Johnny Skeptic

How can we be reasonably certain whether the New Testament Canon was chosen by God, or by men who used personal preferences without divine guidance?

HeretiKc

Where do I start? The task of answering this is almost overwhelming.

Before you could even begin to address the issue of whether God is actually involved in the selection of certain texts for the construction of specific religions, you'd have to address several other more fundamental things: 1) proving that there's some being/phenomenon that could justly be described as "God"; 2) presenting arguments discussing the level of God's involvement in the affairs of humans; 3) showing that God cares about humans and the direction of history and historical events; 4) showing that God has the slightest amount of preference regarding the literary affairs of humans; 5) showing that God would deem it necessary to "guide" in the construction of literature to influence history.

And I'm probably leaving out an incredible number of things you would need to address. But the point is, by the time you're at the specific question you're at, you're already working in the framework of a huge number of (ethnocentric) assumptions about God, to where the question is almost without value.

Tangent

How can a christian be reasonably certain of anything (within the scope of christian theology)? :devil1:

Wouldn't certainty preclude faith?

hatsoff

Agreed. It's very difficult if not impossible to reach an agreement with anyone about the that unless you already share a myriad of related beliefs.

Johnny Skeptic

But conservative Christians and liberal Christians already do share a myriad of related beliefs, but typically disagree about how the New Testament Canon was put together.

mens_sana

This assumes that there is only one New Testament canon. Not true; there are several. The Eastern and African churches share a canon with the West, but also have/use books not included in the West.

So now that we have different collections to consider — and assuming that the West is no more nor less Christian that any other region of Christianity — does that help clarify who did the choosing?

mountainman

Unless the choosing was done before c.330 CE, then it is obvious
that the choosing was done by Eusebius, under Constantine, for
whatever was bound in the Constantine Bibles of that date must
have represented the canon that was then bound.

We have before this date the Muratorian Canon, and the notage
of canon by Eusebius in his HE. Obviously, Eusebius used his own
notage when physically binding and preparing the 50 bibles ordered.



Pete