About claiming scriptural authority...

[Rescued One]

Agreed. There are a few on here who claim scriptural superiority and I have challenges them to back up their theology with scriptures that show their point of view. The ones I have an issue with will not do this and just claim God has told them through scripture and they are right and you are wrong. You can post scriptures that clearly contradict what they are saying and they still do not accept it.

I am always open to people believing something different to me, as long as it is in line with scripture and they can show that. If its down to a difference in interpretation of the Word I can accept to disagree but that we interpret it differently. Sometimes I will even agree with them if it proves my interpretation (including what I have been taught) is incorrect. After all, we are all fallible, only God is not.

But most Pentacostals don't worship the Trinity.

 

[Mountainmike]

To be more specific Jesus said that.

Your comment proves Stabats general issue.
How does theological nitpicking help? And why the combative tone in many posts?

In this case: What was the point in your comment? How does it affect the conversation an iota? Do you do deny the deity of Jesus? Do you regard Jesus' word as any less or more significant than God the Father? Do you think Father and Son disagree on it? I cannot think you believe any of those.

So why say it at all? Why then pick a theological nit that has no effect on the authority of what was said, when the question is not WHAT was said, we all read, but interpretation and deduction from it. So why bother to say "It was Jesus, not God", other than try to find one more issue of disagreement?

THAT is the point being made generally by Stabat.
How does theological nitpicking help?
Anyway....we have laboured the point.

If the talks on the tone of theological squabbling is a problem, emblazoned as it is with lexical equivalent statements of " I AM RIGHT, CATHOLICS ARE WRONG", then clearly derailing talks about the tone of theological squabbling are even more perverse than the squabbling.

The entire reformation was based on the idea that "every milkmaid" as Luther put it, "the priesthood of all believers" so called, can interpret scripture and have their own doctrine, when freed of the shackles of early church tradition, so as Luther said it "there are now as many doctrines as heads" as 10000 flavours and counting show.

So since there can only be one truth, all who push their own version should recognise theirs is only one interpretation - so stating " I think it means" rather than "it means" when so at odds with the early church, is likely to be a more productive discussion.

There are more productive things to do.
So other than repeat I agree with stabat.
I am out of this thread.

 

[Vicomte13]

Did you know that though you consider doing so when confronted by the challenging theology of others pious, you actually undermine and falsify them by patronizing their faith and position.

This actually leads to the opposite of what you probably thought, you're helping the secularization of Christianity all together.

If theology falls into the fallpit where there's no room for challenges and/ or need for good reasons to uphold doctrine and normative theology without being ostracized, then in the end Christianity will end up as a private matter, a faith where everyone claim orthodoxy in their interpretation of scripture and no theology is open for discussion.

If all Christians saw theology this way then we'd face a completely privatised and secular, subjective religion.

The reason why this is the case?
If no-one's allowed to question any part of what constitutes your faith in God then the door into a fruitful theological discussion is forever closed.

So, to all you in here (and there are several of you) who seek to toss your own subjective interpretation of scripture on others and do your best to strangle discussion by claiming superior insight in scripture.

You end up in that ditch, you run the errand of the world, a world who seek to undermine Christianity and shatter the faithful and spreading them around, cut of the rest of the Christian world. The world wants to see Christianity torn apart and privatised to the level where even evangelizing people will be ilegalised.

Sola Scriptura with every man as interpreter can easily be the end of Christianity as a cultural and moral voice in a increasingly anti Christian world.

I hear what you have said, and it makes a lot of sense. Here is my problem with it:
My own Church, the Catholic, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people (maybe more) over centuries, for their refusal to submit the authority of the Church on various matters. This was not resolved by the Church "changing its mind", but through a massive European civil war - the wars of the Reformation - that killed a third of Germany, and that ultimately ended with the state assuming supervisory powers over the Church's power to kill. The Church was never persuaded theologically to back down from its positions, it was forced down and neutered by external authority. Old news? In present day news, tens of thousands of children, heavily skewed towards young boys, were raped and molested by the priesthood over the course of decades and decades, and the Church had no internal mechanism to see it or address it. Once again, it was not theological authorities or persuasion or anything "Of the Church" that changed this, it was the power of the civil police and prosecutorial services, in country after country, that, once again, had to move in and forcibly impose order upon many of the clergy. The Church hierarchy, for its part, served (and to an extent still serves) to protect many individual clergymen, and the financial resources of the Church, from fully bearing the responsibility for these crimes and sins.

