If Protestantism Is True

[Radical]

Because, historically speaking, canon formation was clearly part of the formation of the doctrinal framework. Early Christians had a “rule of faith” first, and laid out a canon in order to solve disputes over a rule of faith.

So, if apostolic succession was part of the original “rule of faith”, then how did it tie into the formation of the canon… so that one can see its influence on what went in and what stayed out? ….and so one can see the connection that would call for the acceptance of both upon the acceptance of one. Was the Didache excluded b/c it seemed to describe a Jewish synagogue practice of the congregation appointing for itself qualified leaders (as opposed to a more Roman hierarchical approach)? Why wasn’t 1 Clement (which at least describes a form of succession) or an epistle from Ignatius (which claims a form of authority for the bishop) put into the canon if the doctrinal framework (that included apostolic succession) was so decisive. It seems that there is little to no indication that the doctrine of apostolic succession played any part in the formation of the canon.

The problem with conservative Catholics isn’t their emphasis on church authority, but their framing of that emphasis in epistemological terms.

the problem for conservative Catholics is that they merely introduce an additional action that is required by God in the production of the NT. Earlier you said:

It’s perfectly legitimate to say:
“We both believe doctrine X, but you seem to deny the grounds on which we believe it, so I’d like to know what your grounds are for believing it.”

Specifically, the Protestant’s faith (that I described) states: I believe that God acted to ensure that only the right books made it into the canon (without creating an infallible Church).

The conservative Catholic states: I believe that God acted to ensure that the Church possessed the gift of infallibility so that when the Church set the canon, only the right books made it into the canon.

Denying or not introducing the Church’s gift of infallibility does not create an additional problem…in fact, if one is a fan of Occam’s razor, then it could be seen as the better alternative.

And to be fair, 19th and early-20th-century Catholicism often took this kind of rationalistic approach without any direct impact from Protestants (the Catholic Encyclopedia uses the “spiral argument,” for instance).

the spiral argument is just plain bad…and as presented here, is just a renamed circle

Why? I think that’s presumptuous, though it’s a presumption that a lot of Christians make. God seems to have a predilection for using human instruments “warts and all.” I think that a lot of conservative Christianity tries to explain this away instead of accepting it joyfully and gratefully.

I agree…it is a presumption and it is not one that I make. However, since God is perfect and error isn’t, one could reasonably assume that his involvement would eliminate error….or one could reasonably make some other assumption

My starting point is continuity. We are Christians today because of the witness of the Church throughout 2000 years. Once we have been shaped by the Tradition, including the priorities found within the Tradition, we are then capable of asking critical questions about which of the things handed down to us are essential features of the Tradition and which are small “t” traditions that may be open to question.

that last bit sounds like a very subjective process….also, it seems that you have started by presuming that Tradition (still) exists and that it will work on us….from there you claim that we would be able to start to discern the boundaries of the thing which was presumed to exist in the first place. That sounds a little dodgy and perhaps somewhat willy nilly.

One might even say that it happened to get all the specific books right but got other things wrong–but this is not a very probable result….

why? It seems that the Pharisees were able to recognize scripture sufficiently so that Jesus used the same books as them, yet they sure got other things wrong.

In other words, my quarrel here is indeed with conservative Protestants who think that the absolute, fixed, certain starting point for one’s faith is a closed, divinely inspired, infallible (or even inerrant) canon of Scripture.

that’s fair

Considerably more so. I think there are much better arguments for apostolic succession than for the apostolicity of 2 Peter. The historical objections to apostolic succession are to specific features like a monarchical episcopate in Rome. But the principle survives quite well in the absence of these features. The best explanation of the strong hierarchy that emerged in the early 2nd century is that these leaders really were known to have been appointed by the apostles.

there is a lot more required to establish the claimed apostolic succession than the existence of a strong hierarchy that might have been started with leaders appointed by the apostles. Were strong hierarchies such a rare thing in the 2nd century that the existence of such (in some parts of the empire) is most likely explained by apostolic appointment? …and if so, how does that get us to a gift of infallibility that is passed on collectively to any and all successors (no matter what their wart count may be)?

