BluegrassJimmie:
And where in scripture do we find the basis for the conditions under which the decrees are made?
So it seems the argument is that the RCC is right because it is the oldest. Why then are new decrees issued? Would not everything we need to know be in scripture?
These are questions that go well beyond the scope of this thread and will get it closed down, so Iâm gonna be really quick about it. If you want, I can point you to other threads which go really in depth.
The answer to the first question is: there is no explicit definition of these things in Scripture, but there is a basis and an example. The basis is when Jesus tells Peter that whatever he binds on earth is bound in Heaven and whatever he looses on earth is loosed in Heaven. The example is in Acts 15 when the Apostles gather together in a council to decide whether the gentiles must be circumcised or not. They donât appeal to Scripture at all to answer this question. They only use the teachings that Christ gave to them orally. These decrees donât need to be in Scripture, because Scripture is only part of the revelation God gave us. He also gave us Apostolic oral teaching.
Remember: Jesus taught many things to the Apostles after His resurecction in the 40 days before He ascended to Heaven. Yet the Scriptures contain only those words of Jesus from before His resurrection (other than a few sentences at the very ends of the Gospels). God certainly didnât leave us without knowing the teachings from these 40 days! He passed them down through the Apostles, and they passed them down to their successors, and so on. This is how we have the teachings. Without the Catholic Church, a person is missing this 40 days worth of teaching. This is part of the answer to the second question.
The rest of the answer to the second question is much, much, much, much deeper. In short, not everything we need is in Scripture. It canât be. The books of the Bible were never written to give a full systematic instruction in how to follow Christ. They were all written to provide evidence of Christ (Gospels), or to give a basic facts about His life (Gospels) or to answer questions that were asked in letters written to the Apostles (epistles) or to give brief follow up instructions to other clergy whom the Apostles had ordained (pastoral epistles). These writings were only ever gathered together into a book centuries later. They were all written for specific purposes, most of them for specific people (the churches the epsitles were written to for instance). The books of 1 and 2 Corinthians were only ever meant to address specific concerns of Corinth.
That is why in St. Paul commanded the Thessolonians to hold firm and follow the traditions they were taught either by letter OR by oral teaching (2 Thessolonians 2:15). Also, read 2 and 3 John. They are VERY short, because St. John tells his readers that he has much to tell them but he isnât going to do it in writing he is going to wait until he got there to tell them in person. In fact, the only reason St. Paul wrote so much is because he was in prison for 3 years and couldnât go to these places to teach them orally.
Remember that no Christian had a Bible for the first 350 years of the faith, and in fact most couldnât even read until the 1500s at the earliest. If Scripture was intended to be the only thing nevessary or acceptable for salvation, then God left 1500 years worth of his people without a means to be saved that they could understand or even possess. Also, St. Peter writes (2 Peter 3:16) that Paulâs letters are hard to understand. Remember that at the time of St. Peter (and for a thousand years after), only the very most educated people in the whole world could read. This means Peter was telling the most educated people alive that the letters were hard to understand. God certainly didnât leave these letters for the average person to use as their sole basis for faith!
