Posted on 06/21/2012 8:24:00 AM PDT by fishtank
As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate Shifts to Heresy Accusation Hundreds, including seminary presidents, have signed a statement on salvation criticized by both Reformed and Arminian theologians. Weston Gentry [ posted 6/18/2012 ] A statement by a non-Calvinist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has launched infighting within the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and tensions are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
stpio: “St. Jerome complied the first Bible,”....
Sorry, Pope Damasus compiled the first Bible. St. Jerome
translated the original writings into Latin, those writings chosen by the Holy Father to be divinely inspired.
I will be frank. I believe you sincerely mean what you say, but you are making statements about the origins of the Bible that have no factual basis. How do you hope to win anyone who has access to the facts of history?
And in this I am not picking on Catholicism. I urge you to find yourself a good Catholic scholar on Biblical history, perhaps a professor at a Catholic university with a good reputation, and see what he or she thinks of your theory. You should really do that.
Or perhaps just as useful, point me to a scholarly, objective, documented, neutral source on the web, or in a book, one we can both respect, that says Jerome completed the first Bible.
What you are really doing is asking me to abandon all objective knowledge and make a leap of private judgment into accepting whatever you say, without questioning whether it is really true. Do you really think any reasonable person would do that?
>>”I will stand by the scriptures rather than simple conjecture.”
It’s what you, Calvin, get from scripture that is in error. Your conjecture is your interpretation.
Two foundational errors here:
>>>>”God is represented through our Lord Jesus.”
Not “represents God” *Is* God.
>>>>”And this God loves man.. We are evil.”
God created evil? God loves evil? The little ones are evil?
However you get to these conclusions, they are errors about God and about Man, resulting in further error in the relationship of God and Man.
Good catch. This was poorly worded. God=Jesus. Now will you say that the God in the Old Testament is the same as the Lord Jesus? Will you say this same Jesus rained fire down on Sodom, smote the Eygptians with plagues, etc? I suspect not.
>>>>”And this God loves man.. We are evil.” God created evil?
Are you going to say we are not evil in direct contradiction to our Lord Jesus? I would suggest you try to reconcile what the Lord stated about us and your theology.
However you get to these conclusions, they are errors about God and about Man,
Ummmm...I would say the first is a typo. As for the second, I believe the error is in your court. Our Lord Jesus states that we are evil therefore it isn't too difficult to conclude we are evil. I'm under the conviction that our Lord was not in error when He made that statement. It's a bit persumptious for me to correct Him.
The more we recognize the wickedness of our own hearts, the greater we can see the love of God.
Quick concurrence with HarleyD:
Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
To sin is to be evil. God loved us while we were still evil. You don’t rescue a drowning man AFTER he pulls himself out of the water, right?
BTW, D, getting back to you on the other questions, but it takes me some time. Later ...
Amen. This is the purity of God who knows no sin. Anything that sin, no matter how small, is looked upon by God as evil or wicked. We are children of wrath. And there is good reason. Everything that God does is perfect and good. Therefore any sin goes directly against this goodness and perfection.
This is the very sorry state of mankind. But that's not the end of the story. God in His divine love redeems us while we are dead in our sins.
I will be frank. I believe you sincerely mean what you say, but you are making statements about the origins of the Bible that have no factual basis...
And in this I am not picking on Catholicism. I urge you to find yourself a good Catholic scholar on Biblical history, perhaps a professor at a Catholic university with a good reputation, and see what he or she thinks of your theory. You should really do that.
~ ~ ~
Heard it already, you’re repeating yourself SR. Blinded,
is the word. The Bible didn’t come complete, you can know
where it came from. You reject a basic fact of Christianity.
Most Protestant ministers acknowledge the Bible is Catholic.
“Your theory”....?
Vague, avoiding, not wanting to address two facts, the most
Holy Eucharist is true and the Bible is Catholic.
There are libraries full to give proof. You ask show me... You won’t take two saint’s words for the truth or, makes one cry, Christ Himself in John 6. How about Eucharistic miracles?
“Perhaps” and “scholarly”...phony and self important words while you avoid the Truth brother. Some of the most scholarly people have denied the Truth. Be real. You can change, I pray.
It’s possible, ask Our Lord in prayer, ask Him if it’s true His presence in the Eucharist? Believe, all your misunderstandings about the faith will fall away. Desire the Eucharist.
God bless you,
p.s. Your responses to a couple of Catholics here, ask them, they will help you. Watch this scientist describe
the miraculous findings in this Eucharistic miracle which took place in Argentina a few years ago. 900,000 plus views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbg_dhI4XCs
Please SR, take the time to watch the Youtube. Science
is astounded! I care...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbg_dhI4XCs
stpio
God also says we are created in His image, blessed and very good:
God created man in his own image… And God blessed them…And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.This is how proof texting can produce all manner of contradictory exegesis. And why I avoid playing Dueling Verses.
