Pondering Protestantism: Church history and authority

Warning: This is a long one!

I've been thinking a lot about Protestantism lately, both because most of my family is Evangelical, and also because I've been spending a lot of time reading Challies-Dot-Com and The Bayly Brothers. In particular, David Bayly posted some thoughts a while back on the visible vs. invisible Church, which got me to thinking about it all over again. To be honest, this was a huge factor in my poping, and although I never questioned the matter very closely before then (I was not a terribly well-informed Baptist), I don't understand how Protestants who actually know their faith handle the issue. (Note: I'm not baiting anybody here; I really would like to understand.)

It seems to me that all of the Biblical references to “The Church” refer to an institution, beginning with Jesus’ “Upon this rock” promise to Peter. It could be that they can all be read as referring to all believers in general, or it could be that it’s meant to convey both. So let's consider both sides of it. The trouble with asserting an invisible, non-institutional Church is that even Protestants hold to certain beliefs that required definition from an institutional Church, like the canon of scripture and the nature of the Trinity. Other beliefs also defined by ecclesiastical authority, like veneration of saints and transubstantiation, are rejected by Protestants, on the grounds of sola scriptura.

Logically, there are three possibilities:
1. The Church has always held the authority to define doctrine, that authority being exercised by the hierarchy in conjunction with scripture, but not limited solely to scripture.

2. The Church has never held that authority, and is instead a collection of widely disparate bodies of believers united by their faith in the same Christ, but not by any temporal body.

3. The Church had that authority at one time, but has lost it at some point through corruption.

Possibility number 1, obviously, is the position of all Christians except for Protestants. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and the various traditional Oriental churches all hold to this, and do not appear to have ever not taught it. Protestants, by the very nature of their protest, must either reject this position or acknowledge themselves to be in rebellion against legitimate authority. (For the moment, we’ll leave aside the question of whether that Church is headed by Rome or by all five Patriarchs in union. It’s an important question, but since Protestants recognize the authority of neither Rome nor Byzantium, it’s not really relevant here.)

Possibilities 2 and 3 pose certain problems. If the Church has never had the authority to define doctrine in the absence of explicit scriptural teaching, then the Council of Nicea had no authority to define the Trinity, and the Councils of Hippo and Carthage didn’t have the authority to define the New Testament canon. Hence, if we take what’s behind door number two, both those things, taken as axiomatic by Protestants, are in reality matters of individual judgment. (Incidentally, the logical end of this line of reasoning legitimizes the Mormons, whose departure from Christian orthodoxy comes from defining for themselves both the canon of scripture and the Trinity.)

The third possibility is no more supportable than the second. Let’s take an example:
If the Church was empowered, say, to define the New Testament as 27 books long (Council of Hippo, 393, and Third Council of Carthage, 397), but was not empowered to define Mary’s role as the Mother of God (Council of Ephesus, 431), then that leaves a window of only 34 years in which the Church could cease to exercise authority in doctrinal matters. If we allow the definition of the theotokos at Ephesus to stand (since it’s more a statement on the Incarnation than on Mary), then we have to go to the next council that defined something unpalatable to Protestants. How about the Second Council of Nicea, in 787, which upheld the veneration of icons? Few Protestants would agree that the Church had the authority by that time to make such a decree, since they consider that veneration tantamount to idolatry. That’s a window of 390 years, which may be enough time for the Church to have lost its teaching authority. But the question remains: at what point did the shift occur? In which year? At what event? I have yet to receive a credible answer to that question from any Protestant.

It’s not an idle question, nor is it meant to be a straw man. Rather, it strikes me as both crucial and relevant. Debate over “Upon this rock” notwithstanding, the other half of Jesus’ promise to Peter said “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” If the Church once possessed authority, and no longer does, then at some point the gates of hell must have prevailed, at least until 1517. I don’t see any alternative. The same Church that defined the Trinity at Nicea is the one that ruled on icons 462 years later. And despite a split between East and West, there’s an unbroken historical line to the same Church that ruled on transubstantiation in 1215 and on justification in 1563. The East-West schism has little bearing on either of those issues, since both Catholics and Orthodox believe more or less the same in those areas. Only Protestants reject those doctrines outright.

So, Protestant readers, I’m very interested in your answer to that question, or for that matter, whether you think it’s germane at all. At what point do you believe the Church’s dogmatic authority ceased to be?