HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Thirty-Nine Articles on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 1571 (the Articles of Religion of the Church of England in their final form; revised from the Forty-Two Articles of 1553 and the 1563 Convocation text, ratified by Convocation and Parliament in 1571) · Wikipedia
Verdict on the deuterocanon: NO — canonical Scripture is the books "of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church"; the deuterocanon the Church "doth read for example of life and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine." Article VI of the Anglican formulary draws the canon at the Hebrew-sized Old Testament and files Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees in a named sub-canonical list of "the other Books" — citing Jerome ("as Hierome saith") by name for both the criterion and the formula.

Claims & evidence

Article VI: canonical = books "of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church"

The sixth Article opens with the rule of sufficiency — "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation" — and then defines what counts as Holy Scripture by a test of undisputed reception:

In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

— Articles of Religion, Article VI, "Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for Salvation."¹ The Article then lists the canonical Old Testament book by book — Genesis through Malachi, the Hebrew-sized thirty-nine — and receives "all the Books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received." The criterion is not the breadth of liturgical use that carried the disputed books into Augustine's canon, but its mirror image: a book is canonical only where its authority "was never any doubt," which by definition excludes the books the Church had long read with a qualification.¹

The deuterocanon: "as Hierome saith," read for life, not for doctrine

Having drawn the canon, Article VI assigns the deuterocanon its lower rank in the very words — and on the very authority — of Jerome:

And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:

— Articles of Religion, Article VI.¹ There follows a list of the books so read: "The Third Book of Esdras, The Fourth Book of Esdras, The Book of Tobias, The Book of Judith, The rest of the Book of Esther, The Book of Wisdom, Jesus the Son of Sirach, Baruch the Prophet, The Song of the Three Children, The Story of Susanna, Of Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasses, The First Book of Maccabees, The Second Book of Maccabees."¹ The list is wider than the seven Tridentine deuterocanonical books: it brackets together the books Trent had defined as canonical (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, with the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel) and the three the medieval Vulgate had carried but Trent itself dropped (3–4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses) — all alike "read for example of life and instruction of manners," none of them admissible "to establish any doctrine."

The formula traced to its source: Jerome and Luther

The Article does not invent its distinction; it names its source. "As Hierome saith" points back to Jerome's ruling in the Prologus Galeatus and the prefaces — that the disputed books may be read "for the strengthening of the people, but not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas" — the read-for-edification-not-for-doctrine formula that Rufinus had stated as cleanly ("read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine") and that Luther had set in print as a Bible heading ("not held equal to the Holy Scriptures, and yet are profitable and good to read").² The English Reformation thus answers the canon question with the patristic middle position handed down from Athanasius through Jerome and Rufinus — keep the books for reading, refuse them as proof of doctrine — rather than with either the Septuagint-based "Yes" of Trent (1546) or the hard total exclusion the Westminster Confession would press a lifetime later.²

Notes

• NO — but the soft, Jerome-style "no." Like Luther and Rufinus, the Articles keep the deuterocanon as edifying reading while denying it doctrinal authority; they do not call it heretical or order it removed. This is the moderate Anglican line that the Westminster Confession (1647) would later harden into a flat exclusion (the Apocrypha "of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings") — the next witness on this timeline.
• The list is wider than Trent's. Article VI's fourteen "other Books" include the three texts (3–4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses) that Trent had quietly left out of its own canonical list — so the Article rejects as doctrine-establishing not only the seven books Rome defined but the whole longer-Vulgate appendix. It also lists the Greek additions (the rest of Esther; the Song of the Three Children, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, all additions to Daniel) as separate items, where Trent had covered them with the phrase "entire with all their parts."
• Why it mattered doctrinally. The Article's refusal to "establish any doctrine" from these books is aimed squarely at the contested proof-texts the deuterocanon carried — 2 Maccabees 12 for prayer and offerings for the dead, Tobit 12 for almsgiving that "saves from death" — weighed in the Arguments on the summary timeline. Cutting the doctrinal cord while keeping the books for reading is precisely the Reformation's answer to those texts.
• Provenance. Article VI is quoted from the text of the Articles of Religion as printed in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and reproduced at Wikisource; the date 1571 follows the Articles' final ratification, the 1563 Convocation text having been revised and confirmed in that year.

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