IS FALSE! As is many other items required by the Catholic church in Luther's time and now.
The WORD of G-d had been around for over 1500 years. Seek YHvH in His WORD ! This patently false on it's face !
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Look, dear Catholic and non-Catholic Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I happen to be Baptist, but I have a great and deep respect for the Catholic church in the preserving of the Scriptures down through the centuries.
I also respect many Catholics for their strong pro-family, pro-life stands.
I think this thread will only cause fighting and dissension among us. I don’t think it is worth the “heat” and puts us in danger of making ourselves a negative witness to non-believers. This issue has been argued over the last 500 years and I don’t think we are going to resolve it today.
I think we should try to look at our points of agreement - that is - it is from the Bible which the essential teachings and doctrines come - that the Bible is God’s Word - that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Word made flesh, that He was/is God the Son, incarnated in the flesh through the Virgin Mary, that He lived as a human being for approximately 33 years, that He died on the cross to remove the guilt of our sin, that He rose from the dead on the third day.
We also agree that it is through faith in Jesus Christ that salvation is accomplished - that there is no other by whom we can be saved.
Let’s not fight. I have my opinions on this issue that would disagree with the writer of the article, and, I’m not denying the importance of the issue, but it just seems whenever we get into these kinds of topics on Free Republic that we often set a bad example for those who are not Christians. They only see people “arguing over religion” and they don’t understand what we are talking about. We give our faith and our Lord a bad rep by the way we argue with each other.
C’mon, please - and, further, it’s Christmas time. Let’s don’t flame each other.
The WORD of G-d has existed from
The Ekklesia was created in Deuteronomy 4:10. Seek YHvH in His WORD ! Patently false on it's face !
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
before the foundation of the universe.
It also augmented scriptures to add man-made tradition. Seek YHvH in Hus WORD ! The Roman "church" destroyed any manuscript
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
which disagreed with man-made tradition.
One reason to accept it: Popes screw up.
I concede that the scriptures are not the only pathway to God. This pathway may be found from others of faith, from self-realization, fellowship, and/or prayer as well. But I dare say that you will not concede that the Church is fallible. In this you must, of course, then agree that the Inquisition and any other number of issues created or acquiesced to by the ‘Church’ or parts of the ‘Church’ were not wrong. For the ‘Church’ is the leader in ‘Tradition’ as you put it.
I submit that the ‘Church’ consists of Men. Mankind is fallible and unable to avoid sin - which is why it was necessary for Christ to die thereby cleansing our sins and opening our path to Heaven. To believe that Man is without sin is naive at best. To believe that the ‘Church’ is the only capable interpreter of God’s Word is near blasphemy in that it nears nullifying Christ’s words that through he alone may we find the Kingdom of Heaven. Not through the Church, but through Christ are we delivered.
Faith does not come from buildings or bones or organizations. Though objects may indeed be imbued with power by God in order to bring more of the Faithful to him or assist them in the struggles on earth, the worship of the object instead of the Lord who imbued the objects is sacrilege. I have known “men of faith” who were fallen and could not see it, and I have seen men of the world who struggled day to day and were so faithful of Christ’s love that I could only hope to achieve a semblence.
I do not say this to decry your faith, but to strengthen it beyond mere faith in the ‘Church’ and fallible men and instead to arrive at a bedrock of faith in the salvation of Christ to gain a place in the presence of the Lord.
And a mormon can become a Doctor of Theology at BYU.
Everyone’s certain, except me and my monkey!
Good post.
The Arians are killing the church and you take aim at reformation disputes?
shesh brother, get a life.
“3) The “Scripture” that St. Paul is referring to here is the Old Testament, a fact which is made plain by his reference to the Scripture’s being known by Timothy from “infancy” (verse 15). The New Testament as we know it did not yet exist, or at best it was incomplete, so it simply could not have included in St. Paul’s understanding of what was meant by the term “scripture.” If we take St. Paul’s words at face value, Sola Scriptura would therefore mean that the Old Testament is the Christian’s sole rule of faith. This is a premise that all Christians would reject.”
The writers of the NT had a self conscious awareness that what they wrote was inspired and therefore “Scripture”. Peter classed Paul's letters as part of Scripture, (2 Peter 3:16) and commented that ‘no prophecy of Scripture springs from private interpretation but men as they were borne along by God's spirit’. (2 Peter 1:20, 21)
Both Peter and Paul certainly were aware that they spoke and interpreted prophecy and that their writing could be thus be called “Scripture” even then.
