The Church and the Bible
Based on various posts and comments I’ve seen lately in this and other Christian communities, I would like to offer the following observation for everyone’s consideration.
Many believers perceive scripture as the original source of Church doctrine. But this simply cannot be the case. The Church as described in the book of Acts did not have any New Testament scriptures. Nonetheless, it was apparently capable of being the Church, making disciples, and upholding apostolic teaching.
As time went by, the material of the gospels and the epistles was written and began to circulate among the local congregations. But not every congregation was familiar with every piece of every document. There was no Internet or Christian publishing company to make sure that everybody got a copy of every document - nor was there yet any consensus about which documents were “canonical” and which ones were not.
The epistle that Paul wrote to the Church at Ephesus, for example, went to the Church at Ephesus - and took some time to wend its way elsewhere. And what he wrote Ephesus he specifically wrote to address the particular issues faced by the Church there. This doesn’t mean that it didn’t also have universal implications. It’s just that it was not addressed in its totality to all the congregations scattered between Rome and Jerusalem.
At the same time, other material which never made it into our present-day canon also circulated among these various local congregations - some of which they found useful and some of which they rejected.
It is worthwhile noting that for these few centuries, a fixed canon was not necessary for the refutation of heretical doctrine. In fact, the attempts by various false teachers to promote heresies provided those carrying the orthodox apostolic teachings with important opportunities to clarify what it was that the apostles taught.
Eventually, of course, it became necessary to establish which documents were legitimate and which ones were not. This business was not done in any especially extraordinary way. It was done as the Church had always done its business - in a consensus of Church leadership.
Thus we are confronted with an unavoidable historical fact. The Church did not become the Church because of the New Testament. The New Testament, on the other hand, only became the New Testament because of the Church.
Again, this is not necessarily the mental picture that many of us have of the relationship between the Bible and the Christian faith. Many of us were indoctrinated with the idea that the Bible is the foundation upon which the Church is built. It is not. The Church is built upon the rock of Jesus the Christ - who commissioned Spirit-empowered disciples, rather than a book, as the medium by which He would infect the world with His Way.