Attention Dear Dogma - I can answer your Chesterton Challenge -?
Sorry for not know any other way to respond to this but I just saw you post this link in another question. I hope you are still online to view this. here is the challenge -
Mr. Chesterton asks; Can Protestants be taken seriously by the man in the street?
It's really not that long of a quote, take the time to read it and respond in support of Sola-Scriptura if you can;
"To this
I owe the fact that I find it very difficult to take some of the
Protestant propositions even seriously. What is any man who has
been in the real outer world, for instance, to make of the
everlasting cry that Catholic traditions are condemned by the
Bible? It indicates a jumble of topsy-turvy tests and tail-foremost
arguments, of which I never could at any time see the sense. The
ordinary sensible sceptic or pagan is standing in the street (in the
supreme character of the man in the street) and he sees a
procession go by of the priests of some strange cult, carrying their
object of worship under a canopy, some of them wearing high
head-dresses and carrying symbolical staffs, others carrying
scrolls and sacred records, others carrying sacred images and
lighted candles before them, others sacred relics in caskets or
cases, and so on. I can understand the spectator saying, "This is all
hocus-pocus"; I can even understand him, in moments of irritation,
breaking up the procession, throwing down the images, tearing up
the scrolls, dancing on the priests and anything else that might
express that general view. I can understand his saying, "Your
croziers are bosh, your candles are bosh, your statues and scrolls
and relics and all the rest of it are bosh." But in what conceivable
frame of mind does he rush in to select one particular scroll of the
scriptures of this one particular group (a scroll which had always
belonged to them and been a part of their hocus-pocus, if it was
hocus-pocus); why in the world should the man in the street say
that one particular scroll was not bosh, but was the one and only
truth by which all the other things were to be condemned? Why
should it not be as superstitious to worship the scrolls as the
statues, of that one particular procession? Why should it not be as
reasonable to preserve the statues as the scrolls, by the tenets of
that particular creed? To say to the priests, "Your statues and
scrolls are condemned by our common sense," is sensible. To say,
"Your statues are condemned by your scrolls, and we are going to
worship one part of your procession and wreck the rest," is not
sensible from any standpoint, least of all that of the man in the street."
Quoted from GK.Chesterton "The Catholic Church and Conversion"
So, the reason that Christians are adamant about Jesus being the only way is because that is what He claimed. Christianity is exclusive because that is what our Lord said. John 14:6 - "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The overly taken out of context John 3:16 says "for God so loved the world that whosoever should believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life".
It's "whoever believes in Him", not Allah, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Mohamed or believes in Him and gets baptized, performs vows, pays alms, attends church, does good works, goes to confessional, or whatever.
While those "ors" are good things and evidence that somebody really has been born again, they of themselves do not make a person saved. God saves us by grace alone.
Plus this recent century's Catholic stance of pretty much anything goes is new to them even. They too used to say that Christianity was the only way (albeit theres was perverted) but a clear sign that they are not sticking to the scriptures is that they now support the stance which the Chesterton challenge clearly puts out - anything goes.
So I didn't address it apparently. I guess I got caught up defending the scriptures whereas I should have been defending the actual source of the text.
The Catholic church isn't what makes the Holy Bible authoritative. God does. It is perfect because He inspired it, not because of the result of the councils decisions over the past 2000 years. If the Catholic church stuck to the Bible, no Christian would have a problem with them, but they don't and that's the problem. God did use those councils to establish His word in the bible and He gets credit for that. Plus the Catholic church uses deutercanonical texts (the apochrypha) where as no protestant does. Now, I'm defending Protestants as if they all have it right (they don't) but I mean to say that God got it right and man often messes it up. So when Jesus claims exclusivity, we have no right to add to it.