Ask a Muslim how he knows that the Koran is the divinely inspired Word of God and he will tell you that God sent an angel to Mohammad. Ask a Mormon how she knows that The Book of Mormon is the divinely inspired Word of God and she will tell you that God sent an angel to Joseph Smith.
But ask a Christian how he knows that the New Testament is the divinely inspired Word of God and you will hear an absolutely ridiculous collection of far-fetched assertions of evidence. Did Jesus himself write a message? No. Did Jesus sit down and dictate a message to one of his disciples? No. Christians don’t even allege that an angel gave God’s Word to them!
So why do Christians believe that the 27 books that comprise the Christian New Testament are God’s divine message to humankind, God’s Holy Word?
Answer: First, Christian apologists will refer to an ambiguous passage in First Timothy that may or not quote a short phrase (five words!) from the Gospel of Luke:
Christian website: Paul quotes Luke’s Gospel directly. More to the point, Paul labels it Scripture on the same level as the Old Testament.
Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” –First Timothy 5:17-18
The first quotation — “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain” — comes from Deuteronomy 25:4. It is clearly Scripture.
The second quotation — “The laborer deserves his wages” — comes from Luke’s Gospel, specifically Luke 10:7. Paul considers it Scripture, as well.
Gary continues: And then there is a passage in the epistle of Second Peter in which the author of that book, whom conservative Protestants still believe was the Apostle Peter, states that Paul’s teachings are Scripture.
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:15-16 ESV)
Never mind the fact that a significant percentage of scholars doubt that the passage in First Timothy is referring to the Gospel of Luke and never mind the fact that most scholars believe that Second Peter is a forgery, written by a forger in the 80’s or 90’s CE, not by Peter, the chief disciple of Jesus, whom even Christians believe had been dead for decades, so could not be the author.
Never mind, because even if we accept as fact that Paul wrote First Timothy, and we accept as fact that he was referring to the Gospel of Luke as Holy Scripture, and we accept as fact that the Apostle Peter wrote the epistle of Second Peter and we accept as fact that Peter meant to declare the writings of Paul as Holy Scripture, who gave Peter and Paul the authority to make such declarations of divinity??? Do Protestant Christians accept that Peter was the first pope, whose pronouncements on doctrinal matters were infallible as the “Holy See”, Christ’s vicar on earth?
Good grief!
Apologists will then counter: “It wasn’t just Paul and Peter. The entire Church unanimously accepted the four Gospels as the divine Word of God.”
The Church?? So now Protestant Christians are appealing to “the Church” as the source of authority on doctrinal matters??? So Protestants admit that the Magisterium of the Church has been given authority by God to decide what is divine and what is not??
Good grief!
Either Protestant Christians need to admit that they are still papists at heart or admit that the evidence for the divine inspiration of the Christian New Testament is piss poor, so poor that even the evidence for the divine inspiration of the Koran and Book of Mormon far exceed the evidence for the New Testament.
Human beings wrote the books of the New Testament and human beings declared them divine. Period.
Wake up, Christians. Your holy book’s claim of holiness is full of holes!
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End of post.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
It’s a question many Protestants rarely want to talk about – at what point in the early church did the wheels fall off. Protestants often pick and choose the stuff they like from the first few hundred years, while ignoring that many of those later Roman Empire Christians would reject Protestant ideas such as the three Solas, bishops not running the show, etc.
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Again, the scolarly consensus is that Paul did not write the letters to Timothy. (As referenced in the notes to this article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_Timothy) The letters are forgeries of the second century, 60 or more years after Paul died, when the synoptic gospels were already in circulation.
The guff about all scripture being inspired by God, therefore, comes from a dishonest forger (aka a liar). His quoting Luke is no big deal either, when the gospel had by then existed for 30 or more years.
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The entire Christian belief system is based upon assumptions: The assumption Paul wrote First Timothy. The assumption that he was quoting the Gospel of Luke. The assumption that the Gospel of Luke was written before Paul’s death. The assumption that Paul was speaking for God. The assumption that Paul was dealing with a full deck.
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