Hello and welcome to Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, Pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. In this episode of Word Magazine, I'm going to be doing a reading of part of a paper that I presented back on August the 27th of 2018. at the 2018 International Congress on Calvin Research that was held at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. I gave this breakout session paper on the topic of Calvin and Canon. I actually brought my recorder in to record the presentation and the Q&A, and I put it on the podium and forgot to turn it on. So to make up for that, I'm going to do this reading here. Really sorry I didn't record it because there was some good Q&A that took place after the paper was presented, and I'm thankful that the paper seemed to be well received by those who were there. I had a, again for this breakout session, just about 20-25 minutes to present the paper and then 5-10 minutes for questions, and it was in the Rust Auditorium there in the Van Til building at Westminster. The paper in itself is over 10,000 words in length, so it's a long paper. I'm hoping to do some editing, revising, and have it published somewhere. It's kind of a follow-up to, in part, to the paper that I did earlier that was turned into an article on Calvin and text criticism. So I've just kind of been interested in how John Calvin approached the issue of text and canon and his influence in shaping the reformed Protestant view of the canon of scripture. So, anyway, obviously I'm not going to present the entire paper. Again, it's sort of a work in progress, and I hope it will be published somewhere in the future. But I'm going to give just an abbreviated reading of it. Again, I chopped it down to just 20, 25 minutes. When I originally presented it, I might go a little bit longer than that. in this reading. So let me go ahead and get to the paper again, which is Calvin and Canon. In his biography of John Calvin, William J. Bousma observed, against the claim of the Roman church to have settled the matter, Calvin denied with no distress the existence of a fixed New Testament canon. This paper will examine Calvin's understanding of the canon of the Christian scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, as reflected in his various writings. And we will assess whether we believe Baalsma's opinion on Calvin's use of canon, whether or not he saw the New Testament as fixed or not, hopefully by the end of the paper. In order to grasp Calvin's understanding of canon, we must address at least four key issues. Number one, Calvin's view of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Number two, Calvin's view of the so-called Anti-Legomena of the New Testament, that is the works that were often spoken against, especially 2nd and 3rd John and Revelation, but also Hebrews, James, 2nd Peter, and Jude. Third, we need to address Calvin's understanding of the criterion of canonicity. And fourth, we need to look at Calvin's definition not only of the proper books, which should be included in the canon of the Christian scriptures, but also the texts of those books. Before we look at those four key issues, we need to say something about the canon in the Christian tradition. And so I'm going to give a brief overview of canon within the Christian tradition. So we begin with the period of early Christianity. It has been suggested often that the definition of the Orthodox Christian canon at the earliest levels came in response to refutations of the teaching of the arch-heretic Marcion, who not only rejected the Old Testament, but promoted only a mutilated version of the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles as Scripture, although some of the views on Marcion's role in shaping the canon of Scripture have recently been challenged. Among the earliest extant efforts to list the canonical books is the so-called Muratorian Fragment, dating to the 2nd century, as well as the list composed by Origen in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Eusebius of Caesarea, in the Ecclesiastical History, offered his own review of the New Testament books, famously dividing them into three categories. The recognized books, the disputed books, which included James, Jude, 2nd Peter, and 2nd and 3rd John, and what he called the rejected books. That would be things like the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, Epistle of Barnabas, etc. Also in the Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius reports on the Old Testament canon as it was received by Melito of Sardis, which is significant among other things for the fact that it contained only the books of the Hebrew Bible, without explicitly mentioning Esther, Lamentations, and Nehemiah, and did not include the Apocrypha, except perhaps for the wisdom of Solomon. In his work on Christian doctrine, completed in 427, Augustine provided his own canon list, which reflected his preference for the Greek Septuagint and its inclusion of works from the Apocrypha and the Old Testament. This, by the way, would pose special difficulty for Calvin, given his respect for and dependence upon the great North African theologian. The watershed for Western Christianity in this