When Was The Canon Established?

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Dedicated Mind

I guess my real question is who established the canon and when? Was it 1st century christians or the roman church?

That depends on how you look at it and what you mean by "The Roman Church."

The Roman Catholic Church as it exists today didn't really come into being until about the Eleventh Century. Many people within the Roman establishment certainly argued that their authority extended over all of the other bishops, but that wouldn't really come into actual practice until after the "Great Schism" between East and West. It was also at about this time that a lot of practices that we recognize as "RCC" came into being: celibacy and non-married clergy, prohibition on beards being worn by the clergy, etc.

What the early Christians believed was that they were "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:20). So, anything said and taught by Jesus Christ and His apostles was considered "Scripture."

The winnowing and selection of just what documents represented these teachings took some time. Most of our NT today was "universally accepted" pretty much from the start. There were other books that were accepted in some regions but questioned in others. Given the lack of any means of modern communication between the various regions, it simply took some time for the "universally accepted" stamp to be applied to all of the books that we recognize today.

A lot of people want to believe that there was some apostle (usually John) who sorted through everything and set the canon. The fact is, no one even made such a claim until centuries and centuries later. Marcion's heresy seems to have really caught the church off guard. If there was some sort of authentic canon at that time, the follow up to Marcion would not have been as jumbled as it was.

The straight answer to your question is: The Council of Trent - 1545.