"The Church instructs me on Scripture interpretation"
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This is NOT intellectual suicide:
Acts 17:11
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
OK.. one last time. You posted this long article, started this long thread then disappear.. come back and answer the question, or quit posting...
Here’s the question again..
I didn’t say that you are stupid or ignorant. I said you were ignorant of Church history. Which you seem to prove by failing to address the issues and seeking to say I called you names. The church of the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Persia, and etc) descended directly from the original Jerusalem church (from the Fundementalist/Pentecostal book of Acts) continued functioning until the time of the later Crusades. The so-called Roman Church was divided when the Roman Empire divided into East and West. So, which one of these three was “the Church”. The Roman Church only gained prominence because of Politics and Secular Power. Jesus has always had His ‘true Church’ of ‘true disciples and believers’ among almost every church. Here’s betting you really can’t answer this post.
Catholics whine about liberals and then attack Funamentalist Protestants for "doctrinal rigidity." Now there's something for you.
BTW, this is anti-Fundamentalist Protestant bigotry. Not the "you're ee-vil and your going to heeellllllll!!!!!!!!!," but the implications that every Biblical Fundamentalist is a semi-retarded, inbred moron.
What I find interesting, and truthful, about this article is that reading the Bible in a black and white way can sometimes lead Christians into error.
First of all, we have many Christian denominations, with many interpretations, with many omissions from the text, with many individual opinions about what they are reading.
Also, that style of Bible reading often results in caring more about the Bible than your fellow man: joyfully browbeating others that you, oh-so-special you, have the real understanding of God’s word because you are so special. Many, many are the sincere searchers who have been treated harshly and disrespectfully by somebody thumping a Bible. An example of this is given in the movie “There Will Be Blood” when the “pious” minister is deliberately, publicly humiliating a sinner for his own satisfaction and pleasure.
In that sense, that type of Bible reading is simplistic. Only the Catholic Church with its wealth of knowledge, study, and tradition can view the Bible as something living and vital. Christ promised that we would continue to be taught by the Holy Spirit throughout time.
I find it hard to place value on what Billy Bob, who just got religion last month, tells me I should believe about the Bible my Church has been pouring over for over 2 thousand years!
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Avoid Intellectual Suicide: Do Not Interpret the Bible Like a Fundamentalist
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Or like a liberal seminary professor.
RE: R.C. Sproul’s recounting of how his (liberal) seminary professor
thinking Sproul’s paper on Jonah was worth of peer-review publication.
Sproul had to inform the prof. that his term paper was basically the
consensus opinion in analysis of the book of Jonah.
ROTFLMAO!!!
**Note**
For the purposes of the RF, the
"a" above stands for "armpits."
Of course Scripture agrees with the Church. After all, Scripture is a Tradition of the Church.
Thank God for the Church.
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“The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life.”
So who do we look to?
Seriously I would rather take my understanding of scripture and years of reading and thinking and many many hours of prayer put together to sort out the problems of life than go to a shrink, minister or such forth. Reading scripture, attending church and prayer plus experience ought to give you a strong world view and belief system with which you can understand the problems of life - if it doesn’t then you either
1) Don’t really believe it
2) haven’t really bothered to think it through
3) have placed your God given right to question and understand in someone else’s hands
4) all of the above!
***it must at least conform to the basic dogmatic teachings of the Church. ***
WHICH teaching of the church?
The grace saturated predestinarian teaching found in the Council of Orange or the Pelagian works based heresy of Trent?
Agreed. The only difference is I don't trust a succession of maniacs interpreting it for me either.
Let’s see: which cult... which cult?
Ah. Got it.
This assumes that is nothing more than love, which is wrong. Love is balanced off of holiness. Both coexist. God can seek "vengence" because He is holy. God can be jealous because He is holy. Neither of these characteristics would, or could, be described as "loving" characteristics. Yet, God tells us in many places that He does seek vengences and He is a jealous God.
It is folly to think God is only love and forgiveness. This is not the God of scripture.
Wow, an article on theology written by an idiot!
Am I surprised?
For an interpretation of Scripture to be acceptable (which does not mean it is necessarily correct) it must at least conform to the basic dogmatic teachings of the Church."For an interpretation of Scripture to be acceptable (which does not mean it is necessarily correct.)"
So why would it be acceptable? And to whom? To God? Surely not to God if it is not correct.
The rest of what I quoted from the article:
"...it must at least conform to the basic dogmatic teachings of the Church."
