Catholics CAN'T Answer This Question!!!

[Major1]

Believe what you choose. It is no ski off my nose.

If we "SKI" off your nose......where would we land???

 

[Major1]

Bible-Alone cannot avoid IDIO-SYNCRATIC understanding...

That is why God established His Ekklesia upon this earth...

Foretold by the Prophet of Christ David:

"For I will partake of the cup of Salvation...
And CALL upon the Name of the Lord..."

This the Church has been doing consistently for 2000 years...

In persecutions...

Arsenios

With that kind of reasoning, then wouldn't you say that it was IDIO-SYNCRATIC understanding which actually lead to the RCC's traditions which are not found in the Scriptures at all?

Oral Tradition must therefore be invalidated automatically if it contradicts the Bible, and it does. Of course, the Catholic will say that it does not. But, Catholic teachings such as purgatory, penance, indulgences, praying to Mary, etc., are not in the Bible.
Therefore they MUST come from the minds of MEN whose thinking is then peculiar to themselves hence your word......."Idio-Syncratic.

A natural reading of God's Word does not lend itself to such beliefs and practices. Instead, the Catholic Church has used Oral Tradition coming from MEN to add to God's revealed word and then extracted out of the Bible whatever verses that might be construed to support their doctrines of Oral Tradition.

Nevertheless, the Catholic apologist will state that both the Bible and Sacred tradition are equal in authority and inspiration and to put one above another is a false comparison.
But, right there is the problem my friend. By what authority does the Catholic church say this?

You will say that it is because it claims to be the true church--descended from the original apostles? So? Making such claims doesn't mean they are true.

I can stand in my garage all day and claim that I am a car but I am not a car just because I say that I am.

Besides, even if it were true, and no one is saying that, there is no guarantee that the succession of church leaders is immune to error. We saw it creep in with Peter, and Paul rebuked him for it in Gal. 2. Do you really think that the Catholic church leaders are better and more spiritual than was Peter?

 

[Albion]

See there? I introduced you to that emoticon...and you liked it. We agree on some things at least.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Sometimes division is necessary in Christianity. Consider the circumstances of Christians in the time of American slavery. Within various churches, some stood strongly and formally on the side of slavery, and backed that stance with Bible and church tradition. Others saw no way to square "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" with the institution of slavery. The country itself divided, and so did religious denominations. To paraphrase Lincoln, 'both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God', but the particular fact of what each said that God was telling them to DO, plainly and clearly "in the Bible", made the other utterly evil, indeed a servant of Satan.

Well, when the Bible does support its regulated ameliorated form of slavery as contextually morally tolerable, not as a imperative command but as "thou mayest" in a world in which slavery was an established institution and an integral part of the ANE economy, then it takes study to justify (versus simply call for) an unconditional ban on it in today's world.

A good concise description of slavery in the Bible is here, and a more in-depth examination is here, by the grace of God.

Yet while many evangelical-types supported Biblical slavery, esp. as conducive to their conversion, many notable Christian evangelicals were at the forefront of the movement in the West. with such primary men whom we highly esteem such as William Wilberforce who wrote in his diary when he was 28 that, "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and Reformation of Morals.

The famous English preacher Charles Spurgeon had some of his sermons burned in America due to his censure of slavery, calling it "the foulest blot" and which "may have to be washed out in blood."[93] Methodist founder John Wesley denounced human bondage as "the sum of all villainies," and detailed its abuses.[94] In Georgia, primitive Methodists united with brethren elsewhere in condemning slavery.

Many evangelical leaders in the United States such as Presbyterian Charles Finney and Theodore Weld, and women such as Harriet Beecher Stowe (daughter of abolitionist Lyman Beecher) and Sojourner Truth motivated hearers to support abolition. Finney preached that slavery was a moral sin, and so supported its elimination. "I had made up my mind on the question of slavery, and was exceedingly anxious to arouse public attention to the subject. In my prayers and preaching, I so often alluded to slavery, and denounced it.[95] Repentance from slavery was required of souls, once enlightened of the subject, while continued support of the system incurred "the greatest guilt upon them.[96]-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery#Christian_abolitionism [not to exclude the Quakers who in particular had a profound influence.]

