Some protestants argue that they have a fallible canon of infallible scripture. Isn’t that the same thing as saying :
‘We are certain scripture is infallible but we are not certain it is scripture’?
What is your take?
My take is that we are absolutely certain what what books of the Bible are genuinely Scripture, but the early councils that determined the canon were not protected from error by the Holy Spirit.
In spite of not being protected from error by the Holy Spirit, they reached a universal consensus on the 27 books of the New Testament. It’s also worth noting how they did not reach universal consensus on the books of the Old Testament. A canon was already in place that was used among Jews, but no OT canon was declared with finality for any of the ancient churches until the second millennium.
This last part is especially worth noting for the following reason. For those who believe these councils enjoyed divine protection from error, why would He have guided them into perfect agreement on the NT canon but not on the OT canon? (Christianity still isn’t in agreement on the OT canon, but you knew that). So how does it make sense for God to guide them infallibly on the NT canon but not on the OT canon…at least, not until the 15th century when the Holy Spirit guided His One True Church in this way, but only after the Christians represented by most of the early ecumenical councils were in schism from Rome and only when the Protestant Reformation brought the issue back to the forefront of attention in the West? Doesn’t it make more sense to suppose that they were simply able to reach universal consensus in some instances but not others?
Suppose you ask what these early Christians said of themselves when they initially went through this process. Did they claim to enjoy protection from error by the Holy Spirit? Well, the only way to answer that is to say they did not make any such claim. They didn’t deny it, but that was because the idea did not exist. No one was suggesting it, so there was nothing to deny. The concept of infallibility was certainly well known- they were dealing with Scripture, after all. However, the first time anyone applied this idea to early ecumenical councils was in the 8th century.
The middle of the 8th century, to be a bit more precise. That’s when one Arab Christian named Theodore Abu-Qurrah addressed the issue of the confidence that later generations of Christians could have in the early ecumenical councils. How do we know they were right? His idea was this: The only way we can have an appropriately large amount of certitude in what they came up with (starting with the canon of Scripture) is to suppose that they were protected from error by the Holy Spirit. (If you can imagine that you’re talking to a mixture of Greek and Roman Christians in the 8th century, you could ask this man why God would have guided them to infallible certitude on the NT canon but not the OT…but make sure you do so in the mixed company of Greek and Roman Christians. That might be interesting…or awkward).
At any rate, that’s the first time anyone had such an idea, but it didn’t begin to get really popular until pretty well into the 9th century. But as of right now, most Catholics just assume that the idea goes back as far as the early councils themselves and that we should take their word for it when they say they’re infallible. Which they did not.
So are Protestants certain that our books of the Bible are actually the Bible? Yes we are. Do we claim that we were protected from error from the Holy Spirit in coming to the consensus that we have? No, but we’re sure that we’re dependent on the appropriate canons.