early period of canonical recognition came with Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It was significant, among other things, for the fact that Jerome not only translated the Old Testament from Hebrew rather than the Greek Septuagint, but also for his disparagement of the books of the Apocrypha and his prefaces to the Old Testament books. In the canon of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger observes during the Middle Ages, the church in the West received the Latin New Testament in the form that Jerome had given to it, and the subject of canon was seldom discussed. At the same time, however, Metzger continues, we find a certain elasticity in the boundaries of the New Testament. In the immediate pre-Reformation period, Erasmus' Greek New Testament of 1516 included comments at the beginning of each New Testament book which, among other things, challenged Pauline authorship of Hebrews, expressed doubt as to whether James was written by James the Apostle, and freely questioned traditional attributions of authorship of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. Among the early reformers, Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstad, in both a scholarly Latin work of 1520 and a popular German work of 1521, not only asserted the independent authority of Holy Scripture, apart from ecclesiastical pronouncements, but also divided the New Testament into three ranks. First, the Gospels and Acts. Second, the undoubted epistles of Paul, along with 1 Peter and 1 John. Third, the seven disputed books. James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation. So began the German tradition of the canon within the canon. Martin Luther's German New Testament of 1522 indicated uncertainty about four of the New Testament books as evidenced by the table of content and layout. In the table of content, the first 23 books from Matthew to 3 John are each assigned a number. Then a blank space was given and four books were listed unnumbered, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. In his prefaces to the New Testament, as well as to individual books, Luther placed the books in three ranks. First, those that most clearly showed Christ in salvation, namely the Gospel of John, 1 John, and Paul's letters, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians. and the book of 1st Peter. Second rank was the Synoptic Gospels, which included the other Pauline epistles, Acts, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John. And then in the third category, he listed the four books of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation as standing in a last rank or last place. In his preface to James in the 1522 German New Testament, Luther made his famous statement that James was a right-strawy epistle compared with the others, although this comment was removed from later editions. It should be noted that Tyndale's English New Testament of 1525 followed Luther's orderings of the New Testament books and also included his prefaces. In 1534, Luther published the first complete edition of the German Bible, which included prefaces for the books of the Apocrypha, undermining their canonicity. In response to the Reformation, Rome met in the Council of Trent, which held its first session in 1545. In 1546, it issued its fourth decree, on the canon of the scriptures, which affirmed in the Old Testament alongside the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, seven books of the Apocrypha, as well as the additions to Esther and Daniel. It also declared that the Latin Vulgate provided the definitive text of Scripture. Metzger describes this as the first time in the history of the Church that the question of the contents of the Bible was made an absolute article of faith and confirmed by an anathema. Calvin's views on canon must be understood against the backdrop of both of his fellow reformers' reconsiderations of canon and Rome's declarations on canon in the Council of Trent. So with this brief overview of canon in the Christian tradition, completed through the early Reformation and Trent era, we can return to look at the four key issues that I previously noted. So we begin, first of all, with a brief examination of Calvin and the Apocrypha. In 1547, Calvin issued the tract titled Acts of the Council of Trent with the Antidote in response to the pronouncements made in the opening sessions at Trent. In the tract, he excoriates those degenerate, illegitimate sons of the Roman sea for forming a catalog of scripture in which they mark all the books with the same chalk and insist on placing the Apocrypha in the same rank with the others. He charges Rome with doing so in order to provide new supports for unscriptural teaching. He writes, quote, out of the second of the Maccabees, they will prove purgatory. and the worship of the saints. Out of Tobit, satisfactions, exorcisms, and whatnot, from Ecclesiasticus they will borrow not a little, for from whence could they better draw their dregs? Despite this harsh denunciation, however, Calvin adds, quote, I am not one of those, however, who would entirely disapprove of reading those books. But in giving them an authority which they have never possessed, What