Is SOLO Scriptura Scriptural?

[Dorothea]

We simply believe differently. We're not out here purposefully lying to each other to lead each other astray.

To a certain extent, this is true, except for the example I made in my last post. The problem is that those who interpret privately what they believe the Scriptures are saying are usually wrong because they have not humbled themselves and adhered to the teachings of the Apostles and their successors (taught by the Apostles) who interpreted what the Scriptures meant nearly 2000 years ago. I would think it would be imperative to those who believe differently that they would want the complete, fullness of the faith and understand what the scriptures originally were interpreted to mean. Now, having said all that, I DO NOT believe anybody here or any of my Prostestant friends are not Christians or are terrible people. I believe you all to be people who love God and worship Him the way you understand and believe. It's just unfortunate that the beliefs aren't all in line with the first Church. Wouldn't that be nice?

 

[racer]

Please tell us how something can be more clearly stated than this:

In other words, in respect of His divine presence we always have Christ; in respect of His presence in the flesh it was rightly said to the disciples, 'Me ye will not have always.' In this respect the Church enjoyed His presence only for a few days: now it possesses Him by faith, without seeing Him with the eyes." (Augustine, Lectures on the Gospel of John, 50:13)

We possess him by faith WITHOUT SEEING HIM. Rules out physical/literal/corporeal REAL presence. If you guys want to talk symbolic, metaphorical, spiritual, we can go there. But, He is not here in the flesh.

 

[Trento]

Believe what you want. You're delusional as I have demonstrated.

I guess we have a bunch of delusional Protestant Scholars here.



1) Otto W. Heick, A History of Christian Thought, vol.1, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, 221-222:

• The Post-Apostolic Fathers and . . . almost all the Fathers of the ancient Church . . . impress one with their natural and unconcerned realism. To them the Eucharist was in some sense the body and blood of Christ.

2) Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., rev. by Robert T. Handy, NY: Scribners, 1970, 90-91:

• By the middle of the 2nd century, the conception of a real presence of Christ in the Supper was wide-spread . . . The essentials of the 'Catholic' view were already at hand by 253.

3) Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, v.3, A.D. 311-600, rev. 5th ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rep. 1974, orig. 1910, 492, 500, 507:

• The doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not a subject of theological controversy . . . . till the time of Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth century . . . In general, this period, . . . was already very strongly inclined toward the doctrine of transubstantiation, and toward the Greek and Roman sacrifice of the mass, which are inseparable in so far as a real sacrifice requires the real presence of the victim......
  [Augustine] at the same time holds fast the real presence of Christ in the Supper . . . He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements.

Note: Schaff had just for two pages (pp.498-500) shown how St. Augustine spoke of symbolism in the Eucharist as well, but he honestly admits that the great Father accepted the Real Presence "at the same time." This is precisely what I would argue. Catholics have a reasonable explanation for the "symbolic" utterances, which are able to be harmonized with the Real Presence, but Protestants, who maintain that Augustine was a Calvinist or Zwingian in his Eucharistic views must ignore the numerous references to an explicit Real Presence in Augustine, and of course this is objectionable scholarship.

• 
  Augustine . . . on the other hand, he calls the celebration of the communion 'verissimum sacrificium' of the body of Christ. The church, he says, offers ('immolat') to God the sacrifice of thanks in the body of Christ. [City of God, 10,20]

4) J.D. Douglas, ed., The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, rev. ed., 1978, 245 [a VERY hostile source!]:

• 
  The Fathers . . . [believed] that the union with Christ given and confirmed in the Supper was as real as that which took place in the incarnation of the Word in human flesh.

