Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura...is there a difference?

[SolomonVII]

That exactly is the problem I have with Sola Scriptura. The bible says nothing, it's a book. We read it and interpret what it says.

The Bible says nothing?!!!

That is a very poor attitude to have about the inspired word of God.

The Bible says everything that we need to know about who we are and who God is.

 

[Rick Otto]

The Bible says nothing?!!!

That is a very poor attitude to have about the inspired word of God.

The Bible says everything that we need to know about who we are and who God is.

Well, scripture does say that it is alive, but in sympathy with nestoj's point that I think he was trying to make,...
my son complained he didn't think he could get to sleep the other night because accidentaly took his night pill that marning. I told him to read the bible.When I first set out to read it cover to cover, it was the best sleeping pill available.

 

[tadoflamb]

Probably not.
Similar to praying to Mary.
Some RC's call it worship, some call it reverence.
Regardless of what it's 'called' it's what you 'do'.

Regardless of what SS is called, it's what I "do".


Sola Scriptura are fighting words around here.
It's been that way as long as I've been here.

Here's the big difference. No matter what any Catholic on any internet forum one can always go to the Church for the correct and most precise answer.

With ss'ers, there is no Church to which one may refer to the true definition. In order to understand ss I'm obliged to just take some man's (or woman's) word for it. Something ss'ers specifically warn against.

 

[Rick Otto]

Here's the big difference. No matter what any Catholic on any internet forum one can always go to the Church for the correct and most precise answer.

With ss'ers, there is no Church to which one may refer to the true definition. In order to understand ss I'm obliged to just take some man's (or woman's) word for it. Something ss'ers specifically warn against.

I'm comfortable with that because I realize that the character & content of what is a personal relationship cannot hinge upon some intellectualy grasped definition. A history of trust building us implied in a relationship.

 

[SolomonVII]

Well, scripture does say that it is alive, but in sympathy with nestoj's point that I think he was trying to make,...
my son complained he didn't think he could get to sleep the other night because accidentaly took his night pill that marning. I told him to read the bible.When I first set out to read it cover to cover, it was the best sleeping pill available.

I would never claim that the Bible is an easy read.
When I first started reading the Bible, the preachers in the media were all afire on how the ten horns of the beast were all prophecied thousand of years ago, as the EU gained members. It was all about the coming apocalypse, according to them.

The more I read Revelation, the more I realized that I was clueless about what was being said. It might as well have been in the original Greek.
Nietzsche is like that too by the way. The imagery painted with the words is startling and tantalizing, but it is all so cryptic that you leave with the impression that you have learned nothing at all.

What I also left with though was the distinct impression that the media preachers were pulling rabbits out of their hats with their wild and crazy interpretations.
The images on the other hand, have stuck with me, and the influence has been lifelong. They deepen my understanding of things happening in the world, of the eternal and recurring truths of a world mired in sin.

It is a lifelong journey, wrestling with the word of God. It is not some light bed time reading. Going to some supposed infallible interpretation as a bottom line though is ,imho, like going to Cole's notes rather than reading the novel.
There is simply no bottom line, when it comes to the word of God. There is only deeper, wider, higher, more intricate, more detailed, levels of understanding.

I am not saying that the Bible is something that ought to be read alone without any outside influence. Two thousand years of spirit filled commentators from Irenaeus to Jewish Rabbis ought to have come up with something useful to aid understanding.

But at the same time I don't think that it is so cryptic that all that there can be is interpretation without substance. I would hope for Catholics even, the Catechism is not being used as a Coles notes sort of replacement.

 

[sunlover1]

... If it is, how does someone establish a single norm, since there could be (and are) many interpretations of what the scripture is actualy saying?

The same way one would establish what a priest is saying, since there could be (and are) many interpretations of what he says.

So the same way we might all hear God's Word and understand it in our own
way, is the very same way we'd all understand it if He were here in the flesh
to 'speak aloud' to us, face to face.
We'd all come away with our own understanding.
IOW, God is 'speaking to us' in written form with Scripture
just as He'd 'speak' to us if face to face.
Quite similar to the bishop might say something to us face to
face or in written form.
Can we understand the one man but not the other?

But God, on the other hand,
(Why did He give us His Scripture?)
is able to "reveal" Scripture to us, so that
we CAN know what He wants us to.
(whereas our bishop, may or may not be understood

His church is 'built' on revelation.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Then opened he their understanding,
that they might understand the scriptures,

Awesome, isn't He

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he
talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

 

[sunlover1]

Here's the big difference. No matter what any Catholic on any internet forum one can always go to the Church for the correct and most precise answer.

All of my relatives are and I was raised as RC.
Different priests do teach different things.

With ss'ers, there is no Church to which one may refer to the true definition. In order to understand ss I'm obliged to just take some man's (or woman's) word for it. Something ss'ers specifically warn against

Use Scripture as your rule or don't.
that's your choice

 

[nestoj]

From a "disinterested" viewpoint, the body of professing Christianity is a mosaic. That is only more or less a problem depending on at least a few factors.
I'm thinking that along with baptism, we should tattoo the two greatest commandments on forearms or something.