end was sought but just to have the use of spurious paint in coloring their errors?" In adding these books, Calvin charges Rome with making scripture a nose of wax because he says it can be formed into all shapes. Calvin makes various references to at least six books from the Apocrypha within his institutes. On one hand, he can sometimes appeal to these books or clarify the interpretation of them in order to support or expand his arguments. On the other hand, however, he frequently makes clear that these works are to be distinguished in their authority from the received books of the Hebrew Bible. Here is a review of some of the references to the Apocrypha within the Institutes. We begin, first of all, with a discussion of angelology, the Institute's Book 1.14.8. Calvin notes that two names exist in the scriptures for the angels, namely Michael and Gabriel. He then suggests that a third, namely Raphael, might be added, if he says you wish to add the one from the history of Tobit, citing Tobit 12.15. Secondly, in a discussion of the origin of images, In Institutes 1, 11, 8, Calvin begins by citing the wisdom of Solomon, saying, Next, what is held in the Book of Wisdom concerning the origin of idols is received virtually by public consent, that the originators of idols were those who conferred this honor on the dead, and thus superstitiously worship their memory. The reference here is to Wisdom of Solomon 14 verses 15 and 16, which traces the vanity of the origins of idol-making to a father consumed with grief at an untimely bereavement who made an image of his child so that he now honored as a god, Calvin says, what was once a dead human being. The most frequently cited book from the Apocrypha within the Institutes is Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach. And so the third text we could look at would be Calvin's citation of Ecclesiasticus or reference to it in Institutes book 2, 5, 18. where Calvin examines Ecclesiasticus 15 verses 14 through 17. This passage had been cited by Erasmus, along with a jab against those who would exclude it from the canon. Calvin begins, they bring forth Ecclesiasticus, a writer whose authority is known to be in doubt. Fourthly, in a discussion of the merits of human works before God in Institutes Book 3, 15, 4, Calvin responds to appeals by his opponents to Ecclesiasticus 16, verse 14 or Ecclesiasticus 16, 15 in the Vulgate, which reads, Mercy will make room for every man according to the merit of his works. and he goes forward in his exposition to describe how this passage had been misused by Roman Catholics. Though he rejects Ecclesiasticus as part of Scripture, he is willing to give it hypothetical consideration, but under exegetical analysis, he argues that even this passage does not support the point as his opponents approve. Most importantly, their views on good works do not fit with what Calvin calls the measure of Scripture. Fifth, in a discussion of the necessity of humility in prayer, in Institutes Book 3, 28, Calvin draws on several Old Testament examples, including Isaiah's declaration, We are the clay, thou art the potter, and we are the work of thy hands, in Isaiah 64, 5-9. After citing the petition of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 14.7, Calvin concludes his teaching on prayer by fusing two passages from the Apocrypha's Baruch, whose authorial tradition associates it with Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Calvin can approvingly cite the work while also questioning the veracity of its purported authorship. Though Calvin does not see this work as authentic or canonical, he does see devotional value in it. Six, in a discussion of the providential preservation of scripture in Institutes Book 1, 8, 10, Calvin makes reference to an apologetic dispute regarding a historical incident described in First Maccabees 1, 56 and 57, in which the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes ordered the destruction of the Hebrew scriptures. Calvin begins, quote, indeed, the passage and the history of the Maccabees that they put forth order to detract from the authenticity of Scripture, is such that nothing more appropriate could be thought of to establish it, since Antiochus, they say, ordered all books to be burned. Where did the copies that we now have come from?" He asks, in what workshop could copies have been fabricated so quickly? For it is well known that directly after the persecution had ceased, the books were extant. Calvin's point, Antiochus was clearly unable to destroy all the copies of God's word. For Calvin, the true lesson to ponder is how much care the Lord had taken to preserve his word when, he says, contrary to everybody's expectation, he snatched it away from a most cruel and savage tyrant as from a raging fire. Seventh, and finally, in his rejection of purgatory as a deadly fiction of Satan in Institutes Book 3, 5, 6, Calvin surveys various texts cited by his opponents in Institutes Book 3, 5, 8, including Philippians, Revelation, and 2 Maccabees, in the book of 2 Maccabees. The contested passage from the Maccabean history is 2 Maccabees 12, verses 43-45, and it's referenced to prayer and atonement made for the dead. Calvin begins his