There are plenty of nuances one needs to make to this theory, and contemporary scholars have an ideological bias against it,…

not sure what you mean by nuances…and it isn’t as if a bias doesn’t exist for proponents of the doctrine

……but it seems to me that (taken in its essentials) there are good arguments for it and no reasonable ones against it. (The scholars who pooh-pooh it have no evidence except the mere existence of other groups claiming to be Christian.)

The NT doesn’t claim it for the Church. The pastoral epistles probably come closest to providing any support for apostolic succession, but even they present problems. Titus teaches that an overseer must hold firmly to the message that he was taught.….and not that:

a) upon appointment, he will be given the gift of infallibility in conjunction with the other overseers of the church so that they won’t be able to stray from the message

b) He should develop the message that he was taught (using his gift of infallibility in conjunction with the other overseers of the church)

The message is preserved b/c that is what the appointee has demonstrated that he will do….before he gains office and not b/c of some special gift.

Ignatius claims an authority for the bishop (singular in his part of the empire), but doesn’t base that authority on apostolic succession. The bishop got his authority directly from God. Clement mentions succession, but it isn’t a succession of monarchical bishops…it is a succession of groups of presbyters. The Didache has the congregation appointing its own leaders and apostles serving a missionary function. None mention anything about a gift of infallibility riding along with the office. By the time that Irenaeus comes along, accurate information about how the leadership in Rome started and developed seems to be lost. For something that is supposed to have been divinely instituted from the get go, it is rather confused.

No indeed. What I am saying is that if you not only accept but make absolutely central and foundational to your faith one particular complex, lengthy, and contentious decision-making process of the early Church, you need to come up with some very strong arguments indeed for why you don’t start in general by giving the benefit of the doubt to the principles and methods of the early “Catholic” Church, including points such as apostolic succession, baptismal regeneration, the necessity of church unity, the possibility of losing one’s faith after baptism, and so on.

the ‘benefit of the doubt” should only go so far…and not very far at that. From their works do we see that the ECFs only reported history with accuracy? Do we see that they refrained from adding the product of their pious imaginations to the body of faith? If not, then their entitlement to a benefit of the doubt is very limited. Further, wrt apostolic succession in particular, please see my “chain” comments below and then understand why such corrupt links would, IMHO further eliminate any benefit of the doubt in that regard.

 

[Radical]

If one starts from that starting point, most of the distinctive Protestant arguments don’t look very cogent. Classical Protestants claim to treat the authority of the early Church with respect, but in fact what they do is run it through the lens of the Reformation.

I see serious problems with your starting point in that it sounds like everything might be run through the “ECFs can’t have erred” lens or the “it is exceedingly unlikely that the ECFs have erred” lens…or at least some lens in that vein. I think the proper lens allows a “Protestantism as a distinctive form of Christianity, with clear doctrinal differences from Catholicism and Orthodoxy” to survive….and survive quite nicely.

But this assumes that we have some independent access to divine inspiration apart from the historic testimony of the Church. I am not saying that we accept that testimony blindly. Rather, we “think with it”–we put ourselves within it and see if it makes sense. If certain bits of it don’t make sense, we see if we can tweak it without the whole thing collapsing. If the whole thing collapses, I don’t think we have anything that can be called Christianity in any sense that Mormonism, say, can’t.

well since you brought up Mormonism, if we come across a doctrine/claim for the first time within the historical record and merely give the benefit of the doubt to whoever is putting forward that doctrine at some later date (b/c the adherents claim apostolic authority for the fellow)…then to what extent have we distinguished ourselves from Mormonism?