When Paul said “all Scripture” the OT and his own writings inspired by holy spirit were included.
What a pile of trash...
Joh 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Scripture alone, right there...With scripture alone, we know we have eternal life with Jesus thru his name...
1Jn 5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
Scripture alone, right there...We know we have eternal life from the scriputures alone....
Your religion came up with it's own man made traditions which contradict the scriptures and as a result, you guys don't even know if your are going to make it to your fabricated purgatory...
No doubt you false teachers have led millions of people away from the Holy Words of God to be replaced with the unscriptural and ungodly words of your man made doctrines and you will have to explain that to God one day...
What a pile of trash...
Joh 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Scripture alone, right there...With scripture alone, we know we have eternal life with Jesus thru his name...
1Jn 5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
Scripture alone, right there...We know we have eternal life from the scriputures alone....
Your religion came up with it's own man made traditions which contradict the scriptures and as a result, you guys don't even know if your are going to make it to your fabricated purgatory...
No doubt you false teachers have led millions of people away from the Holy Words of God to be replaced with the unscriptural and ungodly words of your man made doctrines and you will have to explain that to God one day...
So we can make things up like however we want??? Cool. If Sola Scriptura is wrong we are FFFFRRRRREEEEEEE !!!! Yippee.
I composed a very long reply, as I can see the gist of most of these arguments, but had some issues with some particulars. I may finish it later.
Meanwhile, a short observation that “Reformed” people have a valid issue with accepting tradition/’the spirit’/etc as the final arbiter of Godly truth, but often fail to acknowledge that they must a priori use some other standard in picking their canon and their interpretation of it.
“Catholics” on the other hand, can spend so much time pointing at these ignored presuppositions that they ignore weaknesses in their own position on the role of tradition in interpretation, overstate the monolithic nature of their history, and often fail to acknowledge the limits of reason (though in general those of this tradition have more practice in using it to its limits than modern protestants).
Both tend to fear an averred reliance on the Holy Spirit as teacher, comforter, interpreter to be “private interpretation,” and wholly unreliable.
I would submit that in actual practice, the criticisms of the opposite group are a more accurate picture of what each side is really doing than either would care to admit, and generally, the same logical constructions being used to assault the other position can be turned around if one were intellectually honest, to poke the same hole in one’s own position.
Much of what the author has written is based on things that should be self evident, once they are examined in any depth. However, I find that it makes more sense to appeal to the written word as the arbiter of tradition, than the other way around (all a priori reasons behind accepting *this* word and not that duly noted). I suspect that we are not quite arguing apples to apples in all this, much as the sort of foolishness we could get into when discussing issues that appear to pit God’s sovereignty against man’s responsibility.
so - that is my short thought... :)
No church, of any kind, will ever face God.
But you will.
Alone, and naked.
Just something to ponder when someone wants you to join something.
The organization of this is a little difficult to make references, but I’ll give it a shot.
Section 1 - not taught in the bible.
I will generally agree, however -
Point 2) under exposition on 2 Timothy passage does not follow from argument in point 1). That is, he has already shown that profitable and sufficient are separate categories. If we translate pasa to be “every” scripture is profitable, we are not anywhere close to saying every scripture is sufficient, an argument he points out to be incorrect, but is somewhat a straw man, as he is refuting a position that is not being posited.
From here we have a question of what he means when the author says all (each) scripture, as well. Every book? every passage? scroll? verse? word?
Point 3 - it is not clear that it is the old testament alone to which Paul is referring. Peter refers to Paul’s writings as scripture, so it is plain that there is an expanded view of scripture in the first century, contemporaneous with Paul’s own writing.
Further, his claim that we beg the question of how we can be sure of “all” of the correct writings is also a straw man. There are tomes written on the subject, showing how the Bible is self referencing, how Jesus referenced such and so many books in his words. These sorts of claims for including certain books in the canon do not rely on the general acceptance of church fathers (Tradition) criterion, though this is an important condition for acceptance of them.
The crux of this particular argument is valid, however, because both protestant and Catholic accept or reject canon based upon the choices, or tradition, of the church, a point that cannot logically be surmounted, and generally gets me raised eyebrows in the circles in which I tend to fellowship.
