my reply:

But the crux of the issue is this: Protestantism holds that the divine inspiration of some book can be correctly and reliably determined by believers apart from an infallible authority.

This position is indefensible. It is not reasonable or profitable to assert that "The test for canonicity is inspiration", for, even if true, this assertion would be of no help in establishing the credentials of any text. Neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin nor any other Protestant has been able to advance objective criteria that make it possible to test inspiration. Nor is it possible to do so.

Luther's criterion, essentially, was whether the book in question strongly supported his own doctrine of "justification by faith alone". If —and only if— this book supports this doctrine, according to Luther, then the book is inspired. Luther never provided proof to justify the validity of this test. This criterion is transparently subjective and inadequate: subjective because it is based on Luther's personal interpretation of the pre-existing canon of Scripture; inadequate because it would permit anyone to write an essay supporting "justification by faith alone", an essay which would satisfy Luther's test for proving inspiration. Every literate Christian, therefore, would be capable of writing text having inspired status equal with the canon defined in the fourth century! Luther's criteria lead him to openly disparage the Epistle of James, as well as to reject the deuterocanonical books which had been officially recognized as canonical more than a thousand years before Luther thought to dispute them.

John Calvin's method was even more ambiguous and subjective: He asserted, "The word will never gain credit in the hearts of men till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit..." Calvin's test ultimately was based on the individual's subjective impression of the questioned text.

Any attempt to propose objective criteria inevitably fails because inescapably one must appeal to preconceived and subjective assumptions regarding the message God intended to transmit.

The Protestant The Interpreter's Bible, certainly not one to Roman Catholic teaching authority, reviews the issue of determining the canon, and then admits the inevitable outcome of rejecting the Church's authority in this matter: "On the principles here laid down, the exact boundaries of the New Testament may be held to be debatable..."

Divine inspiration is a characteristic of all the books of the biblical canon, but in no way can inspiration itself be made a test of canonicity. Without a divinely established, infallible authority to identify and declare the authentic contents of the Bible, believers would have no objective basis for knowing whether the bible they possess is complete and inerrant, or that it is free of spurious material.

my reply:

Dan, I think no reasonable look at history can defend this claim, which I can only regard as a well-intended but fictitious legend. However, it appears to me that there may be no alternative argument for one who defends sola scriptura. I would like to propose a different perspective which I believe rests better on historical fact:

In the early years of the Church's history, the Jews were troubled by their own controversies over the content of the Old Testament. The rapidly growing Christianity was making extensive use of the Holy Scriptures in the widely disseminated Greek translation, the Septuagint, or "LXX". "It should be noted that the Jews regarded the Christian use of the LXX to prove the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies by Christ to be wholly improper." This Christian use of the Scriptures was a significant factor causing the Jewish rabbinical leaders to take defensive steps to codify the content and —in their minds— protect the orthodox interpretation of the Scriptures. The first-century Jewish rabbinical synod at Jamnia, at around 95 A.D., defined criteria for determining which books comprised the Scriptures:

1) conformance to the Pentateuch;
2) authorship no later than the time of Esdras;
3) language must be Hebrew;
4) place of composition must be Palestine.

Using these criteria, the synod produced a list of the books of the pre-Christian Scriptures. The resulting "Palestinian" canon rejected a number of books of the Alexandrian canon, upon which was based the Greek Septuagint translation, also called the LXX. "After dropping these books from the Palestinian canon, the latter was closed, and once the contents were fixed, the text was also agreed upon. In their own words, the rabbis 'made a fence around it.' They also provided for a new translation into Greek to replace the Septuagint...which the Gentile Christians had appropriated and were using for apologetic purposes —for example, to prove the virginal conception of Christ from the term parthenos (virgin) in Isaiah 7:14. The Jewish translator, Aquila, rendered it neanis (young woman)."

Most early Christians regarded the Old Testament books as the word of God, although this attitude was not universal: "There were important groups of second-century Christians... who felt uneasy about the Old Testament, or even rejected it as completely alien to the gospel of Christ, but they stood outside the central stream of Christianity." Some recognized only the Palestinian canon proposed at Jamnia; however, most accepted the larger Alexandrian canon of the Septuagint.

