“Nobody is claiming that Luther is or was infallible.”
So it’s possible for him to be wrong in the books that he decided should be part of your canon?
“One thing that seems to be beyond the comprehension of most Catholics is that we DON’T follow men, but Scripture.”
The point that has been made and will continue to be made, is that yes, yes, indeed you are following men. You are all following Luther, because you use the books that he used, and you use his arguments verbatim. These are not arguments you will find in scripture, but tradition.
As for me not comprehending, I am a convert. So it’s rather presumptuous to claim that I don’t understand your position when I have argued it myself. I used to be a Protestant. They were very good to me and I am thankful for my time with them.
However, every single one that I knew who was serious about his faith had a bible and a concordance in their library. Scriopture and Tradition.
“We don’t follow Luther’s teachings”
WRT the canon, you follow Luther’s list and his arguments. That is the point at hand right now, and you are trusting that he, and one man, was correct and that the Church, and all the other men were wrong.
“Our salvation is through faith in Christ, not affiliation with a denomination or following the teachings of men long dead, especially if they don’t line up with Scripture.”
Yes, your salvation is by the Grace of God, through Faith in Jesus Christ. As is mine. There is no difference. That is what you do not see. We do not put our faith in men, any more so than you put your faith in men. You have your traditions which you uphold faithfully in how you live and conduct yourself. This is not a bad thing.
But it is still tradition. There is no dichotomy between faith and tradition, you need both of them. In using Luther’s books, you are using his arguments and his tradition. You cannot have the bible apart from tradition of one sort or another.
“Anything that doesn’t conform to the plain and clear teachings of Scripture is WRONG”
Agreed. But the key word here is conform. There is nothing in scripture that states that Maccabees should be included and Hebrews should not, or vice-versa. You cannot get there from here.
“Scripture is the standard by which all things are to be measured to see if they are truth or not”
But how do you decide what is and what is not scripture? You cannot measure a rope with itself. You need a measure that is not the rope to test the rope to determine how long it is. You cannot take scripture and then state that scripture measures itself, because your scripture and ours are not the same thing. You have taken books out. This is a problem, if you are a sola scripturist, because not you are arguing that some scripture isn’t really scripture, based on the tradition of men, of Luther.
“If something cannot be verified by Scripture, then it is suspect and nobody has license to declare it true with any degree of certainty.”
Absolutely. Why then are you accepting Luther’s claim that some parts of scripture are not scripture? How would you argue against someone who wants to toss out Romans for being ‘anti Gay’, when we know that God loves everyone? It is coming.
“Opinion pieces of others are interesting to some degree in some cases, but do NOT rise to the level of authority or veracity of the Word of God itself.”
Then what do you make of Luther’s statement and opinion that some scripture is not scripture?
Jesus himself set the standard by measuring tradition against the Scriptures. Some traditions were acceptable, others contradicted or “set aside” God's Word and therefore had to be rejected.
On occasion tradition has a useful role but when it does it is the cart not the horse.