Posted on 07/12/2011 6:58:08 AM PDT by marshmallow
Elendur,
To further clarify who belongs to the ONE true church, it is those, and only those who are Born-Again and their church affiliation does not matter at all to Christ.
In fact, Christ said there would be many who had done many good works, who had healed the sick in his name and worked miracles and called him Lord, Lord who would ultimately end up in the fires of Hell.
Only those who have the Love of God in their hearts, who have been born-again will make Heaven.
Wow! VERY well said. May God bless your discerning spirit!
Does it? Did you ever ask yourself why the eunuch was reading the Scriptures then? If he believed he needed a man to understand them, then why was he reading them?
You have missed the point of the passage, namely, that this portion of scripture is harder than others, and he was asking the correct questions from the text ... "of whom does the prophet speak?"
Also, do you use this passage to support a doctrine that we as individuals cannot understand the text without a priest, church, etc? What about all the commands in scripture that we are to read, memorize, teach, preach, obey, etc. the scriptures? Does that not imply it is understandable?
I'm not convinced that what you espouse is taught in this passage.
Tradition tells us that this is how we always interpreted scripture and how it has always been interpreted from the time of Christ and His Apostles. It does not supplement but rather complements.
the "professionals" is a wrong term -- a professional is like say Taize who interpreted scripture his own way. In orthodoxy, the clergy merely ensure that what is believed is what has always been believed since the time of Christ. the various doctors etc. from John Chrysostom etc. merely focused on and debated the deeper meanings of why we believed and practised what we did and do
For example, the Early Christians may not have understood why they broke bread each week, yet in the Didache (written AD 70) we know they did. They believed something that caused the Romans to say "these are cannibals, they eat the blood and flesh of their God" and Justin the Martyr had to refute this.
It is wonderful that you and we read through the Bible every year, but each time I read a book, I discover something new (unless I'm particularly thick that day, which is often), and more and more I realise how little I do know.
What you are saying of looking for comments etc. is somewhat the right track -- we read, pray and believe as a community, a community in Christ -- as individuals we are flawed, prone to error, incapable of even starting to understand the enormity that is God, which as a community in Christ we can start on this journey.
Since you take care to read comments by others, we too do that, but we don't limit it to the people of today, but read what Christians in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 10th, 14th etc. centuries wrote about and discussed about and debated about and we always hark back to "this is what the Bible says and this is what we have always believed that to mean" -- if someone say says that God says "no need for doctors", we ask if this is in the Bible, if the interpretations of the Word is what we have always interpreted it to mean? If it is not, then it is to be discarded
The "traditions" are no more than you reading comments of others, only reading the comments of those who lived at the time of the Apostles, who may have known them or their disciples. There can be no radical reinterpretations only a refinement of what we already know.
The "community" in the midst of which we read, pray, learn and worship God is the Church (it is not just the sub-shepherds)
That is orthodoxy
Thank you for making this a civil discussion among Christians. Perhaps we can make this religion forum a place where one can share, disagree and even agree to disagree and bless each other. Thank you
yes and no -- it is common language (it was originally in Koine Greek or Aramaic) but, forget about the translations, even in the original, every statement can be interpreted differently by different folks. Let me give you a few examples:
but let's be very clear -- ambiguity is our, the interpeters fault, the Bible itself is inerrant --> a reading of the Gospel and the Pauline Epistles still convince our Oneness Pentecostal friends of their beliefs which are at loggerheads with ours -- different interpretations of the same inerrant Bible. Even core, fundamental beliefs like the True Presence in the Eucharist -- one may interpret this as True or just a symbol if one takes it as it is. Some may say that one must speak in tongues to show being born again, others may not agree and say that miracles ended at the time of the Apostles. This is our own individual interpretations which are open to errors and cast no aspersions on the inerrancy of the Bible
If you were to line up all the passages that Protestants disagree on, you would have a handful of passages, but nothing approaching a sizable portion of the whole Bible. Why? For the most part the translation and interpretation of the text is straightforward and understandable.
We don't need help understanding ... "thou shall not steal" ... because the textual meaning is plain.
Are there a handful of passages that believers disagree on the interpretation? Yeah. Are they difficult passages to interpret? Not usually ... but some are.
Does that require more hard work? Yup ... that's when we roll up the sleeves and get busy.
Of course not, we ALL agree on the simple rule books that are in parts of the OT and NT
But there are a lot of places where the Bible is not as crystal clear as "don't do this." or "do this", hence we have different interpretations on some fundamentals.
Let's take a fundamental of fundamentals -- is Jesus Christ God? I've communicated with many intelligent, conservative, believing freepers who honestly interpret the bible to not say that Jesus is God. They have interpreted it that way on their own.
ditto for another one -- baptism for the remission of sins. I'm not going to go into the discussion of merits of either side, only going to say that both (or more than 2) can have a self-interpretation while the verse is the same in the same inerrant work of God that is the Bible.
Get busy doing what? Seriously? Let me take the case of what happened in 1817-1830 in the Prussian union -- two groups, one the Lutherans who believed utterly in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Calvinists who did not.
Both sides were utterly convinced that they were correctly interpreting the inerrant Word of God.
