Contra solascripturism

Abbot Joseph over at Word Incarnate writes an excellent post on the relationship between the Church and scripture, quoted below:

"So we have to realize that the Church is not based on the Bible, but rather the Bible is based on the Church.  The Bible is the fruit of the Church’s life and testimony; it was produced by the Church, and the books that are contained in it were recognized and declared by the Church to be the word of God. In the first century or two of Christianity, many other writings were held to be of equal value to what are today the recognized Scriptures, and they were read along with them in the liturgical assemblies.  But by the Church’s authority, granted by the Holy Spirit, these other writings were deemed not to have the level of divine inspiration required to be accepted as the word of God.

 (That is why it is the height of arrogance for an individual like Martin Luther to think he could personally decide which books are Scripture and which are not, for he eliminated seven books from the Old Testament.  It is an inadequate excuse to say he simply decided it was better to use the Hebrew canon than the Greek Septuagint: the whole Christian Church for 1500 years accepted the Septuagint canon of the Old Testament as the word of God, and virtually all the citations from the Old Testament that are found in the New Testament are from the Septuagint.  How could he possibly think he had the authority to cast out the word of God?  Was the version of the Old Testament used by the writers of the Gospels not good enough for him?  He also tried to remove the Epistle of St James from the New Testament, since it didn’t agree with his own theology—which in his opinion evidently meant it couldn’t possibly be the word of God—but thank God no one tolerated that particular folly.)"