This process of thinking with the historic Church is not something against which divine inspiration can be placed, because our access to divine inspiration is not independent of that process–it’s part of the process (including, possibly, part of the process of thinking critically about and “tweaking” it).

fair enough, but only if we admit the possibility of error by the historic Church…such is required for an actual and honest assessment . Without that, we would only be going through the motions for an essentially predetermined result

If you reject something as “uninspired” if it makes cultural sense, then I think you will wind up with not much that is inspired.

it provides a reasonable source for the thing observed….a more reasonable source IMHO than divine institution

Romans were certainly concerned with order, and I suppose one could say that the method of succession used by the “five good emperors,” who reigned during most of the second century, looks a lot like the method the second-century Catholic Christians claimed the apostles had used. But one could also argue that it looks similar because it’s a commonsense way of handing on authority–find someone trustworthy and give them authority. There really isn’t any more to apostolic succession, at its core, than that.

well then, if it is based on practicality or common sense, then it can be eliminated as soon as it is no longer the most practical form of governance….

I think the hidden assumption in your argument is really that an “inspired” model would have looked more like our cultural model (i.e., democracy) and less like a model appropriate for the culture in which Christianity began.

no, I expect that God would work w/i the culture, but then I wouldn’t go on to insist that God would forever employ that same model for all subsequent cultures….that would have God failing to work within the later cultures…

Furthermore, in fact bishops were elected by the people in the early Church. If you want to argue that later Catholics have unreasonably rejected that part of the early Christian model while keeping the more authoritarian parts, I’m with you! (Though I’m not willing to make election a criterion of validity.)

good, and I am not willing to make a mechanical succession a criterion of validity either

God could do a lot of things. The question is what God *did do.*exactly

If you start with Protestant assumptions, then it makes sense that God would care more about the canon than about church government. But those were clearly not the assumptions of the early Church.

that’s a good point…but the early Church’s assumptions aren’t necessarily valid either

In other words, we either start with the assumptions of people 1500 years after Christianity began, or we start with the assumptions of the early Christians (or we start with our own cultural assumptions, which is a bad idea because those will influence us more than is appropriate even if we don’t consciously give them any role whatsoever).

or we could note that assumptions are involved and strive to determine whether there is any justification for making the assumptions… earlier assumptions are not valid simply b/c of their earliness

To me the latter seems the obvious choice. It’s not about blindly following everything the early Christians said, or mechanically finding some formula for determining which things we follow blindly–it’s about starting with their starting point instead of that of sixteenth-century would-be Reformers for whom the centrality of a fixed text was culturally obvious.

that seems to be what Sullivan tried to do (with a slight Catholic bias) in From Apostles to Bishops and he doesn’t seem to be nearly as insistent as do you. He found the historical evidence lacking, but salvaged apostolic succession on the basis of theological arguments (this is exactly where bias can most easily have an affect).

The fact that recent Popes have been such eloquent proclaimers of the Gospel, 500 years after it seemed obvious to many devout and learned people that the Papacy had decisively abandoned the Gospel, is one of the most powerful confirmations for me.

this is quite the spin. Please remember that this is supposed to be a miraculous chain of succession that extends from Christ and the apostles through to the current bishops including the Pope. One doesn’t judge the quality of a chain based on how shiny and sound the last few links are. Men of integrity are exactly what the pastorals specified….they should be the norm and not a thing that contrasts so dramatically with corrupted links of the past that one is awed by the change. Plausibility points are not gained by now having what should have always been. Instead the integrity of the whole chain becomes questionable by the existence of quite a number of corrupted links. …particularly when those links were added to the chain in total disregard for the NT’s requirements. Further, one should note the modern media’s coverage of the Pope’s election and his actions in office and also the freedom of Catholics to now go elsewhere. Given that coverage and freedom, is it even reasonable to expect that the modern Popes could be anything but shiny links? I note that our interpretations of this thing are very different, perhaps b/c of the subjectivity involved (and your obvious bias )…and then I note that the qualities of an apostles that could be less subjectively measured (as in the mark of an apostle to do miracles and the possession of an impeccability/fruits of the HS of an astounding level so as to be consistent with the unique presence of the HS that is claimed for the office and its gift) are exactly the things that the Catholics say weren’t passed on…. seems just a little too convenient.

