If Paul could warn the Corinthians "not to go beyond what is written" (1 Corinthians 4:6), then surely those of us living in postapostolic times are no less obliged to this principle. Especially as the church was already being racked with internal division and errors. Paul in effect invoked the principle of sola scriptura in forbidding the saints from going beyond the written texts. Paul urges this in the context of his defense of his ministry against the charges of the "superapostles," who led many Corinthians astray by their claim to extraordinary revelation that circumvented the apostolic circle. It is interesting that while Rome increasingly answered the heretics by appealing to its own authority (an ongoing apostolic authority), Paul himself, though undisputably an apostle, drew the Corinthians attention to that which had been already committed to writing even while the apostles were living. There one could not go wrong. That Peter even refers to Paul's epistles as Scripture" underscores just how early the apostles were talking about official pastoral letters as canonical (2 Peter 3:16)
