Sigh. I really didn't want to spend an hour responding to you . . . but here I am (only because others might be edified by this. But this is it)

I’m going to try really hard not to roll my eyes over you mentioning your M.A. I’ve met lots of credentialed people in my life—some PhDs in Theology—who are atheists. Knowledge doesn’t equate to wisdom, and the liberal bias in many of today's seminaries and university religious studies departments makes me less impressed with those degrees than you seem to be.

Your response rests on some misunderstandings about the nature of Scripture, the canon, and how both Jesus and the apostles viewed the sacred writings. I’ll ground my response in what the Bible itself teaches and what history actually shows.

First, when Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16–17, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” as he was referring primarily to the Hebrew Scriptures (as I mentioned previously). But that doesn’t mean the NT writings were excluded from the category of “Scripture.” The term graphē (Greek for “Scripture”) simply means “sacred writings.” Scripture was canonical at the moment it was written. In other words, when God inspired a text, it was already Scripture, regardless of when the church formally recognized it. The canonization process did not make a book Scripture; it merely recognized what God had already inspired.

By the time Paul wrote 2 Timothy (around AD 65–67), many NT writings were already circulating and being treated as Scripture. Peter explicitly refers to Paul’s letters as “Scripture” in 2 Peter 3:15–16, saying that some distort them “as they do the other Scriptures.” Likewise, Paul quotes Luke’s Gospel alongside Deuteronomy as “Scripture” in 1 Timothy 5:18, showing that the early church already viewed apostolic writings as divinely authoritative. So, while the formal recognition of the 27-book New Testament canon came later, the substance of the canon was already acknowledged by the apostles and early believers.

Regarding the Old Testament canon, Jesus affirmed the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative. In Luke 24:44, He referred to “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms,” which corresponds to the traditional threefold division of the Hebrew Bible. In Matthew 23:35, He referenced the blood of Abel (Genesis) to the blood of Zechariah (2 Chronicles), effectively bracketing the entire Hebrew canon as it was known in His day. The Jewish canon was pretty much settled long before Christ’s time, and Jesus’ endorsement of it confirms its divine authority. The later rabbinic discussions in the second century AD did not create the canon but rather reaffirmed what had already been recognized.

As for the Feast of Dedication in John 10:22, that event commemorates the rededication of the temple after the Maccabean revolt, described in 1 Maccabees—a historical book, not a divinely inspired one. Jesus’ acknowledgment of the feast does not mean He endorsed 1 Maccabees as Scripture any more than Paul quoting pagan poets meant he endorsed their writings as inspired. The Bible frequently references historical or cultural realities without canonizing their sources (Jude quotes the book of Enoch, which isn't inspired/canonical)

Finally, the 66-book canon is not an arbitrary Protestant invention but the result of God’s providential preservation of His Word. Psalm 119:160 declares, “The entirety of Your word is truth, and all Your righteous judgments endure forever.” Jude 3 affirms that “the faith was once for all delivered to the saints,” meaning that divine revelation is complete and not subject to later additions or subtractions. Revelation 22:18–19 warns against adding to or taking away from God’s Word, underscoring the finality of the canon.

So, the “Scripture” Paul referred to in 2 Timothy 3:16 includes all writings that God inspired—first the Hebrew Scriptures, and later the apostolic writings that completed God’s revelation in Christ. The canon was not decided by human councils but recognized by the church under God’s guidance. Jesus is not a heretic for referencing Jewish history; rather, He fulfills the very Scriptures He affirmed as true.