Except that every church on that list, without a single exception (only the Orthodox Church can even be argued to be an exception) wouldn’t exist today if not for the Schism, and later the Reformationists and King Henry VIII splitting off from the Catholic Church.
Special pleading, that doesn’t work. However, you are still sadly mistaken. There were many splits(e.g. Gnostics, Arians, Nestorians, EO, Old Catholic Church, Feenyites, etc) in the early church since the time of the Apostles. If you want to use splits as a reason for dismissing sola Scriptura as a workable rule of faith, then you must likewise say the same thing about your rule of faith since you claim it has always been used.
History makes that abundantly clear, and few Protestants would dare to argue with the simple fact that if no one had ever broken from the Catholic Church, Protestantism wouldn’t exist.
Isn’t that a self-evident statement? If no one had ever broken from Judiasm, Christianity wouldn’t exist. See what I mean?
Therefore, it’s completely legitimate to compare the one Catholic Church with all of those churches together, at least those besides the Orthodox; had the Reformation experiment been a successful one, there wouldn’t be Protestant churches.
This argument doesn’t carry much weight and it is self-refuting. If your rule of faith( remember I’m arguing based on your logic) was successful there wouldn’t be any of the churches and heretics I mentioned above
There’d be a Protestant Church, if Sola Scriptura was an equally consistent and stable rule of Faith as the Magisterium.
Yeah, we can see you rule of faith is so stable that there are never split offs from it. Even today we see Feenyites and Traditionalists breaking off from your church based on the rule of faith.
Since the reason that all those other churches are a plurality and so varied is because they broke away from a Mother Church that was unified, it’s not at all unfair for the Catholic to be able to sit back and say “Tsk tsk tsk; that’s what happens when you break away from the Magisterium.”
Splits are sometimes necessary when and institution is no longer held captive to the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. However, it most definitely is not only unfair it is a fallacious comparison. You can either make the comparison at a denomination level(i.e. Catholicism vs Presbyterianism ) or at a rule of faith level( sola Scriptura vs Scripture+something else). I understand your hesitance of not wanting to compare apples to apples. Catholics have been getting away with this fallacious comparison to prop up their case for many years. It has been successful and hoodwinking those who have not seen what is going on. As a matter of fact most of the Catholic arguments that individuals have failed for and therefore converted are fallacious at their core. I demonstrated this in my thread on the canon, another argument that has been used to fool many.
No, Protestants cannot say the same, for one simple reason. Catholics say “The Church Allows it.” For Protestants, what church has the authority to allow it?
Their own local church or denomination depending on how they are organized. But see once again you are making a fallacious comparison. You want one Protestant denomination to speak for all Protestant denominations, but that is silly. Does Rome speak for all the groups I mentioned above?
And they can’t say the Bible allows it, because that’s what they disagree on in the first place whenever they disagree with any degree of significance.
This is only true because of your fallacious comparison. A Protestant denomination(e.g. Presbyterianism) most definitely can say “The Church allows it” or the “The Church denies it.”
Faithful Catholics can know when the Church allows for disagreements and when not. If Protestants knew when the Bible allowed for disagreements and when not, there would be one unified Protestant Stance on issues like homosexuality, abortion, divorce, etc. - or else a complete truce agreeing to disagree. Neither has occurred.
Yes, because of your fallacious comparison. Individual Protestant denominations have ruled on such things, but instead you want all of these different denominations to totally agree based on their rule of faith, but if that is the case then we must lump Catholics together with all those who use Scripture+something else as their rule of faith.
Wanna try and do apples to apples my friend?