response, quote, What they bring forward from the history of the Maccabees, I deem unworthy of reply, lest I seem to include that work in the canon of the sacred books. He then points out that the book of 2 Maccabees ends with the author imploring, pardon if he has said anything amiss. The reference is to 2 Maccabees 15 verses 37 and 38, wherein the author tells his readers, So I too will herein my story, if it is well told and to the point. That is what I myself desired. If it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could do." Calvin observes, surely he who admits that his writings are in need of pardon does not claim to be the oracle of the Holy Spirit. Calvin thus rejects any appeal to 2 Maccabees as an authority alongside canonical scripture. Aside from his analysis of particular passages from the Apocrypha, Calvin also offers well-known general comments in the Institutes on Scripture, noting that its authority does not come merely from Church recognition, by which appeal was made for the canonicity of the Apocrypha, but from its self-authenticating authority. So, in Institutes Book 1-7-1, Calvin observes, Now daily oracles are not sent from heaven, for it pleased the Lord to hallow his truth to everlasting remembrance in the Scriptures alone. Hence, the Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven as if the living words of God were heard. For Calvin, obviously, the Apocrypha lacks the inherent authority of having sprung from heaven, a deficit that cannot be overcome by church recognition. In Institutes Book 1, 7, 4, Calvin likewise contends that Scripture's authority does not come from external proof. There follows, in Institutes Book 175, Calvin's distinctive argument for the self-authenticating authority of Scripture. He begins, quote, let this point therefore stand, that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated, alta piston. Hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning, and the certainty it deserves with us it attains by the testimony of the Spirit. For Calvin, this self-authenticating authority cannot be proven by scripture for Scripture by proof of reason or external evidence, and it is absent in the Apocrypha. So, the evidence from the Institutes makes clear that Calvin rejected the books of the Apocrypha as being part of the canonical Scripture, whatever ecclesiastical declarations might be made about them. In his introduction to the Apocrypha, Bruce Metzger observes, quote, in his celebrated treatise of theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin makes more than 4,000 references to the canonical scriptures in support of his system of doctrine. It is instructed to note that he refers only 10 times to the book of the Apocrypha. They are Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Baruch, and 1st and 2nd Maccabees. And in these cases, he never uses the Apocrypha to substantiate any doctrine," end quote. Calvin often questions, in the Institutes, the authenticity of the purported authorship of the Apocryphal books, as evidenced by comments like, whoever he may be, he clearly despises the use of the Apocrypha to support doctrines that he finds to be unscriptural, like the appeal to 2 Maccabees in support of purgatory. On the other hand, he is willing, on occasion, for the sake of argument, to give hypothetical consideration to what these books might contribute to Christian theology. He clearly does not suggest that the books of the Apocrypha are inherently nefarious, and can even make appeal to them as edifying, if uninspired, as in his appeal to Baruch when teaching about humility in prayer. Let's move on to the second key point, which is Calvin and the anti-legomena of the New Testament. With regard to Calvin's views on the canon of the New Testament, it is essential to review his New Testament commentaries on the so-called anti-legomena, the works that were spoken against, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Jude, as well as to consider the fact that he apparently did not author commentaries on 2 and 3 John and Revelation, which are also among the anti-legomena. Let's start with a few words about Hebrews. In the introduction to its commentary on Hebrews, Calvin acknowledges not only historical questions about the authorship of Hebrews, but also recognizes challenges as to its place within the New Testament canon. He begins, quote, not only various opinions were formally entertained as to the author of this epistle, but it was also at a late period that it was received by the Latin churches, end quote. For Calvin, precise knowledge of the authorship of Hebrews is an indifferent matter as regards its canonical standing. Calvin expresses skepticism in particular as to the Pauline authorship of the work. He also rejects the conjecture that this work was first written in Hebrew and only later translated into Greek, a proposal meant to explain its variance from typical Pauline style. Calvin also provides an extensive, oops, I gotta go on now to the book of James. Calvin begins his commentary on James by acknowledging its uneven reception both in the ancient past and among some of his unnamed contemporaries. Quote, it appears from the writings of Jerome and Eusebius