Shouldn't The Bible Be Sufficient Enough For Knowledge Of God?

[Secundulus]

But what is needed isn't extra information (Tradition (TM)) but the community in which to learn through mutual dialog with others at different stages in the learning process with different talents and perspectives.

Adding tradition doesn't help - it just means there is more data that I have to make sense of!

What you are suggesting is Tradition. It is just tradition from a different source.

One source of tradition is (or seeks to be) of Apostolic origin.

The other source of tradition is of experiential origin.

Two very different approaches to understanding God's revelation.

 

[ebia]

Well I am heartened to see that you at least believe in a magisterium(teacher). I do dissagree through that all Tradition is bad.

I didn't say that all tradition was bad.

That community that is lived and its teachings are part of that tradition. I mean there certainly are some oral traditions that are apostolic and are to be believed by Christians.

Are there?

Umm the way I see it is this; if extra information was not needed then God would not have given us the extra information and instructed us to use it.

Perhaps he didn't.

Also empirically looking to the practical situation if extra info was not needed then the bible would be self explanatory

That does not follow. Our ability to understand is always fallible, limited and flawed. What scripture lacks isn't more information of the sort delivered by tradition, but tranformed human beings to read it.

I think that demonstrates practically that something outside of scripture like tradition was needed to be used as a interpretive grid and indeed that is how the early Christians used it.

I don't think tradition does what it says on the tin.

What it does is largely replace scripture with another, much less interesting, set of documents and then says 'right we've done the interpreting for you'. All you've really done is given me a different set of documents to interpret, but providing you 'believe' this set of documents that's okay.

...and indeed that is how the early Christians used it.

That depends on what we mean by early and how we interpret history.

 

[ebia]

What you are suggesting is Tradition. It is just tradition from a different source.

If you think that you haven't understood what I've been trying to say.

 

[Jpark]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God? Why do humans continue to seek more answers? I realize that knowledge is a forbearer of human desire but if God wanted us to know more than the Word says about him wouldn't he have written more?

Do you think there are some answers that need not to be known either because we don't need to know or God wants us to know later after all of this is said and done?

Opinions!!!!!

The Bible and the Holy Spirit. If you have the Holy Spirit, you have the mind of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:16).

 

[Emmy]

Dear JamesAH. God gave us 10 Commandments, and Jesus gave us 2 Commandments, and they contain all what God gave us in His 10 Commandments. 1) Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. 2) Love our neighbour, all others, friend or foe, AS we love ourselves. St. Paul describes Love in 1) Corinthians, chapter 13, and God/Jesus mean the selfless love, without any strings attached. When we consider this, we will see that LOVE covers all GOOD deeds and words. It is all God wants from us, easy to remember and straightforward. BUT there is also Jesus, our Saviour, and He paid God`s Holy Law with His Blood, and reconciled us to God. He told us to repent, to exchange our selfish and unloving/uncaring character INTO loving as God wants us to love. Jesus paid the Price and is waiting to help and guide us back to our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and who made us in His image, and wants us to be with Him for ETERNITY. I always thought that is enough for us to know, and to follow sincerely. The only answer I can give, why so many and different ways to follow, is that we all have the same GOAL, but can think of different ways. I say this humbly and with love, Donny. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[Emmy]

Dear JamesAH. God gave us 10 Commandments, and Jesus gave us 2 Commandments, and they contain all what God gave us in His 10 Commandments. 1) Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. 2) Love our neighbour, all others, friend or foe, AS we love ourselves. St. Paul describes Love in 1) Corinthians, chapter 13, and God/Jesus mean the selfless love, without any strings attached. When we consider this, we will see that LOVE covers all GOOD deeds and words. It is all God wants from us, easy to remember and straightforward. BUT there is also Jesus, our Saviour, and He paid God`s Holy Law with His Blood, and reconciled us to God. He told us to repent, to exchange our selfish and unloving/uncaring character INTO loving as God wants us to love. Jesus paid the Price and is waiting to help and guide us back to our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and who made us in His image, and wants us to be with Him for ETERNITY. I always thought that is enough for us to know, and to follow sincerely. The only answer I can give, why so many and different ways to follow, is that we all have the same GOAL, but can think of different ways. I say this humbly and with love, James. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[Anglian]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God? Why do humans continue to seek more answers? I realize that knowledge is a forbearer of human desire but if God wanted us to know more than the Word says about him wouldn't he have written more?

Do you think there are some answers that need not to be known either because we don't need to know or God wants us to know later after all of this is said and done?

Opinions!!!!!

