In addition, while your definition of SS churches must be so wide as to fly [FONT=Arial, sans-serif] a Unitarian Scientology Swedenborgian Episcopalian 747 thru it,
Yes, it is that wide because the application seen in Protestant churches is exactly that wide. Don't like it? Narrow it down in reality, and then maybe I'll think of narrowing the definition I am going to respond to.
That is so absurd that it renders it similar to the shameless insistence of cultist desiring to see what they want. So a Unitarian, or Scientologist or Swedenborgian adherent operates under Scripture being supreme and sufficient as the wholly inspired word of God, as i have described?! Even Episcopalians trend to reject Scripture as that, or do you think the reformers held Scripture to be anything less, or read L. Ron Hubbard? Your insolence is in-credible.
You are using mere dissent from the authority of your church as a common denominator under which anything can be included in order to justify rejecting those who show that it is your church that is in rebellion to Scripture,
almost as much as Rome!
But you aren't going to narrow the reality of SS application down in reality because, due to the way SS is used, you have no authority by which to do so.
More non-sense. Does one need "authority" to define things according to substantiated historical statements, and do i really need to provide such to show that the Reformers were not the likes of Unitarian, or Scientologists or Swedenborgians, which you presume authority to class them with?
Also, with Tradition, only one definition can be correct, and Orthodox and Roman Catholic, contrary to the practice of Protestant relativism, do not consider the other to be equally valid.
There you go again. It is actually liberal Protestantism that is typically closest to Catholicism and which engages in relativism, and your papal cousin said (he
did) that the blood of Christ even makes atheists children of God. Meanwhile, the strongest adherents of SS are in evangelicalism, which rose up to counter doctrinal and moral relativism.
They see themselves as the one Church, while Protestants think the Church can somehow be a divided morass of disorganized people who profess many different faiths.
What blindness is in your glass church. It is actually Catholicism and liberal Protestant churches which impugn the authority of Scripture which is a variegated morass of people who profess many different faiths, as
well testified to.
And do not try to sell me the lie that Protestants have any real unity. When you get down to the dogma of Soteriology, the most key doctrine of the Faith, there is no unity to be had.
And car thieves have a hard time finding a police station. The fact is that apart from mere paper unity and professions, it is those who hold most strongly to Scripture being the wholly inspired accurate word of God that are most unified in core beliefs, while there is room for debate in non-salvific aspects and other things.
Meanwhile, Orthodox Clark Carlton finds,
Orthodoxy is not simply an alternative ecclesiastical structure to the Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church presents a fundamentally different approach to theology, because She possesses a fundamentally different experience of Christ and life in Him. To put it bluntly, she knows a different Christ from that of the Roman Catholic Church.” — Clark Carlton, THE WAY: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, 1997; http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-07-033-b.
And the feeling can be mutual:
Few Catholics realize that Eastern Orthodoxy, especially as represented by Palamite theology, represents a systematic and comprehensive attack upon Catholic doctrine. Catholic and Orthodox theology are not only in opposition to one another in their understanding of God (theology), but also in the various disciplines of philosophy – in Cosmology, Psychology, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Theodicy, and Ethics. They posit radically different views of God, of man, and of the relationship between God and His creation... Over the past 2,000 years there have been many heresies, schisms, and systems of thought comprehensively opposed to Catholicism. But none has carried the potential threat for corruption of all of Catholic dogma which Eastern Orthodoxy represents. — http://www.waragainstbeing.com/partiii
Repeating the claim that the OT Scripture affirms the New Testament doesn't remove the Tradition from the picture, because the Canon of the Old Testament stands in authority over it.
Indeed the OT stands in authority over the claims of tradition, oral preaching purporting to be of God, with even apostolic teaching being subject to examination by Scripture.
But you are avoiding the fact that Scripture provides for the recognition of writings being of God and consequently, provides for recognition of a canon of such. Scripture thus can be said to provide for tradition in this sense.
And there are even two disparate traditions to choose from, the Masoretic Canon of the 5th-6th century and the Septuagint canon of the first few centuries.
The Church used the Septuagint for more than a millenia before Protestants decided that somehow a very well read set of books filled with fulfilled Messianic prophecies and holidays which the Messiah participated in were somehow hidden.
Which is your authorized interpretation no doubt, but the NT refers to both, while the existing copies of the LXX are far far from uniform in contents.
Roman Catholics didn't help the situation by referring to their own canon as the second canon, when it was truly the first canon. The canon stands upon the Authority of the Church, or else the authority of post-Resurrection Jews that rejected the Christ. Guess which one I stand on.
