If the New Testament is authentic, ONLY because the Church compiled....or even CREATED it, than logically, the Church has (or had) greater or equal authority to the Bible--which of course is Rome's claim.
If, however, since inspired by the Holy Spirit, the writings of the Apostles had their authority all along...since the ink dried on the page...and members of the Church only recognized that (also by the Holy Spirit) all along, and only later formalized that recognition via the councils--than that in no way puts any organized church in competition with the full and final authority of the holy Scriptures.
There's a BIG difference between creation and recognition--like the difference between Rembrandt himself, and an art expert working for a museum... The expert may well be totally qualified to recognize, and even expound upon Rembrandt's work, but he's fully incapable of creating such work himself.
So too the councils that recognized, but did not create....the books of the Bible.
Another good book specifically about the recognition... (not formation or creation or even compilation) of the 4 Gospels is Who Chose the Gospels?: Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy by Dr. C.E. Hill.
As Hill amply demonstrates current critical scholarship posits a dark (Dan Brown-type)conspiracy by the late patristic bishops...to deny the poor little minority (fake) "gospels" credibility--when of course all points of view (say the tolerant PC-meisters) deserve equal time, right? Preposterous!!!
It really is almost comical--if it weren't so sad, affecting eternal destinies--what passes for profound scholarship in higher critical bible academic circles these days...
AnalogReigns:
I think your pitting the Bible against the Church is part of the Protestant argument for its sola scriptura position. The Catholic Church does not pit the Sacred Scriptures against the CHurh nor against authentic Apostolic Tradition for they all flow from the same source, Christ. The Church is His Body and Christ is the Eternal Word, the Sacred Scriptures flow from Christ thru his Body, the Church. To pit them against each other is from the Historic Apostolic Christianity Tradition, both of which Rome and the Orthodox maintain, is not in continuity with orthodox Apostolic Christianity.
The Holy Spirit sent by Christ to the Apostles, who inspired them to write Sacred Scriptures, is the same Holy Spirit that guided the Church in the 4th and 5th centuries to canonize those Books into the NT that were orthodox in Doctrine, connected to an Apostle, and appropriate for reading in the Liturgy [i.e. the Church’s public Worship]. It was on those criteria that the Church came to determine the Canon.
So no matter how some FR Protestants here try to do mental gymnastics to avoid the historical fact that it was the Decision of the Catholic Church determining the NT Canon, it does not make not true and your “creation and recognition statement” is an attempt to avoid the conclusion that Prof. Kruger came to, that it was the 4th and 5th Century COuncils and decisions of the Popes that finally fixed the NT canon.
AnalogReigns:
Now while Prof. Kruger may acknowledge that the Church appealed to authority outside of The Bible to recognize and determine the canon, my guess is given the fact that he is a Reformed in theology, he probably does not agree with that decision by the early Church and of course the authority the Church Fathers appealed to was the Church, which of course St. Paul does indeed call the “pillar and foundation of truth} [1 Timothy 3:15].
When "The Gospel of Judas" came out there were so many confused people in my church that I dropped my whole curriculum for a month to address the formation of the canon. We went down a lot of rabbit trails, because it turned out that most of my class (pius, fire-baptised, tithing Baptist adults, no less) had been thoroughly marinated in Dan Brown's conspiracy theories. It was fun, and most of them came away with a greater respect for the Bible.