And who do you ask? Yourself?
Of course not. That would be leaving Biblical interpretation in the hands of fallible men. Perish the thought. God already gives us His interpretation in other scripture. Some rely on that, and some rely on men.
Everything in the Church can be traced to the word of God and corroborated in the Bible.
Really? You mean things like papal authority, and the filioque? Please show me the corroboration.
Again, the Church did not compile the New Testament so that the Reformed may discover the "true" church 15,000 years later, but because of some 200 false Gnostic "gospels" launched by Satan and his demons.
So it was the Church that decided to create the New Testament, and it was because of the Gnostics? Seeing as how you don't mention God at all in the creation of the NT, I guess we really have the Gnostics to thank for its creation. How did the Church get God to agree to inspire the Church's word?
The Church did not need the New Testament to exist.
Of this I have no doubt. :)
I do not believe that there is any hard evidence that even the earliest Gnostic "gospels" (those of "Peter" and "Thomas") predated the canonical Gospels -- or at least the first three. There is furthermore no evidence in Christian tradition or really any internal evidence that the writing of those first three Gospels happened as a reaction to the writing of Gnostic gospels.
Modern scholars such as Elaine Pagels, who are very hostile to traditional Christianity, are categorical in stating that Gnosticism came first, and then big bad orthodox Christianity with its hierarchical structure and patriarchal attitudes came along and ruined it all. I think that the anti-Christian partisan nature of such theories is fairly obvious, and we should be careful about accepting such things as the "Gospel truth" (forgive the pun.)
There is certainly some internal evidence that the Gospel of St. John was in part written specifically to refute the claims of docetism, an early form of Gnosticism, but the tradition of the Church is clear that the main thing that St. John was doing was conveying many events and teachings from the life of Christ that were not included in the first three Gospels. As the last of the Apostles, he was in a position to "fill in the blanks" for the Church before he died. In addition, he was placing the life of Christ into a more specifically theological context in the sense of knowing God -- hence us calling him St. John the Theologian in the Orthodox Church. And much of that theology can only be thought of as a reaction to Gnosticism by stretching things.
A very strong case has been made that St. Matthew and St. Luke wrote their Gospels primarily for the simple purpose of catechesis. The need for such catechesis would have been very early in the life of the Church, especially as the Church grew beyond the ability of those who had personally seen and heard Christ to visit all of the Christian communities. Such catechesis would also have been necessary whether or not there was heresy in the Church, and that need would have predated the rise of Gnosticism. Converts would be coming from paganism, Judaism, etc... and would need to be taught the faith.
Fr. John Romanides has written about this writing of the Gospels as catechesis both in terms of the inner traditions of the Orthodox Church and in terms of how those Gospels (especially those of Sts. Matthew and Luke) are structured in a literary sense -- a parallelism that contrasts over and over the things of sin, death and the devil against the things of God.
It is interesting that in his writings to his spiritual children, St. Ignaty (Brianchaninov) stressed that the two most important books of the Bible to know intimately first are the Gospels of Sts. Matthew and Luke. They are certainly the Gospels that are most heavily emphasized in the Sunday lectionary of the Church. All of this reflects a residual memory of the primacy of these two Gospels as basic catechesis.
Another very obvious reasons for the Gospels to be written was to have writings to be read liturgically at public worship. The ancient tradition of the synagogue was built around readings of the Scriptures, and it was inevitable that Christians would want to have the words of Christ read to them as a part of their worship.
The very writing of these four Gospels plus the book of Acts is seen by some as a self-conscious creation of a Christian Pentateuch. I recently was told, although I have not found any back-up for it, that recent archaeology discovered a portrayal of the Hebrew Pentateuch and the Christian Pentateuch side by side, so whether or not it was specifically designed as such, there may have been those who saw the parallels very early on.
Likewise, the Epistles were written certainly in part to correct errors, but they are a great variety of errors -- Judaizing, paganism, and just plain sinfulness. The need for these books would have been clear regardless of any specific heresy such as Gnosticism, since we are fallen. But even in the Epistles, there is a lot of teaching and exhorting that has nothing to do with correcting error. I certainly don't see a whole lot in the Epistles that are a reaction against Gnosticism.
Regarding St. Ignatius of Antioch, there are numerous places in his letters where he seems to quote the New Testament, so I don't think that one can categorically state that the New Testament was unknown to him. It is certainly possible that his words are simply drawing on the same oral tradition that the New Testament writers drew on, but unless one wants, again, to claim that the New Testament wasn't written by the Apostles (contradicting the Church's tradition), it would be at least as likely that he was quoting the New Testament. There is certainly no compelling reason to believe that none of the NT writings were known to him.
One interesting thing that does arise from looking at St. Ignatius is that the Gospel that he seems to quote is that of Matthew. If Mark had been the first Gospel written as modern scholars claim (as opposed to the Church's tradition), one would expect otherwise -- especially since St. Ignatius was heir to the Petrine see of Antioch.
As a final side-note, there are actually some fairly interesting theories that Gnosticism did have some subtle after-the-fact influences on the text of the New Testament in its Alexandrian text-type. The Alexandrian text-type whose handful of manuscripts primarily underlie the modern critical texts on which all modern translations are based has readings that can, according to some, be read in a Gnostic way -- whereas the Byzantine text-type of those same readings are not at all Gnostic-friendly. None of this is provable, but it certainly adds additional reasons to be cautious regarding the Alexandrian text-type. The links between residual Gnosticism and the later Monophysitism that came to capture Egypt seem, to me, to be fairly clear, which I also find interesting in this regard.
I can certainly understand a measure of zeal in attempting to convince our Protestant brothers of the self-evident fact that the Church and its oral tradition predated the writing down of the New Testament Scriptures, and that thus the understanding of what those Scriptures meant and didn't mean was shaped from the beginning by this Apostolic tradition.
But to swallow the idea that our New Testament Scriptures were written only to react to Gnostic writings seems to me to be "a bridge too far." Likewise, assigning dates of composition to these Gospels beyond the 1st century is not at all in line with our Church's tradition. Dating them much beyond the early 2nd century doesn't even jibe with most scholarly opinions.
And you know that He gave it to you? I am sure you have convinced yourself of that.
Kosta: Everything in the Church can be traced to the word of God and corroborated in the Bible
FK: You mean things like papal authority, and the filioque? Please show me the corroboration
The filioque has to do with Trinitarian theology, which is scriptural. The Catholics are not wrong in asserting filioque; just incomplete. The Petrine office is evidenced in the giving of the keys. His pastoral primacy and his juridical authority, which developed later, are not one and the same. The Orthodox Church recongizes the former, but not the latter.
So it was the Church that decided to create the New Testament, and it was because of the Gnostics?
Not at all! I am apalled that you would take it that way. I will give a more elaborate answer to Agrarian's comment on this.