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Notes -
Also as far as the early development of the canon, there was never really a “one moment” where a truly universal decision as to which books should be included in the Bible was made. It was a process of development that took over a century of the proliferation of numerous writings, before anyone even bothered to start picking and choosing, and by then it was largely a cumulative, individual and happenstance event, that was more-so guided by chance and vibes more than objective and scholarly research. That was until priests and academics began pronouncing what was authoritative and holy, and even they weren’t unanimous. Every church had its favored books, and since there was nothing like a clearly defined orthodoxy until the fourth century, there were a lot of simultaneous literary traditions. The idea that it was otherwise created is by the fact that the church that came out on top simply preserved texts in its favor and destroyed (or let disappear) opposing documents. What we call “orthodox” is simply the church that won.
But, the story also isn't quite that simple. The Catholic Church never had any extensive control over the Eastern churches, which were in turn divided even among themselves (with Ethiopian, Coptic, Syrian, Byzantine, and Armenian canons all riding side-by-side with each other, and with the Western Catholic canon, which itself was never perfectly settled until the fifteenth century at the earliest), but it was essentially established by the middle of the fourth century.
The current Catholic Bible is largely accepted as canonical from fatigue. The details were so ancient and convoluted that it was just easier to simply accept an ancient and enduring tradition than to bother actually questioning its merit. That was further secured by the fact that the long habit of time dictated the status of the texts, because favored books were more scrupulously preserved and survive in more copies than those that are unfavorable, so even if some unfavorable books happened to be earlier and more authoritative, in a lot of cases we can’t reconstruct them with a great deal of accuracy.
We know there are very early books that didn’t survive at all, Ancient fragments of others that we never knew existed, because no one’s even mentioned them. To give a quick example: the first Christian text that didn’t become canonized but was respected as authentic, is the First Epistle of Clement of Rome, which was dated to around AD 95-96 and was contained in a lot of ancient Bibles and was frequently read and regarded as Scripture in several churches. It’s significant because even at this late date, Clement never refers to any Gospel, but frequently refers to various epistles of Paul. He calls them “wise counsel,” not Scripture, and he reserves this authority for the Old Testament, which he cited over a hundred times.
Catholic Answers Apologist Jimmy Akin has argued that the Church has declared the 73 books cannon, but that it has not closed the cannon, meaning that other books could still enter cannon if they picked up a following.
But also I think this is one area that no one really found too important to get 100% correct until the proliferation of Bibles with the printing press.
I personally think 1 Clement should’ve been kept. It’s doctrinally very cohesive with dogma, and orthodox theology. Most Catholics accept though that divine inspiration and miracles came to a close at the end of the Apostolic Age, which is why we don’t see them as much anymore, though you’ve still got Marian apparitions and everything else.
The apostles had a very specific charisim of miracles happening all the time, but there are plenty of miracles that have happened since then and are still happening today. St. Padre Pio's life is a more modern example of someone who had "apostolic" things happen all the time around him. There's the guy who's leg grew back, the Life of Christina the Astonishing, St. Joan of Arc, that one guy who could fly, etc. Does dying after consuming the Eucharist for the first time count as a miracle? I don't know.
It seems to me that there has been no end of miracles and miracle claims in the Catholic Church, though of course the sum total might be large but each individual person might not see one in their lifetime.
Actually if you are willing to wait in line and have upper middle class American level resources, you can see a miracle in person if it’s important enough for you. There are pilgrimages specifically to go look at miracles- most famously the tilma of Juan Diego, or the incorrupt saints. The blood of st januarius liquification is also open to the public. Unlike the Easter fire, many of these miracles have been examined scientifically and found not to have another explanation.
Yeah, I think a lot of atheists just don't really look into it, or assume religious people don't actually experience scientifically evaluated miracles in the modern age, because it would be really challenging to their worldview.
Scott Alexander did a review of Fatima recently where he almost started to get worried, but then decided that there are other less clear claims of similar "Sun-dancing" miracles, which makes the first, most widely-attested and most inexplicable natural somehow? Whatever he needs to do to stay sane I guess.
Or we look into them after reading a post like this and find a bunch of hallucinations and poorly-investigated crap that passes for natural phenomenon. Dare you to go start a top-level about your scientifically evaluated miracles and how good the evidence is.
Most of the primary resources are not on the internet, so it wouldn't be an interesting discussion. I could say, "Giovanni Savino's eye was completely blown out in an explosion, Savino has an feeling of a Catholic Saint's presence, then his eye was back. This is attested to by contemporaneous medical records and interviews with witnesses." And then someone would want a scan of the medical records, which I do not have. And so it goes.
If you are a physician or scientist you can contact the Lourdes Medical Bureau. Its records are open to any physician or scientist who wants to make their own investigation or challenge any particular case recognized as “miraculous.” They have incredibly stringent criteria and throw out 95% of cases most others consider to be genuine healing miracles.
But that's a totally legitimate response to a highly unusual claim without much more evidence than a report by a highly biased source. Given what we know about human cognition, social dynamics, the malleability of memory etc. it's completely reasonable to dismiss this out of hand unless a durable record of this miracle, e.g. photos of his blown off skull on the construction site and the happily healed Savino in his hospital bed the next day after, exist. If it weren't, on what grounds do you (presumably, given its pagan association) dismiss this list of ancient miracle healings performed by the gods Asklepios and Apollo at the sanctuary at Epidauros?
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