"No, rather it's because scripture is the INSPIRED word of God. What Paul wrote came from God. How can that be Gnosticism? This seems to me to be a big DUH!!!"
Whether approach you take toward the canon of Scripture, all of these letters were indeed both determined to be inspired Scripture *and* to be the letters of St. Paul.
The Fathers and Councils who came up with the various lists of canonical NT books, and which coalesced into uniform agreement on a canon all specifically attribute all of these epistles (including Hebrews) to St. Paul.
I'm not sure that there were any canonical lists that did not include every single Epistle of St. Paul, and attribute their authorship to him. The epistles that were missing from this or that list were some of the general epistles. If any Pauline epistles were missing (or considered to be less important) from someone's list, they would have been the later epistles: precisely the ones that Pagels claims are post-Pauline anti-Gnostic forgeries. One would expect the opposite if Pagels claims were true
But HD and 1000S, Kosta is not going to accept any of those arguments, because they are self-referential arguments from the Church's tradition. If you want to discuss this, you will have to go over the details. Kosta will need to tell you the parts he thinks are Gnostic in the epistles of St. Paul, and you will need specifically to show why they are not.
I'm going to do other things, though. Have fun! :-)
Thanks for the ping. It gave me the opportunity to spell out the pre-fab Orthodox position, and that's about all I have the energy for today (I need to spend time with Mrs. Agrarian on Mothers' Day.) :-)
Tut, tut. You can't make the claim that Orthodox/RCCers accept the traditions handed down by the fathers and then say, "It's OK to ignore those traditions." especially when in comes to the Bible. If the Church settled on these books as inspired, then what happen to the insolubility of the Church and the traditions of the church fathers?
Truth is traditions are picked and chosen by various groups within the Church. This is one example. At least Protestants tend to be a little more focus and accept the word of God as standard.
Kosta will need to tell you the parts he thinks are Gnostic in the epistles of St. Paul, and you will need specifically to show why they are not.
Please do. And while you're at it please provide for me the references from early church fathers who, after the scriptures were put together in a book, still believed Paul's writings were Gnostic. We'll base it on Church tradition. How's that for being fair?