Sola Scriptura believers, please explain this.

[Tree of Life]

I don't think the Bible existed at all until after the legalization of the Church in the 300s AD. There was no agreed-upon canon before that, and there were no codicies that put it all together into a book. There were scrolls and letters, but the first Bibles were put together by the newly legalized Church in the 300s, and it was that process of putting it all into one book that CAUSED the discussion over what was "canon" and what was not to have to occur.

Jesus had a canon in the first century. It was the Hebrew Bible.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

What it's all about is that those following each of the various doctrines they get out of book and out of Church have gone and committed horrendous crimes against humanity with the deepest sincerity in their actions, and have believed themselves to be acting in the spirit of righteousness and truth as they did so.

So, NO standard has proven itself to be particularly reliable, and in the end no man can hand over his own critical faculties to any of the traditional ways of finding authority, because they have all failed in rather spectacularly.

Rather than making us as supremely self-confident - indeed smug - in our traditions, as I see so prominently on thread after thread on this site - the history of the failures of our faith following each of the different traditional bases of authority should make us much less certain, and much more circumspect and cautious.

One thing that we should all agree upon: Scripture or not, Church or not, traditions and apostles and doctors of the Church or not, if your preferred method of interpretation makes you think that God has given you the authority to execute people for heresy, or to maintain slavery or wage imperial war on the "infidels" - which the Catholic and Orthodox and Protestant Churches all did, justifying it by their own approaches to authority - then you're wrong. That standard of not killing people in the name of God stands above Scripture and above the Church and all of its tradition and the Pope and the Curia - all of it.

It's not a little thing, for in a subject fraught with miracle and with anything possible, it sets a hard boundary on what men may do in the name of God regardless of the source of "authority".

While you are the final judge of what you will believe (which is done, even if it means surrendering implicitly submit to a cult), and thus the noble Bereans subected the preaching of the apostles to Scripture, yet the the issue is that of an assuredly faithful authoritative supreme authority, which conscience is not. You may discern a map tell you how to get to Texas, but it is the map that should be examined above all and followed more than you.

Scripture is the certain established word of God, and you are to obey your conscience as informed by it, yet it is not the latter but the former that is assuredly faithful authoritative supreme authority, even though to varying degrees it can be subject to interpretation. As can the Constitution, but the document is to be the standard versus what judges of persons say.

Now I realize that you hold that "The Bible is a useful tool, but not a vital one." And "The book [Bible] is incomplete and contradictory, and you can't even read it as written unless you can read ancient Hebrew. And you have to have a sharp legal mind to see what applies to whom." And that only the Torah, and Gospel - and parts of Revelation is Divine law, and the words of Paul (by the Spirit of Christ) cannot be words of equal in authority to what Jesus Christ preached in person. And that there has been more inspired revelation beyond Scripture, and advocate the esoteric Quakers "who listen directly to the Holy Spirit together as individuals and share what they hear, are more right than anybody else as to dealing with God." And that masturbation is the #1, "A-grade universal mortal sin" which all men are incapable of walking in victory over, which argument you boasted was beyond reproof. All of which has been reproved.

Thus I only see a negative example of rejection of Scripture as the assuredly faithful authoritative supreme authority.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

So no, Scripture Alone isn't reliable, and neither is the Traditional Authority of the Church. In the end, you have to judge for yourself and draw the line against the claims of other men that their belief about those things should override your own moral judgment. You are the one who must decide.

Ah, finally a true Protestant according to typical Catholic definition, one who is truly his own supremely reliable papal authority, versus the veracity of his position resting upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Rather than making us as supremely self-confident - indeed smug ..if your preferred method of interpretation makes you think that God has given you the authority to execute people for heresy...then you're wrong.

While you are not actually physically executing people for heresy as an exalted infallible pope, you have exalted yourself as the judge of others, censoring those who differ with you, often with scorn. The problem that there is a supreme authority on Truth above you.

 

[PaulCyp1]

To accept sola scriptura is to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth consists of whatever pops into your head when you read the Bible. If your "truth" conflicts with my "truth", that's okay as long as both our opinions resulted from reading the Bible. It doesn't matter that this results in thousands of conflicting manmade denominations who cannot agree with one another on the meaning of a single biblical text. In fact, truth can never conflict with truth. When two beliefs conflict, at least one of them must be false. Jesus realized this when He prayed, "Father, may they all be ONE, even as you and I are ONE". If sola scripture is accepted, then this prayer of Jesus is meaningless, since it is impossible. Jesus made unity of truth possible when He founded ONE Church, said it was to remain ONE, and promised that ONE Church, and no other, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into ALL truth", and "Whatsoever you bind upon Earth is bound in Heaven", and "He who hears you hears Me".

 

[redleghunter]

I don't think the Bible existed at all until after the legalization of the Church in the 300s AD. There was no agreed-upon canon before that, and there were no codicies that put it all together into a book. There were scrolls and letters, but the first Bibles were put together by the newly legalized Church in the 300s, and it was that process of putting it all into one book that CAUSED the discussion over what was "canon" and what was not to have to occur.

I believe this is accurate. However, the greatest contribution of the apostolic fathers and early fathers is their prolific use of the OT and what later became the NT.

That is why I like what the New Advent site does where they link Scripture quotes where the fathers quote or allude to scriptures.

 

[redleghunter]

Jesus had a canon in the first century. It was the Hebrew Bible.