That's a good foundation. We could go from there.

 

[nestoj]

Yes, but that isn't the point. What I meant was that if you were to base your beliefs on the Bible, you would have a firm guide. We all own one. We agree on what's in it. We all agree on where it comes from. But if you mix "Tradition" in with it, how much? Which traditions? Who decides? What's divinely-inspired Tradition and what's just custom? Etc.

Not that simple. In it's root, Scripture (meaning its canon) is also based on tradition. Now, we might agree on scripture, but that would mean we agree on tradition that compiled it - which is great and as it should be...but following your reasoning, tradition is flawed. Maybe you agree on that one, particular, tradition because, at the time of compilation, it was universally accepted? I could understand that. Just have in mind that most of the traditions were at one time universally accepted. I think that the number of post-reformation traditions is comparatively small. Add that canon of scripture is also not universal today, whatever our position on importance of particular texts might be. If someone included them in scripture, they must be important to him.

Well, that's what I was getting at. We can't prove that either of us isn't a figment of someone’s imagination either, I would suppose. However, we act on that which is most likely right.

True. But that's exactly the problem. If tradition most of the time produces something unacceptable, what's the probability it produced an inerrant biblical canon?

Actually it doesn't. Or at most, it shifts it only on a few non-essentials. With the Bible, all of Christianity is pretty much in agreement on what we are dealing with.

You can't know that. Synthesis of all the texts, which is my understanding of a proper way to judge something against the scripture, might produce vastly different results if the elements of synthesis are different.

But the whole Christian world is in agreement, for right or for wrong (and we already discussed that), save only for the Apocrypha which is mainly a series of morality tales, not books on which we base doctrine. But when we turn to Tradition, there's almost nothing you can count on. Every church has a different definition and makes its picks from out of a mass of historic opinion, legend, folklore, custom, and so on. Using Tradition is like sorting through a haystack looking for a few good strands and then every church that wants to be involved in this search deciding how to compare all the possibilities. There is no church council to decide which Traditions, no worldwide consensus, no uniformity of belief between the churches as to which strands are real and which are just fallible human opinion.

I can understand your critique of the tradition, but can't separate it from a critique of the scripture. I know it is cliché, but Scripture really didn't just fall from the sky. Some traditions, as Thekla said, are quite universal today and were absolutely universal at the time they came, yet they are disputed. In all intellectual honesty, I could accept your viewpoint as one of the valid ones regarding products of tradition, but, in that same intellectual honesty I couldn't exclude the scripture from its edge because it too is a product of tradition.

 

[nestoj]

The Bible says nothing?!!!

That is a very poor attitude to have about the inspired word of God.

The Bible says everything that we need to know about who we are and who God is.

You miss my point. I might find in it "everything that we need to know about who we are and who God is", but if I place it on a bookshelf and let it stay there, it will say nothing about "who we are and who God is".

 

[nestoj]

The same way one would establish what a priest is saying, since there could be (and are) many interpretations of what he says.

So the same way we might all hear God's Word and understand it in our own
way, is the very same way we'd all understand it if He were here in the flesh
to 'speak aloud' to us, face to face.
We'd all come away with our own understanding.
IOW, God is 'speaking to us' in written form with Scripture
just as He'd 'speak' to us if face to face.
Quite similar to the bishop might say something to us face to
face or in written form.
Can we understand the one man but not the other?

But God, on the other hand,
(Why did He give us His Scripture?)
is able to "reveal" Scripture to us, so that
we CAN know what He wants us to.
(whereas our bishop, may or may not be understood

His church is 'built' on revelation.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Then opened he their understanding,
that they might understand the scriptures,

Awesome, isn't He

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he
talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

It's not the same sis. If I do the understanding and leave it at that, it's not the same if all who could read it and afterwards formed an universal understanding...then wrote that understanding somewhere and left it for us who come later. There's a greater probability their understanding was the correct one. I mean, we believe that God wouldn't let entire generations of men to be under influence of false, yet universal, teachings.

 

[Thekla]

The same way one would establish what a priest is saying, since there could be (and are) many interpretations of what he says.

So the same way we might all hear God's Word and understand it in our own
way, is the very same way we'd all understand it if He were here in the flesh
to 'speak aloud' to us, face to face.
We'd all come away with our own understanding.
IOW, God is 'speaking to us' in written form with Scripture
just as He'd 'speak' to us if face to face.
Quite similar to the bishop might say something to us face to
face or in written form.
Can we understand the one man but not the other?

But God, on the other hand,
(Why did He give us His Scripture?)
is able to "reveal" Scripture to us, so that
we CAN know what He wants us to.
(whereas our bishop, may or may not be understood

His church is 'built' on revelation.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Then opened he their understanding,
that they might understand the scriptures,

Awesome, isn't He

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he
talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

It's right that you keep what God gave you.

And that's what we do, too.

It's just that we were given more by God than the Scriptures; we have our origin before the NT.

It is right that we keep what God gave us (which includes also what underlies the Scriptures).

 

[Albion]

Not that simple. In it's root, Scripture (meaning its canon) is also based on tradition.

