As an evangelical Protestant, I believe in the infallibility of the Holy Scriptures. I also believe the bishops of the second to fourth centuries were quite capable of making mistakes. But they were the people who decided (hopefully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) what scriptures were canonical[i]. Could have they made mistakes in choosing to include or omit certain scriptures? I'm sure this is a very old question, but I am only just coming around to consider it now. I was prompted to think about this by the following quote, which I read on this blog post.
“No New Testament writing was born with the predicate ‘canonical’ attached. The statement that a writing is canonical signifies in the first place only that it was pronounced canonical afterwards by the authorities of the second- to fourth-century church, in some cases only after all kinds of hesitation and disagreement . . . So anyone who accepts without question the idea of the canon places himself under the authority of the bishops and theologians of those centuries. Anyone who does not recognize their authority in other matters—and no Protestant theologian does—is being consistent if he questions it here, too.” -William Wrede, “The Task and Methods of ‘New Testament Theology,’” 71.
I suppose, by faith, we have to believe what is written in [ii]:
The human process of collecting the books of the Bible was flawed, but God, in His sovereignty, and despite our ignorance and stubbornness, brought the early church to the recognition of the books He had inspired.
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