I would like a clear concise understanding of what you are saying here. How has Sola Scriptura led to modern relativism. It seems to be that a religion that adds and takes from it's teachings is more prone to modern relativism. After all nothing is permanent, for long. It can always be altered to fit situations. Because from the beginning, it has been fluid. Depending on who is in charge, who stays, who leaves, what in the world may change that necessarily makes changes everywhere, including doctrine and tradition. Just like some think of the US Constitution as fluid, ever changing, RC doctrine and tradition is fluid, ever changing, as changes warrant.
Just like some think of the US Constitution as fluid, ever changing, RC doctrine and tradition is fluid, ever changing, as changes warrant.
As it happens, I do not think that is an accurate description of Catholic doctrine OR tradition. But to argue that is to leave the question, I think.
Did you know that, at least until 1979 the Episcopal Church AND the Church of England were officially Sola Scriptura churches?
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. ...[it goes on to list which books it holds to be Scripture.]Until recently every ordained person in those churches subscribed to those articles. And yet in my Seminary there were Barthians and Liberals, all claiming the be Sola Scriptura, and disagreeing furiously with one another.Article VI "of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation" - The Articles of Religion
And the Presbyterians, the various sorts of Baptists, The Methodists, The Assemblies of God, The Seventh Day Adventists, The Jehovah's Witnesses, all "Sola Scriptura."
And in this thread alone we have recently seen someone claim that all she needs to know about something is her own discernment. The very notion of an objective standard of evaluation which might correct her view is rejected.
Sola Scriptura SEEMS like an unchanging and objective standard. I admit that it is counter-intuitive to propose that that view has led to, or at least contributed to, modern relativism. All I have is the evidence before our eyes.
No, or very few, Catholics would ever claim that their own personal private discernment was dispositive. The (abominable) pro-choice Catholic will make some argument appealing (ridiculously and unsuccessfully) to principles he thinks that he and I share. He will acknowledge Papal and conciliar documents calling abortion a grave sin, and will try to explain them away. But he won't say, "my discernment," or "I discern, and that's that."
And he knows that while this or that bishop may not be zealous about enforcement, there is, as it were, a court before which one day he might be hauled.
What we see in the 500 year history of the Reformation churches is fissiparation. This group looks down on that group. That group looks down on those guys over there. There are differences about will and grace. (No, NOT the TV show, we ALL think that's bad!) About infant v. believers Baptism. About dispensationalism and other stuff.
All Sola Scriptura.
An almost constant theme in "the Coming Home Network" newsletter, a publication of and for non-catholic clergy who become Catholic, is that of denominational differences and disagreements, all disagreeing with one another and all, as the writers invariably conclude (rightly or wrongly) disagreeing with what they gradually come to perceive as the consensus patrum, which to them shows, yes, development like an incoming tide filling in the mouths of all the rivulets, but still constancy.
Some who are not Catholics confuse discipline and doctrine. Celibacy of the clergy is a discipline. That, almost by definition, means it can be changed. The union of two natures in one person, Jesus Christ, is doctrine.
Nature is not even a word in Aramaic or Biblical Hebrew. "Person" as it us used in the decisions and definitions of Ephesus and Chalcedon is not really a word in any language, but rather a "term of art," as they say.
The earlier Christians made do (and a very good 'do' it was, too) with the incoherent sense that Jesus was God and Man. But when some people said He was a blend, so not REALLY God and not REALLY Man, and others said He was a Man except for His Mind or His Will, and yet others that he was originally a Man but was so good that God made Him his son ..., in our view the incoherence could no longer stand. A decision had to be made.
And the decision that was made did not CHANGE the earlier sense that IHS was human and divine. It SPECIFIED it. It said, "Yes, and here, more precisely, is what we mean by that."
So, to us, what are called "changes" and described as chaotic, relativistic, even opportunistic, are in fact unfoldings, clarifications. Even the Marian dogmata are really, to us, about what it means to be a saint united to Christ, as "worked out" in the chief exemplar of that class of created humans.
To me, that is FAR more objective and fixed than the changes and chances of the non-Catholic divisions and the personal discernment which is brandished as a thing not to be challenged or able to be challenged.
So, yeah, on its face, "Sola Scriptura" SEEMS to be the more fixed, objective, NON relative standard. But as the Episcopal Church tragi-comedically shows, and as the insistence on personal discernment as a trump card over any standard confirms, what looks like it must be a more reliable system finally presents itself as incoherent and chaotic.
Finally, MY discernment, whether the Episcopalians or the Assemblies of God are right, is supreme. And from there it is a very short way to "Ain't nobody can tell me what to do, MY discernment RULES!"
That's why I said what I said.