Simply put, the Catholic Church has proven itself over the course of centuries to be untrustworthy with power, and unable to supervise itself. When left to its own devices, it resorts to power and claims of authority to silence criticism and obscure crimes. THAT is why the Catholic Church cannot be wholly trusted, and why people cannot seriously cede their final authority to judge things to the Church. Those who were too trusting of the Church in modern times had their children raped.

Now, that's the way it IS, and there is no sugar coating it. And it's WHY your plea - to simply cede authority and ground to the institutional Church - does not work. The Church has already failed so spectacularly and terribly, over so many centuries, that it's impossible for thinking people to trust it. Catholics still listen to it, and reason out what the Church teaches, but gone - long gone - is the notion that the Church is deeply invested with supernatural wisdom and even perfection. We have ALL seen that this is not so, and we've seen what happens to people who trust it too much: they get raped, and the Church defends the rapists! This is so, and it cannot be gainsayed. It is the REASON why your suggestion cannot work for Catholics: our church is not good enough in its behavior over centuries to be granted that sort of final authority over us that would be required for your ideology to work, for Catholics.

The moral flaws and murderous behavior is mirrored in the Protestant Churches also. The old ones - Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, older forms of Calvinist Reformed, tore a swath of bloody hell and burnt flesh across Europe on their side of the wars of the Reformation. Nobody excuses the Catholics for what they did, other than some Catholics who turn a blind eye to it, but few hold the old Protestant Churches to the same standard and point out their utter barbarity and rotten fruit: 100,000 "witches" burnt in Germany, 20,000 burnt by the Kirk in Scotland, the killings of Catholics - particularly clergy - all across England for the "treason" of remaining Catholic, the bloody depredations of the Presbyterian "plantation" in Ireland, and Cromwell's barbaric campaigns there. It is very bad stuff, every bit as bad as what the Catholics are (properly) accused of doing in those days. And this, mind you, was all intellectually led and justified by the INSTITUTIONAL churches. It was not individuals running off with their own interpretations, but whole movements led from the top.

Anabaptists and "low church" evangelicals, in Europe were mostly victims, not predators, but in America, the largest Baptist group, the Southern Baptists, bear that name because they were staunch, stubborn theological defenders of black slavery and segregation. They have since modified their theology, but that stinking fruit of theological evil was not the brainchild of some individual minds running amok: it was the spiritual position of the largest Protestant Church in America.

Similiarly, in the 1970s the Mormon God changed his mind about black people, and suddenly it was no longer theologically correct to exclude them.

All of these crimes against humanity were perpetrated from the TOP of the Church downward. They were not local symptoms of individuals breaking free of authority. It was Top Down evil - the very top to which you urge we look.

Swimming against this tide is one counterexample. One. Single. Counterexample. One church that came out of the Reformation Era that came to have substantial size that never murdered people over religion - not ever - that always opposed slavery, that never justified predations against American Indians for their land. And THIS particular Church literally has no organized theology at all. Everything is left to the individual moved by the Holy Spirit. They are not "Bible Alone" - the Bible is not their go to, the Holy Spirit is, on an individual level. They make no major decisions without unanimity, and they wait for it, discussing things, calling on the Holy Spirit to "cover" them in their meetings. The only old Christian sect with NO blood on their hands, at all, is the Quakers, and they are the very antithesis of "turn to Church authority" that you suggest. Their fruit has been pretty good too: they brought down slavery in the British Empire, considered men and women equal centuries before anybody else did, and are even the source of the "single pricing" system we have in our commerce today (as opposed to the "Arab bazaar" haggling style of commerce which was the way it was done before). Because the Quakers could always be counted upon to give the same price to all, people quickly learned that they could send children or mentally weak farmhands to go buy supplies from the Quaker merchants - something that could never be done with other merchants: they'd rob the weak-minded blind in the haggling. The Quaker one-price-for-all, great or small, approach was HIGHLY OFFENSIVE to everybody else in commerce at the time, and all sorts of efforts were made to outlaw it and crush it out. It won out because customers everywhere overwhelmingly favor it. Now it is the norm. Thank the Quakers for that.

