Posted on 01/04/2007 1:48:47 PM PST by Binghamton_native
So sacred tradition and the councils themselves testify to the Doctrine of Sola Scriptura found in Scripture.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
No, neither the ancient councils nor scripure itself refer to "sola scriptura." The difference is that the bishops hold that when they reached consensus, with the approval of the Chair of St. Peter, they were infallible. Hence, they did not need to re-argue every past conclusion every time they met. Instead, they could refer to past councils' conclusion.
Protestantism misinterprets the appeal to a past consensus as having a source other than scripture. It is not: The Catholic Church to this day holds that "public revelation" (scripture) is sufficient. If any "private revelation" (apparitions, prophecies, etc.) is to be considered valid, it must conform with public revelation in all matters.
How then, if scripture is sufficient, can Protestants and Catholics disagree? The Catholic church holds that if anyone refuses to ascent to previous consensus, the Holy Spirit is not guiding their reason. This action of the Holy Spirit is not private revelation! The Catholic Church does not hold that separate, extra-ordinary miracles are needed to interpret the bible, but merely that a refusal to ascent to previous consensuses clouds reason or is a symptom of clouded reason or represents a failure to start with adequate initial presumptions.
Yah'shua said "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men."The Catholic Church in particular has its own body of tradition
He was also saying to them,
"You nicely set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition".
Dr. John F. MacArthur, Jr. clearly holds the roman church up the standard initiated by Yah'shua
b'shem Yah'shua
This is very different from the Catholic notion of the Holy Spirit's influence: In theory, an impartial, rational observer would reach the Catholic Church's conclusions providing that the observer accepted as facts a priori all previous conclusions.
So . . .
you are exhorting us to tear out and burn the verses about Holy Spirit leading into all truth?
Appealing to Scripture is not the same thing as asserting that Scripture is the only thing to which one can appeal.
And many of the early councils appealed directly to the rulings of earlier councils. Ephesus anathematized those who did not accept the earlier council of Nicaea. At Chalcedon, the letter of the Roman Pope teaching the correct Christological doctrine was read, and the assembled bishops shouted, "This is the faith of the apostles! Peter has spoken through Leo!" Doesn't sound like sola scriptura to me.
Read the councils for yourself. Y'all are proud that no bishop and no Pope can tell you what the Bible means, but you jump at the opportunity to have some man make sweeping pronouncements about church history or the writings of the fathers, without critically checking them out for yourself.
Are you? That truth is precisely sacred tradition. Christ made that promise not to you individually, not to me individually, and not to John MacArthur individually, but to the Apostles.
The particular case Christ was pointing to did not explain Scripture nor did it settle a dispute about Scripture. In fact, it simply invalidated Scripture, by setting up specific conditions whereby a person could escape from the commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother" by making a pretended offering of his money to the Temple.
It has no bearing or relationship to Catholic practice at all, nor is it an indictment of tradition in general. Elsewhere, Christ says that the Pharisees "sit in Moses' seat" (a concept from Jewish tradition) and the Apostles are obey their teaching but not follow their example. That's not a repudiation of tradition.
The point is moot anyway. Sola scriptura is effectively a myth. Nobody really does it. People who try invent a new body of tradition within a generation or two, sometimes within a month or two. John T. MacArthur follows tradition just as much as I do. You follow tradition just as much as I do. You just don't follow the same tradition that I do.
Yes, and Dr. John F. McArthur, Jr. doesn't understand what he is talking about. The ecumenical councils had to agree that something had been proven, rationally. The Talmudic scholars only had to agree that something had to be a good idea.
Case in point: The kosher njunction against eating meat with dairy. Based on a biblical injunction against boiling a kid in its mother's milk, the rabbis expanded the prohibition to eating any dairy with any meat. No-one ever argued that this "tradition" was an interpretation of scripture; it was purely a case of "well, if a little is good, a lot must be better."
It never ceases to amaze me what nonsense gets passed off as Catholic doctrine.
So are you saying that the councils did not make their decisions by consultation with that Latin Vulgate in their hands?
I'm saying that they never embraced the idea that that Latin Vulgate was the solely authoritative, all-encompassing, formally-sufficient source of doctrine.
I doubt that the Holy Spirit would guide prelates to make doctrines that ran counter to the Scriptures that He inspired.
So do we.
Did Jerome forget to put II Timothy 3:14-17 in his Vulgate?
>> you are exhorting us to tear out and burn the verses about Holy Spirit leading into all truth? <<
What a preposterous non sequitur! What I am saying is that, as far as establishing doctrine, the Holy Spirit works through consensus ("being of one mind"), rather than a prophetic gift.
(The Holy Spirit does also guide our conscience individually, but this is NOT public revelation. Again, however, the Protestant cannot say, "well, my conscience tells me that it would be wrong of me to confess my sins to a priest, therefore Catholicism must be wrong" because such a conscious is informed falsely by rational preconceptions. Herein, the Holy Spirit may be able to guide a Protestant to discern, say, the decision to not bill for hours spent procrastinating, because in such matters the Protestant is in accord with the Church.)
Nope. He had no problem with it. It also teaches nothing resembling sola scriptura. Read it carefully, and read it in context.
That's my entire point:
This is very different from the Catholic notion of the Holy Spirit's influence: In theory, an impartial, rational observer would reach the Catholic Church's conclusions providing that the observer accepted as facts a priori all previous conclusions.... which had also been met in the same manner, tracing all decisions back to the bible as their ultimate source.
Excelsior!
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