However, it is true that Southern white evangelicals overall resisted the threat of changing of the status quo of their society, with those who advocated desegregation were a minority, though "when Graham determined in 1952-53 that he could no longer preach the Gospel to segregated meetings because that would represent a betrayal of the Gospel itself, younger southern Presbyterian conservatives nodded their heads in agreement."

And for the record, though the church of Rome promotes itself as the solution to such disputes, its actual record is inconsistent. As no less than the anti-Protestant RC apologist Jimmy Akin stated in response to another RC who wanted to impose his desire view of his church upon history,

Shane, your mistake is just what I noted. One Pope out of 265 Popes condemns slavery as intrinsically evil in the ordinary magisterium and you call it Church Teaching without ever using your own brain to see if he might have overstepped in his late years... and you are prepared to throw God Himself and His estimation of slavery overboard. The Prots are not 100% wrong when they fault us for Pope worship. You just did it....

The list of bulls against slavery occurred over a time span that included 44 Popes but only about 7 of them denounced slavery of sorts....one was against slavery in the Canaries but only of baptized natives....the next one by Paul III was against the enslavement of the Caribbean natives but not against that of blacks....another was against the trade, but not against the domestic slavery of blacks born to slave mothers and held by religious orders into the 19th century, with [the] Bishop [of] England who knew the Pope [was][ writing for domestic slavery after the bull and not being gainsaid by the Pope. The most complete one was finally at the end of the 19th century by a Pope...Leo XIII this time... who claimed that the Church was the great liberator from slavery, and he gave a papal list which left out the six Popes from 1452 til 1511 who literally turbocharged the slavery by Spain and Portugal that involved millions. [FONT=Liberation Sans, sans-serif] — Soups Re-Redux[/FONT]

I'll quote Lincoln again, because he got it exactly right, in all of its terrible divine logic:

"The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

Oh for wise and moral men like Lincoln today!

The same terrible divine logic applies to the Reformation and its wars, to the perennial wars with Islam and their outcomes over time. When men open their books and, fired by the passions it arouses, reach for the sword to go and defeat the evil heathen, they had the decision over to the Lord God of Hosts, who makes his judgments of such cases manifest on the battlefields of history and in the results that come thereafter.

While Islam needed to be defeated, physical church armies or theocracies obeying the church to enforce doctrinal conformity are not Biblical, and the use of the sword of men in the name of Christ, whether to discipline members for doctrinal offenses or punish or rule over those without - whether Catholic or Protestant - leaves a negative testimony.

While the state can and will indirectly support the teachings of religion on morals - since beliefs are behind moral laws, reflecting the beliefs of their founder and interpretive leaders - it is not to require or punish theological beliefs that are behind the works it may support in the interest of the common wealth.

But that's another thread.

Today, as in all of the past 14 centuries, our war with Islam continues on battlefields all over the world.

Meaning mad Muhammad Islam, which advocates carnal force and religious bloodshed against her theological foes and seeks physical rule over the the over all, and to overthrow the West, which is obviously opposed to it.

In this realm, fundamentalist, sharia law Muslims theocracies are a problem to be dealt with by those who want their freedoms, while the post-Christian, increasingly immoral nature of the West has worked to justify the moral premise of Muslim conquest. Yet Muslims who want freedom and escape the Taliban can be good citizens, though it is may be hard for them to support an increasingly immoral country they were not raised in, and if push came to shove, they can be expected to side with Muslim conquistadors, whom they seldom speak out against.

Christian on Christian war has diminished to harsh words at each other through the various media. Christians are as dug in on every little detail as they were in 1861, but none of the issues move them enough to draw the sword and kill each other. The antagonism of their words makes it clear enough that some of them, if given the power, WOULD draw the sword to settle issues, but most people are just not into religion sufficiently to form any sort of army, so the would-be crusaders are left to fire verbal barbs at one another.

