"…Philip D. Davies in his 1995 work, 'Whose Bible Is It Anyway?'… describes canon formation as a 'cultural phenomenon ... a natural process in any literate society. The formation of a canon is an exercise of power by a privileged class, defining class values by controlling the politics of reading.'"

cited by: Childs, Brevard S. The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies
Winter 2005. Pro Ecclesia (A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology)
cited by: Westendorf, James J. The Old and New Testament Canon—
A Topic Continuing to Intrigue, p. 306
Fall 2005. Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly – News & Comment, Vol. 102, No. 4

Comment: Was it really the politics of third and fourth century that has made churches so strong, authored faith in people who were lost or caught up in addiction? Was it just a cultural phenomenon that inspires people today to praise God and find peace in him when they approach their deathbed?

"Examining the Nag Hammadi trove, Pagels [Elaine Pagels is a Princeton professor, who won a National Book Award for her 1979 essay The Gnostic Gospels) has identified a bouquet of elements attractive to the modern spiritual seeker: echoes of Buddhism and Freud and a lively appreciation of women’s spiritual role. She claims to have found a Christianity less keyed to make-or-break beliefs like the virgin birth or even Christ’s divinity and more accepting of salvation through ongoing spiritual experience. Some of the texts, she has written, deserve to be considered “not as ‘madness and blasphemy,’ but as Christians in the first centuries experienced them – a powerful alternative to what we now know as orthodox Christian tradition.”

Van Biema, David. The Lost Gospels, Time, Dec. 22, 2003, p. 57

Comment:

"'Lost Christianities' author Ehrman, who chairs the religious-studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, notes that some of the early Christians believed in one God, some in two, and others in 30. 'There were some who believed Jesus’ death brought about the world’s salvation,' he says, 'and others who thought it had nothing to do with it. Others said Jesus never died.'"

Van Biema, David. The Lost Gospels, Time, Dec. 22, 2003, p. 58

Comment: 'Lost Christianities' would be better titled 'Fabricated Christianitites.' Didn't Jesus say there would be wolves in sheep's clothing?

"The faith’s historical silhouette was traditionally thought to resemble that of a hardwood tree: bushy with denominational profusion on top, but plumb line straight in its bottom half, theologically unified down through the hardy “primitive church” and on, through apostolic roots, to Christ. To be sure, there was some record of early deviations, or heresies. But they seemed minor, perverse curiosities of limited interest…

Gradually, the more liberal historians came to view early Christianity not as an oak but as a mangrove, a welter of trunks with names like Gnosticism, Ebionism and Marcionism, each offering a different vision of Christ and Christians. The “orthodox” stem, they concluded, had only gradually strangled or absorbed the others. The scarcity of lost texts, the revisionists decided, did not reflect unpopularity in their day so much as a later campaign by the church to eliminate what it deemed misguided teaching."

Van Biema, David. The Lost Gospels, Time, Dec. 22, 2003, p. 57

Comment: This concept would dismiss any divine guidance. It's another attempt to undermine the Christian faith. Unfortunately many of these liberal historians teach church history in Christian institutions of higher learning.

"In the same way that the historical critical approach to the Scriptures claims that the books of the Bible are like any other human literature and came into being in the same way that the literature of other nations did, so the history-of-religions approach to the formation of the canon says that there are certain rational and natural processes that are common to all religions when their adherents decide what their authoritative books are going to be."

Westendorf, James J. The Old and New Testament Canon—
A Topic Continuing to Intrigue, p. 306
Fall 2005. Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly – News & Comment, Vol. 102, No. 4

Comment: In other words, every religion's sacred books were organized in a similar 'human' way. No divine intervention... just a bunch of people who wanted the comfort of claiming that a higher power spoke to them. It's a modern theologian's way of denying that there's any real God (theos) in theology or in the books from which theology is derived.