The Witness of History for Scripture (Homologoumena and Antilegomena)

Besides Scripture’s own testimony as to its divine authority, we have, through the gracious providence of God, ample historical testimony to that effect. For the Scriptures of the Old Testament we have the testimony of the Jewish Church and of Christ and His Apostles. Christian theologians of all ages are right in saying: If the Jews had been mistaken as to their canon or had falsified it, Christ would not have so unconditionally and without limitation pointed to the Scripture in the hands of the Jews and asserted their inviolability, as He does, e.g., in the words: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them” (Luke 16; 29); “All things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me” (Luke 24:44); “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39); “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). — There is, however, no historical witness for the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Neither the Jewish Church nor Christ recognized them as canonical.

For the Scriptures of the New Testament we have the historical witness of the Early Church (ecclesia primitiva). Its witness is unanimous as to the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of John, and the First Epistle of Peter (homologoumena). But as to the canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of John, the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, and the Apocalypse, doubts, more or less strongly expressed, were entertained (antilegomena). Eusebius in his Church History lists the homologoumena and the antilegomena. The historical fact that the Early Church differentiated between the homologoumena and the antilegomena cannot be changed by a resolution of the later Church. Luther, too, abides by this judgment of the primitive Church; he says, appealing to Eusebius (Church History III, 25), that in ancient times the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, and the Apocalypse “had a different reputation.” He finds much excellent instruction in the antilegomena, grants that the offensive passages may be explained acceptably by “glosses,” and will keep no one from appraising them as he sees fit. But he will not class them with the “right certain chief books of the New Testament.” As for himself, he will let the doubt entertained by the Early Church remain. Chemnitz denounced the action of the Roman Catholic Church in declaring the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and the antilegomena of the New Testament a part of the canon of Scripture by a mere decree and in anathematizing all those who refused to accept the canon fixed in the Vulgate, as anti-Christian.

from Francis Pieper, “Christian Dogmatics,” Vol. I [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950], pp. 330-38.