Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
Just as clearly, this is a point on which we will never agree. If, as you say, God gave other of His word only to your Church, then it would be equal with scripture. When two equals apparently disagree, an interpretation is needed. The men of the Church could have let God interpret His own word in the Bible, but we all know they made a very different choice. Therefore, the Bible doesn't mean what it says it means, rather, it means what the Church says it means. That is the reason why I have been saying that the Church puts itself ahead of the Bible. The Church believes it is equal to the Bible and solely controls what the Bible means. ... At least in my Bible, when the word "Word" is used to signify Jesus, it is capitalized, when it is used to denote scripture, it is not.
You are pushing forward the idea of Relativism, that every religion, every concept of God, is as good as another.
I have never said anything like that. I have been accused of it, but I've never said it.
[What Sola Scriptura means:] That everything that Christians are to believe is found in the Bible alone. Where does the Bible give us this rule?
Here are a few supporting verses:
1 Cor. 4:6 : Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written."
Luke 1:1-4 : 1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. Paul first examines oral tradition, and then false writings. He concludes that to be SURE, he must write these things down.
2 Tim. 3:16-17 : 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Notice that it says EVERY GOOD WORK. It does not say that man is prepared for MOST good works. Neither does it say that man is PARTIALLY prepared for every good work.
Your accusations that Catholics twist Scripture is tiring, from where we stand, since we see you do it all the time. For example, Sola Scriptura - which is nowhere in the Bible. This makes it a self-refuting rule.
Oh, come on! You accuse me and my side to every degree you take it. Any view that does not match yours is a twisting of the scripture. You can't deny you argue that. Just above, I gave three examples of support for Sola Scriptura. I could have given more. A nickel says you brush them all aside as a twisting of the scripture.
You came to these conclusions yourself by reading the Bible without ANYONE telling you about Altar Call or Sinner's Prayer? Come on! I am willing to bet that you were open to someone's theology, which you accepted gullibly without hardly cracking the Bible open. They pointed you to a few memorized verses taken out of context, and the rest is history.
I didn't know what an Altar Call was until I became a Southern Baptist, 8 YEARS after saying the sinner's prayer. Of course I learned the basics of Christianity before I said the sinner's prayer. But there was no deep theology attached to what I was taught. I learned it at an interdenominational Bible study. One of the lead teachers was a CATHOLIC!!! Reading of scripture was encouraged. It was for seekers, so no one got into any of the things we are talking about here. It happened to be a Lutheran who told me what the sinner's prayer was, but she was 17 too. She had no knowledge of any of this stuff.
Yes, I did have a one-on-one Bible study at my SB church, but it had nothing to do with my sinner's prayer, and the names of Luther or Calvin never came up once. Of course I had to come to my beliefs by considering the work of others, and how it matched what the scripture says. I never said any differently. Otherwise, I WOULD have just made it up myself. I DID come to the belief that the scripture has to be true without the help of any other people.
The Tradition came before the Bible, friend. This is common knowledge except to some Protestants.
I know there were lots of "traditional" teachings floating around, but it took a popular vote among men to decide which were heretical and which were of the Catholic Church. You have said yourself that any individual Father was perfectly capable of writing down error. It took a vote to sift through it all. Since the voters were also fallible men, I have no confidence that the correct result was reached in each and every single case.
If science leads me to think that the world was created billions of years ago, I am free to believe it without denying the inerrancy of Scriptures. You, on the other hand, MUST believe everything literally in such situations, since you consider the Bible as an idol to be worshipped and that God wouldn't inspire the Bible in an allegorical sense unless He sent a memo to you.
My, my, how little you understand us. I happen to hold the view that without evidence to the contrary, that I should take the accounts of the Bible at face value. I DID reach that conclusion without knowing or hearing any theology about it, other than the Bible is God's inerrant word. I truly have no idea if that makes me a good Calvinist or not. I wouldn't care if it didn't because I know I would not be abandoned by my side for saying so.
I think that your accusing me of idol worship is pretty hilarious given the circumstances. ... When God decided to use allegory in the Bible He did send me a memo. It was in the form of other scripture.
Scriptures do not lie, but sometimes, we misinterpret them.
Yes, I fully agree.
The Scriptures point to the earth as resting on pillars. Is. 40 says nothing about the earth being round on a three dimensional plane, but a circle on a two-dimensional plane - the sky being a canopy in three dimensions...
I guess it shouldn't surprise me that you are pro-actively interpreting AGAINST the scripture matching science. You go ahead and believe that the "pillar" verses were meant to be taken to mean that posts were actually supporting the earth physically. BTW, which tradition is being protected by interpreting the Bible to be filled with scientific errors?
Kosta: Again, the Church did not compile the New Testament so that the Reformed may discover the "true" church 15,000 [should have been 1,500] years later, but because of some 200 false Gnostic "gospels" launched by Satan and his demons
FK: So it was the Church that decided to create the New Testament, and it was because of the Gnostics? Seeing as how you don't mention God at all in the creation of the NT, I guess we really have the Gnostics to thank for its creation. How did the Church get God to agree to inspire the Church's word?
Agrarian: I do not believe that there is any hard evidence that even the earliest Gnostic "gospels" (those of "Peter" and "Thomas") predated the canonical Gospels -- or at least the first three. There is furthermore no evidence in Christian tradition or really any internal evidence that the writing of those first three Gospels happened as a reaction to the writing of Gnostic gospels
Regrettably, the whole thing is taken out of context and twisted. Firt of all, I stated that the Church decided to "compile the New Testament..." for such and such a reason, to which FK suggests I said that the Church "decided to create the New Testament..." and Agrarian simply dismissed the New Testament and referred only to the four Gospels instead!
