Natural Law wrote:
“Unless you assert that this ever increasing fractioning and balkanization of Christendom is the stated objective of the Holy Spirit you must conclude that Jesus intended for there to be a teaching authority to facilitate His call to unity. You can call it what you will, we call it the Magisterium.”
It seems to me that your statement has several problems.
First problem: “Unless you assert ... you must conclude ...”. Logically, that doesn’t hold water.
Second problem: Do the Scriptures not say that faithlessness and factionalism will increase as the end nears. I think so. Why would the Lord, who desired unity, foresee disunity? Did He not know whereof He spoke? (Doubtful) Or did the unity whereof He spoke consist in something the eye may* not see? (Likely) * I say “may” and not “can” because on the last day, God will allow the eye to see what He has always seen, the unity of the Church, the unity that is in Christ.
Third problem: Why must the unity of which our Lord speaks be defined in so crassly materialistic a way? That, it seems to me, is a way of thinking foreign to the prophetic and apostolic word. In fact, it is a worldly way of looking at things.
Finally, one can attain a state of confusion and misbelief through sectarian factionalism, that is true, as you point out. But one can also attain it through centralized groupthink. Both of which have manifested themselves in mankind throughout the centuries. I don’t find any comfort or certainty in either. I take no comfort or certainty in one pope or 33,000 popes. I do take comfort and certainty in the one Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
There is an issue with that -- factionalism has increased and decreased at different points. in the first 700 years there were huge disagreements and you had Marcionism, Arianism, Gnosticism etc. This continued to the political disagreements of the 11th century to the politically influenced Reformation (yes of course there was a religious aspect, but when I see how the Duchy of Prussia converted I see sound pragmatic political reasons as well)
I'm also a bit more hopeful -- I don't think faithlessness is so bad. Yes, it's more visible now than in the 50s, but come on, in the 1700s in England to make fun of the divine was a sport. These things come and go. These are not the end-times, any more than were the 900s or 1682 or 1452 etc
Well, the Orthodox have a way that circumvents this. I'm going to heavily simplify it, but the Orthodox way is utter conservatism -- "that's the way it was and that's the way it should always be". In most conservative Churches whether Catholic or LCMS or WELS or others, core theological changes are not put to the vote.
On core, theological matters that must be sacrosant.
There can be no compromise or changes to what we believe in say the Nicene Creed (note as an aside, I also hold that the filioque should be discussed in council, but also that the meaning that we aim in the filioque is the same, namely "through" rather than "and").