Dear JamesAH,

Why reject any part of what God has revealed to us about Himself? Had He wished to restrict this to a book He would have written it directly. He chose another way, giving us the writings of the fathers, the ancient liturgies and the Councils of the Church. Had He wished us to restrict ourselves to the Bible He would have said so. Nowhere in Holy Scripture does it state what should be in it. Nowhere does it say we should restrict ourselves to it alone.

of course it is a marvellous book and we all learn much; but it is not the first word, neither will it be the last.

peace,

Anglian

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God? Why do humans continue to seek more answers? I realize that knowledge is a forbearer of human desire but if God wanted us to know more than the Word says about him wouldn't he have written more?

Do you think there are some answers that need not to be known either because we don't need to know or God wants us to know later after all of this is said and done?

Opinions!!!!!

We seek more answers because those teaching out of the bible (quite often) lack creativity . it's all in there . some people are just too lazy to find a culturally relevant answer . so the layman seeks their answer elsewhere .

but to answer your question .. no . without the Holy Spirit indwelling . it is just another book .

bless .

 

[sunlover1]

Sure I can certainly say that scripture is enough for us to be acquainted with God(Materiel sufficiency) but what I can't say is that I will always be able to understand scripture without a teacher

Then by all means get yourself a teacher! I have a great teacher!

11It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until 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.

as Acts shows

again, evidently you don't understand the context of that particular situation.
Ebia is trying to "teach" about it in an earlier post.

or also as St. Peter speaks about as he says some things in Pauls writings are hard to understand and the untaught twist them to the their own destruction.

Untaught and unstable
And in the greek it says what?
So now we know that folks will twist Scripture to..
their OWN destruction. (I'm always very cautious
about studying Scripture myself and more so about
trying to teach others. )

So Yes all the materiel is there but that does nto guarantee I am going to understand all of it to come to God and seek proper doctrine, that is why I need a teachers ....

Heck, even WITH a teacher there is no guarantee that we will understand all of it...
Jesus stood face to face with these men and they did not get it.
No better teacher than Jesus I'd say!

Do what you have to do, we are each responsible to know the materials lol

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Evidently God expects you to know how to rightly divide the word of truth...


be blessed
sunlover

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

I'd think so . but also the faith has gone through many changes since then . how can this idea be harmonized with John 5:44?

John 5

44How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

when there are this many tradition at odds with one another . seeking to be approved becomes an exercise in seeking praise from people .

if you did actually succeed in getting this thing done in God's eyes . wouldn't you just be a heretic to everyone else?

 

[Musa80]

The Word comes from Him. He might not have written the books literally by coming down and writing it Himself but all that is in the Word comes from Him so you can say he did write the Bible but not physically.

God is the author of the Word. Those who say otherwise is a heretic.

Relax friend. Don't be so quick to throw out the H word. What I posted was a bit tongue in cheek. Maybe I shoulda used a smiley or something. Of course it is agreed that the Scriptures are inspired, but no God didn't pen even one stroke of them.

P.S. The Bible is the word. The Word is Christ.

 

[Dorothea]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God? Why do humans continue to seek more answers? I realize that knowledge is a forbearer of human desire but if God wanted us to know more than the Word says about him wouldn't he have written more?

Do you think there are some answers that need not to be known either because we don't need to know or God wants us to know later after all of this is said and done?

Opinions!!!!!

I think more is needed to have a relationship with Him and with His Body. Reading of Him in Scripture and learning about Him is not the same as kowning him truly, which we do through prayer. I like this quote from St. Silouan the Athonite (for which his life I'm reading for the past several months...it's over 500 pages lol):

"The Lord does not manifest Himself to the proud soul. All the books in the world will not help the proud soul to know the Lord, for her pride will not make way for the grace of the Holy Spirit, and God is known only through the Holy Spirit.

Enlightened by baptism, people believe in God. But there are some who even know Him. To believe in God is good, but it is more blessed to know God. Nevertheless, those who believe are blessed, too, as the Lord said to Thomas, one of the twelve: 'Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, ad yet have believed.'"

I also like what he says here:

"If we were humble, the Lord in His love would shew us all things, would reveal to us all mysteries, but our trouble is that we are not humble. We puff ourselves up and boast over trifles, and so make both ourselves and others unhappy.

The Lord, though He is merciful, oppresses the soul with hunger on account of her pride, and withholds grace from her until she has learned humility."

According to Saint Silouan, the Lord does reveal more to our humble souls. Just my thoughts. Reading the book on his life and all his letters he wrote so far has been edifying for me.

 

[christianmomof3]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God? Why do humans continue to seek more answers? I realize that knowledge is a forbearer of human desire but if God wanted us to know more than the Word says about him wouldn't he have written more?

Do you think there are some answers that need not to be known either because we don't need to know or God wants us to know later after all of this is said and done?

Opinions!!!!!

