The Integrity of the Biblical Canon in Light of Its Historical ...

MCDONALD: The Integrity of the Biblical Canon 119
basis of orthodoxy and not canonization. This was also the practice of
Irenaeus, who responded to the threat of the Gnostics on the basis of
the "apostolic deposit" of teaching that was handed on in the churches
through the bishops—his regula fidei.
What seems to lead away from the notion that the NT canon was
largely settled in the second century is the doubt that persists in the
Church in the fourth century. Eusebius, in the first third of that century,
lists books that were circulating in the churches and classifies
them into three categories: recognized, disputed, and rejected (Hist.
eccl. 3.25). By the end of the fourth century, the disputed category had
largely fallen away and only the accepted and rejected categories remained.
It is amazing that such discussions, primarily in Eusebius in
the first part of that century and in numerous of the church fathers in
the latter part, would still be going on if the matter of the contents of
the biblical canon had been largely settled in the second century. We
have no problem here in agreeing with Everett Ferguson that the process
of canonization began in the second century with the recognition
of some Christian writings as Scripture, but there is difficulty in saying
that the process was largely concluded in that century. In fact,
where do the church fathers discuss such notions at all in the second
century? There were no categories or terms for the identification of
such literature in the second century, not even the terms Old Testament
and New Testament as Ferguson has argued. 57 These terms,
although originating in the second century probably with Irenaeus,
were not widely used in the churches until the fourth century when
Eusebius still had to clarify their meaning for his readers, and even
then there was an inconsistent use of the terms. Both Eusebius (Hist.
eccl. 5.8.8) and Epiphanius (Panarion 76), for example, include the
Wisdom of Solomon in a collection of NT Scriptures. 58 The terms for
canonization, therefore, were simply not current lingua franca in the
Church until the fourth century.
The process of canonization probably began its final stages during
the burning of books brought on by Diocletian in his persecution of
the Church that was initiated in 303. When Christians were being
asked to hand over their sacred literature under threat of death or
57. See E. Ferguson's review of G. M. Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the
Development of the Canon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992) in JTS 44 (1993) 696-97.
58. The terms were unfamiliar to large sections of the Christian community in the
third and fourth centuries. See, for example, how Origen speaks of the terms in his
Commentary on John 5.4 and de Princ. 4.11. See also Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.9.5, who shows
in his reference to the "so-called Old Testament" the lack of popularity of the terms in
his community. Further, the fact that Wisdom of Solomon could appear in a NT list in
the fourth century speaks against the widespread understanding of the meaning of the
term to identify a fixed collection of Scriptures in the second century.