Posted this comment at Called to Communion ...

(Not sure if this comment will eventually be released from "moderation" there -- at least one subsequent comment has published since the comment was submitted -- but I figured I can post it here, and if Mr. Stewart wants to reply here, he's welcome.)

Mr. Stewart,
Having posted a longer reply to your post here:
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2012/02/did-acts-15-council-rely-on-exegesis-of.html
Let me briefly address two of your points:
1) Amos 9:11-12 does answer the question of whether circumcision is necessary, because it refers to Gentiles who are called by the name of the Lord. That may not be perspicuous to you, but it is the reason that James quoted it.
2) In fact, the assembly did take a stand on the Scriptures (especially Amos 9:11-12) against the traditions of men (namely the traditions of the Judaizers – the men who came from James, but whose tradition was inauthentic). This demonstrates the weakness of oral tradition. If there was already phoney oral tradition in the mid-first century, how much more opportunity there was for such phoney oral tradition later on. A wise God could address this problem by providing for the Scriptures to be written (well – completed – the bulk of the Scriptures were already written) and widely disseminated rapidly.
In fact, God did use this approach. The Scriptures are able to throughly furnish the man of God unto every good work. That’s why were able to reject claims that the papacy was a divine institution even before RC historians (such as Robert Eno and Francis Sullivan) and non-RC historians (like Peter Lampe) demonstrated historically that the papacy was a development.
Tradition of man or Scriptural teaching? Those are the options you have today, since you cannot summon a council of the apostles to ask them whether they transmitted an oral tradition of the bodily assumption of Mary, of her immaculate conception, of her perpetual virginity, of transubstantitation, of purgatory, of prayers to Mary, or prayers to the saints, of worshiping of God by images, and so on and so forth — and if you make an historical inquiry, you will find it clear that at least some of those things do not extend back to the apostles.
So, will you hear Scripture and tradition? Or will you reject history and tradition in favor of the teachings of Vatican I?
-TurretinFan