Is Sola Scriptura biblical? {Open)

www.cronos.com ^ | 31-May-2010 | Self Topic

[Cronos]

1. Where does the Bible claim sola scriptura?

2. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- ness; That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." --> it doesn't say that Scriptura is sufficient, just that it is profitable i.e. helpful. the entire verse from 14 to 17 says "But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (Greek: theopneustos = "God-breathed"), and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works"
3. Where else do we have the term "sola scriptura" in the Bible?

4. Matthew 15 - Jesus condemns corrupt tradition, not all tradition. At no point is the basic notion of traidition condemned

5. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 "So then, brehtern, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter"

6. 1 Timothy 3:14-15

14Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, 15if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

note that the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth is The Church of the Living God

7. Nowhere does Scripture reduce God's word down to Scripture ALONE. Instead the Bible tells us in many places that God's authoritative Word is found in The Church: in Tradition (2 Th 2:15, 3:6) and in the Church teaching (1 Pet 1:25, 2 Pet 1:20-21, Mt 18:17). This supports the Church principle of sola verbum Dei, 'the Word of God alone'.

8. The New Testament was compiled at the Council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, both of which sent off their judgements to Rome for the Pope's approval.

9. Yet, the people HAD the Canon, the Word of God before the scriptures were compiled, and even before some were written

10. Books that were revered in the 1st and 2nd centuries were left out of canon. Book slike the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Acts of Paul. Why?

11. There were disputes over 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation, yet they are in Scripture. Whose decision was trustworthy and final, if the Church doesn't teach with infallible authority?

12. How are Protestants sure that the 27 books of the New Testaments are themselves the infallible Word of God if fallible Church councils and Patriarchs are the ones who made up or approved the list (leaving out the Acts of Paul, yet leaving in Jude and Revelation)?

13. Or do Protestants have a fallible collection of infallible documents? And how do they know that Jude is infallible? And how do they know that the Epistle of Barnabus is not?

14. "And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ" (Eph. 4:11–15).

[conservativegramma]

THAT organization of which you are a member in its present form has only been extant since about 312 A.D. and has become increasingly pagan.

Corrected link.

[OneWingedShark]

I agree that nuances may differ; in fact, I started in on this subtopic with you with just such an admission about language-translation.

But we still have two cases of death-penalty infractions (the furnace and the lion’s den) wherein the jews thought it sufficiently important NOT to comply with the law.

The bowing down to the king’s image is undeniably worship.
The praying of Daniel, however, is debatable [as we are now doing]. I submit to you that if praying to angels were acceptable then Daniel would have been able to “weasel out” on the technicality.

Also, keep in mind, praying to angels and angels as a medium of transport of prayers are two distinct things. One could be likened to yelling at your computer, the other like using your computer to e-mail your dad.

[papertyger]

The whole story here:

I know the whole story; it doesn't say what you infer.

[papertyger]

. THAT'S your true church.

Then what of your Fisher King?

[bkaycee]

Does your grouping believe in everything in the Nicene Creed (ok, ok, I know you don't agree to the One Holy and Catholic Church, but let's put that aside and use the term "catholic" with a small "c"). Does it?

Offcourse, I believe most believing protestants would also agree. It is certainly a summation of scriptural doctrine.

[BipolarBob]

I am riding on the shoulders of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years.

You've placed your soul for all of eternity in the hands of a manmade institution with manmade doctrines and manmade traditions with a history of errors and bloodshed. Pray to God to lift the binders off your eyes and quit depending on your church and depend on God totally.

[Cronos]

1. Do you treat the little statues of the baby Jesus carefully and with respect for what it represents? I daresay you do. And that is the same way we treat our status. What they REPRESENT is important, not the statues themselves

2. To bow or kneel down before something is NOT worship, or else some could be accused of worshiping the bible.

3. If you ask any of those in the pictures above if they are worshipping those statues, they'd laugh at you. If you ask them if they thought any of those people represented were divine, they'd laugh at you. This is not worship. . In Exodus 20:4 God condemned the carving of statues for the sake of worshipping them as idols--a blasphemy the Catholic Church also condemns. In Exodus 25:18-20, on the other hand, God commands Moses to carve statues for a religious purpose: two cherubim which would sit atop the Ark of the Covenant.

Though bowing can be used as a posture in worship, not all bowing is worship. In Japan, people show respect by bowing in greeting (the equivalent of the Western handshake). Similarly, a person can kneel before a king without worshipping him as a god. In the same way, a Catholic who may kneel in front of a statue while praying isn’t worshipping the statue or even praying to it, any more than the Protestant who kneels with a Bible in his hands when praying is worshipping the Bible or praying to it.

[Cronos]

The Catholic Church has been there since the Apostles. Otherwise tell me how come the Syro-Malabars, the Assyrians etc. retained the same beliefs and structures despite being broken away in the 2nd century or earlier?

[Cronos]

Name ONE way in which The Church has become pagan and I’ll ask you why the Ethiopians, the Assyrians etc. retain the same beliefs. These are the beliefs of the Apostles as handed down for 2000 years.

[Cronos]

Offcourse, I believe most believing protestants would also agree. It is certainly a summation of scriptural doctrine.