Wow! Compile, means to gather, to collect in an ordely fashion something that already exists. That is how I used the word. To FK (unintentionally I am sure), complile became "create" -- as in write, make something new which is a complete corruption of my statement, as was Agrarian's (likewise unintentional, I am sure) reference to only four Gospels.
The New Testament consists of 27 books, including the four Gospels, so to take my statement "to compile the New Testament" and twist it to mean to write only four Gospels is simply amazing -- and puzzling. There is also a genuine confusion as to what I was referring to with respect to Gnosticism, as well as some lack of understanding of the historical sequence of events that resulted in the book we now call the New Testament.
As for Elaine Pagles and her satanic group favoring Gnosticism, the fact remains that Gnosticism predates Christianity and has incorporated Christian themes in a number of false and misleading "gospels" and "espistles," staring in the latter half of the first century A.D. and peaking in the second secondy, when the Church, under +Ireanaeus launched a vigorous campaign to combat these ideas and make sure that none of the Gnostic writings find their way into Christianity.
All in all, there were some 200-plus "gospels" and "espitles" written and circulated at the end of the first and throughout the second century A.D. Many of them incorporated verses from the four Gospels and adopted the style and manner similar to, and confusing of genuine Christian texts such as 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John, the Revelation of John, etc.
Gnostic "gospels" of Thomas, of Judas (mentioned by name by +Ireanaeus and recently discovered), the "gospel" of Peter (seen as supportive of docetism), the, "gospel" of the Hebrews, the "gospel" of Philip, the secret "gospel" of Mark, the Apocalypse of Peter, the "gospel" of Mary Magdalene, etc. composed in the mid 1st to mid 2nd centuries A.D. circulated together with genuine Christian Gospels, and Epistles.
The picture was actually made more complicated, and the work of the Church that much more difficult, with the appearances of various other works which were acceptable to the Church for one reason or another, but were never incorporated with the canonical works -- such as the Gospel of James (2nd century), which introduced the theme of the perpetual virginity of Theotokos (Mother of God), and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the so-called "harmony gospels."
These various works were single books, actually, scrolls, which were carried from city to city and read liturgically. No one had all of them neatly packaged into one neat bundle with reference marks and alphabetical index. There simple was no such thing as the New Testament book; only individual scrolls, and no one could for sure know which were genuine and which were not.
When Gnosticism and other heresies began to pop up towards the end of the first and throughout the second century A.D., the Church, with +Ireanaeus at the helm, began exposing these false writings for what they were, and at the same time the Church started collectively examining each known scroll (200-plus) with utmost attention to every word and doing everything to determine the Apostolic authorship with certainty and separating those from the rest.
The one scroll that gave the Church great deal of difficulty was the Revelation of John -- it was not accepted as inspired for over 200 years.
It took the Church fathers, each individually reading and sifting through available scrolls, about three hundred years to separate the genuine inspired works (23 of them in addition to the four Gospels), and reject almost 200 of them. When the Church was sure that the accepted scrolls were works of Apostolic origin, the Church compiled them into what we now know as the New Testament, thereby finalizing the Christian canon officially in 397 A.D. (end of the fourth century of Christianity) at the Council of Carthage. Actually, the complete listing of the current 27 books was done 30 years earlier by +Athanasius, but the "official" birth of the New Testament as we know it had to wait the aforementioned Council, when all bishops consented.
Agrarian's comment that +Ignatius knew the Gospels is correct. The Gospels, at least three of them, were well known (and accepted as inspired) by the end of the first century. It is interesting that +Polycarp (born around 80 AD), who was a disciple of "John," and martyred at the age of 87, never quotes from the Gospel of John, indicating that he did not know of this work supposedly written by the Apostle at the very end of the 1st century.
It was the 3rd c. bishop Eusebius (the first Church historian) who launched the idea that +Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John, but he was known for some interesting statements which cast a lot of doubt on his objectivity as a historian.
The point of this lengthy exposé was to clarify whence came the New Testament and why, and what role did God play in the creation of individual scrolls as opposed to what role the men of the Church played in collecting them into what all Christians including Protestants accept as part of the Bible. To say that the New Testament is simply something given to us by God, or to imply that the Church had nothing to do with it is false and misleading.
The most important point of all this is that the knowledge of what is genuine faith prior to having complete selection of canonical books had to be based on Church Tradition, based on oral and written Apostolic teachings for centuries before the New Testament saw the light of the day, and that the Church fathers were ultimately responsible for selectiong and compiling of the New Testament inspired writings.
Thus, I never implied nor stated that the genuine inspired works contained in the Christian Canon were written specifically to combat Gnosticism! I stated and do state that the process of compilation of genuine inspored works into what we know as the New Testament was driven by the existence of false and dangerous forgeries of faith, mostly Gnostic in origin, because there was no sure way of knowing which scrolls were liturgically true and which were nort.
The canonical books of the New Testament were written because they were inspired by God. However, these works found themselves surrounded by Gnostic works masquerading as "gospels" and "espistles." In response, the Church undertook a herculean task of separating Gnostic works from genuine inspired works in order to prevent corruption of faith, and decided to compile them into one body so that no other works would be read liturgically, and that all Christians would know which works are genuine and which are not.
