The Eastern Orthodox argument for the canon begins with a familiar move: in order to distinguish divine books from non-divine ones, one must first have a method. That method, they argue, is found in the authority of the Church—through tradition, ecumenical councils, and episcopal succession. Without this Church-provided mechanism, they say, Protestants have no principled way to know what books belong in the Bible.

But this argument rests on a fatal epistemological error: philosophical methodism.

Philosophical methodism is the idea that one must first obtain a method of knowing before one can know anything at all. It insists that knowledge is inaccessible unless filtered through a pre-established procedure or authority. In this case, Orthodoxy asserts that we can only know which books are Scripture after we’ve been given an infallible method for sorting them—namely, the Church.

That approach fails on two devastating fronts.

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1. It Leads to Infinite Regress

If a method is required to know which books are divine, then by the same logic, we would also need a method to verify that method. But then we’d need yet another method to verify that one. And so on—ad infinitum.

This is a recursive loop with no epistemic starting point. It ensures that no knowledge can ever be reached, because every method demands justification from a prior method that doesn’t yet exist.

So ironically, the very principle meant to secure certainty ends up obliterating it entirely.

Instead of giving you confidence about the canon, philosophical methodism collapses into radical skepticism. You never arrive at knowledge. You’re stuck forever validating the validator of the validator.

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2. It Assumes You Can Build a Method Without Prior Knowledge

The second—and even more devastating—problem is that methodism assumes you can create a method to identify divine revelation without already knowing any divine revelation.

But this is conceptually impossible. You cannot develop a method for identifying something unless you already know at least one concrete instance of the thing you’re trying to identify.

This is where Greg Bahnsen’s apple-sorting analogy delivers a powerful illustration.

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Bahnsen’s Apple Sorter: Why Methodism Can’t Get Off the Ground

Bahnsen tells the story of someone who inherits an apple orchard. In order to sell the apples, the new owner needs to separate the good apples from the bad ones. So he decides to build a machine to do the sorting.

The machine is intended to identify and separate the good from the bad. But here’s the catch: what if the orchard owner has never seen an apple before?

What if he has no idea what counts as “good” or “bad”? No standard. No prior knowledge. Could he realistically build a machine to sort them?

Of course not.

Without knowing something about apples—what they are, what counts as “good”—you can’t build a method to distinguish them. You can’t sort what you don’t recognize.

Bahnsen’s point is devastatingly clear:

You cannot build an apple-sorting machine unless you already know what a good apple looks like.

And now, here’s the theological punchline:

The same goes for divine revelation.

If you don’t already know something about what divine revelation is—its form, its authority, its character—you cannot build a method to reliably identify it. You can’t recognize God’s Word by a method unless you’ve already encountered God’s Word before the method.

You need at least one example of divine revelation to anchor your method. Otherwise, your method is unmoored—completely detached from its intended subject.

And yet this is exactly what the Orthodox claim does.

They assert that the Church, through tradition or conciliar authority, gives you the method by which you can identify the canon. But what gives you certainty that this Church is trustworthy? They will say, “Because it gave you the canon.” And so the circle closes in on itself.

They’ve built a sorting machine without ever seeing an apple—and then insist that no one else could possibly recognize an apple unless they use their machine.

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The Collapse of Methodism

So philosophical methodism fails in principle on both epistemological and theological grounds:

• It leads to infinite regress, requiring a never-ending chain of justifications for your method.
• It depends on knowledge from ignorance, insisting that you can design a method to identify divine revelation without having any revelation to begin with.

In both cases, methodism destroys the very possibility of knowledge. It undermines the very thing it claims to secure.

As Jimmy Stephens puts it in The Hermeneutical Problem of the Criterion:

“You cannot select a method for identifying revelation without already knowing at least one piece of divine revelation—otherwise the method has no anchor.”

In short: the only way to build a canon-recognizing method is if God has already spoken, and you have already heard.

But that’s not how the Orthodox paradigm works.

Instead, it makes the method primary and revelation secondary—resulting in a framework that is not only logically incoherent but theologically inverted.

2. The Orthodox Canon Has Never Been Authoritatively Settled

Even if we grant the Eastern Orthodox claim that “the Church” has the authority to determine the canon of Scripture, a fatal problem emerges: there is no universally defined Orthodox canon. The very institution that claims to have given us the Bible cannot even agree on what the Bible is. As a result, the Orthodox appeal to ecclesial authority collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions.