It must at least conform to the basic dogmatic teachings of the Church?
Let me make a stab at something.
By the Church, you mean the Christian denomination commonly referred to as Catholic?
If that is the case, carry on and have a nice discussion about "basic dogmatic teachings" but don't expect simple Christians that depend on the One that was sent to teach us all things, the Holy Spirit of God, to rely on anything or anybody else to lead us into all wisdom and knowledge.
Praying for the Holy Spirit to interpretate the Holy Scriptures will continue to be the best way to understand them.
From the Orthodox Wiki:
On one occasion, when weeping over a hyena's blind whelp, he prayed to God and the whelp received its sight. In thanksgiving the mother hyena brought him a sheepskin. The saint forbade the hyena in the future to kill any more sheep belonging to poor people. He received Communion at the hands of angels. His homilies concerned such topics as the spiritual law, repentance, sobriety, and are ranked among the preeminent literature of the Church. These works were praised by the Patriarch Photius the Great himself.
There are two issues here that are being commingled in regard to the mass (the preferred Catholic vocabulary choice) or communion (the preferred Protestant vocabulary choice). The first issue concerns the nature of the sacrament. The Catholic position insists that "is" means "is." That when Christ said, "This is My body," He meant it. He spoke in no metaphorical sense, but literally. The various Protestants on this thread object, and claim that He was not speaking literally. They say that He meant that the bread (and obviously also the wine) are meant symbolically to represent His body and blood. This is the first issue that divides the two sides.
The second issue is that whenever the matter of "communion,” that is to say, the meal Christ instituted in the upper room comes up, the Catholics are not speaking strictly about this alone, that is to say, about the sacramental meal, as the Protestants suppose. They are speaking also of the atonement, that is to say, the crucifixion of Christ. For them the "do this is remembrance of Me," means not simply to repeat what Christ did in regard to the sacramental meal in the upper room but in so doing to "re-present" the sacrifice of Christ to the Father, thus the phrase: "the sacrifice of the mass." They take the verse, “For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you show the Lord’s death until He comes,” (1 Corinthians 11:26) as meaning that Christ’s command, “to do this in remembrance of Me,” means that they are re-presenting His sacrifice to the Father. This is sometimes referred to as the unbloody sacrifice. The Protestant side reacts very strongly to this on the basis of Christ's word on the cross, "it is finished," and various and very many other Scripture passages that plainly speak to the finality and completeness of Christ's atonement at Calvary. Both sides are defending clear words and actions of Christ, but at the expense of not taking His other clear words and actions at their face value. Thus each of the two sides thinks that it is defending and upholding the honor and authority of Christ. And, in a certain sense or from a certain perspective both are right, but cannot bring themselves to admit any rightness in the argument of the other side or any wrongness in the argument of their own side. This is the second issue that divides the two sides.
But no reasonable discussion/debate can take place until these two separate theological issues are distinguished one from the other, and decided on their own terms. As a preface to reasonable discussion I would offer this: It should be plain and clear enough to all that what Christ did and commanded in the upper room on the night in which He was betrayed was to be repeated until He comes again (i.e., for judgment). It should also be plain and clear to all that with our almighty, eternal God nothing is impossible when it comes to the earthly limitations of time and space. It should also be plain and clear to all that there is a connection between that which Christ instituted in the upper room on the night in which He was betrayed and that which He endured the next day in His suffering and death. Finally, it should also be plain and clear to all that what Christ did, endured, and suffered on Calvary is, manifestly, unrepeatable. Now, how all this fits together is what the discussion is really all about.
Only when these two theological/scriptural issues, the Lord's Supper and the Lord's atonement, are separated can they be discussed/debated reasonably. And only after that can the connection between them be established. Who will have the courage to simply disregard what men say and have said about these things, and simply listen as children to what the Scriptures record, that is to say, what the only begotten Son and His apostles say plainly and clearly? If this is done, it will almost certainly become clear that some of the church fathers fell on one side to one degree or another and some on the other side, again in varying degree ... and that still others got the whole thing right ... just like us today.
In this matter, the honor and pride of man mean nothing. Whereas the glory and truthfulness of God are everything. As the Apostle Paul once said of the Old Testament people of God, many of whom fell - inexplicably from our point of view - from the true faith: “What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way! First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: ‘So that You may be proved right when You speak and prevail when You judge.’” (Romans 3:1-4)
In this matter let all say in their heart: SOLI DEO GLORIA!
Avoid suicidal desires...don’t click on this thread.