Posted on 04/20/2014 12:50:38 PM PDT by Gamecock
The perennial question in the debate over sola Scriptura is whether the church is over the Bible or the Bible is over the church. If you take the latter position, then you are (generally speaking) a Protestant who believes the Scriptures, and the Scriptures alone, are the only infallible rule and therefore the supreme authority over the church. But, here is the irony: Roman Catholics also claim to be “under” the authority of the Bible.
The Roman Catholic church insists that the Scripture is always superior to the Magisterium. Dei Verbum declares, “This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it” (2.10), and the Catholic Catechism declares: “Yet, this Magisterium is not superior to the word of God, but its servant” (86). However, despite these qualifications, one still wonders how Scripture can be deemed the ultimate authority if the Magisterium is able to define, determine, and interpret the Scripture in the first place. Moreover, the Magisterium seems to “discover” doctrines that are not consistent with the original meaning of Scripture itself—e.g,, the immaculate conception, purgatory, papal infallibility and the like. Thus, despite these declarations from Rome, residual concerns remain about whether the Magisterium functionally has authority over the Scriptures.
My friend and colleague James Anderson has written a helpful blog post that brings even further clarity to this issue. He begins by observing the judicial activism that happens all too often in the American political system. Judges go well beyond the original intent of the constitution and actually create new laws from the bench. He then argues:
What has happened in the US system of government almost exactly parallels what happened in the government of the Christian church over the course of many centuries, a development that finds its fullest expression in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Bible serves as the constitution of the Christian faith. It is the covenant documentation. It defines the Christian church: what constitutes the church, what is its mission, who runs the church and how it should be run, what are the responsibilities of the church, what is the scope of its authority, what laws govern the church and its members, and so forth. Once the constitution has been written, the task of the ‘judges’ (the elders/overseers of the church) is to interpret and apply it according to its original intent. Their task is not to create new laws or to come up with “interpretations” that cannot be found in the text of the constitution itself (interpreted according to original intent) and would never have crossed the minds of the “founding fathers” (Eph. 2:20).
Yet that’s just what happened over the course of time with the development of episcopacy, the rise of the papacy, and the increasing weight given to church tradition. To borrow Grudem’s phrasing: If the Bible didn’t say something something that the bishops wanted it to say, or thought it should say, they could claim to “discover” new doctrines in the Bible — purgatory, indulgences, apostolic succession, papal infallibility, etc. — and no one would have power to overrule them.
Adapting the candid statement of Chief Justice Hughes, today’s Roman Catholic might well put it thus: “We are under the Bible, but the Bible is what the Pope says it is.” In fact, that’s exactly how things stand in practice. Functionally the Pope has become the highest governing authority in his church: higher even than the Bible. The church has been derailed by “ecclesial activism”.
Thus, even though Rome claims that the Bible is its ultimate authority, practically speaking it is the church that is the ultimate authority. Rome is committed to sola ecclesia. And this clarifies the real difference between Protestants and Catholics. Something has to be the ultimate authority. It is either Scripture or the church.
Is your criteria then:
“...shown to be quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus or what (has been held) always, everywhere, by everybody up to c. 333.”
You are correct I don’t know way it is leading back here. The Book is titled Fundamentals of Catholic dogma. amazon has it. It has been a while since I looked at my copy. I will let you know how much is commentary.
This is a completely false statement. I have answered your questions dozens of times. I have directed you to FR. Otts book on at least two occasions.
Your choice. Last chance.
You’d have to handle disagreement about just what everybody, everywhere... believed.
Putting that aside, you had major disagreements and heresy going on. Those wouldn’t fit your method. To take one major example, who Christ was/is. Would you accept the decrees of the First Council of Nicaea? Arius or Athanasius? Would the dogma Arianism be ok? You end up violating your criteria one way or the other.
The Church accepts the Council.
