At least by quoting Heb 7:27, you retract your previous position that:
“There is NO discussion of a priesthood offering a sacrifice for sin in the New Testament. On the contrary, it is specifically and explicitly REJECTED:”
I never said that scripture spoke directly of “low priests,” but that they are implied by the repeated references to Christ as the NEW high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Nether OT nor NT scripture was ever meant to stand alone without the guidance of divinely ordained interpreters. Even the OT prophesies could never be properly understood until Jesus gave inspired interpretations of these to the Apostles. Do you think the Apostles misunderstood their own NT scripture? Did they not pass along correct interpretation to their successors? (If you say no, prove it.)
Why the continued evasion? Do you know or care what the Early Christian Fathers taught about the priesthood? Were they wrong?
I have evaded nothing. I have pointed out that the New Testament knows nothing of Priests offering sacrifices for sin. Instead, it rejects it.
You also fail to understand what the author of Hebrews wrote:
“15 This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, 16 who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life...
...22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.
23 The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, 24 but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. 25 Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
This does NOT mean there are a bunch of lower Melchizedekian priests, serving as priests in the Catholic Church. Indeed, the writer of Hebrews further explains:
“11-16 Every human priest stands day by day performing his religious duties and offering time after time the same sacrifices—which can never actually remove sins. But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins for ever, took his seat at God’s right hand, from that time offering no more sacrifice, but waiting until “his enemies be made his footstool”. For by virtue of that one offering he has perfected for all time every one whom he makes holy. The Holy Spirit himself endorses this truth for us, when he says, first: ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them’.
17 And then, he adds, ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’.
18 Where God grants remission of sin there can be no question of making further atonement.”
As for papal supremacy, consider this:
“But when the Fathers speak of a Petrine primacy and succession and the primacy of Rome they mean something quite different. They are not silent on the issue. They never denied that Rome had a primacy, but it was interpreted as a primacy of honor since the Church was located in the capital of the Empire and was the site of the martrydom of Peter and Paul. It was not a primacy of universal jurisdiction. They never denied that the Church of Rome had a right to exercise authority. But that authority was limited in its jurisdiction. But when the meaning of primacy and rule is couched in the language of Vatican I we find a vigorous opposition to such claims by the Church Fathers. There is not silence. The Fathers do speak, and they make it clear what they mean by the terms they use. They also speak by repudiating the unlawful claims of Rome as they began to be expressed in the third century and in all the subsequent centuries of the Church.”
http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/windsorandaugustine.html