No it is a matter of truth and if dogma is not built on truth it is a lie..
There was no provision for a priesthood in the NT church..The priesthood was a prefigurement of Christ , a type of Christ.. Once Christ sacrificed HIMSELF, the perfect lamb..there was no longer any need for the priesthood, or sacrifices..there was no more sacrifice for sin .
God put an exclamation mark on that when He destroyed the Jewish priesthood in 70 AD..before the Roman church revived it a couple hundred years later..
Hmm. What's your take on the pogroms?
How bizarre can a statement become? GOD destroyed the Jewish priesthood in 70AD? The Roman Church revived the Jewish priesthood a couple hundred years later?
The ultimate question, that is, the validity, if any, of the priesthood is one of truth, clearly. the ultimate question of every argument is the truth, I'd guess.
But this argument (or this section of it) was about the practice of the early Church, and the Didache, etc. were adduced to address that argument.
If you want to say that it doesn't matter what the practice of the early church was, then it doesn't matter whether the Didache and Irenaeus were inspired or not.
If you want to say that the early Church went off the rails, then whatever the practices proved (or not) by the Didache and Ireneaus, they would be irrelevant.
If you want to say that you at almost 2000 years remove know more about what went on in the early Church than people far closer to it, then we have to assess the likelihood of that proposition.
But if all you want to do is to say that your way is right, and that's it, then what are we doing here?
Surely the truth would include some kind of openness and clarity in argument. If not, then we are talking gnosticism, pure and simple -- some have the experience, are introduced to the mysteries, and have the light; others don't.
Then conversation is reduced to people trying to drown one another out, which is tedious.
Now you have really created a conundrum for yourself and Calvinism. You have to decide if it was Rome (not the Catholic Church, but the real Rome) that destroyed the temple or if it was God. That presents a problem, because it was also Rome (not the Catholic Church, but the real Rome) that crucified Jesus. So, was Imperial Rome an instrument of God or was it a collection of unrepentant sinners who chose to sin? If they were merely instruments of God's will then are they in any way responsible for their sins?
Lastly, since Reformists assert that Imperial Rome' lives on as the Catholic Church is the Church still an instrument of God's plan or is it a collection of unrepentant sinners? You can't have it both ways.