I look more at the results, in this case, results of doctrine of Calvin - its view of God and view of man. These are heresy to orthodox Christians.
Proof texted heresy has existed since the beginning of our faith; but it is no less heresy because it can be proof texted.
And, this again shows how sola scriptura fails in practice: Radically different doctrine can be produced by its practitioners. Each his/her own infallible authority on these contradicting doctrines - based on scripture alone - according to him/her.
Vague? I don’t think so. I’m an attorney. Would you want me to run my law practice by just taking people’s word for it? Based on their feelings? Yikes! Do you know how bad that would be for my clients? The facts concerning the origin of the Bible I’m asking you to confirm are not private secrets. You are still asking me to make a leap of private judgment without giving me any logical reason to do so.
The truth about the Bible, which you refuse to hear, is that it was always present with Christians from the very beginning, at first as the direct preaching and teaching of the Apostles, and later as individual letters and books circulated among the churches. These were primarily in Greek, even the OT in the form of the Septuagint, although some believing Jews used traditional Hebrew Torah for their OT.
And before Damasus and before Jerome, Athanasius of Alexandria, not a pope, had already identified the 27 books of the NT canon. And not out of thin air, or one man’s authority, but out of the experience of three centuries of the Christian faithful using these books, in Greek, Syriac, Latin, etc. Other books of lesser authority he allowed for more mature Christians to study, but new believers were only to study the canonical Scriptures, of which he said:
“these are the wells of salvation, so that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the sayings in these. Let no one add to these. Let nothing be taken away.”
Hmmmm. Sounds suspiciously like Sola Scriptura, but that couldn’t be, unless, unless he was really a time travelling Protestant! Nah, couldn’t be.
See http://www.bible-researcher.com/athanasius.html
Also, here is a nice collection of early canon lists. The Muratorian Fragment in particular is interesting, because although it is damaged, it also contains most of the same canonical books. As it dates from about 170 AD, it is but two or three generations removed from apostolic times. This demonstrates that the NT canon was already establishing itself in all the churches independent of any one human authority. And that is as it should be, because it is God’s word, and He should set the canon for his people, not a man, and not a denomination.
Odd you should disagree with Athanasius on this. As I just pointed out to stpio, Of the canonical Scriptures Athanasius said “these are the wells of salvation, so that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the sayings in these. Let no one add to these. Let nothing be taken away.”
See http://www.bible-researcher.com/athanasius.html
Same canon we use today. But by your theory well of the Bible becomes a dry well, a closed book, hidden behind your own fallible interpreters, who interpose themselves between the pages of sacred text and the thirsty hearts of believers in Christ. Trust God. He will sort out the heretics. Let God’s people drink freely of his word.
For reference:
2Tim 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, [17] that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Ophelimos is by standard lexical usage “profitable,” true. But if you’ve ever had to do real translation of the Biblical text into modern idiomatic forms, you know that cutting and pasting the lexicon can sometimes fail to fully communicate the idea in the original. It turns out Ophelimos comes from a more basic term Ophello, which conveys the idea of heaping something up. This is money going into the cash register, or grain going into the grain elevator. If you are profiting, you are gaining something, you are going from having less to having more, you are getting positive economic results.
Put this together with the structure of the passage. You start out with a resource, Scripture. This Scripture has certain qualities. First it is theopneustos, primary authority, because it is God speaking clearly to his people. Next, because it is God’s word, it gets you something of value. In business parlance, we might call that yield, or productiveness. It produces something for you, it gets you a return on your investment.
But as I pointed out before, that leaves the question of quantity unanswered. If I went to a client and said, you’re going to get a return on your investment, and just left it there, my poor client would scratch his head and wonder how much of a return, because just saying profitable doesn’t answer that question. It merely sets the stage for answering the “how much profit” question.
And Paul does answer that question with the word artios, “complete,” and redoubles that sense of completeness with exaritzo, “thoroughly equipped,” the same root word cranked up to maximum volume, as in “Seriously.Total.Preparation.”
BTW, the “perfect” of James 1:4 is telios, not artios. It conveys the idea of maturation, and it is in regard to learning patience as the path to spiritual maturity. We learn both to wait for and to wait on God. It is not directly relevant to sense of “fully qualified,” or “sufficient” that we find in artios. This is an important distinction because artios invites the question, qualified for what? Paul answers by saying “totally prepared for every good work.”
That leaves nothing out. Every good work would include every quality of character, belief, and action that one would need to be a man of God. So if some man came up with an extra belief or two, and it wasn’t in Scripture, Paul is here implying he doesn’t need it. Its extra baggage. If you have Scripture, you have what you need to be a totally outfitted man of God. And that’s all Sola Scriptura really says.
