Musings on the canon

Ok, so before I begin to work on my paper, Richard Rorty's Claim concerning William James and Nietzsche, I just wanted to post a few random thoughts on the Christian canon. Here is the primary issue, does the authority of the canon come from the church or the Bible? Now according to the orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church, God used the church to decide what the canon, i.e. the Bible, would be. Since God used the church to authoritatively pick the canon, the church can therefore determine what else ought to be authoritative, e.g. papal infallibility, or church councils, or creeds & confessions. Now the Protestants say, the church picked out the scriptures that were already authoritative, there were 3 criteria for a Scripture to be included in the canon, and please someone correct me if I am wrong, (1) apostolic authority - is the author an apostle or a follower of one, (2) universal acceptance - how many of the churches used this book authoritatively (3) orthodox teaching - does it agree with the other scriptures. I also think that it is important for who the church was founded by that was using the scriptures, if it was founded by an apostle I think that that gave more significance to the use of the biblical texts. So based upon these criteria, the church took those books that were already authoritative and combined them in the Bible.

Did God give the authority to the church to determine or make something that was aurthoritative? Why do I brink all of this up? Because there are many interesting questions to be asked. First, of all, the question of hermeneutics and the role of church councils and creeds in interpreting Scripture. Second, the role of the individual in interpreting Scripture. I am reading a book on (actually doing a book review for the Southwestern Journal of Theology) Ancient Christian Hermeneutics. Many of these questions have divided the Protestants from the Orthodox/Roman Catholic Churches, I am interested in who is right.