that this epistle was not formally received by many churches without opposition. There are also, at this day, some who do not think it is entitled to authority." He, however, affirms its canonicity. Calvin says, I, however, am inclined to receive it without controversy because I see no just cause for rejecting it. The key problem is the book's notorious teaching on faith and works in chapter two and its perceived inconsistency with the doctrine of justification by faith. Calvin also provides an extensive harmonization between Paul and James in Institutes Book 3, 17, 11, in which he states, quote, What then? Will they drag Paul into conflict with James? If they consider James a minister of Christ, his statement must be so understood as not to disagree with Christ speaking through Paul's lips. Calvin's forthright discussion of the authorship of James, his willingness to challenge traditional views of its authorship, and his conclusion that a precise determination of authorship is not possible or even essential, anticipates the approaches that will be taken by later, modern historical critical scholars, and the positing of technical anonymity for many of the New Testament books. It is Calvin's convictions on the self-authenticating nature of scripture that no doubt influence his position here. Scripture is not canonical scripture merely because it was written by an apostle or an apostolic associate, even though this well may be the case, and it is worthy of historical consideration. Scripture is canonical scripture, according to Calvin, because it is, quote, sprung from heaven, end quote. Let's look at the book of 2 Peter. In his introductory remarks on 2 Peter, Calvin acknowledges historical challenges to the book's authenticity and reception. He begins, quote, the doubts respecting this epistle mentioned by Eusebius ought not to keep us from reading it. For if the doubts rests on the authority of men whose names he does not give, we ought to pay no more regard to it than to that of unknown men. And he afterwards adds, that it was everywhere received without any dispute." As with Hebrews and James, Calvin demonstrates a nuanced understanding of authorship with regard to 2 Peter. Though 2 Peter may not have been written by Peter, Calvin can still affirm, quote, at the same time, according to the consent of all, it has nothing unworthy of Peter, as it shows everywhere the power and the grace of an apostolic spirit, end quote. Nevertheless, Calvin weighs seriously the fact that the book's traditional title does, in fact, attribute it to Peter. Thus, Calvin suggests, quote, if it be received as canonical, we must allow Peter to be the author, since it has his name inscribed, and he also testifies that he had lived with Christ, and it would have been a fiction unworthy of minister of Christ to have personated another individual, end quote. This leads to Calvin's ingenious conclusion in the commentaries that it was both written by Peter and yet not written by Peter. Calvin says, quote, So then I conclude that if the epistle be deemed worthy of credit, it must have proceeded from Peter, not that he himself wrote it, but that some of his disciples set forth in writing by his command those things which the necessity of the times required. Let's move on to the book of Jude. In his introduction to Jude, Calvin notes the brevity of the work and the fact that almost the whole of it is nearly the same as 2 Peter 2. And yet, he confidently affirms the book's canonicity while acknowledging historical opposition to it. Now we move on to Calvin's views on the books of 2 and 3 John and Revelation. The question remains as to the significance of the fact that Calvin did not write commentaries on the books of 2 and 3 John and Revelation. Does this mean that Calvin rejected these as canonical books? Clearly, this cannot be the case, since Calvin not only included these works among the 27 New Testament books in his 1540 publication of Olivetan's French Bible, but he also listed them among the canonical works in the third chapter of the Gaelic Confession of 1559. As we have seen with the anti-legomena, however, Calvin did not insist that apostolic authorship or association was necessary for canonicity. What matters is whether or not a book possesses what he called an apostolic spirit, which is indeed the Spirit of Christ. Did Calvin then doubt the inspiration of these works, 2 and 3 John and Revelation? In a chapter devoted to the New Testament canon, the respected Calvin scholar T.H.L. Parker adds an appendix in his book on Calvin's New Testament commentaries on these omitted works. And that appendix begins with Parker saying the following, What, however, of the books that he omitted, why did he not write on 2 and 3 John and Revelation? He starkly ends that appendix with a one-sentence paragraph. This is Parker, quote, Calvin nowhere, according to the Corpus Reformatorum, refers to 2 and 3 John. Not only are there no commentaries on 2 and 3 John, but Parker found no extant citations of these works in all of Calvin's works. One might think, for example, that Calvin could not have resisted some reference to diatrophies in 3 John, verses 9 and 10, and some sly comparison to popes