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It's a bit sad to see someone with the intellect, education, and accomplishment of Beckwith, with such a shallow, and actually simply wrong, understanding of the basis of the "normative authority" (using his term) of holy Scripture.

Proof to me, that intellect, education and accomplishment are no proof of understanding, competence or wisdom.

October 31 is only three days away. For Protestants, it is Reformation Day, the date in 1517 on which Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to that famous door in Wittenberg, Germany. Since I returned to the Catholic Church in April 2007, each year the commemoration has become a time of reflection about my own journey and the puzzles that led me back to the Church of my youth.
One of those puzzles was the relationship between the Church, Tradition, and the canon of Scripture. As a Protestant, I claimed to reject the normative role that Tradition plays in the development of Christian doctrine. But at times I seemed to rely on it. For example, on the content of the biblical canon – whether the Old Testament includes the deuterocanonical books (or “Apocrypha”), as the Catholic Church holds and Protestantism rejects. I would appeal to the exclusion of these books as canonical by the Jewish Council of Jamnia (A.D. 90-100) as well as doubts about those books raised by St. Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, and a few other Church Fathers.
My reasoning, however, was extra-biblical. For it appealed to an authoritative leadership that has the power to recognize and certify books as canonical that were subsequently recognized as such by certain Fathers embedded in a tradition that, as a Protestant, I thought more authoritative than the tradition that certified what has come to be known as the Catholic canon. This latter tradition, rejected by Protestants, includes St. Augustine as well as the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), the Third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), the Fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 419), and the Council of Florence (A.D. 1441).

The 16th Century Reformers' understanding of the authority of scripture does NOT rely on certain writings being recognized by Church authorities. This may be what Dr. Beckwith was taught--or what he understood, or what many Protestants today understand is the basis of the final authority of the Bible, but, that is NOT how the original Reformers understood it. The direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit--present when the ink of the Apostles dried on the papyrus of what became the New Testament--is what established the authority of the holy Scriptures.

How was that inspiration recognized by the world? By the power of testimony of the first (and only) Apostles. The Church is "built," according to the Apostle Paul, "on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." (Ephesians 2:20)

To say that the authority of the Church is equal to Scripture...because the Church authorities recognized and formally approved of Scripture, is a bit like saying that if Congress passed, next week, a resolution, recognizing and approving the authority of the U. S. Constitution, that Congress shows that it has equal authority to the Constitution... What nonsense!!! Congress, and all the US Government, as it is formed (in theory at least)....is a CREATION of the U. S. Constitution, NOT it's partner, nor certainly its Master.

Of course the Constitution, is a creation of the 1st Continental Congress--the Founding Fathers--analogous to the "apostles and prophets" St. Paul spoke of...but, that "founding father" status was not handed down to the next Congress, or generations of US politicians, it was only found in that first generation. Yes, the analogy breaks down, as the Constitution can be amended, and a new continental congress could possibly be formed--throwing out the old US Constitution (shudder...let us hope not). Such are the institutions of men. None-the-less, significant parallels remain.

So too, the Church...is a creation of a group of "founding fathers" that is the original Apostles--whom they themselves identified as someone who knew Jesus on earth personally and was a "witness to His resurrection." (Acts 1:22). The undisputed record of their teachings, is found recorded in ONE place, that is the New Testament books, that is the Constitution...of the Church. Does that make the Church, her traditions, her councils, her wise teachers (such as Augustine or Aquinas), of ZERO authority (as many evangelicals, or other mis-taught Christians, perhaps such as Beckwith was....think)? No, not at all--as with the US Constitution is toward the US government's secular authority, the Bible is the foundation, and establishment for Church authority--both in council, wise individuals, and, traditions....AS LONG AS THOSE LESSOR AUTHORITIES STAY UNDER THE "CONSTITUTIONAL," or full, final, and inerrant, AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.

But if, according to my Protestant self, a Jewish council and a few Church Fathers are the grounds on which I am justified in saying what is the proper scope of the Old Testament canon, then what of New Testament canonicity? So, ironically, given my Protestant understanding of ecclesiology, then the sort of authority and tradition that apparently provided me warrant to exclude the deuterocanonical books from Scripture – binding magisterial authority with historical continuity – is missing from the Church during the development of New Testament canonicity.

