Did church councils give us the Bible?

We talk  about the Council of Nicaea, this  group of men getting together to decide  what’s gonna be in our Bible today.

But that’s not what happened. The point is that the New Testament  documents were recognized very early by  the early church fathers, between 106 and 110 AD. Basically early church  fathers like Ignatius and others  recognized 25 out of the 27 books we  call the New Testament canon that early. The councils came  much later largely  because you couldn’t have councils work  while Christianity was on the run. Christianity was persecuted a good  portion of the first three centuries. It wasn’t until Constantine made  Christianity tolerable in about 311 AD  that Christians could freely associate  and do these kind of things from all  over the Roman Empire and come  together and hash some things out. But the Bible wasn’t written by  the Council of Nicaea nor did the Bible  come together in a canon in the Council  of Nicaea. The canon had been recognized  generally by early church fathers much  before that. There were later councils  that did say this is  definitely the Canon but that had  already been recognized earlier.

What was the purpose of the council  then? 

People come together to argue  over different things and there were councils over the  deity of Christ, who had the right view  of the deity of Christ, that was one  council. I’m not an expert on these  church history issues but I know that  was one of the things they argued over. We still get  together and argue over stuff. Theology is a big topic so next month I’m going to  Denver to go to the Evangelical  Theological and Philosophical Society  where people will give papers and talk  about these things. People have  been doing that forever so I don’t see  any problem with people doing that. But what’s  underneath the question is that “these things can’t  be trusted because they were decided  very late.” That’s not the case. They  may have been talked about very late but  they were also talked about much earlier  as well. And the evidence shows that  these are early documents written by  eyewitnesses or people who knew  eyewitnesses. And it’s a very strong case that what the  New Testament says about Jesus is really  true and if that’s really true, then  Christianity is true.