If Sola Scriptura...why didn't Jesus have his words written down

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bengal_fan said:
but the guidance seemed to be reason and an historic link between the book or letter in question and the apostles. this being the traditional standard of orthodoxy as found in Acts 2.
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But not the Holy Spirt ?
the authority is present in protestantism. it is just not limited to the leaders. actually, in the earliest church, we have evidence that the congregation actually chose the priest and bishop. it was later changed but originally, the decision on who would make the decisions was left to the (well not general public but…) the members of the church.
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That could well be because back then, theological knowledge of the priests weren’t much higher than the congregation. There are plenty of reasons for why this is a bad idea now. There are plenty of Catholics that disagree with Catholic doctrine for starters, nearly all have no knowledge of theology or philosophy whatsoever, if it was left for them to elect a bishop, imagine the chaos that would cause 😉
agreed, these men’s teachings were not in line with apostolic teaching as passed down through the writings of the apostles AND the church (teaching from the writings of the apostles).
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?? Those names were arbitrary, they aren’t real ministries. But what I find inherently flawed is, most protestant teachings aren’t in line with the early church, who were infact taught by the apostles.
 
bengal_fan said:
no, i was demonstrating that it was those charged with representing individual groups of churches coming together on equal footing and reaching an agreement that constitutes authority. much like a representative government.
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But these people were not the general public, they were men of some sort of religious background, authority.
i don’t see how it’s not in line. i just think you are getting caught up in your own interpretation of what has happened. i see the infighting and bickering and downright persecution of each other as Christians as horrible. but i think the fact that we have so many expressions of the faith and the fact that because of denominations, we now have the freedom to ask questions and seek answers to things that at one time would have gotten you excommunicated at best and killed at worst as a good thing.
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It’s true, but, whilst we must have hope and pray for Christ’s guidance, it does not automatically mean that Christ has given me or you authority on doctrine. Could I get together with a group of friends, say a prayer together and then work on forming a theology on why murder is correct? Even though we have come together under his name? This is probably the reason why many cults have also come up, now I say this with no intention of affiliating them with religious groups, but KKK members for e.g. believe the Lord is always guiding them, other white supremacist groups, etc.
Christ did pray for unity. so why can’t we be unified when we agree on the necessities? we all as Christians believe in one God in three persons. we believe in the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus. we believe in salvation because of Jesus. we believe in the Holy Spirit. we believe in a universal connection between all Christians that we call “the church” (not the building or a particular denomination, but the mystical body of Christ to which all believers belong). the problem comes when denominations add “essentials” that are really non-essential. i love augustine when he say, “in essentials, unity. in non-essentials, charity” (paraphrase mine).
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Christ did pray for unity, but he also instituted an authority in which the unity subsists in. So whilst we all long for this unity, no doubt, Catholics, Protestants and all other denominations alike. Each do believe that there are differences which cannot be reconciled if each holds to it.

For the Catholic Church considers Mary a prominent figure, but most Protestant Churches don’t. They claim it as blasphemy, so how can there be a unity? Likewise Catholic Churches would consider certain Protestant doctrines heretical. Also a ‘church’ realistically speaking is the body of Christ when all members adhere to the morals, teachings by those who have been given authority. I do not see how we can all be in the body of Christ if we have different ideas of morals. Luckily, most of Christianity agree on the main morals, such as no abortion, no murder, no homosexual acts, and etc. But there is the spiritual side of things too which are equally important and not everyone agrees on that.
i do not follow luther’s lead. i disagree with luther on so many issues it is ridiculous. most of protestantism does not trace its beliefs back to luther. most go back to calvin and zwingli. calvin based most of his teachings in anselm and augustine as well as scripture. who says they haven’t been given the authority to do so? when philip interacted with the ethiopian eunuch and the eunuch became a Christian and was baptized, philip disappeared leaving the eunuch to continue his journey back to ethiopia alone. there is a Christian church in ethiopia today that traces its roots to this eunuch. he was never made an apostle nor ordained. he was simply baptized. i view this as a model for beginning a church. as long as faith, baptism, and humility are at the core (as they were with the eunuch) we have full permission to form a community of believers.
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As laudable as it may seem, how can there be a one true church with so many different ideologies, even though the core beliefs remain the same.
this is a list, but it does nothing to contradict my point. if you look at what each of these denominations hold as their core beliefs… they will be virtually identical. the disagreements come in the form of organization, style, and practices… not so much in doctrine and definitely not in absolute core doctrines.
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That was addressed here, I already put that in the same post:
religionfacts.com/christianity/denominations/protestantism.htm
if we focused on our commonalities as opposed to our differences, it would be the church Jesus instituted.
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When you said this, it instantly reminded me of what Pope Pius XII said in Humani Generis about liberal Catholic theologians saying something like that. Whilst yes we are meant to focus on common things to further ecumenical dialogue, the differences are too important to just throw aside. I’m not going to quote the passage, because it’s 3 - 4 paragraphs long. However, you can read here for my response, since I agree with Pius XII:

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html

It’s paragraph 14 - 17
I don’t want to paste even a part of it, because if I do, it says I exceeded the character limit.
yes, but you made a comment about my comment about prima scriptura.
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Did I? Ok I probably didn’t realize it
 