Before the Council of Trent of the 1560s, there was no formal & final recognition of the Apocryphal books by the Roman Catholic authorities. In fact, the name "Apocrypha" is the name which the translator of the Latin Vulgate--THE medieval Bible--St. Jerome gave it--because he didn't believe the Apocryphal books were canon. Neither did Origen, Melito of Sardis, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Hilary of Poitiers, Epiphanius, Basil the Great, Jerome, Rufinus, even Pope Gregory the Great--and perhaps the majority of ancient Church Fathers, and medieval theologians. The Jewish religion in Jesus' day--a point of which Jesus never refuted--too, rejected these books as canonical--in fact the LXX (Greek version of the Old Testament--primary bible to 1st Century Jews) excluded the Apocrypha at first (ca. 200 BC) only including it later.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, maintains that this magisterial authority was in fact present in the early Church and thus gave its leadership the power to recognize and fix the New Testament canon. So, ironically, the Protestant case for a deuterocanonical-absent Old Testament canon depends on Catholic intuitions about a tradition of magisterial authority.

Wrong. It depends on recognizing the Holy Spirit worked even among the Jews...allowing them the discernment between His word, and the legends and fairy tales (see the Apocryphal book of Tobit, or Bell and the Dragon--as examples of completely nonsensical legends--NOT found in the REAL bible) of the Apocrypha.

This led to two other tensions. First, in defense of the Protestant Old Testament canon, I argued, as noted above, that although some of the Church’s leading theologians and several regional councils accepted what is known today as the Catholic canon, others disagreed and embraced what is known today as the Protestant canon. It soon became clear to me that this did not help my case, since by employing this argumentative strategy, I conceded the central point of Catholicism: the Church is logically prior to the Scriptures. That is, if the Church, until the Council of Florence’s ecumenical declaration in 1441, can live with a certain degree of ambiguity about the content of the Old Testament canon, that means that sola scriptura was never a fundamental principle of authentic Christianity.

(Sigh)The good-news of the Apostles, or really, through the Apostles from the Holy Spirit, is what created the Church. The Church is not logically prior to the gospel which created her... That good news--with the authority of the Aposles--was written-down, covenant/legal-fashion ("if it ain't written, its not enforceable..." old legal expression) in the New Testament books. Do you want the authority of the Apostles? Look to the Bible, not a very demonstrably fallible human institution.

After all, if Scripture alone applies to the Bible as a whole, then we cannot know to which particular collection of books this principle applies until the Bible’s content is settled. Thus, to concede an officially unsettled canon for Christianity’s first fifteen centuries seems to make the Catholic argument that sola scriptura was a sixteenth-century invention and, therefore, not an essential Christian doctrine.

This only is logical IF, and only IF, the bible is only as authoritative as the Church recognizes it to be--and that logically assumes Church equal in authority to scripture. Is Dr. Becket claiming that before the Councils of Carthage et al., the NT books had no authority? Nonsense! From the day they were written down--they had absolute Apostolic authority of the Holy Spirit...recognized officially, or not.

Second, because the list of canonical books is itself not found in Scripture – as one can find the Ten Commandments

(ACTUALLY, THE NUMBERING OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IS NOWHERE IN SCRIPTURE....AND THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO NUMBER THEM)

or the names of Christ’s apostles – any such list, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be an item of extra-biblical theological knowledge. Take, for example, a portion of the revised and expanded Evangelical Theological Society statement of faith suggested (and eventually rejected by the membership) by two ETS members following my return to the Catholic Church. It states that, “this written word of God consists of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments and is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior.”
But the belief that the Bible consists only of sixty-six books is not a claim of Scripture, since one cannot find the list in it, but a claim about Scripture as a whole. That is, the whole has a property – i.e., “consisting of sixty-six books,” – that is not found in any of the parts. In other words, if the sixty-six books are the supreme authority on matters of belief, and the number of books is a belief, and one cannot find that belief in any of the books, then the belief that Scripture consists of sixty-six particular books is an extra-biblical belief, an item of theological knowledge that is prima facie non-biblical.

Only logical if the Bible is treated like any other book...without 1st acknowledging its supernatural inspiration. The books of the Bible, with utterly unique authority--cannot logically appeal to exterior authority to prove themselves--hence they are, as God is Himself...("I am, that I am") self-authenticating. That we, the Church have recognized that list of books, in no way proves that we the Church have equal authority to those books (see the Continental Congress reasoning above).

For the Catholic, this is not a problem, since the Bible is the book of the Church, and thus there is an organic unity between the fixing of the canon and the development of doctrine and Christian practice.

Except for the fact that anyone who is informed and honest can see, a very fallible, broken, sinful visible Church--in her present and her history--and if she is equal in authority to God's Word--what kind of God is that???

Although I am forever indebted to my Evangelical brethren for instilling and nurturing in me a deep love of Scripture, it was that love that eventually led me to the Church that had the authority to distinguish Scripture from other things.

An authority LESS than the Bible, created by, and derived from, the Holy Spirit working in the prophets and the Apostles....who also created the Scripture--God's Word--to whom all authorities--even that of Rome--must bow.