>> All of this presupposes that there is a yardstick upon which determinations can be made regarding the “turth” or its “interpretation.” In other words, who gets to be “right,” and upon what does that authority rest?
That authority rests in God alone. Thus, we will not definitively know the answers until we meet Him.
>> A document of any type is only as valuable as its comprehensibility, its ability to be understood and interpreted. We both believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible Word of God. I would submit that a document that purports to be infallible needs an infallible interpreter. Otherwise, its very infallibility is rendered useless.
The infallibility of the Bible is not rendered useless by the fallibility of its interpreters any more than the Bible’s moral code is rendered useless by the fallibility of its practicioners. Fallibility is inherent in humanity. Anyone claiming his own infallible interpretation of the Word of God is himself claiming to speak with the authority of the Almighty. That authority does not rest in one man, or one heirarchy.
SnakeDoc
Yes, it is. Perhaps not in everything, since some parts of the moral law or other aspects of Scripture are quite simple and perfectly plain. But not everything is, and St. Peter warns against the presumption, as one finds in 2 Peter 3:16. Scripture, then, is not as "perspicuous" as some allege. Yet, regardless, it is both inspired and infallible. To that end, its infallibility is only rendered useful in the "difficult" cases, through the agency of an infallible authority. Since Jesus Himself does not instruct each of us personally, that authority is through a human agency that He established, as Scripture makes clear enough in the passages I cited earlier. That agency is the Church. Specifically, that Church which has existed throughout the entire span of the Christian Era, and has kept the Deposit of Faith delivered to it from the Apostles, through the working of the Holy Spirit. There is only one such Church that can claim both the historic continuity required and the intact Deposit of Faith at issue.