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To: pseudo-justin
Perhaps with the aid of the Holy Spirit ?
John 14:16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

17 [Even] the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

John 14:25 These things have I spoken unto you, being [yet] present with you.

26 But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

John 15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:


340 posted on 11/21/2002 2:34:14 PM PST by Quester
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To: Quester
The basic difficulty with Sola Scriptura is that it takes a certain real truth -- that Christ through the Holy Spirit personally teaches us in dramatic ways the meaning of Scripture for me and my life--and then turns that truth concerning my subjective relationship to the Lord into an ECCLESIOLOGICAL principle about the source of the NORMATIVITY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. From the fact that in a subjective encounter with the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit guides me to understand X, it does not at all follow that X is normative doctrine for all other Christians.

So I agree that the Holy Spirit can and does guide individual readers to grasp things from the Scriptures, but I deny that such subjective encounters issue in doctrines that are NORMATIVE for other Christians. What is it that confers normativity for others upon what the Holy Spirit leads you to see? There needs to be an ECCLESIAL guidance as well. The Holy Spirit must guide the Church as a whole in the same way it guides this or that joe.

Besides, how do you deal with the following. Either you are infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit or you are fallibly guided. If you say that you are infallibly guided, then you attribute to yourself the very attribute you deny to the Catholic Church. Why should we think that you are infallible? If you are fallibly guided by the Holy Spirit, then certainly what you discover is not normative for others, and we are back to the questions I raised to xzins in the first place.

Lastly, two people, A and B, both claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, A says "Scripture says X" and B says "Scripture does not say X" Somebody is getting deceived unless the Holy Spirit is speaking contradictions. Now what should I do? Please don't tell me to pray and study, or we are back to where we started in teh first place.

347 posted on 11/21/2002 2:56:51 PM PST by pseudo-justin
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