The Church preceded the Bible. Jesus refers to His Church in the gospels —the church which the gates of hell would not prevail against.
After Pentecost, the apostles were preaching the gospel authoritatively, “by word of mouth or by letter.” They were making disciples of all the nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Yet the last book of the Bible wouldn’t be written for another 70 years after Pentecost. The Bible simply couldn’t be the sole rule of faith in the early church, because the New Testament did not yet exist.
A consensus regarding which books constitutde Sacred Scripture took even longer. The first local councils to defined the canon of Scripture occurred around the year 400 A.D. The final Canon of Scripture was determined by the Council of Trent 1100 years later.
Moreover, prior to the invention of the printing press, the doctrine of “The Bible Alone” was completely impractical, since hand-copied Bibles were extremely rare, costing the equivalent of a year’s wages, which is why Bibles were often chained to pulpits.
The invention of the printing press made Luther’s doctrine practically possible.
Historically, there is no record of “the Bible alone” doctrine prior to Luther. Logically, if one rejects the infallible teaching authority of the Church which wrote, preserved and canonize the Bible, then one must consider the Bible to be errant.
So you believe that according to SS, only the Bible can be used to determine doctrine, versus that Scripture alone is the assuredly infallible rule of faith, and while other sources and things which it provides for may be used, yet Scripture functionally is the supreme judge of all truth claims, and that this supremacy is not seen in Scripture?
And is your argument is that since there was no infallible canon, and since Scripture is open to interpretation, then an assuredly infallible interpreter (Rome) was necessary in order to preserve and provide assurance of truth, and establish writings as Scripture, and act as the supreme authority on truth?
Hope to post back tomorrow, God willing.
“The Church preceded the Bible. Jesus refers to His Church in the gospels —the church which the gates of hell would not prevail against.”
Not so much. When Paul reasoned with and converted some of the Thessalonians he used “the Scriptures” which, at least, would been the Hebrew Scriptures.
So it would be more correct to say the church preceded the Bible as we have it today.