While i have no doubt that traditional RCs such as who defend the Spanish Inquisitions (which was in obedience to papal requirement) and seem to long for those days and means would both ban all that that theologically opposes Rome and use the sword of men against them, yet the antagonism of their words simply does not mean that, if given the power, they WOULD draw the sword to settle issues. If my foes here were my neighbors I would like to shovel their driveway or change their tire, give them food, etc. by the grace of God, but in the realm of doctrinal debate this is indeed war btwn Truth and deception, and one cannot esteem the former without opposing the latter.

But I do not find evangelicals defending the killing of witches or Catholics or others for theological offenses by Protestant theocracies as was done in the past in copying Rome and the world. Obeying "whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake, (Titus 1:11) is not by the sword of men, but by overcoming error with Truth from the wholly inspired source of it above all on earth.

Christian Forums reveals the depths of antagonism and antipathy between Christians.

And when you have everything from the justification of abortion and fornication (if "loving" and not part of idolatry) to teaching born again Christians cannot sin (though trespasses against others do not count as sin), or that they essentially much confess every sin they ever committed as Christians to be saved, and the promotion and defense of distinct "one true (organic) churches," or who exalt the Quakers today as valid prophets, and attack those without who use the wholly inspired record of the NT church as the standard for this, then what do you expect?

• Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. (1 Timothy 4:16)
• Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)
• Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. (Jude 3)
• Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. (Ephesians 5:10-11)

Since the CF criteria for "Christian" is simply intellectual assent to the Nicene Creed then all sorts of absurdities fly around under that umbrella.

Already in Europe the battle of the future is visible. Christianity is going the way of the faith in Odin and Thor - a dwindling fringe. Islam is aggressive, but ultimately superstitious and ignorant. Will the Europeans choose the God of the Koran, or will they choose the God of Spinoza and Einstein? My bet is on Spinoza.

No, the disciples of Spinoza are mostly in The Pill and appeals mainly to the intellectual, while it lacks the substance and certitude of Scripture and to a lesser extant, the Qur'an, but the disciples of the latter procreate the most, and Islam appeals to the flesh from whence it came and receives sympathy from the liberal West which rejects the supreme standard of God and thus critically lacks judgment overall.

Yet Christians "wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12) and to know where the train of post-Christian society is headed one must consider that the devil want to rule and receive obeisance.

What I foresee is increasing secularism as well as adherents of Islam, leading to a dictatorship brought to power thru the demonic seduction of the liberal victim-entitlement mentality/share the wealth "justice," but which, as in Communism, results in dependence upon and thus obeisance to the State, which supports the devil's alternative society with its perverse alternatives to what God has ordained, true worship of the God of Scripture and in the moral realm, the placing together of what God has sexually placed asunder.

Now I am not sure what all this to do with the OP?

 

[Albion]

So then, Biblically speaking, were the Church at Ephesus and the Church at Rome one Church or two Churches...

"Biblically speaking" there is only one church. But the word being used was "denomination," not "church."

 

[Major1]

Thank-you...



Good - This is Holy Scripture recording that God is the supreme authority, and not Scripture...



If only PBJ would be so clear as you are in these words...



Exactly!



The Holy Bible is the WRITTEN, and the Holy Word is SPOKEN...



No question at all...



Divine Revelation is not contained within its pages - It is REVEALED FROM its pages...



The same is said in Revelation... And rightly so... And this precisely because of the propensity of fallen man, and especialaly the Jews of ancient times, to misunderstand and ignore plain words from God to His Holy Ones who then write down for us what God commands... This is why they were given the Law from Moses and its enforcement... This is why we now, since Christ, have such a profound need for voluntary obedience within the Body of Christ... The involuntary foreshadows the voluntary... The visible the invisible... Enforced restraint by the external Law now fulfilled by the willful embracing of Christian virtue in turning from the world and unto God... "For against these there is no Law..."



The written Bible exists on earth, my Brother... And THAT Word comes forth from God Who also caused Isaiah to record:
"For My Thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways",
saith the LORD.