In terms of BEHAVIOR, the Christians who are farthest from your model: the Quakers - who individually rely entirely upon direct revelation from the Holy Spirit, and collectively wait on the Spirit to give them unanimity - are by far and without question the most Christian of all of the Christianities. There is no other Christianity of the 16th Century Era of any substantial size that has a track record that doesn't include murder and oppression. And yet the Quakers are not only not beholden to a Church hierarchy for their theology, they are not Sola Scripturalists either. They are, for all practical purposes, Spirit Alone people, on an individual level - with neither organized church nor written Scripture as final authority. The individual himself, listening directly to God speaking to him through the Holy Spirit, is the final authority of every aspect of the faith. The purpose of the "Meeting" - where they traditionally sit in silence, with no preacher and no sermon and no readings, only rising as individuals to speak "when the spirit moves them" - is for the Spirit to move many of them to a common purpose, and thereby be able to collectively move to help people.

And THAT approach, the utter antithesis of what you have said, has brought more practical benefit to the world (the end of slavery in the British Empire, women's suffrage, the single pricing system), without any of the moral authority-killing murder and torture, than any other Christian Church of any since in Western Europe or the Americas in the 16th Century.

"You will know them by their fruits", Jesus said. The Quakers have, by far, the best fruit of any Christianity of the last 500 years. And they have no murders to their Church's discredit. That's the most powerful counter-argument I would make to what you have said.

The organized, institutional Churches that rely on turning to theologians for final authority have an abysmal track record of injustice and sin and have produced some fruit so bad that one has to draw lines under history and say "But we're DIFFERENT now."

The Quakers don't have to do that, and they have no final theological authority in their church at all, neither a body of men NOR the Bible. Just God speaking to them individually.

Judged by outcomes, that seems to be the best way. Take book and building out of it and have individuals turn to God and call upon him, with no authority to bind each other at all, only the ability to persuade, as the same Holy Spirit moves from mind to mind.

Judged by the fruit, and by the comparative track record of violence and sin, it is impossible to gainsay the Quaker approach.

Because of the bitter fruit of the past 500 years, it is likewise impossible to place ultimate faith in the wisdom of theologians in the church hierarchies, because the results have been so bloodyhanded and evil, over and over again. It works for transmitting organizational power. It does not, however, work at transmitting the peace of Christ.

Essentially - I have heard your argument, but I must respectfully dissent. The Quakers are the proven best model for approaching God. Our own Church has really made a hash of it, and still can't get out of its own way. The more Quakerlike we all become, the better.

 

[JoeP222w]

Sola Scriptura with every man as interpreter can easily be the end of Christianity as a cultural and moral voice in a increasingly anti Christian world.

You have a great misunderstanding of what Sola Scriptura is.

Sola Scriptura is not "every man as interpreter".

 

[JoeP222w]

The reason this deception that a mere lay can understand the great depth in scripture has to do with the vacuum made possible by pluralism not any reformers.

So what you are positing, God is incapable of speaking with clarity and perspicuity, and normal, everyday people are too dumb to understand scripture. Many of the Apostles were common, everyday people, so where were the scholars that interpreted scripture for them?

Your god is too small.

 

[JoeP222w]

I'm not sure what you expected when you chose to vilify all those who are "Sola Scriptura."

The OP was blantently atagonistic.

Indeed, and sets up a great Straw Man and complains when no one counters the fallacious argumentation.