Yes I believe we see such in Luke 24:44-50

 

[redleghunter]

To accept sola scriptura is to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth consists of whatever pops into your head when you read the Bible. If your "truth" conflicts with my "truth", that's okay as long as both our opinions resulted from reading the Bible. It doesn't matter that this results in thousands of conflicting manmade denominations who cannot agree with one another on the meaning of a single biblical text. In fact, truth can never conflict with truth. When two beliefs conflict, at least one of them must be false. Jesus realized this when He prayed, "Father, may they all be ONE, even as you and I are ONE". If sola scripture is accepted, then this prayer of Jesus is meaningless, since it is impossible. Jesus made unity of truth possible when He founded ONE Church, said it was to remain ONE, and promised that ONE Church, and no other, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into ALL truth", and "Whatsoever you bind upon Earth is bound in Heaven", and "He who hears you hears Me".

Can we find objective truth in the Decalogue?

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

I do not have much to add to this or say that has not already been said, in reading through some of the posts what came to mind is Sola Scriptura, like other doctrines, includes in the exposition what it is, and what it is not. The doctrine of the Trinity initially came to mind in this line of thought. Historically it seems the positive and negative aspects defining doctrine often came as a result of opposition, through the defense of true doctrine. This like other sound doctrine involves affirmations and denials.

 

[Vicomte13]

I'm not feeling it, it seems your attitude is the same no matter what the authority is. Whether it is Scripture or tradition you want to moralize at random.

There's nothing whatsoever RANDOM about my moralizing. No matter what the traditional basis of Christian authority is: book or institution, it has led to bloody horror. And that's a problem - a DELEGITIMIZING problem. When the logic of your religion leads to burnt flesh and bloody executions and upholding slavery, as traditional Christianity - whether Bible-based or institution-based - has, then you've arrived at the same place as the Muslims, who likewise have a book and a tradition.

And that place is not legitimate.

We know how we "got past" the bloodiness of the Christian past: we secularized. The state and individual liberty grew, and the authority of religion - whether book or church-based - was pushed down. It is that secularization that allows us Christians today to speak so openly about religion and God on a site like this. Muslims are still in the grip of their book and their institutions, and if THEY try to do this, they'll end up killing each other in short order. WE were like that too, not so long ago. And it wasn't through our religious beliefs that we solved it, but by external, secularizing force: the religious beliefs were not flexible enough or rational enough to arrive at a point of tolerance. They literally had to be forced down into subjection to political force.

Now, that was the actual tradition that ended religious bloodshed in Christendom, but it never resolved the inherent contradictions in Christianity - it simply paved them over by something else.

Considering the degree to which Christians right here are bickering about details of the First and Second Century of which there are a bare handful of writings to tell us anything, it is legitimate for me to focus on the raging problems of Christianity that really became visible in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries, because THOSE problems are still there today, unresolved, and those problems are widely attested and widely known, and act as a barrier to belief for millions.

None of this is random moralizing. I am focused directly on the weakest link of Christianity: all of the horrible violence done by the Christian Churches under their powerful leaders, with the enthusiastic participation of the Christian masses, not very many years ago. THOSE problems are much more damaging to the Christian enterprise - and to the believability of Christian religion - than what Irenaeus may or may not have thought two thousand years ago.

Scripture alone led to the burning of people and the justification of slavery by ALL of the major sects. And Traditionalism based on the authority of the Church in apostolic succession also led to exactly the same crimes against humanity.

Obviously, therefore, these techniques BOTH failed. They BOTH produced something very much like Islam, and it was only superior force from OUTSIDE of the religion that pulled the fangs out of Christianity and broke the political power of Christians so that they could not do that anymore.

And THAT IS A PROBLEM for Christianity, because the evils that were done following the logic of Scripture Alone, and by following the logic of Traditional Authority in Apostolic Succession BOTH FAILED.

Since they both failed, it really don't do, in 2018, to go and fight about who said what in the Second Century and why THAT approach is right, because BOTH contending approaches failed utterly in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries. Those more recent failures are much more important, because they created our world today, and because they show how neither of the two belief systems ultimately works.

The Catholic Church failed, and the Protestant Churches failed. Their logic and their authority and their beliefs turned them BOTH into bloody Muslim fanatics, just as the Muslim versions of Sola Scriptura (the Sunnis) and of Apostolic Succession and Traditional Authority (the Shi'ites) have turned Islam into a dog's breakfast of violence and savagery. Christianity killed 40% of the population of Germany in the Thirty Years War. That's not a little thing. It's WHY Christianity died as the primary philosophical force in Europe and the Age of Reason and of the secularizing states swept in.

THAT is the fundamental flaw of Christianity, whether Catholic or Sola Scripturalist, that is important. THAT is what has to be faced and addressed. THAT is the hard part. Arguing about the First and Second Centuries is easy, because there's very little material and it's all abstract. Facing the Christian jihad and the burnt flesh and the enslavement of much of the world by Christians in the name of Christ: THAT is much more recent, and THAT is very hard to face. But THAT is what the rest of the world remembers - and rightly so - and it MUST be addressed by Christians, at least if they ever hope to turn the corner on things like abortion, the homosexualizing of society, restrictions on religious liberty, etc.

Your traditional Churches are emptying out because of the unresolved problems of the RECENT past. Of course you don't want to face these problems, because they highlight the failure of Apostolic Christianity and also the failure of Sola Scriptura. The only Christian Churches that are really growing are emotionalist "charismatics" whose claims to authority are shaky (at best) but who make their people feel good. Also, the mosques are filling up - in Europe and in America.

So you can grouse at me for pointing directly at the clay feet of Christianity, but I'm doing you a service. The Second Century does not matter nearly as much as what Christianity did in the 16th Century - burn tens of thousands of people for witchcraft - and in the 17th - kill a third of Germany, depopulate two continents and enslave and transport a race across the seas to generate profits for Christians. Those are the foundational elements of all of our modern post-Christian states, and those crimes against humanity - carried out by Catholic Traditionalists and Sola Scripturalist Protestants alike - are THE REASON Christianity has lost its claim to moral authority. Christianity in the time of Christ was pretty wonderful. Christianity in its full political power, carried to its logical conclusion as the primary program of European and American states, was an utter nightmare. Which means that Sola Scriptura and Traditionalism do not work at getting to a good end. You need something else, something new that can overcome the temptations of power in both of those traditional ways of practicing Christianity.

