Truth Unites - No, Jerome Didn't Accept a Larger Canon

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Gavin Ortlund responds to a video at Capturing Christianity about Jerome's view of the canon.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Hey, everybody, just a quick video. Maybe, oh, well, we'll see how long it takes. I just want to interact with Cameron Bertuzi's video. He put out a video called correcting Gavin Ortland on the canon with the word correcting in all caps, correcting! Correcting! I do that, too. Sometimes caps give you emphasis.

Anyways, the video focused on Jerome. So we're just going to drill down into Jerome. So if you're wondering, should I watch this video? It's about basically Jerome's view of the canon. and if you're interested in that, hopefully we'll get clarity on that. My video that they were responding to was in response to a claim made by the channel Voice of Reason about church history, and so I had gone through a number of different church fathers, but the discussion here is just on Jerome, so that's fine, so let's work through

Jerome. Basically, the claim on the table that they're making is that Jerome changed his mind about the canon twice. So early on he changed his mind to reject them, and then he changed it again, later in his life, to receive and accept the Deutero-canonical books as canonical scripture. And I think this is wrong. Such a view requires that Jerome, not just Jerome is flip-flopping in his view of the canon, but the same method of argumentation requires that basically all the major patristic voices in this conversation, like Athanasius and Cyril of Jerusalem and about four or five others, are also flip-flopping on their view in the canon. So I'll show that. It also means Jerome was fundamentally misinterpreted by the medieval Christians. And it also means that basically

contemporary scholarship has just totally missed this somehow. And I think working through each of these points will just show this is not a credible view of Jerome. First of all, just to just point out, the view that I'm arguing for for Jerome is pretty much standard, I think. The idea that so in my video, I discussed how the earlier, the scholarly discussion is whether earlier in Jerome's career, there's a change. And that's a discussion. And I talked about that. Basically, the question is, did he always reject the Dudero canonicals, or did he accept them early on and then come to reject them? And I said at Gallagher's view on that and so and so forth. But I mentioned, like, no one argues that he changed his mind again. This is not in the scholarship that I can find. There's no real

discussion of this that he accepted the Duteroa canonical again later in his life. Now, maybe there is no discussion of that to some extent. I don't have to be. I don't have to be a discussion. I don't have exhaustive knowledge of this particular point, but I don't see it, and this point came up in their discussion, and to his credit, Gary Mashuta, who's a real expert on this topic, lots of respect for his work. But he, to his credit, he acknowledged that this is pretty standard in the video. The question is whether his earlier view is a wider canon, and then he narrows it. Nobody is talking about him widening his view of the canon laid in life or something like that. But even the... Is that true? Does no one talk about him widening his canon? Well, yeah, I mean,

generally it's thought that Jerome doesn't change his mind. But actually, we argue to the contrary. So I think probably in scholarly circles, I don't know. Actually, David's done more work in that than I have, so... And then David went on to mention one book, so I'm going to look into that book. But I really appreciated Gary's honesty and just acknowledging that, quote, generally it's thought he didn't change his mind. And quote, those are his words. That's what I'm arguing for, and it's pretty standard in the scholarship. The alternative view that Jerome came to reject his very clearly stated canon list from the 390s, that's pretty out there. And so this is why I'm trying to talk about this disconnect between the scholarship and the popular level discussion.

So let's explain why that is. the scholars are well aware that Jerome will cite a book like Syrac as scripture. He does this a lot. So why is it that the idea that this means he changed his mind about the canon, not something you really see in the scholarship? Well, let me give two arguments in this video, the flip-flopping argument, which I've already alluded to, and then the medieval reception argument. But first, I want to point out that the exact line of argumentation they made in their video, I anticipated in my initial video. Now, there's one point we need to make before we go on to the East. I hate for these videos to get too complicated,

but this subject matter is extremely complicated. And we need to address one thing that I can anticipate will come up. Even though I'm going to address it, I bet people will still miss Mike addressing it and just say it anyway. And this is exactly what happened. What I was discussing there is that many early Christians had a two-tier canon or two different registers of canon. I'm not particular about the details of what you call.

all this. And I said you can find in the same church father, they'll cite a Deutero-canonical book as scripture or with It Is Written or, you know, the Holy Spirit says through this or something like this, and then they'll at the same time not included in their canon list. And I gave examples of this from Jerome. And I concluded, here's the point to take away from this if that got too technical for you. Don't allow people to say, oh, look, this particular church father cited a book as scripture therefore that settles the question when they don't even tell you in what sense they cited it as scripture

or what they said about it or how they classified their canon list. You see, many of the church fathers have a distinction between first tier and second tier and in many cases that distinction will concern differing levels of authority.

