The verse you reference should seem like enough to me. That Long with along with the verse about:
- giving Peter the Keys, and
- what you bind is bound and what you loose is loosed, and
- if your brother sins against you to take it to the Church.
Seriously -
The authority question is one of simple and pure logic. Christ established a church, singular, upon a group of individuals, apostles. They in turn recognized early on that there needed to be a way of determining and disseminating consistant teaching across the church. As pointed out above, the number of protestant denominations is a clear indication of what happens when there is no central authority.
Acts clearly shows that the Church excersized authority by appointing a replacement for Judas, approving the teachings that Paul had been preaching since his conversion, and dealing with the issue of Jewish Dietary Law at the first council of Jeruselum. If the Church was unable to centrally and authoritatively teach and enforce the teachings, what would have become of Christianity in those early days? The days before there was even a written New Testament.
Rawb probably gave the best example of what happens when there is a lack of overall authority. Look at the number of different protestant denominations. Look at all of the different, and conflicting, theologies all claiming to be “Bible Based”. If the Bible alone was all one needed, then why so many different churches? If the written word was all you needed, why didn’t Jesus write an instruction book by His own hand to assure that everyone knew it was His?
Jesus founded a Church upon simple principles and placed that Church into the hands of Men whom He chose. He then gave them the power to build that Church, teach others and pass on His authority through the ages. He gave them the power to bind and loose. He promised He would always be with The Church. He admonished us to take our disagreements to The Church. A church - Singular.
He ordered the Apostles to make disciples of all nations, not write a book and then get out of the way.
The apostles did all that Jesus Commanded. It was, to some extent, their disciples and successors who wrote down the various texts we have in our NT. It was their successors who, in council, gathered, reviewed, codified, copied, disseminated, defended and protected the Bible as we know it from about the year 400 to today. All under the Authority of Christ’s Church, protected by Him and guided by the Holy Spirit.
As a final point I will propose this. Although the Church loves and protects the Bible as the inspired word of God, she recognizes the many writings from the first centuries that are not in the NT yet contain much that is valuable information. In addition there are literally thousands and thousands of scholarly works that have been written from the earliest days until today. A huge storehouse of the collected knowledge of Christ’s Church for 2 millenia.
Because we have the many learned and scholarly men of the magisterium, we have the benefit of their collective mind and deep understanding of all of this information. Why should we, the faithful in the pews, wish to dismiss all of this - the History, the Learning, the developed Theology, the Guidance, of2000 years - Why would we want to dismiss this for just the one book and just our own limited intellect? Why would we want to try and re-invent the wheel?
Peace
James