Some Roman Catholic apologists have presented a “Protestant dilemma” - that is, without the “original” infallible institutional church, there is no authorizing body to close the canon (the books of the Bible). I think this ultimately presents a false dilemma because it leaves out the very Person Scripture identifies as the steward of divine truth: the Holy Spirit.
The alternatives are not “an infallible institutional Church determines the canon” or “fallible individuals somehow determine it for themselves.” There is a third category, and it is distinctly biblical:
God speaks → the Spirit inspires the Word → the Spirit preserves the Word → the Spirit indwells the Church → the Church, under the Spirit’s ministry, recognizes and receives the Word.
This preserves the necessary distinctions. God is the ontological ground of Scripture’s authority. The inspired text is the objective content. The Holy Spirit is its divine steward. The Church is its corporate recipient and witness.
The Church therefore does not constitute Scripture’s authority by recognizing it. Neither does reliable recognition require the recognizing institution itself to possess intrinsic infallibility. A fallible instrument can reliably accomplish what an infallible God sovereignly intends through it. Indeed, inspiration itself demonstrates the category: fallible human authors produced an infallible Word because the reliability of the result was grounded in the Spirit’s action, not the native infallibility of the human instrument.
We should distinguish inspiration from illumination and providential preservation, of course. The point is not that subsequent councils or Christians become inspired or incapable of error. It is that God does not require an independently infallible ecclesiastical organ in order to preserve His Word and bring His people corporately to recognize it.
That is where I think the Catholic canon argument carries an unstated premise. It assumes that reliable ecclesial reception requires an infallible ecclesial receiver. Why?
The Protestant need not establish that premise. Scripture gives us another explanatory ground: the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Word and leads Christ’s Church into truth.
So the real question is not, “How can a fallible Church recognize an infallible canon?”
It is: “Why would the Holy Spirit require an infallible human institution in order to ensure that Christ’s Church receives the Word He Himself inspired?”