The pages that define

[Xeno.of.athens]

Starting on page 1395 and ending on page 1502 in my Hendrickson KJV bible are found all the letters attributed to saint Paul. These are the pages that play the chief role in defining Protestant doctrine. In my Hendrickson KJV there are 1548 pages. So, within those pages (1502-1395), that is 107 pages, is found the core of Protestant teaching. 107 out of 1548, or 6.9% of the KJV, is where the "rubber meets the road" for Protestantism; this is not to say, however, that no other pages are used for doctrine, but the 107 are the place where the core doctrines are found. Thus, in my opinion, Protestantism is a Pauline religion. Are you content with this?

The ancient Churches take a different path, for them the four canonical gospels play the primary role because they reveal Jesus who is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And through the gospels all the rest of the holy scriptures are read as if the gospels cast a light by which the core teaching in all the rest of the holy scriptures are to be read and understood. The gospel take up pages 1179 to 1345, 166 pages or 10.7% of the KJV. Is this satisfactory?

 

[Fervent]

I don't think it's so much a difference of location, as much as it is a difference in hermeneutics and ecclesiology. In this regard, it's natural for doctrine to primarily be drawn from the epistles in general, and Paul's epistles in particular because these provide synthesis and direct teaching from the narratives. Understanding narratives is far more involved, especially for defining doctrine, because narratives require a greater understanding of context both literary and historic. So the epistles get leaned into because they are closer to explicit doctrinal statements and give the lens for understanding the narrative portions of the Bible. Nearly everything in the epistles can be taken as normative, but narratives require justifying why certain statements are normative rather than simply descriptive.