I respectfully disagree.
The Holy Spirit is the only guaranteed source of truth.
I consider an answer like that to be just too coy. When I say that Scipture, the Word of God, is the authority we can trust, of course that's only because it is the Word of
God, i.e. that it comes from God who is ultimately the authority. When we believe the word, we believe it because of where it comes from. So if you say, no, it's the Holy Spirit--God-- you are just saying the same thing except that you don't want to believe that God's revelation in scripture was successful.
St. John said that the world isn't large enough to contain all the books it would take to record all that Jesus has done.
And don't omit give us the whole of John's advice--
what is recorded in the Bible is all that we need. (Jn 20-30:31) He, John, tells us that we don't need any suplement, not that we do!
This means there is much more truth available than what is in Scripture.
Not at all. Read the verse and don't read INTO it what you want it to say. What he says is that IT
WOULD TAKE,
not that
THERE IS...
In fact, he's saying that there's no need for the rest that COULD be written since this, scripture, tells us all that we need.
And you are arguing that you want to add to it nevertheless.
If Scripture was all it took then Jesus wouldn't have bothered founding a Church
What an illogical conclusion. The church was founded for exactly the reason Jesus said it was founded: to spread the Gospel, baptise all nations, etc. It was not founded in order to add to his teachings. He commissioned his Apostles to go into the whole world, etc. AFTER he had finished his years of public teaching.
In fact He never told them to write anything down.
You don't know that. It is quite presumptuous, not to say almost ridiculous, to decide that when Paul was called by God, for instance, and made an Apostle, his life's work--writing to and comunicating the Gospel throughout the Empire--was something he decided to do on his own and had nothing to do with God's call to him on the road to Damascus. And it was Paul who was the most prolific contributor to the New Testament.
I must say its disconcerting for Sola Scripturists to claim all truth is in the Bible but fail to practice all the Bible tells us too.
And I must say it's disconcerting to have those who argue so adamantly against the sufficiency of the Bible then base their contention that more is needed....ON THE BIBLE. What an obvious contradition. First, you say that the Bible doesn't do what it needs to do, then you say the the organized church is supposed to do it instead, and then you try to use the source you've just discredited as the basis for that! You can't have it both ways.
They cannot do all the Bible tells them because its not available to them where they are.
Of course it is. You, meanwhile have no idea of the add-ons that you are contending are so essential. I have asked Catholics over and over again for some of the must-believe doctrines that they have--and, by implication, we should too--that come to us purely through this non-Bible method.
No one has yet named a one. You won't be able to, either. It's undeniably strange, isn't it, considering that all the arguments in favor of your extra-Biblical methodology are well-rehearsed, but when you get through arguing for how we are to know God's will, you don't know what it is?
Its as bad a hypocracy as any sin anyone in the Church has ever committed.
If it were a hypocrisy. What I've outlined about your duplicity is clearly a much better example of such a thing.
The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 was only the first one.
We accept it as correct because its decision is incorporated into scripture which itself is inerrant.
There have been 21 more since then. Are they less inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit because they are not in the record the Church has passed on infallibly as infallible?
There is no reason to think that these conventions of men are infallible, or that they are Holy Spirit guided or inspired. Most were just the meetings of the leaders of one denomination, not representative of the whole church, and cannot be considered Ecumenical Councils in any way.