5) F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd ed., 1983, 475-476, 1221:

• 
  That the Eucharist conveyed to the believer the Body and Blood of Christ was universally accepted from the first . . . Even where the elements were spoken of as 'symbols' or 'antitypes' there was no intention of denying the reality of the Presence in the gifts . . . In the Patristic period there was remarkably little in the way of controversy on the subject . . . The first controversies on the nature of the Eucharistic Presence date from the earlier Middle Ages. In the 9th century Paschasius Radbertus raised doubts as to the identity of Christ's Eucharistic Body with His Body in heaven, but won practically no support. Considerably greater stir was provoked in the 11th century by the teaching of Berengar, who opposed the doctrine of the Real Presence. He retracted his opinion, however, before his death in 1088 . . . It was also widely held from the first that the Eucharist is in some sense a sacrifice, though here again definition was gradual. The suggestion of sacrifice is contained in much of the NT language . . . the words of institution, 'covenant,' 'memorial,' 'poured out,' all have sacrificial associations. In early post-NT times the constant repudiation of carnal sacrifice and emphasis on life and prayer at Christian worship did not hinder the Eucharist from being described as a sacrifice from the first . . .
  From early times the Eucharistic offering was called a sacrifice in virtue of its immediate relation to the sacrifice of Christ.

Berengar is the first Christian of any prominence at all that we know of who denied the Real Presence. In the subsequent period we have the Cathari and Albigensian heresies who did the same, and John Wycliffe, whose view was similar to Calvin's. Hardly notable exceptions to the extraordinary unanimity of all the other great Christians up to 1517!
But - I note in passing - anti-Catholics like Dave Hunt will go to the amazing extent of embracing the Albigensians as Christian brothers, in order to find a Christian "church" which runs counter to the Catholic (or Orthodox) Church in this period. These heretics were Manichaean-type dualists who believed that flesh and material creation were evil and that "Christ was an angel with a phantom body who, consequently, did not suffer or rise again." They rejected the sacraments, hell, the resurrection of the body, and condemned marriage. (Ibid., p.31) Yet Dave Hunt is ready to accept them as Christian brothers before he will offer the right hand of fellowship and the title of "Christian" to a Catholic like myself! A prime example of irrational anti-Catholicism if ever there was one!



6) Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 146-147, 166-168, 170, 236-237:

• By the date of the Didache [anywhere from about 60 to 160, depending on the scholar]. . . the application of the term 'sacrifice' to the Eucharist seems to have been quite natural, together with the identification of the Christian Eucharist as the 'pure offering' commanded in Malachi 1:11 . . . The Christian liturgies were already using similar language about the offering of the prayers, the gifts, and the lives of the worshipers, and probably also about the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, so that the sacrificial interpretation of the death of Christ never lacked a liturgical frame of reference . . .
  . . . the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, which did not become the subject of controversy until the ninth century. The definitive and precise formulation of the crucial doctrinal issues concerning the Eucharist had to await that controversy and others that followed even later. This does not mean at all, however, that the church did not yet have a doctrine of the Eucharist; it does mean that the statements of its doctrine must not be sought in polemical and dogmatic treatises devoted to sacramental theology. It means also that the effort to cross-examine the fathers of the second or third century about where they stood in the controversies of the ninth or sixteenth century is both silly and futile . . .
  Yet it does seem 'express and clear' that no orthodox father of the second or third century of whom we have record declared the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic (although Clement and Origen came close to doing so) or specified a process of substantial change by which the presence was effected (although Ignatius and Justin came close to doing so). Within the limits of those excluded extremes was the doctrine of the real presence . . .
  The theologians did not have adequate concepts within which to formulate a doctrine of the real presence that evidently was already believed by the church even though it was not yet taught by explicit instruction or confessed by creeds . . .
  Liturgical evidence suggests an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, whose relation to the sacrifices of the Old testament was one of archetype to type, and whose relation to the sacrifice of Calvary was one of 're-presentation,' just as the bread of the Eucharist 're-presented' the body of Christ . . . the doctrine of the person of Christ had to be clarified before there could be concepts that could bear the weight of eucharistic teaching . . .
  Theodore [c.350-428] set forth the doctrine of the real presence, and even a theory of sacramental transformation of the elements, in highly explicit language . . . 'At first it is laid upon the altar as a mere bread and wine mixed with water, but by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into body and blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment.' [Hom. catech. 16,36] these and similar passages in Theodore are an indication that the twin ideas of the transformation of the eucharistic elements and the transformation of the communicant were so widely held and so firmly established in the thought and language of the church that everyone had to acknowledge them.
  

