Wow, you really are brainwashed. So if the church, let's just say the Catholic church, preaches that Christ alone is not enough to save and we must do works that we are bound by Scripture to follow that direction? Are you honestly saying that? Because that is not at all what Scripture states. It does not state the church is infallible and should be followed no matter what. IT SAYS TO REBUKE FALSE TEACHING.
I challenge you to prove, by scripture alone, that Tradition, (properly understood) and the Magisterium (properly understood) are not needed for the rule of faith. You failed to address this challenge because it is impossible for any sola scripturist to meet it. So you are all over the map with one derailer after another.
The Council of Jerusalem was infallible. The evidence is in Acts 15. "...the Holy Spirit was with us..." But you reject infallibility with a false caricature due to the mental block caused by sola scriptura. Therefore you teach the Council of Jerusalem was fallible, a false doctrine.
Luther and Calvin lamented over the consequences of their false teachings, but couldn't see the forest for the trees.
You’re trying to set the Bible against the Church, which is typical Protestant methodology, and ultra-unbiblical. The Bible never does that. I’ve already given the example of the Jerusalem Council, which plainly shows the infallibility of the Church.
The Bible repeatedly teaches that the Church is indefectible; therefore, the hypothetical of rejecting the (one true, historic) Church, as supposedly going against the Bible, is impossible according to the Bible. It is not a situation that would ever come up, because of God’s promised protection.
IT SAYS TO REBUKE FALSE TEACHING.
What the Bible says is to reject those who cause divisions, which is the very essence of the onset of Protestantism: schism, sectarianism, and division. It is Protestantism that departed from the historic Church, which is indefectible and infallible (see also 1 Tim 3:15). Thus, you fail Paul's test.
Therefore, heresies and Protestantism either had to play games with history in order to pretend that it fits with their views, or ignore it altogether.
Of course, all authority ultimately comes from God (Paul was called before he was born: Gal 1:15).
It is the pitting of the ultimate source against the secondary, human source (the Church) which is the problem in your approach and that of Protestantism in general. You guys don’t like human, institutional authority and don’t have enough faith to believe that God can and does preserve it,
so you try to undermine it by fallacious arguments, as presently.
No doubt you aren’t even aware that you are doing it. To do this is automatic in Protestantism; it’s like breathing. It’s like the fish that doesn’t know it’s in water.
It all comes from the rejection of the infallibility of the Church (which is one thing that
sola Scriptura always entails).
We believe in faith that the Church is infallible and indefectible, based on many biblical indications. It is theoretically possible (speaking in terms of philosophy or epistemology) that the Church could stray and have to be rejected,
but the Bible rules that out. We believe in faith that it has not and will not.
You don’t have enough faith to believe that God could preserve an infallible Church, even though you can muster up even more faith than that, which is required to believe in an infallible Bible written by a bunch of sinners and hypocrites.
We simply have more faith than you guys do. It’s a supernatural gift. We believe that the authoritative Church is also a key part of God’s plan to save the souls of men.
We follow the model of the Jerusalem Council, whereas you guys reject that or ignore it,
because it doesn’t fit in with the man-made tradition of Protestantism and a supposedly non-infallible Church.
Dialogue with a Calvinist: Was Paul a "Lone Ranger"?