Cheers

 

[PRmerger]

I have not personally done it for each and every book but which books I have done it matched up.

Then what are doing is giving tacit acceptance of the authority of the Catholic Church to discern the canon of Scripture for you.

And, as such,** you defer to the authority of the Church.**

The RCC position on the inspiration of Scripture

Catechism of the Catholic Church

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”69

“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”70

106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.”71

107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”72 (702)

Amen!

And, just a point of apologetics, it is not the Roman Catholic position that you shared above, but the Catholic position. The Church is not Roman, Chafer.

 

[mark_a]

It could mean “there will always be faithful Christians”; or “the Church will eventually overcome the forces of evil, whatever vicissitudes happen between now and then” (as many commentators have pointed out, “gates” are defensive structures); or something along those lines.

Sure, you can make an argument for why the promise makes sense if the Church is infallible. But that’s not the same thing as saying that Jesus promised infallibility.

Infallibility is such a complex, nuanced concept, anyway.

Why, for instance, would it mean infallibility and not impeccability? Why would doctrinal error taught in a particular, official way be the only thing excluded?

This may be the right interpretation. But it’s not the obvious one.

Edwin

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

It’s one of those tired topics that gets kicked around here incessantly.

I haven’t seen it in the way you presented it. It’s normally big rock/ small insignificant pebble or male rock/ female rock or Jesus pointing to himself as he says “upon this rock”.

Thanks again.

 

[Jim_Dandy]

Misrepresentation of Sola Scriptura. It does not deny the use of external information on things. That does not reflect what I believe regarding Sola Scriptura. You made a mistake in your comment.

There are many definitions of Sola Scriptura. Luther had one, Calvin another. The same is true of Protestant sects. For example, here’s one:

www.bereanchurchfellowship.org:

“We believe the Bible, consisting of both the Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety, is the only divinely inspired, inerrant, objectively true, and authoritative written Word of God, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” (bold added)

Having been one, I can attest that Southern Baptists do not believe Sola Scriptura allows information external to the Bible.

Your definition is not the only one. Since there is no authority in Protestantism, there is no right or wrong definition of Sola Scriptura, and no right or wrong doctrine – there is only personal opinion.

I’ve been following your reasoning. I’m eager to know how you discerned that personal letters from the authors to friends or to a slave holder about his slave were inspired Scripture? Or about Luke/Acts, written to a personal friend?

 

[Chafer_DTS]

Misrepretation of SS? Tell me…which denomination out of thousands properly represents SS and its definition? Many have said SS is NOT a doctrine but only a principle while others say it is a doctrine. [/qupte]

Yes Sola Scritpura was misrepresented there. I am not pointing that out for my health. I am sure you would point out of someone misrepresented an belief that you have. Please show me the respect by not making a cop out on a misrepresentation done to my position. I hold to Sola Scriptura as understood and represented by the reformers and doctrine in such creeds such as the Westminster Confession of faith, The London Baptist Confession of faith and the Thirty-Nine Articles. It seems to me you are unaware of what Protestants believe or never read or studied their writings on this issue.

And when will you answer my question? Show me the chapter and verse where the Bible explicitly states it is SUPREME over the church? Here…let me use your own criteria:

Let’s see we have Ephesians 2:20 on who it states as the foundation of the church. Hence the Apostles and the prophets. The foundation is already made. This would cover the old testament prophets and the apostles and their delegates who are directly connected to them.

 

[Chafer_DTS]

There are many definitions of Sola Scriptura. Luther had one, Calvin another. The same is true of Protestant sects.

That is simply put very untrue. All the reformers were in agreement on this specific point based on their own writings. Sola Scriptura is defined and seen in reformed and lutheran creeds. Guess that is not your area of study.

For example, here’s one:

www.bereanchurchfellowship.org:

“We believe the Bible, consisting of both the Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety, is the only divinely inspired, inerrant, objectively true, and authoritative written Word of God, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” (bold added)

I have no problem with that. That is essentially Sola Scriptura. That was held by all the reformers.