You and Calvin both. Now I understand...
:)
Thanks for your post. Nicely done - but still plainly just wrong.
If your exegesis requires so much explanation and redefining and convoluted reasoning, I think it most likely is prima facia evidence it is replacing clear meaning with on-its-head arguing, worthy of a lawyer with a guilty client. :)
Profitable or useful are pretty clear. If Paul wished to say entirely sufficient, Occam would say he would have used different words.
>>>”If you are profiting, you are gaining something, you are going from having less to having more, you are getting positive economic results.
Doesn’t change a thing. Profitable does not mean exclusive. Useful is the better reading.
Pasa graphe means every - not all - Scripture. Every passage of Scripture is useful. Very simple and clear sentence when compared with your, forgive me, tortured rewrite.
“Complete,” and “thoroughly equipped” describe the clergyman, not the Scriptures which are useful to this end.
As for James 1:4, teleioi (perfect) and holoklepoi (complete), lacking nothing” are much stronger, not weaker, words than “artios”
If Paul was teaching sola scriptura why does Paul teach that he is giving Revelation from God orally?
“For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” [1 Thess. 2:13]
And good luck claiming St. Paul as teaching sola scriptura in the face of this:
“Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”
.. which negates your argument completely.
From the thirty-ninth Letter of Holy Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, on the Paschal festival; wherein he defines canonically what are the divine books which are accepted by the Church.If you read the Festal Letter, where this quote occurs, the point *is* what is canonical - instructing his churches on what could and could not be read in Church as approved Holy Scripture. It is not about doctrine, especially not sola scriptura.
"Let no one add to these. Let nothing be taken away” applies to the list of approved books, the list he writes just above your selected quote.
To correct your use, which is a major error of context, read the beginning, before your quote, where he talks about heretical writing that could be confused because of the similarity of names. (This was quite a problem.) Then goes through the list of what he approves of as scripture.
The context of your quote is clear - Athanasius was giving liturgical directive concerning what was approved as scripture. Your quote refers to the canon and is not teaching sola scriptura.
If you wish to call Athanasius a teacher of Protestant sola scriptura, you'd need to do more than pull one quote, out of context, and avoid others of his, such as:
"The very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning was preached by the apostles and preserved by the Fathers. On this the Church was founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be celled a Christian." [Athanasius, Ad Serapion 1:28]
"The very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning was preached by the apostles and preserved by the Fathers. On this the Church was founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian."Must... sleep...now..
Blessings.
Ha. You may be interested to know I went to law school at Liberty University, where the program revolved around a mission of returning the law to its deep roots in natural law. We considered the works of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, your own John Paul II, and many others, from many of the major lines of development, both good and bad, all as related to the formation of our law. This was done, at least in part, to give us the power to rise above what the law is and ask what it should be according to right reason, a place most lawyers never get to. A great program.
BTW, I for one would never defend a client I didn’t believe in, including a “Scriptural” client. And living in the shadow of Abe Lincoln’s Springfield, how could I? :)
I think you misunderstand my use of the Athanasius quote. stpio and I have been discussing the “ownership” of Scripture. He was contending for a completely [C]atholic ownership, beginning during the time of Damasus, although he had originally set his claim of Bible origins on Jerome’s Vulgate (it’s good to know you all are at least as fallible as I am).
Anyway, point is, I wasn’t using the Athanasius quote to support Sola Scriptura directly, nor was I using it to make a rigorous argument for canon (though I was intrigued to see his list of approved books was the same as mine, and only too happy to point it out). I was only using it to show that the Scriptures existed in their fullness, and were being used by faithful Christians, well before stpio’s date of claimed originality.
The importance of the location in time is that once you get back to Nicea and before, you get to a Scriptural teaching corpus among the churches that most any so-called “Protestant” would be happy to sit under, including me. And it is that gang, the primitive [c]atholics, that preserved the Scriptures for us through good times and some very bad times, from the beginning of the church. Note the small [c]. A person can be a catholic Christian, without being a Roman Catholic. As it was used before Nicea, [c]atholic really only meant “universal,” i.e., shorthand for the churches of Christ anywhere and everywhere.
BTW, “protestant” is a pejorative and highly misleading at that. We “primitive [c]atholics,” which you call “protest-ants” still call ourselves Christians. Christians have always protested error, but protesting erroneously used church authority is not what defines us. It is our faith in God and Christ and the word of God that defines us. The best word for that is still just Christian. Yes, Christian was a pejorative too, but we like it, so we’ll keep it.
OK, we seems to be going in circles on this. That’s fine. I’m not offended. However, as you know, my time is not unlimited, so I must resist the temptation to stay on one point indefinitely, especially when past the point of diminishing returns. Are we there yet?
