GraceAnneWinter said:
Well, I for one question the words of my pastor, and make sure that what he says follows the Bible before I practice it. Maybe you should consider questioning the words of your pope, because like my pastor, he is not perfect. Also, if my church is a "man-made sect" then I would have to say your church is also, but I don't think either is man-made, both of course, have sadly been influenced by man and that is why it is important to question the words of other Christians and leaders of our churches.
You've been avoiding my posts... figures..
By what standard do you judge what is "biblical"? Especially when sect has their own spin on what the Bible means!
For example,
Former Fundamentalist seminarian Tim Staples relays his experience at Jimmy Swaggert Bible College: I was amazed to find myself in two classes back to back that taught entirely different positions on the Trinity. The first taught orthodox Trinitarian theology. The second taught that God the Father has a body and God the Holy Spirit has a body. The first class taught that Jesus was the eternal Son of the Father. The second taught that he was the eternal Word who became the Son only at the incarnation. I remember going to lunch with a young lady one day and she was very distraught. She said to me in despair, I thought I knew what I believed about God, but now Im not sure what I believe. (quoted from his testimony, "The Bible Made Me Do It", included in Surprised by Truth, Basilica Press, San Diego, 1994)
Jesus preserved the Church in all truth. The traditions of Fundamentalists are only about 150 years old, and of the earliest Protestants, 500 years old, whereas the teachings of the Catholic Church are 2000 years old. One good source of the works of the early Church fathers is
The History of Christianity by Paul Johnson.
I ask you, who has a better interpretation of Scripture, one who was taught by an Apostle (or a disciple of an Apostle) and whose mother tongue is Greek, and lived in the context of the NT world, or someone who picks up the Bible and (having trusted whoever interpreted it for them into a modern tongue) reads whatever they want from it?
Protestant theologian David W. Bercot, in his book
Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up? (Scroll Publishing Co., 1989) took, what he described as a new look at todays Evangelical Church in light of early Christianity. He denounces false doctrines which reformers introduced such as symbolic baptism, Calvinist predestination, and salvation by faith alone.
In his book,
Common Sense: A New Approach to Understanding Scripture (Scroll Publishing Co., 1992), Bercot says that it is arrogance to reject the early Church Fathers interpretations of the Bible in favor of our own modern-day interpretations: Your quest is to find out how the primitive Church in general understood the New Testament. In other words, what was the course of performance of the first generations of Christians? After you have read enough of their works to have a good feel for their culture, mindset, and overall Christian beliefs, go back and re-read the New Testament. Read it through their pattern of thinking. See what new things you will discover. When youre through, youre free to go back and pick up all of your former beliefs, if you like. But perhaps you never will (p. 165-166). He talked of great Church fathers like Polycarp (A.D.69-155), a disciple of John the Apostle himself. This man, like so many other early Christian leaders, refused to renounce Jesus Christ, and became a martyr for the faith. Men willing to die for the teachings of the Apostles, Bercot argues, would not be likely to corrupt those teachings knowingly.
The Apostle Paul worte to Timothy that the CHURCH is the pillar and bulwark of Truth (1 Timothy 3:15). He wrote to the Ephesians (Ephesians 4:11-13) of the importance of Church leadership and structure
to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. He did not call for the individual interpretation of faith and knowledge, he spoke of UNITY, coming through instructing others. This is why Acts 4:32 tells us that the Christians of the early Church were of one heart and mind.
Are things really like that now?
Is the "fracturation" of Christianity truly the response Jesus was hoping for when He prayed for the unity of all people who would come to believe in Him (John 17:20-23)? I dont think so.
So how has the Bible alone idealogy led to a restoration of the biblical Christian Church as Fundamentalists all claim they have? How has it led to a unity of all believers? Or even the Truth?
The Bible proceeds from the Church, not the other way around.
You keep forgetting, the Bible only exists, thanks to the Catholic Church who preserved her, through whom the Holy Spirit has always worked, and will continue to work until Christ comes again in glory.
You have yet to prove your interpretation of Scripture is correct over the Catholic Churchs or the thousands of other denominations out there.
Basically, Protestant theologies are all based on personal interpretations on the Bible, which the Catholic Church produced. As Vincent of Lerins stated: Here, perhaps, someone may ask: If the canon of the scriptures be perfect and in itself more than suffices for everything, why is it necessary that the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation be joined to it? Because, quite plainly, sacred Scripture, by reason of its own depth, is not accepted by everyone as having one and the same meaning. . . . Thus, because of so many distortions of such various errors, it is highly necessary that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed in accord with the norm of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning (The Notebooks [A.D. 434]).