 

[PeaceB]

I hear what you have said, and it makes a lot of sense. Here is my problem with it:
My own Church, the Catholic, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people (maybe more) over centuries, for their refusal to submit the authority of the Church on various matters. This was not resolved by the Church "changing its mind", but through a massive European civil war - the wars of the Reformation - that killed a third of Germany, and that ultimately ended with the state assuming supervisory powers over the Church's power to kill. The Church was never persuaded theologically to back down from its positions, it was forced down and neutered by external authority. Old news? In present day news, tens of thousands of children, heavily skewed towards young boys, were raped and molested by the priesthood over the course of decades and decades, and the Church had no internal mechanism to see it or address it. Once again, it was not theological authorities or persuasion or anything "Of the Church" that changed this, it was the power of the civil police and prosecutorial services, in country after country, that, once again, had to move in and forcibly impose order upon many of the clergy. The Church hierarchy, for its part, served (and to an extent still serves) to protect many individual clergymen, and the financial resources of the Church), from fully bearing the responsibility for these crimes and sins.

Simply put, the Catholic Church has proven itself over the course of centuries to be untrustworthy with power, and unable to supervise itself. When left to its own devices, it resorts to power and claims of authority to silence criticism and obscure crimes. THAT is why the Catholic Church cannot be wholly trusted, and why people cannot seriously cede their final authority to judge things to the Church. Those who were too trusting of the Church in modern times had their children raped.

Now, that's the way it IS, and there is no sugar coating it. And it's WHY your plea - to simply cede authority and ground to the institutional Church - does not work. The Church has already failed so spectacularly and terribly, over so many centuries, that it's impossible for thinking people to trust it. Catholics still listen to it, and reason out what the Church teaches, but gone - long gone - is the notion that the Church is deeply invested with supernatural wisdom and even perfection. We have ALL seen that this is not so, and we've seen what happens to people who trust it too much: they get raped, and the Church defends the rapists! This is so, and it cannot be gainsayed. It is the REASON why your suggestion cannot work for Catholics: our church is not good enough in its behavior over centuries to be granted that sort of final authority over us that would be required for your ideology to work, for Catholics.

The moral flaws and murderous behavior is mirrored in the Protestant Churches also. The old ones - Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, older forms of Calvinist Reformed, tore a swath of bloody hell and burnt flesh across Europe on their side of the wars of the Reformation. Nobody excuses the Catholics for what they did, other than some Catholics who turn a blind eye to it, but few hold the old Protestant Churches to the same standard and point out their utter barbarity and rotten fruit: 100,000 "witches" burnt in Germany, 20,000 burnt by the Kirk in Scotland, the killings of Catholics - particularly clergy - all across England for the "treason" of remaining Catholic, the bloody depredations of the Presbyterian "plantation" in Ireland, and Cromwell's barbaric campaigns there. It is very bad stuff, every bit as bad as what the Catholics are (properly) accused of doing in those days. And this, mind you, was all intellectually led and justified by the INSTITUTIONAL churches. It was not individuals running off with their own interpretations, but whole movements led from the top.

Anabaptists and "low church" evangelicals, in Europe were mostly victims, not predators, but in America, the largest Baptist group, the Southern Baptists, bear that name because they were staunch, stubborn theological defenders of black slavery and segregation. They have since modified their theology, but that stinking fruit of theological evil was not the brainchild of some individual minds running amok: it was the spiritual position of the largest Protestant Church in America.

Similiarly, in the 1970s the Mormon God changed his mind about black people, and suddenly it was no longer theologically correct to exclude them.

All of these crimes against humanity were perpetrated from the TOP of the Church downward. They were not local symptoms of individuals breaking free of authority. It was Top Down evil - the very top to which you urge we look.

