The Bible tells us of many individuals who didn't know Scriptures to whom it was committed to love God. One doesn't need Scriptures to love God. It seems to me that in your mind the Bible is the source of faith and love for God. More bibliolatry.
What, are you going back to Genesis or something? You live after Christ was here. It is your job to know the scriptures. God commands that you love Him. Without a burning bush experience, how are you going to love Him if you do not know anything of Him. Can blind faith even cover that? Just love ................... whatever?
God is the source of faith and love for God, NOT man. The faith is revealed in the Bible, as is the HOW of how to love God. If, however, man is the starting point, then man makes these up as seems fitting to him. For example, if one didn't think that Scriptures were of use in loving God, then perhaps loving God could be accomplished by simply blindly doing good deeds, which would be premised on the ANTI-Biblical proposition that man was capable of doing them on his own. Man has created his own system that seems pleasing to him.
No one who knew the Scriptures recognized Christ from the Scriptures!
How can you say that, the righteous certainly DID. Jesus Himself said that the Scriptures testified about Him. Are you telling me NOBODY got it? That would be a blind assumption. The Scriptures don't back you up.
You cannot fully appreciate Christ without Mariology.
No doubt. Without a man, or in this case a woman, we cannot fully reach Christ. This would make perfect sense if the world started with man, as you said. No man comes to the Son but through another (wo)man. In the Apostolic world, this is the order of the universe. This view actually makes "co-Mediatrix" look weak. :)
And it's not my "job" to know the Bible. It is the job of those who were ordained to give that knowledge to others. Just as with the Ethiopian eunuch. And Christ makes that very clear when He says: "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message" [John 17:20]
It's not sporting when you make it that easy. :) So, you are telling me, all in the same breath mind you, that it's not your job to know the scriptures, but it IS the job of your teachers to teach you the scriptures. Is that right? Therefore, if your teachers do a Godly job, then you will know the scriptures, but that is not your job, but you are to learn from your teachers, but your teachers should teach truth, but you should not know about, but................ :)
IOW, how can it be the job of your teachers to teach if it is not your job to learn? OOOOORRRRRRR, do your teachers not teach the Bible? If that's true, then you're off the hook, and none of you know the scriptures. :)
FK: One can be an Arminian and be a Bible-believing Christian easily, but all those others you listed are clearly NOT Bible-believing Christians.
Why, because their "bible" doesn't fit the man-made bible of Luther's?
No, I'm sure there are plenty who think the Bible I read is fine, but they are not Bible-believing Christians.
The Church established which books will be in the Bible and the Protestants rejected some and made their own. By your definition, none of the Protestants/Baptists could possibly be Bible-believing Christians since they don't use the Bible used by the original Church, which includes the so-called Apocryphal books and the Septuagint.
Your sect determined what books it wanted to use, even using horse-trading book for book, as if it was a commodities exchange or something. :) Bible believing Christians were not in power then and had no say. While your sect(s) claimed all power and authority, they did not speak for all of God's Church. You have said before that your branch of God's Church did not even accept Revelation until hundreds of years after the Latins declared it official Canon. This is even before the Schism, so which of God's Churches was right? This obviously proves there was not only one voice, and there were true believers, (and I add) including Reformers who lived in those early times, but did not succumb to the power structure set up by men.
In other words, it's all what man's definition you are willing to accept as "true," that determines who is "Bible-believing" and who is not.
Well sure. It's our term and we use it across denominational lines to refer to each other. I have found it to be highly accurate, and have little trouble recognizing another one.
If you deny the authority of the Church then anything goes.
If we deny the authority of the Church then we can start to grow in knowing the authority of God.
I have dealt with people who call themselves Bible-believing Christians but who also made up their own Bible. So, why should I treat these so-called Bible-believing Christians any different than the LDS?
Well, if you put the KJV on a par with the LDS bible, then I have no answer for you. It is very clear that you have no understanding of who Bible-believing Christians are. BUT THAT'S OK! :) We know who we are. :) That's all that matters since we use it to identify each other. The Mormons have their own Bible and that is fine for them, or something, but we know that it isn't the same type of Bible we are referring to for the purposes of the use of the term.
None of them uses the Bible put together by the original Church.
Again, so much emphasis on the Apocrypha that no one on your side quotes from. Why is that? In my personal FR experience, the statistic has now moved to less than 1% of responses to me including any proof offered from any book in the Apocrypha. Further, it's been over a year since I have griped about a proof offered that was Septuagint only. It just doesn't happen all that often. These are not world ending differences. They DO count, don't get me wrong, but I just find it curious that in all of the hundreds of subjects I have discussed, almost no one hauls out the Apocrypha or the Septuagint to make his or her point on that basis. I am fine with treating them the same way you guys do. :)
To be one as He and the Father are one is not really much of a wiggle room.
That depends on which one you eliminate to believe only in the preferred perception of the other one. :)
The faith was delivered once and left in the hands of the Apostles and those who followed in their footsteps to safeguard.
So those who followed men would be saved. No other conclusion is possible if the world started with men.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
***No one who knew the Scriptures recognized Christ from the Scriptures!***
FK: to bolster your argument... I would turn your attention to Luke 2:25-40.
