56. Scholium. Whether
an inspired book could be lost. This matter is obscure, and
there is disagreement about it among the experts; and the Church has not
defined anything concerning the question.
It seems that the following should
be said: 1) If an inspired book was not canonical, i.e., handed
over to the custody of the Church: probably it could perish, because it
is probable that there existed lost inspired Letters, v.gr., another letter to
the Corinthians, besides 1 and 2 Cor., as St. Paul says: I wrote to you in
my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons (1 Cor. 5:9); also
another in the Church of Laodicea, concerning which St. Paul says to the
Colossians: . . . have it read [this letter] also in the church of
the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea (Col.
4:16).—But this is not certain, because the Greek authors deny the
existence of a third letter to the Corinthians, and those words I wrote to
you my letter . . . refer to the same letter, toe the preceding statement
(5:2) about the incestuous man. Likewise, the letter to the Laodiceans is
understood by others to be about one of our other canonical letters, which
either was written from the city of Laodicea or like an encyclical it was read
and the Laodiceans were to send it to the Colossians, or finally it can be
understood as a letter by the Laodiceans themselves.
2) If an inspired book was
handed over to the custody of the Church, the existence of the book and the
truths contained in it were truths pertaining the deposit of revelation; and,
although truths of lesser importance would be lost (for example, numbers,
chronology, profane names or purely scientific things in the O.T.) because of
the temporal purpose which was involved in their revelation . . . but it seems
to be more difficult to be able to admit the loss of a whole book. However,
Franzelin has a different opinion (De Deo Trino [1895] th.4 n.1 p.37).
(Joachim Salaverri and Michaele Nicolau, Sacrae Theologiae Summa, 4
vols. [trans. Kenneth Baker; Keep the Faith, Inc., 2015], 1B-583)