7) J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1978, 447, provides this statement on the heels of Augustine's Ennar 98:

• 
  One could multiply texts like these which show Augustine taking for granted the traditional identification of the elements with the sacred body and blood. There can be no doubt that he [Augustine] shared the realism held by almost all of his contemporaries and predecessors.

8) Carl Volz, Faith and Practice in the Early Church, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983, 107:

• 
  Early Christians were convinced that in some way Christ was actually present in the consecrated elements of bread and wine.

9

) Maurice Wiles and Mark Santar, Documents in Early Christian Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1975, 173:

• 
  Finally, John Chrysostom and Augustine explore the social connotation of participation in the Eucharist: the body of Christ is not only what lies on the altar, it is also the body of the faithful

 

[racer]

To a certain extent, this is true, except for the example I made in my last post. The problem is that those who interpret privately what they believe the Scriptures are saying are usually

Those who refuse to acknowledge the fact that they "privately interpret" are in a perpetual state of denial and really are in no position to argue or debate these matters. They are certainly in no position to assume they know more than those who are confident that they can trust God as well as can any church and to differing extents follow their personal judgement. I will be judged according to "my" beliefs and actions, not according to what any church teaches or does.

 

[racer]

I take that back, sorta. There are some Evangelical Protestants who do deceive their fellow Orthodox Christians in other countries when they go there to evangelize and because of language and different understands and forms of wording for their Christian beliefs, sometimes they convince these life-long Orthodox that they haven't been "saved" and end up converting them. So, deception does happen, I'm afraid.

You truly believe their intent is to deceive? You believe that they "lie" to those whom they think know no better? You believe that they don't "believe" what they tell those to whom they are witnessing to be true?

 

[Thekla]

Not if you understand the terminology in the non-modern understanding, but as it was understood at the time./quote]
and, it is assumed by or asserted by those who agree that those who don't agree just don't understand. That's ridiculous. There is no room for discussion when taking into account some the very explicit statements provided.

I am explaining an older conceptual basis that has been lost. The quote I gave indicates the interpenetration I referred to; this description of interpenetration is explicit.

I am sorry that I have offended you, as this is not my intention. But I do know that in this era scholars are sometimes given to anachronism in their approach. Otherwise, why would they not footnote terminology, like symbol, that has a different meaning in ancient use ? The same misunderstandings happen cross-culturally still in this era. If we do not understand another culture in the same century, how can we assume to understand cross-culturally and across the span of history ?

Which does not imply or affirm the "Real Presence," unless you concede that Spiritual is as real as Physical and the Real Presence is a "spiritual" presence and not corporeal.

It is both; the spiritual is present in the physical and transforms or in some way affects the created.

Simply stating this does not make it fact. There are people much more knowledgeable and intelligent than I who have drawn the same conclusions as have I. So, implying that disagreement results from ignorance or lack of understanding is not a sufficient argument.

I have tried to explain; my explanation was not intended as an accusation. This is my failure, and I am loathe to continue here for this. It saddens me.

So, what you presume I take the texts of the fathers and skim through, point my finger and magically find these comments? No, I found them by reading what the fathers wrote in context. Just because this is all I post, that does not mean that's all I've read.

I mean to read the entire body of a persons work, with a mind to how they understood in their culture and era. To read all of Shakespeare gives one a better understanding than to read some of Shakespeare. To read him with the understanding of his own era (the reason for footnotes in most modern editions of his plays) gives an even fuller understanding.

 

[racer]

I guess we have a bunch of delusional Protestant Scholars here.




1) Otto W. Heick, A History of Christian Thought, vol.1, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, 221-222:

• The Post-Apostolic Fathers and . . . almost all the Fathers of the ancient Church . . . impress one with their natural and unconcerned realism. To them the Eucharist was in some sense the body and blood of Christ.

2) Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., rev. by Robert T. Handy, NY: Scribners, 1970, 90-91:

• By the middle of the 2nd century, the conception of a real presence of Christ in the Supper was wide-spread . . . The essentials of the 'Catholic' view were already at hand by 253.

3) Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, v.3, A.D. 311-600, rev. 5th ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rep. 1974, orig. 1910, 492, 500, 507:

• The doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not a subject of theological controversy . . . . till the time of Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth century . . . In general, this period, . . . was already very strongly inclined toward the doctrine of transubstantiation, and toward the Greek and Roman sacrifice of the mass, which are inseparable in so far as a real sacrifice requires the real presence of the victim......
  [Augustine] at the same time holds fast the real presence of Christ in the Supper . . . He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements.

Note: Schaff had just for two pages (pp.498-500) shown how St. Augustine spoke of symbolism in the Eucharist as well, but he honestly admits that the great Father accepted the Real Presence "at the same time." This is precisely what I would argue. Catholics have a reasonable explanation for the "symbolic" utterances, which are able to be harmonized with the Real Presence, but Protestants, who maintain that Augustine was a Calvinist or Zwingian in his Eucharistic views must ignore the numerous references to an explicit Real Presence in Augustine, and of course this is objectionable scholarship.

• 
  Augustine . . . on the other hand, he calls the celebration of the communion 'verissimum sacrificium' of the body of Christ. The church, he says, offers ('immolat') to God the sacrifice of thanks in the body of Christ. [City of God, 10,20]

4) J.D. Douglas, ed., The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, rev. ed., 1978, 245 [a VERY hostile source!]:

• 
  The Fathers . . . [believed] that the union with Christ given and confirmed in the Supper was as real as that which took place in the incarnation of the Word in human flesh.

5) F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd ed., 1983, 475-476, 1221:

• 
  That the Eucharist conveyed to the believer the Body and Blood of Christ was universally accepted from the first . . . Even where the elements were spoken of as 'symbols' or 'antitypes' there was no intention of denying the reality of the Presence in the gifts . . . In the Patristic period there was remarkably little in the way of controversy on the subject . . . The first controversies on the nature of the Eucharistic Presence date from the earlier Middle Ages. In the 9th century Paschasius Radbertus raised doubts as to the identity of Christ's Eucharistic Body with His Body in heaven, but won practically no support. Considerably greater stir was provoked in the 11th century by the teaching of Berengar, who opposed the doctrine of the Real Presence. He retracted his opinion, however, before his death in 1088 . . . It was also widely held from the first that the Eucharist is in some sense a sacrifice, though here again definition was gradual. The suggestion of sacrifice is contained in much of the NT language . . . the words of institution, 'covenant,' 'memorial,' 'poured out,' all have sacrificial associations. In early post-NT times the constant repudiation of carnal sacrifice and emphasis on life and prayer at Christian worship did not hinder the Eucharist from being described as a sacrifice from the first . . .
  From early times the Eucharistic offering was called a sacrifice in virtue of its immediate relation to the sacrifice of Christ.

Berengar is the first Christian of any prominence at all that we know of who denied the Real Presence. In the subsequent period we have the Cathari and Albigensian heresies who did the same, and John Wycliffe, whose view was similar to Calvin's. Hardly notable exceptions to the extraordinary unanimity of all the other great Christians up to 1517!
But - I note in passing - anti-Catholics like Dave Hunt will go to the amazing extent of embracing the Albigensians as Christian brothers, in order to find a Christian "church" which runs counter to the Catholic (or Orthodox) Church in this period. These heretics were Manichaean-type dualists who believed that flesh and material creation were evil and that "Christ was an angel with a phantom body who, consequently, did not suffer or rise again." They rejected the sacraments, hell, the resurrection of the body, and condemned marriage. (Ibid., p.31) Yet Dave Hunt is ready to accept them as Christian brothers before he will offer the right hand of fellowship and the title of "Christian" to a Catholic like myself! A prime example of irrational anti-Catholicism if ever there was one!




6) Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 146-147, 166-168, 170, 236-237:

• By the date of the Didache [anywhere from about 60 to 160, depending on the scholar]. . . the application of the term 'sacrifice' to the Eucharist seems to have been quite natural, together with the identification of the Christian Eucharist as the 'pure offering' commanded in Malachi 1:11 . . . The Christian liturgies were already using similar language about the offering of the prayers, the gifts, and the lives of the worshipers, and probably also about the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, so that the sacrificial interpretation of the death of Christ never lacked a liturgical frame of reference . . .
  . . . the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, which did not become the subject of controversy until the ninth century. The definitive and precise formulation of the crucial doctrinal issues concerning the Eucharist had to await that controversy and others that followed even later. This does not mean at all, however, that the church did not yet have a doctrine of the Eucharist; it does mean that the statements of its doctrine must not be sought in polemical and dogmatic treatises devoted to sacramental theology. It means also that the effort to cross-examine the fathers of the second or third century about where they stood in the controversies of the ninth or sixteenth century is both silly and futile . . .
  Yet it does seem 'express and clear' that no orthodox father of the second or third century of whom we have record declared the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic (although Clement and Origen came close to doing so) or specified a process of substantial change by which the presence was effected (although Ignatius and Justin came close to doing so). Within the limits of those excluded extremes was the doctrine of the real presence . . .
  The theologians did not have adequate concepts within which to formulate a doctrine of the real presence that evidently was already believed by the church even though it was not yet taught by explicit instruction or confessed by creeds . . .
  Liturgical evidence suggests an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, whose relation to the sacrifices of the Old testament was one of archetype to type, and whose relation to the sacrifice of Calvary was one of 're-presentation,' just as the bread of the Eucharist 're-presented' the body of Christ . . . the doctrine of the person of Christ had to be clarified before there could be concepts that could bear the weight of eucharistic teaching . . .
  Theodore [c.350-428] set forth the doctrine of the real presence, and even a theory of sacramental transformation of the elements, in highly explicit language . . . 'At first it is laid upon the altar as a mere bread and wine mixed with water, but by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into body and blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment.' [Hom. catech. 16,36] these and similar passages in Theodore are an indication that the twin ideas of the transformation of the eucharistic elements and the transformation of the communicant were so widely held and so firmly established in the thought and language of the church that everyone had to acknowledge them.
  

7) J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1978, 447, provides this statement on the heels of Augustine's Ennar 98:

• 
  One could multiply texts like these which show Augustine taking for granted the traditional identification of the elements with the sacred body and blood. There can be no doubt that he [Augustine] shared the realism held by almost all of his contemporaries and predecessors.

8) Carl Volz, Faith and Practice in the Early Church, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983, 107:

• 
  Early Christians were convinced that in some way Christ was actually present in the consecrated elements of bread and wine.

9


) Maurice Wiles and Mark Santar, Documents in Early Christian Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1975, 173:

• 
  Finally, John Chrysostom and Augustine explore the social connotation of participation in the Eucharist: the body of Christ is not only what lies on the altar, it is also the body of the faithful

Trento, I've exposed your misrepresentations before. Nobody reads all that jargon you post. These men do not blelieve what you are implying--IF THEY DID THEY'D BE ROMAN CATHOLIC.

We know they're not Roman Catholic why? Because they openly state or stated that they are protestant. We don't have to ponder their teachings and determine to what faith they belonged. We know because they say so. St. Augustine, St. Ireneaus, St. Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, etc . . . never relegated themselves to either group.

 

[racer]

I mean to read the entire body of a persons work, with a mind to how they understood in their culture and era. To read all of Shakespeare gives one a better understanding than to read some of Shakespeare. To read him with the understanding of his own era (the reason for footnotes in most modern editions of his plays) gives an even fuller understanding.

thekla, if this is true, then the better part of Christianity is hell bound. We all might as well shove our heads in the sand and poke our butts in the air and fly by the seat of our pants. According to Orthodox and Catholics we're not to trust personal/private interpretation (though how anyone can possibly believe they are exempt), not knowledgeable enough to correctly understand, nor can your average layperson ever read ALL of what ALL the church fathers, church councils, priests, bishops, popes, whatever taught or wrote.

So, let's all just flip a coin when we choose a church.

It's amusing how for so long the RCs or Orthodox would quote ECFs and assume that those who knew no better would never read up on the quote or the father. They assumed that we'd always just accept what was claimed and never check for urselves. It's been okay for all RCs and EOs to quote out-of-context but when their assertions are refuted, they accuse others of not knowing what they are talking about because they're quoting out of context.

 

[Thekla]

Not getting your point.

Again, symbolon means: the part makes present the whole, where there is an interpenetration of the two elements that make up the symbol.