2.1. Competing Orthodox Canons: Internal Incoherence

Orthodox apologists often cite the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) as the decisive moment when the Orthodox Church affirmed its canon—including the so-called deuterocanonical books. But this synod was local, not ecumenical, and its authority has never been universally accepted across all Orthodox jurisdictions.

To this day, no pan-Orthodox council has ever dogmatically defined the biblical canon. The first seven ecumenical councils—the backbone of Orthodox conciliar tradition—never listed or defined the contents of Scripture.

Instead, Orthodox jurisdictions diverge significantly:

• Greek Orthodox: Includes Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and sometimes 4 Maccabees in an appendix.
• Russian Orthodox: Adds 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) and often omits 3 Maccabees.
• Georgian Orthodox: Includes 4 Ezra, 3 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh.

This is not a unified biblical canon. It is a patchwork of inherited, regional, and inconsistent traditions, none of which command universal Orthodox consensus.

2.2. The Patristic Record Undermines Canonical Consensus

Far from providing clarity, the Church Fathers only highlight further disunity on the canon:

• Athanasius (Festal Letter 39, AD 367): Excludes all deuterocanonicals, aligning with the Protestant OT and affirming all 27 NT books.
• Gregory Nazianzen: Omits Revelation and multiple deuterocanonical books.
• Cyril of Jerusalem: Excludes the deuterocanonicals and insists that only universally read books should be recognized.
• John of Damascus: Affirms only the 22-book Hebrew Bible, excluding Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees as apocrypha.

These are not marginal figures. They are towering voices in Orthodox tradition, yet their canon lists flatly contradict what many modern Orthodox assume based on liturgical use. The canon was not a fixed apostolic deposit—it was a process of gradual and inconsistent development.

2.3. Apostolic Succession Does Not Secure the Canon

Eastern Orthodoxy frequently appeals to apostolic succession as the basis for canonical authority. But this appeal collapses under scrutiny.

Multiple churches that claim apostolic succession—Roman Catholic, Coptic, Armenian, Assyrian—hold to different biblical canons.

Even within Orthodoxy itself, bishops in full apostolic succession have historically disagreed on the canon. Apostolic lineage may preserve institutional continuity, but it does not yield epistemic certainty. If succession cannot even guarantee agreement on the contents of God’s Word, it cannot serve as the foundation for canonical knowledge.

2.4. A Functional, Not Dogmatic, Canon

Orthodox scholars themselves often concede that the canon in the East is “open,” “fluid,” or “functional.” Deuterocanonical books sometimes occupy a secondary status as “ecclesiastical” rather than fully “canonical.” Even the Book of Revelation, despite being included in most Orthodox Bibles today, was excluded from liturgical reading in the East for over a millennium and remains absent in many services today.

The Eastern canon, then, is shaped by worship practice, not binding doctrinal judgment. The contrast with Protestantism is sharp: the Reformers recovered a canon attested by the earliest Fathers and widespread usage. Orthodoxy never officially dogmatized the canon at all.

2.5. Liturgical Use Is an Unstable Canonical Criterion

Some Orthodox apologists argue that what is read in the liturgy determines the canon. But this criterion is historically unreliable:

• Books like 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache were read liturgically but ultimately rejected as Scripture.
• Revelation was canonized but remained excluded from liturgical use in the East for centuries.

Liturgical use is a function of tradition and geography—not divine authority. It cannot provide a stable, universal canon.

2.6. The Trullo Contradiction: Canon by Committee?

Jay Dyer and others argue that the canon was “loosely closed” at the Council in Trullo (692) and reaffirmed at Nicea II (787). But this argument only deepens the confusion.

Trullo ratified the canons of both Laodicea (c. 363) and Carthage (397)—two councils with contradictory canon lists.

Source	Included Books	Excluded Books
Laodicea (Canon 60)	OT: Hebrew canon; NT: excludes Revelation	Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, 1–2 Maccabees, Revelation
Carthage (397)	OT: Includes deuterocanonicals; NT: includes Revelation	—
Athanasius (367)	NT: All 27; OT: Excludes deuterocanonicals	Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, 1–2 Maccabees
Gregory Nazianzen	Omits Revelation, deuterocanonicals	Revelation, Tobit, Judith, etc.
John of Damascus	Follows Hebrew canon; excludes deuterocanonicals	Same as above

This is not canonical closure—it is canonical contradiction. You cannot affirm both Laodicea and Carthage without embracing incoherence.

