Response to Some Standard Protestant Objections to the Deuterocanon

By: Jay Dyer

A Reformed Protestant apologist recently sent me several objections to the Deuterocanonical Books. These are the books which are included in the Catholic and Orthodox canons, but were removed from Protestant Bibles, originally by Luther. As it stands, his objections are standard, with a couple new ones I had never heard (but which are easily refutable). I decided it would make a good article, since generally, reformed apologists rehash the same tired, old arguments and rely on straw men. One good example is the repeated claim that we think they are canonical because they are cited and alluded to by New Testament authors. This is not true. This is simply a response to the constant Protestant claim that they are never cited, showing it to be false.

Another good example, as will be seen below, is the claim by Protestants on the one hand that citation doesn’t prove canonicity, while turning around and arguing that since Peter quotes Paul, somehow Protestants can magically have a canon without any Church or any Tradition. This contradicts the first claim that citation doesn’t prove canonicity (as all agree), and begs the question, for it assumes apostolic authorship of the said Petrine text, which, like Matthew and other Gospels, cannot be known apart from Patristic Tradition. It’s really quite simple.

Objection 1: the DC is not Scripture because Pope Gregory himself did not consider it canonical. Read more of this post