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This seems preferable to 100 separate groups claiming they aren't infabllible, all teaching something different, while all of them lay down doctrine with an air of infallibility. Catholic vs EO comes down to a singular issue of disagreement. Figure that out, and the question of which Church was granted infallibility by Christ is pretty easy.
Strawman argument on your part.
This thread is about the "solas." There' aren't "100 separate groups" in this equation. Under the umbrella of protestantism, there is vast agreement on the solas.
And that "singular issue of disagreement" is possibly the understatement of the year or century. Rome as a church stands and falls on it's claims of Papal supremacy. If that falls, the Roman Church itself fails.
But more to the point, you act as if there's some universal agreement with Rome. Rome is really more of an umbrella...where as long as you bend the knee to the Pope, you're good. I've argued before that Luther would have been fine with his teachings had he simply not challenged the Pope. What he believed and taught wasn't materially out of bounds.
Likewise, we can look at people like James Martin, the Bishops in Germany, etc, and see that Rome is quite loose with it's beliefs as long as you bend to the pope. It's the one doctrine that materially matters.
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admitting upfront I may be wrong, but I've run this 50 different ways and both of these come back as AI summaries. If you can cite Augustine's work, I'm happy to investigate and admit I was wrong.
First quote is from Contra Cresconium. If you google it, you'll have the following link:
https://www.augustinus.it/latino/contro_cresconio/index2.htm . Go to book 2, section 31 and put it into a google translate and you'll get the following "For we do no injury to Cyprian, when we distinguish any of his letters from the canonical authority of the divine Scriptures. For it is not without reason that the ecclesiastical canon was established, to which certain books of the Prophets and Apostles belong, which we dare not judge at all, and according to which we freely judge of the other letters, whether of the faithful or of the unbelievers."
Second quote is from his book "Retractions" where he writes to "retract" or "correct" errors in his teachings. I don't have a weblink to that book.
The translations will be different because the quotes I use are from what Chemnitz wrote in his response to Rome in his Examen.
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"We" is doing alot of work here. I think it's fairer to say that "you" or "your parish/congregation/affiliation" don't forgo tradition and understand the role of men and women. But there are plenty of Lutherans that disagree with you, and they will base their disagreement on their interpretation of scripture. When confronted with the fathers, they, like you, will say they don't have to agree with the fathers where they are wrong. How do we determine who is right and who is wrong when both claim scripture is clearly in their favor?
We is not doing much work. This has been gone over in multiple threads where it has been shown that there is a massive amount of Lutherans that are in full communion with each other. Not under a single bishop, but many.
But more to the point, we have as much control over somebodys use of the term "lutheran" as you have over Roman Catholics. Or are we to ignore all the sedevacantists groups who claim to be the true church? I'll point out that former long time Catholic Answers host Patrick Coffin numbers among those groups.
It is actually a bit interesting to think about the fact that Rome is closer to these fringe Lutheran groups than I am. The Lutheran World Federation is the group Rome claims successful agreement on, are also the groups that support woman ordination, as well as essentially being non-christian.
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ou quoted(?) Augustine earlier, so I'll refer to him (despite the fact that there are many others). He wrote a tome for the explicit purpose of teaching Christian teachers how to interpret the bible. He says there are difficult passages. He even says you have to use the Church to know what scriptures are canonical and which aren't. I'm not saying "nobody" can understand them. I'm saying the Scriptures go with the Church so that we may understand.
His response to the Manichaeans? Yes I agree with him. I too can trust the gospels because of the catholic Church. that's the very point I made to Thaddeus. We trust in the tradition and history of the church because we know Satan will never prevail against it.
The key item to remember is that Augustine is not talking about the Modern Roman Church. That didn't exist, and he in no way expresses that it is because of some magisterium or Pope that he does this, but because he is part of the catholic church and not part of the Manichaeans.
This is very much similar to Iranaeus in "Against Heresy's" when he makes a similar argument against the Gnostics.
This because a foundational point on why I don't need a presumed "infallible authority" to accept the Scriptures, but instead can look to the history and tradition of the catholic Church to see how God has preserved His Word, both before the human birth of Jesus, as well as after.