I would like to ask those who comment on my posts to read each and every word of mine as to the meaning and to respond to that meaning and not to "extrapolate" other meanings.
If unsure as to why I am saying something that may seem hyperbolic or odd, I ask you to ask for an explanation before jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Sometimes out of eopcnomy and perhaps common knowledge, we resort to brevity, and make summary statements, because the body of knowledge behind it is simply too voluminous to post each and every time.
1 Cor. 4:6 : Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written."First, 1 Corinthians was probably written around 57 AD. As a result, it predates almost every other book in the New Testament, and certainly all of the gospels. To take Paul's comment out of context and literally, as you do, nothing written after First Corinthians is to be trusted. After all, the books written after First Corinthians--that is, the whole New Testament, give or take some epistles--"go beyond what [was] written" in First Corinthians.
Further, the admonition not to go beyond what is written is a literal translation of what was apparently a common saying of the time, roughly equivalent to "don't get too big for your britches." Read some commentaries on it.
Luke 1:1-4 : 1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.Paul first examines oral tradition, and then false writings. He concludes that to be SURE, he must write these things down.
You are conflating two passages, one from Paul, and a much later one from Luke. The introductory passage from Luke presupposes the existence of other narratives. The plethora of noncanonical gospels shows us that merely writing something down was not enough. As Luke says, the true traditions "were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word." So, the introduction of Luke shows us how Holy Tradition preceded the New Testament and inspired its writing, and neatly illuminates the logic behind apostolic succession.
2 Tim. 3:16-17 : 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.Paul had to have written Second Timothy before his death in 67. This means that 2 Tim. far predates the gospels and the Book of Revelation, among other parts of the New Testament. So we know that Paul, when talking about "Scripture" being God-inspired he was not talking about the New Testament as we know it.Notice that it says EVERY GOOD WORK. It does not say that man is prepared for MOST good works. Neither does it say that man is PARTIALLY prepared for every good work.
The lines preceding your quote are:
But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known (the) sacred scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 2 Tim. 3:14-15.If Paul was writing to adults, what sacred scripture would they have known "from infancy?" Not the Pauline epistles, which were not written until the 50's. Not the Gospels, which were not written until the 60's (at the earliest). He must have been talking about the Old Testament. Finally, 2 Tim. 14 makes reference to what the recipients of the letter "have learned and believed," because they know from whom" they learned it. No reference to scripture here. Instead, it is a reference to Holy Tradition and, perhaps, apostolic succession.
Kosta is correct that he stated "compile," and I apologize for the misunderstanding of what he and jo kus had been saying.
The specific post contained this statement, and I suspect that it was this statement that both FK and I responded to:
"That means that the Patriarch of Antioch, St. Ignatius, who was made bishop by none other than St. Peter in person, knew what we now read in the Bible by learning it from the mouth of St. Peter and not reading it in the "Bible" mainly because the only Bible in those days was the Old Testament. The New Testament did not see the light of the day for another three hundred years."
Since not even the canon of the OT had been codified within either Judaism or Christianity at the time of St. Ignatius, I assumed that this statement meant that the texts of the books we refer to as the OT existed, but that the texts of what we now call the NT did not exist until much later and that St. Ignatius therefore didn't have access to the NT texts. This is a pretty common belief amongst modern scholarship, so I can, I hope, be forgiven for missing the distinction in this particular case.
My emphasis on the 4 Gospels was due to the fact that St. John's Gospel does have some anti-Gnostic qualities, and due to the fact that the most prominent Gnostic writings were "Gospels."
I agree, of course, completely that the process of compiling the canon of the NT was the work of the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, just as the work of writing the individual books was the work of individual men -- also with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And of course the preservation of those texts and that canon was the work of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
I would point out for the sake of our Protestant brethren that the process of selecting a canon was not solely based on a need to differentiate between canonical and heretical works.
There are works still considered to be valuable and non-heretical writings that were considered at one time or place or another to be Scriptural: the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the (1st) Epistle of Clement, the canons of the Apostles, etc...
So the fact that a particular work was not included in the NT canon does not necessarily mean that the Church considered it to be heretical -- although most rejected works were, as Kosta notes, quite simply heretical frauds.
Likewise, the fact that the Apocalypse and a number of the general epistles were excluded from various lists does not mean that anyone of the Church of that time considered them to be heretical -- they were simply exercising caution in making certain that they were embracing only works of genuinely Apostolic origin, of inspiration by the Holy Spirit, and with no doctrinal errors.
Interestingly, it took the Protestant Reformation for a serious reconsideration of the canon of Scripture to take place. As well as rejecting the "deuterocanonical" works, there is the famous labeling of the Epistle of St. James by Martin Luther as "the epistle of straw," and his disparaging attitude toward Hebrews, Jude and Revelation -- not to mention his relative "downgrading" of the importance of the Gospels of Sts. Matthew, Mark, and Luke...
As a coda to my final paragraph above, I must in fairness say that Luther and the Reformers never actually excised any of the NT books. It was in Luther's comments about the Scriptures that his opinions are known.
In setting up a sort of hierarchy within the Scriptures, Luther wasn't really doing anything that the Church hadn't already done to some extent. What he did, though, was to reject the traditional hierarchy in favor of one of his own preference. He liked the Gospel of John and certain Pauline epistles best.
