From the above video Bart said that the Nicene Council used a circular logic with the three following criteria.
- A book had to be written by an apostle or a close associate of an apostle.
- It had to be widely used; i.e. a dominate theological point of view
- Had to be Orthodox or the correct doctrine as judged the Church fathers.
So,
- if a book said it was written by an apostle, but it did not reflect the “orthodox doctrine” then it could not have been written by an apostle and so it was excluded.
- if a book was widely used but it did not reflect the “orthodox doctrine” then it could not have been written by an apostle and so it was excluded.
- If a book did not reflect the Orthodox doctrine then it was excluded.
From Wikipedia’s Athanasius of Alexandria —Some argue that, in his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius was the first person to list the 27 books of the New Testament canon that are in use today.[9] Others argue that Origen of Alexandria was the first to list the twenty-seven books of the New Testament in his Homilies on Joshua (only there is a textual variant as to whether or not he included Revelation).[10][11]