Now this was the clip from my video that probably should have been played and interacted with because it explicitly anticipates the primary line of argumentation that they made in their video. They played a bunch of other clips, and they didn't get to this one, though I appreciated Cameron at least referencing it and trying to hold William's feet to the fire a little bit, because William was doing exactly what I anticipated.

The same thing, citing Deutero Canonicals as Scripture, as though that just ended the matter. The whole reason I went into that in my initial video is to show you can't argue like that. Now, so let's work through this and explain that a little more here. Insofar as the two-tier proposal that I made was addressed when Cameron, brought it up in their video, it was misunderstood. So they were saying, you know, several times that, you know, Tier 2 scripture is also inspired as though that contradicted what I'm saying, but that's exactly what I'm saying. Many early Christians treat Tier 2 scripture as inspired, and they'll cite it as Scripture and as divine scripture, and at the very same time.

They will hold them to be less authoritative. And in my video, I stated, there's some variation, and some ambiguity from one patristic figure to another about how exactly, you know, Athanasius and Jerome were not the exact same. So it's not an argument against my view to say that tier two scripture was spoken of as inspired. That's part of what I'm saying. Nor are many of the quotes that were presented in the presentation of their video, like the quotes from Sutcliffe and Holworth and these other scholars really relevant. Those are talking about the earlier Jerome. But the main point that I want to address is this argument that because Jerome, because I think this is the backbone of their case, because Jerome cited Deutero-canonical

books as scripture later in his life, then this means he changed his view of the canon. Let me give two arguments against this. I think these are pretty decisive. The first is the flip-flopping problem. So the biggest problem here is that this requires not just Jerome, but virtually all the major players in the discussion right now from the patristic era, are flip-flopping back and forth in their views of the canon throughout their career, despite never telling us that. And they're not being any evidence for that. So with Jerome, they reference letters and other writings of Jerome leading all the way up to 390,

and then several things after the 390s into the 5th century. And then you have his preface to Samuel and Kings in 391 or 32, and his letter 107 from later in the 390s. And so the proposal is he's got one view all the way up, right up to 390-ish. Then he flips and he changes, and then he changes again at some point after that. Now, already, if you listen to how Jerome makes his case and you know Jerome's personality, you're probably going to wonder, really, would he change his mind twice like that? Is there another way to understand this? But here's the real problem. And just think about this.

This makes the other players in this discussion, like Athanasius, Cyril, and I'll mention several others, also flip-flopping in their views, without ever telling us that they're changing their views about the canon. And without the scholarship ever noticing that, or the medieval church ever noticing that, because all these other figures do the exact same thing. They cite from the Deutero-canonical books, sometimes as scripture,

and then they exclude them from the canon lists. So, for example, Athanasius in his discourses against the Ariens, He will cite wisdom and Syrac along with a bunch of other scriptures. This is what many will do. These books are cited a lot, sometimes alongside scripture or with the introduction of it is written. But then, of course, with wisdom and Syrac, this is around 360 here. So William's reasoning would mean that this means somehow Athanasius, also like Jerome,

is flip-flopping between 360 when he cites them as scripture and 367, when he explicitly tells us that wisdom and Syrac are not indeed included in the canon, just a few years after this. William also cites a letter from Athanasius to the bishops of Egypt and Libya, written probably around 356, where he cites the book of Syrac as the Holy Spirit speaking. So again, if citing a book as scripture means it's canonical, then this would mean that in the 11 years between writing this letter and the 367 letter, Athanasius flips his view. on the canon without ever telling us that. Now with Cyril of Jerusalem, this one is even more problematic

because in his catechetical lectures, book four, he gives a canon list, shorter canon list, I quoted this in my first video, 22 books, and the very same work. He will cite Deuterocanical books many times. Here's an example from book six, where he cites Job and Syrac in succession to establish a point.

