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The study and prayer over the text do have a cumulative effect, both on the individuals and on the community. We are in a real way the summation of 2000 years of being the Body of Christ and even more time being faithful Israel. We are interwoven with the Word. Which is why a person can't do away with the Church and just wing it with a Bible.So much energy expended over the centuries in reading, study, prayer, discussion, debate, writing, preaching, codifying, preserving, and attempting to live by the biblical text. And that's not even the controversial part. - lol
No. It's still possible for one to be authoritatively right and the other flat wrong. We don't have to throw up our hands and conclude that everything is hopelessly randomly confused.This touches on my main concern here. How can anything be truly authoritative if there is no consensus? The lack of consensus tells me that it is still in the purview of opinion.
God gave us a single revelation. Not multiple disconnected revelations. One of the schemas for Vatican II on Scripture was about how Scripture and Tradition were TWO sources. That schema was tossed out as the bad theology it was. Replaced with the view that there was a single source. There is a single voice of truth, Jesus Himself. He taught the disciples, raised some to be apostles, gave them authority, and they cobbed together a New Testament consonant with the teaching they received directly from Jesus. The Church and the Bible go together. They shouldn't be used apart from each other, and even before the NT was written the OT and the Church went together. So the balance is the Church explaining Scripture and the Scripture limiting the Church.This is a challenge to my sense that authority needs to have a singular voice. (the truth) The idea that there is some give and take to find the "balance", as you put it, is a challenging concept. Let's discuss this further, please. How do you sort through this? What are the key principles involved? It seems to me, there needs to be an anchor, or some firm mooring to make this work. What do I tie my rope to?
I think it's well explained in Dei Verbum, the Vatican II dogmatic constitution on Holy Scripture.
I don't trust my experience. I have a heart of darkness just like the rest of humanity. I also know that I am far from infallible. (The great advantage of having a pope is knowing you are not the pope.) So if my experience tells me something I am skeptical. I allow for some common sense, but not much. What I look for is the aggregate experience of many other faithful Christians. Errors tend to cancel and sometimes the exemplars to follow are even obvious. If the Church declares them to be saints then I can cautiously trust them as guides for me.One thing we really haven't touched on in this posting between you and I, is the aspect of experience in concert with tradition and scripture. The catalyst for this topic was a description I heard about a tricycle that has as its front steering wheel spiritual experience and two rear stabilizing wheels of tradition and scripture. What's your take on that idea? Where does the experience of a personal religious journey fit in the Traditional Church? (capital T and C) Or with the idea of authority. Is there some authority in experience as well? (now I'm WAY out in left field, I suppose)
I've never heard of this tricycle analogy but I like it enough to consider it. I do see Tradition and Scripture as good balancers for our experiences, but I tend not to rely much on my own experience as anything super-trustworthy. But if you substitute in the community experience of the Church then it makes more sense and I think Scripture and Tradition are great stabilizers. And the tricycle works.
The analogy that's been out there more commonly is that of a stool. Three legs. Scripture, Tradition, and the live exercise of authority in the Church. Without any one the stool is unstable. All three need to work together. Dead Tradition doesn't work. Sola Scriptura doesn't work. Even the combination of two of them doesn't work And making it up as we go along doesn't work either. The tension of the three elements seems most fruitful to me. It forms an interpretive framework that is sound, flexible yet tested, not ossified, not lost to the fluctuations of the crazy culture. And the dead get their vote in the Tradition and in the Biblical texts that some of them wrote.
I cautiously make my own journey trying to be within the safety of the flock. I know that doesn't sound very bold, but I'd rather not be bold in the sense of Marcion or Arius or even Luther. I got a chance this weekend to see the Sandhill Cranes as they stopped on the Platte River. They spend a month there, spending the nights on sandbars in the river and the days in the fields fattening up. And making noise. They are always conversing. Incessantly. Loudly. A million birds who can't keep quiet, in dialogue with each other. And in a week or two they will take off and some will fly as far as Siberia. And they'll do it again next year and every year. That massive flock, that congregation, defines them though, far better than a description of any one bird.
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