The mutually exclusive Truth is that either all, some, or none of the 27 books of the NT which are universally agreed upon as Canon by the three branches of Christianity are inspired by the Holy Spirit or not.
Fair enough. I choose your "some" option. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
You've come here with a view that in fact they are NOT all inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that only the 4 Gospels are inspired by the Holy Spirit.
I can't say that. I can't say that the other books of the Bible are not inspired by the Holy Spirit, I'm saying that I don't accept all of them in what I consider to be the Christian canon. Protestants have a canon, Catholics have a different canon, Orthodox have yet another canon. I have mine. In fact, I include the Gospel of Thomas. Some say it's Gnostic, but I don't find it any more Gnostic than the the Gospel of John--and I am NOT a Gnostic. So, don't even start throwing that term around. I can feel you itching to do so.
And don't even try to suggest I'm not a Christian. I fully accept that salvation and eternal life come only through Jesus Christ, and furthermore, I fully agree and accept the Nicene Creed, the Apostolic Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.
I may be a denomination of one, but there it is.
I actually have a fairly deep education with regards to Church History, and so I am well aware of the development of the Canon and personally believe that the Holy Spirit did indeed guide its formation, and I agree, along with the three major branches of Christianity that the 27 books I previously listed are indeed Divinely Inspired. I also agree that the Canon is closed.
Oh, so you only include the New Testament in YOUR canon. Then you're no different than me. You try to sound like you are, but you're not. And frankly, I'm fine with that. So long as you're taking responsibility for your own Christian faith, then I'm fine with your canon. In fact, you and I would agree on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Your position is mutually exclusive and contradicts that of thousands of years of Church history.
It doesn't contradict anything. I just have a different canon. And for the record, your Protestant faith goes against 1500 years of Church history, and my guess is your not a deeply orthodox Lutheran, so your sect of Christianity is probably heretical compared to the Catholic Church. I'll bet you don't even believe that Mary is the mother of God or that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. I'm not judging. I don't believe that either (Well, I actually do believe the bread and wine become the substance of Christ.). And I can see where the whole "mother of God" thing comes from. But again, like you, I'm not Catholic.
Now, if you want to come to this forum and declare that you have received some mystical and gnostic revelation that the Church has actually been wrong for these past 1700 years and that the Holy Spirit didn't actually inspire anything other than the Gospels, then I would love to hear an argument as to why that is.
[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]! You actually called me a Gnostic before I even mentioned the Gospel of Thomas. How did I know that? You don't even know what a Gnostic is or what they believed, do you? But you throw that term around. Ever heard the saying: "To speak without thinking is to shoot without aiming?"
And what are you talking about? You're a Protestant. You're outside that 1700 year-old Church just like me.
Why can you trust the Gospels and not the other books? Does the fact that the Gospels are inspired and the other NT books not inspired mean that the Gospels are without error but that the epistles all contain errors? Luke and Acts were written by the same author pretty much back to back. Yet, you reject Acts as authoritative and accept Luke? Why?
Finally, something we can discuss...
Acts is not a Gospel, so...I don't know what else to say about that.
Inerrancy is not a concern of mine. The books of the Bible have been copied and translated so many times, there's no telling what the originals said. BUT, I don't care. I'm looking at my bible right now. In it are the Gospels. Those Gospels still have more than enough transformative power. So, I don't care about inerrancy.
The Old Testament is Jewish literature. We are not Jews; we are Christians. So, it's great for historical reference, but doesn't belong in a Christian canon. Or do we not follow Jesus Christ?
The New Testament has letters and Gospels. Letters are just letters by Christians who were writing in the 1st century. There's no reason for them to be in the canon. Why not have Augustine's "Confessions" as a book of the Bible?
As to why I trust the Gospels:
a. No one knows who wrote them, so they stand on their own and either succeed or fail based on what they say. And that means what my 25-year-old Bible records as the Gospels.
b. They inspired me to be like Christ, to follow Christ--so they work.
c. They exist miraculously, because the life and teachings of Jesus Christ would not permit the Catholic Church to exist as it does, and yet, the Catholic Church preserved the Gospels for all these centuries, at least up until the printing press.
d. They have a kind of supernatural depth to them. They are concrete on one level, symbolic on a deeper level, and then transformative on an even deeper level, such that reading--just hearing--the words as their spoken can cause a change in the mind of the reader--even if they don't understand what the passage says.
So, as Martin Luther would say: There I stand.