Which canon saw disagreements down thru the centuries and right into Trent, which provided the first indisputable canon after the death of Luther. Yet that of the EO isslightly larger. So you can debate that with your infallible cousin, while the Prot canon has strong ancient support as well.
Nice, you twist Scripture to prove that Christ's prophecy failed and therefore Christ deserved the Cross.
What blatant audacious absurdity! That the church began contrary to your model for assurance of Truth, followed itinerant preachers whom the magisterium rejected but who established their Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, is not a failed prophecy of Christ but a fulfilled one. And it is under your (and Rome's) model for determination and assurance of Truth, in which the historical stewards of Scripture are to be followed, that Christ was held to deserve the Cross!
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, (Matthew 20:18)
You do know that the Church is the one to which the adjective is referring. In Greek writing, that is the only thing to which it can refer, since it is not grammatically attached to God. Changing the grammar of the verse to match your doctrines, rather than changing your doctrines to meet the grammar of the Scripture, is quite deceptive.
That would be wrong, but i was only offering that as one possible alternative, but you are correct here that the subject is the church. However, it is that Pillar and Ground means one true one infallible church having authority over Scripture is also deceptive as if these few words her teach that, nor is a infallible church warranted.
The Church is the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. It is not arrogant to make that claim. It is, in fact, hopeless if it isn't. If the Church is not the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, then there is no hope for man to know God with CERTAINTY. If you cannot say your church is teaching the whole Truth, then you cannot say that you have access to the Truth.
Here you go again. You criticize making a verse to match doctrines, yet "pillar and ground the truth" does not translate into church being the infallible ground or basis for the Truth, or infallible authority on the Truth, or whatever you want to make it read in order to
effectively place the church over Scripture (since it only authoritatively consists of and means what she says).
Instead your interpretation is driven by your premise that the church must be infallible in order for souls to know God with CERTAINTY, and to be teaching the whole Truth. Yet God always provided what was necessary for salvation and growth in grace, though more grace was later given there are things yet to be revealed, (1Co. 13:12; 1Jn. 3:2; 2Co. 12:4) and infallibility was not necessary for Scripture for souls to know God (and what was of God) with CERTAINTY. Unless you want to read that back into the OT.
For souls certainly were saved and holy, even Job, and while to Israel "
were committed the oracles of God. Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 3:2; 9:4,5) and disobedience to the magisterium was a capital crime.
Yet this neither inferred or required ensured infallibility, and the Lord provided and preserved His Truth without one, long before a "infallible" church presumed it was essential for this, effectively placing itself above Scripture, but which even the writers of which are subject to.
You seem to have a problem here. Not a single one of the verses quoted here raise Scripture to being supreme authority over the Church. Because there is only one supreme Authority: Christ.
Of course Christ is the only one ultimate supreme Authority! Do you really think i meant otherwise, or must i state such a basic given? But God is not some abstract deity but one who reveals Himself, and the issue is what is the supreme transcendent substantive Divine source of that Truth?
But it seems Caths want to use Christ as the supreme authority to make their church the supreme authority, which can thus have Christ support it as needed, and thus silence those who reprove her by Scripture. As do cults, while the apostle's veracity rested upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, not mere professions or formal procession.
However, despite your denial, the fact that since what was written became the
well-evidenced standard for obedience and testing Truth claims, and under which the NT church began and in reliance upon it, directly and indirectly, then Scripture is indeed the supreme authority [on earth!] over the Church, to which it is subject to examination by, as were those who sat in the seat of Moses. (Mk. 7:2-16)
A person does not need to be infallible.
That's good to hear.
Also, Mark and Luke fail the test of being Biblical Apostles.
And you fail the test of showing they were.
You like using Rome as a foil against the East. That's called Strawman argument.
No, they did that already.
Since the definition of Tradition is different,
Which you repeat but failed to show me yet. I am all ears.
You can only find evidence of change in Rome because of the doctrine of Dogmatic Development. Orthodox do not have that.
Oh yes:
Roman Catholicism, unable to show a continuity of faith and in order to justify new doctrine, erected in the last century, a theory of "doctrinal development." Following the philosophical spirit of the time (and the lead of Cardinal Henry Newman), Roman Catholic theologians began to define and teach the idea that Christ only gave us an "original deposit" of faith, a "seed," which grew and matured through the centuries....On this basis, theories such as the dogmas of "papal infallibility" and "the immaculate conception" of the Virgin Mary (about which we will say more) are justifiably presented to the Faithful as necessary to their salvation. - http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/ortho_cath.html
Yet the EO "development" (among other things) included praying to the departed, absolutely unseen in Scripture as said, and and distinctively titling NT presbuteros/episkopos as "priests" (hiereus) with the Spirit of Christ never did, and which was done as a consequence of the development of the Lord's supper into a sacrifice.
