As a Catholic who has pondered the Sola Scriptura belief a great deal I have to say that first, we Catholics have to put aside the notion that Protestants are willfully ignorant had are deliberately choosing to follow a path that does not lead to Salvation. Quite frankly, I have found many Protestants who love Jesus and God more and live their lives in greater harmony with the Gospels than many CINOs. There is a lot we can learn from them too.
I see the Sola Scriptura movement largely as a failure of trust in the Church and its Apostolic Tradition. When you know what they believe about the Church and its history it is more than understandable, it is expected. They see this as having to rely on the word of an institution that they believe is evil. Were the distortions and mischaracterizations they state true I too would not trust the Church.
We know that the Scripture proceeded from the Tradition and that for 300+ years there was no Scripture beyond the Old Testament. Remember, that the Canon of Scripture given by the Church is largely accepted by Protestantism. When they cite the Bible we need knowingly ask "says who" since the Early Christians could not agree on whether Revelations and the Epistle of Barnabas should be in or out.
We Catholics must therefore, with patience and love, correct their errors and overcome their doubts. This must be done with objective facts, respect, and the example of beatitude.
Scripture can never stand alone, if the person reading is a believer.
Scripture are letters written by GOD through people from different lands. So, even when one reads, it’s source is still only GOD.
Scripture should be read in faith. When read with faith in GOD, then, it can not possibly make a believer want to just stay home or stand on it alone.
After or while reading in faith, there is the presence JESUS left with us called the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can come whenever it wants to the person that believes from their heart. Some are blessed to know the HOLY SPIRIT; and some are not. This is a key thing in faith. The ones that hear the Holy Spirit, “ seem” to have an independence that the ones that dont hear the holy spirit can’t understand. Yet, the ones that are issued out of the church building by the Holy Spirit, still have to hold to the laws of GOD in the WORD that built the church building and the church of faith in our hearts. There is no difference.
Reading and believing, then scripture is never standing “ alone”.
When a person just reads scripture without faith? Well, then, not are they living on scripture alone, but, they are living on ego. Scripture enforces us to go to and be a “ church” in some way by spreading the news, living according to the WORD, changing our lives, being baptized by water and or spirit, and making fellowship with others; building or not can do this.
When a believer reads with faith, then, the Holy Spirit will send them to a church building or to become some kind of church themselves in their travels, because of their need to spread the good news of CHRIST!
It’s all about faith and believing in the heart that is first. After, this will implement obedience and the path of the “ church “ of worship that we must attend; building or body ( our temple), or both.
In HIS Holy Word, we will find those that are in the church building.
Then we find those that are a “ walking “ church “, who are issued to go from country to country, door to door to spread His Holy Name! Making fellowship with so many.
With the technology that GOD has allowed today, there is fellowship every where; as you all here can easily realize. Some of you dont go to the same church building, some dont go to the church building at all, and some just read the WORD. But, all here are talking over GOD’s beautiful and loving Word. All ( prayfully and hopefully) trying to inspire and edify one another. All we pray and hope are doing their best to live according to HIS word ( only GOD knows)! Here, on this site, is a church for some of you.
Some of the prophets went to the sanctuaries, some did not. Some of the disciples went to church buildings and some did not.
JESUS did ministry in and out of the church buildings.
Still on this earth, do we realize that there are people that can’t read, write, walk, and dont have the means to do so. There are believers that GOD sends to meet them and pray with them and tell them who JESUS is. They believe in their heart, die, and are saved.
For example, like the criminal on the cross with JESUS that repented and JESUS said that he will be in heaven. What church did he go to?? Where was he baptized once he believed? He was in the church of the spirit.
Both churches are equal. Just obey where GOD sends you and be a judge of no one’s process.
All have to believe, pray, and listen to what GOD has them to do and make sure it aligns with HIS WORD!!
Church buiding brings fellowship, edification, correction, accountability, and inspiriation. The walking church brings fellowship, edification, correction, accountability, and inspiration.
Both are amazing!!
Where ever we are, GOD has to be in our hearts or it doesnt matter where we sit, listen, read, or live; there is no church if it’s not in the heart.
If HE sends you and tells you to be obedient by constantly going to a church building every day or every Sunday, then you must do it.
If HE tells a person that they can read and follow in their home. Then must go out and spread the good news to others. Then they must do that.
It all aligns with GOD’s WORD and WILL which we will all follow; those that believe. Even those that dont believe are used by HIM. HE is in control. Not us.
Please read:
NUMBERS 11:25-29
25 Yahweh descended in the cloud. He spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the spirit came on them they prophesied — but only once.
26 Two men had stayed back in the camp; one was called Eldad and the other Medad. The spirit came down on them; though they had not gone to the Tent, their names were enrolled among the rest. These began to prophesy in the camp.
27 A young man ran to tell Moses this. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’
28 Joshua son of Nun, who had served Moses since he was a boy, spoke up and said, ‘My lord Moses, stop them!’
29 Moses replied, ‘Are you jealous on my account? If only all Yahweh’s people were prophets, and Yahweh had given them his spirit!’
MATTHEW 18:19-20:
19 ‘In truth I tell you once again, if two of you on earth agree to ask anything at all, it will be granted to you by my Father in heaven.
20 For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.’
COLOSSIANS 4:15
15 Please give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church which meets in her house.
EZEKIAL 20:40-41:
40 For on my holy mountain, on the high mountain of Israel — declares the Lord Yahweh — is where the whole House of Israel, everyone in the country, will worship me. There I shall accept and there expect your presents, your choicest offering and all your consecrated gifts.
