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To: fortheDeclaration; aruanan
imho the idea of maintaining "home churches" wherein specifically people just pick up a Bible and teach (as opposed to praying, expressing their love of God, reading together) can lead to the various questions like "is there a Trinity" etc.

That's not to say that a "church in a home" that has people praying together is not a good idea -- it is -- we just need to be humble about teaching and remember that we must learn from our master Christ who gave us the Word and gave us the interpretation of it through tradition.

To say that one must derive from Scripture alone all of the theological truths that God wished to reveal to mankind—and even all of the religious practices in which Christians should engage (i.e., that Scripture is "sufficient for faith and practice") is demonstrably wrong --> and if I am not mistaken, you do not take this extreme point of view, correct?

Apostolic Tradition includes such points as against contraception or the sacrament of confession (which you do disagree with, I know), etc.

Yet, honestly, isn't even "sola scriptura" a tradition that "if its not in the Bible, we do not believe" -- a tradition that leads to all of the above differences in fundamental beliefs and even to the extreme points of the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses taking the same points to extreme (because each interprets differently -- perhaps more the Jehovah's witnesses than Mormons).

Is it not true that many times a practitioner of sola scriptura will say the Bible is "unclear" on something to allow for differing opinion and interpretations? Yet, how does that square with "Scripture is the authority and source of all doctrines of the Christian faith" if you have "unclear" points?

Let's just take the point of John 3:5 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be "born of the water and of the spirit"
-- does that mean:

  1. Born of birth amniotic liquid? Hence that means that spirits must be born on earth (and I've heard Freepers putting this argument forth)
  2. Just a spiritual Baptism?
  3. Baptismal water and Holy Spirit's action through this?
Each of these views is held by various practitioners of sola scriptura, and this is a fundamental belief, mind you.

Which of these is true? All three can't be at the same time true as they are contradictory

Jesus would have explained what He meant to His disciples and Nicodemus who would have explained it down to THEIR disciples and so on and so forth ("ok, Druselius, now I was taught by Antonicus who was taught by Marius who was taught by Ignatius who was taught by Polycarp who was taught by John the Apostle who was taught by Jesus that this passage here means.....").

There is no doubt that Christ taught His disciples, scripture even points out that He taught them post His resurrection, yet those points are not in scripture, so what are they? Maybe a detailed set of what the words given earlier really meant? Most likely because the Apostles and the ones following them were always clear to say that they learnt from so-and-so Apostle

Paul made it clear when he says not to say "I am of Apollo, I am of Paul but of Christ" that the focus should be on the ultimate teacher of the teachers, not that he is against people sticking to the rule of what was taught by their teachers. In fact he urges people to stick to what they were taught and to hand that down to others. That is the basic definition of Holy Tradition -- the teachings from the Ultimate Teacher through a succession of teachers, all lesser -- it doesn't matter about the character of the intervening teachers, what matters is the Truth is pure and it is pure because it comes from the Ultimate Teacher who is pure.

193 posted on 11/02/2011 4:54:33 AM PDT by Cronos (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2787101/posts?page=58#58)
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To: Cronos
imho the idea of maintaining "home churches" wherein specifically people just pick up a Bible and teach (as opposed to praying, expressing their love of God, reading together) can lead to the various questions like "is there a Trinity" etc

Nothing says that those churches couldn't have preachers and teachers.

229 posted on 11/02/2011 11:28:15 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn (Pr.29:2))
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