Having been one, I can attest that Southern Baptists do not believe Sola Scriptura allows information external to the Bible.

I am not Southern Baptist but I would say that you are misrepresenting their offical doctirnal positon. Your statement is strongly contradicted by my Baptist systematic theology sets that I own. The problem may have been 1 individual fellowship you may have been part of where Sola Scriptura was either misunderstood and neglected or a possible departure from the doctrinal standards. That can happen to any church. Even you would agree that several priest within Roman Catholicism departed from offical Roman Catholic teaching on doctrine.

Your definition is not the only one. Since there is no authority in Protestantism, there is no right or wrong definition of Sola Scriptura, and no right or wrong doctrine – there is only personal opinion.

Please do not give me a cop out. Standard Protestant creeds contradict what you say about Sola Scriptura. Plus all my Protestant systematic theology sets also conflicts with what you stated. Sola Scriptura was made loud and clear by the reformers and their followers and placed it in their creeds. May I understand you as a former baptist who never knew it’s offical theological teachings ? I question there only because of what you claim about Sola Scriptura of which conflicts with reality.

I’ve been following your reasoning. I’m eager to know how you discerned that personal letters from the authors to friends or to a slave holder about his slave were inspired Scripture? Or about Luke/Acts, written to a personal friend?

Luke was a great historian who was connected to Peter and possibly Paul. It’s historical details and doctrinal content forms a big basis. It’s historical data is very impressive ! Luke claims to have collected information from eye wittnesses and other material carefully.This is where one’s investigation has to start with all it’s details that he wrote. Your mention of Luke and Acts brings back memories. My own confirmation name was Luke. I chose that because of his detailed writing in the book of Luke and Acts . I hold him in high regard as he was used by God. Reading those 2 books itself uplifts christians from a personal stand point in building one up in the faith.

 

[PRmerger]

1. Do you as a professing Roman Catholic hold to the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture as specified in The Catechism Of The Catholic Church ?

Yes.

1. Do you as a professing Roman Catholic affirm all the NT Canon book listing as stated in the NAB which is a Roman Catholic Bible ?

Yes, with the qualifier that the Church is not Roman.

1. Do you believe in the very same NT Canon book listing as affirmed in Protestant translations of the Bible ?

Yes.

1. On what basis do you believe in the equal authority of sacred tradition after the apostolic area with Scripture ?

Faith and Reason.

Faith in the Church that proclaims this to be so.
Reason because there is no other way that I could discern what is theopneustos and what is not…except for deferring to some other entity to tell me so.

1. On what basis do you accept Roman Catholicism rather than Eastern Orthodox since both claim to be apostolic in lineage ?

I believe that the Easter Orthodox are in schism with the One True Church.

1. On what basis do you accept the OT and NT Canon that was proclaimed by the RCC ?

The same way that you do–because the Church declared the canon of Scripture.

We do not know it any other way.

1. What are the standards that the RCC used to determine what the OT and NT are and why was it correct ?

The standards are: what was consonant with Sacred Tradition was discerned to be inspired.

What conflicted with Sacred Tradition was rejected.

1. When you decided that the RCC was the only true church did you use private judgement based on evidence as your basis for accepting Roman Catholicism ?

Faith and Reason.

If so, is this using a fallible basis on something ?

Yes. I am not infallible.

1. Is it possible for you to error on your personal fallible judgement regarding Roman Catholicism as being true ?

Absolutely.

1. Do you have 100% certain knowledge that all the claims of Roman Catholicism regarding it’s history and doctrinal positions are true ?

No. Not at all.

1. Do you believe that Protestantism departs from what is stated in The Apostle’s Creed, The Nicene Creed, The Chalcedonian Creed and The Athansian Creed ?

“Protestantism” is a BEHEMOTH, and, as such, there is no such thing as knowing what Protestantism proclaims. There are tens of thousands of Protestant denominations that I would have to address whether each and every one of them departed from what is stated in the above creeds.

In short: some don’t depart. Most do.