I'm here to talk about that, because THAT is the fatal flaw in Christianity that lays like an open sewer. Historically, Christianity's horrors ended the way that it appears Islams current horrors will have to end: secularized rulers paying lip service to traditional religion but not really believing it, imposing uniform rules on everybody, and taking down religious institutions and people by armed force where necessary to break their power to do violence and inspire it. The powerful monarchies and nationalist states of Europe are the RESULT of the failure of Christianity to peacefully rule.

And if the flaws in Catholic and Protestant authority are not recognized and addressed, Christianity can never return to the leadership of the culture: it failed too terrible to be allowed to do that again.

So, you guys want to bicker about the Second Century. It's pointless. In the 21st Centuries Christianity is ebbing away because of the Christian sins of the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, and the spectacular failure of Christianity to reign in the Christian-on-Christian (and Christian-on-Jew) bloodshed of the first half of the 20th Century.

You have to address the issue I am addressing, because it is the far more important one. If you've decided you're a Sola Scripturalist like Luther, Calvin and Knox - fine! Great! How do you prevent the witch hunts and callous disregard for the poor? If you've decided that the Pope and Tradition are the cat's meow - wonderful! How do you stop the Church from burning Joan of Arc and the Pope from granting the slave-trade monopoly?

Where is the SCRIPTURAL or TRADITIONAL authority that prevents you, when you have power, from executing witches and heretics and oppressing your opponents. Christianity never solved that problem - not ever. Wouldn't even admit it IS a problem. And so Christianity broke itself.

That's the question: what is the limit on Sola Scriptura? What is the limit on the Pope. In history, Christians had no limits on their logic - so they burnt witches and burnt Germany and chained Africa and ended up having to be chained by kings and the secular state.

That's where things stand today in Christendom and in Dar es Islam. Neither Christians nor Muslims have figured out the internal boundaries and limits on religious power. The Christians imposed boundaries on religion externally, by force, through state power: Christian theology has not yet found an answer to control ITSELF. Neither has Muslim theology, but there, the secular state is not yet strong enough to break the teeth of the religion and bring it to heel, as the European kings and republics were eventually able to do with Christianity.

I can understand the desire to avoid the subject, but it is THE subject that matters, because it is THE reason that Christians have steadily lost the social wars of the past two centuries, and why the Churches are emptying out.

I haven't left. I'm still in the pews pointing directly at THE issue. But my fellow Christians seem to be as walled off and crazy about the wrong things as they were in the 1500s. The selling of indulgences was a petty matter compared to the BURNING of human beings as witches! WHY did Luther and Calvin and Knox and Pope Leo think they could burn witches?

Do Christians TODAY still think that they are authorized to do so, that - if they had the power - "You shall not suffer a witch to live?" Christians have to be able to answer that question "NO", and then they have to explain WHY they are directly overthrowing a direct order of God in the Bible, why that is ok.

Protestants never forget Purgatory and the sale of indulgences, and Catholics never forget that Jesus gave Peter the Power of the Keys. But you both need to be talking about the burning of witches, because you Protestants burnt 100,000 people alive under the auspices of Luther, Knox and Calving, and you Catholics burnt a messenger of God alive in Rouen marketplace and granted a monopoly to Portugal to conduct the slave trade. And you justified these things with the Bible. Why were your spiritual ancestors - Luther, Knox, Calvin and the Papacy - TOTALLY WRONG in doing so? Why did they all read the Bible and interpret the Power of the Keys in ways that were satanically evil?

You have to answer that - and in doing so, you have to ADMIT the hellish evil that came from Luther, Calvin, Knox and the Papacy in these regards: they all failed - they followed Bible Alone and they followed the Power of the Keys - and they unleashed hell on earth and did massive evil. Why did they fail? What did they misinterpret? What part of their interpretations of the Bible and their grant of authority through the Spirit was wrong?

If you can't address that, then your religion is stuck in 1519, and it still hasn't faced up to the inherent potential for evil in its organizing philosophy.

And if unleashed, you would follow the same pathway into evil again, just as the Muslims do.

If you cannot address this and fix it, with repentance, and with the admission that your belief system needs to be perfected and improved upon, and provide the improvement that the Catholic and Protestant Churches failed to figure out, well, then you're going to be condemned to arguing about the second century forever as your churches continue to empty, the emotionalists continue to grow, and the mosques continue to fill.

You have to address the evils unleashed by Traditionalism and by Sola Scriptura, or you're playing in the sandbox of irrelevancy.

There's nothing "random" about any of this. Christian violence is the gaping self-inflicted wound caused by Sola Scriptura and by Catholic Traditionalism. It has never been addressed. Nobody here is addressing it. And if you don't address it, you're just talking about useless nonsense. The Bible is an evil piece of trash if it really means you can and should burn witches, and that it's ok to enslave Africa if the Pope uses the power of the keys to say so.

THAT is what you MUST address if your religion is going to save itself.

It's easier to go down the cow path, like blind cows, and fight the same arguments that have been fought for 500 years. But you must confront Luther and Leo and Calvin to their faces and ask: why did you evil men think you could put men into the FIRE? Why did your religion fail so spectacularly? Why did YOU fail so spectacularly as Christian men and do such hellish evil? Were you possessed by the Devil? Or is there a fatal flaw in your belief system about the authority of book and Church? Or both?

Answer that. You have to answer it, or you're just a cow on the path.

 

[112358]

How did you intend this exactly? I agree with this statement one hundred percent. It means those who invented Sola scriptura departed from the Church.