My Brother, I am but exhorting those who are BIBLE BELIEVERS to believe God... The Bible - The WRITTEN word of God - Is ABOUT the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ, now sitting at the Right of the Most High in the Heavens... The Bible was written that THROUGH it we should encounter the Living God and be joined with Him... We cannot be joined with Him BY the Written Words of Holy Writ, but only THROUGH them BY God...

This is not all that mysterious, although it is a total Mystery, OK?



I appreciate your efforts to avoid arbitrary Christianity by anchoring your Faith in a non-human yet divinely inspired Holy Book... God has richly blessed your efforts using that means... But it has unforseen consequences, and the utterly unavoidable one is the Supremacy of the Individual Understanding and interepretation of the meanings of the words being read, and the unavoidability of arguing with each other over who is right and who is wrong... Getting 3 Baptists in a room will get you three opinions on the meaning of any Scriptural pericope...

It is the worshipping Community that is the place to enquire for the sake of interpreting its own Holy Writ, and for Christians that worshipping Community has come down to us in the historical Body of Christ that gave us this Scripture... Scripture itself records that Christ is the Head of this His Body, and it is from this Body, the Ekklesia of God, and through this Body, Christ's Body, and by members of this Body, that wrote and preserved by God's Command, the very Bible which you so utterly and rightly revere...



I can't either...



God is infinitely greater that the written words of Holy Writ...



Thank-you...



Thank you Major...

That is why, you may have noticed, that I did not accuse but asked the question, and was dumb-founded that I was having to argue it...



You are now call the Body of Jesus Christ Who is the Head of His Own Body, the Church, UNRELIABLE??
Do you agree that Christ came to establish His Holy People upon this earth?
And that the Ekklesia of God is the worshipping Community of the Christians He established?
And that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail over this Communith of the Faith of Jesus Christ?
That this Community is the Ground and the Pillar of the Truth?

Now I agree, that variously individuals within this Community can and have and will go "off the rails"...
That is why we hold to Holy Tradition rather that Patriarchal (or Papal) authority...
What has been believed at all times by all the faithful members of the Body of Christ...
An unbroken chain of 2000 years of the writings of the Church Fathers. beginning with the Bible...



And only individuals alone with Scripture can do so, which makes Sola Scriptura inherently wicked...

One of the things I appreciated in my approach to the EOC is the fact that Holy Tradition has already "ironed out" all the major wrinkles that have surfaced across 2000 years of Christian history, and that the myriad of questions I had developed in my private reading of Holy Writ had already been addressed by many holy men of God, and that there was a concensus of understanding across two millennia...

Anyway, thank-you for affirming the Primacy of God...

And not the primacy of Scripture...

Arsenios

I appreciate your honesty and your heart but I can not accept some of your comments.

You asked...........
"You are now call the Body of Jesus Christ Who is the Head of His Own Body, the Church, UNRELIABLE??"

What I actually said was............
"It has always been wrong to attempt to put men, even Bible writers, the Bible or the Church on par with God."

I stand by that comment. The Church is made up of SINNERS. Yes they are "Forgiven" but sinners still they are and all sinners do one thing......SIN!

Then you said...........
"And only individuals alone with Scripture can do so, which makes Sola Scriptura inherently wicked...".

No Sir!. MEN are sinners and they are inherently wicked.

It is MAN who can take ANYTHING and turn it into an idol or a lie.
Do you really think that Jesus Christ is happy that MAN has tuned the RCC Church itself into a IDOL???
Do you think Jesus approves of Mary & Joseph being bowed down to in the RCC church whether it is called worship or veneration? MAN has done that brother, NOT Sola Scriptura.

Matt. 15:19..............
"For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander."

Jere. 17:9..........
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"

Mark 7:21-23.............
"For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Sola Scriptura merely seeks to set forth what Scripture teaches on various subjects so as to be a suitable bond of union for those agreed as to the teaching of Scripture.
Sola Scriptura says that Scripture is the final court of appeal and not MAN and MAN is who makes up the Church and what is a man......A SINNER!.
This is what the Protestant Reformers meant by sola scriptura.

