I'm saying that it's evident that having a chief interpreter does not prevent schisms.
I never said it did. The only way to prevent schisms is to deny free will, which is not what God wants. The price of free will is the existence of sin, and schism is one of those sins.
Your comment about a hypothetical unified protestant church makes me think your idea relies on saying "the protestant church is divided but the catholic church is not" and I suppose that were true if the protestant church existed, but what I see is that e.g. this Presbyterian church or that Lutheran church isn't actually divided, doctrinally, at all. So if you forget the abstraction "protestantism" which is just a label, because nobody gathers in a protestant congregation, they gather in a Church of England congregation or whatever, and focus on the concrete churches then what you are saying is false, we do not suffer endless schisms at all. The concrete church of Rome actually does suffer schisms and the concrete church of the NHK does not. But the phantasm church of "Protestantism" does. Maybe that sorts out what I'm asking.
I consider the existence of presbyterian, CoE, NHK, etc to all be schisms that stem from the concept of protestantism. Even if you do not use the concept of a hypothetical unified protestant church, these are all denominations that are considered protestant, and they are all in schism with both Catholicism and each other.
Well I understand if this is the only way you can talk about it yourself, but you must see that to anyone else this is you assuming the conclusion. Obviously we're just going to say actually Rome drifted from original church teachings over time and the orthodox are going to say actually you schismed from them first.
People who believe in a flat earth will disagree with the fact that the earth is a sphere, their assertions don't make the world any less round.
Sola scriptura means only scripture is infallible viz. that the Pope or ecumenical councils are not, and not that anybody can read anything they like into scripture and that's right.
The natural conclusion of sola scriptura is "if only scripture is infallible, who decides what the correct interpretation of scripture is?" Which leads to the follow up question, "how do you explain why all the different protestant churches read the same infallible scripture and came to different conclusions that are incompatible with each other?"
For example you say
Calvin I believe does comment that the scriptures are sensible enough that a sober Christian would have to make an effort to come to an outrageous conclusion
but this is the same Calvin that came to the outrageous conclusion of predestination!Is this supposed to be a very obtuse way of admitting he was a drunkard?
While scripture is infallible, it needs to be correctly interpreted, and the Magisterium is the authority to determine what is the correct interpretation. Under that authority we have one denomination, without it you have countless denominations.
But for us the authority of a minster or council is because they are wise and learned not because they are divinely barred from error - in fact, basically what you believe but one of you added the infallibility part because modernism undermined belief in wisdom and authority.
I'm not sure you understand the very specific nature of Papal Infallibility because you're implying it means something far broader than it actually does. We didn't add infallibility as a response to modernism. Papal Infallibility allows the Pope to have the final and definitive say on matters of faith and morals in situations where the College of Bishops are unable to reach a consensus. It does not mean that the Catholic Church as a whole has never made a mistake before, and it is merely one small element of the God given authority that the Catholic Church has held from the moment Christ gave Peter the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and the powers to bind and loose.
Over the course of history we have undergone a long and ongoing process of discerning theology, that's essentially what the ecumenical councils are for. Then protestantism came along and said "we don't need all that, just read the bible!" but the result has been an explosion of different incompatible denominations.
Do you believe scripture is filled with pitfalls and traps for lay believer or is it just not easy to interpret with precision? because those are two different problems.
I do not believe scripture is attempting to decieve or trick people, but it certainly necessitates dedicated and careful study to interpret, and it is therefore susceptible to being misinterpreted by people who read in it what they want to hear more than what it says. Case in point, protestants who read Matthew 16:17-18 and come to any interpretation other than it being the formation of the Catholic Church because that interpretation, while correct, is inconvenient for their theology.
