[CTrent1564]

jboot:

And as you went down those trails, at what point did you determine the Church decided on the NT canon. In other words, where in History after the Death of the last Apostle, i.e John [circa 90AD] did you find that the Early Church had agreed on the 27 book NT canon that we have today.

[jboot]

My goal was to get the class to see that there was a common, uncontroversial and accepted NT canon from the time of the Early Church, that the "disagreements" among believers about which texts to include were relatively minor (i.e. there is no evidence that such things as "Judas" were ever accepted and later rejected) and that all disputes were settled by the time of St. Augustine. We created a nice timeline showing the various early canons, which turned out to be very useful in slicing throught the confusion.

FYI, I don't reject the idea that the Church and the Councils were given the discernment and the authority by the Holy Spirit to fix the canon. But that would be a non-starter in a suburban Baptist Sunday School in these post-Christian times. In this case, it was better to go the "long way around" to get to the same conclusion.