Further, Canon 60 of Laodicea is not found in all manuscripts of the council’s acts, yet was used for centuries in the East to exclude Revelation. Trullo thus affirms both a disputed text and two conflicting canon lists.

2.7. Nicea II Repeats, But Does Not Resolve, the Problem

Eastern apologists often appeal to Nicea II as a confirmation of Trullo. But this only compounds the issue.

Nicea II did not define the biblical canon. It simply reaffirmed the canons of Trullo (Canon 1) without resolving the underlying contradictions. There is no list of biblical books in Nicea II, nor any effort to reconcile Laodicea’s exclusion of Revelation with later liturgical or canonical practice.

Orthodoxy appeals to conciliar authority, but these councils never definitively settled the canon.

2.8. Ongoing Canonical Disagreement

To this day, Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions remain divided:

• Greek Orthodox: 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and sometimes 4 Maccabees.
• Russian Orthodox: 2 Esdras, but not 3 Maccabees.
• Georgian Orthodox: 4 Ezra, 3 Maccabees, Prayer of Manasseh.

Appeals to Trullo or Nicea II do not fix these divergences—they merely highlight them. There is still no uniform Orthodox Bible.

2.9. Revelation as the Canonical Outlier

The Book of Revelation stands as a litmus test for the instability of the Orthodox canon:

• Laodicea excluded it.
• Eastern churches resisted it for over 1,000 years.
• It remains outside the lectionary in many Orthodox jurisdictions.

If Trullo’s affirmation of Laodicea is binding, then Revelation is not canonical. If Trullo is not binding, then Orthodoxy has no council that defines the canon. Either way, conciliar authority collapses.

2.10. “Loose Closure” Is Theologically Incoherent

Dyer’s “loose closure” model implies that the Church did not possess a fixed canon for over 700 years after the apostles. This leads to troubling implications:

• Were Christians held accountable to a fluid or undefined canon?
• Were Church Fathers wrong for excluding books now affirmed?
• Was the Word of God incomplete or inaccessible for centuries?

This turns the Bible into an institutional construction, not a divine revelation.Scripture as publicly known and authoritative before any institutional canonization, then institutional authority is not a necessary condition for canon recognition.

2.11. Jesus Refutes the Need for an Institutional Canon Authority

Perhaps the most devastating rebuttal to the Orthodox canon model comes not from councils or Church Fathers, but from Christ Himself.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus appealed to Scripture as knowable, binding, and authoritative—without ever appealing to an infallible ecclesial institution to define it:

• “Have you not read…?” (Matthew 22:31)
• “It is written…” (Matthew 4:4)
• “You err, not knowing the Scriptures…” (Matthew 22:29)

Yet during Jesus’ time, there was no universally agreed-upon Jewish canon:

• The Sadducees accepted only the Torah.
• The Pharisees accepted the full Hebrew Bible.
• The Essenes at Qumran used a variant set with unique texts.

Despite these canonical disputes, Jesus never expressed concern about a lack of formalized canon. He never appealed to an infallible Sanhedrin ruling to resolve textual disputes. He treated the Scriptures as self-authenticating and recognizable to God’s people:

“My sheep hear my voice…” (John 10:27)

Christ’s method directly undermines the Orthodox claim that institutional ratification is required to know the canon. If the Son of God treated Scripture as inherently authoritative and knowable without ecclesial decree, so can His people.

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Orthodoxy Enshrines Canonical Uncertainty

Eastern Orthodoxy has never authoritatively settled the canon of Scripture.

Trullo and Nicea II affirm contradictory sources—Laodicea and Carthage—without resolution. The patristic record is divided, and Orthodox jurisdictions still disagree today. Liturgical use is inconsistent. Apostolic succession has not yielded clarity. Even Jesus’ own example rebukes the need for institutional ratification.

Orthodoxy claims to stand on tradition, but in doing so it enshrines uncertainty under the guise of continuity. The appeal to Church authority does not secure the canon—it fractures it.

The canon was not constructed by committee. It was recognized by the people of God, in accordance with the voice of the Good Shepherd. And it remains so today.