Swimming against this tide is one counterexample. One. Single. Counterexample. One church that came out of the Reformation Era that came to have substantial side that never murdered people over religion - not ever - that always opposed slavery, that never justified predations against American Indians for their land. And THIS particular Church literally has no organized theology at all. Everything is left to the individual moved by the Holy Spirit. They are not "Bible Alone" - the Bible is not their go to, the Holy Spirit is, on an individual level. They make no major decisions without unanimity, and they wait for it, discussing things, calling on the Holy Spirit to "cover" them in their meetings. The only old Christian sect with NO blood on their hands, at all, is the Quakers, and they are the very antithesis of "turn to Church authority" that you suggest. Their fruit has been pretty good too: they brought down slavery in the British Empire, considered men and women equal centuries before anybody else did, and are even the source of the "single pricing" system we have in our commerce today (as opposed to the "Arab bazaar" haggling style of commerce which was the way it was done before). Because the Quakers could always be counted upon to give the same price to all, people quickly learned that they could send children or mentally weak farmhands to go buy supplies from the Quaker merchants - something that could never be done with other merchants: they'd rob the weak-minded blind in the haggling. The Quaker one-price-for-all, great or small, approach was HIGHLY OFFENSIVE to everybody else in commerce at the time, and all sorts of efforts were made to outlaw it and crush it out. It won out because customers everywhere overwhelmingly favor it. Now it is the norm. Thank the Quakers for that.

In terms of BEHAVIOR, the Christians who are farthest from your model: the Quakers - who individually rely entirely upon direct revelation from the Holy Spirit, and collectively wait on the Spirit to give them unanimity - are by far and without question the most Christian of all of the Christianities. There is no other Christianity of the 16th Century Era of any substantial size that has a track record that doesn't include murder and oppression. And yet the Quakers are not only not beholden to a Church hierarchy for their theology, they are not Sola Scripturalists either. They are, for all practical purposes, Spirit Alone people, on an individual level - with neither organized church nor written Scripture as final authority. The individual himself, listening directly to God speaking to him through the Holy Spirit, is the final authority of every aspect of the faith. The purpose of the "Meeting" - where they traditionally sit in silence, with no preacher and no sermon and no readings, only rising as individuals to speak "when the spirit moves them" - is for the Spirit to move many of them to a common purpose, and thereby be able to collectively move to help people.

And THAT approach, the utter antithesis of what you have said, has brought more practical benefit to the world (the end of slavery in the British Empire, women's suffrage, the single pricing system), without any of the moral authority-killing murder and torture, than any other Christian Church of any since in Western Europe or the Americas in the 16th Century.

"You will know them by their fruits", Jesus said. The Quakers have, by far, the best fruit of any Christianity of the last 500 years. And they have no murders to their Church's discredit. That's the most powerful counter-argument I would make to what you have said.

The organized, institutional Churches that rely on turning to theologians for final authority have an abysmal track record of injustice and sin and have produced some fruit so bad that one has to draw lines under history and say "But we're DIFFERENT now."

The Quakers don't have to do that, and they have no final theological authority in their church at all, neither a body of men NOR the Bible. Just God speaking to them individually.

Judged by outcomes, that seems to be the best way. Take book and building out of it and have individuals turn to God and call upon him, with no authority to bind each other at all, only the ability to persuade, as the same Holy Spirit moves from mind to mind.

Judged by the fruit, and by the comparative track record of violence and sin, it is impossible to gainsay the Quaker approach.

Because of the bitter fruit of the past 500 years, it is likewise impossible to place ultimate faith in the wisdom of theologians in the church hierarchies, because the results have been so bloodyhanded and evil, over and over again. It works for transmitting organizational power. It does not, however, work at transmitting the peace of Christ.

Essentially - I have heard your argument, but I must respectfully dissent. The Quakers are the proven best model for approaching God. Our own Church has really made a hash of it, and still can't get out of its own way. The more Quakerlike we all become, the better.

Correlation does not imply causation - Wikipedia

In statistics, many statistical tests calculate correlations between variables and when two variables are found to be correlated, it is tempting to assume that this shows that one variable causes the other.[1][2] That "correlation proves causation," is considered a questionable cause logical fallacy when two events occurring together are taken to have established a cause-and-effect relationship. This fallacy is also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "with this, therefore because of this," and "false cause." A similar fallacy, that an event that followed another was necessarily a consequence of the first event, is the post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this.") fallacy.​

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

If you don't like non-Catholicism, we won't force you to leave your pope.

what does the pope have to do whit what I wrote in my OP?
I repeat teadiously so, I didnt say anything about the Roman Church in the OP.
Please read through it if you dont believe me instead of getting hung up in my faith icon...