I meant that any "church" or any individual who claims to wield authority over, or in place of, holy Scripture is an apostate church or individual. CHRIST IS THE WORD, whether in written or verbal form. One can presume to hold the authority that only He possesses, but that is a fundamentally flawed and incorrect presumption.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

To accept sola scriptura is to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth consists of whatever pops into your head when you read the Bible. If your "truth" conflicts with my "truth", that's okay as long as both our opinions resulted from reading the Bible. It doesn't matter that this results in thousands of conflicting manmade denominations who cannot agree with one another on the meaning of a single biblical text. In fact, truth can never conflict with truth. When two beliefs conflict, at least one of them must be false. Jesus realized this when He prayed, "Father, may they all be ONE, even as you and I are ONE". If sola scripture is accepted, then this prayer of Jesus is meaningless, since it is impossible. Jesus made unity of truth possible when He founded ONE Church, said it was to remain ONE, and promised that ONE Church, and no other, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into ALL truth", and "Whatsoever you bind upon Earth is bound in Heaven", and "He who hears you hears Me".

That is absurd, since in reality accepting SS is to accept Scripture as the supreme infallible source of objective Truth, and authority on it, which both individual and church is to submit to, but it does not mean that how one understands it is supreme and infallible.

Your RC alternative is that an assuredly (if conditionally) infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth (including writings and men being of God) and to fulfill promises of Divine presence, providence of Truth, and preservation of faith, and authority.

And that being the historical instruments and stewards of Divine revelation (oral and written) means that such is that assuredly infallible magisterium. Thus any who knowingly dissent from the latter must be in rebellion to God.

Yet this faces the same problem as making Scripture the supreme infallible authority on Truth, since Catholics can, must and interpret their church at variance with each other, including on just what magisterial level teachings fall under (and thus what is infallible and is not), and thus what manner of assent is required, as well as the meaning of such to varying degrees. Even the elitist unScriptural Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.

And actually attempting to figure out just what magisterial level many teachings fall under can be very difficult, Faced with such, one poster sighs,

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 proffered solution 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. - Catechism "infallible?"

And indeed, Pope Pius X decreed, "It follows 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.

And other papal statements can be seen to apply this to basically any public teaching any However, in application by RCs, this dies the death of a thousand qualifications, esp. with the election by their pastors of the socialist liberal Pope Francis.

And while RCs fantasize their magisterium is the solution to division to division, that actually had led to more division. As one poster wryly stated,

The last time the church imposed its judgment in an authoritative manner on "areas of legitimate disagreement," the conservative Catholics became the Sedevacantists and the Society of St. Pius X, the moderate Catholics became the conservatives, the liberal Catholics became the moderates, and the folks who were excommunicated, silenced, refused Catholic burial, etc. became the liberals. The event that brought this shift was Vatican II; conservatives then couldn't handle having to actually obey the church on matters they were uncomfortable with, so they left. ” Nathan, Against The Grain

And thus we have various types of Catholics (besides the substantial irreconcilable differences btwn RCs and EOs), from brands of Traditionalists who dissent in part from (theology by warring committees) Vatican 2, and the non-infallible CCC, to varying degrees of liberal Catholics, both of which are represented here, and virtually all of which are counted and treated as members in life and in death by Rome, with Ted Kennedy type RCs being more affirmed that Traditionalists who rock the boat.

And you cannot appeal to the limited paper unity of official statements, for Biblically what a person or church really believes is based on what they do and effect. (James 2:18; Mt. 7:20)

All of which amalgamation are thus your brethren, and which in the name of unity you would have conservative evangelicals join, yet if testimony means anything, in contrast to most of those Rome considers members, those who most strongly esteem Scripture as the wholly inspired and accurate word of God testify to being the most unified in core beliefs. Why should be leave churches in which we can make distinction btwn false, liberal brethren and basically faithful, and join one which makes us brethren with Ted Kennedy types?

In addition, comparing an amalgamation of churches called "Protestant" which can inmclude everything from to Scientology to Swedenborgism to so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" to so-called "Christian Science" Mormonism to Unitarianism to other liberal churches, based on not being Catholic, is specious, and to thus to prove your point, then you would have to show that holding to SS can never produce unity equal or superior to that of Catholicism.

Furthermore, to appeal to "Bible Christians" you would have to show that the NT church began under the Catholic model for ascertaining assurance of Truth, that, as said, an assuredly (if conditionally) infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth (including which writings and men are of God) and that being the historical instruments and stewards of Divine revelation (oral and written) means that such is that assuredly infallible magisterium. Thus any who knowingly dissent from the latter must be in rebellion to God.

However, the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, (Mt. 23:2) who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture, "because that unto them were committed the oracles of God," (Rm. 3:2) to whom pertaineth" the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Rm. 9:4) of Divine guidance, presence and perpetuation as they believed, (Gn. 12:2,3; 17:4,7,8; Ex. 19:5; Lv. 10:11; Dt. 4:31; 17:8-13; Ps, 11:4,9; Is. 41:10, Ps. 89:33,34; Jer. 7:23) </p><p>

And instead they followed an itinerant Preacher whom the magisterium rejected, and whom the Messiah reproved them Scripture as being supreme, (Mk. 7:2-16) and established His Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, as did the early church as it began upon this basis. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)

Moreover, writing was God's means of long term reliable authoritative preservation once God revealed Himself and His will to an entire nation, (Exodus 17:14; Exodus 34:27; Deuteronomy 10:4; Deuteronomy 17:18; Deuteronomy 27:3; Deuteronomy 31:24; 2 Kings 22:10-13; Isaiah 30:8; cf. Job 19:23; John 20:31; Revelation 20:12, etc.) and the appeal was not to oral transmission as the transcendent word of God.

