In this case, how can God ENSURE that any one man's intellect is taught correctly without overriding the free will of the teachers? If a teacher has correct knowledge, what guarantee is there that he will faithfully pass along that knowledge based on his free will? There can be no guarantee without God's intervention. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. :)
FK: "I realized that you think the Bible itself is infallible for EXACTLY the same reason that you think the writings of the Church Fathers are infallible."
That's not true. Individual Church Fathers can be wrong about a particular doctrine - individual verses in the Bible can NEVER be wrong, as every word is inerrant.
I meant that your view is that the Bible is inerrant NOT because God says so, but because your hierarchy took a vote and declared it so. Likewise, the writings of any particular Father are declared infallible by a similar vote.
When the mind of the Church says that something is an Apostolic teaching, though, what reason will you give me that they are lying on this issue, but they are not lying on what IS Scriptures?
I'm not accusing anyone of lying, but I do think that when it came to the Bible, there was a different standard. Men are capable of error, and so I believe that the Bible was effectively taken out of the hands of man to ensure its inerrancy. I also believe that God gave a special grace to the compilers to ensure inerrancy. It is self-evident because no error appears. This does not apparently transfer over to the writings of the Fathers, because errors were made. Your case would be stronger if any of the true writings of the Apostles was rejected as uninspired. To my knowledge, that did not happen. Writings of Fathers were rejected many times.
FK: "So anyone who disagrees with the Catholic interpretation on this is a "man of the flesh"? Wouldn't that mean that all of the rest of us are unregenerate and unjustified? "
Whew! Where is this going? No, the "rest" of you are not unregenerate.
When we were talking about the literal sense of the sacramental flesh, I was responding to your statement:
FK, this is something that ONLY the Spirit can enable us to comprehend. It is not something that can be explained and understood with the man of the flesh: ...
Since this is a Catholic belief, I thought you were saying that all others are "men of the flesh", thus, unregenerate.
FK: "Therefore, if God did nothing else, and just sat back and watched, then all humans would wind up in hell. Would God be just in doing this? I suspect you would say "No", and I would say "Yes". What does God owe us? I don't think a thing at this point."
I would agree IF God hadn't made a promise with man IN THE GARDEN to send a redeemer... If God is just, then God will uphold His promises. If God is not just, then we can agree - God owes us nothing. He binds Himself to us out of love for us, not out of any "owing" anything to us.
In our system of justice a unilateral promise is not necessarily binding, especially if there is no reliance. So, say I promise to pay you $1,000 one year from now and ask nothing in return. A year passes and you ask for payment. I say I was just kidding. If you can't show that you altered your life significantly based on the expectation of that payment, then you can't sue me. Even if you did alter your life, it would be a very difficult case to win.
But since God's system of justice is not like man's, His unilateral promises are always binding on Him. This is not in the sense that God "owes" us, it is in the sense that God owes His own nature, since it is axiomatic that God is not a liar. He can't say "just kidding" because it isn't true to His nature.
IF God establishes commandments to be obeyed, but doesn't give man the ability to obey them - then He is not just in any definition of the word.
That would be true only if your definition of justice was the only one. God's justice is different. You place many more duties and obligations upon God based on your interpretation of scripture. You even place duties upon Him for non-decreed wishes. Your above makes me wonder what you think the purpose of the Commandments was. Was it salvation to you in the OT? If you believe that all men were given the ability to obey all the Commandments flawlessly through life, and if you believe that only two in all of human history ever did it, one being Jesus, then what kind of ability do you think God gave all men? If the score is 2 wins and 20 billion losses, then God must not really have given everyone something of value, did He?
I ask you to consider what would be the point of Jesus telling the elect to persevere if they are infallibly saved? Or the non-elect to persevere if they cannot but sin? The whole idea of perseverance is lost on the Protestant theology of OSAS or TULIP.
He tells them to persevere because that is part of the salvation model revealed in scripture, and that is part of the human experience. (We all experience choosing to persevere.) He also tells them that none of His sheep will be lost. Jesus knows that everyone of the elect will still sin to some degree, even after salvation. He wants to minimize that amount as much as possible, so He says encouraging things like this. Paul follows up with his series of "By no means" statements. We are told what a saved man looks like. That helps us to sin less often. A person of the elect, though, will nevertheless be saved, even if he is unaware of these teachings explicitly.
The idea of perseverance is not lost on Protestants. We just give God all the glory and credit for it. Others believe that man should get partial glory and credit. The principle that it must/will happen for the elect is the same for both of us, right?
Then we can no longer call God "fair" if there is no possibility of a man pleasing God when God actively chooses to withhold from that man the ability to please God. We should stop kidding ourselves and stop calling God "fair" if this is your idea of what happens at Judgment.
Again you impose a human sense of fairness on God. You truly are the saucer who complains to the potter that he did not make you into a vase. God never promises us that He will make all of us into vases. God makes some people who are born with horrible genetic deformities. Is God fair with that? God makes some people with severe mental handicaps, who, during life on earth, will never have any kind of understanding about Him that we enjoy. Is that fair of God? Many humans would say "No", that's not fair. God's sense of fairness is different, AND better.