How do you say one interpretation is right and the other is wrong? They can't both be right.
in this case the Kaiser tried to forcibly say both were right, but the Words of Institution did not proclaim the Real Presence.
I can go on about what this led to, but the crux is that we can read one line in an inerrant work and have more than one opinion -- we are flawed humans.
The only thing that can "roll up the sleeves and get busy" after a point where we say "I am correct" is 4 options: force or compromise (which has repercussions like the leading to laxity) or agree to disagree or appeal to what has always been believed.
Also, to be contrary :), even the simplest of passages can be interpreted differently by a different opinion “thou shall not steal” —> what if one is at a greengrocers and takes one blackberry to eat. Or “borrows” something from a neighbor. I think the latter is wrong and the former is ok, but iffy. Others may disagree with me about this.
Sorry, I don't believe that for a minute. And I doubt what I read is what you meant. Unless you are saying it was years later when someone 'added understanding'.
The "traditions" are no more than you reading comments of others, only reading the comments of those who lived at the time of the Apostles, who may have known them or their disciples.
That scares me a little bit. Okay, a lot.
That grotesque caricature of Sola Scriptura is so ludicrous I can't tell if it is just ignorance or willful misrepresentation.
For starters, NO ONE denies that the Gospel was at first preached orally by the Apostles, or that the Church began at Pentecost.
Cordially,
This is another good case of different interpretations of a sentence :)
This is another good case of different interpretations of a sentence :)
not strictly correct. Messianic Jews and some Adventists disagree that the Church began at the Pentecost..
Some take John 20:22 to say that the Church began before the pentecost.
or take this website: pb ministries.org which says
The church did not begin on Pentecost.This is the theory of Scofield, the Campbellites, Holy Rollers and many Protestants. Something unusual happened, very, very unusual, on Pentecost after Christ’s resurrection, yes. But the book of Acts does not tell us that the church originated on that day.Now I don't believe this, but this is one group of folks who interpret scripture different and they say that the Church did NOT being at the Pentecost...To say that the church originated on Pentecost ruins the typology of the church as being God’s temple filled with His glory. Notice: when the Tabernacle was completed, the glory of God filled it (Exodus 40:34).When the Temple was completed, the glory of God filled it (1 Kings 8:10, 11). When Christ left this earth He left behind Him an "ekklesia" that had been following Him for over three years. He had taught it, set Apostles in it, given it the Lord’s supper, met with it after His resurrection, commissioned it, and commanded it to wait in Jerusalem for an enduement of power. On Pentecost the church was immersed in the Holy Spirit. The glory of God filled His new "tabernacle," His "temple," the "house of God"—the church.It wasn’t built on Pentecost, it was filled with divine glory on Pentecost.
How do we know there was an "ekklesia" before Pentecost?
Because the word "ekklesia" means a called out assembly and Christ had that long before Pentecost.
Because before Pentecost the disciples were assembled in the upper room praying and conducting a business meeting (Acts 1:12-26) , electing an apostle. They were 120 in number (v. 15), and who will deny that they were an "ekklesia" (assembly) of baptized, professing Christians? Who can show one thing that reveals that they were not a Christian "ekklesia" (assembly)?
Because Christ "set" the apostles in the "ekklesia" and that was done before Pentecost (Mark 3:13-19; 1 Cor. 12:32) .
Because Jesus told them how to exclude members from the "ekklesia" (Matthew 18:15-17), and that was before Pentecost. Scofield, in order to get around this passage, says that this is instruction for the "future" church. Mason answers: "But it still remains unreasonable to believe that Jesus referred to something that the disciples did not understand, or that He indicated a rule of discipline relating, to a church that did not exist"(The Church That Jesus Built, page 18) .
Because the "ekklesia" had both ordinances given to it before Pentecost.
Because the only singing Christ ever did was before Pentecost (Mark 14:26) and Hebrews 2:12 says that it was in the "ekklesia." Hence there was a church before Pentecost.
Because the commission was given before Pentecost and if there were no church then, then the church does not have the commission of Matthew 28:19,20.
Because those saved on the day of Pentecost were "added to" the "ekklesia" (Acts 2:41, 47). You couldn’t add the 3,000 souls to nothing, so there must have been an "ekklesia" already in existence.
Because Judas was an apostle in the "ekklesia" and he died before Pentecost. Hence there was a church before Pentecost.
Point well-taken. I stand corrected. I made a too-general statement countering the assertion that sola Scriptura entails that the Church did not begin for "generations".
Cordially,
No worries — and thanks for bringing it up — I would never have found these guys I posted in post 76 if it wasn’t for you. Their interpretation is.. interesting...
That is fair.
Let me see if I understand correctly.
Extra-biblical (? meaning ‘not in the bible’) christians from early days had understandings that, either thru omission or over-simplification, are not well-represented in the bible itself?
Other truths (either not in the bible at all or at seeming disagreement with current bible interpretations) have been handed down and, maybe hundreds of years later, over time enlightenment/understanding has been added to these truths?
And ‘approved’ representatives still have the liberty to do that today?
Let me know if I am in the ball park.
Some of the more antiCatholic crowd does.
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