"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist." - Catholic writer Greg Dues in "Catholic Customs & Traditions
And there is the greater problem: the Holy Spirit is active in the Church, and He leads into all truth.
This is a claim the Protestants cannot honestly make. By making the claim that the Spirit leads all Protestants who faithfully and sincerely study the Bible into the Truth, they claim that the Spirit leads one man to Calvinism and the other to Arminianism. And yet another is led into Synergism, and another is led into Eternal Security.
And comprehensive doctrinal unity has ever been a goal not realized, while RCs and EOs also battle over who is being led into Truth versus error, while their fruit is far more dead and variant on basic issues than those who hold most strongly to Scripture. I can tell you from experience where the unique fellowship of the Spirit is most realized, and it is not in the dead institutionalized churches of Catholicism or liberal Protestantism (or cults).
As Spurgeon found.
Although upon doctrines of grace our views differ from those avowed by Arminian Methodists, we have usually found that on the great evangelical truths we are in full agreement, and we have been comforted by the belief that Wesleyans were solid upon the central doctrines. (Sword and the Trowel, May, 1891)
We hear much moaning over our divisions. There may be so me who are to be deplored among ecclesiastical confederacies, but in the spiritual C hurch of the living God, I am really at a loss to disc over the divisions which are so loudly proclaimed. It strikes me that th e tokens of union are much more prominent than the tokens of division. But what ar e they?
First there is a union in judgment upon all vital matters. I converse with a spiritual man, and no matter wh at he calls himself, when we talk of sin, pardon, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and such like themes, we are agreed. We speak of our blessed Lord. My friend says that Jesus is fair and lovely - so do I. He says that he ha s nothing else to trust to but the precious blood; nor have I anything else. I tell him that I find myself a poor , weak creature; he laments the same. I live in his house a little while - we pray together at the family altar, you could not tell which it was that prayed, Calvinist or Arminian, we pray so exactly alike, and when we open the hymn book, very likely if he happens to be a Wesleyan he chooses to sing, "Jesus, lover of my soul." I will sing it, and then next morning he will sing with me, "Rock of ages, cleft for me."
Now I hate High Churchism as my soul hates Satan; but I love George Herbert, although George Herbert is a desperately High Churchman. I hate his high Churchism, but I love George Herbert from my very soul, and I have a warm corner in my heart for every man who is like him. Let me find a man who loves my Lord Jesus Christ as George Herbert did, and I do not ask myself whether I shall love him or not; there is no room for question, for I cannot help myself; unless I can leave off loving Jesus Christ, I cannot cease loving those who love him. (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 12, p. 6; http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols10-12/chs668.pdf)
You may claim that there is possibility of error, but I ask, if Christ is truly part of the Church, and Christ is inerrant, then how can it err and still somehow be the Body of Christ? That's like saying that the body can exist without the Head.
What a absurdity, as by that logic since the Christ is inerrant and the church is His body then it also must be sinless, omniscient, omnipotent. Which is consistent with the idolatrous nature of ecclesiolatry. And since Israel was His people, they must be the same.
This is the job of the Spirit, to preserve ALL of the Truth.
And thus
For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven (Psalms 119:89) and all Scripture is inspired of God, but when you open that up to whatever a church says was oral tradition, then the church becomes as Scripture, not effective subject to it, as it can only mean what she says in any conflict. In contrast, the apostles overcome challenges by virtue and power,
By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, (2 Corinthians 6:6-7) But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 4:2)
God isn't happy to just preserve the Scripture. He preserved the Scripture and the proper interpretation thereof.
The proper interpretation is not based upon the premise that the church is infallible, thus Scripture can only mean what she says in any conflict, but its veracity is dependent upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power.
It was delivered once. It was no redelivered or rediscovered in the Reformation. If it disappeared from the Church in any meaningful way, then Christ deserved the Cross, and we have no purpose for discussing ANY of this.
What non-sense! While you just
eliminated Rome (since faith is what you act out), man is a steward of the manifold grace of God, and men refusing that or being poor stewards does not impugn Christ, while rather than needing an infallible entity, God often provided and preserved Truth and faith by raising up men from without the congregation proper and magisterium or otherwise in leadership, which rejected them, while preserving a relative remnant. Which is how the church began.
