I'm going to comment on the first half of Horn's response to Winger:
I don't care about commenting on the second half.
1. Horn says: We can either believe that an apostolic tradition Jesus gave the apostles was faithfully preserved throughout all church history or else it was lost right after the apostolic age, and wasn't found until the Reformation or later–like Mormons say. Everyone is going to talk about where it lies. You either have bona fide historical pedigrees going back to the apostles or you have your interpretation of the Bible–which apparently people don't figure out for 1500 years or even 1900 years (19C Restorationist movements). God left us a church which preserves his word written and unwritten.
In response:
i) Horn is evidently referring to oral traditions. The "unwritten word" of Christ.
There's nothing conspiratorial or far-fetched about the possibility or high probability that unwritten traditions can and will be forgotten. There might be some lingering oral apostolic tradition, but how is that verified? How do we sift that from ecclesiastical legends or heresies masquerading as apostolic traditions?
ii) Knowledge can be lost. The original understanding of a passage or ceremony can be lost, obscured, or distorted.
Take biblical archeology. The discovery of texts and inscriptions from the ancient Near East that clarify the meaning of a Bible reference. Historical and geographical references. People and places. Kings. Battles. Improving our knowledge of biblical chronology or Classical Hebrew.
iii) Horn is fixated on historical pedigree, but truth is independent of whether it's traceable through a continuous chain of testimony. Once again, consider biblical archeology. That recovers long-lost information. Millennia elapsed. There's no continuous chain of testimony. To the contrary, there's been a break in the record for centuries or millennia before that's retrieved.
iv) Because human beings social creatures, we are prone to cultural inertia. That's reinforced by sanctions against those who buck the system. We see that in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. That's what makes the work of Christian missionaries so challenging. Likewise, secularism becomes culturally entrenched in some countries.
v) Apropos (v), conditioning can blind people to other interpretations. Alternatives may not even occur to them due to the myopic power of conditioning.
That's true for theological traditions generally. If you're indoctrinated in a particular faith-tradition, if that's all you've ever been exposed to, that's your filter. That may be all you see in the text. A different interpretations may not even occur to you.
Consider how many Jews fail to recognize Jesus in messianic prophecy and the Gospels. Consider Paul before his epiphany. It took the a Christophany to shock him out of his hidebound perspective.
vi) It's not that Catholics are unable to perceive Protestant interpretations in Scripture. It's that Catholics are committed to belief that the text can't mean that, because it runs counter to Catholic dogma. The impediment is not that Protestant interpretations can't be found or discerned in the text of Scripture, but that prior commitment to Catholic dogma automatically screens that out of consideration.
vii) There's also a gap between how Catholic apologists read the Bible and how professional Catholic commentators read the Bible. Modern Catholic Bible scholars are often far more open to interpretations that question or deny traditional Catholic constructions. They recognize other exegetical options in the text. Superior options.
2. Horn's appeal to patristic endorsements or the Roman church suffers from anachronism. Institutions change over time. Institutions may become unrecognizable with the passage of time. Institutions may abandon their original vision. Institutions may become the antithesis of what they originally represented.
The church fathers aren't prophets. They are remarking on the state of the church in their own time and place. They aren't vouching for medieval Catholicism or the Roman Catholic church in the 21C.
3. Horn appeals to Heb 13:17. But that backfires:
i) At a time when, as he himself belabors, the NT wasn't widespread, Christians were naturally more reliant on eyewitnesses to the ministry of Christ.
ii) Appealing to church leaders only pushes the question back a step: which leader should you obey? Consider false teachers in the early church. Church fathers and heretics were frequently contemporaries, viz. Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus, Arius, Sebellius, Theodotus of Byzantium. Some heretics are as early or earlier than most church fathers. Does this carry the presumption that they transmit authentic apostolic traditions?
And we can take it back another step. Consider false teachers in NT times. The Hyperpreterism of Hymenaeus and Philetus (1-2 Timothy) Docetists (1 John). Judaizers (Galatians). Antinomians (Jude). The Colossian heresy. Dual-covenant theology (Hebrews). Hyperspirituality (1 Corinthians).
So you can't just blindly pick a leader to follow. You need some criterion to distinguish false teachers from true teaching. Appealing to church fathers begs the question. Are they orthodox because they're church fathers–or church fathers because they're orthodox? There has to be a source and standard of orthodoxy independent of the church fathers to evaluate and validate their legitimacy as doctrinal guides.
4. Is baptism the rite of church membership? Depends. Suppose a spy infiltrates a foreign intelligence agency. Technically, he becomes a foreign agent. He belongs to the agency of a hostile state. He has an official position in the organization. An official rank. Official ID. But in reality he has no allegiance to the agency. To the contrary, his formal membership is just a subterfuge. Likewise, people can be baptized without having any ultimate loyalty to the Christian faith.
Baptism is a sign of membership. Sometimes it corresponds to reality. But the rite is not in itself constitutive, beyond certain duties and privileges that come with public reception. Of course, Horn operates with a Catholic paradigm of baptism. That's an argument for another day.
5. There's development in Catholic and Protestant theology alike. That's not the issue. The issue is a matter of consistency, especially when Rome claims special divine guidance and protection from error.
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