Now the bottom line truth is and always has been that in the Roman Catholic economy their understanding is that Scripture is not the supreme and final authority but is held along with oral tradition and the magisterium of the church.

The magisterium is not limited to the written Word of God, and in the final analysis to reject the magisterium is the same as rejecting Christ and his Apostles. Seeing that the church, although giving high respect to Scripture, finds the Word of God in oral tradition too, and also claims to be the only sure identifier of it as well as its infallible interpreter, sola scriptura does not apply as a formal principle as it does orthodox Protestant churches.

To resolve the differences between Rome and orthodox Protestants, we have to consider
(a) the relationship of Scripture and the Word of God, and
(b) the way in which authority developed in the Western (Latin) Church.

We should be able to conclude by showing that sola scriptura is the correct formal principle of the church and its proper application will have no more radical consequence than returning the faith and practice of the church to an apostolic simplicity.

 

[Major1]

Major1 makes an interesting point here. Didn't Jesus asks sinners (the Apostles) to serve him? After His resurrection, didn't Jesus appear to them and commissioned them to be his evangelizers? (Mk.16:15) And they obeyed. (Mk.16:20)

Maj.1 is correct in saying the Church is made up of "sinners" ......as were all the apostles. So is he (Maj1) suggesting or insisting that they too are not to be believed or we are not to accept their writings because of their sinfullness? If Maj.1 thinks we must judge by others by their conduct, then he better toss out his bible, because all its authors were sinners.

And he has a hard time believing or arguing the point? Very interesting!

It is really funny that you would choose to go down that path.

(Vatican City) -- Pope Francis says all 12 Apostles were sinners, not just Judas Iscariot. During his homily at Mass Tuesday morning, the Pope urged Catholics to fully embrace their religion, not just stand on the sidelines. He explained that Jesus welcomed everyone to church, regardless of their sins, and that he built the church on the foundation of the Apostles, "all of them sinners." As for Judas, the Pontiff said he became a traitor because he had" closed himself to love" but added that all the Apostles abandoned Jesus when he needed them most.
Francis has frequently referred to Judas since becoming Pope last year. He has previously warned Catholics that those who "isolate their conscience in selfishness" will lose, just like the Bible says Judas did when he accepted silver coins in exchange for betraying Jesus.
Pope Francis: All The Apostles Were Sinners | FM NewsTalk 97.1

Now that is the interesting thing in your proposal.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

With that kind of reasoning, then wouldn't you say that it was IDIO-SYNCRATIC understanding which actually lead to the RCC's traditions which are not found in the Scriptures at all?
Oral Tradition must therefore be invalidated automatically if it contradicts the Bible, and it does. Of course, the Catholic will say that it does not...
Besides, even if it were true, and no one is saying that, there is no guarantee that the succession of church leaders is immune to error. We saw it creep in with Peter, and Paul rebuked him for it in Gal. 2. Do you really think that the Catholic church leaders are better and more spiritual than was Peter?

Oh, they will say it is not a matter of Catholic church leaders being better and more spiritual than was Peter, but that of a special charism of infallibility possessed by whoever sits in the seat of Peter which kicks in whenever such speaks according to Rome's infallibly defined criteria. Which includes the freedom of the pope to speak as infallible without the bishops.

Yet which (according to Catholic teaching) does not mean the pope is speaking as wholly inspired of God as Scripture is, and thus God is not the author of such as He is with Scripture, but that he is merely protected from error. And to which the highest degree of assent (sacred assent of faith) is required.

However, as you likely know, the bishops as a body in union with the pope are also held to be able to speak infallibly if in accord with the criteria for thus. In addition, non-infallible Teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium generally require ordinary assent (religious submission of will and intellect).

For Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. Such as the Bull Unam Sanctum which dams ex-RCs besides others.

All of which means that "the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock...the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors." - VEHEMENTER NOS, an Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906.

For Scripture, Tradition and true history only validly consist of and mean what she says:

It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity....Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. . — Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.

