What an absolutely clueless thing to say! There was NO such authority. Do you actually believe God left it up to mere men to tell HIM what of His words they would accept and what they would reject??? Sorry, pal, God says something, you better obey Him or face the consequences. If Jesus chided the Jewish religious leaders for their ignorance of Scripture in not recognizing their own Messiah, then how can you possibly imagine He would go easy on any future church leaders? Believers received the writings of the Apostles AS the sacred Scripture. They didn't tell Paul, for example, that they would read it and get back to him!
boatbums write: “Do you actually believe God left it up to mere men to tell HIM what of His word”
Is this the childish dialogue we are having here? Written words did not fall from the skies and magically assemble themselves into chapter and verse. They were part of the oral traditions that was transcribed Much was transcribed. Much of it was not: John 21: 25:
“But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.” (Douay-Rheims Bible)
What were transcribed had to looked over by the early Church fathers (theologians) who painstakingly over decades under Petrine authority included some and discard others like the Gnostic gospels and the gospel of St. Thomas.
At the time of the Nicean Council, there were basically hundreds of Christian sects with hundreds of differing Gospels. The council was created to unify Christian theology and belief in order to prevent conflict. The church fathers who met decided on the Gospels that we’re all familiar with now as they were the most common amongst the varying sects. The Gospels of Thomas, Judas, Mary, Phillip, etc were discarded because the texts didn’t represent the majority of Christianity at the time.
From all this came one Credo with belief in the Holy Eucharist as the source, center, and summit of all Catholic worship for all ages. The historical and biblical reference to inter-cessionary prayer and the veneration of relics goes back to Biblical times as the referenced in the earlier posts.
As then we have this gem of “Bible-Christian” “theology” that God gave each one in his heart to interpret the scripture. This is the stuff for kindergartners. Go tell that to the followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. Snake-handling Christians make the same argument as do every corner street self-appointed pastor who thinks they can “authoritatively” interpret scripture. Eminent theologians simply laugh this stuff off as truly an “absolutely clueless thing to say.”
This is precisely why we have the nonsense of the Joel Osteens, Billy Grahams, and Rev. Jeremiah Wrights of this world. The folly of the Reformation that have let loose a diverse and often contradictory assortment of interpretations.