TRD,
I agree with what you wrote to a degree.
Christianity - as revealed in Scripture - is a relationship with Christ.
Where I sense I would disagree with you comes in how we know Christ. I believe it is through the revealed word alone that the relationship is formed and grows. Scripture is the basis for that relationship. And it is the "truth test" for all claims. Otherwise, we have only opinion instead of revealed truth.
If you are putting forth the argument that you can know the Person of Christ through any other means, then you have no way of knowing that the "Christ" you have met is not Krishna, or another imposter. Any teaching should be compared to the Scriptures - or else why was it so important to "any of the Ante-Nicean Fathers, ... Cappadocians Fathers, or St. Athanasius (all contemporaries with the fixing of the Christian canon)" to definitively declare which books were inspired of God? Hmmm? Apparently, the importance of this canon was apparent to them as it should have been. St. Paul declares that all scripture is inspired by God. Apparently he also believed scripture important.
In the absence of Scripture, do you rely on the men you quoted?
To close on where we agree with each other...
If someone knows the scripture alone, but doesn't have a personal relationship with the Savior, he is bankrupt.
best to you,
ampu
"Panta graphEs" is the phrase the Holy Apostle Paul uses. It means "all writings". The canon of Scripture was not fixed at that time, so it is a little odd to apply the phrase to the canon as later fixed by the Council of Carthage, and the 4th and 6th Ecumenical Councils (and shortened by Luther in imitation of the Christ-denying rabbis of the Council of Jamnia) to argue that the collection of books the Church canonized to be read in churches is the basis for the Church's way of life. A way of life that was well established by the time the last authored book, the Revelation to St. John, was written, and centuries before a decision was taken as to which books constituted Scripture.
The Revelation to St. John is contemporaneous (c. 96 AD) with St. Ignatius of Antioch's epistles (St. Ignatius' martyrdom is traditionally dated at 107 AD, but some scholars argue that it may have been as early as 98 AD). St. Ignatius' letters speak of the order of the Church and its liturgical life in a manner familiar to Orthodox Christians, as we continue the same life, albeit with the shorter Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom as the standard, and to Latin Christians, though post-Vatican II the similarity between their life and that of the ancient Church is less pronounced. And the letters speak of it as a well-established way of life, of Apostolic origin, not something being invented or discovered at the time.
In point of fact, when the Holy Apostle used the phrase, any Jew or Christian of Jewish heritage would have taken the phrase to mean the Law and the Prophets. One meets Christ in these writings, but only in prophecies and types.
I am reminded of a story from old Russia. A man had been seized by the atheism that was creeping into the intellectual classes even before the Revolution, and went to an old staretz. The man was distressed by his unbelief, and declared to the elder that he wanted to believe, but couldn't.
The elder did not send him to read the Scriptures, but gave him an icon of Christ, and bade him do 100 prostrations a day before the icon, and return in a year. The man returned a year later, joyous that he had found faith in Christ.
Indeed Our Savior is the pearl beyond price. The Scriptures are merely our primary testimony to Him.