"Books that were left out of the NT"

This is one of the worst arguments I've ever seen for the Catholic canon, and/or worst objections to the Protestant canon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0wYXP9X6ic

He begins with an extremely deceptive overview:

The Bible did not descend from heaven fully formed and complete…no divine table of contents but rather the guidance of the Holy Spirit in determining what was authentically the word of God and what was not. 

Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, and John were determined to be divinely inspired, but the early church also had more than 40 other Gospels to contend with: Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Protevangelium of James…The Acts of Andrew, and the Acts of Paul and Thecla.

Between St. Paul and the other apostolic authors our canon includes 21 epistles, but there were dozens of other letters in circulation at the time; works like 1 Clement, the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas, Ignatius to the Romans, Polycarp to the Philippians were all used in churches for worship and revered at least regionally as divinely inspired. 

And finally our canon includes the book of Revelation–an apocalyptic work of the late 1C, but as you can imagine it was not the only one in existence. Early Christians would have known the Apocalypse of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Shepherd of Hermas as well. 

All told, we're dealing with over a 100 distinct works here. As strange as some of these names may sound to us to day, the fact of the matter is that the church was a blank slate at the time. 

The Gospel of Matthew seemed strange to some in the 2C with many preferring other works. When we look at the canon developed by Marcion in 130, Matthew, Mark, John, and Acts are all missing–as well as 1-2 Timothy and all of the Catholic letters. 

Other canons like Codex Vaticanus included all of the canonical Gospels but did not include 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation–

while the Codex Sinaiticus included all the normal books, but also included Shepherd of Hermans, Epistle of Barnabas.

There's the Didache

In reality, the NT as we have it today did not appear completely intact until the 367 letter of St. Athanasius, and was not officially listed in a church synod until Hippo in 393. Before that there were investigations, opinions, and local customs, but no uniform teaching.

So how did we get from multiple canons with multiple books down to just one that appears in 367. 

1. Let's to back through these claims:

The Bible did not descend from heaven fully formed and complete…no divine table of contents but rather the guidance of the Holy Spirit in determining what was authentically the word of God and what was not. 

i) If Roman Catholics can appeal to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in determining what was authentically the word of God and what was not, so can Protestants. I'm not endorsing that criterion. But the appeal cuts both ways.

ii) Of course the Bible didn't descend fro heaven formally formed and complete. Books of the Bible were composed at different times. In that sense it has to be put together. 

But that doesn't commit us to Roman Catholic ecclesiology. Protestants can trust the judgment of some Christians in the early church who were close to the sources. That's not a blank check. And that's not an argument from authority. 

Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, and John were determined to be divinely inspired…

2. Were they included in the canon because they were determined to be  divinely inspired? Who made that determination?

Or were they included in the canon because Christians wanted to know about Jesus, and these were written by authors known to the Christian community to be trustworthy sources of information about Jesus? My point is not to deny the inspiration of the Gospels, but was that in fact the first criterion, or was their inclusion in the canon more organic and spontaneous? 

Aren't we talking about books that originated in Christian communities who personally knew the authors, and over time that was extended by reputation to other Christian communities didn't know the authors firsthand? 

but the early church also had more than 40 other Gospels to contend with. 

3. Let's put some dates on these documents:

Gospel of Thomas (c. mid-late 2C, Gnostic), 

Gospel of Mary (c. mid-late 2C) 

Protevangelium of James (c. mid-2C)

The Acts of Andrew (c. mid-late 2C)

The Acts of Paul and Thecla (c. late 2C)

These are approximate dates. But even if we make allowance for an estimated range of composition, all of them are too late to be written by the attributed author or anyone who knew the characters. So this is just pseudonymous fiction masquerading as biography and autobiography. For instance, the Protevangelium of James is a farrago of pious legends.  These were never legitimate candidates for inclusion in the NT canon. 

And finally our canon includes the book of Revelation–an apocalyptic work of the late 1C, but as you can imagine it was not the only one in existence. Early Christians would have known 

4. Once again, let's put some dates on these documents: 

The Apocalypse of Paul (c. mid-2/mid-3C; Gnostic)

The Apocalypse of Peter (c. mid-2C) 

Once more, these are too late to be written by the attributed authors. These are fictional visions, dishonestly attributed to Peter and Paul. 

The Shepherd of Hermas 

5. According to the Muratorian canon, that's a mid-2C work written by the brother of the Bishop of Rome. Given its prestigious location in the capital of the Roman Empire, a book of visions by the brother of the Bishop of Rome would have a built-in constituency and patronage which the author wouldn't enjoy if he was a nobody. So the reception of the book was artificial. 

Between St. Paul and the other apostolic authors our canon includes 21 epistles, but there were dozens of other letters in circulation at the time; works like 1 Clement, the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas, Ignatius to the Romans, Polycarp to the Philippians were all used in churches for worship and revered at least regionally as divinely inspired. 

