Yes - and this is where the discussion has to be had. Not "well, the Reformers did / didn't reject councils" because whether they did or not (and they clearly did) doesn't matter so much as
why.
Why did they consider that after the "chief four" councils may be rejected? Why did they consider that some canons are superfluous or even incorrect? What assumption or assumptions lead to this point?
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Protestants in general don't limit the Holy Spirit to scripture. Most Protestants would say the Holy Spirit is active in their own lives and experience, and probably more would say the Holy Spirit is active in their home church.
Right. But they do not extend that to the Church writ large. I think in general the Protestant tradition - and this is difficult because that covers such a HUGE net of beliefs - is largely individualistic vs corporate. Especially those that arose out of Pietism, which is most modern protestants. This means that the activity of the Holy Spirit is then also on the individual basis.
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The tricky part, from a Protestant perspective, arises when some other person or some other church says the Holy Spirit has given that person or church authority over your person or church. IE "The Holy Spirit says you have to follow our orders". Historically, that falls under Church Councils or Papal decrees.
The trickier part is that the scriptures are clear that the Church collectively does have authority and infallibility - not individually - and that individual Christians are under authority of the leaders of the Church, and that the Church is actively led by the Spirit.
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Retrospection then shows that Councils contradict other Councils, decrees contract other decrees, and decrees contradict Councils. Since the Spirit does not contradict the Spirit, all of these Councils and decrees can't be simultaneously Inspired and valid. So every tradition, or lack of tradition, has to use some independent judgement to decide which decrees and councils are valid and which are not. The Fathers get dragged into this frequently, but the diversity of opinion in the Fathers is larger than in any tradition, or non-tradition. So it leads to the same problem of having to pick the correct Fathers to defend the correct Councils and support the correct decrees.
I agree with this point and it is absolutely where you wind up when you are cut off from tradition. You have to go and find witnesses to tradition. The witnesses to tradition are - what scriptures did the Church use? What did contemporary leaders think about these and how did they use them ...and which of these contemporary leaders did the Church consider reliable through time?
Simplifying this to "what is canon" and subordinating everything to those words is an error, and it is an error within a logical loop besides (what is canon -> the books the Church used -> how do we know -> Tradition -> how do we check Tradition -> the canon).
In this regard it is clear that councils or decrees are not authoritative
in and of themselves but only in the context as far as they speak for the Church, that is, the Spirit.
This applies equally to scripture! The writings are only authoritative as far as they speak for the Church.
And, in this regard, all of these are only authoritative if they reflect what has always been practiced and taught publicly, because the Faith was passed on once for all to the saints. This is what the scriptures say, this is what tradition shows, and this is what the fathers taught.
It is very clear then what authority we're speaking of and why it is authoritative. Not because of some administrative hierarchy but because it is either true or not true, and that is only understandable from the perspective of what the Church confesses and has always confessed, because that is the witness to Christ.
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When you put the two perspectives together, you end up with a Protestant church that feels like the Holy Spirit is very active in the congregation. Then they hear another church say that the Holy Spirit tells them to subordinate themselves to a power structure or religious tradition. That Protestant church reasons that the Holy Spirit has told them no such thing despite ample opportunity, and they reason that the other church just wants power or influence for non-holy reasons.
This is a mischaracterization of the issue, I think, and is a kind of product of the separation from Holy Tradition that the Great Schism sowed and the Reformation cemented. The problem is that there should be no variation in praxis, confession, dogma, or scriptures between Churches by definition (i.e., Holy Tradition which is guided and shaped by the Spirit). Any variance is potentially problematic, especially if it ends up in a contradictory claim.
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All that suffices to say that the Holy Spirit side of the discussion isn't going to convince anybody of anything, unfortunately
Ha. Well, then, there's no sense in speaking at all because this is the claim to infallibility of the scriptures. If we chuck the "Holy Spirit side of the discussion" then literally all of it goes out the window - from the OT on
