How Direct Revelation Trumps Sola Scriptura

JAL said:

Explicitly at variance with what I said. Lovely.

Click to expand...

Ok, well I completely fail to see how you've made your point.

Thanks for sharing.

JAL said:

I'm not shoving my conclusions down your throat. On the contrary I'm affording you every opportunity to rebut them. All you have to do is provide one clear exception to the rule of conscience. Obviously you've been unable to do that.

Click to expand...

Christian forum.

OP about direct revelation Vrs sola scriptura.

But I cant use scripture...... What rule of conscience is there in Christianity? Where is it in the scripture, or as taught by Christ.

LostMarbels said:

Christian forum.

OP about direct revelation Vrs sola scriptura.

But I cant use scripture...... What rule of conscience is there in Christianity? Where is it in the scripture, or as taught by Christ.

Click to expand...

Exactly because the reason we have a conscious in the first place is because God gave it to us to point back to him. We're human beings not gods who can just make up whatever doctrine or morals that we want to

I have zero to go on, no traction at all outside of biblical reasoning within scripture. I cannot even conceptualize willfully agreeing within myself, and accepting that belief as from God.

Not saying I've never been wrong. Im saying it took the holy spirit convicting me of my error in accordance to scripture to change my belief.

JAL said:

What is your authority for claiming that Scripture is inspired? Oh that's right. The rule of conscience has the final say. As in all matters.

Click to expand...

My belief in the God I now serve as being God, is given by direct revelation.

The god Mohammed served was given him by direct revelation.

These two (God)s are different gods, clearly known and clearly seen, one trying to appear as the other. With one being false and the other True, what then do we appeal to determine an absolute authority and absolute standard.

The revelation my God has given many before me, none of which contradicts itself none of which contradicts direct revelation to myself - Scripture.

So when I want to make an appeal to others with an absolute authority, I must go to what I know is true, that is Scripture.

There are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.

There are three that bear record on earth, the spirit, and the water and the blood, and these three agree in one.

In Christianity everything that doesn't agree in one, are not in the One.

"If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son."

Whats the witness of God but scripture?

"He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son."

What is the record God gave of His Son but Scripture?

"These things have I written unto you..."

"All Scripture is God-breathed"

"But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."

And it all stands in agreement,so I am in group A.) one who believes in Christ for the salvation of men, and scripture as the infallible authority over those same men.

Albion said:

If that were so, the "truth" would be one of constant change, human ambition, and doctrinal uncertainty.

It's more than certain that there has to be some overriding, absolute, standard...and there obviously cannot be anything that beats the word of God himself given to us men. Can there? To be sure, nothing that is manmade, like Holy Tradition, can do so.

Click to expand...

The truth is the same passed on generation to generation, it merely is defined in different standards, that same truth grows with the faithful, the tradition of the Church is unbroken going to the Apostles, God drives the human ambition of the Fathers and the faithful, did not Paul the Apostle frequently boast of his God given ambitions to spread the Gospel of Christ? If we say that Church tradition is uncertain then we call into question the certainty and reliability of the scriptures themselves, how would we know the difference between Apostolic works and Gnostic and heretical forgeries, how did the faithful know in ages past, by looking at the tradition of the Apostles and Church passed on to them. What standard decided what was the Word of God and of Orthodoxy and what was the words of men and what was heretical, but Apostolic Church tradition. The canon was developed by holy tradition that’s a historical fact, after all the Church councils and Fathers decided the canon, there was no exact canon of scripture before the Church. To believe in Sola Scriptura one has to believe that fallible men put together infallible scripture, which is absurd. Infallible Apostolic tradition created the Infallible scriptures. Both of those together are overriding standards one doesn’t compromise the other, both require each other. Tradition is a God breathed blessing that we have, which is why the truth doesn’t require a “reformation”, only what is of man requires a “reformation”, Sola Scriptura is of man not of God, and not Biblical, the nature of the scriptures themselves refute Sola Scriptura.

nvm

JAL said:

In post 37 I laid out two possible theories of how the Third Person illuminates our minds to comprehend the Scriptures:
(1) The exegetical system.
(2) Direct revelation.
Your post obviously favors 1 over 2. The main reason it gives for this conclusion is the argument that subjective experience doesn't work, that it cannot be a reliable medium of objective information. That stance is self-contradictory, isn't it? If direct revelation cannot and does not work:
(1) Then we have to throw away the entire Bible, right? After all it was authored by direct revelation.
(2) And we have to reject the doctrine of the Inward Witness, right?

