Sola Scriptura is hitting me the same way. And I'm resisting being put into a "pro-" or an "anti-" camp.
(More systematic and rigorous answer SHOULD follow. Don't know if it will. I owe you something on your post 4894 and I may never get there either! I have to prepare a class on Christifidelis Laicos (or whatever it's called) and a little pamphlet on what are Guelphs and Ghibellines and why we should care. (Answer: we shouldn't.)So this is all impressionistic and not really an argument so much as the soup out of which an argument might condense someday -- or might not.)(pause while I load coffee maker)
Did you catch the earlier discussion about "Whether God can sin?" My (alleged) contribution was that the whole conversation is skewed by the (largely unconscious) acceptance of the notion that Freedom is about choosing between good and evil - and either choice can be seen as equally free. But if one abandons that idea of freedoms and takes up the idea the freedom is to know and to be able to do the good, then the "choice" of sin is not an ability, but a disability. In THIS view the very question "CAN God do evil?" can't be asked. It has to be phrased, "Is God so weak that He might FAIL to exercise freedom?" A different understanding of freedom is a game changer.
So I'm looking for something analogous with Sola Scriptura. And the suspicion that there IS something out there is why I said "bogus." I did not mean "I disagree with it." (Or I don't mean that now. Who knows what I meant last week?) What I'm thinking is maybe we are asking the wrong question, or asking it the wrong way.
To proceed: You know my joke about the Church and Coffee? We know Xty is true because it spread throughout the known world before the discovery of coffee. -- and to cap off the silliness I suggest that for centuries people were standing around after Mass (or whatever) with a doughnut in one hand and saying, "I just have this feeling that I should have something warm in my other hand ...."
Well, I sorta kinda wonder if Sola Scriptura doesn't leave us in a similar place. For a century or so all the Christians are saying, "Gosh, I got the leather, I got the zipper, I just feel they should somehow be connected with pieces of papyrus, parchment, or vellum with words on 'em."
Once we start out with "Sola Scriptura, true or false, discuss amongst yourselves," we are trapped forever. Your excellently posed nuanced view will be considered. The verses which seem to mention oral tradition favorably will be presented with an "Ah-HAH!" and scoffed at reflexively, and then debated. The dates of the closing (officially or by common use) of the NT canon will be discussed.
And maybe all the while we are missing the real point (of which I have to say that, right now, I have no idea what that might be.)(But I have some guesses.)
I wonder how much the development of Scholasticism and its decay into Nominalism led to a desire to present a grand theological TOE (Theory of Everything) which would have the internal clarity of structure of a geometry textbook. I wonder how misguided that might have been. At least with Thomas, I get the impression NOT that he is trying to present a "system" but that he is trying to portray accurately something external to himself. But when we got to Calvin and (to a lesser extent, Luther) I get the idea that these guys have one "Big IDEA", and it's a good one, and they are going to use it as their hermeneutic for EVERYTHING.
So Scripture is used as a kind of collection of statements of different kinds, some postulates, some theorems, some reflections on postulates and theorems. And the excellence of the "System" will be judged by its comportment and congruence with scripture.
The model which sneaks into this approach is some sort of crystalline logical structure which, if only we could solve some algorithmic questions, could be computerized.
BUT
We are not about making a kind of Newton's Principia of God Almighty. Somebody mentioned the effusive Alphonsus Liguori the other day. And another madman of Love is the (ahem, third order Dominican) St Louis de Montfort, who comes right out and talks about "worship" of our Lady. And I can just hear the thumps as our antagonists pounce all over him. But he's not speaking with theological discipline, He's effervescing, he's rockin' and rollin'.
And while this ADHD dyslexic guy LOVES attempts at theological precision and comprehensiveness so much that I'll read guys with whom I disagree (Whitehead?) just for the pleasure of it - when I get to heaven I want to quit theologizing and just gaze upon Him about whom I have wasted so many little grey cells. THAT's the point, after all.
SO, back to Scripture. I'm mulling over the dynamic and fluid situation, from the Ascension and Pentecost, through the writing of Paul's stuff, through the setting down of Mt. Mk., Lk.,and Jn and the exquisite Heb. and the wild and crazy Rev. What were they all doing and thinking before there was a Scriptura to be all Sola about? Why did they want or why were they moved to set things down and say "This is the REAL DEAL?" We know it was, in part, a reaction to Marcion, but what was Marcion thinking, what did HE say about his version of Luke and Paul that resonated with the people he ensnared?
The Sola Scripturites will want that period to have been as short as possible while we will be comfortable with its taking a few centuries for the idea of an authoritative or canonical scripture to settle down, coalesce, and harden. But unless we develop a myth that the Apostles stayed alive long enough to hand off their reliability to a collection of books, I think it might be good to consider the Church before the Muritorian canon and to wonder how they thought of themselves. WHAT was Jerome thinking when he said ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. To whom was he speaking? Did he think only the literate could know Christ?
This is way too long and self-indulgent. But I am proposing we have put ourselves into an impossible situation because we are asking the wrong question.
That's enough words.
Sure, it seems to be human nature to attempt to distill the essence of the relationship between God and man into words, AND to have those words make sense. When I read a short trilogy by Francis Schaeffer I found that he had an amazing and simple insight into this. The whole ball of wax, he said, comes down to where we start. The Renaissance thinkers and their progeny all tried to start with man and then build God around that. They all miserably failed, naturally.
According to Schaeffer, and I agree, the only ones to find an answer that made sense started with God through His word, and then saw how man fit in with that. So, the search itself for the answers to the REALLY BIG questions is not at all misguided IMO. Whether or not that search results in satisfaction and peace (glory to God) or a maddening, hair-pulling, tearing of clothes, futile mind screw will depend on the presuppositions we start with. Do we take as given absolutes, antithesis, etc., and what do we say about the nature of God and His word? That brings us to:
SO, back to Scripture. I'm mulling over the dynamic and fluid situation, from the Ascension and Pentecost, through the writing of Paul's stuff, through the setting down of Mt. Mk., Lk.,and Jn and the exquisite Heb. and the wild and crazy Rev. What were they all doing and thinking before there was a Scriptura to be all Sola about? Why did they want or why were they moved to set things down and say "This is the REAL DEAL?" We know it was, in part, a reaction to Marcion, but what was Marcion thinking, what did HE say about his version of Luke and Paul that resonated with the people he ensnared?
I suppose when I consider what they were thinking it is that they were not the ones doing the thinking. :) The presupposition I start with is that God is the author of His word and it came to both be written and organized solely because God ordained that it would be so. The only decider concerning the content of God's word was God. The Bible is Holy because it is from God, and no decisions of men changed what the Bible would be. So, it would seem that our starting points are a bit different, and this might go far in explaining how we arrive at different views about the scriptures and Sola Scriptura.
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WHAT was Jerome thinking when he said ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. To whom was he speaking? Did he think only the literate could know Christ?
I have no idea what Jerome was thinking, but I can totally relate to what this says. Sola Scriptura does not lock God's word onto the printed page. It's the contents that matter, regardless of transmission. Sola Scriptura is just fine with illiteracy, in terms of it being no barrier to knowledge of the truth. God's words, in whatever form, are Spirit and they are life.