Ask · Scripture & How We Got It
Did a council choose the books of the Bible?
The short answer
No. No council sat down and picked the winners. The books were recognised, not selected: the churches received writings that carried the authority of the prophets and apostles, used them for generations, and the later lists and councils named what was already received. The section of this site called How We Got the Bible works through the documents one by one.
The fuller answer
The New Testament itself shows recognition happening early. Peter refers to Paul's letters and calls them Scripture, in the same breath as the rest of the Scriptures, while Paul is still alive or only lately dead. Whatever else that means, the category of apostolic writing as Scripture existed long before any council met.
He writes this way in all his letters, speaking in them about such matters. Some parts of his letters are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
2 Peter 3:16 (BSB)
Jude writes of the faith entrusted once for all to the saints, a fixed body of teaching to contend for. The churches tested writings against that faith: Was it apostolic? Did it agree with the rule of faith? Was it received by the churches everywhere? When Athanasius wrote his Festal Letter in AD 367, he listed exactly the twenty seven New Testament books we have, the first surviving list to do so, describing them as the springs of salvation, already known and used.
Beloved, although I made every effort to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt it necessary to write and urge you to contend earnestly for the faith entrusted once for all to the saints.
Jude 1:3 (BSB)
The councils that did touch the question, at Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397, ratified lists for their region. They invented nothing. And the Council of Nicaea, the one most often blamed or credited, issued twenty canons on clergy, discipline and prayer, and never addressed the canon at all. The full evidence, with the documents themselves, is laid out in How We Got the Bible on this site.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
- Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (AD 367)
- The Canons of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325)
- Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), Canon 24
Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.
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