The prominent Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes, "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive that the... books of the Hebrew Bible of Palestinian Judaism... It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha, or deutero-canonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was not the original Hebrew version, but the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, or LXX."

"The LXX was an important book for the early Christian authors. ...the writers of the New Testament used it, quoting from it on a number of occasions. It became the accepted Old Testament of the Church and was declared by some Christian authorities to have been inspired. The Church Fathers took it as their standard text, preferring it to the Hebrew versions of the Old Testament." Numerous patristic quotations can be found which include Septuagint passages in general, and deuterocanonical passages in particular.

From these points we can draw several conclusions:

Generally, following their initial acceptance of the Gospel message preached by the Apostles (and their successors and appointees), believers were built up in the faith through the subsequent and ongoing teaching presented to them by their episcopal "overseers" (episcopus =bishop). The fullness of Christian teachings was transmitted by various means, primarily: oral preaching, written apostolic letters, sacraments, and liturgical worship.

The various written letters which the apostles —and their successors and appointees— directed to the various churches were widely regarded as authoritative and reliable. However, there was not universal agreement among the various churches as to precisely which letters were "inspired". Certainly there were not bound volumes of the "New Testament" in circulation in the first several centuries of the Church's existence, nor was there even agreement —much less a definitive declaration— on precisely which books were "inspired".

The very fact that in the fourth century there were several solemn declarations —both papal and conciliar— specifying the authentic canon contradicts the assertion that "believers" instantly recognized and universally agreed upon the canon. If there had not been controversy over this issue, there would have been no cause for the subsequent definitive declarations. Why would the Church have needed to intervene dogmatically over an issue on which there was universal agreement? Such declarations historically result as the outcome of serious disputes threatening the unity of the faith.

The exact content of the canon had been open to question since the first century, and there were very numerous written teachings on the Christian faith that circulated among various local churches: writings that were locally held to be equal with the books we now call "canonical", but were officially excluded from the canon in the fourth century. Among these contested writings were the Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Marcion, Gospel of Thomas, Acts of Peter, Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Andrew, Acts of Thomas, Epistle of Barnabas, and spurious Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians.

It was precisely the circulation of these many questionable and disputed texts that provoked increasing controversy and disunity among the local churches, and which occasioned the need for an authoritative decision.

my reply:

This proof is particularly unconvincing, Dan, because it instantly collapses in the face of historical facts:

• First, not every canonical book is quoted by a subsequent canonical book.
• Second, quotations of Old Testament and New Testament books in the second and third centuries by various authorities prove nothing about whether these books are inspired. By applying your assertion we should be forced to regard the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and even some of the non-Christian writings of Aristotle, Plato, and others, as inspired because they were "quoted from in the 2nd & 3rd centuries"! Irenaeus of Lyons quoted Plato; does this mean Plato's writings are inspired and belong in the Bible?

First, your acknowledgment of "debates about the authenticity of certain books" undermines your contention that "The people of God discovered these books right away...". Because of this, you also undermine your further contention that "Pronouncements were based upon if the people of God had discovered the book to be inspired back in the first century." The possibility of this vague assertion being true depends upon there being unanimous agreement over the canon in the first century. Since there was not universal agreement, this theory is impotent.

However, you're on target to acknowledge that as late as the fourth century controversy over the canon still existed.

In this regard, the function of the authoritative declarations on the canon, given by Pope Damasus I, and affirmed at numerous later councils, was to provide infallible guidance, sure knowledge, and final authority on the question of the contents of the Bible.

Perhaps few Protestants consider the contradiction inherent in accepting Catholic conciliar definitions of the New Testament canon while rejecting the definitions of the Old Testament canon which issued from the very same councils!

Roman Catholics know which books the Bible contains, because the successors of the Apostles have consistently and infallibly shown to us which books are inspired. The canon of Scripture proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church is the same canon as that which passed into her hands in the first century, and which was officially defined no more than three centuries later.

Unlike the Protestant canon, whose Old Testament portion is based on the doctrine of the non-Christian synod of Jamnia, and which the early Church rejected, the true and complete canon has persisted unaltered in the Catholic Church since the first century.