He makes a valid point, whether he is "swimming" or not. By attacking the Catholic Church, you merely bite the hand that has given you the Scriptures in the first place. You implicitly trust their decisions on what is Scripture, while discarding the claims made by such Gnostic groups as those who follow the Da Vinci Code and other such nonsense. But WE say the latter is nonsense ONLY because we trust the Catholic Church's table of contents more than the Gnostics. Otherwise, why DO you reject the Gospel of Thomas???
NO ONE comes to the Scriptures without some paradigm or lense that we read it through. Men from different faith traditions read it differently, sometimes diametrically opposed. That's a simple fact.
Regards
***By attacking the Catholic Church, you merely bite the hand that has given you the Scriptures in the first place.***
The Holy Spirit gave us Scripture and ultimatly kept it safe. If He used the RC church to that end for a period of time, so be it.
Or, even more intriguing: why is the book of James (to pick a book) canonical, but the Didache or 1Clement not? All are quite orthodox.
See you think you can make the pope , tradition and the words of the magistrum as valid as scripture because you see scripture as nothing more than another 'work" of the church. When one comes to the word of God as an intellectual pursuit one looks to men for clarification and to have it substantiate a position they already hold.
We believe it was inspired, protected and ordered by the hand of God. It is nothing but arrogance to think A CHURCH gave it to anyone.
The fact is that peter recognized the words of paul as inspired scripture LONG before the cannon was selected and closed by a work of God.
NO ONE comes to the Scriptures without some paradigm or lense that we read it through. Men from different faith traditions read it differently, sometimes diametrically opposed. That's a simple fact.
The question is which comes first the chicken or the egg? I would say that most born again Protestants were saved before they sought to have a greater understanding of the scriptures, their Faith and foundation existed before the study, they did not look to the study to give them faith
Au contraire mon frere. The protestant Luther edited the Catholic bible and THAT's what they consider Scripture. My only questions are: What gave Luther the authority rather than the Church and if Luther got to decide then why can't I forge a new canon of Scripture based on whatever "Christian" texts I deem worthy?