Replies

very powerful! Thank you for that outline!

I think a lot of this argument stems from the misunderstanding of Tradition. There's a difference between Tradition and tradition. Tradition being the oral word of God passed down through the apostles. The only scripture the apostles had to go on was Old Testament. This is only logical. Which is why as much as I study I see no way that sola scriptura works. The bible did just appear the day after Jesus was resurrected... what were the apostles doing after that? Preaching...the ORAL word of God. That is what the Catholic church teaches of Sacred Tradition. They were only forced to write things down when heretics decided to not believe in those Tradition teachings. That's why there is such a strong belief among Protestants that things were 'made-up'. Nope, they were always there, they just weren't in contention until someone decided to start a new line of thinking and the church was forced to write it down.

I have done many bible studies, all protestant bible studies. All made my Catholic faith stronger. For me, and I am speaking for me here... for me, Sola Scriptura = Anarchy. "if I don't like the way you interpret something, I'll just start my own church"... and 500 years later we have how many thousands of denominations? To interpret scripture without Tradition scares the daylights out of me. It's how we end up with 'christian denominations' saying homosexuality is okay... because they decide that the holy spirit gave them the authority to interpret scripture themselves. How scary it would be if the the American public were allowed to take the Constitution and interpret any way they want...they could start all different kinds of local governments... surely it would weaken us.

However, as logical as that all seems to me. I really don't think God wants us fighting over it. I love C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". His analogy to the "Hall" of Christians. Our goal as Christians should be, by our actions, to guide people to that hall. The doors from the hall should not be argued over lest we scare any nonbelievers completely away.

I continue to have strong relationships with my Protestant friends. We learn from each other.