I'll make one more reply here, and I'll try to tie it back into venerating the saints. If you'd like, I'd love to have a continuing discussion about this, but it seems a tad off topic in this thread. Perhaps we could pick a place to start another?
Originally Posted by
sunlover1
Scripture is the truth that the church upholds. (Thy Word oh God is truth)
The Word of God is Christ. Christ is the Truth. The Church is the pillar of Christ - we hold up Christ to the world (most fully in the Eucharist). We teach Christ in the homilies, catechisms, evanglism, and (God willing) in our lives. We read Christ in the Scriptures.
But to elevate the Scriptures into that roll - to say / imply that the Church is only here as a vehicle for the Scriptures - is, imho, to elevate the Scriptures too highly. It borders of making them the center when it should be Christ - Truth in all its forms - that is the center. I don't care if that Truth is in Scripture, the mouth of a priest, an icon, a hymn, or a Buddhist monk... If it is Truth it is Christ. The Church is NOT the pillar and ground of the scriptures - it is the pillar and ground of the Truth.
The Scriptures proclaim Truth - but they do NOT exclusively proclaim it. There can be other sources of Truth. Specifically, in EO and RCC ecclesiology, we would say that the fullest revelation of the Truth has been entrusted to the Church, and that this is not exclusively contained in Scripture (though Scripture is a part of it).
Again - it would be as if the verse said "The Church is the pillar and ground of the Scriptures" and someone replied "Romans = Scripture, therefore the Church is the pillar and ground of Romans." Most protestants would find that odd. They'd say Romans is Scripture, but not the only Scripture. Well, Scripture is Truth, but not the only source of Truth. We must be discipled to the Church to recieve the teaching of Truth, and then, from within that teaching, we will have some hope of reading the Scriptures.
I do go to church, but I also measure everything taught there...against Scripture.
Given what we've both admitted about our inability to interpret Scripture, we'd have to say we're checking what we hear in Church against our
interpretation of Scripture. Not that this makes an ethical difference, it's just more accurate and takes out any temptation to say that we somehow "objectively" read Scripture.
Since I cannot infallibly read Scripture, though, I ALSO take what I
think Scripture says and
check that against what the Church teaches me. In other words, if I'm reading the Scripture and I find a passage that, for some reason, looks to me to be teaching that the Son of God was a created being, I don't suddenly judge that the Church is in error and that I should judge the Church "based on what Scripture says." Rather, I take that reading and offer it to the Church and
obediently correct my erroneous understanding for its correct one. I don't critique the tradition. The tradition critiques me. I am IT'S disciple (through the Church). It is not MY disciple.
So it goes both ways. Yes - I will listen to my priest and, far from mindlessly (indeed, much to his annoyance I'm sure), I will pester him if I don't understand something or if it seems (to me) to be out of line with scripture or tradition. If it got bad enough, I might go to the bishop or the holy synod of bishops (if I thought the priest were committing heresy).
At the same time, though, I am a disciple of the Church and I submit my views to it.
Those two things may seem at odds, but only if one is looking for a systematic authority structure. There isn't one. We're more of a family growing together towards God, and this process is organic, but very real. We cannot check the Church against Scripture alone, we must also check ourselves against the Church. We must not think "Is such and such saint in my Church?" but rather "am I still in the same Church as such and such saint?"
Ha. I'm sure my ability is even thinner!
God alone knows. May He have mercy on us both.
But that's because: to the natural man, the things of God are
foolishness. Sheep mentality, that's what I have sometimes... well, often.
Which is precisely why we cannot be expected to interpret scripture on our own and invent doctrine based on that interpretation. Truth must be revealed - it isn't discovered. It's a revealed faith. All we have to do is stay true to that revelation.
I think you'll agree to that, but we'll differ over
where that revelation is contained. I see it as a living revelation contained in the Church. If it were in scripture alone, then we would be without hope, for we would be left with nothing but our own minds to help us deduce doctrine from Scripture. If it isn't alive - if it isn't multifaceted and contained in the voices of living people - then we have no hope of finding it. We would be the blind leading the blind.
But I am not expected to understand the things of God apart from
His help. We sheep hear His voice.
Yes. And this is why the Holy Spirit gives us the Church and preserves Holy Tradition. The Holy Spirit cannot contradict itself. What was true in the 2nd century is true today. If the Church cannot die, then it remains only to find that great tradition which has persisted from scripture on to today and to submit ourselves to it - no small task, but one well worth undertaking.
We arent told to leave our brain at the door though
I know you meant that as a joke (and I take it as good natured), but I honestly don't see it as that strong a dichotomy. Yes - we must engage ourselves (including our mind) in the process of discipleship. Blind obedience isn't even really obedience - it's just nonconfrontational disinterest. True obedience requires one to engage the mind and bend it to go a new direction.
It's a process. Discipleship is a process and a parternship - a relationship. It requires two people, both engaged, one obedient, the other qualified to teach (having recieved the revelation of God). Slowly but surely, the one being catechized can aquire the mind of the Church.
