Duvduv

The apologists attributed to the second century already mention texts to be considered a canon of writings for the Christian "Church" but NEVER (not even once) do any of them tell us WHO decided what was to become official AND HOLY WRIT ("New Testament"). There was no Pope, no Vatican, no official Board or Committee back in the second century.

So WHO authorized these writers to state what is a Christian canon in the second century if in fact these gentlemen were merely "freelancers" in terms of teaching theology and doctrine. These were people whose lives are virtually UNKNOWN even according to our friend Eusebius. There was no central Christian authority until the Constantinian regime to establish such things.

Furthermore, IF they already had their "canon" from a "second century" Irenaeus, then why was it necessary for one Athanasius TWO HUNDRED years later to specify the "canon" of the New Testament?!

In chronological order you can point to: (unknown) Irenaeus, (unknown) Tertullian, (unknown) Origen all the way to Athanasius, considered by many as the "father of the canon." And since when would a major tenet of the faith be recorded merely in a festal letter by a single individual bishop?!

If so, who appointed Athanasius the "father of the canon," and why wouldn't second-century-Irenaeus enjoy that title, or for that matter the original apostles according to traditional teaching?!

outhouse

it was claimed they had a canon, you do understand the word percieved do you not?

we know Marcion made a horrible attempt at grouping scripture important to his personal movement togetehr and is known as the first real compiler depsite others who may have had collections that remained silent while being persecuted by romans.

Toto

There was no central authority, and therefore no agreement on what constituted the canon. Christians continued to argue about what belonged in the canon until modern times, and some still do.

I assume you have read the classic article Formation of the New Testament Canon

outhouse

That is a good link I keep handy as well

James Brown

It would have made, "But the Bible says . . . " style of arguments very interesting for 300 years of Christian history.

sotto voce

And yet, Christians today are unanimous, even if they have no denomination, if they do not even speak the same language, if they have just met. And they agree on very much more, as soon as they have just met.

It must have been the same in apostolic times.

What makes the idiot imperial outfit even more risible is that it took around four hundred long years to state what was holy, and what was not. You and I get it in seconds.

There are three quick ways of getting refused membership of a church. One is to admit to committing some egregious crime, or even a besetting sin, and excusing oneself of it. Another is to say that Roman Catholics can be Christians. Which comes to the same thing.

The third, equally effective, is to express disagreement with any teaching of the 66-book Bible.

A scripture that selects itself, anyway, as believers and unbelievers well know.

Duvduv

Toto, of course there are certain differences among Orthodox/Catholic/Protestant/Eastern sects about the inclusion of a few texts into their Old and New Testaments, but OVERALL they all accept the 4 gospels, the epistles, Revelation. The establishment of these texts as the "New Testament" of the Christ religion is unchallenged.

But the question remains unanswered. WHO authorized individual writers to determine what are the essential Christian texts of what we call the New Testament?? Especially since we are talking about several writers about whom almost NOTHING at all is known!

And according to those who believe certain writers existed in the second century, WHAT authority did they have over anyone else to specify for the entire sect what are the essential texts that were to stand alongside the Old Testament?

The resort to a discussion of Marcion is of no use since we have NO actual information about anything to do with Marcion aside from the claims of ancient propagandists.

NO SINGLE person could have written about this unless there was some kind of CONSENSUS among his assorted colleagues and associates. There was no established body for a consensus. Authority only became established in the 4th century.

sotto voce

And Christians owe that authority a debt?

It's an old Catholic 'argument' vs. Protestants, this, anyway. "You rebellious Proddies owe the Bible to us. We wrote it, we defined it."

Well, not so fast. If the imperial employees had cut out any of the 27 books, they would have been immediately labelled as heretical. The whispers would have been, "Why have they omitted Hebrews? Oh, of course, silly me, you can see why. They would have loved to omit it, though."

And why did they not include the works attributed to Clement, Ignatius et al., that they so esteem and rely upon? "They can't slip those in, they are far too late, and they are demonstrably demonic! They were sorely tempted, though."

Toto

Not quite. Revelation's status is iffy, along with some of the epistles.

Some early churches used the gospel of Peter, which is mostly lost to us.

You're never going to know. Who determines anything like that? Robert M. Price thinks Polycarp put the NT together.

People acquire that sort of authority by their own personal persuasiveness, or their family connections, or other factors. Why does it matter?

If you have an established authority, you don't need consensus. Consensus is the general agreement of right thinking folks.

MrMacSon

It developed haphazardly over many generations over a few centuries.

As for your propostion for a consensus ...
... the creeds are alleged to have been a type of consensus, especially the way the Nicene Creed was is reported to have developed.

See what the Catholic Encyclopedia had to say -

See the next major headings:

The Cath. Encyclopedia is, of course, likely to be biased and embellish some aspects & leave out others, but it seems to give a good outline