Deleted due to character limitations of the forum.
The short answer to your question is that different Christians “recognize” different canons in regards to the OT and to some degree (very small) the NT. It has always been that way. The Eastern Orthodox have a different canon OT canon than Catholics. Thats a fact. The Oriental Orthodox have a different OT canon than Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Thats a fact. Protestants have different canons than the other ones, thats a fact. If councils set the canon for Christianity, they failed. Look at how no one else used the “Catholic” canon. We can get hung up in the NT canon but I suggest the answer is a larger one.
Its good to be back. I had lurked a bit but your answers were not answers so I had to reply.
How does one recognize the Oriental Orthodox, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, yet reject all 3? Does a disagreement between the earliest Churches, which developed several hundred years after the start of the Church, justify anyone starting a ‘new’ Church at will? Whose will are those Churches started from?
You present the same train of thought on the canon of the Bible. ‘No one else uses the Catholic canon, so we can choose any canon at will.’
The reality of the ‘Catholic’ canon is, Martin Luther took that canon when he ‘protested’. Then he decided to use the Hebrew Palestinian Canon over the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Alexandrian Canon of the Old Testament. The Protestants use the New Testament canon, even though Martin Luther expressed objections to some of those books.
You only named three Churches and three canons, why don’t Protestants of today, recognizing there were only three of each, research them and accept one of them? Does the differences of the three, you named, make them all wrong? What gives Protestants, of the 1500s and upto present day, more insight than any of those Churches?
The fact is, there was one Church since the beginning. Yes, several hundred years later there was an Oriental Orthodox, and several more hundred years later the Catholic Church split into the East and West Churches. The fact of the matter is, Protestants reject all three of those Churches. Again, what gives Protestants, from the 1500s to present day, more insight than any of those Churches?
Careful how you answer, because it seems saying all three were incorrect it leaves us with hundreds of years of generations without the truth Protestants claim, even though they themselves do not agree on doctrines. This in affect means Christ was not always with ‘us’, us being those hundreds of generations without ‘truth’.
Now, let’s remove the argument of the canons for this part of the discussion. The fact is, the Bible was only in the possession of Churches, sharing many Catholic doctrines, for 1500 years, with Catholics holding it the entire period, prior to the Protestants having one. Now everyone has one. How can people reject the Churches that had Bible, with different canons, and accept their canon as the inerrant and final authority? Martin Luther tells us himself that the Catholics gave them the Bible, otherwise they would have known nothing about it at all. How does one reject this recorded history, not only by Church histories, but secular history as well?
When we look at the letters and epistles, we recognize that the letters were circulated among Churches, with Apostles still around to ‘interpret’ them. That means there was only ONE Church, in many locations. It was not every Church for themself, as Protestantism is today.
We recognize that Paul wrote a letter of instruction to Timothy, who he himself had appointed to a position of authority in the Church, stating that scriptures were ‘God breathed’ or ‘inspired by God’. These were the scriptures, Paul also wrote to Timothy and identified as, known since your infancy. The New Testament was not around yet. Those scriptures were Old Testament scriptures.
God started a Church, that gave us the Bible, in that order. That is indisputable. Christ never wrote anything, nor ordered anything scribed. If one reads the scriptures, in context, they will see everytime Christ told someone to ‘preach’ or ‘teach’ it was those He appointed to a position of authority. He never told the multitudes to ‘preach’ or ‘teach’. There is clearly an authority defined in scriptures and it’s not scriptures themselves. It’s the Church.
Only 5 of the Apostles wrote any ‘scriptures’. These were men who walked, talked and lived with Christ during His ministry. The other 6 Apostles did not write anything that was defined as part of the canon. 3 authors of New Testament scriptures were taught through the oral tradition, from the Church Christ started. ALL of them had the same teachings. Again, there was no differences as we see with all the denominations.
New Testament scriptures were written from around 50 to 107AD, yet the Church and Christianity, not only grew, it flourished even among persecutions with penalty of death.
