Antithesis.
Antithesis.
§ 196. Bellarmine (De verbo Dei, bk. 1, c. 12) and nearly all the Papists place the Book of Judith in the canon. For this they especially use two arguments: [I] From the Council of Nicaea. In his preface to Judith, Jerome witnesses that “the Council of Nicaea counted this book in Holy Scripture.”
We respond. (1) Jerome had not yet been born when the Council of Nicaea met. Therefore he is not an eyewitness. If Eusebius, who was present at the council, or Athanasius or others who were alive at that time were to make this claim about the Council of Nicaea, it would have greater trustworthiness and authority.
(2) There is a great difference between “We read that the Council counted” and “The Council counted the Book of Judith in the number of Holy Scripture.” Jerome says the former but certainly not the latter, for he testifies in an appended note to Eusebius’s Chronic. and in his Dialog. adversus Luciferian., c. 7: “The Church has earnestly embraced the doctrines of the Council of Nicaea.” He says, however, that the Church did not accept the Book of Judith. Therefore Jerome himself does not believe what he wrote elsewhere, namely, that the Council of Nicaea counted this book in Holy Scripture. Hence he was only reciting this as the opinion of someone else. In his prologue to the Proverbs, he expressly says, “The Church indeed should read the Book of Judith, but she should not accept it among the canonical Scriptures.” He says, “Judith is not in the canon” (Prologus galeatus).
(3) Jerome does not reveal where it is read that the Council of Nicaea accepted this book.
(4) In the acts of the council, which are extant today, no trace of this matter is found. Alanus Copus suspects: “At one time there were many more canons than the twenty that we have today” (Dial., bk. 1, c. 7). The Papist Lindanus, however, responds: “The holy opinion of the fathers of Laodicea does not admit it.” Furthermore, this occurs nowhere in the eighty canons of the Council of Nicaea that Dominicus Nicolinus published.
(5) Athanasius, who was present at the council, clearly rejects this book in his Synopsis. Epiphanius, who speaks highly of the trustworthiness of the Council of Nicaea (Haeres. 76), omits the Book of Judith when he lists the canonical books (De mens. et ponder.). Hilary, who suffered exile because of decrees of the Council of Nicaea, does not list this book with the canonical writings in his prologue to the Psalms. Rufinus (Expos. Symb.), a contemporary of Jerome, and Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. 4) reject it. To make this brief, none of those who wrote about the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea mention this matter.
(6) If the Council of Nicaea took only this book into the number of the canonical Scriptures, it burdened with heavy prejudice those remaining books that it skipped. You see, why did it omit Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, and the other apocryphal books that the Papists nevertheless consider to be canonical?
(7) If the Council of Nicaea approved of this book, it approved it as it was written in Greek, a fact that Sixtus Senensis acknowledges (Biblioth., bk. 1, sect. 2). However, if it did approve it as it was written in Greek, in Bellarmine’s judgment it approved a lie. Bellarmine (loc. cit., § Nec vero) prefers Jerome’s Latin version to the Greek text in order to escape the force of our argument that the temple was not leveled before the Babylonian captivity, for this is clearly written in the Greek. Yet Jerome’s Latin edition was not in existence at the time of the Council of Nicaea; therefore that council could not have approved it.
(8) Had the Council of Nicaea judged this book to be canonical, the Council of Laodicea, which met shortly after that of Nicaea, would not have left this book out of the canon and among the apocryphal writings.
(9) It is not the same for something to be canonical Scripture and for it to be counted in the number of the Sacred Scriptures. You see, there are counted in the number of the Sacred Scriptures whatever writings are contained in the Bible and are read, along with other books, for the edification of the people. But these are not immediately, just because of that, canonical and effective for the confirmation of dogmas.
(10) Bellarmine himself acknowledges that when the expression “Sacred Scriptures” is taken in a broader sense, it applies not only to canonical but also to apocryphal and ecclesiastical books (De concil., bk. 2, c. 12, § Dico secundo).
(11) No man either in or outside of a council is permitted without definite testimonies or firm proofs to take into the canon or make equal to the canonical books an apocryphal book that the judgment of the Church has rejected, unless he operates with prophetic or apostolic authority and is equipped with a divine testimony that does not err. But we cannot attribute such authority to the Council of Nicaea.
(12) Guilelmus Lindanus, a Papist writer, treats all of these honestly. He argues in Panopl., bk. 3, c. 3, that Jerome’s statement in his Epistle 10 ad Furiam (“If, however, this volume is accepted,” etc.) makes him have serious doubts as to whether the Council of Nicaea prescribed a certain canon of Scripture to the Church. He says:
If the Council of Nicaea put the Book of Judith along with others into the canon, why did the Council of Laodicea not follow this eighty years later? Why did Nazianzen not mention it? Rather, it is read that the council reckoned it, as Jerome says, and this seems to me to indicate the suspicion of a doubter. Of course, perhaps one may think that this Nicaean canon on the canonical books was one among many other such canons, at least forty-seven of them (as, indeed, I think), which, according to Julius I, the bishop of Rome, were cut out by the trickery of heretics and stolen away from the Church. Lest we support this, the devout opinion concerning the most holy fathers who gathered at the Council of Laodicea compels [us to say] that they, at that time when the knowledge of the canons especially adorned the bishops, were not so forgetful of both their name and duty so as either to be ignorant of them or, having investigated them, not to require them. Furthermore, if it actually is read what Jerome says is read—that the Council of Nicaea reckoned the Book of Judith among the canonical books—what is Jerome’s intent in writing in his preface to the Books of Solomon that the Church indeed reads the Books of Judith, Tobit, and the Maccabees but does not accept them among the canonical Scriptures?
Later Lindanus writes: “I am led to think that nothing about this matter was defined in the Council of Nicaea because the Sixth Council of Constantinople, the Trullan Council, approved the Laodicean canon on the canonical Scriptures. It seems to me that it would not at all have done this had the men at Laodicea either not accepted or shortened the canon of Holy Scriptures that those 318 learned, holy fathers of Nicaea had designated.” Lindanus says all this truthfully.
(13) Melchior Canus admits: “A certain canon of Scripture had not been defined at the time of Rufinus” (Locorum comm., bk. 2, c. 11). Yet Rufinus lived after the Council of Nicaea.
§ 197. [II] They argue from the authority of certain fathers. Junilius Africanus (De partibus divinae legis, bk. 1) and Isidore (Etymolog., bk. 6, c. 1) testify: “The Church of Christ elevates and proclaims this book among the divine books.”
We respond. (1) They actually are making the opposite claim. When Junilius (loc. cit., c. 3) had listed as the historical books of the Old Testament the five Books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and the four Books of Kings, a pupil asked whether there were other books that had to do with sacred history. He answered: “There are some who add 1 and 2 Chronicles, the two Books of Ezra, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Esther, etc.” (De part. div. legis, bk. 1, c. 3). Disturbed as he was by these words, Bellarmine seems to think that Junilius considered those books on the same level as the canonical books. But when Junilius’s pupil next inquires, “Why do those books not run with the canonical books?” Junilius responds: “Because these were accepted among the Jews with this difference as well, as Jerome and others testify.”
(2) It is a great mistake of Junilius that he denies that the Hebrews kept the two books of Chronicles, the two of Ezra, Esther, etc., among the canonical books. It is therefore impossible for him to be a suitable witness about the canon of Scripture.
(3) We have spoken about Isidore’s judgment earlier.38
(4) The testimony of one or two does not grant canonical authority to any book. Rather, the unanimous approval of the Church is required for this.