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And I have very little sympathy for the gnostics; not just because I'm pretty orthodox, but also because I like my body. That's, to me, one of the high points of Christianity -- that, at its best, it treats the body as something good given to us by God for our pleasure. There's a reason the creeds teach the "resurrection of the body".
But more on topic. I agree that there was no unified center in early Christianity, and that the papacy was a later development. This is one of the chief points we Protestants disagree with RCs on. That's why I said 'generally accepted', rather than speaking of the teaching of the early church. We might disagree on exactly what the scope of 'generally' is, but it seems clear that there was some agreement about the canon among Christians; for example, no one wanted Sappho's poetry in, and no one wanted the Gospel of Luke out. There was, apparently, difficulties regarding Hebrews and Jude; I don't know the history to know well enough what books almost made it.
The end of text generation was not an arbitrary point; the idea of the council was that books written by apostles were in, others were out. From what little I know of contemporary theories, a number of the NT books are no longer thought to have been written by apostles. But the idea that the books written by people who wrote while Christ's contemporaries were still alive are more authoritative seems to me to make sense yet.
Part of it (and looking at the new individualism thread made me think of this) is that I view part of being a Christian as being part of a tradition, and that tradition has a great deal of weight for me. I don't blindly follow it; some of my beliefs are fairly heterodox. But if tradition tends to think a certain way, I won't depart from it without good reasons. It's part of epistemic humility; I might think a certain way, but if lots of people, many of whom are as wise or wiser than I think otherwise, it's only befitting to give their opinions a great deal of weight.
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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."
"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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