Who did this?
Seems like a lot of time went by before this was done, why is that?
It seems like there is a big gap from the end of the Apostolic Era around 100 AD and the late 4th century apprx. 374 AD. State sponsorship helped the centralized hierarchy, to eliminate all who would disagree, but it did not impart the power to determine who receives the Holy Spirit, or to lay claim to the "right way" to worship God.
Acts 10:44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.
It is the indwelling Holy Spirit that identifies all Christians not a state monopoly. We were warned about not placing our trust in historic ancestry.
Luke 3:8 Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father." For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
Sorry, I must be blunt about this: you really don't know Church history, do you? When exactly did the Church receive "state sponsorship?" And when exactly did the Church combat heresies?
There is no gap. The Gospels were accepted immediately. By 100 AD all four Gospels were used as scripture. The first to "canonize" the Christian Bible was Marcion, a heretic, who rejected all but Paul's Epistles and parts of Acts, and rejected the rest of the NT and all of Old Testament.
After Marcion, various churches used various books, many of which were later rejected, in the readings during the liturgy. Many, if not most, New Testament deterocanonicals were regarded as "questionable." The book of Revelation was first accepted in the East then placed in the "questionable" category for nine centuries, and is still of dubious character in the East, although officially recognized as scripture.
Similarly, the book of Hebrews was not accepted in the West. So, the Church fathers bargained for an even exchange: for the East to accept Revelation and for the West to accept Hebrews as a compromise.
Sure doesn't sound very inspired to me. In other words, no one knew for sure.
The anti-intellecutal, anti-historical, andti-empirical stance of some religious zealots is promoting ignorance and blind beliefs, if nor superstition.
What would you be without knowing who your parents are or were, or where you come from (personal history)? You could makes yourself to be anything you want to be, and live in delusion.
What would America mean to us if we didn't know it's history? We could make up any myth about it and believe it. What would the Bible mean if we didn't know its history? Anything we want it to be, which is pretty much what Protestants make of it imo.
Acts 10:44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.
The way the Jews used the term "Holy Spirit" (i.e. the Spirit of God) is as "power of God," not as a some edifying divine hypostasis that hijacks your soul. The power of God was the energy that God bestowed on His people to forge on, not to interpret, understand, or have faith.
The problem is that we are using the same Jewish words with altered (Christianized) meaning, the way the word "cool" meant one thing in 1920, and another in 1980. But, without historical context, such a word could not be interpreted correctly in different usage because its original meaning would be lost.
This is where historical and cultural content and the language come in and are crucial in understanding what is meant.
That Luke was a Jew in his faith is rendered doubtless from the fact that he still believes in "Shoel" and the "righteous." That the Apostles were Jews in their faith is made manifest in the very first chapter of Acts when they ask Jesus if He will restore the Kingdom of Israel. IN other words, they saw Him as a Jewish messiah, not God.
And the word "Son of God" is also one of those words we get from Judaism which a changed meaning. The term "son of God" never ever meant God in the Old Testament. It is a term used for angels and kings. Not even St. Paul does explicitly say that Jesus was God, but an image of God (because he was the ideal man in his mind, the second Adam, who was also an image of God).
We were warned about not placing our trust in historic ancestry...Luke 3:8
Yeah, sure, maybe that's why Luke lists the genealogy of Jesus as "proof" of His Davidic ancestry...We can read into the bible anything our heart desires once we strip it of its historical, linguistic and cultural antecedents.