This ends up going to the "different mindsets" notion I've been pushing on this thread. I'd suggest that the sola scriptura mindset wants a set of data which is entirely objective and unchanging and then proposes to use that dataset to work out the true dogma.
As a child of my age I understand the appeal.
Some Catholic apologists seem to propose Scripture plus the deposit of faith (as presented by the nebulous "magisterium") as providing the "Correct" dataset. Thus they fall into the same renaissance, budding Baconian empirical mindset in which the natural sciences are the model and paradigm of objective truth.
I think that model fails, whether applied by Protestants or, as modified, by Catholics. Practically speaking, it seems there is right much disagreement among the Sola Scriptura guys. Theoretically speaking if there were some place where the "deposit of faith" were collected and updated, and kind of annual journal of "where we are now" it could still be subject to the same disagreeing interpretations as the Scriptures themselves are.
Personally, I really am a kind of Xtian existentialist. One of the reasons I resonated so much with the late J2P2 Magnus is that His "personalism" stirred up sympathetic vibrations in what is generously called my "thought".
"That's nice," I hear you say, "but what does it mean?" I think it means something like what Augustine thought, "Unless you believe, you will not understand" as he read what Isaiah said to Hezekiah (Is 7:9 - from memory) "If you do not believe, you will certainly not be established."
To put that positively, God calls us into relationship with Him, and without the answering commitment of our hearts (which He enables and prompts) we cannot be "established" or, for that matter, "understand".
This belief is one which at least potentially requires our risking everything we have, even our lives. Experientially, and because God is gentle, it seems to me He rarely requires such a risk, and only slowly imparts the conscious readiness to take such a risk. But the rock-bottom requirement of faith is inescapable.
This is, somehow, because, ultimately, the Truth is not a body of propositions but a personal or super-personal being. The Truth is Jesus the Messiah, the Lord, and all that is true in whatever way is true in Him.
Now, and again this is, IMHO, God's gentleness and grace, we get to, as it were, "practice" or "train" in plighting our troth to the Truth.
We plight our troth not so much to ecclesiastical bureaucrats or even committees of such bureaucrats (something FAR more dreadful) but to what we take to be God's promise to His Church.
It is as if God were to say, "Okay, you say you trust me? Well I'm telling you now to follow the teaching of these bureaucrats. Trust my promise to you that even their venality (or worse) cannot obstruct the keeping of my promise."
It is hard enough to stick with my own conclusions when things get rough. A little peer pressure, some mockery, some threats, and suddenly sticking to my guns seems sort of arbitrary and self-centered.
But submitting myself to some manifestly imperfect bureaucrat on what I take to be God's say so alone? Now, that is hard!
In this connection, it is maybe important to point out that not all the "Doctors" of the Church are theologians. Terese of Avila and Catherine of Sienna were clearly people in intense and vital relationships with (arising from intense and vital commitments to) God in Christ.
Catherine says, "All the way to heaven is heaven." That is not a proposition of systematic theology. It is either a report of someone who knows "all the way to heaven" or it is nonsense. But Catherine was a lady who was at once obedient and not afraid to upbraid priests and the Pope. But she was obedient.
You may say, "But what if they had said or required something wrong?" And we answer, "The promise of God, which He gracefully kept was that He would not let them go wrong when it REALLY counted." The miracle is that they did not say or require something wrong, when it counted.
We look, with you and with your horror and suspicion, at these ecclesiastical bureaucrats. And we give a low whistle and shake our heads and say,"Wow, that was CLOSE! But God kept His promise."
But for the individual lay Catholic, especially for one with an interest in theology, it all comes down to the commitment to Christ and the willingness to follow Him, even when it looks ridiculous to do so.
If the Summa, if the Catechism, if the Bible were all we knew, we would know nothing worth knowing. We seek to know Christ, and knowing Him only a little, with such a small portion of knowledge as He has chosen to give us, we place ourselves in His care, even when that turns out to be the care of bureaucrats.
As the song says:
Oh Lord, in you have I trusted.
let me never be confounded.
Well put.
Though I vigorously disagree that God has preserved infallibly any ORGANIZATIONAL body of Christian truth.
I suspect, actually, am fairly certain . . . that the lack of original documents was also His design.
I believe HE WANTED folks to FOCUS ON RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM
vs documents, text, etc.
Christ said “It is written . . . “ to satan a few times.
On the whole, HE FOCUSED ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FATHER AND WHAT THE FATHER TOLD HIM.
He MODELED that for all Christians.
He also fiercely castigated the Jewish magicsterical for endlessly haggling and ‘refining,’ ‘adding endlessly nuanced laws, rules, policies, interpretations to the original Scriptures—which they definitely had reasonably reliable copies of,’ etc.
TRUSTING IN THE LORD . . . LET ME NOT BE CONFOUNDED—INDEED.
That’s TRUSTING
IN
THE
LORD
NOT . . . an organization, body politic, library of text, committee of bureaucrats, or WHATEVER else.
That’s TRUSTING
IN RELATIONSHIP
IN THE LORD.
We all have affinities for things similar to our constructions on reality. Such affinities easily become customs, habits and then idols.
Christ persistently cut catty-wumpus across all the Disciples’ affinities, assumptions, sensibilities, doctrines, preferences, comfort zones . . .
HE INSISTED ON RELATIONSHIP and an ongoing, ongrowing, dynamic, rising, improving RELATIONSHIP . . .
NO resting on ancestry . . .
NO resting on even Scripture, per se . . .
NO resting on yesterday’s achievements or righteousness per se . . . though, of course, we do rest in a sense on His finished work on The Cross . . .
NO resting on one’s group or even one’s achievements in behalf of the group . . . even in “The Name of God . . .”
We are to REST IN CHRIST . . . IN RELATIONSHIP
We TRUST HIM AS the Author and Finisher of our faith and of us IN RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
The infallibility is IN HIS CAPACITY TO LEAD US TO AND PRESENT US BLAMELESS BEFORE THE FATHER.
The infallibility is IN HIS CAPACITY TO WORK ALL THINGS TOGETHER FOR OUR AND THE KINGDOM’S GOOD.
He, above all, knew the folly of even beginning to trust ANY collection of humans—much less a political bureaucratic collection of self-serving RELIGIOUS ELITES such as He spent so much time most fiercely condemning.
Human nature has not changed in 2000 years.
Human political natures have not changed in 2000 years.
Human bureaucratic dynamics and tendencies toward self-serving aggrandizement and truth mangling have not changed in 2000 years.
And they are not about to change.
Only Holy Spirit amidst humans dispensing The Blood and Truth of Jesus is redemptive at all in individuals and certainly amidst and with groups of flawed humans.
Pretending that ANY human group has a corner on ANY even major portion of RELIGIOUS truth is, to me, kowtowing to blind, denial ridden ignorance of human nature and the nature of flawed human groups.
God works all things together for good to INDIVIDUALS WHO LOVE HIM AND FOR HIS KINGDOM . . .
REGARDLESS
of idiotic junk individuals and groups of individuals proclaim AND DO ‘in His Name.’
. . . not because of . . . any group’s particular proclamations of monopolistic rights to any even major corner of RELIGIOUS truth.
And RELIGION is a long ways—usually 180 degrees away from—authentic spirituality—SPIRITUALITY IN RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST.
imho . . .
It is after all a work night. I’ll need to read that post more closely when it is not so close to bed time.