In other cases, he will cite the Deutero canonical's with the introductory formula, it is written. He does that in book 16. So if citing a book as scripture means it's canonical, which is what William is arguing, that's their case for the change in Jerome, then that means Cyril changed his mind about the canon within the space of this one book. So you can see the problem here. And the exact same point could be made from Rufinus, from Hillary, from Gregory of Nazianzis,

and from John of Damascus, at least, if not more. All of them will cite certain books as scripture while simultaneously excluding them from their canon. So which is more likely that all these church fathers are flip-flopping back and forth in their view of the canon without telling us that they're doing that? Or what I've proposed, that you have a two-tier system where you can have a narrower canon and then a wider set of scripture. That's how they use that term. Often will, with the wider set having less authority. Now, someone might say, where do you see evidence for this two-tier view? because I understand this is really counterintuitive with our current language, how we use the word scripture.

But we don't have to use the same terms. The important point is what the terms are trying to convey. And this has already come up. This idea of a two-tier system has already been present in a lot of the quotes I've given. It's present in Jerome's own language. Just as the church also reads some books but does not receive them as canonical scripture. So also one may read these two scrolls for the strengthening of the people, but not. not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas. Well, that's basically a two-tier kind of model, right? Some books are for reading, for strengthening, others are canon to be used for confirming the authority of dogmas. Similarly with Athanasius's list in the 367 letter, he lists the canon of scripture for the Old Testament, the shorter 22 book canon, then he lists the New Testament,

then he says, these are the fountains of salvation that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain, and these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. He says, don't add to these, don't take away from them. He quotes Jesus talking about the scripture. Then he goes on to say, oh, but there's other books that are not included in the canon, but they're appointed by the fathers to be read. And so somewhere in the canon, others are just read. Then he talks, he explicitly mentions the, and after that, then there's the apocryphal books. So that's the third tier. So he's got a two-tier system. And then a third tier, if you include the apocryphal books. Those in the canon, those that are merely read. What a lot of people think

is this reference to reading is just the liturgy of the church. Some of these books are read in the liturgy, but they're not authoritative like the canon. Another example is Rufinus, who has a shorter canon, then he says, there are other books, which are not canonical, but ecclesiastical. So this is, again, the two-tier system, canonical versus ecclesiastical. Tier one, tier two. You find this same idea in Gregory the Great, who speaks of certain books that are not canonical, yet brought out for the edification of the church. So, I mean, we, of course, I mean, we could document example after example of this. But the point that I've been making is that the term scripture can still be used by many church fathers for that second tier. You see, and they can still be called

inspired by God, the spirit speaking through them, this kind of thing. A way to put it, not all scripture is canon, even though all canon is scripture. Canon is the tighter category. from many of these church fathers. Now, this, I flagged this, hoping that this would be the thing that we kind of talk through, but that was just sort of glided over in the presentation with this idea that, oh, if you quote a book as Scripture, then it means that it's in the canon. That is not true. And by the way, this distinction between Scripture and Canon is often admitted in these discussions. You can find Catholic websites who will argue for their view, but they're acknowledging this distinction between canon and scripture, and I'll put that up on the screen.

If you don't allow for that, if you don't allow for my proposal, a two-tier canon list, two registers of scripture, and you have to say that all these different church fathers are flip-flopping back and forth. When they exclude certain books from their canon list, oh, but now they cited it as scripture, so nope, nope, they must have changed their mind and this kind of thing. It really doesn't work. So that's the flip-flopping problem. There's another problem, and that's medieval of Jerome's view. If Jerome sort of silently, without telling us, rejected his earlier canon list, not only does that mean that Jerome and the other figures here are flip-flopping, but sometimes in the space of one work. But it means the medieval era fundamentally misunderstood Jerome and received him

wrongly. In other words, if Jerome sort of submitted to the church or something like that, the church never knew that. Because Jerome's influence is far and wide. Throughout the media, evil era for making the Dudero-canonical books questionable or altogether rejected. I already mentioned this from Cardinal Cajitan, who I don't think was adequately really dealt with, but that's another issue. Let me just give some more examples here. The Glossa Ordinaria is a very significant collection of biblical commentaries in the form of glosses. This was massively influential, widely used. The new Catholic encyclopedia says so great was the influence of the Glossa Ordinaria on biblical and philosophical studies in the Middle Ages that it was called the

tongue of scripture and the Bible of scholasticism. Alistair McGrath-Rite-so-Morgrath-right, so influential did this commentary become that by the end of the 12th century, much biblical commentary in Excheesus was reduced to restating the comments of the gloss. So, question is, how does the Glossaordinaria view the Deuterocanonicals? And what's Jerome's influence on it? It's very clear. When it gets to the Deutero-canonical books like Tobit and so forth, it just says this is not

