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The '''New Testament Canon''' is the collection of the 27 divinely inspired books that make up the [[New Testament]], which has been accepted and formally approved by the Church.
==History==
The Roman Emperor [[Constantine the Great]] (272-337) had a great effect on Orthodox Christianity. With his [[Edict of Milan]] in 313, Christians had more freedom and Church leadership took aggressive public stances. As a result, Church controversies now flared into public [[schism]]s, sometimes with violence. Constantine saw the quelling of religious disorder as the divinely-appointed emperor's duty and called the 314 [[Council of Arles of 314|Council of Arles]] against the [[Donatism|Donatists]] and the [[First Ecumenical Council]] to settle some of the doctrinal problems seen as plaguing early Christianity. A number of early Christian writings were lost or destroyed during this time.
In his Paschal Epistle of 367, [[Athanasius of Alexandria|Athanasius]] gave a list of exactly the same books that would formally become the New Testament canon.
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