I nearly became a Catholic myself, and had many of the same questions you did. I hope I can provide a detailed explanation of the "Bible Christian" position to you on your questions. I try to be as historically accurate as possible and honest with you in my answers, and if you need clarification for any of my historical claims I will be happy to provide reputable sources.
First off if the Bible was to be the sole rule of Christian faith why did not Christ leave the early church with a Bible? Why did the Bible come centuries afterwards?
In with the good questions straight off the bat eh?
So, why didn't Jesus leave the early church with a Bible? Well, I believe He did. Sure, He didn't conjure one up immediately and give it to His Apostles, but was it not the Holy Spirit that inspired and worked through the Apostles in their writings? And it wasn't as if those early believers had nothing, they had the Old Testament Scriptures.
You say that the first Christians were not 'Bible' Christians, and say that is 'not up for debate' yet Paul exhorts Timothy to continue in what he has learned and firmly believed, being acquainted with the sacred writings. Now remember Paul isn't even talking about the New Testament yet, but the Old Testament Scriptures which the early believers already had.
From 2 Timothy 3:14-17:
"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."
Paul isn't just speaking of these Scriptures highly, he's going as far to say that the Scriptures are profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, that the man of God may be
complete, and equipped for
every good work!
So I think Jesus did leave the church with the Bible. They had the Old Testament, and the New Testament was being written in the Gospels and the epistles, and these circulated around the church.
To say it took 'centuries' to have the Bible I would contest. Let's take a look at 2 Peter 3:
15 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.
The New Testament presumably hasn't even finished being written yet, and already Paul's letters are treated as Scripture! They didn't have to debate about it for centuries, here Peter is quite naturally saying that Paul's letters are Scriptures.
Now, there were contested books that took some years to iron out whether they were canonical or not. But by the second century and certainly the beginning of the third century we had the vast, vast majority of the books of the Bible sorted out, with a few questions raised over books like Revelation and Hebrews.
We have the Muratorian fragment, traditionally dated to 170 AD, which lists the vast majority of the 27 New Testament books, and shows that there was already widespread consensus on the vast majority of the canon, and that these epistles and Gospels were being circulated by believers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratorian_fragment
And if the Bible is your sole rule of faith how come it is not anywhere in Scripture written which of the books was to comprise the Bible?
Another great question. This bugged me for a while too. How can we know for sure?
Well, we can know with a great deal of certainty simply by looking at the early Christians. We have the Muratorian fragment and the discussions of the church fathers in the second and third centuries. We can judge the NT books as having widespread circulation, of apostolic authorship and of theological content. These three tests can be applied to virtually all of the NT books. We only start finding difficulty when we reach epistles where we are no longer so sure of authorship like the epistle to the Hebrews. Based on the consensus of the church though and the content of the letters themselves we can be very confident that the canon is accurate.
A popular Protestant way of putting it is that we have "a fallible collection of infallible books". We are certain we have the complete canon, but we would not claim infallibility in doing so.
And if you do not trust the Catholic Church why do you trust the Bible when the Catholic Church decided which of the many writings on the life of Christ and from the Apostles and the early Christians were to be in that volume that was decided at the councils of Rome, Carthage and Hippo centuries later?
I have problems with your question here, and would say it is to some degree inaccurate.
There was an early consensus from believers on a vast majority of NT books, the Catholic Church didn't get together in the early centuries and put it all together from nowhere.
In fact, all three of the examples you cite are not infallible councils under the Pope's authority.
In fact, the Catholic Church did not infallibly rule on which books of the Bible were canon until the 16th century in the Council of Trent (some would argue the 15th century in the Council of Florence).
So that means for the first 1600 years of church history, Christians had no idea what was in the Bible? Of course not, the canon was quite clear without the infallible proclamations of the Catholic Church.
Regarding your specific examples, the Synod of Hippo was a regional African council that was not ratified by the Pope. The Synod of Carthage as well was a regional council not ratified by the Pope. Neither of these were therefore infallible.