Which is in competition with another infallible interpreter of Tradition with whom it substantially disagrees:

► “Scripture owes its authority to the Church. It is the Church likewise that alone constitutes the authoritative interpretation of the Bible…the decisive criterion for our understanding of Scripture is the mind of the Church.” — http://www.equip.org/articles/ortho...thodox-tradition-apostolic/#christian-books-2

► When written documents appeared, it was the Church that decided which of them should constitute the canon of Scripture; and so, in this sense, Scripture owes its authority to the Church. - Alkiviadis C. Calivas – 2002; Theology: The Conscience of the Church - Page 123

But as said, since the Jews gave us the bulk of Scripture, upon which the church established itself, then according to the above logic first century souls should have submitted to the magisterial stewards of Scripture, who were over the body which provided them.

Going back to Rome, just how many infallible promulgations there are (some RCs say all encyclicals are infallible while an Orthodox writer cites a prime authority of infallibility as saying there were "thousands and thousands" of infallible definitions issued by the Roman see, while), and to which of the 3 or 4 magisterial levels each of the vast multitude of teachings belong to, and thus to which level of assent is required, are all subject to disagreements, as can their meaning be to some degree.

Thus the response of a poster in the face of the technicalities of all this:
rrr1213: Boy. No disrespect intended…and I mean that honestly…but my head spins trying to comprehend the various classifications of Catholic teaching and the respective degrees of certainty attached thereto. I suspect that the average Catholic doesn’t trouble himself with such questions, but as to those who do (and us poor Protestants who are trying to get a grip on Catholic teaching) it sounds like an almost impossible task. - Catechism "infallible?"

The response to which is just obey everything:

Well, the question pertained to theology. The Catholic faithful don’t need to know any of this stuff to be faithful Catholics, so you are confusing theology with praxis.

Praxis is quite simple for faithful Catholics: give your religious assent of intellect and will to Catholic doctrine, whether it is infallible or not. That’s what our Dogmatic Constitution on the Church demands, that’s what the Code of Canon Laws demand, and that is what the Catechism itself demands. Heb 13:17 teaches us to “obey your leaders and submit to them.” This submission is not contingent upon inerrancy or infallibility. - http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=1565864#post1565864

Which is basically the same as what I see the far less technical Orthodox requiring, and thus disallowing the validity of principled dissent based upon Scripture being the supreme authority as the wholly inspired assured word of God (which status liberal Prots effectively reject) , even though degrees of disunity as well unity are realized under it, as is the case with all but the strictest sola ecclesia groups.

 

[Arsenios]

You are saying that the Church is the final authority.

The church is made up of SINNERS
and you are insisting that they are the ones to be believed and accepted
over and above the Word of God.

That is why I can not believe you are arguing this point.

Then, by this "logic", why oh why, my Brother, should we believe the SINNERS
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Iakovos and Peter should be believed and accepted?
OR...
Do you agree with Scripture when it records that these men are Holy Men of God?
They are all members of the Body of Christ and in obedience to Him...

I do not ascribe FINAL AUTHORITY to MEMBERS of the Church...
I ascribe it to the Head of the Church...
And through Him, to the Body of Christ...
And this by 2000 years now and counting, of consistent Patristic witness of that Body...

If the Bible is the Supreme Authority, then so are YOU...
And YOU are NOT...
Nor am I...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

If we "SKI" off your nose......where would we land???

I see you have met Mr. DumbrowSKI!

He landed, btw, in a pile of words...



A.

 

[Major1]

Then, by this "logic", why oh why, my Brother, should we believe the SINNERS
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Iakovos and Peter should be believed and accepted?
OR...
Do you agree with Scripture when it records that these men are Holy Men of God?
They are all members of the Body of Christ and in obedience to Him...

I do not ascribe FINAL AUTHORITY to MEMBERS of the Church...
I ascribe it to the Head of the Church...
And through Him, to the Body of Christ...
And this by 2000 years now and counting, of consistent Patristic witness of that Body...

If the Bible is the Supreme Authority, then so are YOU...
And YOU are NOT...
Nor am I...

Arsenios

The answer is very easy brother.............