 

[PRmerger]

Misrepresentation of Sola Scriptura. It does not deny the use of external information on things. That does not reflect what I believe regarding Sola Scriptura. You made a mistake in your comment.

Fair enough. That’s not your definition of SS. But, you’ll have to forgive me for not knowing which of the many, many differing definitions of SS you ascribe to.

But you still have deferred to another entity in discerning whether a particular book is inspired or not.

You cannot know of your own accord.

And, if it is your position that this is possible–that you do not need the authority of the Church–then if a Christian reads the Gospel of Barnabas and discerns, using external and internal evidence, that it is inspired, do believe that it is?

 

[PRmerger]

No it does not. It was written after the apostolic area

Who declared that for something to be inspired it had to be written during the apostolic era?

and contains doctrinal errors in it.

Ah, so here’s another testament to your belief in Sacred Tradition.

You are proclaiming the Catholic position here that the* kerygma *came first, the Apostles received it, proclaimed it to their successors, and then those writings which did not conform to the Oral Tradition were rejected.

No not exactly. It contains errors within it. It appears to have a slightly defective view on the Trinity if I remember correctly.

But don’t you get your understanding of the Trinity from the Scriptures?

So how can you say that something is NOT inspired because it contains a defective view on the Trinity, when the only way you know what the Trinity is is from the Scriptures?

Something that you would agree with me on. It is not apostolic. Hemas is not directly connected to the apostles or a delegate of an apostle. My main concern is it’s errors and it being outside the time of the apostles.

And you know that the letter to Hebrews is apostolic, how? Since you do not know who wrote it?

 

[PRmerger]

When will you answer the questions that I had asked you ?

Heh.

You asked the question at 6:14 pm.

I answered at 8pm.

Compare that to my posing this question to you on June 13. And again on June 18. And AGAIN today.

Finally you answered.

So, if you could give me the same allowance you give yourself, before asking, “when are you going to answer my question”, that would be the nice thing to do.

 

[Zosimus41]

Don’t know how helpful this will be, but when I first recovered my belief in God (was granted the grace to recover it, I should say) I had to decide where God’s Church was to be found. Logically it was clear to me that if Catholicism was false, everything that sprang from it was also false, so it was either Catholicism or Judaism. And between those two, the choice was clearly Catholicism.

You make a very good point. As Jesus said satan cannot cast out satan. So why imitate something that you perceive to be evil as a lot or prots do and/or taught about the RCC.

For example when they came out with so called christian rock my thoughts were if you think its evil to begin with why would you want to “church it up” or imitate it? Brings to mind this church used to hand out little cartoon books to explain the evils of rock n roll etc…

The first red flag should be why is King James written on the cover of my bible? Its like one of those bad office copies you come across from time to time.

 

[stewstew03]

The question there is a logical fallacy. It is asking me to prove a universal negative. Look up logical fallacy arguments. The positive aspect of my belief is the fact of the nature and divine quality of Scripture which stands as the basis of Sola Scriptura.

Respectfully, I believe you are confused Chafer. You are the one claiming a universal negative by saying that nothing else (except the bible) is inspired. No one is saying “Chafer, prove that there are no other inspired sources.” That, of course, would be asking you to prove a universal negative.

Aside from your confusion you are dodging the question. You are claiming that Jesus taught sola scriptura, and yet you cannot show that Jesus taught sola scriptura. Surely our Lord and Savior would not leave us with a doctrine (SS) that cannot be proven from the text of the one and only inspired source available to mankind…

 

[Zosimus41]

Respectfully, I believe you are confused Chafer. You are the one claiming a universal negative by saying that nothing else (except the bible) is inspired. No one is saying “Chafer, prove that there are no other inspired sources.” That, of course, would be asking you to prove a universal negative.

Aside from your confusion you are dodging the question. You are claiming that Jesus taught sola scriptura, and yet you cannot show that Jesus taught sola scriptura. Surely our Lord and Savior would not leave us with a doctrine (SS) that cannot be proven from the text of the one and only inspired source available to mankind…

Hey there Stew!

