded exactly this point.⁶³

Fourth — and this is the most important response — Protestants who dismiss these councils must explain on what authority they determine which books belong in the Bible. If the councils that defined the canon are not authoritative, then who is? The Protestant principle of sola Scriptura — Scripture alone — cannot answer the question of what constitutes Scripture. You cannot appeal to the Bible to determine what the Bible is. That is circular. You need some external authority — tradition, church consensus, conciliar decision — to identify the canon. And every such authority that the church has ever exercised has included the deuterocanonical books.⁶⁴

Objection 2: "Trent Was Just Reacting to the Reformation"

We have already dealt with this objection in passing, but it deserves a fuller response. The claim is that Trent defined the deuterocanonical books as Scripture specifically to counter the Protestant Reformers — especially Luther's rejection of 2 Maccabees and its support for prayers for the dead.

The chronological problem is devastating to this argument. Florence affirmed the identical canon in 1442 — 104 years before Trent and 77 years before Luther publicly rejected the deuterocanon at the Leipzig Disputation of 1519. Even the Synod of Sens (1528), which was held specifically in response to the Reformation, based its canon decision on the Decree of Pope Gelasius, the Third Council of Carthage, and Pope Innocent I — all of which predated the Reformation by over a thousand years.⁶⁶

The deliberations of Trent confirm this. The council fathers did not conduct a fresh investigation of the evidence. They did not debate whether the deuterocanonical books were inspired. They simply asked: "Should we affirm what Florence, Carthage, and Hippo already affirmed?" The answer was yes. The only new element was the anathema — and even that was directed as much against internal Jeromist tendencies as against external Protestant challenges.⁶⁷

Was Trent responding to the Reformation? Of course — in the sense that the Reformation made a definitive pronouncement on the canon more urgent. But responding to a challenge is not the same as inventing something new. If someone denies that water is wet, and I issue a formal statement affirming that water is wet, I am "responding" to the denial — but I am not creating a new fact. I am reaffirming an old one. That is precisely what Trent did with the canon.

Objection 3: "The Jewish Canon Did Not Include These Books"

This objection has been addressed extensively in Chapter 19, but a brief summary is appropriate here. The argument is that the Jewish canon — the canon of the Hebrew Bible — did not include the deuterocanonical books. Since Jesus and the apostles were Jews who used the Jewish Scriptures, the argument goes, they would have followed the Jewish canon.

The problem is that there was no single, fixed "Jewish canon" in the time of Jesus. As we argued in Chapter 19, the concept of a closed Hebrew canon is a post-Christian, rabbinic construction. The rabbinic Bible — the canon of twenty-four books (equivalent to the Protestant thirty-nine) — was not finalized until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and its boundaries remained somewhat fluid well into the second century. The Sadducees accepted only the Torah. The Pharisees accepted a broader collection. The Qumran community used books like 1 Enoch and Jubilees alongside the protocanonical texts. And the Hellenistic Jewish community — which produced the Septuagint and from which the early church received its Scriptures — clearly included the deuterocanonical books.⁶⁸

Moreover, as we argued in Chapter 12, there is strong evidence that the rabbinic "closing" of the canon was itself motivated in part by anti-Christian polemic. Rabbi Akiba and his circle narrowed the Hebrew canon and altered the Hebrew text in order to distance Judaism from Christianity. Appealing to the rabbinic canon as the norm for the Christian Old Testament is, in effect, allowing the rabbis who rejected Christ to determine the shape of the Christian Bible.⁶⁹

Augustine understood this. His method for determining the canon was based on what the Christian churches — especially the apostolic churches — had received and used, not on what the rabbis decided after rejecting Christ. The councils followed Augustine, not Jerome. And I believe they were right to do so.

Objection 4: "Not All Church Fathers Accepted the Deuterocanon"

This is true, and we should acknowledge it honestly. As we discussed in Chapter 26, there were church fathers who expressed reservations about the deuterocanonical books. Athanasius placed them in an intermediate category. Rufinus distinguished between "canonical" and "ecclesiastical" books. Some Eastern fathers — influenced by contact with Jewish scholars — adopted shorter canon lists.

But the important question is not whether there was unanimity — there was not, on this or on almost any other theological question in the early church. The important question is where the consensus lay. And the consensus, as both Augustine and the councils recognized, was overwhelmingly in favor of the deuterocanonical books. Even the fathers who expressed theoretical reservations — like Athanasius — continued to quote the deuterocanonical books as Scripture in their own writings and used them to establish doctrine.⁷⁰

As Michuta demonstrates in his comprehensive survey, explicit denials of the deuterocanon's inspiration did not appear until Jerome in the late fourth century. Before Jerome, you can find varying opinions about the exact classification of these books — but virtually no one denied that they were inspired. The distinction between "canonical" and "ecclesiastical" that Jerome popularized was his innovation, not the church's tradition.⁷¹

Objection 5: "Calvin Said the Question Was 'Undecided'"

In his Antidote to the Council of Trent (1547), John Calvin argued that the canon question was unsettled in the early church. He wrote: "It is well known that Jerome states as the common opinion of earlier times" that the deuterocanonical books were ecclesiastical, not canonical. Calvin then acknowledged that "the same view on which the Fathers of Trent now insist was held in the Council of Carthage" and was followed by Augustine — but he attempted to dismiss this by saying, "as he testifies that all of his age did not take the same view, let us assume that the point was then undecided."⁷²

Calvin's argument is revealing — and deeply flawed. He is forced to concede that the canon of the Council of Trent had historical precedent in the Council of Carthage and the writings of Augustine. But he tries to minimize this by portraying the matter as "undecided." As Michuta observes, this gets things exactly backward. Calvin holds Jerome's outlook to be the "common opinion of earlier times," but Jerome himself — who introduced the Hebraica veritas — knew that the truth was otherwise. Jerome was the innovator; Augustine was defending the existing consensus. Augustine's canon was based on the "clear consensus of the early Church, especially those churches with historical ties to the apostles." Jerome's was based on his own novel theory about the superiority of the Hebrew text.⁷³

Furthermore, Augustine's acknowledgment that "all of his age did not take the same view" is simply an honest recognition that Jerome dissented — it is not an admission that the question was "undecided." If we applied Calvin's logic consistently, we would have to say that the doctrine of the Trinity was "undecided" in the fourth century because the Arians disagreed with it. The existence of dissent does not make a question undecided. It just means someone disagrees.

The First Vatican Council (1870): A Final Clarification

One additional conciliar pronouncement deserves mention. The First Vatican Council (1869–1870) reaffirmed the canon of Trent and added an important clarification about the nature of canonicity. Vatican I explicitly rejected the idea that the church "made" or "created" the canon. Instead, the council declared that the canonical books are canonical because they were written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and were entrusted to the church by divine providence.⁷⁴

This distinction matters because it addresses a common misconception — one held by both some Protestants and some Catholics. The church did not make the deuterocanonical books inspired by declaring them canonical. They were already inspired. The church's role was to recognize and formally attest to what God had already done. As Michuta puts it: "The Church is not somehow above Scripture; instead, the Church is Scripture's duly authorized custodian."⁷⁵

This is a point that evangelicals should find deeply sympathetic. We believe in the inspiration of Scripture — that God, through the Holy Spirit, inspired the human authors to write what He intended. We do not believe that church councils make Scripture inspired. But we do recognize that God used the church — guided by the Holy Spirit — to identify and preserve the Scriptures that He had inspired. The question is simply whether the church got it right. And I believe the consistent witness of the councils — from Hippo to Carthage to Florence to Trent — shows that it did.

The Conciliar Witness: A Summary

Let me pull together the evidence we have examined in this chapter. The conciliar record on the canon is remarkably consistent:

The Decree of Damasus / Council of Rome (c. 382 AD): Listed all protocanonical and deuterocanonical books as divine Scripture.⁷⁶

The Council of Hippo (393 AD): The first council known with certainty to produce a formal canon list. Included the deuterocanonical books.⁷⁷

The Council of Carthage III (397 AD): Confirmed Hippo's list. Augustine was present and influential. Requested Roman confirmation. Included the deuterocanonical books.⁷⁸

Pope Innocent I (405 AD): Confirmed the canon of Hippo and Carthage in a letter to Exsuperius. Included the deuterocanonical books.⁷⁹

The Council of Carthage IV / African Code (419 AD): Reaffirmed the canon with heightened solemnity. Sent the canon to Rome for confirmation. Included the deuterocanonical books.⁸⁰

The Council of Florence (1442 AD): The first ecumenical council to promulgate a formal canon list. Issued through the Cantate Domino decree. Listed all deuterocanonical books without distinction from the protocanonical books.⁸¹

The Council of Trent (1546 AD): Reaffirmed the canon of Florence, Carthage, and Hippo. Added an anathema for added solemnity. Explicitly rejected the Jeromist proposal to distinguish between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books.⁸²

The First Vatican Council (1870 AD): Reaffirmed Trent's canon and clarified that the church recognizes but does not create canonicity.⁸³

That is a chain of conciliar testimony stretching over nearly 1,500 years — from the late fourth century to the nineteenth century. Every single link in that chain includes the deuterocanonical books. There is not a single council in the history of the church that has produced a formal canon list excluding them.

The Deeper Question: Who Decides What Is Scripture?

Underneath all of the historical arguments about councils and dates and decrees lies a deeper question — a question that, I believe, is ultimately more important than any of the individual historical details. That question is: Who has the authority to determine which books belong in the Bible?

For Catholics and Orthodox Christians, the answer is relatively straightforward: the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has the authority to recognize and define the canon. The councils exercised that authority, and their decisions are binding.

For Protestants, the question is much harder. The doctrine of sola Scriptura — Scripture alone as the ultimate authority — creates what we might call the "canon problem." If Scripture is the ultimate authority, then we need to know what Scripture is before we can submit to its authority. But Scripture itself does not contain a table of contents. The sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible do not include a divinely inspired list of which books belong in the Bible. So we cannot use Scripture alone to determine what Scripture is. We need something else — tradition, church consensus, conciliar authority, or some other criterion.⁸⁴

Every Protestant attempt to solve this problem ultimately relies on some authority outside of Scripture itself. Some Protestants appeal to history — "We follow the canon that the early church recognized." But which early church? And which recognition? As we have seen, every formal canon list produced by the early church includes the deuterocanonical books. If Protestants are genuinely following the early church's recognition, they should accept the deuterocanon.

Other Protestants appeal to internal criteria — "We recognize Scripture by its self-authenticating quality, the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and its doctrinal consistency." But these criteria are subjective and have produced wildly different results in practice. Luther used these criteria to question James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation — books that virtually all Protestants today accept without question. If the "self-authenticating quality" of Scripture is the criterion, why did the greatest Reformer get the New Testament canon partly wrong?⁸⁵

Still others appeal to the Jewish canon — "We follow the canon of the Hebrew Bible because Jesus and the apostles were Jews." But as we have argued throughout this book, the Hebrew canon as we know it is a post-Christian, rabbinic construction. It was shaped in part by anti-Christian polemic. And the apostles themselves used the Septuagint — which included the deuterocanonical books — as their primary Bible.

I do not raise these points to be polemical or to attack my Protestant brothers and sisters. I raise them because I believe the canon question is one that Protestants need to take far more seriously than most of us have. And I believe the councils — Hippo, Carthage, Florence, and Trent — give us the best answer the church has ever provided. Not because councils are infallible in every pronouncement they make, but because they represent the collective, Spirit-guided wisdom of the church, drawing on apostolic tradition and universal practice to recognize what God has inspired.

As Michuta puts it, sola Scriptura "places the scriptures as the final court of appeal, but it is unable to identify which judges are to sit on its bench."⁸⁶ The councils identified those judges. And they included the deuterocanonical books among them.

An Evangelical Response: Why I Side with the Councils

I am a Protestant. I am an evangelical. I believe in salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. I affirm the five solas of the Reformation — though I think the Reformers' understanding of some of them was incomplete and in need of correction. And I am increasingly persuaded that the councils got the Old Testament canon right.

Let me be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying that Protestants need to accept Catholic doctrines about the papacy, the Magisterium, or the infallibility of councils in order to accept the deuterocanonical books. I am not saying that the councils were right about everything. I am saying that when every formal canon list in the history of the church includes the same books — and when the only voices arguing for their exclusion are Jerome (whose position was corrected by the councils), a handful of medieval Jeromists, and the Protestant Reformers (whose canon decisions were driven in part by polemical concerns) — then the burden of proof lies very heavily on those who want to exclude these books.

I also want to be transparent about something. I used to hold the standard Protestant position on the deuterocanonical books. I assumed they were rightly excluded. I assumed the Reformers had good reasons for removing them. And I had never actually read them. When I finally did read them — when I encountered the breathtaking theology of the Wisdom of Solomon, the haunting beauty of Sirach, the stirring courage of the Maccabean martyrs — I began to wonder whether I had been wrong. When I studied the conciliar evidence — the evidence we have examined in this chapter — I became increasingly convinced that I had been.

The councils speak with a unified voice across more than a millennium. The deuterocanonical books are Scripture. They were received by the apostolic churches. They were read in every church of Christ from the earliest times. They were affirmed by the greatest theologians of the early church. They were defended by the councils against Jerome's innovation. And they were confirmed by ecumenical authority at Florence. Trent merely reaffirmed what had already been declared.

In the next chapter, we will examine what happened when the Protestant Reformers — despite this enormous weight of evidence — decided to remove these books from the Bible. That decision, I believe, was a mistake. But it was an understandable mistake, rooted in genuine theological concerns and in an incomplete understanding of the historical evidence. Understanding why the Reformers made that decision — and why it was wrong — will be the task of Chapter 29.

Conclusion

The conciliar record on the Old Testament canon is clear, consistent, and overwhelming. From Hippo (393) to Carthage (397, 419) to Florence (1442) to Trent (1546) to Vatican I (1870), the church's councils have unanimously affirmed the deuterocanonical books as part of the inspired canon of Scripture. Not one council in the history of the church has produced a formal canon list that excludes them.

The claim that Trent "added" books to the Bible is not just inaccurate — it is the exact opposite of the truth. Trent merely reaffirmed what had been the church's position since the late fourth century. The council fathers at Trent explicitly based their decision on the precedents of Hippo, Carthage, Innocent I, Gelasius, and Florence. They explicitly rejected the proposal to adopt Jerome's distinction between canonical and ecclesiastical books. Their decree was, as the historical evidence clearly shows, a conservative reaffirmation of existing tradition — not an innovation.

If the councils of the church have any authority at all — and if we trust them for the New Testament canon, we must grant them some authority — then their consistent, repeated, emphatic affirmation of the deuterocanonical books deserves our serious attention. The question is not whether the councils spoke. The question is whether we are willing to listen.

I believe we should listen. And I believe that when we do, we will find ourselves drawn back to the Bible that built the church — the Bible that includes the deuterocanonical books that the councils affirmed and the Reformers mistakenly removed.

Bibliography

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Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

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Geisler, Norman, and Ralph MacKenzie. Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997.

McDonald, Lee Martin. The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority. 3rd ed. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007.

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