re: Protestant-Only Religious Service at Pentagon

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I’m not denying that reasoning at first principles can be circular. I’m saying your version never escapes it. You claim Scripture is the only infallible authority, but your way of identifying and interpreting Scripture ultimately comes back to your own judgment and your claim of the Spirit confirming it. That’s a closed loop with no binding authority to settle disagreements.

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Those are two different things (the closed loop, and the binding authority to settle disagreements).

First, the closed loop (circularity) exists because of the final authority is God’s word being what it is with no greater authority over it to appeal to. Rome has the exact same circularity, but it is found in the authority of the Magisterium rather than the Bible (which is why I say sola ecclesia). When pressed about why should you trust the Magisterium, the ultimate answer is “because the Magisterium says so”.

The second issue is about binding authority being able to settle disputes in order for it to be binding. I’ll come back to that falsity.

In addition, Rome does the same thing you accuse me of, namely that the Magisterium’s claim of infallible authoriry “ultimately comes back to [her] own judgment and [her] claim of the Spirit confirming it.”

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That’s the issue you keep avoiding. You admit the Church can err, and interpretation can err, yet you still claim a universally binding infallible rule. When disagreements happen, there is no final authority to resolve them, just competing claims of certainty. That’s not just theoretical, that’s exactly what we see in practice.

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I have responded to this and have not avoided it at all. You are not seeing the logical problem of your objection and therefore you interpret my response as avoidance of the issue.

Let me explain your error with an imperfect analogy: a father is leaving his house for a time and provides parting instructions to his children before he leaves. After he is gone, the children argue about what he meant regarding those instructions.

What you are claiming that the father’s instructions were not a binding authority because the children did not have an infallible interpreter to settle the disputes while he was away.

In fact, the command of the father was authoritative and binding and he expected his instructions to be obeyed, and he may even punish the children for their disobedience upon his return.

Another point to add to this analogy is that Rome acts as one of the children, saying he alone infallibly interprets the father’s instructions. The other children disagree and more fighting ensues because they ask the “infallible” child how they know, and he says that the father left him in charge to settle the disagreements while he was away. The other children didn’t witness that claim, so the “infallible” child continually supports his authority with the “because I said so” defense, and the other children are expected to trust him even though he has no evidence beyond his claim of infallible interpretative authority.

Does the child’s claim of infallibly mean he actually is infallible? No. Are the father’s instructions not binding and authoritative without one of the children acting as an infallible interpreter? No, they are binding even without an interpreter, and the father will hold all the children to account for how they obeyed his authoritative commands upon his return.

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And being thorough doesn’t mean the core issue is answered. You still haven’t explained how an infallible rule functions when both its identification and interpretation are fallible. Saying “we can be certain without being infallible” just repeats your position, it doesn’t resolve the problem.

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I have already explained this directly. The authority is still authoritative in spite a problem with the one who is under it, because of the nature of that authority (its ontology). You are claiming that unless we infallibly know that authority is authoritative (epistemology), that it cannot be authoritative. I’ve disputed that several times now, drawing on the example of Jesus holding the Jews to account for the authority of the Old Testament without an infallible judge to declare what is the Old Testament.

I say again, you have the exact same problem that you have laid against me. You claim Rome is the infallible rule that interprets the Bible in order to settle disputes, yet disputes continue, even about the interpretations provided. If your logic were consistent, you couldn’t claim that the Magisterium is infallible because you don’t have an infallible interpreter of it to decide controversies and disagreements that arise from its interpretations.

For example, when the issue of Papal Infallibility was decided, there was still a lot of disagreement about how that is applied to the scope or breadth of that infallibility. There is still disagreement about what that even means and how it is applied in practice, because it still isn’t clear when Pope’s are actually speaking ex cathedra. There isn’t even an agreed-upon list of statements that qualify because only two are clear enough. There are many other statements that are in dispute. Where is the infallible interpreter of the infallible interpreter?

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I’m not saying you’re arguing in bad faith. I’m saying your framework cannot deliver what you’re claiming for it, which is a clear, binding, and non-contradictory authority for the Church.

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I again dispute the notion that sola scriptura is not a framework that provides what you just stated, because the authority and its application are different issues. However, if I were to play along, your framework of an infallible Magisterium suffers from the same exact issues, as I’ve laid out previously.