I have not read any other replies.
But, no, the Bible is not enough for us to know God.
The Bible can tell us about God, but the Body of Christ is a corporate Body. Not one of us on our own can know all that there is to know about God. Each of us is a member of Christ who has a portion of Christ and to see Him, we need to be built up with other members of the Body of Christ.
One individual Christian who has no contact with others is like the proverbial blind man and the elephant who only knows about the elephant's tail or the frog in the well who only sees a little patch of sky at the top and thinks that is all there is of the sky.
We need the Body to know the Lord.

I am sure there are things we will never know or understand about God because He is beyond our comprehension in many ways, however that does not mean that we should not strive to know Him as best as we can.

 

[Anglian]

How very beautiful it is to read the last two posts, which from different positions say the same thing. Thank you both dear sisters.

peace,

Anglian

 

[Yarddog]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God?
Opinions!!!!!

No. Atheists have the Bible but understand nothing of which is contained within it.

The Holy Spirit is needed for us to know that what is contained within the scriptures is the truth. Even though Christians have the Holy Spirit, we also read the scriptures mostly using our own minds which cannot fully understand the hidden meaning which Jesus gave to the Apostles.

Without the Holy Spirit revealing the true meaning of scripture, the words are just words.

 

[Yeznik]

Shouldn't the Bible be enough for us to know God?

No. Because we know that God reveals Himself outside of Scripture before He reveals Himself inside of Scripture. Meaning God communicated, for example, with the Prophets and Apostles directly then through them the Scriptures were compiled.

Secondly a lot of people come to God without ever reading a word from the Scriptures but yet experiencing God. Generally speaking literacy was something that was advocating in the West within the last several hundred years.

Why do humans continue to seek more answers?

Because humans want to seek a deeper relationship with God.

I realize that knowledge is a forbearer of human desire but if God wanted us to know more than the Word says about him wouldn't he have written more?

The issue is if God is solely and ONLY confined to a book to express Himself than He is no longer God.

Do you think there are some answers that need not to be known either because we don't need to know or God wants us to know later after all of this is said and done?

To some degree I agree with your statement, but I think the general issue for this question comes from Western Christianity in which people are constantly trying to figure out how does Gods mind work.

 

[sunlover1]

I'd think so . but also the faith has gone through many changes since then . how can this idea be harmonized with John 5:44?

John 5

44How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

when there are this many tradition at odds with one another . seeking to be approved becomes an exercise in seeking praise from people .

if you did actually succeed in getting this thing done in God's eyes . wouldn't you just be a heretic to everyone else?

I'm sorry Michael. I am not entirely clear about your question here concerning this particular passage.
He says to study to show ourselves approved unto GOD, not to men. So seeking praise from people isn't our motive or even desire is it?
As far as being considered an heretic to men, once one "knows" God's ways,
heh, who cares what other's think of your beliefs?
Naturally we care how we 'conduct' ourselves and display fruit etc.
But we cannot always please both God AND men... gotta just choose God
(I hope I understood your post, if not, sorry bout that)

Reading of Him in Scripture and learning about Him is not the same as kowning him truly, ...

Ahhhhh, truly there is none like Him, is there?

Thought you might love this song as much as me.
IIRC it was written by Rich Mullins (who was Catholic btw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijAKh_C89UE

"The Lord does not manifest Himself to the proud soul. All the books in the world will not help the proud soul to know the Lord, for her pride will not make way for the grace of the Holy Spirit, and God is known only through the Holy Spirit.

My hands have made both heaven and earth;
they and everything in them are mine.
I, the LORD, have spoken!
"I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts,
who tremble at my word.

Without the Holy Spirit revealing the true meaning of scripture, the words are just words.

Word.
Good to see you Yarddog!

 

[squint]

It is impossible to divide Gods Word from Gods Spirit.

God Himself sanctioned HIS WORD alone:

Isaiah 55:11
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

John the Apostle recorded Jesus stating very similar:

Revelation 2:23
And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

Tradition of men teaches us that GOD MAY DAMN us if we do not each TRANSUBSTANTIATED BREAD or VENERATE a CO-REDEMTRIX or KISS THE FEET OF STATUES.

Some may justify themselves in that effort, while potentially DAMNING others. And some are not interested in playing that game, thinking that we are APPEASING God in that effort, even while hatred of those outside the group(s) DRIPS from the hearts of those who practice such things.

go figure.

s

 

[squint]

2 Chronicles 16:9
For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

Deut 28:26 and becomes carcass of thee to food for every flyer of the heavens, and for beast of the land, and there is none causing trembling.
[Ezekiel 29:17/Reve 19:17]

Reve 19:17 And I perceived one Messenger standing in the sun, and He cries-out in great voice, saying to all the birds, the ones flying in mid-heaven, "hither! be ye being gathered! into the Supper of the Great God. 18 That Ye may be eating fleshes of kings......
[Deut 28:26/Ezekiel 39:17,18]