Part 1
Ozzie:
You have no idea what ALL the first Christians believed, and you’re assuming they were all without error in their beliefs. In your own way you’re elevating them all to the office of Apostle. My goodness man, there were false doctrine being propagated in the Church even in Apostolic times.
Hmmmm. Then Jesus Christ, who was God, could not and did transmit his message of salvation through His Apostles to His Church and through His Church to succeeding generations – without error – so that all men in every age could know the Truth. Jesus may have taught the Truth, but there is no way for anyone else to know it with certainty. Salvation is therefore a ****-shoot. Christianity is, at best, a guessing game.
Actually, Ozzie, the false doctrines were
outside the Church – they’re called “heresies.”
Not even the early writers, who touched the lives of the Apostles, wrote on all the doctrines in the N.T.
Christianity, like Judaism before it, was transmitted orally. Some of this oral tradition was eventually written down and collected and became the NT; the remainder was preserved through extra-biblical means. Both are the Word of God. Jesus didn’t write a book, nor did he tell anyone else to write. Few people could read and write until many centuries later. Neither the sacred writers of the NT nor the Early Church Fathers intended to write an instruction book on Christianity. But since the 16th century, Protestants have attempted to make the Bible into a textbook.
Plus, their writings were not divinely inspired.
Since it was the Catholic Church that identified those writings that were divinely inspired, and the writings of the ECF’s were excluded, I’ll take the Church’s word for it.
Only the Scriptures have that authority and inerrancy.
Do tell me how you know which writings are Scripture. And how you tell the difference between a “divinely inspired” writing and one that is not “inspired”.:bowdown2: And tell me what good a collection of inerrant writings is without an inerrant translator and teacher! How do you know the collection itself is inerrant, unless there was an inerrant collector? Show me the inerrant list of inerrant books!
The Scriptures were written so that subsequent generations of believers would know exactly what to believe regarding faith and practice.
Oh. It’s an instruction book in Christianity? NOT. The Bible is a
collection of writings, written at different times and locations, for different audiences, and for different reasons. The NT is the Catholic Church’s own record of her spiritual journey during the first 100 years or so of her existence. It
confirms the teaching of the Church, but it is not the original source of her teaching and beliefs. The Catholic Faith “came to us through the Apostles” (Latin-rite Liturgy), not from reading a book.
And if subsequent generations of believers know exactly what to believe after reading it, why are there so many different opinions about what it means among Protestant Christians, all based on the same 66-book version of the Bible? And so many differing opinion about morality?
That’s why an exegetical study of the Scriptures is important, even for those born again by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit regenerates the believer so he can understand the things freely given to us by God (1Cor. 1:12), but the believer himself must still accurately handle the Word of God (2 Tim. 2:15).
Let me guess: Those who do not hold the same opinions you do are not “handling it accurately.”
(Continued)
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