II Peter 1:20-21........
"You must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

The Holy Spirit revealed to the prophets the messages of Scripture. The writers of the Bible wrote not according to their own will or whim, but only as they were moved, or controlled, by the Spirit of God. The Bible is God's own book!

II Timothy 3:16-17........
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

The Holy Bible affects human beings so profoundly, because "all" the Bible is "God-breathed." It's more than a nice collection of moral principles; it's more than a great book; it's an inspired document, God's book. The prophets who wrote the Bible related what they saw and heard in human language, but their message came directly from God.

 

[Albion]

Then, by this "logic", why oh why, my Brother, should we believe the SINNERS
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Iakovos and Peter should be believed and accepted?

Because they were inspired by God to write as they did! That is not the case with common legends, folklore, and the opinions of Saint Soandso writing from several hundred years after Christ, yet these are the stuff of "Holy Tradition."

Is that so hard to understand?

 

[PeaceByJesus]

The answer is very easy brother.............

II Peter 1:20-21........
"You must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

The Holy Spirit revealed to the prophets the messages of Scripture. The writers of the Bible wrote not according to their own will or whim, but only as they were moved, or controlled, by the Spirit of God. The Bible is God's own book!

II Timothy 3:16-17........
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

The Holy Bible affects human beings so profoundly, because "all" the Bible is "God-breathed." It's more than a nice collection of moral principles; it's more than a great book; it's an inspired document, God's book. The prophets who wrote the Bible related what they saw and heard in human language, but their message came directly from God.

When one continually fails to see (or acknowledge) the difference btwn the authority on Truth btwn sinners who are speaking as wholly inspired of God and those who are simply in positions of authority then it testifies to a continual cause/problem.

 

[Vicomte13]

Oh, they will say it is not a matter of Catholic church leaders being better and more spiritual than was Peter, but that of a special charism of infallibility possessed by whoever sits in the seat of Peter which kicks in whenever such speaks according to Rome's infallibly defined criteria. Which includes the freedom of the pope to speak as infallible without the bishops.

Yet which (according to Catholic teaching) does not mean the pope is speaking as wholly inspired of God as Scripture is, and thus God is not the author of such as He is with Scripture, but that he is merely protected from error. And to which the highest degree of assent (sacred assent of faith) is required.

However, as you likely know, the bishops as a body in union with the pope are also held to be able to speak infallibly if in accord with the criteria for thus. In addition, non-infallible Teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium generally require ordinary assent (religious submission of will and intellect).

For Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. Such as the Bull Unam Sanctum which dams ex-RCs besides others.

All of which means that "the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock...the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors." - VEHEMENTER NOS, an Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906.

For Scripture, Tradition and true history only validly consist of and mean what she says:

It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity....Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. . — Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.

Which is in competition with another infallible interpreter of Tradition with whom it substantially disagrees:

► “Scripture owes its authority to the Church. It is the Church likewise that alone constitutes the authoritative interpretation of the Bible…the decisive criterion for our understanding of Scripture is the mind of the Church.” — http://www.equip.org/articles/ortho...thodox-tradition-apostolic/#christian-books-2

► When written documents appeared, it was the Church that decided which of them should constitute the canon of Scripture; and so, in this sense, Scripture owes its authority to the Church. - Alkiviadis C. Calivas – 2002; Theology: The Conscience of the Church - Page 123

But as said, since the Jews gave us the bulk of Scripture, upon which the church established itself, then according to the above logic first century souls should have submitted to the magisterial stewards of Scripture, who were over the body which provided them.

Going back to Rome, just how many infallible promulgations there are (some RCs say all encyclicals are infallible while an Orthodox writer cites a prime authority of infallibility as saying there were "thousands and thousands" of infallible definitions issued by the Roman see, while), and to which of the 3 or 4 magisterial levels each of the vast multitude of teachings belong to, and thus to which level of assent is required, are all subject to disagreements, as can their meaning be to some degree.

