No New Testament in the first few centuries? Where did you get that idea?
Liberal scholars of 100 years ago believed that...and some continued since, but as the science of textual criticism has improved, the accepted dating of the New Testament books has been acknowledged as older and older. Most all moderate-to-conservative scholars now fully accept that ALL the New Testament books have 1st Century authorship (with minor editing early on). Even the most liberal bible scholars today don’t think the New Testament texts are 3rd Century-made-up-by-a-committee books, as they did 50 to 100 years ago.
Textual variations are primarily in spelling or punctuation—without a any large parts being different. The story of the stoning of the immoral woman in Matthew doesn’t always appear there early on, and the last couple paragraphs of Mark appear to be an edited add on. Those are about the only paragraph differences one finds in the gospels. Ephesians may have been a couple of Paul’s letters put together, and 1st and 2nd Corinthians appear to be perhaps letters 2 and 3 (or 4) in a series of letters.
So what? It’s all 1st Century! Did every single church recognize the authority of every single book? No...but most did, and late antiquity was a sophisticated—and fairly orderly (before AD 450 and Rome’s fall, anyway) time...in other words, they weren’t illiterate bumpkins running the churches.
As to FORMAL recognition of the list of the canon...yes, that took place in the 3rd and 4th Centuries. So what? Antiquity was a fairly informal time... and they only formalized what was officially apostolic because in the 2nd Century a heretic named Marcion made up his own (heavily edited list...deleting the Old Testament and many other NT books as well).
An example might be, today we recognize the founding documents of America as the Declaration and the Constitution. Historians also recognize the Federalist Papers, and maybe Cato’s works and perhaps John Locke’s works and certain other pieces as formative in our ideals of our Founders about governance. There is no, however, “official list” of the works that made up the minds of Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Hamilton and Washington....but, it isn’t a great controversy, as historians aren’t stupid, old collections still exist, and they do know what these men read.
Now if a powerful political party came along and said Jefferson was really a proto-Communist...and he didn’t really read say, John Locke...and the Federalist Papers really weren’t a part of the intellectual background for American Liberty—then perhaps some group of honest scholars would create an “official reading list” of our Founders...that is the provable books and papers that they did indeed read. (and given that we have had a fairly stable society... figuring that out, again, wouldn’t be all that hard, even 250 years later).
I realize that’s not a perfect analogy, but it works. The idea that all these contradictory books were floating around...and NO ONE KNEW what was really written by Paul, or Peter, (or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) in say AD 250 is kind of silly. They were closer in time then, after all, to the death of the apostles, than we are to the death of Jefferson.
The Church Catholic’s canonization process (that is listing the books accepted as Apostolic—the list of the New Testament) was messy and took time—but it certainly was NOT just some committee of Constantine arbitrarily choosing books that suited their fancy... It was a very careful, scholarly process, that was done in a conciliar way...that is with representatives from throughout the known world.
A major criteria was, is the book Apostolic? The only book that made it into the canon that was not is Hebrews—which is very theological—and it may well be apostolic, very early on though, the author’s identity was lost. Still it is of 1st Century origin (which is more than we can say about ANY of the gnostic “gospels” which are typically 3rd or 4th C. origin).
My point is a very definite distinction can be made of the AUTHORSHIP of the New Testament books (1st Century, by eyewitnesses...)and the official recognition and formal listing of the books. Just because the recognition took place later, does NOT mean we cannot know that the early Christians were indeed familiar with our New Testament books...even if they didn’t all have exactly the same list.
Like a listing of the important sources our Founding Fathers read—there is broad general agreement—even if a formal body hasn’t given us an official list. So too was the case before Nicea and the formal recognition of the canon of the New Testament.
INDEED.
One more point. We do have a substantial collection of the writings of the ante-Nicean Fathers. (Irenaus, Tertullian, Origen, etc) Experts on the Fathers will tell you that THE ENTIRE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT could be reconstructed, just from their writings—so much did they quote it, so familiar were they with it, so confident were they of these books’ Apostolic authority.
Clearly the earliest Christians—at least their leadership—long BEFORE the formal list of the canon, were VERY FAMILIAR with the books we know as the New Testament.
What I was chipping at is the idea that people were placing their authority in the scriptures in the same way Protestants do so today. Literacy in the New Testament Church was no more than 10-15 percent in any given region. Even if literacy rates had been higher, it was cost-prohibitive to print a book of Scriptures. I think I read once that a single page would have been the modern day equivalent of $30. As such, most Christians didn't have copies of the Gospels to verify their doctrine. The truths of the faith were relayed to them orally, and it was generally readers in the church and priests who relayed those truths.
Here's the question I'm getting at...if people didn't have the means to diligently search the Scriptures for doctrinal clarity, what was their authority?