The question of authority in relation to the biblical canon

Al Kimel, at Pontificator, offers another incisive post on the issue if canonicity, this one entitled, "Canon to the right of them; canon to the left of them." The problem of canonicity reduces to the problem of authority and, for the Protestant, the problem of a bifurcation between the authority of Scripture and that of the Church, which, in truth, should not and cannot be separated. There is little more ironic than the spectacle of evangelicals vociferously defending the infallible divine guidance of the apostles in their inscripturation of God's Word turning, a moment later in conversations with Catholics, to backpedal furiously at the suggestion that God could have extended this infallible guidance beyond the apostles' act of writing to their verbal teaching and that of their authoritatively ordained successors.

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