3. The Church Cannot Be the Ground of the Canon Without Collapsing into Fideism

Having shown that Eastern Orthodoxy has never dogmatically settled the canon, we now turn to a deeper problem: Even if the Orthodox Church did define a canon, its method of knowing that canon would collapse into fideism or circularity.

Orthodox apologists frequently claim, “We trust the Church. That’s how we know the canon.” But such an answer only raises more questions: Why this Church? Why not Rome, or the Copts, or the Assyrians?

3.1. Historical Arguments Are Fallible

If the Orthodox reply, “We trust the Church because of historical continuity,” they are no longer relying on divine authority but on fallible historical reconstruction. And if that’s their epistemic foundation, it is no more secure than the Protestant who appeals to the historical transmission of Scripture.

In other words, Orthodoxy’s supposed advantage vanishes the moment it steps into fallible historical argumentation. It cannot claim special divine authority if it relies on the same evidentialist method it criticizes in Protestants.

3.2. Circularity and the Church–Canon Loop

The more common reply is that the Church is the authority because God has appointed it, and thus it can define the canon. But this results in a vicious circle:

• “We know what the canon is because the Church defines it.”
• “We know which Church to trust because it gave us the canon.”

This is not a virtuous circularity grounded in God’s revelation—it is institutional self-reference. The canon is validated by the Church, and the Church by the canon, without any external standard to judge either claim.

It is as if the Orthodox Church says: “Believe us because we’re right. We’re right because we said so.”

This is not epistemological stability. It is dogmatic assertion masquerading as theological method.

3.3. Internalism and the Collapse into Elitism

As Jimmy Stephens has argued in The Failure of Internalism, the Orthodox canon argument often functions as if internalism were true, even if Eastern Orthodoxy does not explicitly affirm internalism as a philosophical position. That is, their appeal assumes that unless one can access all the justifying data—councils, apostolic succession, historical validation—one cannot truly know the canon. But this method places the canon behind a wall of epistemic prerequisites, making it inaccessible to all but professional historians and theologians. The result is that ordinary believers are forced to either defer blindly to the Church (fideism) or embark on a historical reconstruction few are equipped to undertake.

This reveals a fatal dilemma at the heart of the Orthodox canon argument:

Either the Orthodox believer must verify the canon through access to historical data (councils, apostolic succession, etc.),
or they must accept the Church’s authority without independent verification.

• If the former, then the Orthodox position collapses into internalism, and the canon becomes epistemically inaccessible to most. But this standard leads to epistemic disaster. If one must reconstruct church history to know the canon, then only a trained academic can have justified belief. The average Christian is left epistemically cut off from the Word of God unless they defer to the Church without understanding. This turns biblical knowledge into a kind of historical gnosticism—reserved for those with access to the inner archives of ecclesial history. The canon becomes unknowable for most people, even while being claimed as foundational.
  
• If the latter, then it collapses into fideism, since the Church’s authority is assumed without rational warrant.

Therefore, the Orthodox appeal to the Church to justify the canon either undercuts its own epistemic authority or removes it from rational evaluation altogether. But even worse: no one—not even the initiated—can be justified on this model, because the historical data is itself fragmentary, conflicting, and cannot deliver infallible knowledge. It simply does not yield divine certainty.

3.4. Sola Scriptura Offers a Better Ground: God’s Self-Attesting Word

In contrast, Sola Scriptura does not rest on internalist standards, institutional authority, or historical reconstruction. It rests on the external, self-authenticating Word of God. As Van Til and others have argued, divine revelation is the precondition for intelligible knowledge—it does not need to be justified by man but is the very thing by which man justifies anything else.

The Church receives and recognizes the canon, but it does not ground or create it. Scripture is not true because the Church says so. The Church exists because Scripture is true.

3.5. Fideism Masquerading as Tradition

If the Orthodox Church had clear, non-circular reasons to believe in its divine authority, it would simply present those reasons. But because it lacks that foundation, it defaults to the canon argument as a rhetorical shortcut—a proxy for trust in the institution.

But this is precisely what fideism is: believing something on the basis of sheer institutional say-so, without rational justification or appeal to God’s self-attesting revelation.

Orthodoxy criticizes Protestants for allegedly standing on “private judgment,” but it replaces that with blind submission to an undefined and historically inconsistent body.