And as written, as is abundantly evidenced, Scripture became the transcendent supreme standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the wholly Divinely inspired and assured, Word of God.

Thus what we have is both Bible Christians as well as Catholics with their respective supreme infallible objective authority on Truth, both of which are subject to variant interpretations, with both evidencing that they can produce both degrees of unity as well as division, but only one is Biblical.

What is missing in both is that of manifest men of God of Scriptural purity, probity and power as the apostles were, (2 Corinthians 6:4-10) under which the prima NT church saw its basic unity.

 

[JacksBratt]

50,000 witches burnt in Luther's Germany.
20,000 witches burnt in Knox's Presbyterian Scotland
Calvin sending his rival to the flames.
The Bishop of Rouen sending Saint Joan of Arc, a messenger from God, to the flames.
The Byzantine East clinging staunchly to slavery such that the Muslim conquest brought liberation and permanent and swift conversion to the bulk of the people set free from their Christian masters by their Muslim liberators.

That is what I'm talking about. An abstract religion of ideas about books and structures that burns people alive and loses half of its worshippers forever to another God because it enslaves them in bitter economic chains is not a believable religion - because it has failed so spectacularly.

And that is where the rigid insistence of Bible, or Church authority, or "governors are appointed by God" logic got the Christians - to the point where the horrors and failures of ALL of the different traditional pasts are so obviously terrible that one cannot truly uphold the purity of ANY of the traditional beliefs about authority, because they all failed as spectacularly as Saul of Tarsus did in his bloody pursuit of the Law as he understood it.

If to tell this obvious truth about the murderous failure of Scripture Alone Christianity and Traditional Christianity and Imperial Christianity be Satanic, then call me the Devil's Advocate, because these things are so, and the fact they are so puts the axe to the root of the rigid belief in ANY of those sources of authority. They all failed. Bloodily. Murderously. And similarly.

Which means that standing by them as though they DIDN'T fail is self-deception - a lie.

I prefer not to lie to myself, at least. Starting by admitting the failure of these traditional approaches, what I am left with is the realization that, in the end, I have to choose what I will accept from those who claim authority, and what I will not. I note that when people in the past preferred to suspend their own critical judgment and rational faculties, they went on and murdered masses of people in the name of Christ.

Get the authority wrong and you'll end up doing very evil things, as all of the Churches have done.

So no, Scripture Alone isn't reliable, and neither is the Traditional Authority of the Church. In the end, you have to judge for yourself and draw the line against the claims of other men that their belief about those things should override your own moral judgment. You are the one who must decide. Go with Luther and Calvin, and you'll be there burning those witches with them - they never recanted their authority to do that. Go with the Pope and the Church, and you'll be burning Joan of Arc and giving the Asiento to black slavery in the New World - and his heirs will not admit that there was no authority to do that either. Sharp limits on these belief systems are the only way to prevent the same sort of errors from being repeated anew.

If the Christians won't use reason, then the seculars will impose it on them, because they have to. We have to learn from history and experience.

I can see that you are really passionate about something here but, in all honesty, anyone reading the scriptures, as they are written, has no support for killing people in masses.

I think that if you were to look into these killings, you will boil it down to one person or group of persons with an agenda that is outside of the teaching of the bible.

 

[JacksBratt]

To accept sola scriptura is to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth consists of whatever pops into your head when you read the Bible.

That is completely false. Period. The Bible is very clear on what it is saying.

It is when people, of authority, try to tell us of a truth that is not found in the scriptures, that's when you start going sideways.

If your "truth" conflicts with my "truth", that's okay as long as both our opinions resulted from reading the Bible.

Unless someone who assumes that they have more authority tells us what they believe to be true. Then we must listen to them??

It doesn't matter that this results in thousands of conflicting manmade denominations who cannot agree with one another on the meaning of a single biblical text.

All "religions" are man made.

Jesus made unity of truth possible when He founded ONE Church, said it was to remain ONE, and promised that ONE Church, and no other, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into ALL truth", and "Whatsoever you bind upon Earth is bound in Heaven", and "He who hears you hears Me".

Exactly... and He gave us His Holy Word as a guide. No man should add to it... No man should take anything away.

One church, one body of Christ, all using Christ's word as a source of truth.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

There's nothing whatsoever RANDOM about my moralizing. No matter what the traditional basis of Christian authority is: book or institution, it has led to bloody horror. And that's a problem - a DELEGITIMIZING problem. When the logic of your religion leads to burnt flesh and bloody executions and upholding slavery, as traditional Christianity - whether Bible-based or institution-based - has, then you've arrived at the same place as the Muslims, who likewise have a book and a tradition.

And that place is not legitimate.

We know how we "got past" the bloodiness of the Christian past: we secularized. The state and individual liberty grew, and the authority of religion - whether book or church-based - was pushed down. It is that secularization that allows us Christians today to speak so openly about religion and God on a site like this. Muslims are still in the grip of their book and their institutions, and if THEY try to do this, they'll end up killing each other in short order. WE were like that too, not so long ago. And it wasn't through our religious beliefs that we solved it, but by external, secularizing force: the religious beliefs were not flexible enough or rational enough to arrive at a point of tolerance. They literally had to be forced down into subjection to political force.

Now, that was the actual tradition that ended religious bloodshed in Christendom, but it never resolved the inherent contradictions in Christianity - it simply paved them over by something else.

Considering the degree to which Christians right here are bickering about details of the First and Second Century of which there are a bare handful of writings to tell us anything, it is legitimate for me to focus on the raging problems of Christianity that really became visible in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries, because THOSE problems are still there today, unresolved, and those problems are widely attested and widely known, and act as a barrier to belief for millions.

