I don’t know how anyone but God can resolve the history issue.
Seems to me both sides have their list of history experts attesting to the “facts.”
Add in the fact of the RC edifice ‘cleansing’ the libraries . . . in centuries past . . .
Sigh.
I do appreciate that you have a better understanding of the perspective of some of us.
Then, actualyl take a look at say Munificentissimus Deus and Ineffabilis Deus where the process leading up to the official definition is described.
You guys are all over the tumultuous history of the Church. Fine, so think about whether a Pope with two wits to rub together is going casually to "impose" a dogma on an unwilling Church.
Or see if someone can come up with an official papal or conciliar "definition" that isn't in response to crisis.
WHich is more likely, (1) Out of the blue without any provocation or controversy Trent is going to "add" the Apocrypha to the OT. (2)With a unexpectedly durable schismatic movement going on, one which proposes a Canon of the OT which differs from the list thitherto generally accepted, so the Church, sigh, heaves it's massive bulk up, and say, "Nope, THIS is the OT."
I don't know about you, but I was told that one of the main reasons fro nailing down the NT canon was the Marcion put up HIS list of books that are okay. (I was told Luke and parts of the Pauline corpus.) So the Church had to respond and to make her stand on the matter known.
Just the way this guys writes the list is enough argument for me that massive huge grains of salt are required.
Were I to grant the, to me, somewhat "paranoid" in the popular sense notion that the Vatican periodically gets rid of the embarrassing stuff, even then we have enough data to show that this list is bogus, not so much in the raw facts (though I doubt many of his dates), but in the spin.) in naming them.
I may not be right about much, but this guy is off the wall.
It was Newman, no fool, (and, I am told, against promulgating Papal Infallibility) who said, "To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant."
Of course, I don't expect that in itslef to persaude anybody of its truth. But this guy was a learned and scholarly man If even they aren't conclusive it's hard to think that there aren't some arguments to give Protestants pause when they see what presents itself as a slam dunk outline of history that PROVES the Papists are wrong. It's all just too good (too neat, too pat) to be true.