I can personally affirm that the God promised zOE-life is far superior to anyone's "sola scriptura" and definitely beyond "Holy Tradition". With out life there is no understanding of Scripture. They remain but lifeless words on a page left unlived and unbreathed!

The theology of man is foolishly trying to limit thee infinite of God's Word into finite principles of systematics that cannot breath or live beyond their hierarchal limited resources of their goofy ideas.

That includes the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church and all Reformisms. Which is everyone!

Thee, of God, given and promised zOE is so far beyond man's invented theology, that it runs circles around them and wonders why everyone is stuck in the lifeless filthy mud, completely useless, and going nowhere!

God didn't put you there: theology did!

Q: What unites as one? A: God's Life, God's Love, God's breathed Word.
Q: What divides, and continues to divine us? A: theology!

Well, youre pinned down by your own flawed argument.
Every believer articulate normative theology off of Scripture either based upon the solid work of clergy with knowledge far beyond your own or by yourself (which is as subjective as anything).

All Christians interpret scripture to some extent that is a fact even if some are to blind to realize it. We hold tons of moral theology to be normative without the bible saying anything about a given topic explicitly.

Just look at morally questionable science, the bible says nothing about it cause it wasnt tematized in the 1st century. With time we`ve been forced to make up our mind about such Things as egg-donation, test tubes etc...

Think through it for a second, what do you think about these issues and why do you believe as you do?
You can vaguely point at scripture YOU find suitable to make YOUR theology based upon, but the bible NEVER mention any such thing as egg-donation or such.

This is where YOU make Theology with your limited knowledge of the scriptural Depth not to mention that all hermenutical work you do rests upon and totally rely on some unknown persons translation and choices (yes, the bible can litterally be translated into millions of different translations based upon the choices of Words translated from Greek and Hebrew.) between similar Words on the original Language to one of many in English.

If anything you must make your own theology by reading Septuagint on Greek thats the least you can do in order to have any Clue.

Here is what it comes down to for many of these folks: pride. The idea that they should be under the spiritual authority or guidance of another is offensive to them. They say that our Lord Jesus is their authority. They say that Sacred Scripture is their authority. But they will never once say that a church or a pastor is their authority, because putting themselves under the authority of a church or a pastor does not allow them to be in control and to believe anything and everything that they want to believe, all the while claiming to be guided by the Holy Sprit as a pretense.

Sadly this is true, but often times such people fail to see this themselves.

Interesting you mention this. Christianity Today (an Evangelical publication) published an interview with a NT scholar from Notre Dame university. He elaborated a bit more on your quoted statement and I think for a Catholic theologian gave a very balanced assessment.

The Freedom and Chaos of Sola Scriptura

One thing to consider for your OP is many who post for or against Sola Scriptura usually have a modern view which is actually what I call "solo meo."

The Reformers did not disparage the teaching office, nor did they toss out councils and synods. For example, the Westminster Confession is a good source to review the definition of Sola Scriptura.

Westminster Confession of Faith

No they most certainly did not.
Theologically Im very far from Luther and the rest of the reformers, but we share the Insight that laymen and women simply dont posses the knowledege, Insight or the Authorithy to interpret Scripture by the HS.

And stabat explains the reason is that Christianity is made so unappealing.

The first quote you make tries to imply an elect predestined, which is how you context "the sheep" as if to say they are who they are, and our need to radiate the good news has nothing to do with it.

That's not " God said" . "That's phoebe said, proof texting words from scripture, to support her apriori position.
I can select words out of context to support any doctrine I like. And many do that.

So in presenting your position as " God said" - perhaps you should say " I think God meant this.... by this.."

Which is stabats point. Presentation of opinion matters.

Well it is partally my point, but not the entire one.
The issue is both to be found as you say in the unappealing nature of such a "billion-headed" beast as this makes Christianity or at least makes it appear, but also that fruitful and spiritfilled discussion and enlightment will cease to exist cause everyone is claiming infallbility in their own reading of scripture.

