The Myth that Church Councils Established the Canon Shows Up in a Surprising Source
UPDATE (May 7, 2024): The Christianity Today article described below has been updated and now includes an editorial notice of correction
UPDATE (May 7, 2024): The article described below in Christianity Today has been corrected and now includes this acknowledgment: “This article has been updated to clarify that the fourth-century church councils were not establishing biblical canon.”
_____
One of the most widespread myths about the canon of Scripture is that the books in the Bible were established by one or more church councils. I’ve written about the origins of this falsehood here and in my book Why Should I Trust the Bible? in addition to devoting an entire podcast episode to the topic. John Meade has also written about the canon and the councils, unpacking the ways that this legend has worked its way into popular imagination.
Nevertheless, due to the widespread reach of this myth in the aftermath of The Da Vinci Code and popular books from skeptics, I am no longer surprised when news articles persist in repeating these claims.
I was surprised, however, to see this falsehood recycled recently in Christianity Today.
According to an article in Christianity Today entitled “One of the Oldest Books in Existence Will Be Sold, Worrying Scholars,”
Which “Councils”? And Who “Established” the Canon at These Councils?
“The codex… was written,” according to this article in Christianity Today, “before the late-fourth-century councils, when the canon of Scripture began to be established” (italics added).
Τhis statement left me confused at multiple levels. I’m not sure what “late-fourth-century councils” might be intended.
The only church-wide council that took place in the late fourth century was the Council of Constantinople, which never addressed the canon at all.
The thirty-ninth festal letter from Athanasius of Alexandria was sent to the churches in A.D. 367, and the overseer of Alexandria does list the books of the Bible in this letter. Still, his letter didn’t establish the canon, and his letter had no connection to any church council.
In A.D. 397, a council in Carthage did consider which texts should be regarded as Scripture, but this regional synod did not initiate the establishment of the canon in the church.
Regardless of which councils were intended in the article, multiple second-century documents reveal that the formation of the canon was already well underway less than a century after the last books of the New Testament were written. The fragments from the pen of Papias, the report from Serapion of Antioch about the Gospel of Peter, the Muratorian fragment, the linkage of the fourfold Gospel to the four corners of the earth in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyon—all of these documents and more testify to widespread establishment of a core New Testament canon of twenty or so texts far earlier than the fourth century.
The canon of Scripture was not “established” by any church council in the fourth century or any other century. The acceptance of the books of the Bible did take place over time, and the process was complex and sometimes messy—but no church council established these books as authoritative, and the canon’s establishment did not begin in the late fourth century.
I have no doubt that this was an honest mistake, and I’m sure the author was well-intended in every way. I am still delighted to write for Christianity Today whenever I have the chance. And yet, this is a significant error that a cursory search of historical sources could have easily corrected. The result of this mistake is further multiplication of a myth that has no basis in fact.