Where did i say i dismissed both personal experience and historical claims as evidence for Rome’s authority? I stated the former has its place, which is also true of the latter. But what i dismissed was that this could be your basis for assurance as a RC, which is the case.
I guess maybe that’s your point. That there isn’t really any authority, in the form of Man, to trust. Ok. But if indeed that is your point, then I submit there’s a disconnect between your spiritual life and the life you lead on a daily basis. Because you clearly submit to authority in other areas
You are missing the point, which is not that there is no warrant for obeying authority, but that there is no warrant for Rome being perpetually assured infallible (albeit under her conditions), nor for the premise this is essential for assurance of Truth.
I have read the Bible too, and, when I have, I have never heard it talk back to me. In a voice that can be heard. In a voice I KNOW is from God and know it’s NOT the Devil.
I have, if not audibly, as when you are born again, it is the living word to you. (Heb. 4:12) But i have no heard the pope speak as God, though they presume His place on earth.
Maybe you find this pitiable. I don’t know. But I do know I’m a pitiable creature in the eyes of God. And I also know that my mind is no match for the Devil’s. I need help defeating his plans in my life.
The Lord quoted Scripture to combat the devil, not those who sat in the seat of Moses. And which the teaching office does provide help, when it presumes to be as sure as the voice of God, then you have the devil working on an institutional level.
This is what occurs in cults and in Rome, perpetuating erroneous traditions that are not the result of the weight of Scriptural warrant.
No org or person save the Lord can claim assured veracity, and while there are persons who do can cause problems, when an org does so then that is multiplied.
And rather than being needed, the church actually began in dissent from those who presumed a veracity above that which is written, even though they were the recipients of promises of preservation and God's presence, and had historical descent. Moreover, souls knew both writings and men of God were so, and that an itinerant Preacher was the Divine Son of God without an infallible magisterium.
No, the Incarnation must have a deeper meaning than that. And the deeper meaning is to teach us our need for another. Our dependence on him. Our proper place in relation to him, which is in service and subjection to him. How can we learn that lesson if we say to the humans who came before us, “I don’t care what you say, I’m going to read the Bible for myself, and decide myself what it says.” That’s what it is, to read Scripture divorced from any authority and history.
That is true and is not the issue. Reformers did not discard all else and simply read Scripture, as that is not what sola scriptura means, but it alone is the wholly inspired and infallible and supreme rule/standard for faith. Scripture is abundantly evidenced to be the transcendent standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the assured Word of God.
But they did not read it alone. From Alister McGrath's [Irish theologian, pastor, intellectual historian and Christian apologist, currently Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at Kings College London] The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundation of Doctrinal Criticism:
Although it is often suggested that the reformers had no place for tradition in their theological deliberations, this judgment is clearly incorrect. While the notion of tradition as an extra-scriptural source of revelation is excluded, the classic concept of tradition as a particular way of reading and interpreting scripture is retained. Scripture, tradition and the kerygma are regarded as essentially coinherent, and as being transmitted, propagated and safeguarded by the community of faith. There is thus a strongly communal dimension to the magisterial reformers' understanding of the interpretation of scripture, which is to be interpreted and proclaimed within an ecclesiological matrix. It must be stressed that the suggestion that the Reformation represented the triumph of individualism and the total rejection of tradition is a deliberate fiction propagated by the image-makers of the Enlightenment. — James R. Payton, “Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings”
Which does not mean they found past sources as always faithfully passing on what is found is Scripture (nor does all church "father"s wrote all support Rome), but what is at issue is authority presuming autocratic supreme authority, which is the fall back recourse of Rome when faced with challenges that refute them, as illustrated in Cardinal Manning's classic response.
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.
I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, pp. 227,28
Thus most of your post is not really addressing the real issue, but thanks for trying to articulate a good argument otherrwise.
Ok. Then what would or could convince you?