If we believe that the Bible is inspired…and the early church councils established the current cannon (and they did)…does that mean we must acknowledge that the early church councils were inspired? If that is the case, then what does that mean theologically for the restorationist movement? I’m curious on what other people think. Discuss
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I think you’re asking good questions. For the Restoration Movement, the desire is to abandon human creeds and return to “just” the bible. What we know as “the bible” has shaped the community of faith for almost the past 2000 years – despite being picked by a church council, it’s not up for debate anymore. It’s closed. I think, from a Restoration standpoint, the best we can hope for with the church councils is that the Holy Spirit was working in them to produce the right canon. That does not necessarily mean anything else the councils did were inspired.
I think that’s a good position. We can say that they are inspired in some ways and not inspired in others. I like that, but at the same time, I feel it is a rather weak argument. If we can pick and choose on what things the councils say go, who’s to say that the Bible or what it contains itself is inspired. I understand that Christianity itself is based on faith, but to say that an organization can be wrong in so many ways as we Restorations do (ecclesiastical structure for example). And also to call a some of a council’s decision error and some of it doctrine undermines the authority of that organization altogether. It is not that one can’t believe that, it just makes it less believable. It is not as if the CHurch hadn’t been using the New Testament before it was Cannon, they did use it. But they obviously didn’t use it in the same sense that Restorationism uses it. They had city and regional bishops, a large ecclesiastic structure, and many other practices not authorized by the New Testament. So, if they people who affirmed the New Testament as authoritative did not use it in that way, should we?