The union of both, however, - of the drink and of the Word, - is called the Eucharist, a praiseworthy and excellent gift.

Here, Word (capitalized) refers to the pre-eternal Logos (Christ) and is described as being in "union" with the drink (wine).

Those who partake of it in faith are sanctified in body and in soul. By the will of the Father, the divine mixture, man, is mystically united to the Spirit and to the Word.",

The "divine mixture" is the created penetrated by the spiritual -- thus the mixture - which sanctifies those who partake (consume it) in faith.

So, the spiritual penetrates the physical, the physical contains the spiritual but appears the same -- both retain their "character" and by the will of the Father one is "mystically united to the Spirit and the Word (Logos/Christ).

The term for this interpenetrated thing is "symbol".

 

[Thekla]

thekla, if this is true, then the better part of Christianity is hell bound. We all might as well shove our heads in the sand and poke our butts in the air and fly by the seat of our pants. According to Orthodox and Catholics we're not to trust personal/private interpretation (though how anyone can possibly believe they are exempt), not knowledgeable enough to correctly understand, nor can your average layperson ever read ALL of what ALL the church fathers, church councils, priests, bishops, popes, whatever taught or wrote.

So, let's all just flip a coin when we choose a church.

It's amusing how for so long the RCs or Orthodox would quote ECFs and assume that those who knew no better would never read up on the quote or the father. They assumed that we'd always just accept what was claimed and never check for urselves. It's been okay for all RCs and EOs to quote out-of-context but when their assertions are refuted, they accuse others of not knowing what they are talking about because they're quoting out of context.

If you honestly think that's what my motivation is, and that I am making accusations instead of explanations, then there is no point for me to continue.

God bless +

 

[racer]

If you honestly think that's what my motivation is, and that I am making accusations instead of explanations, then there is no point for me to continue.

God bless +

Actually, I'm out numbered and tired!!1 Gotta' go fo now, will start fresh tomorrow.

No, I don't think that you are trying to be degrading or purposefully insulting. I just can not understand the argument made against private/personal interpretation by people who are clearing exercising both. I do not believe that God has made Christian doctrine so convoluted that only a Philidephia Lawyer can understand.

 

[chestertonrules]

Actually, I'm out numbered and tired!!1 Gotta' go fo now, will start fresh tomorrow.

No, I don't think that you are trying to be degrading or purposefully insulting. I just can not understand the argument made against private/personal interpretation by people who are clearing exercising both. I do not believe that God has made Christian doctrine so convoluted that only a Philidephia Lawyer can understand.

To roughly quote Chesterton, it's no use asking for a simple key. What matters when it comes to keys is whether or not they open the door.

 

[Dorothea]

Those who refuse to acknowledge the fact that they "privately interpret" are in a perpetual state of denial and really are in no position to argue or debate these matters. They are certainly in no position to assume they know more that those who are confident that they can trust God as well as can any church and to differing extents follow their personal judgement. I will be judged according to "my" beliefs and actions, not according to what any church teaches or does.

Are you implying that I interpret privately? Well, I can tell you honestly that I don't. I ask my Spiritual Father if I am confused by a verse. But usually the footnotes explain if I don't get it. So, I adhere to those who first interpreted the Bible, not my own interpretations because I know that I am not the Apostles or the successors who learned at their knees. They certainly know better what everything means in the Bible better than I or anyone here. So, why not go with what has already been translated and interpreted as the truth from the beginning that depart from this and try to go it alone on your own belief of what verses mean? I am certainly in no position or the authority to do so. And you are right, I do not know more than you. Probably less. But neither of us know better than the Apostles and their successors who originally interpreted Scripture. So, better to go with their interpretations than my faulty own.

 

[Dorothea]

You truly believe their intent is to deceive? You believe that they "lie" to those whom they think know no better? You believe that they don't "believe" what they tell those to whom they are witnessing to be true?

Why would evangelical Christians go to a country which is in the majority Christian, and go to preach the Gospel to Orthodox Christians (say in Russia)? Why are they trying to teach Christians about Christ when they already know?

 

[bbbbbbb]

Why would evangelical Christians go to a country which is in the majority Christian, and go to preach the Gospel to Orthodox Christians (say in Russia)? Why are they trying to teach Christians about Christ when they already know?

