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Derek Rishmawy Is Awesome, As Usual, But...

Aren't you just tilting at windmills here, since Sola Scriptura doesn't allow anyone to claim hermeneutical victory, because good faith disagreement still exists? Derek might think that a certain interpreter fails to account for context, but a more "liberal" interpreter, if you will forgive the term, can make the same claim.

There is no such thing as a "Magisterial" reformer. They don't exist. They never existed. Later, you could say that an interpretation was further away from the Catholic Church than another, but everyone who believed and believes that Scripture alone is the final infallible rule of faith and practice is actually making his or her own interpretation of it the rule of faith. He does this with his so-called "derivative" authorities, too. To make them binding would be to--even in his mind--repeat the alleged Catholic error. To appeal to them derivatively allows him the conceit of historical/theological continuity (especially against certain interpreters who disagree with that "consensus") without ceding his interpretive authority/asking whether the distinction is real.

Well, it isn't, even if the powerful desire not to be Catholic would like it to be.

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