Sunday evening ping!
Oh good grief! What the passage in Timothy says is:
“14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Yes, Timothy was to continue in what he learned...from the Apostle Paul. No Protestant is denying Apostolic authority. However, many doctrines of the Catholic Church are not taught by anything we have handed down from the Apostles. We didn’t need 2nd, 3rd, or 27th generation unfolding because Paul taught the “whole counsel of God” - not part.
It then says the scriptures “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” So if we need it for salvation, it is there. Otherwise they would NOT be able, but would need help.
Then Timothy is told to use the scriptures because they have authority - they are God’s Breath - and he is to use them “for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. The result (the next verse starts with “so that”) is that the man of God “may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” “Thoroughly equipped”. “Every good work”.
Doesn’t leave much.
And in Jude we find that he is contending “for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.” ‘Once for all’ doesn’t leave a lot of room for development.
And in 2 John we read, “8 Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. 9 Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; 11 for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”
Hard to abide in the teaching of Christ if you don’t HAVE the full teaching of Christ. And we are told “Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God...”
Sounds serious. And we read further, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house...for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”
Just show us where Apostolic succession is taught or promoted in scripture ..
Tradition that has a biblical base is accepted by most Protestant churches.. it is just the ones from thin air that cause us a problem.
What traditions would Rabbi Paul have taught ? Would Rabbi Paul have taught the traditions surrounding the Or Would Rabbi Paul have taught the Babylonian Paganism of Nicea ?
Question :
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
celebration of YHvH commanded Feasts ?
Ping!
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**Both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are the word of God, while the Church is “the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” [1 Tim. 3:15] The Holy Spirit through the Church protects Both from corruption. **
A fact not recognized by all.
Ok, Paul is claiming apostalic authority... I guess I better read Corinthians. To get my apostolic authority. Don’t need the Papal tradition, that line has failed. Don’t need the Patriarchs of Constantinople or Moscow. That line has failed also. So I guess I just have to read Paul, by Paul, about Paul.
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Bump for Monday reading
Gee, another thread about the need of Christians for more teaching authority than is to be found in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. One might be tempted to think that there is an agenda being put forth by a tag team of apologists.
All efforts to discuss reasonably this matter with them will eventually be out-shouted by them. They will point to the so-called “oral tradition” or “oral teaching” that was supposedly given to the church (here, of course, read Roman Catholic). It goes something like this: What the Scriptures say, while inspired by God and inerrant, is not necessarily complete. That is the RC argument in a nutshell. In support of this certain passages are cited that speak of oral teaching and the handing on of certain traditions as if this meant something other than the oral teaching that of necessity preceded the writing of the New Testament Scriptures or, thereafter, that which naturally accompanied the Holy Scriptures as the duty to which the apostles and their successors were called to by Christ Himself, Matthew 28:18-20. Clearly, the approved teachers, beginning with the twelve, were to go out into the world and make disciples by baptizing and teaching. They in turn were to train up a new generation of teachers/pastors/bishops/elders (call them what you will, Scripture has many names/aspects for this calling), and so on.
In the stead of this simple, contextually clear reading of the various New Testament texts that speak of traditions and oral instruction, the idea is put forth that there is other important, nay, indispensable, material never committed to writing in the time of the apostles that, nevertheless, was passed on in the apostolic succession and only in the course of time revealed as needed by the teaching authority of the church headed by the successor of Peter, i.e., the Roman Pontiff and believed by those who recognize his authority even though they are not as directly under his thumb, e.g., the Greek Catholics of eastern Europe or the Melchite Catholics of the Near East. This is the agenda.
Think of it this way: The Jews have the Tanakh (the written word of God, recorded between c. 1400 and c. 400 B.C.) and the Mishnah together with its supplementary Tosephta (the oral word of God not written down until the time of the Tannaim (roughly 70-200 A.D.). In practice, as the various commentaries and expansions of Tanakh and, especially, Mishnah/Tosephta appear through the centuries, the Tanakh itself (which really is just an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim (the Law (though better translated, the Teaching), the Prophets and the Writings) suffers and is more or less supplanted in authority by the so-called “oral word of God,” the Mishnah. In other words, the traditions become the tail that wags the dog.
The same thing happened with the Qur’an, the supposed word of God given to Muhammad and immediately written down. It too was and still is supplemented by the ahadith, which are basically oral traditions passed on by those who knew and heard Muhammad, and written down only later.
In all these cases, the later so-called oral word or, we could even say, somewhat confusingly, the “oral Scriptures,” in time come to be the lens through which the earlier written Scriptures (yes, I know, redundant) are understood and interpreted.
It was precisely against such well known and well understood practices by the Roman Church, mirrored in the practice of the other so-called religions of the “Book,” Judaism and Islam, that the term SOLA SCRIPTURA arose and, more importantly, the practice of relying on Scripture alone as the final and only authority on all doctrinal matters of Christendom became the watchword of the Reformation of the Catholic (universal) Church.
Where much of the Reformation went off the rails was in connection with the other so-called reformers, properly, the radical reformers (the Reformation associated with Luther was a conservative one). The radical reformers threw out church tradition and understanding completely, as if God had not spoken to every generation through the Scriptures, as if God had not spoken clearly to earlier generations, as if the church of Christ had somehow disappeared at times, even though her Lord said she would never fail, even as she stood before the very gates of hell. So, instead of the twin authorities of Scripture and tradition that Rome was always struggling to reconcile, usually at the expense of Scripture, the radical reformers ended up employing the twin authorities of Scripture and human reason/experience (depending on which branch of the reformed you are talking about). Alas, here too human reason and/or human experience tends to trump the authority of the Holy Scriptures.
In a nutshell, Romanist and Reformed are like two sides of the same coin. The twin authorities are the written word, Holy Scripture, and human judgment, either through time, Rome, or contemporaneous, the Reformed. Or put it another way, human understanding as the second authority is a top down, hierarchical authority for the Romanist, but a bottom up, individual authority for the Reformed (hence why you have apparent, and it is only apparent, unity in the former, and chaotic multiplicity in the latter).
The Lutherans (confessional Lutherans) insist that the Scriptures interpret themselves. That is to say, that God’s word is the final, clearest, and only authoritative commentary on itself. It trumps all human judgment and understanding, whether of the past (tradition) or of the present (reason/experience/emotion).
I for one will rely on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament alone, but without disregarding the teachers and traditions that have come to us, for they, our fathers in the faith, are to be honored (simple 4th Commandment duty) and listened to, unless they contradict the written word.
sola gratia
sola fide
sola scriptura
and solus Christus
These are general questions for any of the Roman Catholic followers of this thread: First, where are the faithful of the Old Testament now? To the best of your understanding, what does your magisterium teach on this matter? And, of course, since the title of this thread is “Where is that in the Bible?”, Scriptural references would be appreciated. Second, are the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament understood to be Scripture in the same sense and with the same authority as those of the New?
I ask these two questions because some of the discussion of the last few days has left me rather confused as to how Roman Catholic theology deals with these issues. In the spirit of honesty, I must confess that I will almost certainly disagree with you, since I have on many other issues already. But I am genuinely interested in how you understand these things. Thank you in advance for any information you care to provide.