Seven decades of heavy atheistic teaching from the Communist Party of Russia virtually eliminated any and all knowledge of religion of any type. To assert that all Russians are well-versed in Orthodoxy is as realistic as saying that all Chinese are observant Bhuddists.

 

[Dorothea]

Seven decades of heavy atheistic teaching from the Communist Party of Russia virtually eliminated any and all knowledge of religion of any type. To assert that all Russians are well-versed in Orthodoxy is as realistic as saying that all Chinese are observant Bhuddists.

Not saying all, but many kept their beliefs through catacomb churches.

 

[Thekla]

Seven decades of heavy atheistic teaching from the Communist Party of Russia virtually eliminated any and all knowledge of religion of any type. To assert that all Russians are well-versed in Orthodoxy is as realistic as saying that all Chinese are observant Bhuddists.

Not quite. The Orthodox Church was actively persecuted, but not absent.

My friend grew up in the USSR, and recounted what the state teachings were like. But people knew of the Orthodox Church. As one priest told me (he went there to help, as priests were in short supply), the state propaganda (including on the Church) was easy to spot. Most people had no difficulty identifying it, and were able to adjust their thinking accordingly.

After the 'loosening' of restrictions, there was much headway to make with initially few resources. But progress was definitely made, and is ongoing.

 

[Livindesert]

thekla, if this is true, then the better part of Christianity is hell bound. We all might as well shove our heads in the sand and poke our butts in the air and fly by the seat of our pants. According to Orthodox and Catholics we're not to trust personal/private interpretation (though how anyone can possibly believe they are exempt), not knowledgeable enough to correctly understand, nor can your average layperson ever read ALL of what ALL the church fathers, church councils, priests, bishops, popes, whatever taught or wrote.

So, let's all just flip a coin when we choose a church.


It's amusing how for so long the RCs or Orthodox would quote ECFs and assume that those who knew no better would never read up on the quote or the father. They assumed that we'd always just accept what was claimed and never check for urselves. It's been okay for all RCs and EOs to quote out-of-context but when their assertions are refuted, they accuse others of not knowing what they are talking about because they're quoting out of context.

Qutoed for truth Even deciding to let someone teach you is a personal interpitation itself which many fail to recognize.

 

[racer]

To roughly quote Chesterton, it's no use asking for a simple key. What matters when it comes to keys is whether or not they open the door.

Was Chesterton a Theologian?

 

[Thekla]

thekla, if this is true, then the better part of Christianity is hell bound. We all might as well shove our heads in the sand and poke our butts in the air and fly by the seat of our pants. According to Orthodox and Catholics we're not to trust personal/private interpretation (though how anyone can possibly believe they are exempt), not knowledgeable enough to correctly understand, nor can your average layperson ever read ALL of what ALL the church fathers, church councils, priests, bishops, popes, whatever taught or wrote.

I don't think that is what it means at all.

In this thread, I have been trying to explain that some of the terminology in the ECF quotes is no longer understood in the same way.

As a parallel, I used the example of "humor" in Medieval vs. modern understanding. The modern use is much narrower, and does not refer to the balance of all four bodily humors resulting in many different temperaments one of which could be 'funny'.

Symbol (in the ECF quote you cited) may be the same word we use now, but it had then a different conceptual ground.

As for personal interpretation, it is also a matter of what erroneous interpretations were embraced along the way; all 'major heresies' (Arianism, Nestorianism, etc.) were supported using scripture. So there is a "danger". Further, there is a matter of knowledge (how much of the Holy Scriptures one has read, how deeply they have been studied and for how long) and spiritual maturity.

So, let's all just flip a coin when we choose a church.

OK

It's amusing how for so long the RCs or Orthodox would quote ECFs and assume that those who knew no better would never read up on the quote or the father. They assumed that we'd always just accept what was claimed and never check for urselves. It's been okay for all RCs and EOs to quote out-of-context but when their assertions are refuted, they accuse others of not knowing what they are talking about because they're quoting out of context.

I would prefer that people research for themselves. My involvement here has largely been to clarify definitions.