What bothered Luther were the perceived contradictions within Scripture -- since the Epistle of St. James seemed to contradict St. Paul, then the Epistle of St. James must be of doubtful origin or lesser authority. He seems to have fallen prey to the idea that if Scripture seems to contradict itself, then part of it must not really be truly Scripture.
The Calvinist tradition tends to like the Pauline epistles and the Old Testament the best -- its own "practical hierarchy" within Scripture.
"What was there from the very beginning? Did the Apostles have "faith" in the exact details as expressed by the ecumenical councils? That would be pressing pretty hard, wouldn't it?"
No, it would hardly be pressing it hard at all. I don't think that any Orthodox Christian would have any doubt that were the Apostles to have been faced with Nestorianism, Arianism, or Monophysitism, that they would have rejected them, and in response articulated essentially what the Ecumenical Councils did in their response.
"Did they have an implicit and intuitive faith but not as detailed as expressed in the creeds? That would seem more likely, would'nt it?"
Yes, that is exactly what I believe I stated when I disagreed with the idea that "a belief articulated with precision for the first time is a belief that has only newly sprung into being."
"If you want to press that the Apostles had the exact same knowledge as expressed by the creeds then Kosta's pushing the envelope that the OT patriarchs and prophets possessed a different faith is logically consistent with that prior proposition."
Kosta will have to explain and defend what he means with regard to the OT patriarchs and prophets. My understanding of the Church's teaching in that regard is of a piece with what I said about the Apostles. In the case of the Patriarchs and Prophets, the teaching of the Church seems clear that while they probably held such beliefs only "implicitly and intuitively" to use your terminology, they would indeed have recognized Christ as the Messiah and acknowledged him as God.
This is really not just a theoretical proposition, either. St. John the Baptist was the last of the OT prophets, and he recognized Christ. The Apostle Nathaniel "a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile" recognized Christ. On Mount Tabor, Moses and Elijah appeared with Christ, and spoke to him concerning his coming passion. They clearly recognized Christ as being God, and in their persons, all of the law and prophets were encapsulated.
And within Orthodox theology, they specifically did have the chance to encounter Christ in Hades and recognize him as God -- and they did. It is inconsistent with Orthodox teaching in general about the afterlife to believe that the Prophets and Patriarchs would have responded to Christ differently in Hades than they would have had they encountered him on earth while they were alive. There are few OT references to the Messiah as God, but they are there, and I believe that they reflect an "implicit and intuitive" understanding of devout Hebrews prior to the time of Christ.
I believe that it was St. Augustine who said something to the effect that the New Testament is within the Old Testament concealed -- and that the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.
"I really don't see the need to compress all knowledge into one historical situatedness. It seemed implicit in your posts that you seem to believe that the knowledge of the OT patriarchs and prophets was not an exhaustive knowledge of the exact persons and events to come but enough of a implicit faith and so then the question becomes why then would knowledge end?"
I'm not sure what your question means, or what exactly you are asking. Perhaps at root is the question of what constitutes knowledge. In one sense, there is no-one with a greater knowledge of Christ than those of the Apostolic era -- they walked and talked with God in the flesh, and they were there for the great outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Their knowledge of Christ can hardly be exceeded -- certainly at the heart of our reverence for the Theotokos was that she, bearing God in her womb, knew God more intimately than anyone else before or since possibly could. They set a standard for knowing Christ, and it is for that reason that New Testament Scripture is restricted to writings of Apostolic origin.
Articulation of theological formulations is not the same thing as knowledge. One can mouth precise statements of dogmatic truth and not know God at all. No-one is claiming that the Apostles were going around in the 1st century preaching the specific terminology of Ephesus or Chalcedon or the Cappadocian Fathers. We are saying, though, that the body of faith was intact from the beginning because the knowledge of Christ was intact from the beginning.
"Again, your terminology tries to force faith and knowledge as exactly the same thing. The Reformation faith is "exactly" like the Apostles faith in the substitutionary atonement of Christ. However, our "formulations" are more precise because knowledge is not static. To deny the Church grows in understanding is to deny the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit to "blow where he may". Faith seeking understanding. Nothing wrong with that, is there?"
No, I'm afraid that it was you who were forcing faith and knowledge into being the same thing, when you asked Kosta the rhetorical question about whether the Apostles held the faith of the Ecumenical Councils. Your own implied answer was that they did not. The only possible explanation for such an answer would be that since the Ecumenical Councils used specific doctrinal definitions, terminology, and formulations for the first time, that the Apostles couldn't possibly have held the same beliefs as the Orthodox Church of, say, the 4th or the 8th century.
My point was that if you are going to consider patristic teachings to be innovations on the basis that they are supposedly not Scriptural because they make use of certain philosophical terms that are not used in the Bible in exactly the same way, or not at all -- then one must certainly apply that same standard to the Reformers, who were pretty obvious creatures of their own time and philosophical milieu...
If you are going to accept the teachings of the Reformers in spite of the fact that their specific formulations are found neither in the Scriptures nor in the writings of the early Church -- then there is no rational reason to reject the writings of the Fathers whose faith stands directly in the line of our Orthodox tradition.
What the Orthodox Church essentially teaches is that the Apostles passed on their faith, their body of knowledge, their understanding, and their praxis to their followers, and they passed it on to subsequent generations without interruption. In response to heresies and challenges and through the working of the Holy Spirit, all of this became more precisely developed -- without changing. The combination of that preservation of the deposit of the faith and the action of the Holy Spirit yields the very "precise" (to use your term) beliefs and practices of the Orthodox Church today.
