Clout Chaser 🗿 on Nostr: I mean, it's just not something that's ever been in contention. Early on, there were ...

I mean, it's just not something that's ever been in contention. Early on, there were a few New Testament books that no one was quite sure about. There's a fancy Greek term for them that slips my mind atm, but most of it were unanimously agreed on, and those that aren't have historically been given less weight in establishing doctrine.

So it's not like we're just being totally arbitrary here. This has been accounted for. Catholics call it "Tradition" with a capital T. It's what we've inherited, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I think the best critique against my position would be that Christians haven't historically agreed on the Old Testament canon. For example, I'm a Lutheran, and we're in the tradition of St Jerome, who only accepted the Hebrew Old Testament. A Catholic accepts roughly 75% of the books that ultimately made it into late Septuagint copies, you can (perhaps inaccurately) call that the Augustinian canon.

But the problem with this whole discussion for me is, when you look at any of the books that were ever even considered to be inspired Scripture by the Church at large, there's no doctrinal disunity between them. I don't particularly care if Sirach or Tobit are in the Bible or not, it wouldn't change any tenant of my religion.