http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/orob/bridge-too-far
It certainly is. Thank you for posting that.
From the article.....
At the central core of racism we find the sinful hearts of men living in a fallen world. This fundamental problem has no earthly cure. There is no speech that can be given, no law that can be passed, and no publicity campaign that can solve it. Only the truth of God’s Word combined with the strength of God’s Holy Spirit living within us can bring us victory over this sin.
Sola Scriptura teaches......
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 3:11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
James 2:1-13 1 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
You can’t go against scripture, right?
No, so clearly those who don't follow Scripture will fall into error, as in the example of racism. Adhering to the clear, simple teaching of Scripture was the motivating force behind the efforts to end the slave trade made by William Wilberforce.
William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml
Sure. But you cannot deny that the Southern Baptist Convention endorsed a fundamentally racist POV based on Sola Scriptura until about 40 years ago.
The Methodists were the ones who pushed for the abolition of slavery.
Sola Scriptura means that you can make the Bible say whatever the heck you want it to say.
Fundamentalists haven’t exactly been buddy buddy with the Methodists.
Methodists, for one, reject the idea of eternal security and embrace free-will. Not to mention, they invented social justice in the 19th century in their postmillenial phase.
If this is about slavery, then there is a marked distinction btwn evangelical-types who did not want to uphold that tradition went it could be abolished, versus institutionalized religion, Protestant or Catholic.
Fair summation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_slavery#Christian_abolitionism
And here on slavery in the Bible: http://www.astorehouseofknowledge.info/Slavery
And this is very good treatment on slavery in the ANE: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html
It MUST be understood, esp. in the light of our image of the antebellum south, that that slavery was not a monolithic institution, and the Bible does sanction, if not mandate, its regulated ameliorated form, in managing an intractable institution of the ancient world. And which was better under the Hebrews than the type of slavery that the modern welfare state ends up being.
There was no slavery in the church when it began as an organic community, (Acts 2-6) and some estimate that about half of the church was made up of slaves in the slaves states of Rome and Greece, and which institutional practice was regulated to be morally tolerable in that context, till the outworking of the Christian ethos of love, albeit interrupted, and the political situation would enable it to be wholly cast off as cultural appendage.
Rome at best sounded an uncertain sound, though joined by many Prots in sanctioning it, but below is the response of one RCA to a exalt-Rome-at-all-costs polemic:
Shane, your mistake is just what I noted. One Pope out of 265 Popes condemns slavery as intrinsically evil in the ordinary magisterium and you call it Church Teaching without ever using your own brain to see if he might have overstepped in his late years... and you are prepared to throw God Himself and His estimation of slavery overboard. The Prots are not 100% wrong when they fault us for Pope worship. You just did it.
Your thoughts on torture and saving Pope Leo X’s reputation from an obvious cruel belief is absolutely the same syndrome.
I think you are important to the Church but you will spoil it if you think flattering Her when She really needs the opposite from you is the thing to do. Paul confronted Peter in Galatians and Peter grew....the Church now has no one with Paul’s truthfulness.
The list of bulls against slavery occurred over a time span that included 44 Popes but only about 7 of them denounced slavery of sorts....one was against slavery in the Canaries but only of baptized natives....the next one by Paul III was against the enslavement of the Caribbean natives but not against that of blacks....another was against the trade, but not against the domestic slavery of blacks born to slave mothers and held by religious orders into the 19th century, with [the] Bishop [of] England who knew the Pope [was][ writing for domestic slavery after the bull and not being gainsaid by the Pope. The most complete one was finally at the end of the 19th century by a Pope...Leo XIII this time... who claimed that the Church was the great liberator from slavery, and he gave a papal list which left out the six Popes from 1452 til 1511 who literally turbocharged the slavery by Spain and Portugal that involved millions. And you can easily research the first words of that chain by going to Romanus Pontifex on line by Pope Nicholas V and go to the middle of the 4th paragraph.
In the OT flattery was a sin. Why does no one say that anymore? Because Church speak is floating in it. — http://www.jimmyakin.org/2009/02/soups-reredux.html
So people who aren’t sola scripturists are racist?
Is this the reason why the Catholic church rejected slavery while Protestant churches were perfectly ok with it? ;)