Being curious as to how things went awry I just did right click on a FR rendered page where the reply of yours which contained the info could be found, and saw that the amazon link url was not contained "within" the quotation marks and brackets either, but only following those initial portions of coding, with the link url itself outside of the initial closing bracket ">" though it was there saying "amazon" etc., etc., with the book info plain as day, all of it together following that initial closing bracket, while preceding the closing and bracketed backslash "a", which latter portion is of course the target info which is rendered on a page to be viewed and "clicked" on.
I don't know if that [above] can make sense but to those who do a lot of hand-coding of links. Trying to learn such things elsewhere on the web I have often found people seeming to be speaking of some basic coding -- but with nomenclature I could not well enough understand. Part of the problem in trying to explain coding is also that it can time consuming to search and find just the right "coding" which can display the coding as flatly visible in the final results, rather than being picked up as being coding itself and being dropped off.
In reviewing my own html efforts, I find through experience of my own mistakes that just the lack of a closing quotation mark (if such are initially included) can make a link non-functional.
Coding mistakes are of course entirely forgivable, I make all sorts of other errors myself also, like putting commas in the wrong places, allowing typos to get by me, and just about any keyboard mistake not to mention lousy sentence structure --- so please don't take my above commentary as intended from spirit of my own to be anything other than hoping to be helpful, on a lateral and horizontal basis rather than any vertical neener-neener-neener sneering sort of thing. I don't inhabit the sort of lofty heights which can much provide basis for that sort of thing.
But thank you again for the title at least, and the effort to link to it to, rather than simply give a title. The extra effort is appreciated even though this time 'round the result was other than you had intended.
Yep, I like Athanasius’ example. Great demonstration of Prima Scriptura Contra Mundum. An early version of us, except that in those days the magisterium could still reverse itself based on Scripture.
BTW, this comment is necessarily hit and run, as I am at work and don’t have time for a full brawl. :)
However, I love to peek in every now and then, so carry on ...
Peace,
SR
Your reply makes sense.
I copied the Link code” from the HTML sandbox and put it at the beginning and end and then trimmed the appropriate code, or so I thought. I will try to pay closer attention in the future, Thank you for you assistance.
Am I correct in reading this that you don't have a problem with 'someone' declaring things infallible, but only on what basis it is done so?
Not in principal to the first part, the second part determining if there is a problem.
If so, who would be acceptable to you and on what basis? Notice, I assume there must always be a 'who.' I think that is true infallibly. :)
If any atheist tells me that it is sunny day here, and the sun is shining, then i would consider that a a surely true, and thus infallible statement.
Likewise a pagan who affirms their is a Creator. Scripture affirms man can make correct judgments, even about the weather, (LK. 12:54) and affirms the use of reason as arriving at assured truth in the light of evidence. (1Kg. 17:24; Jn. 6:69)
But it nowhere affirms formulaic assured infallibility as per Rome.
Now once again i will ask,
Is your argument that an assuredly infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth? (Or what>)
63 pages are Bibliography and indices. I imagine that many of those 560 pages are introductory notes to the various assembled information, along with some additional explanation of the writer's own as to what those things may mean -- as in brief summaries?
The book is broken up into parts concerning the Nature of God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy spirit. It breaks each of these down into teachings and De fide (must be believed. He gives brief histories of many of them and shows errors concerning them from scripture and history. So your assessment was fairly spot on. I wanted to review it before I agreed, it has been a year since I had to refer to it.
Well, that's the way Christ set it up of course :) But...
Logically, the alternative is A) Some other person on entity. And then you have the problem of whom/what. Or you have B) A bunch of competing "Truth."
So, in practice, sola scriptura does not work. Unless you have another alternative?
But the Bible never burned people at the stake.
ooops.....
bump
I cry....
Mentioned; but not pinged...
Numbers 22:28
Infallible Truth, as it is in Scripture as a truth, and while he was not literally sitting in the seat of a prophet, but was standing upon one, he was speaking as a "protest-ant" one, giving hope to every such preacher desiring to be used of God.
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