In point 5) one could also think of a soldier equipped with all the necessary equipment, but without practice being unable to defend himself, or assault the enemy.
I would generally tend to agree with his statements about reading into Revelation.
Section 2 - acceptance of oral tradition
I am not sure that it is clear that Paul refers to solely oral tradition. It would seem possible that he had written other things to them as well, especially given what seem to be internal references to a Corinthian letter that no longer is in existence.
The 2 Thessalonians passage is pretty plain, unfortunately, he gums it up in the following paragraphs. Further, one of the criteria of canonicity is whether a book was written by an Apostle (or close associate), realizing that the Catholic Church regards the Pope as an apostle, protestants might argue that the passage is referencing Apostolic tradition in a very limited sense.
Moreover, we now come full circle in the question begging - how are we (or the church) to differentiate between “Tradition” and “tradition”? I submit here that sola scriptura is an attempt on the part of Luther to say that tradition must be submitted to scripture for credibility. Otherwise we end up with a circle of robed men telling us the constitution means what they say it means [sorry for the digression, but you see my point, perhaps]. We would seem to be in agreement here, as he says that Sacred Tradition is not contrary to the Bible (though we disagree on some of the particulars of whether some of his list of Traditions are clearly found in scripture .
Section 3 – pillar and ground.
I’m going to have to look at this, in English, at least, the passage would easily appear to call God the pillar and ground of truth. When one considers that the Apocalypse has letters written to churches that are in error, and that there has been plain error throughout history, the claim that God will not allow the Church to definitively teach doctrinal or moral error seems to be reading into the passage a bit.
As he says, we define the church differently. The Copts may think they have a claim to an unbroken lineage, fwiw, or a few other groups as well. The claims of the monolithic nature of everything Church (in the west) prior to the Reformation are hard to take at face value, so I will leave it at that.
On Matthew 18: To what organization is the Lord referring when he say to go before the church? He did not seem to mean himself, he did not seem to mean every believer who existed (as absurdly proposed in this section) – perhaps the local synagogue? Practically, they would supposedly know or be able to establish everything about a situation – there would be little point in taking Brother Ed to the pastor or priest or rabbi in the next town over when everyone in the neighborhood knew that he had been pilfering Brother Joe’s grain and could speak directly to it.
There is a world of difference between the Word become flesh teaching the Word on a scroll and a human being or group of them doing so. Jesus had hard things to say about the traditions of the church leaders of His day, traditions which were buttressed by similar arguments to some that are being made here.
I have spent a while longer than I have on this, so I will gloss through a bit.
When Christ said he would not leave us orphans, to whom was he referring when he said “I” will come to you? The author has claimed the church to be already in existence at this time, so it most likely refers to someone else. The comforter, interpreter, teacher all are terms for the Spirit.
Generally, logically speaking, all of these arguments are damaging to the position of Sola Scriptura. But, as I said in my brief post, I am not sure that pointing out the limitations of the appeal to Scripture alone serves to buttress the position of the author in favor of the Catholic Church as the arbiter of truth. I suppose that is enough of that here, as it can become a “Catholics have done and said this or that” versus “ you don’t understand the idea of a Vicar...” kind of argument, though a long dialog on these things may be beneficial.
The post is about the limitations of the Reformed position, and as one steeped in it from infancy it is better for me to address those than to poke at yours.
Aside – most people who talk with me at length find themselves somewhat surprised (I am not sure why) at how “reformed” I am (again, I am not sure why). Then I begin to talk about how the Psalms are full of references to the works of God declaring His glory, how we are told that we are without excuse because of this, and because of our consciences which were given us to point us to the way, and how the poets and prophets of the pagans are referenced as pointing to or speaking the truth, or state that Homer and Plato pointed at a lot of things that were true, or could lead one to recognize Christ when introduced to him, and they get a little edgy. But Scripture plainly tells us that God has set eternity in the hearts of men.
It’s all vanity, also says the preacher – and he’s right. Have a good night.
Sola scriptura is correct-as the Holy Spirit (God Himself) who never contradicts Himself will lead the person reading to either believe or reject against God’s will Christ. I certainly do ~not~ need the Catholic Church to tell me what the plain words of the Gospel says!~
J.S.
21 reasons to reject the “sola” in “sola scriptura” bookmark.
Thanks for this.