and prelates who love, quote, to have the preeminence among them, end quote. and who unjustly casts out unfaithful brethren from the church. But from Calvin's pen, there is only silence with regard to 2 and 3 John. Another possibility is that Calvin simply did not think it was proper stewardship of his time and attention to devote a commentary to works consisting of a mere 13 verses in the case of 2 John and 14 verses in the case of 3 John. With regard to the Book of Revelation, although we do not have an exposition from Calvin's pen solely devoted to this work, he did make frequent reference to it. particularly in the Institutes. In Battle's index of biblical references in the Institutes, he notes at least 26 citations of or references to Revelation in Calvin's Institutes. Parker notes at least 40 references to it in the index of the Corpus Reformatorum. That would include all of Calvin's writings, not just the Institutes. Parker notes that Revelation is a surprising omission from Calvin's extant writings. Parker takes it only as very probable, though not completely certain, that Calvin, in fact, did not expound this book. Parker mentioned several early authors, including John Bale in his book, The Image of Both Churches, written in 1547, itself a commentary on Revelation, who make intriguing but wholly unsubstantiated references to a commentary on the apocalypse by Calvin. More likely, according to Parker, Calvin may have been deterred from writing on Revelation for a theological reason. So Parker says, quote, for him, the Old Testament proclaimed Christ in an obscure manner. But in the New Testament, Christ had appeared in complete clearness. It was like the difference between twilight and noontide. Hence, apocalyptic, involving the use of allegory, was part of the Old Testament method of teaching, and he was not afraid of treating apocalyptic in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, as witnessed his commentaries on those books. But, just as allegory was out of place in interpreting the Gospels, so apocalyptic is foreign to the New Testament's complete revelation of Christ." In the end, we can only conclude that though Calvin accepted 2nd and 3rd John and Revelation as part of the canon of Christian scripture, he did not, as far as we know, devote extended attention to their exposition. We move on next and look at Calvin and the criterion of canonicity. And I'll just summarize briefly some of the things that I said here. In fact, when I did the paper presentation, I just skipped over this portion entirely. Calvin does, as we noted earlier, put the emphasis on in canonicity on the self-authenticating nature of scripture, the fact that it is inspired, the fact that it gives evidence that it is sprung from heaven, And so he puts the major emphasis on the criterion of canonicity being the self-authenticating nature of scripture. So I'm going to skip over that portion entirely. And I'm going to go to the fourth key issue, which is Calvin's treatment of the selection of the books of the Bible and also the texts of the Bible. This final key issue again relates to Calvin's views on the canonical text of the Bible. For Calvin, canon was not merely a matter of which books should be recognized as part of the canon of scripture. But it was also about defining the authoritative texts of those books. Calvin's linkage of canon and text is clearly seen in his response to session four of Trent in his tract, Acts of the Council of Trent with the Antidote. He takes Rome to task for repudiating all other versions while retaining the Latin Vulgate alone as authentic. For Calvin, doctrine must be checked by the Hebrew or Greek original. He argues, quote, in condemning all translations except the Vulgate, as the error is more gross, so the edict is more barbarous. The sacred oracles of God were delivered by Moses and the prophets in Hebrew and by the apostles in Greek, end quote. He then adds, quote, the ancients, though unacquainted with the languages, especially with Hebrew, always candidly acknowledge that nothing is better than to consult the original in order to obtain the true and genuine meaning." The Romanists are not only content with, as Calvin puts it, a defective translation, but, he says, they insist on worshipping it, just as if it had come down from heaven. I have argued elsewhere that with regard to the text of the New Testament, the mature Calvin demonstrated a marked preference for the Textus Receptus as the canonical text of the New Testament. And you can see my article, Calvin and Text Criticism, which appeared in Puritan Reform Journal in July of 2017. We can safely assume that Calvin also preferred the Masoretic Text as the canonical text of the Old Testament. So having surveyed those various key issues, let me now draw some conclusions on Calvin's consensus. on canon and his ongoing legacy. Calvin's ultimate consensus on canon can perhaps best be observed in two works. First, in his republication of the Olivetan French Bible in 1540. This edition represents Calvin's consensus on a Protestant canon with 39 books from the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament and 27 books from the Greek in the New Testament. with no