in the canon. And in the preface, it explains why by referencing the authority of Jerome. Many people who do not give much attention to the Holy Scriptures think that all the books contained in the Bible should be honored and adored with equal veneration, not knowing how to distinguish among the canonical and non-canonical books, the latter of which the Jews number among the Apocrypha, skipping down a bit, the canonical books have been brought about through the dictation of the Holy Spirit. It is not known, however, at which time or by which authors the non-canonical or apocryphal books were produced. Since nevertheless they are good and useful

and nothing is found in them which contradicts the canonical books, the church reads them and permits them to be read by the faithful for devotion and edification. You can see the two-tier system here. Their authority, however, is not considered adequate for proving those things which come into doubt or contention, or for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogma as Blessed Jerome states in his prologue to Judith and to the books of Solomon. So you can see there, the commentary is appealing to Jerome for this two-tier system. Now, we could just go on and on and on with medieval examples of this. In my initial video, I began with a citation of the Catholic Encyclopedia,

talking about the diversity of medieval views. And you can see many medieval commentators who will explicitly reference this 22 Hebrew letter argument for the 22 books of the Old Testament, and then it'll have the two-tier system. I'll put up Hugh of St. Victor here as an example of this. Many, many medieval theologians questioned the canonical status of many or all of the Dutero canonical books, and the main cause is Jerome. I know people would just call me a liar. All you have to do is Google it.

I mean, you know, is Google. William Avakum, Old Testament canon, enter, look around, bead, hugely important. early medieval historian. Medieval canon Bede, you know, this is from his revelation commentary. This is sort of my field. I did my Ph.D. in medieval theology. I can tell you, the new Catholic encyclopedia, a work of Catholic scholarship, is not wrong when it writes the following. Saint Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter, he judged, were circulated by the church's good spiritual reading, but were not recognized as authoritative scripture. The situation is the situation. The situation is,

remained unclear in the ensuing centuries. For example, John's Damascus, Gregory the Great, Wallafried, Nicholas of Lira, and Tostado continued to doubt the canonicity of the Dutero-Cononical books. According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled a matter of the Old Testament canon that this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent. So that's very similar to what I've quoted before. Why is that uncertainty there? Because of how the medieval church interpreted Jerome.

So again, if Jerome changed his mind and actually said, no, no, no, no, no, I do accept this larger canon of scripture, then everybody in his wake seems to not realize this. How likely is it that the medieval church somehow just seemed to miss this, right? See, Jerome is not some lone voice. In the video, it was claimed that Jerome was a minority, view, but there's no discussion given to the other figures that I referenced, like Rufinus, Hillary, Milito, Athanasius, Gregory, Cyril, origin, John of Damascus, and so on and so forth. You go into the medieval era, you find a lot of questioning of these books. So I understand their purpose wasn't to get into that, but it's relevant to these claims of majority versus

minority. Jerome is not some oddball out there. He actually casts a long shadow into the medieval era on this question. So I'm trying to bring clarity here, because after a long rebuttal to over two hours long. The net result is a lot of viewers, I think, are kind of, you know, they're just sort of uncertain. They're like, I don't know who's right. And I hope this brings clarity. No, Jerome did not come to accept the Deutero-canonicals as canonical scripture. When he's translating each one, just look at his prologs, he explicitly spells out, this book is not canonical scripture. As I've documented, he nowhere rescinds those claims. The citations of other book as scripture don't prove a change for him any more than similar citations from Athanasius

means Athanasius is flip-flopping in his view of the canon, or similar citations of Cyril of Jerusalem, means he's flip-flopping, or Gregory of Nazianzis, and so on and so forth. The way that the scholarship generally interprets Jerome on this question and the way the medieval church received him is simply correct, I think. Just three final things real quick to be said. At one point, Cameron says that I overstate my case here, and he makes that a general tendency of mine. I just wanted to respond to that. I think hopefully it's clear with Jerome, I'm not. I don't think I'm overstating my case. I mean, when I do overstate something, it's certainly possible for me to do that. When I do overstate something, I try to be willing

