René Paquin

This article examines the formation of the New Testament canon through an in-depth historical and theological study. René Paquin, a doctoral student in religious studies at the Université de Montréal, adopts an analytical approach rooted in the Orthodox tradition, seeking to accurately reconstruct the process by which the Church of the early centuries recognized and delineated the New Testament writings. The central idea of the article is that the constitution of the canon can only be fully understood by returning to the patristic sources and early ecclesial practice, independently of the interpretive categories introduced by the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. The main contribution of this study lies in its ability to reposition the canonical question within its Orthodox ecclesiological context, thereby offering an alternative reading to the confessional approaches that have largely dominated modern Western biblical scholarship.