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Wmfights, thank you for posting this. It is always interesting to read about the formation of the canon.

I think one point of misunderstanding (misunderstood by some Catholics, too, as well as by some others) arises when people don't distinguish between "Traditional" and "Defined Dogmatic". Much of the certain Tradition of the Church is not formulated as a dogmatic definiton until some challenge or crisis requires precise argument and formal restatement.

A formal, painstaking recapitulation of what the Church holds, does not mean the Church has just invented or imposed it on the spot. It means that the ancient truths have been (again) iterated in a clear pronouncement.

Examples abound. For instance, the Church always had an Incarnational and Trinitarian understanding of Christ; but one wouldn't find those exact, precise words used much before the early Ecumenical Councils. This doesn't indicate that the Church "didn't believe" in the Incarnation or the Trinity before the 4th century; it just indiates that the explanations became sharper and clearer: often in response to the goad of controversy.

This issue arises when we speak of the canon of Scripture. Some claim that the Church did not authoritatively define the canon of Scripture until the Council of Trent and, since that Council was a reaction to the Reformation, the deuterocanon can be considered an “addition” to the original Christian canon. This is not correct.

Regional councils of the early Church had enumerated the books of the Bible time and again prior to the Reformation, always upholding the current Catholic canon. Examples include the Council of Rome (382), the Council of Hippo (393), and the Third and Fourth Councils of Carthage (397, 418). All of these affirmed the Catholic canon as we know it today, while none affirmed the Protestant canon.

If you can find one Christian Council that lists only a short, 39-book O.T. Canon in the 4th or 5th centuries, I would be interested in hearing of it. It would be news to me.

Yes, it could be argued that the "short list" comes to us from a council --- but not a Christian one! It comes from the ca. 100 AD Jewish scholars of Jamnia (Yavne), who were reacting against the successful Christian use of the Septuagint in gaining Jewish converts to the Gospel of Christ.

So either way (39-book or 46-book) you have to depend on a council: but why a Christian would want to revert to the authority of an anti-Christian rabbinical council, puzzles me.

To be sure, there was plenty of discussion and some dissent on such things, even among churchmen. But the Christian Councils were unanimous. Even a thousand years later, while seeking reunion with the Copts, the Church affirmed the same canon at the ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442.

True, it was when the canon became a serious issue following the Protestant schism in the early 1500s, that the Council of Trent "dogmatically defined" the full, 46 book O.T. Canon. But it was same Canon that the Church had traditionally and consistently taught for more than 1,000 years.