You complain that Catholic interpretations of the text exclude any exegesis which you believe contradicts Catholic dogma. You then accuse the Catholic side of just being involved with ‘eisegesis’ to prop up Catholic dogma.
However, Reformed theologians have their exegesis which interprets things in a Reformed way. Meanwhile, there exists an abundance of exegesis that contradicts Reformed exegesis in every imaginable way. Yet, Reformed Churches don’t turn around and change their dogmas to conform to the varying exegesis at every turn. But this is what you are asking the Catholic Church to do. You want the Catholic Church to conform to exegesis that you agree with but we could just as easily complain that the Reformed Churches exclude exegesis that contradicts Reformed exegesis and so Reformed exegesis is really just ‘eisegesis’ used to support Reformed dogma.
If we all did what you are asking, we’d be Universalist Unitarians in two weeks’ time.
How do we get past this? Putting aside the option of becoming Unitarians we are left with two options.
1) We go on throwing each other’s exegesis at each other in a question begging manner like you do with 1 Tim 3:15
2) We find a way to address the differences in interpretation in a non-question begging way.
2) We find a way to address the differences in interpretation in a non-question begging way.
Option # 2 is what Called to Communion is all about. To that end, we have been putting forth the argument that the only non-question begging way to address the mountains of differing exegesis is to locate the Church that Christ founded by finding the successors to the apostles. Once we find the successors to the apostles, we approach that Church and conform our understanding to the exegesis and dogmas that the apostolic Church preaches.
In summary, our approach is exactly the approach that Irenaues used and other early fathers used when fighting against the Gnostics. Their answer to the Gnostic exegesis was not to embrace the Gnostic exegesis but to say, “No, we are the Church that Christ founded. We are the Church of the apostles. We have the succession of the apostles and the Church says that Gnosticism is false…”
There are many such examples. Here is one:
“But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst Of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,–a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. …To this test, therefore will they be submitted for proof by those churches, who, although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine…Then let all the heresies, when challenged to these two tests by our apostolic church, offer their proof of how they deem themselves to be apostolic… Tertullian, Prescription against the Heretics, 33 (A.D. 200).
(Of course the debates with the Gnostics went further/deeper than that but this is why the early Church looked to her succession in the first place. )
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