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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas; RnMomof7
Was the Bible that Luther received inerrant (without error)? If no, then Luther's doctrine of "The Bible Alone" is self-refuting.

Not so because the writers of the Bible never instructed men to add tradition to Scripture.

Jesus condemned tradition in many places in the gospels. Why would He then go back and add it again, or instruct it to be added again?

And if so, where did He instruct us to add tradition to Scripture and hold it in equal esteem?

He constantly referred to Scripture to validate Himself. Why don't Catholics follow His example?

4,582 posted on 12/03/2010 6:06:42 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
Was the Bible that Luther received inerrant (without error)? If no, then Luther's doctrine of "The Bible Alone" is self-refuting.

Not so because the writers of the Bible never instructed men to add tradition to Scripture.

So you are saying that the Bible that Luther inherited didn't contain errors?

If yes, then you have two logical problems that are fatal to Luther's theory of "the Bible alone."

First, Luther declared several Old Testament books to be non-canonical. Did "the Bible alone" tell him to remove several books from itself? Or did Luther consider himself to be an authority greater than the Bible alone? For Luther's Bible to be inerrant, he would have had to have acted infallibly in determining the canon of Scripture.

(Interestingly, R.C. Sproul recognizes this problem, and has declared the Bible to be "a fallible collection of infallible books." Or something.)

So rather than the Church of Christ acting infallibly in determining the canon of Scripture, Luther must have acted infallibly in determining the canon of Scripture, if Luther's canon of Scripture is to be considered inerrant. And if Luther held the rest of the Bible to be inerrant, he would have had to have argued that the Church that wrote and preserved Scripture up until his time had acted infallibly until his day.

How could Luther rashly reject the authority of the Church that had written, preserved, and canonized Scripture up until his time, unless he considered his teaching authority to be superior to the Church and Scripture?

Secondly, if the Bible that Luther inherited didn't contain errors, then the earthly source that he received it from acted infallibly in writing, preserving and canonizing it. And since this process occurred over many centuries, this earthly source acted infallibly over the course of many centuries.

What could this earthly source be except Christ's Church?

If you put aside Luther's novel teaching of "the Bible alone" and look at the argument objectively, you will see that the logic is inescapable. It's a simple, insurmoutable, dilemma.

And wholly appropriate to consider on Protestant Revolution Day.

4,659 posted on 12/04/2010 4:39:33 AM PST by St_Thomas_Aquinas
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