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To: Vicomte13

You're posts continue to lead me to believe that you do not accept the authority of the Bible, unless it suits your already established philosophy.


743 posted on 01/31/2007 1:27:48 PM PST by pjr12345
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To: pjr12345

I accept the authority of the Bible.
I accept the authority of the Church.
I accept the authority of the Holy Spirit, in private revelations.
I accept the authority of science.
I accept the authority of reason.
I accept the authority of the law.

And it's up to me to regulate, between these authorities which often conflict, what seems truest. That is an authority granted to me by the fact of existence and having a mind. God didn't give me a mind for me to not use it.

The Bible conflicts with itself.
Using Scripture to interpret Scripture, I can avoid this problem a few different ways, which lead to different results.
I CHOOSE to allow Jesus to be the prism of Scriptural interpretation, because internally to the Bible it makes the most sense: the BIBLE says he is God, so giving him the highest authority makes the most sense on the text. Externally, I have the Shroud of Turin and the ongoing parade of miracles to tell me he really is what the Bible says he is, which merely reinforces my view that the proper prism of interpretation of the Bible is through Jesus.
I read Jesus' words about the Old Testament and apply them literally: it means love your neighbor as yourself, and love God over all. That then avoids all the problems of having to square natural science with the Genesis account.

That Catholic Church tells me I can accept natural science's explanations of the origins of the universe and the world without being in conflict with Christian theology, so now I have Church authority to back up my own sense that Bible authority means putting Jesus first when using Scripture to interpret Scripture.

And that moves the Old Testament out of contention.
It also anchors the New Testament, and gives the foundation and the light in which Paul must be read - in light of Jesus (the reverse does not make sense to me).

Then, of course, the world moves on and there are miracles of saints and apparitions of Mary and healings, in the ongoing process of God's salvific powers poured out upon the earth. Obviously this isn't in the Bible. That ends about 90 AD or so, if not earlier.

So, the Bible must also be interpreted in terms of these continuing manifestations of the will of God as well.

I do not accept that the Bible is the rulebook for Christianity. I believe it contains inspired and useful writing, but is by no means the final word.

In short, I am not a Protestant, and you're not going to find my view of the Bible at all satisfactory.

But it is not at all true that I do not accept the authority of the Bible. I accept the proper authority of the Bible, but I do not assign it greater authority than I think it has. I do not believe, as you do, that the Bible rules the Church. I believe that the Bible is a book collected and published by the Church, written by Churchmen of the Old and New Covenant. I don't think it is the only record of God's inspiration and revelation on earth.

I simply look at it differently.


744 posted on 01/31/2007 2:32:51 PM PST by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
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