Anyway, a few remaining points to consider:
1. I have only provided extended exegesis for your convenience. It is not unusual for RC readers come to this passage with such powerful filters in place that what should be obvious from the ordinary rules of language is very hard for them to see. I hope I will not be penalized by you for my extraordinary efforts to work past these unfortunate barriers that lie between us.
2. As for 2 Tim 3:16-17, you are hung up on profitable. There is no reason for that. None. It is nothing but a necessary middle link in the chain of Paul’s logic: You have Scripture. It’s God speaking. It gives you benefit in Doctrine, Reproof, Correction, Instruction. In fact, it gives you so much that you will have absolutely everything you need to be a man of God.
So however you want to construct it, that’s what Reformers mean when they say Sola Scriptura.
See, this is why I think we may be done here. This is so obvious to me that I cannot comprehend your problem with it. That’s fair enough. I have my filters too. The difference is, I know I have filters, and I try to see around them. It has led to some significant and occasionally life-changing insights. Just sayin …
3. In James 1:4, the expressions “teleion” and “teleioi kai holokle¯roi” are not, as standalone words, particularly stronger or weaker than “artios” and the intensified “exaridzo”; they are simply different, and differently used. “artios” deals with qualification, proficiency, sufficiency for a task. The expressions in James are focused on maturity. The scope and focus are different.
Certainly God wants both for us. The Scriptures provide us all we need in terms of content from God, in doctrine, evidence, correction, and instruction. But having all that without the personal patience to learn how to apply it during the difficult times in our life would be worthless.
On the other hand, if we were as patient as Job, and as mature as Methuselah, yet had no teaching content from the mouth of God, what good would our patience do us? I think this is a false dichotomy. The two passages are talking about two different kinds of completeness, and that is why the difference in terms. There is no conflict. The ideas complement each other, and as Spurgeon once said, one should never try to reconcile those who are already good friends.
4. You cite 1Thess 2:13 as if it were a problem for Sola Scriptura. This reflects one of your filters at work. Sola Scriptura does not teach that the spoken word of the Apostles was less authoritative than the written record of their words. That is a misconstruction imposed on us by those who either don’t understand what we are saying or those who wish to knowingly make a straw man. I hold my friends here at FR to be of the former category. I have no doubt you have been told, by people you trust, that we reject all oral tradition. This is a simple falsehood. Consider the passage:
1Thess 2:13 For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.
Who is speaking? Paul. What is he speaking about? Direct, in-person Apostolic teaching. That’s the strongest possible recommendation for the authority and authenticity of a teaching. But the apostles are no longer among us. God has left us with a written record of their teaching. And the doctrines in the Bible have been taught in all the churches from the beginning until this very moment in time. He has not left us without his word. Nor has he buried parts of his word in some remote Central American desert for later discovery. Nor has he left out anything we need for a rule of faith by hiding it away in some lost then rediscovered apostolic oral tradition.
So when he says:
2Th 2:15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.
… he is talking about direct apostolic teaching which he personally delivered. Traditions in RC parlance have evolved to specifically infer certain arcane doctrines patently missing from the public record of the early church. It was a secret? Even though the people of God need to know it to be saved?
No, the burden is on the RC expositor here to show that tradition means anything other than the recorded corpus of apostolic teaching which came to be the canon of Scripture. “Canon,” BTW, means rule of faith. As I said, we do not deny all tradition a priori. But we do believe in the self-consistency of God. He will not tell us one thing in the canonical Scriptures, only to contradict it through some allegedly apostolic whispers “discovered” centuries later.
Furthermore, there is evidence Paul was actively concerned about this possibility and sought to foreclose it:
2Th 2:1-2 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, [2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Here Paul is explicitly providing a principle by which to reject false teaching, whether it comes in “spiritual,” written or oral form. What is the principle? Resonance with known apostolic teaching. To paraphrase, “If what you hear doesn’t line up what you already know from my being with you in person, or this authentic letter from me, don’t believe it.”
Sola Scriptura uses the same, exact principle. We will accept as potentially valuable any tradition, written, oral, or spiritual, as long as it harmonizes well with apostolic teaching as recorded in Scripture. To say otherwise is to misrepresent Sola Scriptura as it is understood by those who profess it. We embrace all valid knowledge. We just give Scripture top billing. Like Athanasius:
“For even the notorious Aetius, who was surnamed godless , vaunts not of the discovering of any mania of his own, but under stress of weather has been wrecked upon Arianism, himself and the persons whom he has beguiled. Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faith’s sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrine so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture.”
See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2817.htm
Don’t worry. It’s safe to go there. It’s one of your sites. I think.
Peace,
SR
Thanks for your reply.
Yeah, I think we’re in diminishing returns territory now.
But.. our broad disagreement on this verse has thoroughly demonstrated how sola scriptura doesn’t work in practice.
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