I think the ‘messy’ way the canon was formed mirrors the way the Bible was inspired in the first place. Certain passages are prima facie man-written and bear no sign that the author was conscious of being under divine inspiration, for example, 1 Corinthians 7:12 and Luke 1:1-3. If you can accept that God led the Apostles and their associates correctly in what they wrote in the original documents, it seems natural that God must also have controlled the process of assembling those documents into a clearly-defined volume.I do not find it hard to suppose that all the apparently arbitrary factors that have shaped the New Testament (Greek philosophy, the political machinations of Emperor Constantine, Roman culture, the invention of the printing press, etc.) are not merely accidents of history, but that God was masterminding events and working behind these secondary causes to produce his desired result.

I guess it would be reassuring to have a sign from heaven to confirm to us that the canon we have ended up with is what God intended. But even if it turns out that Hebrews or Jude should not have been included, or that the Shepherd of Hermas should have been included, I don’t think those tweakings would make any practical difference to us as individuals or to the church as a whole.

The canon we have inherited is a fact of history. Even if we formulated a new canon today, the existing canon would remain significant as being what the historical church has acknowledged and used, and also implicitly, what God has used to build and sustain his church during that period.