What Protestantism teaches is that the Apostles failed utterly in passing on the deposit of faith, since their bones were hardly cold in the grave before the faith began to be lost and perverted. According to this view, St. Augustine had some bits of understanding in spite of being part of a very lost Church but was a lonely island. Only in the 16th century did someone finally start to get it all right and put it all together correctly by reading properly for the first time the Greek texts of Scripture that had been passed down in the Orthodox Church...
The question that must be asked is which form of "growing with understanding" is a more likely path for the faith of the Apostles to take?
Amen.
I've always liked what Augustine wrote --
"First you believe; then you understand."
By His grace alone.
I meant that the Church must declare all verses supporting the siblings of Jesus to be void. That is the only way to maintain the tradition of Mary's perpetual virginity, since it is found no where in scripture. The only evidence of any kind on the subject is that Mary did have other children, so those verses must be quashed for the good of the Church. If your answer is that tradition preceded the scripture, then my response is that therefore, tradition supersedes scripture in the case of disagreements like this between tradition and scripture. If you say there is no disagreement, then that proves my statement.
I refuse to accept that each and every Biblical Christian scholar in the history of mankind understood none of the ancient languages, nor could any of them interpret Biblical ideas to save his/her life. That is, except of course, for all the Catholic ones. That is the clear message I have gotten on this thread.
In 2982 I referred you to this post by InterestedQuestioner: ...
Yes, you certainly did, and I responded in 3039 that I had read it, thought it sounded reasonable, and had some comments and questions. I also made a case for my point of view on this. Nobody owes me anything, so I do not at all feel slighted that I got no responses, but I do want it on the record that I did read it and responded.
FK: "I asked someone (or several) that if your interpretation was correct, then how did people refer to their actual blood siblings."
I don't know factually, they probably used the same word "adelphos" as they do today, and if greater precision were necessary they would say "direct brother" or something.
But as I admitted, the Bible does sometimes use the word "brother" to mean a blood sibling. Why would you have to guess? Since I have sworn off looking up Greek on this thread due to experience, what word do they use in passages like Matt. 4:18-22?
If it is the same word, then you are saying that at the time, there was absolutely no concept whatsoever of special brotherly love between blood siblings. How could there be if you would tell a stranger that the two people over in the corner were both your brothers, when one was your third cousin twice removed, and the other was your blood sibling? I can't buy it. I know of no civilization that put so little importance on the nuclear family, and close blood ties. You are asking me to believe it meant nothing to anyone of that time.
FK: "I have no Biblical reason to trust [the Church fathers] over and above the Bible."
This is funny. Actually, you do have a biblical reason, 2 Thessalonians 2:14, in particular, ...
I don't see how that verse says I should trust the Church over and above scripture, as you suggest. Paul says to follow everything he taught them both orally and in writing. I don't believe Paul would have contradicted himself, which is why I don't think the oral teaching survived as well as the written one did.
If for some reason all the Bibles physically vanished or became linguistically incomprehensible through the passage of time and semantic drifts, the Word would still be the same and Christianity would still be the same.
Yes, the Word would be the same, but surely Christianity as practiced would not. The first Christians, the "best" ones, couldn't prevent the Gnostics and many other sects from cropping up even back then. Don't you think there would have been a geometric progression into further error without the scripture? I do. Look at the mess we're in today WITH the scripture. :)
Yes.
Well, since then I've learned that you think of the scripture as part of Tradition. I see your view as being that if there were 10,000 stories to tell, the authors of the NT just decided to write some of them down, leave others out, and it didn't really matter because it would all be picked back up again through the Church. The scriptures are fine, as a supplement, but Tradition is really where the truth rests. After all, it was first. If anyone ever thinks that the scripture does not match Tradition, then in every single case it is the person misinterpreting scripture, not misinterpreting Tradition.
If God "wrote" the Bible, how could their personalities come through unless they added a little of their own "zest" to the text? ... the scribes' personalities somehow "snuck" in?
Their personalities didn't come through because of them, but because God wanted it that way. There was no sneakery involved. It was all God's will. There could be a dozen reasons for this. Just speculating, one could have been to authenticate the letters from the Biblical writer. Paul visited places and then wrote letters. If they didn't sound anything like him, then that would not have been productive.
A similar idea could have worked for the Gospel authors, the people heard the oral teaching first and then read the written word. If they did not match both in content and in style, then that would have been a red flag for new believers. In any event, I am merely observing what appears to be patently true in terms of the fact that personalities came through. I do not claim to declare the reason for it with certainty.
If what St. Ignatius, a disciple of Apostle Peter, we are confident that his writings reflect the knowledge of the Church and St. Peter himself, for otherwise I doubt he would have made him a bishop and patriarch of Antioch and his spiritual successor.
I honestly am not sure what the missing words are, but I think my answer would be that you have thrown out many teachings of the early Fathers, most notably, Augustine. (Wikipedia even says that Tertullian questioned that Mary was a perpetual virgin, but I don't quote that source as gospel. :) How do you know which of the works of these heralded Saints is true and which is bogus. My understanding is that other fallible men get together and have a vote on it. Those fallible men decide what God meant, and you are bound by it. Your confidence is based on fallible men.
So, you put yourself in the position of being the correct interpreter of the word of God!?