I'm familiar with that slogan but I don't think it's true. The Scriptures are revelation, not custom or folklore. To the extent that the Church enters in here, it's not as though some church organization commissioned someone to write up the various legends of the past and then proclaimed them the holy book of our religion. No, the church merely recogized the revelation for what it is. So Traditionn has nothing to do with it, really.

Now, we might agree on scripture, but that would mean we agree on tradition that compiled it - which is great and as it should be...but following your reasoning, tradition is flawed.

That's right.

Maybe you agree on that one, particular, tradition because, at the time of compilation, it was universally accepted?

As said above, it's not a tradition, so this isn't a problem at all!

Just have in mind that most of the traditions were at one time universally accepted.

I'm surprised that you'd say that. Perhaps you could elaborate on your acceptance of Papal Supremacy and Infallibility.

Add that canon of scripture is also not universal today, whatever our position on importance of particular texts might be.

As I've explained, there is nealy universal agreement. Meanwhile, you want include traditions on which there is no uniformity at all. Please address that.

If tradition most of the time produces something unacceptable, what's the probability it produced an inerrant biblical canon?

As we said before, nothing is provable 100%, but we DO HAVE nearly universal agreemet on this. What else can our religion be based on?

 

[sunlover1]

It's not the same sis.

No, not the same.
I can read what GOD said, and interpret that.
Or I can read what MAN said that God said.
Which do you suggest is more logical?

I mean, we believe that God wouldn't let entire generations of men to be under influence of false, yet universal, teachings.

Can we say that? We do see Him hiding His truth:

Proverbs 28:5
Evildoers do not understand what is right, but those who seek the LORD understand it fully.

Jeremiah 31:34
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

Matthew 13:11
He replied, "Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.



WE, on the other hand, are taught BY God:
John 6:45
It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.

John 14:16
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever--

John 14:17
the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

John 14:26
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you

.1 Corinthians 2:12
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

2 Corinthians 1:21
Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,

1 Thessalonians 4:9
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.

Hebrews 8:11
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

1 John 2:20
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

 

[sunlover1]

It's right that you keep what God gave you.

And that's what we do, too.

It's just that we were given more by God than the Scriptures;....

Certainly we were given more!

He didn't give us a book and say, "See ya!"
He left us Himself to dwell IN us.

God's purpose is to BE with His people.
That's His bottom line.

Scripture is how we get to know His voice.
But to LIVE, we need to HEAR His voice.

 

[Thekla]

Certainly we were given more!

He didn't give us a book and say, "See ya!"
He left us Himself to dwell IN us.

God's purpose is to BE with His people.
That's His bottom line.

Scripture is how we get to know His voice.
But to LIVE, we need to HEAR His voice.

It's one of the ways, for sure.

And He dwells in the midst (and in) us, to the extent that we will have Him.

And it's kind of you to draw this together; your tradition received Him and the Scriptures, so you keep this

We (EO, for example) received more than this from God, so we keep this

We all have the responsibility to keep what we receive, whether or not another approves of that. And often, what we (EO,OO, etc.) have received from God in Christ through the Holy Spirit is not approved by others on GT (Christians in confessions/traditions that did not receive so much) -- and they make it pretty clear they don't "approve".

But, that's okay -- we seek not the approval of men (who disapprove of what we received), but in and for the love of God, participation in Him.

 

[SolomonVII]

You miss my point. I might find in it "everything that we need to know about who we are and who God is", but if I place it on a bookshelf and let it stay there, it will say nothing about "who we are and who God is".

I in no way suggest that you place the Bible on a book shelf and leave it there.
That is not what sola scriptura would be all about.

 

[nestoj]

No, not the same.
I can read what GOD said, and interpret that.
Or I can read what MAN said that God said.
Which do you suggest is more logical?

That's the thing - in both cases it's what men say God said.

Can we say that? We do see Him hiding His truth:

Proverbs 28:5
Evildoers do not understand what is right, but those who seek the LORD understand it fully.

Jeremiah 31:34
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

Matthew 13:11
He replied, "Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.



WE, on the other hand, are taught BY God:
John 6:45
It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.

John 14:16
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever--

John 14:17
the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

John 14:26
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you

.1 Corinthians 2:12
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

2 Corinthians 1:21
Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,

1 Thessalonians 4:9
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.

Hebrews 8:11
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

1 John 2:20
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

I believe we could say that. We could confirm God hiding His truth from evildoers, but not from all of the Christians.

 

[Albion]

That's the thing - in both cases it's what men say God said.

I'm trying hard to keep up with this discussion and keep everything in order. Earlier, you wrote:

Oh, but I accept that Scripture is revealed word of God

So which is it--you accept that Scripture is (the) revealed word of God...OR...it's what men say God said?

 

[nestoj]

Certainly we were given more!

He didn't give us a book and say, "See ya!"
He left us Himself to dwell IN us.

God's purpose is to BE with His people.
That's His bottom line.

Scripture is how we get to know His voice.
But to LIVE, we need to HEAR His voice.

The Holy Ghost, yes. But Scripture is not the only way Holy Ghost interacts with people. There's a multitude of ways. I believe a conscience to be one of them.