And at the Council of Rome, there was no canon declared. It is known now that the
Decretum Gelasianum, where the canon was proclaimed is most likely a forgery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Rome
So there is no need to trust the Catholic Church on what's in the Bible, when they only infallibly proclaimed what was in the Bible in the 16th century,
after the Protestant Reformation, so we clearly know Christians did not need a proclamation from the Catholic Church to know what was in the Bible.
If the Bible was to be the sole rule of faith why did the disciples, the Apostles, why was their vocation not to be going around handing Scriptures to people?
Jesus gave the mission to the Apostles, to preach the good news. And the Apostles were authors of the Bible, the Holy Spirit worked through them to produce the epistles and Gospels that make up the Bible we have today.
As I mentioned already, look to 2 Timothy 3 to see how important Paul viewed the Scriptures, which at that time were just the Old Testament Scriptures too, and that the Scriptures would equip them for every good work, that they could be
complete. The Bible being the only sufficient rule of faith is not based on nothing, but on the Scriptures themselves which testify to its own sufficiency, equipping us for every good work, profitable, that we may be complete, lacking nothing!
A further example of the Apostles' view of Scripture would be from 1 Peter, which gives an extraordinary insight into the Apostle Peter's view of Scripture being more sure than what he has seen with his own eyes!
From 1 Peter 1:
16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.17 For when he received honour and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”,18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.19
And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Look at what Peter is saying here. He is talking about how he witnessed the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ with his very eyes, they were eyewitnesses of His majesty, and heard the very voice of God!
And what does Peter say?
We have something more sure, the prophetic word. Peter is saying the Scriptures are more sure than what he has seen with his own eyes in Jesus' transfiguration. And if there's any doubt about what the 'prophetic word' is, you can see from verse 20 it is quite clearly speaking of the Scripture.
Old Testament... graven images... bronze serpent...
I personally do not use this argument really and so am not going to defend it. As someone who formerly was very interested in Catholicism, I understand why these aren't convincing. Your answers sound very familiar to me, a fan of Catholic Answers perhaps?
Who is the final authority in which, when God tells people to do the opposite of what He tells them elsewhere in Scripture? Who is the final authority as to if people come up with two Scriptures that say the opposite, and two people are led to opposite beliefs, who is the final authority to decide who is right and who is wrong? Both of them will say Scripture is the final authority and both will have Scriptures to back up what they believe. And so Scripture is not the final authority.
I agree there are difficult issues, but I also believe on all doctrines of faith these things can be resolved by Scripture. Scripture interprets Scripture, and while people have opposing views I would posit that often one side will have their own personal reasons for why they believe this or that, and may find it difficult to submit to what the Bible is saying.
Now of course there are genuine disagreements on what the Scriptures are saying, but I believe these are often a few minor matters, and with a thorough approach to the Scriptures and reading them as a whole, making sure to interpret Scripture with Scripture, looking into proper context and what the text is saying rather than we want the text to say, in virtually all cases we will come to the correct conclusion. Paul tells us the Scriptures are profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness. We can trust in its inerrancy, infallibility and the guidance God provides us through it.
Now, let's look at the Catholic position. If the Church is the final authority, does this really make it better?
At the end of the day, in order to conclude that the Catholic Church is the infallible interpreter of Scripture, you've had to use your own reason and mind to come to that conclusion, yes?
So in the same way a Protestant has had to use his or her mind to come to an interpretation of Scripture, a Catholic has at some point had to use his or her mind to come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is the infallible interpreter.
Now, are our minds infallible?
No, so the problem persists. Fundamentally, if a person uses his own mind to interpret Scripture (and remember that Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds, I'm not being arrogant and saying we can interpret it by ourselves), how is this more fallible than a person who concludes using his mind that the Catholic Church is the infallible interpreter? Both rely on fallible minds and reasoning.
