This post was actually something we can debate back and forth on so I appreciate it….

Incoming wall of text…

Laodicea…

actually helps my point more than yours. First, that list is disputed. The canon attached to Laodicea (Canon 60) isn’t even in all manuscripts, so building a firm case off it is shaky to begin with.

Second, even if you grant it, it was a regional council as you said, not binding on the whole Church. You have multiple regional voices in the early centuries that differ on certain books. That’s exactly why later councils clarified things. When you look at the broader picture, the consistent usage in the Church, especially in the West and in the liturgy, lines up with Rome, Hippo, and Carthage, which include the Deuterocanon.

On Cyril, same thing. He had a shorter list, but he still treated some of those books as valuable and used them. Individual hesitation isn’t the same as the Church rejecting them. So yeah… there was some early debate on the margins, no one denies that, but the weight of the Church’s practice and the councils that actually settled the question long before the Reformation included those books.

Trent didn’t create a new canon. It closed a debate that had already largely been settled in practice for over a thousand years.

Jerome…

had personal reservations early on. Nobody disputes that, but two key things matter way more than his private opinion… He actually translated and included those books in the Vulgate, the Bible the Western Church used for over a thousand years. That’s not a small detail. That’s the Church’s lived canon. And more importantly, he submitted to the Church’s judgment. He didn’t teach a separate binding canon, didn’t reject their use in liturgy, and didn’t try to carve out a parallel authority structure. That’s a big difference from what happens later in the Reformation.

Also, Jerome isn’t the only voice. Augustine and the North African councils explicitly affirmed those books as Scripture. So you’ve got one Father with initial hesitation vs a broader consensus in practice and councils.

So even if Jerome personally distinguished levels of use at one point, the Church as a whole didn’t settle on a permanent “two tier canon.” The canon that was actually used, read in liturgy, and affirmed in councils included the Deuterocanon.

Appealing to Jerome’s early opinion while ignoring what he ultimately did and what the wider Church affirmed is kind of picking one data point and treating it like the whole picture.

Josephus…

He isn’t laying down a binding “canon” the way you’re treating it. He’s describing what was commonly recognized among certain Jewish groups at the time, especially tied to Temple tradition. Christianity didn’t just inherit one single Jewish stream, it came out of a world where multiple textual traditions were in use, including the Greek Scriptures that the apostles actually quote from. That matters, because the New Testament writers overwhelmingly quote the Greek tradition, not the later standardized Hebrew text. So the question isn’t “did a Jewish source exist that had a shorter list?” Of course it did. The question is which body of texts the apostles and the early Church actually treated as Scripture in practice. That leans heavily Greek.

On the Septuagint point, nobody is saying “everything ever bound in a Greek collection equals Scripture.” That’s a strawman… The argument is that the Deuterocanonical books were part of the Scriptures used liturgically and received by the early Church. There’s a difference between random historical writings floating around and books consistently read as Scripture in worship.

And the Jerome comparison still doesn’t land. Jerome had a personal preference for the Hebrew canon, but the Church didn’t adopt a permanent two tier system. What actually happened historically is that the Church continued to read and treat those books as Scripture, and that’s what got affirmed in councils long before Trent.

So appealing to Josephus plus a broad “Septuagint had extra stuff” argument doesn’t overturn the actual historical pattern, which is what the Church used, read, and handed on as Scripture.

Trent… (shorter now, I promise)

Sure, there were discussions and even some disagreement at times. That happens with a lot of doctrines early on, but the key question isn’t “was there ever debate?” It’s “what did the Church actually receive, use, and eventually bind itself to?”

For over a thousand years before Trent, those books were in the Bible used in the West, read in liturgy, and affirmed in regional councils like Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. That’s not fringe or optional in practice, that’s the Church living with a consistent set of Scriptures.

So when you say it “wasn’t required until Trent,” that’s like saying the Trinity wasn’t required until Nicaea. The belief existed, was taught, and was lived long before it was dogmatically defined. The definition comes when it’s challenged hard enough that the Church has to draw a clear line. Trent didn’t create a new belief. It closed the door on a debate that only really got forced open during the Reformation.

Your last two points…

That “binding vs canon” distinction sounds nice and all, but it doesn’t really hold up historically. If a book is consistently read in liturgy, treated as Scripture, used for doctrine, and affirmed by councils, then in practice it’s functioning as canon. You can call it a “second tier,” but that’s not how the Church actually lived it out.

Early Protestant Bibles actually prove that point. They didn’t just include those books as random history in the back for fun. They were preserved because they had long been received and used by the Church. The later removal is the shift, not the earlier inclusion.

And the bigger issue is authority. Who decides what counts as “God-breathed”? If individuals or later movements can downgrade books that the Church had used for over a thousand years, then the canon becomes something you can revise based on preference or interpretation.

So yeah, you can try to draw a line between “included” and “canonical,” but historically the Church didn’t operate with that kind of clean separation. The books that were used, proclaimed, and handed on are the ones that ended up defined as canon.

TLDR: The early Church was very very Orthodox/Catholic. If you can’t recognize your church all the way back to the beginning then it’s not a viable option. It’s either Orthodoxy or Catholicism.