4. The Character of God Destroys the Canon Objection

The Orthodox canon argument doesn’t merely fail on historical or epistemological grounds—it fails theologically. At its core, it implies that God’s Word is not sufficient until the Church declares it so. But this is an attack on the very attributes of God.

4.1. God’s Word Needs No Human Endorsement

As Jimmy Stephens puts it:

“If the surety of God’s Word is God’s Word because of whose Word it is, why would God need to swear on the authority of a group of believers?”

To say that Scripture is not fully authoritative until the Church certifies it is to imply that God’s own speech is not clear, sufficient, or trustworthy unless supplemented by man. That is not just an epistemic problem—it’s a theological offense.

If God’s Word is not enough in itself to produce certainty, then God is:

• Not clear — since His speech alone doesn’t suffice to make His will known,
• Not wise — since He apparently failed to design a Word that can stand without human approval,
• Not trustworthy — since believers must ultimately trust the Church more than the God who speaks.

This turns the Church into a mediator of certainty that stands over God’s revelation, not under it. It implies, absurdly, that the Church is more reliable than God Himself—a notion that is both epistemically incoherent and theologically blasphemous.

4.2. Doubting Scripture Is Doubting God

As Stephens rightly concludes:

“Any room for doubt about the necessity or sufficiency of Scripture is just room for doubting God generally.”

If God cannot communicate clearly and sufficiently, no one can. And if the Church is needed to “complete” or “clarify” what God has said, then the Church—not God—is the true epistemic ground of Christian knowledge. That is not Christian theology. It is functional ecclesiolatry.

4.3. The Protestant Circle Begins and Ends in God

This is also why the Orthodox critique of Sola Scriptura cannot be reversed against Protestants. When Protestants affirm the canon, they are not appealing to ecclesiastical consensus or fallible reasoning. They are appealing to the character of the God who speaks.

As we argued in Sola Scriptura and Circularity, ultimate authority always involves circularity—but not all circles are equal.

• The Protestant circle begins and ends in God’s self-revealing Logos:
  “We know Scripture is God’s Word because God speaks, and God cannot lie.”
• The Orthodox circle begins and ends in the institutional Church:
  “We know Scripture is true because the Church says so, and we know the Church is true because Scripture says so.”

But this latter circle collapses. It places the Church above the Word, turns trust in God into trust in man, and assumes that divine revelation is insufficient until ratified by human institutions.to a loop of ecclesial self-reference and theological inversion.

5. The Orthodox Canon Argument Undermines the Intelligibility of Language

One of the most devastating implications of the Orthodox canon objection is its assault on the intelligibility of language itself. If divine revelation cannot be known apart from a human institution confirming it, then a chilling consequence follows: God’s speech is no longer sufficient to communicate knowledge.

5.1. The Incomprehensibility of Divine Speech?

As Jimmy Stephens rightly observes:

“If an all-wise, almighty triune creator of human language cannot guarantee knowledge by speaking, then less wise, less powerful, and contingent beings have no hope of saying anything sufficient to communicate what we want.”

The Orthodox canon argument depends on this denial—that divine speech alone is not enough. It must be clarified, supplemented, or made knowable by ecclesial or conciliar mediation. But if God’s Word cannot communicate apart from the Church, then the very concept of communication collapses. We are no longer dealing with theology—we are dealing with linguistic nihilism.

5.2. The Absurd Consequences of Canon Skepticism

Here’s the reductio:

• If God’s speech isn’t clear, then no speech is.
• If God’s intent can’t be conveyed directly, then no intent can be.
• If God’s words must be ratified by the Church to be knowable, then the Church is more competent than God at communicating truth.

This is not only absurd—it is blasphemous.

5.3. The Christian View of Language: Logos-Centered

The Christian view of language begins not with the Church, but with the Logos. God is the original speaker, the source of meaning, and the one who created human beings in His image as communicative, rational creatures. As John 1 declares, the Word (Logos) was “with God” and “was God,” and it is this divine Logos who brings light and understanding to men.

Thus, to claim that Scripture is unknowable without ecclesial ratification is not merely bad ecclesiology—it is anti-Logos. It denies the sufficiency of divine communication. It severs language from its Creator. And it turns the voice of the Shepherd into the voice of the committee.

5.4. A Theological Catastrophe, Not Just a Canonical Error

This is why the Orthodox objection is not merely a mistaken argument about canon mechanics. At its core, it is:

• A rejection of God’s communicative sufficiency,
• An elevation of human mediation over divine immediacy,
• A denial of the very foundations of knowledge, meaning, and revelation.

