In unus plus unus

I used to be a convinced Protestant.  A contented Protestant. Then I was overtaken by a fatal doubt.

One day, as I was reading through 1-2 Corinthians, a terrifying question swept over me: What if I’m miscounting?

I mean, sure, they’re numbered in our editions of the NT. But that’s an editorial addition. In the original Greek of 1 Corinthians & 2 Corinthians, it doesn’t say that Paul wrote two letters. Rather, you read one letter by Paul to the Corinthians and another letter by Paul to the Corinthians.

Now, I kept counting and recounting. And every time I counted 1 & 2 Corinthians, they always added up to two letters. I never got three or four.

But then I remembered, as Bryan Cross is wont to say, that for me to add them was making myself my own arithmetic authority.

Sure, Paul wrote one letter to the Corinthians, and another letter to the Corinthians. Paul said he wrote each letter. But he never said he they were two letters.

How could I be infallibly certain that I hadn’t added wrong? For me to infer or deduce that if Paul wrote one letter to the Corinthians, and another letter to the Corinthians, he wrote two letters to the Corinthians–that these were exactly two letters, rather than five–was quite a leap of faith. A bridge too far. What if I’m a butterfly who dreamt that I read 1-2 Corinthians?

I mean, sure, other Protestants have also done the math, but what if they miscalculated?

It was only when I read the ex cathedra encyclical In unus plus unus ("On one plus one") by Pope Numerus III that my heart was calmed.

I honestly don’t understand how Protestants can live with the unbearable anxiety of having to number books of the Bible.