Editing Sola scriptura (section)

===== Composition and authority=====
For early Lutherans, ''sola scriptura'' did not mean that all books of the Bible are equal: there is an authoritative first-class subset for dogma: this has been called "the canon within the canon."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lane |first1=Jason D. |title=Luther's Criticism of James as a Key to his Biblical Hermeneutic |journal=Auslegung und Hermeneutik der Bibel in der Reformationszeit |date=19 December 2016 |pages=111–124 |doi=10.1515/9783110467925-006|isbn=978-3-11-046792-5 |doi-access=free }}</ref>
[[File:Biblia.svg|thumb|left|"I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach..."<ref>{{bibleverse||Revelation|14:6|9}}</ref> This illustration is from the title page of Luther's Bible.]]
The phrase "prophetic and apostolic" serves to exclude as sources of dogma those (canonical) biblical books which do not directly deal with Christ or the Gospel: this may not only exclude the Old Testament [[Deuterocanonicals]] but the New Testament ''[[antilegomena]]'' such as Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude and Revelation.<ref name=valleskey/> 

Early Lutherans used "apostolic" in what has been called a theological rather than historical sense: Luther wrote "what preaches Christ would be apostolic". At one stage of Luther's developing opinion, he rejected the Epistle of James as a foundation of the faith and held that the Book of Revelation was neither prophetic nor apostolic in his terms.<ref name=birner>"Because James lacked authority, Luther even refused to accept the use of a verse from it during a 1543 disputation."{{cite book |last1=Birner |first1=Benjamin |title=The Proper Distinction Between Antilegomena and Homologoumena: Its History and Application |date=2019 |url=http://essays.wisluthsem.org:8080/handle/123456789/4477 |access-date=25 April 2025}}</ref> 

Luther's followers to an extent restored the historical link between authority and canonicity  by appealing to ideas of New Testament ''[[antilegomena]]'' to favour those books deemed to have initially been accepted by all the early churches.<ref name=valleskey>{{cite book |last1=Valleskey |first1=Stephen |title=The New Testament Canon: Cur Alii Prae Aliis? |url=http://essays.wisluthsem.org:8080/handle/123456789/1378 |access-date=25 April 2025}}</ref> [[Martin Chemnitz]] listed the first-class books of the Old and New Testament: for Chemnitz "no dogma ought therefore to be drawn out of these books'' (the antilegomena) ''which does not have reliable and clear foundations and testimonies in other canonical books. Nothing controversial can be proved out of these books, unless there are other proofs and confirmations in the canonical books,"<ref name=valleskey/> which moderates or contradicts Luther's general hermeneutic principle "scripture interprets scripture." However, Chemnitz himself had to use ''antilegomena'' to justify some anti-Roman positions.<ref name=birner/>{{rp|28}}  

By the early 20th century, Lutheran theologian J.P. Koehler taught that a statement of the ''[[homologoumena]]'' must not be restricted by a statement taken from the ''antilegomena''. However, conventionally many Lutheran theologians hold that there is no statement in the former that actually contradicts the latter, as a matter of logical necessity or actual examination, making the idea of a canon-within-the-canon moot: Catholic theologians have disputed this. Another contemporary theologian [[August Pieper (theologian)|August Pieper ]] wrote that the Lutheran church "wisely failed to determine formally the extent of the New Testament canon"<ref name=birner/>{{rp|43}} in the sense of not explicitly formalizing the canon-within-the-canon.

According to Lutheran scholars, the so-called apocryphal books of the Old Testament were not written by the prophets, nor by inspiration; they contain errors,<ref>(Tobit 6, 71; 2 Macc. 12, 43 f.; 14, 411),</ref> were never included in the Palestinian Canon that Jesus was theorized (before the discovery of the [[Dead Sea scrolls]])<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sundberg |first1=Albert |title="The Old Testament of the Early Church" Revisited |journal=Festschrift in Honor of Charles Speel |date=1997 |url=https://www.tomsienkewicz.com/classics/Speel_Festschrift/sundbergJr.htm |access-date=25 April 2025}}</ref> to use,{{sfn|Lueker|Poellot|Jackson|2000a}} and therefore are not a part of scripture.{{sfn|Engelder|Arndt|Graebner|Mayer|1934|p=27}}