41 I shall welcome you like a pleasing smell when I bring you back from the peoples and gather you from the countries throughout which you have been scattered, and through you I shall display my holiness for all the nations to see.
COLOSSIANS 1:24-26
24 It makes me happy to be suffering for you now, and in my own body to make up all the hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church,
25 of which I was made a servant with the responsibility towards you that God gave to me, that of completing God’s message,
26 the message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed to his holy people.
1 CORINTHIANS 2:1-16
1 Now when I came to you, brothers, I did not come with any brilliance of oratory or wise argument to announce to you the mystery of God.
2 I was resolved that the only knowledge I would have while I was with you was knowledge of Jesus, and of him as the crucified Christ.
3 I came among you in weakness, in fear and great trembling
4 and what I spoke and proclaimed was not meant to convince by philosophical argument, but to demonstrate the convincing power of the Spirit,
5 so that your faith should depend not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
6 But still, to those who have reached maturity, we do talk of a wisdom, not, it is true, a philosophy of this age or of the rulers of this age, who will not last long now.
7 It is of the mysterious wisdom of God that we talk, the wisdom that was hidden, which God predestined to be for our glory before the ages began.
8 None of the rulers of the age recognised it; for if they had recognised it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;
9 but it is as scripture says: What no eye has seen and no ear has heard, what the mind of man cannot visualise; all that God has prepared for those who love him;
10 to us, though, God has given revelation through the Spirit, for the Spirit explores the depths of everything, even the depths of God.
11 After all, is there anyone who knows the qualities of anyone except his own spirit, within him; and in the same way, nobody knows the qualities of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now, the Spirit we have received is not the spirit of the world but God’s own Spirit, so that we may understand the lavish gifts God has given us.
13 And these are what we speak of, not in the terms learnt from human philosophy, but in terms learnt from the Spirit, fitting spiritual language to spiritual things.
14 The natural person has no room for the gifts of God’s Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognise them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit.
15 The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the value of everything, and that person’s value cannot be assessed by anybody else.
16 For: who has ever known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his adviser? But we are those who have the mind of Christ.
HEBREWS 9:14-28
14 How much more will the blood of Christ, who offered himself, blameless as he was, to God through the eternal Spirit, purify our conscience from dead actions so that we can worship the living God.
15 This makes him the mediator of a new covenant, so that, now that a death has occurred to redeem the sins committed under an earlier covenant, those who have been called to an eternal inheritance may receive the promise.
16 Now wherever a will is in question, the death of the testator must be established;
17 a testament comes into effect only after a death, since it has no force while the testator is still alive.
18 That is why even the earlier covenant was inaugurated with blood,
19 and why, after Moses had promulgated all the commandments of the Law to the people, he took the calves’ blood, the goats’ blood and some water, and with these he sprinkled the book itself and all the people, using scarlet wool and hyssop;
20 saying as he did so: This is the blood of the covenant that God has made with you.
21 And he sprinkled both the tent and all the liturgical vessels with blood in the same way.
22 In fact, according to the Law, practically every purification takes place by means of blood; and if there is no shedding of blood, there is no remission.
23 Only the copies of heavenly things are purified in this way; the heavenly things themselves have to be purified by a higher sort of sacrifice than this.
24 It is not as though Christ had entered a man-made sanctuary which was merely a model of the real one; he entered heaven itself, so that he now appears in the presence of God on our behalf.
25 And he does not have to offer himself again and again, as the high priest goes into the sanctuary year after year with the blood that is not his own,
26 or else he would have had to suffer over and over again since the world began. As it is, he has made his appearance once and for all, at the end of the last age, to do away with sin by sacrificing himself.
27 Since human beings die only once, after which comes judgement,
28 so Christ too, having offered himself only once to bear the sin of many, will manifest himself a second time, sin being no more, to those who are waiting for him, to bring them salvation.
ROMANS 14:1-3
1 Give a welcome to anyone whose faith is not strong, but do not get into arguments about doubtful points.
2 One person may have faith enough to eat any kind of food; another, less strong, will eat only vegetables.
3 Those who feel free to eat freely are not to condemn those who are unwilling to eat freely; nor must the person who does not eat freely pass judgement on the one who does — because God has welcomed him.
REMINDER ( the heart):
1 So no matter who you are, if you pass judgement you have no excuse. It is yourself that you condemn when you judge others, since you behave in the same way as those you are condemning.
2 We are well aware that people who behave like that are justly condemned by God.
3 But you — when you judge those who behave like this while you are doing the same yourself — do you think you will escape God’s condemnation?
4 Or are you not disregarding his abundant goodness, tolerance and patience, failing to realise that this generosity of God is meant to bring you to repentance?
5 Your stubborn refusal to repent is only storing up retribution for yourself on that Day of retribution when God’s just verdicts will be made known.
6 He will repay everyone as their deeds deserve.
7 For those who aimed for glory and honour and immortality by persevering in doing good, there will be eternal life;
8 but for those who out of jealousy have taken for their guide not truth but injustice, there will be the fury of retribution.
9 Trouble and distress will come to every human being who does evil — Jews first, but Greeks as well;
10 glory and honour and peace will come to everyone who does good — Jews first, but Greeks as well.
11 There is no favouritism with God.
PRAISE JESUS,
Jesus4life