Thus the response of a poster in the face of the technicalities of all this:
rrr1213: Boy. No disrespect intended…and I mean that honestly…but my head spins trying to comprehend the various classifications of Catholic teaching and the respective degrees of certainty attached thereto. I suspect that the average Catholic doesn’t trouble himself with such questions, but as to those who do (and us poor Protestants who are trying to get a grip on Catholic teaching) it sounds like an almost impossible task. - Catechism "infallible?"

The response to which is just obey everything:

Well, the question pertained to theology. The Catholic faithful don’t need to know any of this stuff to be faithful Catholics, so you are confusing theology with praxis.

Praxis is quite simple for faithful Catholics: give your religious assent of intellect and will to Catholic doctrine, whether it is infallible or not. That’s what our Dogmatic Constitution on the Church demands, that’s what the Code of Canon Laws demand, and that is what the Catechism itself demands. Heb 13:17 teaches us to “obey your leaders and submit to them.” This submission is not contingent upon inerrancy or infallibility. - http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=1565864#post1565864

Which is basically the same as what I see the far less technical Orthodox requiring, and thus disallowing the validity of principled dissent based upon Scripture being the supreme authority as the wholly inspired assured word of God (which status liberal Prots effectively reject) , even though degrees of disunity as well unity are realized under it, as is the case with all but the strictest sola ecclesia groups.

A religion that cannot, among white, educated English-speaking people in prosperous America, in the 19th Century of our era, automatically see, without effort, that its leader's commandment "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" by itself erases any Christian defense of slavery, is useless trash.

 

[prodromos]

Because they were inspired by God to write as they did!

Are you of the opinion that God no longer inspires members of His body to write as they do?

 

[PeaceByJesus]

A religion that cannot, among white, educated English-speaking people in prosperous America, in the 19th Century of our era, automatically see, without effort, that its leader's commandment "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" by itself erases any Christian defense of slavery, is useless trash.

And thank God for those who did (and men like Spurgeon are those I most esteem), and it is always a remnant who see best, but as for the rest being trash, why would the Lord's commandment "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" itself erase any Christian toleration of slavery in its midst in the first century, if more understandable?

That is a question souls in the 19th century might have asked, including Washington and Jefferson, maybe surmising it could be made morally tolerable, while being more concerned with getting by than challenging the status quo. Which still does not make it right, and it is hard for me to understand how some called "evangelical" could not oppose, though we must go by what historians can find or fail to find regarding the overall attitude.

However, perhaps most of those called "evangelical" do not evangelize souls in a much of a manifest way, though they do more than others. Souls not glorying God and going to Hell should elicit the strongest response from us who have realized the new birth and are conscious of the contrast. May I do better myself by God's grace.

Meanwhile we have plenty of people professing Christ who implicitly support, if blind to it, a form of enslavement of people via the seductive victim-entitlement mentality, and "elect me and I will get you what others earned, which is your right," which I think has done more to harm and destroy self and families and society than some versions of slavery (which is not a monolithic institution) would.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Are you of the opinion that God no longer inspires members of His body to write as they do?

If one is of the opinion that sundry Christians can write at the same level of inspiration as the authors of the Bible, then why is it that your Bible has remained unchanged since it was canonized? I find this odd coming from an Orthodox Christian. I might expect something like this from a Catholic Christian, whose Church has embraced extra-biblical Tradition and proclaims it unashamedly as equal to, or perhaps, superior to, the Bible itself.

 

[prodromos]

If one is of the opinion that sundry Christians can write at the same level of inspiration as the authors of the Bible, then why is it that your Bible has remained unchanged since it was canonized? I find this odd coming from an Orthodox Christian. I might expect something like this from a Catholic Christian, whose Church has embraced extra-biblical Tradition and proclaims it unashamedly as equal to, or perhaps, superior to, the Bible itself.

You're avoiding the question (I know I didn't ask you).

 

[Albion]

Are you of the opinion that God no longer inspires members of His body to write as they do?

I consider the canon to be closed. Don't you?

 

[bbbbbbb]

I consider the canon to be closed. Don't you?

One is treading on dangerously thin ice to believe in an open canon of scripture.