High churchmen typically reject sola Scriptura. They appeal to church councils to determine orthodoxy and heresy. But here's a problem with that: if they use church councils as their criterion for theological truth, how do they determine which church councils are authoritative? High churchman don't regard all or even most church councils as authoritative. Indeed, they think some church councils are heretical or illegitimate.
Do church councils determine what's true, or does truth determine which church councils are true? If church councils are your starting-point, how do you decide which ones to start with? If you use church councils as your criterion, how do you decide which ones to trust? Unless you have independent access to the truth, apart from church councils, how do you winnow church councils that teach true doctrine from church councils that teach false doctrine? If you use church councils as your doctrinal criterion, what's your doctrinal criterion to assess church councils? There are competing conciliar claimants. What about Arian church councils?
Reminds me of Raymond Brown when defending his liberal views of Biblical inspiration against his conservative critics - there are conservative and liberal readings of church councils and documents.
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