No, not in a million years. It only looks that way to you because I differ from the Church. So, when I see a verse that says "For it is by grace you are saved, through faith ...", and I interpret it to mean that we are saved by grace through faith, you would say that I am coming up with my own private (crazy) interpretation, because the Church strongly disagrees with this.
I think Kosta was referring to the Canonization of the NT Scriptures, not its original writing. There were a number of valuable writings that many local churches were content to read DURING the Liturgy that were later not accepted as part of the Canon. For example, the First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians was read by the Corinthian churches for over 150 years during the Mass. It was only later forces of Marcion and Gnosticism (opposing forces of contraction/expansion) that "forced" the Church to determine the contents of the Canon.
Regards
Agrarian says that there are many OT references to Messiah as God. In most cases, when God is referred to as the "Savior" it relates to His brining Israel out of Egypt or physically saving Jewish people and cities from wrath. As a Redeemer, He is referred to in terms of having mercy on fickle Israel, but nothing even close to what Christ preached in the Gospels.
If there is a seamless connection between the two Testaments, showing one and the same faith, I leave it up to experts to demonstrate, which I have yet to see. We speak of Catholics having a different faith than the Orthodox, yet I would say our the Orthodox have more in common even with Calvinism than the New Testament has with the Old Testament.
Again, I hear over and over that the Judaism at the time when Christ walked on earth was "different" from the rabbinical post-Jamnia Judaism, yet I see no proof or specifics to defend such an assertion.
What we are asserting is that only those who followed Christ were real Jews, as we, followers of Christ, are "real" Israel. We also assert that all the Patriarchs believed exactly what we believe, yet their only problem with Israel was that the Jews kept reverting to worshiping idols.
If they had the same faith, why were the Patriarch and Prophets in Hell when Christ descended there? They were righteous, yet they were condemned!
Needless to say, there is an extraordinary amount of "stretching" that is required to make the two Testaments become "seamless."
You've go that right, brother. You understand what I was referring to but you said it better than I could.
I am merely relating what is common knowledge of the historical development of Christianity's spread throughout the world. God CHOSE not to give ANY NT writings to the first Christians! This is proof positive that Scripture does NOT determine what we believe, but it comes from the Apsotles themselves. THEY taught by word of mouth first, then by letter. NOWHERE does it say that the Bible now takes over. Thus, if you have problems with this line of thought, it seems to me that you are not following the Scriptures, the Word of God.
I agree that if something disagrees with Scripture, it is not valid Tradition. I don't find any Apostolic Tradition (a.k.a "orally" taught teachings that we still hold to) that disagree with the Bible that cannot be properly explained. IF something comes from God, it holds equal weight. Who cares if it is written or not?
I have never said anything like that. (Relativism) I have been accused of it, but I've never said it.
When you use yourself to interpret the Bible and the concept that any person can interpret themselves outside of the Church, then that is what you are saying, even though you don't use those words.
1 Cor. 4:6 : Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written."
Your interpretation of this does not match the KJV, which gives a different take: "And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and [to] Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think [of men] above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another."
This verse doesn't say anything about "what is written" as being Scriptures! Even if Paul is refering to Scriptures, he is undoubtedly refering to the Old Testament, as the NT wasn't even written yet when the First Letter to the Corinthians was penned.
Luke 1:1-4 ...Paul first examines oral tradition, and then false writings. He concludes that to be SURE, he must write these things down.
I presume you mean Luke. Luke is trying to write down all of the various stories circulating about the Christ into one orderly account. Luke doesn't say anything about "false writings". He is merely trying to consolidate everything that was already known. It is unlikely that a person living in Athens would know EVERYTHING orally said about Christ, thus, a written account is better, all things equal. However, nothing here about Sola Scriptura!
We already talked about 2 Timothy. You need to try to stop reading what is plainly not there:
"the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
That does not say that something ELSE can equip someone for every good work. It merely says that "Scriptures" (which, funny enough, is NOT refering to the NT Scriptures, since Paul is refering to a set of writings that Timothy was familiar with during his CHILDHOOD! Thus, to take this as you do, then, you will have to discount the NT in your Sola Scriptura) are USEFUL for every good work. So is prayer. So is the Church, the community of faith.
"And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" Eph 4:11-13
This clearly tells us that apostles, prophets, evangelists and so forth are for PERFECTING THE SAINTS...UNTO THE PERFECTING OF MEN... Nothing about Scriptures, although we can ASSUME that they would use the Bible as part of their preaching and teaching.
Clearly, the NT Bible never says anything about "itself" because it didn't exist yet! Thus, Sola Sciptura is a false teaching of men that leads people away from the Word of God as taught by the Apostles.
Any view that does not match yours is a twisting of the scripture.
Ditto. But I have the teaching of 2000 years of Church teachings, backed by the promise of the Holy Spirit who CANNOT lead us into error. You have yourself and the teachings of heretics to lead you. Frankly, I will stick with the Holy Spirit's promise to guide the Apostles to all truths and will follow their successors.
Your story of conversion verifies my point: We take on the teachings of those who teach us. You didn't read the Bible and come to conclusions yourself. We ALL deal with this to some degree. For Catholics, it is a matter of proving whether it (the Catholic Church) existed first and was established by the first generations of Christians. If so, it would be hard to argue against the Spirit's guidance of it, as it still exists, as Christ promised.
