The early church leaders viewed many documents as inspired, not just canonized scripture.
“It will have been noticed that in the preceding discussion concerning criteria used by early Christians in discerning the limits of the canon, nothing was said concerning inspiration. Though this silence may at first sight seem to be strange, the reason for it arises from the circumstance that, while the Fathers certainly agreed that the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments were inspired, they did not seem to have regarded inspiration as the ground of the Bible’s uniqueness. That is, the inspiration they ascribe to the Scriptures was only one facet of the inspiring activity of the Holy Spirit in many aspects of the Church’s life.7 For example, while Clement of Rome speaks of the sacred Scriptures (here referring to the Old Testament) as ‘true and given through the Holy Spirit’ (lxiii. 2), the author of the Epistle to Diognetus writes for his own part to his correspondent: ‘If you do not offend this grace, you will learn what the Word (λόγος) talks about through those through whom he wishes to talk, when he pleases. For whatever we have “been moved painstakingly to utter by the will of the Word that commands us, it is out of love for the things revealed to us that we come to share them with you’ (xi. 7–8). Among the writings of Eusebius there is a sermon attributed to the Emperor Constantine; whether or not this attribution is correct, the preacher clearly does not consider inspiration to be confined only to the Scriptures. He begins his sermon with the prayer, ‘May the mighty inspiration of the Father and of his Son … be with me in speaking these things’ (Orat. Const. 2).
Not only do early ecclesiastical writers view themselves to be, in some degree at least, inspired, but also others affirm, in a rather broad sense, the inspiration of their predecessors, if not their contemporaries. In a letter that Augustine addressed to Jerome, the bishop of Hippo goes so far as to say (Epist. lxxxii. 2) not only that Jerome has been favoured with the divine grace, but also that he writes under the dictation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritu Sancto)—which may seem to be rather strong hyperbole applied to the often irascible Jerome. “That Gregory the Great enjoyed the reputation of being inspired is easier to understand than is the case of Jerome, and Gregory’s biographer, Paul the Deacon, describes how the Holy Spirit, ‘under the form of a dove whiter than snow’, would explain to him the mysteries of Scripture (Vita S. Gregorii, 28).
That the early Church saw the inspiration of the Scriptures as but one aspect of a much broader activity of inspiration is clear from the use made of the word θεόπνενστος (‘divinely inspired’). This word, which is used in the affirmation that ‘all Scripture is given by inspiration of God’ (2 Tim. iii. 16), is chosen by Gregory of Nyssa in referring to his brother Basil’s commentary on the first six days of creation as an ‘exposition given by inspiration of God … [admired] no less than the words composed by Moses himself (Hexaemeron, proem.). The same word is used also in a synodical epistle from the Council of Ephesus to describe the council’s condemnation of Nestorius as ‘a decision given by inspiration of God’. Indeed, a still later writer even describes the epitaph on the grave of Bishop Abercius ‘as a commemorative inscription inspired of God’ (Vila…
“In other words, the concept of inspiration was not used in the early Church as a basis of designation between canonical and non-canonical orthodox Christian writings.
In short, the Scriptures, according to the early Fathers, are indeed inspired, but that is not the reason they are authoritative. They are authoritative, and hence canonical, because they are the extant literary deposit of the direct and indirect apostolic witness on which the later witness of the Church depends.”
Excerpt From
The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
Bruce M Metzger
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