Is this really the direction you want to go? Seems to me a logically consistent approach is to regard direct revelation as viable insofar as we adhere to the rule of conscience:

“If I feel certain that action-A is evil, and action-B is good, I should go with action-B.”

Click to expand...

Your OP created an unnecessary dichotomy. A Direct revelation as seen in Holy Scriptures accomplishes the will and purpose of God. We know of them because of the witness of the prophets and apostles.

When we are sitting down studying our Bibles it is not a direct revelation but the Holy Spirit Who illumines us to the Truth revealed in Holy Scriptures. Exegesis is a tool to draw out the Truth the Holy Spirit illumines us towards.

1. Your use of “Direct Revelation” is used incorrectly as we know from Holy Scriptures these were events or happenings which God intervened with the supernatural for His will and according to His purpose. For example, Paul with an angry rage to punish The Way and crush it was directly confronted and an immediate change occurred according to the will of God.

2. Reading and studying Holy Scriptures is about getting to know God more deeply, His Holiness and purpose and will as revealed to the prophets and apostles.

3. Exegesis is a tool of interpretation to draw this Truth out of the text. The Holy Spirit illumines us, softens us to the Truth revealed in Holy Scriptures.

JAL said:

In other words, the Inward Witness doesn't work? It's too subjective? God would be a fool to base His kingdom on something that subjective, right? I mean, after all, like you said - one billion people with their own personal experience! And yet He did. Perhaps maybe He's a bit wiser than you are? Did you ever consider THAT possibility?

Click to expand...

What if there is a conflict between your direct revelation and my direct revelation?

Who or what arbitrates within our church?

JAL said:

You mean exegesis? Oh that's right I forgot. It's fallible. Seems we're out of luck - we don't have an infallible source. Oh wait a minute. Forgot something else. Since the prophets wrote infallible Scripture, seems we CAN envisage an infallible source, namely the gift of prophecy. Maybe that's why Paul wrote

Click to expand...

No you missed my point. Exegesis is a tool. The Holy Scriptures are the only infallible source to test claims to the truth.

Al Masihi said:

The truth is the same passed on generation to generation, it merely is defined in different standards, that same truth grows with the faithful, the tradition of the Church is unbroken going to the Apostles, God drives the human ambition of the Fathers and the faithful, did not Paul the Apostle frequently boast of his God given ambitions to spread the Gospel of Christ? If we say that Church tradition is uncertain then we call into question the certainty and reliability of the scriptures themselves, how would we know the difference between Apostolic works and Gnostic and heretical forgeries, how did the faithful know in ages past, by looking at the tradition of the Apostles and Church passed on to them. What standard decided what was the Word of God and of Orthodoxy and what was the words of men and what was heretical, but Apostolic Church tradition. The canon was developed by holy tradition that’s a historical fact, after all the Church councils and Fathers decided the canon, there was no exact canon of scripture before the Church. To believe in Sola Scriptura one has to believe that fallible men put together infallible scripture, which is absurd. Infallible Apostolic tradition created the Infallible scriptures. Both of those together are overriding standards one doesn’t compromise the other, both require each other. Tradition is a God breathed blessing that we have, which is why the truth doesn’t require a “reformation”, only what is of man requires a “reformation”, Sola Scriptura is of man not of God, and not Biblical, the nature of the scriptures themselves refute Sola Scriptura.

Click to expand...

I do not believe Christianity was intended by God to be an organized religion as man views it.

Php 2:13
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

God is actively working in our walk with him. We are encouraged to seek out wisdom, and promised in James God will give knowledge to all who ask of him. We are promised by Jesus a helper and teacher in the form of the holy ghost that will teach us, and guide us in the ways/knowledge/wisdom of God. We are taught to find wisdom, and seek truth in God. Ask about our faith and lean not on our own understanding.

Nowhere are we taught to rely on another man for witness and revelation. In fact, God hates both religion and tradition. Many of us like to disregard that fact as if it is not recorded in the bible as spoken from God himself.

Mind you, the Pharisees went after Jesus's apostles for nonconformity to the canons of their church when they ate bread with unwashed hands.

Mat 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
Mat 15:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for (as) doctrines the commandments of men.

Red my edit.