FK: "Well, if I was the pastor of my own church, I certainly wouldn't have those rules, [women not speaking in Church] ..."
AH, but IF the Bible is the LITERAL word of God, you have gone against it! God's Word is independent of our own opinions.
The Bible is the literal word of God and should be interpreted as it was intended to be. This includes allegory and context. Jesus Himself interprets the Sabbath Commandment as something other than the literal letter. That doesn't mean we are free to interpret everything in any way we want, it just proves that there are examples of the phenomenon. It seems logical to me that whatever verse says that women should not speak in church is of this kind. I don't see other evidence in the Bible that shows that it serves God to have women be silent in Church, so I don't take that as a literal command written in stone, as it were. :)
How can God ensure that His teachings are given correctly? Is that what you are asking me? Are you saying that God cannot enfluence the contents of a teaching?
I meant that your view is that the Bible is inerrant NOT because God says so, but because your hierarchy took a vote and declared it so. Likewise, the writings of any particular Father are declared infallible by a similar vote.
Do you know what a circular argument is? That is exactly what you continue to do when you say "the Bible is the Word of God - because the Word of God is the Bible." Break this vicious circle and prove to me that the Bible is the Word of God WITHOUT the Church. The Bible CANNOT prove itself.
I'm not accusing anyone of lying, but I do think that when it came to the Bible, there was a different standard. Men are capable of error, and so I believe that the Bible was effectively taken out of the hands of man to ensure its inerrancy.
Are you trying to eat my cake?! What makes you think that? What evidence do you have to make such a presumption?
Your case would be stronger if any of the true writings of the Apostles was rejected as uninspired. To my knowledge, that did not happen. Writings of Fathers were rejected many times.
As were writings of men who claimed to be Apostles, such as the Gospel of Thomas. The reason why it was rejected was its content, not its author. As such, the Church used the same criteria for judging ALL the books of the NT. Did they meet the criteria established by the Apostles' teaching - oral and written - without contradiction? The fact of the matter is that you really don't have much to stand on to reject such things that are well established as Apostolically taught, such as infant baptism. What holds you back is theological issues, not any search for the truth. We accept many things as true that are not in Scriptures...
I wrote :FK, this is something that ONLY the Spirit can enable us to comprehend. It is not something that can be explained and understood with the man of the flesh: ...
You wrote : Since this is a Catholic belief, I thought you were saying that all others are "men of the flesh", thus, unregenerate.
What I am saying is that our human nature's brain cannot understand transubstantiation. As Christ said, it takes the Spirit coming to man and giving supernatural faith from the Father to believe in the Eucharist.
But since God's system of justice is not like man's, His unilateral promises are always binding on Him. This is not in the sense that God "owes" us, it is in the sense that God owes His own nature, since it is axiomatic that God is not a liar. He can't say "just kidding" because it isn't true to His nature.
Which is why Catholics say we can merit. God binds Himself based on His revelation that He is Just. By following His commands, through His graces, God has bound Himself to save us.
That would be true only if your definition of justice was the only one. God's justice is different.
There you go eating that cake again... Than we shouldn't call God "just" if it doesn't even meet human standards of justice. When we say God's ways our not our ways, it doesn't mean that God is WORSE! It means that God EXCEEDS our expectations!
I wrote I ask you to consider what would be the point of Jesus telling the elect to persevere if they are infallibly saved? Or the non-elect to persevere if they cannot but sin?
You responded: He tells them to persevere because that is part of the salvation model revealed in scripture, and that is part of the human experience. (We all experience choosing to persevere.) He also tells them that none of His sheep will be lost.
You are not answering the question... How does God expect man to persevere if man cannot do ANYTHING, even when empowered by God?
The principle that it must/will happen for the elect is the same for both of us, right?
God foresees our perseverance. We don't. That is why we don't know we are of the elect. It makes no sense that God will ask the "elect" to persevere - to be on guard. This is a senseless command if man cannot do anything. Our differences on this stems from you taking God's point of view and trying to foist it upon man's knowledge of his eternal destiny. We don't know - thus, we are told to persevere. IF we persevere, salvation is ours, and we were the elect all along. IF we DO NOT persevere, we were one of those who said "Lord, Lord" - and Jesus will respond "I never knew you". Think on that...
The Bible is the literal word of God and should be interpreted as it was intended to be.
The Bible is NOT the "literal" word of God! Does the Bible say that anywhere? God works through mediators - throughout history. He inspired men to write the Scriptures.
It seems logical to me that whatever verse says that women should not speak in church is of this kind.
This is an example of how God speaks through a human writer. If woman speak in church, then they go against the "literal" word of God! Is God's Word unchanging or not? This is the problem with Islam, for heaven's sake! The Pope has written about this very subject - and why Islam cannot reform itself - because it believes that the Koran is the literal word of God - while he points out that Christians do NOT see the Bible as the "literal" word of God - but subject to interpretation by different times and societies - the People of God in time.
Regards