None of this is random moralizing. I am focused directly on the weakest link of Christianity: all of the horrible violence done by the Christian Churches under their powerful leaders, with the enthusiastic participation of the Christian masses, not very many years ago. THOSE problems are much more damaging to the Christian enterprise - and to the believability of Christian religion - than what Irenaeus may or may not have thought two thousand years ago.

Scripture alone led to the burning of people and the justification of slavery by ALL of the major sects. And Traditionalism based on the authority of the Church in apostolic succession also led to exactly the same crimes against humanity.

Obviously, therefore, these techniques BOTH failed. They BOTH produced something very much like Islam, and it was only superior force from OUTSIDE of the religion that pulled the fangs out of Christianity and broke the political power of Christians so that they could not do that anymore.

And THAT IS A PROBLEM for Christianity, because the evils that were done following the logic of Scripture Alone, and by following the logic of Traditional Authority in Apostolic Succession BOTH FAILED.

Since they both failed, it really don't do, in 2018, to go and fight about who said what in the Second Century and why THAT approach is right, because BOTH contending approaches failed utterly in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries. Those more recent failures are much more important, because they created our world today, and because they show how neither of the two belief systems ultimately works.

The Catholic Church failed, and the Protestant Churches failed. Their logic and their authority and their beliefs turned them BOTH into bloody Muslim fanatics, just as the Muslim versions of Sola Scriptura (the Sunnis) and of Apostolic Succession and Traditional Authority (the Shi'ites) have turned Islam into a dog's breakfast of violence and savagery. Christianity killed 40% of the population of Germany in the Thirty Years War. That's not a little thing. It's WHY Christianity died as the primary philosophical force in Europe and the Age of Reason and of the secularizing states swept in.

THAT is the fundamental flaw of Christianity, whether Catholic or Sola Scripturalist, that is important. THAT is what has to be faced and addressed. THAT is the hard part. Arguing about the First and Second Centuries is easy, because there's very little material and it's all abstract. Facing the Christian jihad and the burnt flesh and the enslavement of much of the world by Christians in the name of Christ: THAT is much more recent, and THAT is very hard to face. But THAT is what the rest of the world remembers - and rightly so - and it MUST be addressed by Christians, at least if they ever hope to turn the corner on things like abortion, the homosexualizing of society, restrictions on religious liberty, etc.

Your traditional Churches are emptying out because of the unresolved problems of the RECENT past. Of course you don't want to face these problems, because they highlight the failure of Apostolic Christianity and also the failure of Sola Scriptura. The only Christian Churches that are really growing are emotionalist "charismatics" whose claims to authority are shaky (at best) but who make their people feel good. Also, the mosques are filling up - in Europe and in America.

So you can grouse at me for pointing directly at the clay feet of Christianity, but I'm doing you a service. The Second Century does not matter nearly as much as what Christianity did in the 16th Century - burn tens of thousands of people for witchcraft - and in the 17th - kill a third of Germany, depopulate two continents and enslave and transport a race across the seas to generate profits for Christians. Those are the foundational elements of all of our modern post-Christian states, and those crimes against humanity - carried out by Catholic Traditionalists and Sola Scripturalist Protestants alike - are THE REASON Christianity has lost its claim to moral authority. Christianity in the time of Christ was pretty wonderful. Christianity in its full political power, carried to its logical conclusion as the primary program of European and American states, was an utter nightmare. Which means that Sola Scriptura and Traditionalism do not work at getting to a good end. You need something else, something new that can overcome the temptations of power in both of those traditional ways of practicing Christianity.

I'm here to talk about that, because THAT is the fatal flaw in Christianity that lays like an open sewer. Historically, Christianity's horrors ended the way that it appears Islams current horrors will have to end: secularized rulers paying lip service to traditional religion but not really believing it, imposing uniform rules on everybody, and taking down religious institutions and people by armed force where necessary to break their power to do violence and inspire it. The powerful monarchies and nationalist states of Europe are the RESULT of the failure of Christianity to peacefully rule.

And if the flaws in Catholic and Protestant authority are not recognized and addressed, Christianity can never return to the leadership of the culture: it failed too terrible to be allowed to do that again.

So, you guys want to bicker about the Second Century. It's pointless. In the 21st Centuries Christianity is ebbing away because of the Christian sins of the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, and the spectacular failure of Christianity to reign in the Christian-on-Christian (and Christian-on-Jew) bloodshed of the first half of the 20th Century.

You have to address the issue I am addressing, because it is the far more important one. If you've decided you're a Sola Scripturalist like Luther, Calvin and Knox - fine! Great! How do you prevent the witch hunts and callous disregard for the poor? If you've decided that the Pope and Tradition are the cat's meow - wonderful! How do you stop the Church from burning Joan of Arc and the Pope from granting the slave-trade monopoly?

Where is the SCRIPTURAL or TRADITIONAL authority that prevents you, when you have power, from executing witches and heretics and oppressing your opponents. Christianity never solved that problem - not ever. Wouldn't even admit it IS a problem. And so Christianity broke itself.

That's the question: what is the limit on Sola Scriptura? What is the limit on the Pope. In history, Christians had no limits on their logic - so they burnt witches and burnt Germany and chained Africa and ended up having to be chained by kings and the secular state.

That's where things stand today in Christendom and in Dar es Islam. Neither Christians nor Muslims have figured out the internal boundaries and limits on religious power. The Christians imposed boundaries on religion externally, by force, through state power: Christian theology has not yet found an answer to control ITSELF. Neither has Muslim theology, but there, the secular state is not yet strong enough to break the teeth of the religion and bring it to heel, as the European kings and republics were eventually able to do with Christianity.

I can understand the desire to avoid the subject, but it is THE subject that matters, because it is THE reason that Christians have steadily lost the social wars of the past two centuries, and why the Churches are emptying out.