Point being is they placed a great deal of religion in, supposing that the meat they touched with unwashed hands would be defiling to them. The Pharisees practiced this themselves, and with a great deal of strictness imposed it upon others, not under civil penalties, but as matter of conscience, and making it a sin against God if they did not do it.
Matthew Henry

But God never made that command making eating with unwashed hands a sin. That was a tradition of man passed off as a doctrine of God. Thusly they were controlling the masses with the threat of damnation by God for not following the edicts of the church. That is why Jesus rebuked them so harshly. They lied. God is not going to dam you for eating with unwashed hands.

JAL said:

I don't see where you answered the question. Here it is again:

What is your authority for claiming that Scripture is inspired?

I gave my own answer because I see no other alternative: "Oh that's right. The rule of conscience has the final say. As in all matters." You are free to supply an alternative authority. However, the very act of doing so sanctions an authority that, in your mind, presides over the question as to whether Scripture is inspired and thus betrays your allegiance to an authority higher than Scripture, thus undermining Sola Scriptura and undermining the claim that Scripture is the highest authority in YOUR own life. Sola Scriptua is an untenable, self-contradictory position. The sooner the church accepts that fact, the sooner she can move forward.

Prediction: You'll once again evade the question. You'll once again spew forth more sanctimonious-sounding dogma such as this kind of statement:

"The Word of God is infallible and thus my only authority"

These kinds of statements, on the surface, SEEM hard to disagree with (especially because evangelicals have been brainwashing us with this nonsense for at least 500 years) but, upon analysis of the facts of human experience, ultimately reduce to a self-contradictory epistemology.

Click to expand...

I don't evade anything.

When scripture says those who belong to him will stand in agreement, and will also stand in agreement with what God revealed and caused to be recorded, then I see that recording as a final authority to which men should refer, when differences arise. Just like scripture says.

If ones conscience tells them things in disagreement with recorded Scripture, then it's not God to whom they listen - according to the Scriptures that stand before me.

JAL said:

With 100 billion souls at stake, God isn’t so stupid as to rely on fallible exegesis. His plan for both OT and NT saints has always been the absolute primacy of direct revelation (1Cor 14:1). Let’s see how it trumps exegesis. Prior to conversion, exegesis convinced Paul that the Messiah would liberate captive Israel . Hence he regarded Jesus neither as Messiah nor as God incarnate. Then he saw a vision and heard a voice on the road to Damascus. This direct revelation caused him to feel certain that Jesus is Lord and God, thereby trumping 20 years of exegesis – he threw it all out the window literally in a single flash of Light.

How and when does a direct revelation trump exegesis? Feelings of certainty. There are no possible exceptions to the following rule, termed here the “authority of conscience” or “the rule of conscience”:

“If I feel certain that action-A is evil, and action-B is good, I should go with action-B.”

In fact that’s how we got saved. The Inward Witness "convicted" us (convinced us), causing us to feel certain of the gospel. Calvin specifically defined the Inward Witness as feelings of certainty.

While the prophets often felt 100% certainty, we immature believers usually suffer mere degrees of certainty. When faced with several choices, my conscience will prompt me to opt for the one that I feel most certain about.

In my next post, I plan to show evidence that walking in faith ideally means walking in 100% certainty born of direct revelation (prophetic experience).

IMPORTANT: If you want to rebut my thinking, you’ll need to supply at least one clear exception to the above rule of conscience. And that cannot be accomplished.

Also, if you want more evidence, I have a whole thread here, demonstrating that the first epistle to the Corinthians defines spiritual maturity as mature prophethood.

Click to expand...

God will never give you a direct vision or teaching that contradicts the Bible rightly understood. Paul used exegesis but wrong exegesis. Since the Bible is God's inspired Word according to 2 Tim. 3:16-17, it must be exegeted correctly. Several principles of exegesis or interpretation are necessary.

First, the meanings of words must be understood the way they are used in other parts of the Bible, not according to human usage.

Second, any verse must be understood in the light of the meanings of the chapter, book, and whole Bible.

Third, any verse must be understood according to the purpose and audience of the author.

Fourth, there are others, but they basically boil down to letting God interpret or exegete his own Word as his revelation of himself. Any contradictory revelations are from a different source, either ourselves or Satan.

Schlauch Mann said:

So, we can't trust our fallible minds to understand Scripture, but we CAN trust our fallible minds to give us the correct feelings about a supposed revelation? Not sure how that works.

