Replies

FK: It is your job to know the scriptures.

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.

The Bible is God's revelation to all believers.

So is the Koran. Your dogmatic statements do not make the Bible objectively God's revelation, FK. You are placing yourself in the position to dictate what is and what isn't from God.

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

The Bible tells us that the Church elders were tasked to teach about God. The Church collected books written by men , books believed to contain revealed moral lessons from God and made a canon from which to teach.

Nowhere in the Bible, OT or NT, do we have anyone tasking the believers in general to read or interpret the Scriptures. That is a Protestant myth. The NT specifically warns against private interpretations of the Scriptures.

The issue with Bereans is also a Protestant deformation. Paul taught in a synagogue. The people who were and are authority (elders) in the synagogue are the rabbis, and they would have, I am sure, checked to see of Paul's teachings were in line with what was in the Scriptures (because it's their job!).

And when they did, some believed him, and some didn't! The synagogue had scrolls and not everyone could open a scroll and read. Nowhere does it say the whole congregation was busily leafing through the Bible because there was no Bible as a book.

Now, everyone can read up on illnesses from medical books, or the law from legal books, or for that matter about any profession, but it is not necessarily everyone's responsibility to know medicine or law or engineering.

And the Bible which you worship specifically tells you that (not everyone is appointed to be an apostle, teacher, etc), but you choose to disregard that because it was pointed out to you on numerous occasions.

Jesus said: Matt 4:4 ... '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.

First, this is Christ being "quoted" while He is alone in the wilderness for 40 days. Was Matthew there? Was Luke there? No, neither was there. So neither is an eyewitness account. Rather it is a moral narrative written by a human being expressing a moral lesson to follow.

Second, Matthew is quoting from the Septuagint. If you check the Hebrew Bible, it says every thing (not every word). It is the Greek Septuagint that introduces the "word," but not the Hebrew version. The Hebrew version says nothing about a "word of God." It says every thing that wells from God.

This alleged "quote" was taken from Deuteronomy 8:3, and in the context of the OT chapter that follows it is clear that we are not speaking of "words" of God, but of God being a source (orifice from which proceeds everything of what) we need.

More importantly, Christ's "quote" is Matthew's (LXX) version is in the future (shall live), whereas the Hebrew version simply uses the present ( "does live"). KJV opted to keep the Septuagint version (so much for Hebrew version of the OT! Mixing and matching and cherry-picking, he?) in this case because it expresses the Christian belief that we will physically die and bread alone will not sustain in life, but those who obey God will continue to live even after we die. The Hebrew OT makes no such implication.

The Greek version with the "word" also fits neatly with the Protestant idea of Scriptures being the "word of God." So, this is how manipulative KJV is! NIV marches right in step. NAB says "everything." The Septuagint is making an anthropomorphic statement which someone took literally and ran away with it!

The second part of your post here says "So, if one wants his life to be nourished by God, he MUST [sic] know the scriptures himself." It sure sounds like the man is deciding. Was this a slip? Or is it your inner conscience telling you the truth? Is it not the Bible which you worship, by your own admission, that says the Holy Spirit will teach you everything you need to know? So, where are you getting 'if one wants..." stuff? Since when is the faith man's prerogative?

And do you not think that God will nourish you spiritually if you simply pray? Is it not Jesus who is quoted as saying that whatever we ask (in good faith) will be granted? Is it not the same Bible you worship that says in the OT that those who obey God's commandments will be taken care of? Where does it say that anyone "must" know the Scriptures in order to believe or to be spiritually sustained?

I suppose you could come back and say what about illiterates and such, but that is not your situation

No I wouldn't, because the illiterates can go to church and hear about God if they want to, but all they really have to do is pray and praise God for His blessings to be sustained. They don't have to read a single word in the Bible. It seems to me, you place the Bible before prayers and seem to think that one cannot pray without knowing the Bible.

Our connection to God is through prayer FK. It can be even without words! If God is the Comforter, what words are "necessary" to feel His love?

Kosta: There is no sola scriptura in the Scriptures!

FK: 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.

No it's not my job, but I happen to know. :) And the clergy certainly know that too. In fact, it was the clergy that called my attention to the nonexistence of "sola scriptura" in the Scriptures.

One CANNOT love God without knowing something of His word

One more dogmatic truism that has no basis in reality.

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

And there is no danger in private interpretation of the Scriptures?

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.

Again, Paul was speaking in a synagogue and the rabbis (elders) checked the scrolls against his words. And some were not convinced!

He was PROUD of them for not taking his word for it on anything.

No, he was simply reporting that they didn't take his word for it.

They searched the scriptures themselves.

Of course, who also was there to search it for the rabbis! Little context please...

Paul implied with his praise that it was the responsible thing to do

You mean, he though it was their job? I agree, that's what the rabbis are for. People don't go behind the curtain and pull out the sacred Torah scrolls every time they want to check something. Even those who read it can only touch it with a pointer (picture)

You think there was your average Berean man (and certainly not women) who "checked" to see if Paul was right? That's about as credible as pink unicorns on Jupiter. That betrays complete lack of knowledge of historical context and cultural and religious practises of the Jews.

Kosta: Where have you been all these years, FK? The Latin North African Council of Cartage 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!

FK: Well, I deal a lot with Latins too, and I know they would STRENUOUSLY disagree with what you say here

Then they can show me that the North African Council of Cartage was "ecumenical." It wasn't. Period.

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.

Works well? Last time I checked, Joel Osteen preaches there's no hell! You find him in your theological camp as a "Bible-believer?" Being a "Bible-believer" says nothing of the private theology each and every such self-styled believer conjures. That's like using the universal "Christian" label. There are all sorts of sects and cults that call themselves "Christian," but what does that really mean. It's nonsense. Some of these groups believe things the other groups consider satanic.

God either intended to communicate MEANINGFULLY to His children, OR, He intended to communicate in secret code only to a few elite

Love is meaningful only if it is returned. Not because it "makes sense." Or because "it's logical." The Church Christ established and left to the Apostles and their successors simply believes that God in His infinite love offers the same blessings to all. Some who call themselves Christians say He offered it only to the "elite," select, elect, chosen. So, before you point the finger at anyone, I would consider pointing the finger at myself first.

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.

I, too, am convinced He loves you, FK. And, yes, we can recognize God's love in other people. That's what makes it real instead of just theoretical, something we read about.

Kosta: 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!

FK: 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.

Jamnia resulted in throwing out all the books written by Christians, including the Gospels. They rejected the Septuagint because it was used by the Christians. You call that Christ-friendly? Little context, situational awareness, etc. help put things in proper perspective.