I agree with bengal fan here, if you are going to post links, make sure it’s something short, because i highly doubt anyone wants to read pages and pages before making an argument.
 
bengal_fan said:
i do not follow luther’s lead. i disagree with luther on so many issues it is ridiculous. most of protestantism does not trace its beliefs back to luther. most go back to calvin and zwingli. calvin based most of his teachings in anselm and augustine as well as scripture. who says they haven’t been given the authority to do so? when philip interacted with the ethiopian eunuch and the eunuch became a Christian and was baptized, philip disappeared leaving the eunuch to continue his journey back to ethiopia alone. there is a Christian church in ethiopia today that traces its roots to this eunuch. he was never made an apostle nor ordained. he was simply baptized. i view this as a model for beginning a church. as long as faith, baptism, and humility are at the core (as they were with the eunuch) we have full permission to form a community of believers.
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bengal fan, you are partly correct in your assesment in regards to the eunuch and the ethiopian tewahedo church. the fact of the matter remains that the ethiopian church was once in communion with rome and there is an ethiopian catholic church which IS in communion with rome. this ethiopian church shares our catholic beliefs in the 7 sacraments and the ecumenical councils. protestant prop ups generally do not, but there are some traditional anglican churches which do (and are seeking full communion with rome).
 
bengal_fan said:
now that’s more like it.

can you sum up some of your stuff for us here?
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I used to go at lengths to explain it on the forums board but that got old very fast so the main purpose of writing was to have a cogent, concise way to explaining and its there for anyone to read.
 
ForMary said:
Do we know for a fact He did not?
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Well…if he did, they didn’t listen. 😃 I’d have expected that like Luke’s prologue, there would be a prologue to such a Gospel (maybe there is or was a Q somewhere) that said something like "there are the words of our Lord, which he commanded us to take down for him.

🤷
 
Harmony1988 said:
Firstly, I am calm. Just because I put words in CAPS, doesn’t mean I’m not calm. I bring attention to those specific words because I want it to mean something.
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Warning - Off topicPoint of order:

In the etiquette of the cyber world, writing in capital letters is akin to screaming (this *might *lead one think calming down is in order). This particular site offers **bold **, *italics *, underlines, and color for emphasis when writing/editing posts.

Just an FYI.
 
ForMary said:
Warning - Off topicPoint of order:

In the etiquette of the cyber world, writing in capital letters is akin to screaming (this *might *lead one think calming down is in order). This particular site offers **bold **, *italics *, underlines, and color for emphasis when writing/editing posts.

Just an FYI.
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Just the statement of ‘etiquette and cyber world’ in itself in not a negative is just contradictory in itself :rolleyes:

I do not wish to waste time colouring letters, even though I do it sometimes, it’s much easier to write in CAPS LOCK.

Also, CAPS gets people’s attention, which logically means my goal is correct, as it got his attention to certain words.
 
the standard scripture gave was the one i stated. it was a standard because, at the time and well before it as well, most of the NT books were known and circulated to the churches. also, they knew the basis of the Christian faith was the apostles’ teachings and they protected the scriptures so vehemently
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it is not as if they just discovered all of these books in 300 a.d. and decided they needed to convene a council to decide what to do with them. no, they needed to limit the number of books viewed as the teachings of the apostles and they used the standard given to them by the early church (as written by luke in the book of acts) that the only books inspired by the HS are those which came from an apostle.
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Sorry to butt in, but, Bengal_fan, you seem to be saying that the Bishops determine the books in the Bible based on whether they were written by an Apostle. At the end of the 4th century there were 150-250 writings all claiming to be written by, or written by those mentored by, apostles. There were many more books written by apostles than what we have in the NT today.

My understanding is the Bishops took the oral tradition to that point and siad either this book conforms to our oral traditon or it does not. The Spirit guided them by giving them a tradition that determined books in the Bible.

Inspired Tradition bore the Inspired Bible. That’s why Catholics always look to tradition to interpret the Bible; not a local study club.
 
Newbie2 said:
Perhaps this is more of a question for Protestants, but if Scripture is all important to the exclusion of Tradition, why didn’t Christ himself designate one of the Apostles as a scribe to write down everything he taught?
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Perhaps John21:25 explains

John 21:25
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.
 
Harmony1988 said:
Just the statement of ‘etiquette and cyber world’ in itself in not a negative is just contradictory in itself :rolleyes:

I do not wish to waste time colouring letters, even though I do it sometimes, it’s much easier to write in CAPS LOCK.

Also, CAPS gets people’s attention, which logically means my goal is correct, as it got his attention to certain words.
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Actually, “caps” are a signal to a lot of people to skip your entire post–as they are akin to screaming.
 
bengal_fan said:
tsk, tsk. just because you don’t understand how protestants do it, doesn’t mean they don’t do it. yes, there is a practice of “me, the bible, and Jesus.” but, ultimately, every protestant (just like every other Christian) puts themselves under some authority other than scripture alone. a pastor, an author, etc. are all other authorities used by protestants to interpret scripture.
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So they lie when they say that Scripture is the sole source?
 
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