I haven't left. I'm still in the pews pointing directly at THE issue. But my fellow Christians seem to be as walled off and crazy about the wrong things as they were in the 1500s. The selling of indulgences was a petty matter compared to the BURNING of human beings as witches! WHY did Luther and Calvin and Knox and Pope Leo think they could burn witches?

Do Christians TODAY still think that they are authorized to do so, that - if they had the power - "You shall not suffer a witch to live?" Christians have to be able to answer that question "NO", and then they have to explain WHY they are directly overthrowing a direct order of God in the Bible, why that is ok.

Protestants never forget Purgatory and the sale of indulgences, and Catholics never forget that Jesus gave Peter the Power of the Keys. But you both need to be talking about the burning of witches, because you Protestants burnt 100,000 people alive under the auspices of Luther, Knox and Calving, and you Catholics burnt a messenger of God alive in Rouen marketplace and granted a monopoly to Portugal to conduct the slave trade. And you justified these things with the Bible. Why were your spiritual ancestors - Luther, Knox, Calvin and the Papacy - TOTALLY WRONG in doing so? Why did they all read the Bible and interpret the Power of the Keys in ways that were satanically evil?

You have to answer that - and in doing so, you have to ADMIT the hellish evil that came from Luther, Calvin, Knox and the Papacy in these regards: they all failed - they followed Bible Alone and they followed the Power of the Keys - and they unleashed hell on earth and did massive evil. Why did they fail? What did they misinterpret? What part of their interpretations of the Bible and their grant of authority through the Spirit was wrong?

If you can't address that, then your religion is stuck in 1519, and it still hasn't faced up to the inherent potential for evil in its organizing philosophy.

And if unleashed, you would follow the same pathway into evil again, just as the Muslims do.

If you cannot address this and fix it, with repentance, and with the admission that your belief system needs to be perfected and improved upon, and provide the improvement that the Catholic and Protestant Churches failed to figure out, well, then you're going to be condemned to arguing about the second century forever as your churches continue to empty, the emotionalists continue to grow, and the mosques continue to fill.

You have to address the evils unleashed by Traditionalism and by Sola Scriptura, or you're playing in the sandbox of irrelevancy.

There's nothing "random" about any of this. Christian violence is the gaping self-inflicted wound caused by Sola Scriptura and by Catholic Traditionalism. It has never been addressed. Nobody here is addressing it. And if you don't address it, you're just talking about useless nonsense. The Bible is an evil piece of trash if it really means you can and should burn witches, and that it's ok to enslave Africa if the Pope uses the power of the keys to say so.

THAT is what you MUST address if your religion is going to save itself.

It's easier to go down the cow path, like blind cows, and fight the same arguments that have been fought for 500 years. But you must confront Luther and Leo and Calvin to their faces and ask: why did you evil men think you could put men into the FIRE? Why did your religion fail so spectacularly? Why did YOU fail so spectacularly as Christian men and do such hellish evil? Were you possessed by the Devil? Or is there a fatal flaw in your belief system about the authority of book and Church? Or both?

Answer that. You have to answer it, or you're just a cow on the path.

You rant against authority is akin to saying that since a something has not prevented evil or has been used or misused to foster it than we should reject it as supreme and authoritative in preference to your exalted reasoning, which does just that.

Yet atheists use the same basic argument against religion in general, and yet making the golden compass of each person has also resulted in as many or more atrocities as in religion in the same time period, while lacking an established standard for even defining what an moral atrocity is.

At least Bible Christians (not as if there were any other) have a standard we can be held to, while for the atheist it can whatever his objectively baseless reasoning sees as moral, even if it means the state removing all children from the homes of creationists "homophobic" parents or who otherwise will not join the modern incarnation of the Communist Party.

However, as regards Scripture, there is a difference btwn something being tried and found wanting and being wanting to be tried. Scripture as well as autocratic church authority has been invoke to support what Scripture itself teaches as morally evil, such as the Inquisitions (though it actually needed and hindered literacy in Scripture), and abusive slavery in modern times, yet evangelicals also produce the advocation of pacifism, and such primary Christian evangelicals such as Spurgeon, Wesley, Finney and Stowe etc. were at the forefront of the abolition movement.

And going back to the beginning of the NT church, we see an organic community under manifest men of God who exalted Scripture as the supreme standard as being the model. Thus both Scripture and the manner of leadership it most strongly affirms has not been tried and found wanting, but fond wanting to be tried.

And if any group with welcome the likes of Peter and Paul and Barnabas et al, it would be those who hold to Scripture being the wholly inspired and accurate word of God, as the apostles did, and not Catholics, despite what they imagine. For the Catholic distinctives are not what is manifest in the only wholly inspired record of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the gospels), that of Acts true Revelation.

 

[redleghunter]

To accept sola scriptura is to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth consists of whatever pops into your head when you read the Bible. If your "truth" conflicts with my "truth", that's okay as long as both our opinions resulted from reading the Bible. It doesn't matter that this results in thousands of conflicting manmade denominations who cannot agree with one another on the meaning of a single biblical text. In fact, truth can never conflict with truth. When two beliefs conflict, at least one of them must be false. Jesus realized this when He prayed, "Father, may they all be ONE, even as you and I are ONE". If sola scripture is accepted, then this prayer of Jesus is meaningless, since it is impossible. Jesus made unity of truth possible when He founded ONE Church, said it was to remain ONE, and promised that ONE Church, and no other, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into ALL truth", and "Whatsoever you bind upon Earth is bound in Heaven", and "He who hears you hears Me".

Is it your position that the Sacred Scriptures are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition?

That the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but vivâ voce?

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Is it your position that the Sacred Scriptures are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition?

That the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but vivâ voce?