We must keep an open theological discussion where each church has to be forced to rethink their theology in order to reveal if said theology still makes sense in todays context and not only so in ancient time.

This is something that the Catholic Church has to do too. If anyone believes Im advocating for a freepass of some sort for us your badly mistaking.
The Church ultimately benefits greatly from having Our faith/ Our truth tried within the boundries of all three arenas, the secular society, the university and the church itself as understood by the great mind of theologian David Tracy.

If we barricade ourselves then in the end the loser is the Church herself ironically...
The lone interpreter claims to know everything, not just that God is triune for example or that Christ is fully man and God to make a different example, but they blatantly claim infalbility in every theological question by subjectively refering to scripture neatly picked to forward their own understanding and agenda.

THIS attitude will be death to Christianity as we know it and as i wrote in the OP.

To be more specific Jesus said that.

You mean you read an translation of Septuagint in which you made theology through your own hermeneutical prosess and ended up applying that scripural passage in order to support your own conclusion?

Im not bashing your interpretation, but im simply underlining the very fact that it is indeed an interpretation based upon a thirdparty`s translation work.

Why do you trust the translator?

Now, I'm asking this honestly, but since you mention "hate" for the Catholic Church as proof that it is "Christ's true Church", what do you make of what the Catholic Church has done throughout history?

Over and over again we tell you that there has been and still is fallible and sinful men among us and that includes Our clergy as well and time and time again you forwards this rethorical question.
What makes this so hard to remember and/ or to grasp?

no one has ever claimed that catholic clergy are sinless...

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

You have a great misunderstanding of what Sola Scriptura is.

Sola Scriptura is not "every man as interpreter".

Well, duh...
That IS the point I was making in the OP...
Luther was a scholar and way to intelligent to hand over the important task of scriptural interpretation to random bakers, carvers and farmers...

So what you are positing, God is incapable of speaking with clarity and perspicuity, and normal, everyday people are too dumb to understand scripture. Many of the Apostles were common, everyday people, so where were the scholars that interpreted scripture for them?

Your god is too small.

You didnt understand my post, how can you ever understand scripture??
Redemption doesnt nessisarily have to do with understanding and knowledge, but if one thing it has to do with humility and obediance and thats where the pride of the lone interpreter may and I repeat MAY come in the way of said persons salvation.

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

the whole concept of believing in the Trinity dogma for example makes no sense if one claim to reject theology and just read Scripture, yet most such people do believe in the Trinity, that is highly inconsistent...

 

[amariselle]

Your comment proves Stabats general issue.
How does theological nitpicking help? And why the combative tone in many posts?

In this case: What was the point in your comment? How does it affect the conversation an iota? Do you do deny the deity of Jesus? Do you regard Jesus' word as any less or more significant than God the Father? Do you think Father and Son disagree on it? I cannot think you believe any of those.

So why say it at all? Why then pick a theological nit that has no effect on the authority of what was said, when the question is not WHAT was said, we all read, but interpretation and deduction from it. So why bother to say "It was Jesus, not God", other than try to find one more issue of disagreement?

THAT is the point being made generally by Stabat.
How does theological nitpicking help?
Anyway....we have laboured the point.

The objections many have with some of the core tenants of Catholicism go far beyond "theological nitpicking." Many people do present their concerns respectfully as well.

If the talks on the tone of theological squabbling is a problem, emblazoned as it is with lexical equivalent statements of " I AM RIGHT, CATHOLICS ARE WRONG", then clearly derailing talks about the tone of theological squabbling are even more perverse than the squabbling.

Unfortunately many simply dismiss even well founded or at least well supported concerns this way. Therefore, rather than take the time to respond, they choose to diminish any objections to "I am right, Catholics are wrong", or "I am write, Protestants and all non-Catholics are wrong."

The entire reformation was based on the idea that "every milkmaid" as Luther put it, "the priesthood of all believers" so called, can interpret scripture and have their own doctrine, when freed of the shackles of early church tradition, so as Luther said it "there are now as many doctrines as heads" as 10000 flavours and counting show.