Yes, and that's the clincher for me. If a grouping does not agree to the tenets of the Nicene Creed, I , personally, would not call them Christian. Hence I do not call Mormons or JWs or Unitarians as Christians.

[OneWingedShark]

1. The three persons are called God. Good. But where is the description of the Trinity as ONE God, three hypostases? Are these 3 separate persons in your opinion or just facets/views of the same person? Where do they have the same essence, the same homousis?

Phil 2:5-7 (NIV)
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

We have it written that the Son is of the same nature as God; what indicates that the Holy Spirit of not of this nature as well?

As for if the trinity is three aspects/facets of one 'person' or three separate 'persons' I honestly don't know. Maybe the truth/actuality is as strange as the nature of Christ: being both man and God. (Like light being BOTH a wave and a particle in Physics.) ...perhaps both are true.

Perhaps it's better that we, as finite people, cannot truly wrap our minds around an infinite God.

[papertyger]

As for if the trinity is three aspects/facets of one 'person' or three separate 'persons' I honestly don't know.

Then you have absolutely NO business debating ANYONE on Christian orthodoxy! God in three persons: Blessed Trinity.

[conservativegramma]

Name ONE way in which The Church has become pagan....

Mary Worship

More Mary Worship

And even MORE Mary Worship!

I'm just getting started but I'll stick the one biggie.

....why the Ethiopians, the Assyrians etc. retain the same beliefs....

Outside of the RCC - They don't.

These are the beliefs of the Apostles as handed down for 2000 years.

They would be appalled at the RCC. Using the New Testament as a proof text I'd have no difficulty proclaiming that were even one of the Apostles to humanly return to earth he would be more at home in a Protestant church and would no doubt be an avid anti proclaiming the heresy of the RCC.

[Cronos]

what indicates that the Holy Spirit of not of this nature as well? —> what indicates in scripture that The Holy SPirit IS? You’ve put it correctly where you say that we as finite people, cannot truly wrap our minds around an infinite God.

[Cronos]

All 3 of those sites are wrong. They are non-Church sites that incorrectly speak of what The Church believes in

It's like me telling an Amish person -- no, you don't believe in THIS, you believe in THIS.

The Ethiopian Church believe in the same beliefs as the Catholic, the Orthodox and the Assyrian Church.

[OneWingedShark]

I told you I *don’t* understand the concept; not really.
I’m a programmer and to put it into object-oriented programming terms:
is the reality something like:
type
Father = interface; ...
Son = interface; ...
Spirit = interface; ...
God = object(Father, Son, spirit) ...;
{This is the 1 God approach; “Hear oh Israel, the lord your God is *one* God”}
OR
type
God = {abstract} Object {the nature of God} ;
Father = Object(God) ... ;
Son = Object(God) ... ;
Spirit = Object(God) ... ;
{This is the three-gods approach; “Hear oh Israel, the lord your *God(Elohim)* is one God”; ‘m’ is the pluralizer in Hebrew and it is said that it is on the term for ‘God’ to show respect/importance... it also underscores that the Father is not the Son and neither is the Spirit.}

But these models are human constructs trying to explain something that I *don’t* understand: the Trinity. (Which is not to say that I don’t accept it.)

How would you explain the trinity?

[Belteshazzar]

Leoni said:
“I didn’t say that praying to God is talking to yourself. I said “Confessing your sins direct to God is no different than confessing to yourself”. Two totally different doctrines.”

The problem lies in the rigid construct through which you view the Scriptures. What our Lord taught us to pray in the 5th petition of the Our Father is indeed a confession of sin. If not, you tell us all, what is it? Now, to admit this is not to deny that there are other and commended ways to confess one’s sins and receive forgiveness (absolution) through the means of another called by God to grant such. (I am purposely speaking imprecisely here so as not to lead the discussion into another area before this is dealt with.)

That is the bottom line. Jesus taught us to ask directly of the Father that He forgive us our sins. Only one who believes in Jesus, that He is the appointed Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Son of God from eternity and yet also true man conceived and born in time to Mary, can so pray. To say any less is to deny the efficacy and manifest purpose of all other of the Prayer’s petitions. In other words, it is to tell Jesus that He mistaught us. I am not going to go there. Nor will I let others go there without pointing out their error.

This is a straw man only in your own wrongly ordered thinking.

[Cronos]

The Apostles were designated by Christ to set up His Church, a Church that would not fail. And that is The Catholic Church. We, along with the Orthodox, Orientals and Assyrians ARE The Church, the ONE Apostolic Church. In fact, if you check up, in Apostolic times we have infant Baptism, the celebration of the Eucharist, the belief in the REAL presence etc. We do not have a set of Christian scriptures as they were not even written down yet. We do have in Apostolic Times, the Holy Tradition. So, they may find the usage of the Scripture so extensively in the Catholic Church (at each mass we read the OT, NT, psalms, Gospel etc.) but would hear it as what they saw.

The Apostles would be more at home in The Church than in a grouping outside The Church

[Cronos]

Oh and of course, the heresy is the break-away from conservative scripture and holy tradition. And those groupings that started to break away 1500+ years AFTER Christ are the heresies, yes...

[papertyger]

Most likely they’d be appalled by you trying to use a book they’d never heard of to contradict the Church....