To mere, here is the hardest Scriptural nut of all in the Sola Scriptura approach.
(As a foreword, I am truly not trying to be controversial here, although what I say certainly will raise energetic responses. This really is my "gut check" issue. I will say that I really made a good faith effort to apply BOTH Sola Scriptura AND Catholic doctrine, hoping that they would perfectly jibe. But they don't. And here is the place where it all comes apart for me.)
Jesus, in speaking of marriage, prohibits divorce and remarriage, except in the narrow case of lewd conduct. Then he says: Moses let you divorce because of the hardness of your hearts, but in the beginning it was not that way.
And right there is the problem.
Moses didn't just LET the Hebrews divorce. HE WROTE IT DOWN IN THE TORAH. So, right there, Jesus is taking a direct piece of the Pentateuch: all of those explicit descriptions of how to properly go about divorcing your wife and what one may or may not do, and saying that NONE of it is Holy. It is SCRIPTURAL, right there in the Pentateuch, but we are NOT to take that Scripture as divinely inspired, according to Jesus! Indeed, we are to take the Scripture itself, in the Torah itself, as NOTHING BUT ERRONEOUS HUMAN TRADITION!
So, there's Jesus calling the holiest part of the Scripture as it existed at his time (there being no New Testament yet at all, and all Jews consider the Torah to be THE holiest part of the Jewish Scriptures. No Jew now, or in Jesus' time either, gave Kings or Esther or the Psalms equal authority to the Torah. The Torah is THE LAW according to the Jews to whom Jesus was speaking. The LAW from God. And Jesus takes whole sections of the Torah itself, describing the proper procedure for divorce, and says flat out that they are contrary to the will of God.
In that passage, Jesus says that all Scripture is NOT the inspired word of God. Those parts of the Torah that refer to divorce Jesus says are nothing but bad human traditions.
Given that, coming from the mouth of God, I cannot accept the argument that Scripture alone will tell us all the answers. Because Scripture says that another part of Scripture is not from God...and that very part of Scripture was understood by the audience to be the HOLIEST part of Scripture!
Nobody has ever been able to work out this conundrum for me, although plenty of people have spit bile all over me for bringing it up. My purpose is not to be controversial for the sake of controversy. Truly, for me Jesus has thrown such a wrench into the reliability of Scripture as a rule to live by, that I think the only thing to do is to follow the rules of the Church that he founded. The best summary catechism in existence, I think, is the Didache of the Apostles, circa 70-80 AD. But that's another story.
I welcome anyone who wishes
God truly made an allowance. Jesus, seeing that He would be giving the Holy Spirit to indwell Christians, felt this allowance unnecessary.
SD
Good post and absolutely true!
The Church is the keeper of the Scriptures not the other way around.