New Testament
KNA
The Second Vatican Council: A Book of the Gospel is solemnly enthroned before the General Congregation on 6 December 1962.
Without the faith of the early church and without the unity it had, there is no New Testament canon; in the same way, without this faith there is no unity between the Old and the New Testament. In this respect, this faith, as the unifying hermeneutic, is itself an essential part of the New Testament as canon. Only when the New Testament is read in the light of the faith of the early Church is it read as New Testament at all, because it is only then that it is the New Testament. It is only the hermeneutic of the early Church that establishes it as one book. This is why it makes no sense, for example, to postulate a different church by referencing a totally different Church structure that can allegedly or actually be found in the New Testament: In this case one is no longer referring to the New Testament, but to a body of literature without historical context.
Theses I–VIII. Commentary, in: International Theological Commission (ed.), “Unity of the Faith and Theological Pluralism, Einsiedeln (Switzerland) 1973, pp. 17–51 (this passage: p. 39). No current English version.