You asked in what sense God has authorship of the Bible, and I say that in both cases, of inspired inerrant scripture, and a hymn or an icon, God uses a human worker who receives an approval from the living body of Christ, the Church. Definitely there is a difference between canonical scripture and other works of the Holy Tradition, and that difference is defined by the Church: one is inerrant when interpreted through the eye of the Church, the other is a contribution to the inerrancy of the entire living Word that abides in the Church, but for some reason or another (how can a hymn be inerrant?) is not declared inerrant.
aren't all Paul's letters written to specific audiences, and are thus not applicable to the rest of us Christians?
This is not what I am saying. We should listen to Paul, but the fact that his, and most other, writings are written to correct errors and confirm historical facts for an audience that has already received the Word in the form of the Holy Tradition illustrates that it is the Holy Tradition, and not written scripture alone that is the Gospel of Christ.
If you and I met the same man, and we each gave him an opposite teaching, would you judge the correctness of the teaching by which of us convinced the man?
Again, this is not the right corollary of what I am saying. If Jake and Jim met a man and each spoke to him, and Jake sent him to Christ then Jake spoke the truth, even though Jim might have succeeded in sending him to Satan.
I understand that you believe that God has deposited "the truth" into the hands of a very select few men. We believe that God has done the same thing, but just to "more" men.
The issue is, which men. Protestantism encourages a democratic model, where not just more men, but everyone, decide moral issues for themselves. Communism says that the state decides. Catholicism says that the truth has to be historically tested and conform with the deposit of faith as preserved by the Church, an institution that persisted since Christ, before it can become social teaching, irrespective of what the state says and what the elections say.
OK, in that sense I understand what you are saying.
Me: "If you and I met the same man, and we each gave him an opposite teaching, would you judge the correctness of the teaching by which of us convinced the man?"
Again, this is not the right corollary of what I am saying. If Jake and Jim met a man and each spoke to him, and Jake sent him to Christ then Jake spoke the truth, even though Jim might have succeeded in sending him to Satan.
I was responding to your original statement:
Ultimately, the test of correctness is whether a holy work brings people to Christ.
Your response fails your own test! :)
The issue is, which men [are repositors of God's truth]. Protestantism encourages a democratic model, where not just more men, but everyone, decide moral issues for themselves. Communism says that the state decides.
Well, in my joking comparison, the state was the Church. I saw some similarities. I don't see Protestantism as being a democracy in that whatever the majority says goes. I thought a great criticism of us was that there were so many differing views. I also don't see every Protestant deciding an individual moral code. That would be chaos. Our sub-unities are fairly united with fairly similar interpretations of God's moral code. We believe none of us has any morals of our own. God defines morality in scripture, and we reckon it, and live up to it or not to whatever degree.