Do you go to St James? I was a member there since 1984.

As St John said

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written!

 

[stewstew03]

Hey there Stew!

Do you go to St James? I was a member there since 1984.

As St John said

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written!

Hi Zosimus - no, St Ignatius-Loyola.

 

[Zosimus41]

Hi Zosimus - no, St Ignatius-Loyola.

May the peace of Christ and his blessings be upon you and your family

 

[Chafer_DTS]

Aside from your confusion you are dodging the question. You are claiming that Jesus taught sola scriptura, and yet you cannot show that Jesus taught sola scriptura. Surely our Lord and Savior would not leave us with a doctrine (SS) that cannot be proven from the text of the one and only inspired source available to mankind…

I already faced and answered the question. Just because you reject what is found in passages such as 2 Tim 3:15-18 does not make it is false. I can go exegetically with those verse by verse In none of my post did I ever claimed that Jesus taught Sola Scriptura. You are putting forth a claim I never stated in any of my post. Speaking of Jesus , He did condemn claimed unwritten doctrinal oral traditions that some claimed to have been passed down from Moses and a succession lineage which contradicted or went againist the Old Testament. Jesus did set forth the principle of the supremacy of Scripture over claimed teaching authories and also the right of private judgement in searching the Scripture.

Respectfully, I believe you are confused Chafer. You are the one claiming a universal negative by saying that nothing else (except the bible) is inspired. No one is saying “Chafer, prove that there are no other inspired sources.” That, of course, would be asking you to prove a universal negative.

You did in fact demand I prove a universal negative. I have shown the inspiration of Scripture as being inspired by God. It carries therefore God’s authority. The burden of proof for Roman Catholicism is for them to put forth evidence that it’s church is infallible in teaching. I do not find anything of an infallible visible universal church. The folly of the question asked was the fact each church was a local church in the book of Acts. We do not find concepts such as the 5 Sees as existing during apostolic times. This is another reason why the question is itself being incorrectly asked. There are no claimed prophets or apostles today in which claimed inspired oral doctrinal teachings will come forth from. The only infallible record today of the teaching of Jesus and the apostles is Scripture. Roman Catholicism sure has not dogmatically and infallibly told us of anything Jesus and the apostles taught that are not presently found in Scripture.

 

[Chafer_DTS]

Heh.

You asked the question at 6:14 pm.

I answered at 8pm.

Compare that to my posing this question to you on June 13. And again on June 18. And AGAIN today.

Finally you answered.

So, if you could give me the same allowance you give yourself, before asking, “when are you going to answer my question”, that would be the nice thing to do.

I have no problems at all giving people time to reply. I had too many post for me to reply to and in some cases I actually missed post made to me. For each post I made there was several different people making post to me on that post. I donot know about you but I have a hard time keeping up like that.

 

[PRmerger]

I have no problems at all giving people time to reply. I had too many post for me to reply to and in some cases I actually missed post made to me. For each post I made there was several different people making post to me on that post. I donot know about you but I have a hard time keeping up like that.

Oh, I certainly give you kudos for being the minority here, and for maintaining dialogue.

I just found it amusing that I actually responded in record time, and the irony of your request, given your relatively great response time.

 

[stewstew03]

Summary:

Nicea325: Where does the Bible say it is supreme over the church?
Chafer DTS: That’s a universal negative.

Chafer, it is not a universal negative, and the response is absurd - it’s a straw man.

You are making an affirmative proposition - “The bible teaches sola scriptura” or “the bible does not teach Tradition (with a capital ‘T’).” Nicea’s question (and mine) is: Where does the Bible say that the only norm of faith is Scripture?

And as PRmerger has shown - YOU rely on a norm other than scripture to prove the inspiration of scripture, namely, the Church. And you cite documents written by fallible men (the thirty-nine articles, and other reformed confessions) to support this “infallible” tradition of sola scriptura. So, at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll state it again:

Prove this affirmative proposition: The bible teaches sola scriptura.

Thank you.