That is ignorant and absurd, for the fact is that an authoritative body of wholly inspired Scripture had been established by the time of Christ, as manifest by the frequent appeals to Scripture, including "He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:27) And writings of which provided the prophetic and doctrinal epistemological foundation for the church. Moreover it is even implicitly affirmed in Catholicism that btwn her canon and ours, we hold to the most ancient OT canon: “the protocanonical books of the Old Testament correspond with those of the Bible of the Hebrews, and the Old Testament as received by Protestants.” “...the Hebrew Bible, which became the Old Testament of Protestantism.” (The Catholic Encyclopedia>Canon of the Old Testament; htttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm) The Protestant canon of the Old Testament is the same as the Palestinian canon. (The Catholic Almanac, 1960, p. 217)
Meanwhile, it was not until approx. 1,400 years after the last book was penned that your church finally provided her "infallible" canon of the whole Bible - after the death of Luther in 1546. Who, as with other scholars, had freedom to disagree on the canon, which he did as a private opinion which Protestantism disagrees with.
And in reality, scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books continued down through the centuries [go to link and read] and right into Trent, which after a vote of 24 yea, 15 nay, with 16 abstaining (44%, 27%, 29%) as to whether to affirm it as an article of faith with its anathemas on those who dissent from it, provided the first "infallible" RC canon (which is not all the same as even that of the EOs).
Thus the question, if souls cannot discover the contents of Scripture and or be assured of its meaning without faith and reliance upon Rome, the self-proclaimed infallible judge, then how did souls prior to Rome rightly discern both men and writing as being from God?
Also, how can it be that souls cannot know what writings are of God without faith in Rome yet they are expected to see that Rome is of God and thus submit to her, and thus know what writings are of God?
, In addition, further consider the problems with Catholic apologetical ("we gave you the Bible=you need to submit to us") logic: If agreement with what an entity states on somethings means that one should submit to all, then 1st century souls should have submitted to all the judgments of those who sat in the seat of Moses, as the magisterial stewards of Scripture.
How do we explain that the first 2/3’s of our ‘bible’ was compiled by FALLIBLE Jews??