to just acknowledge, oops, I overspoke. I mean, we can all do that. I'm sure I've done that before. But I don't think I'm doing that with Jerome. I'm just saying what's really standard fair about Jerome, you know, again, the disconnect between the scholarship and the popular level, what I'm saying is just sort of standard. But he also said I did this about Zaytune, and I just want to clear this up real quick. So basically, he's making a big deal in his original video on the Zaytune stuff, saying that, you know, just kind of shocked at what I said, that it doesn't have any theological implications. But I never said the historical event doesn't have theological implications. I said the apparition didn't advocate for a particular theology. I'll put my exact words up on the

screen. The emboldened part here got left off in the citation. So, and then he's saying, of course it has implications for cessationism and so on and so forth. So this was a misunderstanding. I assume. I did text him afterwards to try to clarify this. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but just to be clear now, I'm not, what I'm saying is the apparition doesn't advocate for any theology unlike other Marian apparitions, because what I pointed out is you have other Marian apparitions where the apparition will say, I am the Immaculate Conception or something like this. And so there's ecclesially determinative theology at stake from what the apparition says, and I'm saying, say, Tune is not like that. The apparition is not advocating for any theology like that. So hopefully

that's clear now. Okay, second comment, let me just explain why I don't engage with William, because I left a comment on their video. Cameron pinned it, and William responded saying, hey, wanting to do a dialogue or debate or some kind of engagement about this. Just to explain, and then lots of people are saying, oh, why don't you guys talk? Just to explain, I don't engage with William. The reason is, when he does his rebuttals of me, he just makes up stuff that's not true. Just left and right. and like I'll give an example. He's doing a rebuttal on the bodily assumption of Mary,

and there's two quotes that I had in my video, and he says, oh, Ortland got these from a Mormon website. He pilfered them off of an anti-Trinitarian website, this kind of stuff. Now, this is kind of silly because it doesn't matter where I got them, even if I had, that wouldn't change what they actually say. So it's kind of irrelevant. This is the genetic fallacy. But just as a matter, of course, I didn't, in fact,

get them from that website. On my honor, before God, I had never heard of that website until years after he started advancing this claim. He says all kinds of things like this. I'm just giving you one example. So I emailed William when I started hearing him say this, say, you know, and I sent him a picture of the book where I had actually gotten one of the quotes with the quote underlined holding up the picture.

I explained very clearly where I got the other quote. I said, why are you saying I got these from a Mormon website? I didn't get them from a Mormon website. not only did he not concede that point, but he continued to make fresh posts on Facebook many months after this saying, ah, we caught Ortland pilfering these quotes from a Mormon website and this kind of thing. So at that point, when he's now going on to keep saying it after the photographic display of where I actually got the quote, I just kind of say, okay, I'm just going to move on and focus on other people to engage with, because there's lots of great people in the

Catholic apologetics world where I feel like we can have more productive dialogues where there's more trust. And I would just encourage William, when you do something like that, you just got to acknowledge it and not keep doubling down, because that's what happens. If I bring this stuff up, he goes into attack mode and just cranks it up to a 10 out of 10 in terms of the aggressiveness. I just think that's not the kind of dialogue that I think is productive. I would be happy to talk to the other guys. I don't know, David, for all I know, I'm certainly, I have no reason not to talk to him. I would be honored to talk to Gary. He's sort of, but here's my hesitation about, like, doing that.

Gary's an expert on this. I'm not. I have enough knowledge, especially about the church history, that I can unfold that and give an overview of that. But this isn't my wheelhouse. This isn't my area. So that would be a major commitment to take on. If I were to do a dialogue or a debate with Gary, Mashuda, I would have to study for

months to prepare for that, because this isn't really. So I would just say there's lots of Protestants who could do better, represent our side better. I'm willing to do it, but it'd be a major feat, so I'd need to really think through, do I have time for this and that kind of thing. There are lots of other Protestants, though, that would hopefully be in these discussions, and that's the last thing I'll say, is John Meath. I'm going to have John Mead on my channel this summer. He's a great person in this field. This is his area. This is what he studies. And then there's others out there in the Protestant world as well, who I hope would get more unfolded into the study. So anyway, hope this helps clarify on Jerome.

did not change his mind. It is clear. It is just clear. Just like he, so I won't keep belaboring the point. I said it's a short video and here we are. And look out for the video with John and I'll see how people respond to this. I'm sure there'll be more rebuttals and this kind of thing. In terms of dialogue, I'll think about it. Kind of depends on who it's with and that kind of thing. All right. Hope this is helpful though for the onlookers wondering. A lot of people are really wondering. A lot of people are confused and hopefully this can just give clarity. All right, thanks, everybody.