Click to expand...

Ultimately we can trust fully neither our understanding nor our feelings. We can trust God and what God has revealed to us. Bridging the gap between what God has revealed and what we can trust of our understanding of that is the problem.

So far in this thread there have been only two options, to trust our understandings of Scripture and to trust our feelings. I trust both of those a little bit, about as far as I can throw them. I have a different take, one that puts the community of believers ahead of simple old me. I trust not my feelings or my understanding but the apostles whom Jesus hand picked and then confirmed at Pentecost, along with those who followed them in a pedigreed system of successors. Basically what Vincent of Lerins said. "What all men have at all times and everywhere believed must be regarded as true." That puts me in the realm of traditional theology, theology following the Fathers of the Church, where I can have my feelings and understandings guided by Tradition. It has kept me free so far of crazy feelings and on the other hand crazy mental constructs. On my own I probably would have gone to one or the other extreme.

JAL said:

When I first got saved, and was indoctrinated into Sola Scriptura, I was absolutely mystified by these kind of verses:

"Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away" (Gen 5)

"By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” a For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God." (Heb 11).

Back then, I actually felt SORRY for men like Enoch who were plagued with the laborious task of trying to figure out how to walk with God, sans exegesis to assist them !!! I used to think, "Wow how advanced we are today over those men and how far we've come!" Now I consider myself a fool for having felt that way. The truth is that Enoch was likely a prophet in the order of Elijah - note that God took both of them away without death. Enoch probably spoke with God face to face like Moses and Abraham did, and he probably saw all the same kinds of visions that constitute the Book of Revelation, including the heavenly city, the angels, the throne of Christ, and so on. In terms of understanding God's will, he was probably LIGHT YEARS ahead of us. Thus you are just as utterly deceived as I once was, when you write:



Trust me, there's PLENTY OF TRACTION available without exegesis, if men like Abraham, Noah, Enoch, and Moses have anything to say about it.

Click to expand...

How do you even know what you are saying is true? Just because you have a feeling doesn’t constitute truth. The Bible is perfectly fine and many people don’t come into direct revelation with God. There were very few prophets in the Bible compared to the masses of humanity. Not all Believers will understand the scripture however. That’s why there’s the command if your gift is teaching then teach. Romans 12:7
But the teachers will be judged more harshly. James 3:1

JAL said:

In other words, the Inward Witness doesn't work? It's too subjective? God would be a fool to base His kingdom on something that subjective, right? I mean, after all, like you said - one billion people with their own personal experience! And yet He did. Perhaps maybe He's a bit wiser than you are? Did you ever consider THAT possibility?

You mean exegesis? Oh that's right I forgot. It's fallible. Seems we're out of luck - we don't have an infallible source. Oh wait a minute. Forgot something else. Since the prophets wrote infallible Scripture, seems we CAN envisage an infallible source, namely the gift of prophecy. Maybe that's why Paul wrote:

"Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy" (1Cor 14:1).

Conclusion. You're absolutely correct. We DO need an infallible source. Why not go with the only one that we know of? How about that?

Click to expand...

You use the 'infallible' word and seem to imply that a billion people have the gift of infallibility. Knowing myself a bit, I cannot claim any infallibility, neither in my understandings nor my feelings. I can claim that God reveals, not that I always get it. There is something prophetic at work in me but it is not an infallible always on always precise thing. Left to myself I could and probably would go astray.

In this thread the poles are defined as to trust Scripture or to trust a private revelation. We know that there are all of these groups and individuals who trust Scripture and yet they argue about EVERYTHING. If Scripture were so clear, they should agree a lot more than they do. But they don't. I'm sure there are countless examples of people following their inner witness to contradictory positions as well. I don't think either pole works. They only successfully point out the weakness of the other pole.

I don't trust my interpretation of Scripture on it's own. I've seen too many people who believe too many things to think I could get it right all on my own. I don't trust my feelings either, as sometimes I get it in my head that God wants something of me and later I find out how silly that was. But I have found an interpretive key that while it is not perfect, does allow me to muddle on through. And that is that the Apostles had something, and they passed it on, and if I stay in that interpretive community I will be able to correct my course with regards to understanding Scripture and with regards to testing the spirits. So that is what I have done. It complicates things quite a bit but it does serve as a more even keel.