Luther's objections were in regard (primarily) to the sale of "indulgences". The Catholic Church was claiming to be able to sell people a ticket to Heaven, essentially.

So since there can only be one truth, all who push their own version should recognise theirs is only one interpretation - so stating " I think it means" rather than "it means" when so at odds with the early church, is likely to be a more productive discussion.

There are more productive things to do.
So other than repeat I agree with stabat.
I am out of this thread.

Yes, there is only one truth, you are correct. The Catholic Church, however, likewise has its own interpretations. Just because they come from a Papal hierarchy does not mean they are always correct either. History clarifies this point.

This is precisely why people need to read the word of God for themselves and not simply take someone else's word for what it says, not even the Pope's.

God bless

 

[amariselle]

the whole concept of believing in the Trinity dogma for example makes no sense if one claim to reject theology and just read Scripture, yet most such people do believe in the Trinity, that is highly inconsistent...

What about Jesus' baptism by John? How does that not support the "concept" of the Trinity?

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

What about Jesus' baptism by John? How does that not support the "concept" of the Trinity?

Christ got baptized by John, the holy spirit appeared as a dove and God Father spoke in the cloud. That is scripture, to connect said scripture to the concept of God not as three, but as three-&-one is a theological conclusion.

As a believer we cannot escape the construction and articulation of theology.

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

What about Jesus' baptism by John? How does that not support the "concept" of the Trinity?

The "concept" as you call it is theology and interpretation.

 

[FenderTL5]

What about Jesus' baptism by John? How does that not support the "concept" of the Trinity?

It does point to the Trinity.
On the other hand that passage could also be used to support the adoptionism heresy or even Nestorianism.

 

[amariselle]

Over and over again we tell you that there has been and still is fallible and sinful men among us and that includes Our clergy as well and time and time again you forwards this rethorical question.
What makes this so hard to remember and/ or to grasp?

no one has ever claimed that catholic clergy are sinless...

You will recall it was suggested that the hate shown toward the Catholic Church proves that it is indeed the "one true Church", so my question is, what does the hate shown by the Catholic Church (to the point of murdering thousands who would not agree with what it taught) prove about it?

 

[amariselle]

It does point to the Trinity.
On the other hand that passage could also be used to support the adoptionism heresy or even Nestorianism.

Sure, which is why we can't just isolate those verses, but must read the whole Bible and rely on the entirety of Scripture.

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

You will recall it was you who sugested that the hate shown toward the Catholic Church proves that it is indeed the "one true Church", so my question is, what does the hate shown by the Catholic Church (to the point of murdering thousands who would no agree with what it taught) prove about it?

No it was not, it was Gracia who suggested it...

 

[amariselle]

No it was not, it was Gracia who suggested it...

My apologies. I realized that and corrected my post accordingly.

 

[JoeP222w]

Luther was a scholar and way to intelligent to hand over the important task of scriptural interpretation to random bakers, carvers and farmers...

Luther may have illuminated the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, but he was not the creator of it.

You didnt understand my post, how can you ever understand scripture??

You have not explained how I have misunderstood your post. And even if I may have misunderstood your post, that is a huge leap (and offensive) to say that I cannot understand scripture if I don't understand your post. Mighty arrogant of you to use such logic.

Redemption doesnt nessisarily have to do with understanding and knowledge, but if one thing it has to do with humility and obediance

So are you capable of obeying God's law perfectly? Have you been perfectly obedient to God's law? That is what you are implying.

Jesus came to save us because He knows that we are utterly incapable of being obedient to Him, apart from His grace. If you are indeed humble, you will admit that you have not kept God's law perfectly. I have violated God's law in every way, and I am in desperate need of the Savior Jesus Christ.

thats where the pride of the lone interpreter may and I repeat MAY come in the way of said persons salvation.

Lone interpreter, yes, that is a bad thing. But again, that is not the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. You may have not said that specifically, but you certainly implied it, that people are incapable of understanding scripture apart from the authority of the church and scholarship, neither of which are the sole infallible authority. I am not saying that there is no place for the church and scholarship, there is, but they are not the sole infallible authority for the Christian.