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"If" I had any lens at all it would be that an all powerful God who would give His followers a Holy Book would make it include everything the believers needed. I did assume that, but I didn't get it from anyone else.

Well, for the loyal opposition, allow me, between winces (feets makin' trouble today), to say ....

First that your post is interesting and stimulates something resembling thought in my frazzled brain.

And second, We had a meeting/retreat/"Day of Recollection" for the suckers, uh, I mean converts yesterday. I thought it was really good. And toward the end one of the friars came in to talk about "Lectio Divina - praying with the Bible".

And what he said was that in the bad old days before printing the Benedictines (and presumably other monks) would have their assigned time with the Monastery's one copy of the Bible, that maybe more than a hundred or even several hundred monks had to share. And they or some of them wanted to memorize it, or parts of it. And found (as so many of us have) that when you read the Bible and savor it lovingly and attentively you find that God does engage in conversation (or something sorta kinda like it) with you. And so the little teaching on lectio divina progressed.

But the relevance is that maybe our modern "lens" is provided by our sitz im leben. For more than half of the time since the Resurrection the Bible just wasn't avaiable, in practical terms outside of the living community. Not only was gentile Europe shockingly (when compared to our Jewish older brothers) illiterate, but even had they been able to read, there weren't that many Bibles to go around.

Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but my Church History prof said that in post reformation England churches had bibles chained to the lectern for the laity to come read. So, in terms of the history of the Church, the Solitary reading of Scripture just wasn't an option. You came to it from the Church community and returned from it to the Church community, the sacraments, the office (largely psalms anyway), the life and teaching of Church with its paradosis.

Of course, Your mileage varies, but an image I'm trying to suggest (influenced by today's appointed psalm for Congregations preparing catechumens - and the antiphon: Taste and see the goodness of the Lord) from a nutritional POV partaking only of Scripture is a newfangled and unbalanced diet, and not what Christians ate for centuries. So one might conjecture that an unbalanced diet (Sola Scriptura) would lead to an unbalanced opinion (ditto). I don't mean this as some kind of triumphant "Aha!" but just to depict/adumbrate another POV.

First that your post is interesting ......

Well thank you, my friend. :) That's a very nice compliment.

But the relevance is that maybe our modern "lens" is provided by our sitz im leben. For more than half of the time since the Resurrection the Bible just wasn't available, in practical terms outside of the living community. Not only was gentile Europe shockingly (when compared to our Jewish older brothers) illiterate, but even had they been able to read, there weren't that many Bibles to go around.

That's interesting. In fact, just off the top of my google (umm ....., I mean head) I remember that sitz im leben has to do with time and place perspective, including personal perspective. Since I have certainly used this idea to defend Biblical interpretations I freely and fully acknowledge that it is proper to use old world context to interpret scripture. When I first read selected books from the Bible I had zero information about such context.

I suppose the trick is to try to define the universality or timelessness of any given verse IN ITS PLAIN MEANING. I'll bet that definition for many verses has changed multiple times through the ages. However, I like to think that for the very core of teachings on Christ specifically, and God generally, that the exact same meaning has survived all these years, without need of any time or cultural consideration. I think we all have to have faith that the message of Christ, and His mission, are timeless without need of extravagant interpretation by ANY side. Since you and I are both Christians, we are examples.

Of course you are right that only relatively recently has a Bible been reasonably available to (many of) the masses. We Sola Scriptura (ists?) would say that correct oral teaching still "counted" as Sola Scriptura to the extent of its faithfulness to scripture. We obviously think there was "some" error in there over the first several centuries. However, all the points of belief that make one Christian, and more, did survive and flourish in all "truly" Christian faiths.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn someday that some things I think are true are dead wrong because of sitz im leben, so I think you raise an excellent point. I would probably most expect to find that in the area of eschatology. :)

Of course, Your mileage varies, but an image I'm trying to suggest ... from a nutritional POV partaking only of Scripture is a newfangled and unbalanced diet, and not what Christians ate for centuries. So one might conjecture that an unbalanced diet (Sola Scriptura) would lead to an unbalanced opinion (ditto). I don't mean this as some kind of triumphant "Aha!" but just to depict/adumbrate another POV.

Adumbrate? Well, just off the top of my Free Online Dictionary (umm ....., I mean head) I remember that you are proffering a supportable and reasonable view without demanding anyone's acceptance of it as fact. (Man, you've got a good vocabulary. :) Anyway, I would respectfully disagree that partaking only of Scripture is an unbalanced diet. In the nutritional comparison, our bodies NEED nutrients from different food groups to be healthy. The supposition appears to be that we NEED Tradition in order to be healthy, i.e., that the Bible is not enough for the Christian. If true, then for spiritual health, what would you say is lacking in the Bible?