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To: LearnsFromMistakes
What are you talking about, LFM? I said, Scripture is the source of faith. His sheep can hear His voice. Our understanding of God is from the Bible, yet we are still flawed humans, flawed individuals, so each may read one verse and make a separate interpretation. This is true of even the most exact of sentences. However we know that what is true by asking ourselves, what did the Apostles practise and believe -- they learnt from the Master Himself. They passed His interpretation of His word (even if they may, may not have completely understood it) down to their pupils and their pupils to their own and so forth.

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.

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.

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.

93 posted on 07/14/2011 1:13:31 PM PDT by Cronos ( W Szczebrzeszynie chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie I Szczebrzeszyn z tego slynie.)
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To: Cronos

Sorry I am not communicating well. I am trying to understand what you were saying about how the words/teaching of Jesus, once potentially passed down in ignorance, became what we would call ‘doctrines’ or ‘truths’. You used as an example ‘breaking bread’. From what I understood, this was a teaching that was passed along but not fully understood until a later date?


101 posted on 07/14/2011 4:39:25 PM PDT by LearnsFromMistakes (Yes, I am happy to see you. But that IS a gun in my pocket.)
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