If God cannot be understood unless the Church speaks for Him, then God is not truly God, and language is not truly language.

The Protestant affirms that the Word of God is self-authenticating not because we presuppose it in a vacuum, but because we begin where all knowledge begins: with the God who speaks. Our foundation is not a magisterium—it is the Logos.

6. Sola Scriptura Is the Only Escape from Canon Skepticism

By this point, the Orthodox canon argument has imploded under its own weight. What began as an attack on Protestant certainty ends up destroying canonical certainty for everyone—including the Orthodox themselves. Their objection cuts too deep. In denying that Scripture can be known apart from the Church, they sever all access to the canon unless one submits blindly to ecclesial fiat.

But Sola Scriptura requires none of these epistemic gymnastics.

6.1. Sola Scriptura Does Not Require a Method Before Revelation

Unlike the Orthodox model, Sola Scriptura does not demand a method prior to content. It does not say, “We need a Church first to tell us what counts as revelation.” It begins with God speaking.

• It does not require the Church to make divine revelation trustworthy.
• It does not confuse divine speech with ecclesial recognition.
• It does not elevate historical reconstruction or apostolic lineage to the status of epistemic preconditions.

Instead, Sola Scriptura simply follows the pattern of Scripture itself. God speaks, and His sheep hear His voice (John 10:27). The people of God don’t determine the canon—they recognize it.

6.2. Canonical Sola Scriptura: The Better Foundation

This is the model theologian John Peckham has called canonical Sola Scriptura. It rests on three essential tenets:

1. Scripture is the uniquely infallible source of divine revelation available today.
2. Scripture is sufficient to function as the final norm of theology and Christian practice.
3. Scripture is the ultimate standard for judging all interpretation, tradition, and theological claims.

This doesn’t reject tradition; it rightly orders it. Tradition, councils, and confessions are gifts to the Church—but they are ministerial, not magisterial. They serve the Word of God; they do not govern it.

6.3. A Revelation-First Epistemology

Sola Scriptura does not float in midair. It stands on the character of the God who speaks. His Word is:

• Authoritative because it comes from the King.
• Clear because it comes from the Logos.
• Sufficient because it perfectly reveals what is needed for salvation, faith, and obedience.

It is not the Church that gives Scripture its clarity, sufficiency, or authority. It is Scripture that gives the Church its very existence.

This is the proper order of knowledge: revelation precedes recognition. God’s people hear His voice not because a council told them to, but because their hearts have been opened by the Spirit to recognize the Shepherd.

7. The Manuscript Problem: Canon of What?

Even if the Orthodox Church could definitively identify which books are canonical—a claim already shown to be incoherent—it still faces a deeper and even more troubling question: Which versions of those books are canonical?

It is not enough to say “Tobit is Scripture” if there are multiple versions of Tobit with major differences in length, content, and theology. The canon is not just a list of titles. It is a body of inspired texts. And textual variation without authoritative resolution reintroduces uncertainty at the very point where Orthodox ecclesiology claims to provide stability.

7.1. The Septuagint Is Not a Stable Canon

Eastern Orthodoxy often appeals to the Septuagint (LXX) as its Old Testament canon. But this appeal does not solve the problem—it multiplies it:

• The Septuagint is not a unified, fixed text but a collection of translations that differ across manuscripts and traditions.
• Key books like Tobit, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Esther exist in multiple versions, often with entire sections added, omitted, or theologically altered.
• For example:
  • The long version of Tobit in Codex Sinaiticus is nearly twice the length of the shorter versions found in other LXX manuscripts and the Latin tradition.
  • Daniel appears in two Greek versions: Theodotion’s and the Old Greek. Orthodox churches typically use Theodotion, but this preference is not conciliar or infallibly defined.
  • Esther in the LXX adds over 100 verses not found in the Hebrew version—verses that include prayers and explicit references to God, drastically changing the book’s theology.

Even the list of books varies between major Septuagint manuscripts. Some include 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Odes of Solomon, and other texts that are not universally accepted across Orthodox jurisdictions.

So when Orthodox apologists say, “We use the Septuagint,” the obvious reply is: Which Septuagint?

The Orthodox Church has no definitive answer.