6. And the so-called Epistle of Barnabas is a forgery. Indeed, scholars entitle it Pseudo-Barnabas.

7. It's nice that we have letters from some early bishops. That's a window into the world of the ancient church. But is there any presumption that letters by silver age bishops should be included in the NT canon? The fact that the NT contains some letters creates no presumption that just because something belongs to the epistolary genre, it's a candidate for inclusion in the NT. Rather, it depends on who wrote it or when it was written.

To take a comparison, Hebrews is anonymous. One major scholar has argued that the author is Timothy:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/05/authorship-of-hebrews.html

Let's grant that for discussion purposes. If so, then Timothy had a far more intensive mentorship from an Apostle (Paul) than Clement, Ignatius, or Polycarp. So assuming for argument's sake that he wrote Hebrews, his letter would be a much better candidate for inclusion in the NT than the letters of Clement, Ignatius, or Polycarp. 

8. 1 Clement, the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas, Ignatius to the Romans, and Polycarp to the Philippians were not in circulation at the same time the NT letters, when first written. At best 1 Clement and 1-3 John overlap chronologically (if you date all that material to the 90s.). 

All told, we're dealing with over a 100 distinct works here. As strange as some of these names may sound to us to day, the fact of the matter is that the church was a blank slate at the time. 

9. The early church was never a blank slate regarding the NT canon. The NT books were authored by the same men who planted NT churches. This was their literary legacy. The same Paul who evangelized the Gentiles and planted churches in Greece wrote letters. The same John who pastored churches in Asia Minor wrote a Gospel, letters, and the Apocalypse. The same James who was a leader of the 1C mother church in Jerusalem, and half-bother of Jesus, wrote a letter. John-Mark was a known-quantity. St. Luke was a known-quantity. And so on and so forth. 

The Gospel of Matthew seemed strange to some in the 2C with many preferring other works. When we look at the canon developed by Marcion in 130, Matthew, Mark, John, and Acts are all missing–as well as 1-2 Timothy and all of the Catholic letters. 

10. Of course, that's an artificial canon which eliminates books that were already in the standard editions of the NT due to his heretical theological agenda. 

Other canons like Codex Vaticanus included all of the canonical Gospels but did not include 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation–

11. Codex Vaticanus is not a canon in the sense of a canonical list, although codices like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus do provide historical evidence for the NT canon.

12. Casey's comment is devious. The books are missing, not because they were excluded or never included, but because they were lost due due to damage to the back of the volume. 

while the Codex Sinaiticus included all the normal books, but also included Shepherd of Hermans, Epistle of Barnabas.

13. Another misleading comparison. The Shepherd of Hermans and Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas form an appendix, separated from the canonical books. 

The Didache

14. That's an intriguing work, but it's provenance is so murky that it could never be a viable candidate for the NT canon. We just know too little about the background and date. 

In reality, the NT as we have it today did not appear completely intact until the 367 letter of St. Athanasius, and was not officially listed in a church synod until Hippo in 393. Before that there were investigations, opinions, and local customs, but no uniform teaching.

15. Keep in mind that what's come down to us from the early church is a random sample of occasional writings. Only a fraction of ancient Christian writings survived. And many early Christian writings were unsystematic. There's no expectation that we should have lots of extant canonical lists from that period. 

16. There's a difference between a formal canonical list and an informal canon that's circulating in codices, lectionaries, and liturgies. It's quite possible for the entire NT to be widely used before someone draws up a list. Indeed, the list is initially based on usage, although once you have canonical lists, those can restrict subsequent usage. It's when apocryphal works began to proliferate, and heretics began to write rival books, that formal canonical lists became necessary. 

So how did we get from multiple canons with multiple books down to just one that appears in 367. 

17. That statement is equivocal since Casey has presented precious little evidence for multiple canons. In the early church the distribution of the entire NT would be uneven. Yet having, say, just a codex with the four Gospels or a codex with just the Pauline epistles, doesn't imply competing canons, but smaller groupings of a larger overall canon. 

18. And his statement is misleading. It's not like the church started out with a plethora of canonical candidates which it had to pare down. It started out with some 1C documents. Over time there was a proliferation of pseudepigrapha. But that wasn't the original situation confronting the church. It wasn't about ejecting books that were in the earliest collections. 

19. Having introduced his presentation with such a deceptive comparison, Casey later admits that legitimate canonical candidates require "some level of eyewitness account...some semblance of ancient origins". Likewise, he concedes that heretical books like the Gnostic gospels ("fanatic fringe groups") were never legitimate candidates. 

But these criteria don't require ecclesiastical authority. They're not uniquely Roman Catholic criteria. These are criteria for historical authenticity–as well as theological consistency between the foundational documents and later writings.

20. One complication is that Casey may well believe in canonical pseudepigrapha. He's been educated in mainstream Catholic Bible scholarship. The Historical-Critical method. 

If so, that does make the distinction between the traditional NT canon and NT apocrypha rather arbitrary. That, however, is not a problem for the Protestant NT canon, but for contemporary Catholicism, which has capitulated to modernism.