Surely Simeon and Anna knew the scriptures, and were waiting for their fulfillment. They recognized Christ AS AN INFANT!!!!!!!!!!! They knew who he was and what he was BEFORE he did anything. Look at what Simeon said in verse 29: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised...” How could they know what was promised UNLESS they knew scripture?
You live after Christ was here. It is your job to know the scriptures.
That's nonsense. Where does it say so in the Bible? Jesus says it to the Sadducees who were priests. I expect you to know the law because you are lawyer. And I expect doctors to know medicine because they are physicians. I also expect pilots to know how to fly a plane. By the same token, I expect priests to know the Bible. It's their job! It doesn't mean that everyone needs to know law, medicine or how to fly a plane, or for that matter to know the Bible. It is God and not the Bible that gives us faith. God did not distribute the Bible and command everyone to read it. There is no sola scriptura in the Scriptures!
God is the source of faith and love for God, NOT man. The faith is revealed in the Bible, as is the HOW of how to love God.
Let's get this issue straight once and for all, FK: either you believe in God before you read the Bible, which is why you recognize the truths in it, or the Bible gives you faith, and you come to believe in the Bible which becomes your "God."
The first is the a priori belief based on what you call "no basis." And, yes, those who believe woke up one day and realized that they believed. It is sudden and "real" to the believer; it is subjective, and it is a priori, and baseless. It is given (by grace); no words were necessary or exchanged. One believes the message of the Bible, then, because it speaks of God we recognize in our hearts.
If, on the other hand, you "learn" your faith reading fantastic stories of a Zeus-like God that read like Iliad, or the Epic of Gilgamesh or Hammurabi's Laws, and you become convinced by them that these are true God's words, then it is the (words in the) Bible that gave you faith and therefore it is the Bible that is "God," or God's literal word, as your side calls it. And by this approach, of course, it has to be God who wrote the Bible. There can be no other source of faith. Hence, sola scriptura becomes the only "base," and bibliolatry is established.
Your sect [sic] determined what books it wanted to use, even using horse-trading book for book, as if it was a commodities exchange or something.
Well, you are using the same "horse-traded" books (Hebrews and Revelation) which, according to you, men of "my sect" put together and called it the Christian canon. Your sect, which in this case is a proper term, rejects the books that the Apostles used, namely the Septuagint, and made up its own truncated, non-Apostolic "Bible."
While your sect(s) claimed all power and authority, they did not speak for all of God's Church
No they did not, because heresy was born on the Pentecost alongside the Church, and, just like the evil behind the heresy, it persists to this day, and deceptively appeals to so many men and women.
You have said before that your branch of God's Church did not even accept Revelation until hundreds of years after the Latins declared it official Canon
Where have you been all these years, FK? The Latin North African Council of Carthage was a local Council. It was never binding to the whole Church. The first "Ecumenical" Council that canonized the Bible was at Trent, and the Orthodox weren't there!
Kosta: In other words, it's all what man's definition you are willing to accept as "true," that determines who is "Bible-believing" and who is not.
FK: Well sure. It's our term and we use it across denominational lines to refer to each other. I have found it to be highly accurate, and have little trouble recognizing another one.
Your logic escapes me, FK. Read what you wrote: "I have found it highly accurate...." In other words, it passed your test, so it must be true! It's twu, it's twu...LOL!
If we deny the authority of the Church then we can start to grow in knowing the authority of God
Based on what? Your private interpretation of the Bible?
Again, so much emphasis on the Apocrypha that no one on your side quotes from.
First of all, let's understand that when we speak of "Apocrypha" it is a term coined by Luther which does not reflect what our Biblical canon contains. I use the term because the Protestants/Baptists are familiar with it. The proper term is Old Testament deterocanonical books, meaning secondary canon, but they are canon! And they were canon to Hellenized Jews, as well as Greek and Latin converts. Even the first edition of KJV contained deterocanonical books before the Protestant Apocrypha Police got involved.
Christianity was received by Hellenized Jews and the New Testament books are written overwhelmingly using Septuagint sources. It was the OT of the Apostles, and part of the Septuagint canon are the deterocanonicals. They are essential in shedding light on the last 3 centuries of Judaic religious metamorphosis before the appearance of Christ. They also have a great deal to do with what the apocalyptic Judaism believed as far as immortality, resurrection and other escathologcial concepts incorporated into Christianity are con concerned.
By rejecting the OT of the Apostles (Setuagint), who never questioned its canon, the Protestants decided by their human authority to accept the Christ-hating Jamnia formula calling in essence all the non-Pharisaical Jews non-Jews! That would include the diaspra in Asia Minor and Alexandria and the Essense in Israel proper. Thus, by authority vested in himself by himself, Luther what was genuine and what was not. As to deterocanoncial not being quoted directly in the NT, specifically they are bot, but then not everything Christ taught is in the Bible, and not everything that is canonical was quoted in the NT (Jude quoting from i.e. the popular Book of Enoch, which is not even deuterocanonical).