[marshmallow]

No, Doug is not Catholic nor Orthodox. From his "About" page:

I am Doug Beaumont - a college professor, ordained minister, armchair philosopher, back seat theologian, and all around righteous dude. I was not raised in a Christian home and almost no member of my family was religious. I had a Jehovah’s Witness babysitter for a while, and another was a Christian, but I was too young to know or care about the difference. I was sent to vacation Bible school, and I did raise my hand and “say the prayer” with my best friend at one point – but it didn’t really take. During high school, my closest friends were agnostic except one Mormon girl whose beliefs I found strange even though she was pretty cool. Some of my classmates turned out to be Christians although I did not know it then (they had a shock at our reunion!)............

After graduating college and taking the requisite Europe trip, I married my sweet wife and we moved to North Carolina to go to seminary. I am now pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion, teaching at Southern Evangelical Seminary, and speaking for various venues.

[LearnsFromMistakes]

Is it scripture alone?

Or must we entrust our understanding of the scriptures to those steeped in traditions and learning?

Or, simply, can His sheep hear His voice? For some odd reason, we prefer to outsource our understanding of God and His ways to the ‘professionals’.

[sr4402]

Yes, it looks like Doug attempted a Sophistry attack on the Bible. To him it is impossible to be authoritative because of all the things he insists must be done first.

But the thing that must be done first is to become a Christian - to be Born Again. For without Faith it is impossible to understand the Authority of Christ let alone the Scriptures.

Like Erasmus, he attempts to use the wisdom of the world on the Scriptures.

[SoConPubbie]

I don’t need a layer of faulty human administration and human sinfulness between God my Savior and myself.

Jesus died on Calvary to do away with that type of religion (where God would transmit his messages to a priestly layer who would then talk to the people) and to usher in a dispensation where the Holy Spirit teaches us all things we need to know.

That does not mean there isn’t a proper role for a preacher/pastor, just that my relationship with God does not depend in any way on someone that stands between God and myself.

[bronx2]

The fruits of Sola Scriptura is the tens of thousands of independent Christian churches which dot our landscape each proclaiming their own interpretation of the bible. The sin of pride envelopes the hearts and minds of these Sola Scriptura types who worship not God but their own God given abilities.

The reformation crowd continues to abuse the Word of God to promote their own self importance.

[Jvette]

What an interesting read.

I predict that there will be numerous protests from the protestors that the Holy Spirit guides them in their reading and understanding of Scripture.

I refer them to the whole argument of personal infallibility.

Not that that will do any good.

[Iscool]

Even allowing that the Bible is the final and ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice, it still must be understood. That is, the Bible’s authoritative teaching resides in the message it conveys – not the physical book itself. And discovering the message of the Bible requires navigating through many layers of human interaction first. These layers of human interaction are like lenses through which the Bible’s message is seen. It seems to me, then, that to whatever degree these interpretive layers influence how one understands the Bible’s message, to that degree they have an authoritative function (at least practically speaking). This seems to introduce the very kind of human authority that the popular sense of sola scriptura claims to avoid.

Been millions of words written to prove that the words of God are not the final authority for Christians...And all it comes down to is do we believe God or don't we???

Psa 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Psa 12:7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

If we have the words that God intended for us to hear in the scriptures we have today, everything is this long article is meaningless drivel...And I'm sure it is...

Someone who makes the claim that the scripture is only the message God tried to leave for his Children does not in my view, have a relationship with God...If all one gets is a message, it's likely the wrong message anyway...

Keep up the good work, men...

Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2Co 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

[sasportas]

The totalitarian Roman Catholic system, with its interposition of popes and priests, the latter in which confession is made to, is addressed in the thread “Globalism, Tribalism and false reality” in the FR News/Activism section. I invite everyone to read it. Here is a quote from it:

“Even the globalist hostility to religious dogmas can be sheeted home to the Christian teaching that man was created as an individual by God in His own image, with individual rights inalienable at the hands of worldly governments, including the right to commune directly with the Creator without the interposition of a human intermediary in the form of a priest or pope. Such ideas are anathema to those hell bent on people control.”

All one has to do to see the truth on the Papacy vs the word of God issue, is substitute Papists for the “tribalists, the globalists, and collectivists “hell bent on people control,” in the article, and simple faith in the word of God for the individualists.

[MEGoody]

Nothing wrong with what is generally called "religious authority". I would say that the apostles were such religious authorities. And yet the apostle Paul stated that what he taught should also be tested against scripture.

"Religious authority" becomes a problem when people follow that authority regardless of whether or not that person's teachings are aligned with scripture.

[dartuser]

Since you posted from this guy, I will assume you agree with the doctrinal statement from Southern Evangelical Seminary. Nice to see you coming around.

[dartuser]

Now, if sola scriptura is understood as simply teaching that the Bible “alone is of supreme and final authority in faith and life,” then these problems may be avoided, for this would at least admit to the possibility (if not the necessity) of additional authorities. Under this view, sola scriptura can operate alongside extra-biblical authorities without necessarily placing any of them at a level that the Bible alone occupies.

What our Roman Catholic friends are likely to miss from this article is that he is talking about aids to Biblical interpretation that make interpretation sound; not a rejection of the classical definition of sola scriptura.

But the one major part this "philosopher in training" ignores in his multi-level interpretive scheme is the Bible itself. By piling on layers of understanding required to complete the exegesis of a passage ... he has in fact rejected the doctrine of the clarity of scripture. The Bible was written in common language for average people to read and the text presents the message of salvation in an understandable way.

His a priori assumption that the reader comes to the text of the Bible with an insurmountable problem on multiple levels is NONSENSE.

But then again, he needs to put something down on paper if he is going to get a PhD.

[Sloth]

This was the original sense of sola scriptura – the Bible is the ultimate authority in matters of faith and actions

Fair enough. So if the Bible says "a bishop must be the husband of one wife" and some person or organization tells me "a bishop must not be the husband of one wife", then I know that the latter is full of it.