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The New Testament was compiled by the Church and officially canonized in 397 A.D. Do you DENY these FACTS?

The New Testament was recognized by the Church as a spiritual body, made up of local churches in the 1st century.

No Council dictated what the New Testament was going to be, no more then it did the Old Testament, when Trent tried to say that the Old Testament included the Apocrypha books.

The 'Church' is not the Roman Catholic Church.

"The New Testament was recognized by the Church as a spiritual body, made up of local churches in the 1st century."

As it turns out, that was not the case. It took several hundred years to settle on the canon. Also, the Church is not a disembodied spirit, it is the Body of Christ present on earth. Christ founded only one Church that had a defined leadership, a deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to the Apostles, and an institutional character. Christ founded only one Church and one faith, not the confusion of the thousands of conflicting sects familiar to the modern Christian. He founded one Church, and prayed that His followers would be one.

"The 'Church' is not the Roman Catholic Church."

Christ founded only one Church, to which he entrusted the Apostolic deposit of faith. He handed on only one faith, to one Church. The Apostles appointed successors, and handed on the deposit of the faith to them. The consensus of the faithful has been preserved within the Body of the Church since the time of Christ. For the first 1000 years of Christianity, this Church maintained a formal unity.

Today, both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics are part of the same Apostolic Church. If you want Apostolic teaching, that is where you will find it. It is not something that can be invented based upon an individual's interpretation of Scripture, although Scripture definitely points us toward Christ and His Church.

The 16th century saw the rise of a large number of independent ecclesial communities, typically founded by charismatic leaders who selected, rejected or created a collection of doctrines according to their personal preferences that define their individual belief systems. Most of these communities remain Christan, although the individuals in these communities are now in a state of impaired communion with the one Church founded by Christ. They also disagree with each other on almost every point of doctrine except the duty of the individual to be doctrinally opposed to Apostolic Christianity.

There are many on this forum who feel the canon of Scripture is obvious, and easily knowable to any Christian. Unfortunately, the earliest Christians did not have the benefit of their insight. It took about 6 decades to write the Scriptures, and then several centuries to settle on the canon.