IN other news, I got in the middle of the night the problem with your view of the development of doctrine. I can quite see how people who talk about "changeless" without explanation can encouraged this perception.
The exercise of conciliar and papal authority is better understood as judicial than as legislative or executive (though our polity is not purely Montesquieu-an in structure.) Acts/Jeruslem, Ephesus, Nicea/Constantinople were called to resolve conflict, as of course was Trent. That implies that among fathers before the relevant council there will be disagreement. So the existence of conflicting witnesses is not to us a problem to deal with in talking about the handing down of doctrine.
And I think the thing about the vast numbers of CINOs and whatnot also shows a different attitude. For us it's a lot of tares and a little wheat -- or as a Catholic acquaintance told me before I even thought of converting, "It takes a lot of manure to grow roses."
>the clear witness of Genesis that creation is good.<
Right, and heavenly angels don’t sin that is why i do not think that is a strong argument.
But (for the atheist objections) “good” as regards Adam and Eve did not meant robots, but good as beings who could make moral choices, nor did it mean perfect in the sense of having been tested and passed, as Jesus was, who was not simply innocent, but righteous, if we can make that distinctive, being “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15) This is part of what qualifies Him to be the heavenly intercessor, directly accessed in the spiritual realm, and to suppose the infallible Scriptures would be silent as to revealing another moral agent who was sinless, albeit by way of preservation, presumes much, while again, to hold that she was to be a heavenly object of prayer is Scripturally baseless, both on evidential grounds and that of warrant.
>So the existence of conflicting witnesses is not to us a problem to deal with in talking about the handing down of doctrine.<
It is understood that there can be some dissent, and no one should reject that nor the need and authority of a teaching office. But the issue was the use of unanimous consent, and what it conveyed, in the light of even quite significant dissent. “The ‘unanimous consent of the fathers’ is a mere illusion, except on the most fundamental articles of the general Christianity” (Schaff: Chp 13.159)
But as raised before, the larger issue issue is the authority of of an entity to infallibly declare itself (conditionally) infallible, and by such to infallibly sanction traditions which fail of Biblical warrant (as did at least one attempt by the Jewish magisterium: (Mk. 7:10-13) but depend on the infallibility of the magisterium, which itself cannot be established Biblically, as other major doctrines can.
>”It takes a lot of manure to grow roses.” <
Well, God can make good come out of bad, but whether the latter is really necessary is deep.