I know there were lots of "traditional" teachings floating around, but it took a popular vote among men to decide which were heretical and which were of the Catholic Church.
Popular vote? Then I suppose what happened in Acts 15 was a "popular vote", and not the Holy Spirit...This is a matter of belief - that the Spirit guides the Church. This belief is clearly found in Scriptures.
I happen to hold the view that without evidence to the contrary, that I should take the accounts of the Bible at face value
That is what we are taught, as well. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the earth is older than 6000 years, which, by the way, is a tradition of men, since the Bible doesn't mention what year the earth was formed. Thus, I am open to the scientific fact that the first three chapters of Genesis are more allegory than science. However, this does NOT take anything away from the Bible's inerrancy. Inerrancy means that God's Word is truth - in what HE wanted to say. Important distinction.
I think that your accusing me of idol worship is pretty hilarious given the circumstances. ... When God decided to use allegory in the Bible He did send me a memo. It was in the form of other scripture.
Say what?
I guess it shouldn't surprise me that you are pro-actively interpreting AGAINST the scripture matching science. You go ahead and believe that the "pillar" verses were meant to be taken to mean that posts were actually supporting the earth physically. BTW, which tradition is being protected by interpreting the Bible to be filled with scientific errors?
Now don't get all upset! Frankly, I don't really CARE HOW the earth was formed - I know that God did it and why. That is what the Bible is clear on. The rest, the background, is a story that shows God's orderly thought and love behind making His creation. God is the creator of nature, as well as the Scriptures, and He cannot lie. Thus, He leaves tell-tale signs of the earth's age. He doesn't try to "trick" us into thinking that the earth is really old, like some "young earth" fundamentals claim. I trust that science has accurately told us that the earth is more than 6000 years old. Perhaps not 10 billion, but even one billion is a heck of a lot more than 6000 years.
Yes, science has been wrong before - but so has Biblical interpretation. Even Christians have been wrong on what the Bible is meant to say, such as on slavery. Thus, it is a farce to say that Genesis can ONLY be a literal history of the creation of the world.
I do not fear science. I don't need to pretend or desperately search for excuses as to why the earth is older than 6000 years. My faith is secure, even if the Bible has been misinterpreted on this section, which, by the way, many Church Fathers have ALSO looked at Genesis as allegory. St. Augustine wrote a book about it, and that was 400 AD, way before science knew the earth was round. Because Catholics do not hold Scripture INTERPRETATION of men as infallible in this case, I am free to decide, based on the evidence currently available, that the earth is older than 6000 years, not that that matters regarding my faith in Christ. Nor is my idea of Scriptural inerrancy destroyed. Man's interpretations of Scripture outside the Church are fallible.
Regards
FK, I come from a culture that is close to the region and I know that people in Mediterranean cultures refer to their first cousins as "brothers." or "sisters." Thus my first cousin is my "sister" (by aunt). The reason for this is obvious: it prevented intermarriage between first or even second cousins.
The custom is actually alien in the west, especially modern west. Thus, to you Jesus' brothers are His "siblings" because that's the reality of your culture which forces you to interpret the Scripture in this way.
However, in all fairness to the Protestants, the New Testament does say that +Joseph did not "know" Mary until after she gave birth to Jesus (Mat 1:24-25). The term "to know" a woman in the Bible is consistently used as a carnal relationship between a husband and wife (i.e. Gen 4:1).
Another example of interpreting Scripture literally comes from the way the Latter Day Saints (LDS), Mormons, "understand" Mary's conception. They say the words the Bible uses is "overshadow" speaking of the Holy Spirit. This is indeed terminology used in the Bible to denote sexual intercourse, so the LDS simply conclude that Christ was conceived as a union between God and amortal!
We, and this includes your side of Christianity (I hope), sees Mary's conception as a supernatural event, the way we understand sacraments. And, in the same manner, we understand her Virgin Birth, having occurred without breaking her seal or being painful. But if you really want to be a stickler for straight biblical talk, then the Bible does suggest what the LDS seem to be believe (then, they also believe that God the Father used to be a man and that Satan is Jesus' "sibling"!).
Actually, FK, I know with utmost certainty that the New Testament (not all Scripture) is a result of the Holy Tradition.
I do understand that to you this may be as disappointing as it must have been to find out that Santa Klaus really did not exist or that in the real world he was a Saint, but that's what they call "growing pains."
In order for the New Testament to become compiled from existing writings the Church had to know what is orthodox and what is heretical. That knowledge did not exist in neatly packaged book called the New Testament.
The compilation of the New Testament served the purpose to eliminate any possibility of having heretical books used liturgically.
The fathers of the early Church had to be able to tell the difference between Gnostic lies that masqueraded as "gospels" from genuine Apostolic writings. They didn't have an instruction manual on how to tell the genuine from the false. The had to know.
Today, you know because you read the New Testament. But they didn't have one. They had many scrolls, hundreds of them in fact, that looked and sounded like "real" Gospels and Epistles, yet all but 27 of them turned out to be false.
That we have the New Testament today so you can than God who inspired the writers, and your "fallible men" of the Church who gathered the genuine books and compiled them into a book we know as the New Testament.
Beautifully stated, Jo.
St. Augustine is a Saint in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, so that would be absurd. The other day, they quoted St. Augustine during homily in my Orthodox church. What the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches do with St. Augustine is that not all of his writing is necessarily concensus patrum, which is the only "security measure" that guards against private, individualistic or relativistic corruptions.