7.2. Apostolic Use Undermines the Septuagint Claim

Appeals to apostolic citation of the LXX also fail. The apostles sometimes quote the Septuagint, but:

• They also deviate from it, sometimes citing readings closer to the Masoretic Text, and sometimes neither.
• Their use of Scripture is textually fluid, showing that no single version of the LXX was uniformly authoritative in the apostolic era.

Thus, the NT writers themselves do not endorse a fixed, authoritative form of the LXX—let alone the diverse forms preserved in Orthodox tradition.

7.3. There Is No Orthodox Definition of the Textual Form

Even if the Orthodox claim to know which books belong in the canon, they have never defined the canonical form of those books. There is:

• No ecumenical Orthodox council defining which version of Tobit, Daniel, or Jeremiah is canonical.
• No magisterial decision regarding which Septuagint manuscripts or Greek text forms are authoritative.
• No critical edition of the Orthodox Bible universally adopted across jurisdictions.

So even when the Orthodox say “Tobit is canon,” they must still answer:

Which Tobit? Which version of Daniel? Which Esther? Which LXX?

They can’t. Their tradition simply does not answer these questions.

7.4. The Origen Problem: Canon by a Condemned Heretic?

Ironically, the earliest attempt to harmonize these competing OT versions came from Origen, who compiled six columns of translations in his Hexapla (Hebrew, Greek, and others).

Yet Origen was later condemned for heresy by multiple Orthodox authorities. So the Orthodox tradition is dependent on a man they anathematized to navigate its own textual confusion.

If Origen’s textual judgments were unreliable, why lean on his Septuagint form?
But if they were reliable, why condemn the man who systematized them?

The Orthodox canon tradition cuts off the very branch it sits on.

7.5. Apocryphal Books in LXX Manuscripts

Several texts appear in prominent LXX manuscripts that Orthodoxy does not consider canonical, including:

• Odes of Solomon
• 4 Maccabees
• Psalm 151
• The Letter of Jeremiah (sometimes counted separately from Baruch)

These are found in Codex Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, and other early manuscripts frequently cited by Orthodox apologists. If the appeal is to manuscript tradition, these books should be included. But they are not. Why not?

The Orthodox have no consistent answer.

7.6. The NT Textual Problem

The issue doesn’t stop at the Old Testament. The New Testament text itself is not uniform across Orthodox traditions:

• The Greek Orthodox traditionally use the Byzantine Text (Majority Text).
• Other Orthodox traditions (e.g., Slavonic, Georgian, Armenian) reflect different readings and textual families.
• The Orthodox Church has never dogmatized a particular NT text—no equivalent to the Catholic Nova Vulgata or the Protestant NA28/UBS5.

So even in the New Testament, Orthodoxy has no defined textual standard. The Church cannot even say which text of Luke is canonical, let alone which version of Tobit.

7.7. No Inspired Chaptering or Canonical Markers

Even the tools used to recognize canonical books in manuscripts—titles, marginal notes, chapter divisions—are not inspired, yet they often shaped how books were received.

This means Orthodoxy’s recognition of Scripture is mediated through uninspired textual features, undermining its claim that canonical recognition is Spirit-led and ecclesially secure.

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7.8. The Epistemic Collapse of the Orthodox Canon Claim

This is not a minor problem. It is a complete epistemic collapse:

• If the canon includes books with textually divergent versions,
• And the Orthodox Church has never defined which versions are canonical,
• Then their appeal to Church authority does not solve the canon problem—it merely relocates the uncertainty behind a liturgical and manuscript fog.

In effect, the Orthodox Church claims to know which books belong in the Bible, but cannot tell you what those books actually contain.

They have titles, but no textual content. That is not canon clarity. It is unacknowledged chaos.

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7.9. The Protestant Model: Preservation Without Illusion

By contrast, the Protestant model faces textual variation honestly:

• We acknowledge that manuscript differences exist.
• We affirm that God, in His providence, has preserved His Word across manuscript traditions.
• We do not believe that the Church creates or defines the canon—we believe that the Spirit has caused the people of God to recognize the inspired books over time.

We are not grounded in a single manuscript form. We are grounded in the God who speaks, and whose Word is recognizable, sufficient, and preserved, even through textual complexity.

Where Orthodoxy promises certainty, it delivers fragmentation.
Where Protestantism admits complexity, it offers clarity rooted in God.