“Where does scripture condemn Arianism, Macedonianism, Applinarianism, Semi-Arianism, or pretty much any other Christological or Trinitarian heresy in the book?”
If it isn’t revealed by God, then the majority vote of philosophers won’t prove it.
“If the judgment of scripture alone matters and that of the Church or the Church Fathers is irrelevant, than what authority do you have to condemn the Jehovah’s Witnesses or any other group for that matter for how they read the Bible?”
By showing their beliefs conflict with scripture. For example, the Mormons believe there are thousands of Gods, and that Jesus and Satan are brothers, and that God the Father had sex with Mary. Do you suggest we need a church council’s vote to refute that?
Apart from Tradition, the Bible’s meaning falls into a matter of private taste.
Whether you want to admit it or not, the way your religion interprets the Bible is a matter of tradition.
Just take the difference between your views on Mary as Mother of God and the Lutherans and early Reformed Protestants for example.
I’d say you are sort of begging the question when it comes to Mormonism.
Every heretical group since the beginnings of Christianity has claimed the benefit of scripture as being on their side.
“As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful, e.g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of the Lord’s passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by the whole Church wherever it has been established.”
Augustine,To Januarius,Epistle 54:1(A.D. 400),in NPNF1,1:300
http://www.cin.org/users/jgallegos/ecumen.htm
Whatever you learned in Sunday School and after is Tradition.
“While (the sects) mutually refute and condemn each other, it has happened to truth as to Gideon; that is, while they fight against each other, and fall under wounds mutually inflicted, they crown her. All the heretics acknowledge that there is a true Scripture. Had they all falsely believed that none existed, some one might reply that such Scripture was unknown to them. But now that have themselves taken away the force of such plea, from the fact that they have mutilated the very Scriptures. For they have corrupted the sacred copies; and words which ought to have but one interpretation, they have wrested to strange significations. Whilst, when one of them attempts this, and cuts off a member of his own body, the rest demand and claim back the severed limb....It is the church which perfect truth perfects. The church of believers is great, and its bosom most ample; it embraces the fulness (or, the whole) of the two Testaments.”
Ephraem,Adv. Haeres. (ante A.D. 373),in FOC,I:377-378
“For those are slothful who, having it in their power to provide themselves with proper proofs for the divine Scriptures from the Scriptures themselves, select only what contributes to their own pleasures. And those have a craving for glory who voluntarily evade, by arguments of a diverse sort, the things delivered by the blessed apostles and teachers, which are wedded to inspired words; opposing the divine tradition by human teachings, in order to establish the heresy.”
Clement of Alexandria,Stromata,7:16 (post A.D. 202),in ANF,II:553-554
http://www.cin.org/users/jgallegos/private.htm
Good argument point. An individual will use their own reading/interpretation of the scriipture -- Scripture is detailed and has many nitty-gritties that one can get lost in -- what happens if they take Psalm 82:1 God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. and john 10:34 34Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? to argue the first point.
For the second about them being brothers, if we take the various philosophies being developed in the 1800s -- you have Jehovah's Witnesses who argue that Jesus was created, and was Archangel Michael. The Adventist belief under Ellen G white expressed the same. If you take that He was just an angel, then Lucifer was/is just an angel too -- one little step away from orthodoxy leads to a chasmic fall
it does seem to me that if one throws out the community of believers and praying, reading, learning, worshipping as a community, individuals can make such conclusions as in the Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesse, Mormon, even Messianic Jewish belief (the latter currently puzzles me as Jewish folks shake their heads at these guys beliefs and to me it looks like they are trying to merge mercury and water
the JW’s and Mormons think they are following sola scriptura. they condemn sacred tradition and Church Councils.