But, speaking of discarding and distortions, it is really the Protestants who throw out all the other Saints as "bogus" and embraced only one, St. Augustine, and generally only Apostle Paul, and predominately the Old Testament.
Wikipedia even says that Tertullian questioned that Mary was a perpetual virgin, but I don't quote that source as gospel. :) How do you know which of the works of these heralded Saints is true and which is bogus
Tertullian is a perfect example of someone who used to be orthodox and then later on in life left the Church through heresy because he placed his personal beliefs and interpretations above the concensus patrum, which is another way of saying that he thought himself smarter than the rest of the bishops.
So, when I see a verse that says "For it is by grace you are saved, through faith ...", and I interpret it to mean that we are saved by grace through faith, you would say that I am coming up with my own private (crazy) interpretation, because the Church strongly disagrees with this
No, I would say that only because the Church does not say that. We read the same verse the same way as you do, except that your definition of being "saved" is something form the left field.
You also read Scripture that is not the Scripture of the Church but of man called Luther, and men called Calvinists. Your Scripture is not identical to ours, nor does it say the same thing and is not the same canon.
"Agrarian says that there are many OT references to Messiah as God."
Actually, whast I wrote was: "There are few OT references to the Messiah as God, but they are there..."
Given the fact that I misinterpreted or quoted Kosta, this is only fair game! :-)
The most prominent example that spring to mind is the quotation that Christ himself used to silence the Pharisees: "... the Lord said unto my Lord..." And there are several references to the universality of the Messiah's work, encompassing the Gentiles, making the Messiah at the very least more than a glorified Jewish warlord.
"As for Moses and Elijah — on Mount Tabor, they had, shall we say, "inside information." All the people will recognize Christ after death."
Yes, they will recognize him after death, but how will they respond to him? That is the real question in the Orthodox understanding of the afterlife. If Moses and the Prophets lived and died utterly convinced that God could not become man, and held a faith that was as incompatible with Christianity as was the official Judaism of Christ's day and after, then one could only assume that they would reject Christ after death as surely as they would have rejected him had they encountered him during life.
"Again, I hear over and over that the Judaism at the time when Christ walked on earth was "different" from the rabbinical post-Jamnia Judaism, yet I see no proof or specifics to defend such an assertion."
I, for one, have never asserted this. I believe that the official Judaism of Christ's day was just as misguided as was later rabbinical Judaism. I do not believe that the words and actions of the Pharisees reflected the faith of the Patriarchs and Prophets. I am in good company, since Christ himself told the Pharisees the same thing! :-)
My only contention is that there *were* Jews (perhaps reflecting a particular strain of Judaism) who quickly and readily recognized and embraced Christ, and came to recognize him as God. I will leave off the argument from hades, and reduce it to this: had the Patriarchs and Prophets been able to encounter Christ in life, would they have rejected him as did the Pharisees, or would they have embraced him as Lord and God?
If there really is a radical discontinuity between the faith of the Patriarchs and prophets and the faith of the Jews who embraced Christ as Lord and God, then the only possible answer is that Moses and Elijah, had they been around in life, would have been part of the lynching party. That is a legitimate position to hold, but would be one that I would find takes at least as much stretching as does the Church's traditional understanding...
"yet their only problem with Israel was that the Jews kept reverting to worshiping idols."
Yes, while Moses and the Prophets themselves encountered God at the level of theosis, the reality they were dealing with "on the ground" was on an entirely different level. The primary decision that the people were having to make was whether to worship the demons in form of idols, or to worship the one true God. There are thus reasons why the Pentateuch is dealing with some pretty basic issues compared to the lofty writings of the Apostle John.
The process of bringing the people of Israel to the point where they would produce the Theotokos was a long and hard one. This would perhaps explain at least in part why the type of Savior alluded to in OT times was primarily one expressed in terms they could most readily relate to at the time.
But, as St. Gregory Palamas said, the OT Patriarchs and Prophets achieved theosis (albeit in a necessarily temporary fashion), and directly encountered God. They would therefore, have recognized that same God were he to have become man in their time. One who reads what they wrote had the opportunity to have the same encounter, and this is why Christ insisted that the Jewish leadership of his day did not understand their own Scriptures. If they did, they would have recognized him.
"If they had the same faith, why were the Patriarch and Prophets in Hell when Christ descended there? They were righteous, yet they were condemned!"
They were in Hades -- the place of the dead (Sheol in Hebrew), which does not at all necessarily mean a place of torment and punishment. They were subject to death because death had not yet been conquered by Christ's resurrection. Even St. John the Baptist was in Hades, and he recognized Christ for who he was.
What is ironic about this response is that is EXACTLY how the Church determined which writings were not legitimately inspired by God. The Church had a body of teaching, an inner sense, of what was given to it - and after reading the Gospel of Mark, knew it was legitimate, as it matched what they had heard orally. The same is true regarding Gnostic Gospels and writings. They recognized that this Gospel was NOT in tune with the Tradition given, both orally and written. Thus, the FIRST teachings are used as our foundation, our basis for judging whether something given later (written letters) are legitimately from Paul, or are forgeries, or are from an un-orthodox Christian.
It only looks that way to you because I differ from the Church
What is the pillar and foundation of the truth, the Bible or the Church? The community of faith has been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit cannot lie. You KNOW this! And yet, you willingly "differ from the Church". What sort of response do you expect from us?
Regards
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