Or even that they cannot assuredly ascertain what writings (as well as men) are of God) without being told by Rome or the EOs, and having implicit faith in them.

I doubt this question will see an attempt to answer it any more than the rest.

 

[Deadworm]

A_Thinker: "A study on the ministry of the Holy Spirit seems to indicate that He will NOT bring new doctrine ... but, instead, REMIND and AFFIRM the previous teachings of Christ ."
On the contrary, such a study demonstrates precisely the opposite [see my comments below). Indeed, Paul's epistles contain several Spirit-inspired doctrines not found in Jesus' teachings!.

Thinker: "There is companion scripture [to John 16:12] which says the the Holy Spirit will bring Christ's teachings to our remembrance."

You are scrambling to duck the plain meaning of 16:12: "He will guide you into all truth." Tha truth includes much more than what Jesus taught because Jesus included in "all truth" teachings that He has not taught the disciples!

A Thinker: "Then WHY wasn't [Didache] it included in the CANON ?"

Actually, it was included in some early versions of the canon. You overlook the fact that there were several versions of the canon in the first few Christian centuries.
Second, you are apparently unaware of the orothodox teachings of the Apostolic Fathers (Didache, 1 and 2 Clement, and Ignatius, which were composed during the NT era. Third, you duck the ethical importance of Didache's explicit opposition to abortion, an opposition that is not explicit in our canon.

A Thinker: "And how can we distinguish between using the Didache as a basis for christian teaching... and not the Book of Mormon ?"

First, the authority of the Book of Mormon can be refuted on various historical and archaeological grounds. The original version of the Didache (The Two Ways section) is probably as early as anything in our New Testament and bears witness to orthodox Christianity in the Syria region, a region where Antioch happens to be located.
Second, the sayings of Jesus quoted in the Didache derive from a noncanonical source, even though they are also quoted in our Gospels.
Third, you overlook the unavoidable need to embrace divine guidance of early Catholic tradition. The NT cannot comment on it is own inspiration because the NT didn't exist as a corpus of books until after the 2nd century! To advocate an inspired canon, we must rely on an inspired Catholic tradition.
Fourth, you are apparently ignorant of the laws in the criteria for canonical selection. For example, Hebrews was included because of the mistaken belief that it was composed by Paul. Nor were the early Fathers aware of the pseudonymous authorship of the Pastoral Epistles (1-2 Timothy and Titus) and 2 Peter. The pseuddonymity of these books is widely accepted by modern scholars, both conservative and liberal.

 

[Mountainmike]

You seem to have a gap in your history.

There was a substantive period after Christ before there was a new testament - when tradition, that is the faith handed down by "word of mouth and letter" was the only christianity. So the early church was not a new testament church. Which is what catholics believe!.

You also dodge the question of "what is scripture" and what documents are deemed heretical. Which is why Jesus gave authority for the church - that is the succesors of apostles to answer doctrinal questions with the power to "bind and loose" to quote scripture. Which was the authority by which the canon you now call new testament was decided in council. And many documents and canons were also rejected by authority including the first! Marcions! Without the catholic church you would not have the new testament.

And the thousands of PROTESTANT doctrinal disputes on which every aspect of doctrine has mutually exclusive interpretations is proof that scripture is found wanting if you regard as "formally sufficient" - the premise of sola scriptura.

Take a simple aspect. Infant baptism. Scripture is not by itself clear, which proves the new testament is not, and never was intended as a complete manual. Or take priesthood.

The early church describes the role of bishops as the only ones (or their appointees) able to conduct valid eucharist. That clearly the teaching of apostle John through polycarp and ignatius. But you will struggle to find it in scripture.

Scripture is not sufficient alone except in the context of "material sufficiency"which is tacit admission it is not enough by itself.

You rant against authority is akin to saying that since a something has not prevented evil or has been used or misused to foster it than we should reject it as supreme and authoritative in preference to your exalted reasoning, which does just that.

Yet atheists use the same basic argument against religion in general, and yet making the golden compass of each person has also resulted in as many or more atrocities as in religion in the same time period, while lacking an established standard for even defining what an moral atrocity is.

At least Bible Christians (not as if there were any other) have a standard we can be held to, while for the atheist it can whatever his objectively baseless reasoning sees as moral, even if it means the state removing all children from the homes of creationists "homophobic" parents or who otherwise will not join the modern incarnation of the Communist Party.

However, as regards Scripture, there is a difference btwn something being tried and found wanting and being wanting to be tried. Scripture as well as autocratic church authority has been invoke to support what Scripture itself teaches as morally evil, such as the Inquisitions (though it actually needed and hindered literacy in Scripture), and abusive slavery in modern times, yet evangelicals also produce the advocation of pacifism, and such primary Christian evangelicals such as Spurgeon, Wesley, Finney and Stowe etc. were at the forefront of the abolition movement.

And going back to the beginning of the NT church, we see an organic community under manifest men of God who exalted Scripture as the supreme standard as being the model. Thus both Scripture and the manner of leadership it most strongly affirms has not been tried and found wanting, but fond wanting to be tried.

And if any group with welcome the likes of Peter and Paul and Barnabas et al, it would be those who hold to Scripture being the wholly inspired and accurate word of God, as the apostles did, and not Catholics, despite what they imagine. For the Catholic distinctives are not what is manifest in the only wholly inspired record of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the gospels), that of Acts true Revelation.

 

[Albion]

To accept sola scriptura is to accept that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth consists of whatever pops into your head when you read the Bible.

Is it your position that the Sacred Scriptures are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition?

It looks to me that he is repeating one of the most common misunderstandings about Sola Scriptura. We read it here all the time. That is to say that Sola Scriptura implies something about how to translate or comprehend the Bible, whereas it actually means that Scripture is the authority when it comes to doctrine.