I disagree: on the contrary, every time authority is passed on in the NT (including to Matthias, to the deacons, to such men as Timothy and Titus), it is conferred by the laying on of hands, which is to say, ordination. That's the way it was done then. That's the way it always was done through the centuries as the Church spread through Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe from the Black Sea to Ireland. And that's the way it's still done to this day.
Usually when I bring this up, I get either no response, or something like "Hey, no fair using evidence."
All the evidence is on the side of a defined structure with deacons, priests and bishops (sometimes abbots). In all the churches which go back to the Apostles, including not only the Roman Catholics, but also and especially the "Uniate" churches of the Chaldeans, Melkites, Maronite, the Orthodox, the non-Byzantine churches of the East (such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Eritrean Church, the Armenian Apostlic Church and the Egyptian [Coptic] Church) --- also called Oriental Orthodox --- you'll not find a one of them that doesn't have deacons, priests,and bishops; you'll not find a one of them that doesn't find this "in their DNA" going all the way back to the period when the Epistles and Gospels were being written, and they were learning from the very lips of the Apostles.
This constitutes a fact-based argument. Those who ignore facts are those who are "reading their own preferences" into Scripture. Or not seeing and grasping the significance of what is there.
" What Scripture DOES teach is that false teachings would arise even from among church leaders and that Christians were to compare the teachings of these later church leaders with Scripture, which alone is cited in the Bible as infallible."
Agreed, this much: Scripture does say that false teachings would arise even among Church leaders --- which, by he way, confirms that there would be a Church with identifiable leaders ("Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers." Eph 4:11).
But the next part, whoa: let's look at that word infallible---which is only used once in Scripture, and there it doesn't refer to Scripture itself or to anything in writing:
Acts 1:2-4
"...until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandmentsto the Apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."
Get a load of that. There's infallible; and there's 40 days' worth of preaching by Our Risen Lord to the Apostles which is not contained in Scripture. St.John confirms this at the end of his Gospel when he says:
John 21:25
"And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen."
So there's your infallibility: the word of the Lord, given to the Apostles through His oral teaching,and a LOT of it. Conveyed by oral preaching, much of which wasn't written down. Prescinding for a moment from Peter, James, John, and Jude, who wrote epistles, I ask you: who has preserved the teachings of Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Cananean?
They're not in writing. If they ever were, unfortunately any writings are now lost. But their teachings are preserved by the ancient church-cultural consensus of the local churches established by them and their successors in the Apostolic Age. In places like these
look up the churches, or the archaeological remains of the oldest churches there are, and you know what? They have bishops, priests and deacons, they are liturgical, and they are apostolic by succession.
"The Bible does not teach that the apostles were infallible, apart from what was written by them and incorporated into Scripture."
Agreed here, too, to this extent: It is not that all the Apostles were infallible, because they were not. It is that the Church is infallible.
The Church (not one individual, but the Body of Christ, the people of God gathered around heir bishops) had to be infallible, because the Church --- these select men and their successors --- wrote the NT Scripture! And directed the translating, transcribing, and distribution of the NT Scripture, determined the canon of the NT Scripture, all over a period of 200-300 years. The writing was done by 100 AD, but the complete and official canon was not spread, studied, and accepted by broad consensus until at least another 100 years after that. Which came first, Scripture or Church? Obviously, the Church.
More later, my friend. I have to go to bed, get up early tomorrow, repair my painted signs that sort of disintegrated last week in the rain, and go back and do the prayer vigil at our local abortion clinic. Big day.
I won't be able to answer again until Friday probably.
In the meantime, God bless you, brother in Christ.