I appreciate the emphasis you place on the authority of the church, but as we discussed, the ultimate authority for the sola scripturian is scripture, therefore, the authority of the church is always secondary at best.
Yes, as it should be, and
historically was in the early church. If
the church is indeed built upon the apostles and the prophets, than it must also be subservient to the teachings of the apostles and prophets that are recorded in Scripture.
The types of church governments you mentioned do assert church authority to so some extent, but that is not because they adhere to SS, as I can show you plenty of churches who hold to SS, which do not assert the type of ecclesial authority that you mention.
Huh? (typo in bolded part?)
I'm not sure what definition of SS you adhere to, but I did not see anywhere in the 'authoritative definition' of sola scriptura provided by CJ which said that sola scriptura mandates ecclesial authority or defines such a role; in fact, whenever I would ask him about the role of ecclesial authority w.r.t. sola scriptura he would always ignore my question or say that it is 'moot'. I think the fact that many different churches who subscribe to SS have differing roles of the authority of the church is evidence to the fact that the idea of church authority is not essential to the doctrine of sola scripture.
"My definition" for SS is basically the same as all educated evangelicals. As for the
church's authority, again, you'll find more or less the same definition. All you have to do is look at the
confessions or "statements of faith" and I think you'll find suprising uniformity with churches adhering to sola scriptura as opposed to solo scriptura.
I would agree that we can find the doctrines of the apostles in the scriptures, yes, but the proper interpretation thereof (i.e. context) is found in the writings of the saints and in the life of the church.
Ok. If this is true (and sorry, because I know you don't like us bringing up tradition), which Father's commentaries are authoritative? Which saints? What happens when they disagree (which they do...constantly!). Which life of the church? East? West? North? How can we verify which interpretation is the proper one when we find that the Fathers sound like a bunch of evangelicals when they through Scripture at each other?
I don't think one can reliably extract the doctrines of the apostles from the scriptures alone, because once a foreign context is placed thereupon, the meaning becomes distorted and mis-interpreted. Context is everything! In the case of the reformers, it appeared that much of formulation of their doctrine was reactionary, that is, in reaction to the abuses of the Catholic Church IMO, and not in the spirit (concensus teachings) of the ECF's. Yes, there was some quotes used from selected father's (mainly Augustine) to support the sola doctrines; i.e. the fathers were used to support later doctrinal innovations.
This is historically incorrect. the reformers breathed from the Fathers. Calvin (for example) quotes from
numerous church father constantly in his
work of systematic theology (which was not written for polemics, but as a catheceses guide). So it's not just a reaction and your claim that they only rely on Augustine (which they do quote from immensely...as do RCC and every other Western Christian).
We can all go to the fathers. But we should not go to them in attempt to support our later innovations (sola's, etc), but to sincerely search for the faith which was preserved by the apostles.
An innovation like treating tradition as an infallible source of knowing?
I would argue that the scriptural support for sola scriptura or sola fide requires more eisegesis to justify itself than the doctrine of apostolic succession. But this isn't really relevant to the conversation. I think apostolic succession is another 'safeguard' in the process to preserve apostolic doctrine, of course, as I said earlier, I do not think it is a 'fix-all' solution.
I respectfully disagree. I understand how synergists arrive at their doctrines, but I do not believe it resolves the tension between Paul and James. But yes, this is off topic so we'll let it stand there.
As for apostolic succession, what happens if we find that our succession supports
monergism? After all Augustine believed it and taught it. So did
Aquinas, so did Luther, so did Calvin (who strangely gets the credit for it), and of course, all would argue that Augustine is simply exegeting what's in Scripture. So again, what do we do? How do we verfy which line is correct? Again, we find that tradition is useless (as is apostolic succession) in resolving the question because you can't verify oral tradition and the written tradition is not uniform. Thus, the only place we can appeal to is directly to the one infallible source that contains the apostolic teaching, Scripture.
Again, where in the definition of SS does it say so? Further, where does it say that the authority of the church is to be under scripture? Perhaps this is the context in which the reformers understood it (to some extent, anyways), but I do not think it is necessary for the rule to be enforced. Unless you disagree?
I answered this earlier in this response.
