So the Bible don’t give you instructions on who to live a life with God? It don’t instruct you with the 10 commandments? It don’t instruct you on how to treat your neighbor?
Yes, the Bible gives one instructions on how to live a life with God and a life pleasing to God. Yes, it instructs us with the10 commandments and on how to treat our neighbors. I don’t deny that the Bible instructs us.
I no longer believe however, that it is sufficient for one to pick up his or her Bible and go out and start their own church. First of all, I believe that Christ founded one Church (Mathew 16:18), that this Curch has authority (Mathew 16:19, 18: 17-19, John 20: 21-23), and that this Church is visible (Mathew 18:17) as I believe Scripture and Church history show. Therefore, I believe there was no need for anyone to gather anywhere else besides in the Church established by Christ (which I would argue is the Catholic Church, that is for another thread though.)
The reason why I believe that the Bible is not sufficient for someone to pick up and start their own church is because, as I said, it doesn’t read this way. You said yourself that it doesn’t explicitly state the proper mode for baptism, and doesn’t explicitly forbid infants from being baptised. If Scripture was meant to contain everything that one needs to know about the practice of faith, wouldn’t you think these things would be specifically laid out?
I will bring up 2 Peter again in this thread because I think it is relevant;
"15And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
16As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction." (2 Peter 3: 15-16) (
biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Peter%203&version=KJV) (accessed 4/ 6/ 10)
How did one become stable and learned in St. Peter’s time? I would argue, by learning from an Apostle or from one of their companions. Since the Apostles are no longer here on the earth, wouldn’t this verse imply that we go to one of their successors? Their sucessors are to be found in the Catholic Church.
I believe Pope St. Clement and St. Ireneaus understood this:
“‘Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry’ (Letter to the Corinthians 42:4–5, 44:1–3 [A.D. 80]).” Pope St. Clement (
catholic.com/library/Apostolic_Succession.asp) (accessed 4/ 6/ 10)
“’*t is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the infallible charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also incumbent] to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth’ (ibid., 4:26:2).” St. Ireneaus(
catholic.com/library/Apostolic_Succession.asp) (accessed 4/ 6/ 10)
peace*
kpeople:
