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To: Forest Keeper; annalex; Agrarian; blue-duncan; jo kus; HarleyD
The whole point of going idea-for-idea is to compensate for the contexts and culture differences

Now you are beginning to articulate my mindset -- the Scripture proclaims ideas that are eternally true and inerrant. The Scripture transcends all time and culture in its message, not in physical facts.

Sola Scriptura for me is just as you describe Holy Tradition is for you. Sola Scriptura is the ultimate "documented" memory

Unfortunately that is wrong. Read Didache. Written before the end of the first century AD, (while the Gospels were still being written, and the Gospel of John not even in the works yet!), it tells us a lot about Christian practices and early Christianity in general.

For instance, it describes baptism as being done by triple immersion into a "living" water (when possible), or by triple pouring over the head if a baptismal pool were not available. It also requires that the person baptized and those participating in baptism fast for two days, on Wednesdays and Fridays and not on "Mondays and Thursdays as the hypocrites do," here making reference to the Jewish custom of fasting on Mondays and Thursdays. The Baptism is to be made in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

ALL of these customs are still practiced in the Orthodox Church, so we can be pretty certain that in that respect the Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church alone, remained unchanged in the last 2,000 years.

What is important here is that none of this is described in any of the three Gospels that existed until then, nor in John's Gospel that followed. So, here we have a definite example of the Holy Tradition working in the Church while the Gospels were in the making.

It shows that not everything in the Bible (sola scriptura) is the "ultimate memory."

The Didache, however, also shows that the Church did change and even invent some things as time passed. For instance, it talks only of bishops and deacons, but not of presbyters (priests). Yet +Ignatius mentions as early as 107 AD that the Church already had a full three-tier clergy, bishops, priests and deacons. Today we even have subdeacons.

One could object that this is not theology, yet Didache also describes something that does affect our theology very much: concerning the Eucharist. First the order of the Eucharistic offering is reversed from the current practice: wine first, bread second. It is unclear why the Church reversed the order except that the habit may have become entrenched in the primitive Church before the Gospels account of the Mystery (Last) Supper in which they place breaking of the bread first, and drinking the wine second, contrary to the Jewish custom of wine first and then bread.

It is difficult to believe that Jesus, Who was a pious Jew, would have reversed it. Perhaps the Gospel writers decided to do so to distinguish Christian "Eucharist" from the Jewish custom.

More importantly, the Didache (which means "Teaching") talks about the Eucharist as simply being the "breaking of the Bread" and "drinking of the Wine" and not of Christ's Real Presence (i.e. physicial, bodily presence), or it's life-giving mysteries.

So, from this work we can see that some of the practices have indeed been preserved by the Church before the New Testament was completed and are therefore part of the Holy Tradition and the "combined memory" of the Church that exists besides, and in parallel, and in spiritual congruity with the Scriptures, thus rendering a very strong argument against the Lutheran sola scriptura error.

At the same time, there is some substance to the Protestant claims that the Church was not delivered ready-made (just as the NT was not!), and that human intervention and interpretations had a lot to do not only with the ecclasiastical structure and praxis, but with some of the passages that we know from the Gospels, such as the deliberate reversal of the Jewish custom of drinking the wine before the bread.

6,860 posted on 05/18/2006 3:46:59 PM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50
It is difficult to believe that Jesus, Who was a pious Jew, would have reversed it [the order of the Eucharist]. Perhaps the Gospel writers decided to do so to distinguish Christian "Eucharist" from the Jewish custom.

If the Gospel writers were free to make changes this significant, then the Bible is not inspired. It is a work of fiction. Another explanation could be that Jesus did reverse the order because it was "in remembrance of Him". From then on, they would remember Jesus uniquely every time they partook.

7,090 posted on 05/23/2006 10:55:19 PM PDT by Forest Keeper
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