I dont think it odd that we'd be expected to study and show ourselves
approved, so that we need not be ashamed. Rightly dividing the
Word of truth is emphasized as well.
First, I do support reading the scripture, but the command to "rightly divide the word of truth" is directed
to a bishop... namely Timothy. It is those who have been placed to keep things in order (to oversee, or bishop, the Church) and to teach the word (to rightly divide the word of truth) to whom the Church disciples itself.
I don't see lay people as being responsible to divide the word of truth. We are responsible to be familiar with it, but I don't have to come up with an interpretation of it. Rather, I recieve the correct understanding of it, and disciple myself to it.
But bottom line is to love God
and love our neighbor! Shoot, we (ANY of us) are so far off the
target it's a joke. Do your best, let God live in you and
through you, and help encourage others so they can grow and
blossom in Christ as well.
Amen. Let us work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us both to will and to do for HIS good pleasure.
One faith, one baptism, one Lord. I love Ephesians.
I think all Christians follow Scripture in light of what you call tradition.
To varying degrees. Take, for example, this topic of praying to the saints. It is a practice of tremendous antiquity, which recieved universal acceptance in the Church from
at least the mid 2nd century up to the 16th. That is as traditional a practice as one is likely to find. Yet here it is in dispute, not on the basis of scripture (no scripture specifically forbids the practice) but rather on things people reason from Scripture.
If all Christians followed tradition, they'd pray for the saints intercessions as the saints are PART of that one Body, One Lord, One Faith - One Church. For God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. This is the tradition. Yet there are many Christians who don't. In so much as they don't, the don't follow tradition.
There are many, you can find them on these boards easily enough, who reject the resurrection, or the Trinity, or some facet of the Incarnation, or a few books of Scripture, or the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or apostolic succession - all of these are part of a universal and great tradition of tremendous antiquity. Many who call themselves Christian deny these teachings.
So there
are controversies which tradition does speak to.
I do agree, though, that on some level all people follow
A tradition. The question is which one (EO, RCC, Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist, etc) and what those traditions share / disagree on.
It doesnt say undiscipled. It says unlearned and unstable.
The unstable part is interesting - I wonder if one must be both unlearned AND unstable. I take it to be more of a dual-adjective. Those who are unlearned ARE unstable.
We must think here about what Peter would say "learned" to. We know that the Apostles had no great love of the pagan academics - platonic dualism and the Greek theories of philosophy are the very "wisdom" that stumbles against the cross and the vain "philosophy" and "empty reasoning" we are warned against.
Instead, I take this to mean "unlearned in the Church." That is to say - someone new to Christianity who doesn't know where the pitfalls and heresies are. Someone impressionable. Someone untaught. Unlearned. Undiscipled. Uncatechized. You could put any number of synonyms in there... the point is a person who is reading the scriptures outside the safety net and discipleship of the Holy Tradition is fully capable of twisting them to their own destruction.
One can be discipled and still be unstable and unlearned,
Only if the discipleing is unsuccessful or...
depending on who's 'discipling' them.
Bingo. What tradition? That's the question. Not "tradition v scripture" but "who's doing the discipling?"
The other side of this is to remember that merely claiming to BE part of a tradition doesn't make one a part of it. Bishops can be fallible in EO and RCC theology. So we don't check our brain at the door. But we must engage with the tradition with an eye to obeying it, not an eye to judging it.
This passage is speaking of God's wonderful patience so that men be saved, and goes on to say, YOU, be careful not to be led away with the error of the wicked.
Yes, which is precisely why I refuse to abandon prayer to the saints. I will not be led away by these teachers from outside the tradition I've recieved, and I will never stop running to the Church to hear the Truth.
I think you
may misunderstand this verse to mean
not to try to understand Scripture. We naturally need to try
to understand Scripture if we're told to study it and rightly divide it.
It's actually speaking to where prophecy came FROM..
no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the prophecy came not in old timed by the will of man:
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
I see that prophecy is not of private interpretation because it was not of private revelation. God didn't deliver the prophecy to the saints alone, but rather the prophecy was delivered by God, and so it must be the community of God which interprets and understands it.
Praise God, He will lead us into all truth. Like I said, I always test against Scripture, as the noble bereans did.
But they did NOT pick up the Scriptures and discern the Gospel there. They were first taught by Paul, and then engaged in that Truth within the Scriptures and Paul's teaching, submitting to and being enriched by both. There is no dichotomy between Scripture and Tradition. They are part of one another - part of a more cohesive whole.
If God led the 2nd C. Church into all Truth, would that Truth be different from the Truth of the 21st C. Church? I'm not certain that you differ from the 2nd century (outside of sola scriptura, I don't much of anything about you), so this is a genuinely "academic" question. IF we accept that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all Truth, does that Truth change or contradict itself? Doesn't that, then, FORCE us into the Tradition - into heeding it?
May God open the eyes of our understanding!!
sunlover
Amen.
In Christ,
Macarius
" It seems wierd to try and take a part of tradition outside of its context and use it to condemn other parts of that context.
We can "Turn It Around" for our Children's sake.......