rank or distinction among them as in Luther's Bible, while the Apocrypha is included but set apart from the canonical books. The second work that we can look to to see Calvin's mature consensus on the canon would be the Gaelic Confession of 1559. which was prepared by Calvin and one of his pupils, and then revised and approved at a Senate of Paris in 1559. This confession reflects the views of the mature Calvin with respect to canon. Chapter 3 of the Gaelic Confession begins. These holy scriptures are comprised in the canonical books of the Old and New Testament as follows. There then appears the listing of the 66 books of the Protestant canon, with no rankings or distinctions among them. Chapter 4 of the Gaelic Confession adds, quote, We know these books to be canonical and the sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church as by the testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit which enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books, upon which, however useful, we cannot found any articles of faith. Calvin's distinct influence on the Protestant Orthodox view of canon is reflected especially in chapter 1 of the Holy Scripture in the Westminster Confession, as well as in parallel and nearly synonymous statements in corresponding chapters of the Savoy Declaration of 1658 and the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689. This influence includes the definition of the canonical books of the Bible and a rather ironic but clear description of the Apocrypha in Chapter 1, Paragraph 3 of the Westminster Confession, which says, the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. Of course, The Westminster Confession of Faith in Chapter 1 and Paragraph 8 also stresses the immediate inspiration of the scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek, and notes that the Word of God has been maintained by the singular care and providence kept pure of God and kept pure in all ages. and they are, therefore, authentical. Calvin's influence can also be seen in the writings of the Protestant Orthodox, from William Whitaker's Disputation on Holy Scripture of 1588, to John Owen's Of the Divine Original, and A Vindication of the Purity and Integrity of the Hebrew and Greek Texts of the Old and New Testaments, both written in the year 1659 or published in the year 1659. The trajectory extends to modern attempts to re-articulate Calvin's concept of the self-articulating canon as found, for example, in Michael J. Kruger's book, Canon Revisited, published in 2012. Calvin was profoundly influential in shaping and defining a distinctive Protestant and Reformed conception of canon. Over against Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, he rejected the notion that canon was defined by the ecclesiastical pronouncements of the Church, but affirmed that these books claim their canonical status by virtue of ontology, that is, by virtue of their being. In harmony with Judaism, he affirmed the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible as constituting the canon of the Old Testament. Though he rejected the canonicity of the Apocrypha, he could affirm that these works, though uninspired, could serve an edifying role in Christian piety. Such a perspective has been largely lost among most modern Protestants and might well be reclaimed in the contemporary church. Over against some of his fellow Reformers, Luther included, Calvin did not, in the end, affirm a so-called canon within the canon understanding of the New Testament books. He did not divide the New Testament books into ranks, and thus gave an equal authority and status to all. Calvin affirmed that canon was not just a matter of which books are in the Bible, but also of which texts make up those books. By affirming the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, As normative, this meant he departed from Eastern Orthodoxy's preference for the Greek or the Septuagint texts of the Old Testament, and also Roman Catholicism's preference for the Latin Vulgate for the entire Bible. What is more, he affirmed a stress on the importance of the immediate inspiration of the Bible in its original languages and I believe affirmed that the proper text was the traditional one, that is, the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus Received Text of the New Testament. I close then by returning to Balsamus' statement with which I began this paper, that Calvin, quote, denied with no distress the existence of a fixed New Testament canon. end quote, and conclude that this statement is inaccurate. Calvin did not deny, but affirmed a well-formed view of the canon of the Christian scripture. both the Old and the New Testaments. And this ends the paper. I hope this is of some profit to those who listen. And again, I hope that I will do some revision and some expansion and some editing of the paper. Again, I just shared bits and pieces of it. I hope it didn't sound too disjointed as I removed quite a bit of it from the reading. But anyways, I hope that this was helpful and will be edifying to those who hear it. I hope you'll enjoy this Word magazine, and I will look forward to speaking to you in the next edition. Until then, take care and God bless.