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).
In this Church Age, each and every individual believer is a priest to the Father through our High Priest, the Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, the Head of the Church.
God, by His Will has a Plan for every believer and has predestined the logistics for that Plan. We don't understand what He wants us to do until we understand His Will and that is reveals to us in Scripture. By studying Scripture through faith in Him, He is able to first hand grow our understanding of Him, His Will, and how we are to work to be when He wants us and perform per His Will.
While we remain in fellowship with Him, we find ourselves in the right place, at the right time, to perform good works through His Will, by His methods, as good stewards of what He has provided us. Our placement isn't always by worldly criteria, and some have argued God enjoys using those with little to no worldly power to implement His victories in the angelic conflict.
In order to understand what His Plan is for us, we must first understand what He reveals to us and mature in that understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. That only comes by faith, which is matured as Bible doctrine in our thinking and continually residing in it for further sanctification of our thinking by Him.
Sola Scriptura as a policy is a safe place to begin. By means through faith in Him, if you have advance beyond Bible doctrine, already know and abide by all things within Scripture, are able to resist temptation and continue with an even more fruitful life, then I think it is wonderful that God reveals Himself to you even more than what He has already provided in Scripture. For myself, I continue to grow in Him through faith in Christ and by the Word of God which He provides to us in Scripture so I may continue to abide in Him with something veritable. Until He has built me beyond that point, I know He has provided Scripture for me to use to unserstand His Word and grow in Him, so Sola Scriptura for myself is a veritable beginning.
There are also some doctrinal arguments regarding cessationism which indicate nobody receives special revelation after the completion of the canon of Scripture, so if somebody thinks they have Mastered Scripture and now advance to other revelation, it might be the case that they never understood Scripture in their human spirit as they might think they have in their soul.
That's nonsense. Where does it say so in the Bible?
The Bible is God's revelation to all believers. It seems to me that those who believe the Bible was only meant for the cloistered few have no interest in a personal relationship with God. I would imagine the only relationship such would be interested in would be with other men. This separates those whose way of life is Christianity from those for whom Christianity is merely a hobby. With hobbies one can leave a lot of things to the experts, but for a way of life one needs to understand himself. Jesus said:
Matt 4:4 : Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
Notice that it says MAN, not PRIESTS. A man LIVES on the word of God. A priest cannot eat for you, you can only eat for yourself. So, if one wants his life to be nourished by God, he MUST know the scriptures himself.
I suppose you could come back and say what about illiterates and such, but that is not your situation. You are fortunate enough to have the best of every world in terms of availability of the word of God. For anyone in your shoes to sluff off knowing scripture because that's someone else's job seems to me to be passing the buck and proclaiming that you have little responsibility before God. If you tell me that your only responsibilities are to do whatever your priests tell you to do, then your allegiance is to (and the faith would be in) them and not God.
There is no sola scriptura in the Scriptures!
But it's not your job to know that. The best you should be able to do is to tell me that your clergy do not believe in the Biblical teaching of Sola Scriptura. :)
FK: 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."
You are quibbling over oral vs. written and I am talking about the word of God. One CANNOT love God without knowing something of His word. While one CAN certainly come to true faith without having read a word for himself, especially if it is unavailable to him, the danger is in whether the human teacher actually has it right. If one DOES have the scriptures available he would be irresponsible for not reading them for himself. This is exactly what Paul was talking about with the Bereans. He was PROUD of them for not taking his word for it on anything. They searched the scriptures themselves. Paul implied with his praise that it was the responsible thing to do. Paul put the word of God ahead of himself. You appear to put everything else ahead of the word of 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.
Of all the hundreds or low thousands of Christian testimonies I have ever heard or read, not a single one goes anything like that. No Christian church I have ever heard of teaches anything like that. The Bible certainly doesn't teach that. Finally, if Jesus thought that, then He wouldn't have bothered with preaching or teaching.
You have argued a hundred times that the Holy Spirit does not lead the individual because how could anyone be sure that it was not secretly satan doing the leading. Yet now you tell me that our faith itself is baseless and so led by baseless "grace" and that you just somehow know it is from God. That is a glaring contradiction.
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.
Yes, there can be no other source of faith but God. You seem to be complaining that we say God needs no help, or that God cannot be improved upon. I believe that the Bible is the word of God, so if biblolatry is the devotion to the word of God, then I am guilty as charged. :) The alternative is a non sequitur to me, that a person says he is devoted to God, but NOT to His word.
FK: 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!
Well, I deal a lot with Latins too, and I know they would STRENUOUSLY disagree with what you say here. They would say the Canon was established 1,100 years or so before Trent. As far as differences go, I'd say that one is a pretty big deal. At any rate, one good thing to come from this is at least you can no longer say that we "removed" the aprocrypha from the Canon, since there WAS no Canon from which to remove it! :)
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!
What? I said that we Bible-believing Christians use that term to refer to each other, and that we know each other when we come across each other. My experience has been that the term works well across denominational lines. For these purposes, we could not possibly care less whether non-Bible believing Christians recognize us as such or not.
FK: 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?
God either intended to communicate MEANINGFULLY to His children, OR, He intended to communicate in secret code only to a few elite. If God truly loves ME and if He wants to have a personal relationship with ME, then it can only be the former. If the Apostolic interpretation is correct, then by definition a man cannot know God from the Bible. He can only know God through other men. I will never accept that because I am absolutely convinced that God does, in fact, love ME as more than a downline serf.
By rejecting the OT of the Apostles (Septuagint), 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!
We don't see anything "Christ-hating" in our OT. Christ is all over our OT and there are no contradictions. Where do you see Christ-hating in our OT that does not appear in the OT that you use? That is, to such a degree that you feel justified in making the generalization that ours IS Christ-hating and yours is not.