Well, as I said, there is also division between the catholic and orthodox churches so this statement doesn’t really make any point that I’m aware of. There are divisions in all churches, or so it seems.
Anyway, I understand where you’re coming from with the confusion about who has the authority to claim which interpretation is correct. It’s actually a very good question. The problem is that you are thinking about it through the lens of the catholic church. For you, the need for authority on teaching has always existed so you can’t imagine life without it. The problem is that this authority comes from fallible men who can be wrong. The man who trusts God with an honest heart and seeks truth will find truth. The man who doesn’t will not find truth. I consider it to be that simple. You concede that the truth is present in scripture, but require that someone explain it to you. Do not baptists do that? Do they not have someone in their church explain to them how to find their teaching in the same bible? Forgive me if I’m not answering your question properly.
It is NOT the Catholic Church that teaches “Bible Alone”. It is the Church of Christ that teaches Bible Alone. Therefore, saying that the Orthodox are not united to Rome has nothing to do with the point.
You have admitted that there are divisions (by well meaning people, I presume) who attempt to hold up the bible as the singular teaching authority. Therefore, that points to a serious problem to the Bible Along theology. It doesn’t work. And, it certainly is not “perfect” or “perfected.”
Well the problem is that a sampling of some writings from the early church show a disagreement, while the bible itself shows that members of the church who were gifted in prophecy were able to distinguish what was scripture. So I don’t really know what to tell you. I am well aware there was some disagreement, but selected writings out of the entirety of history do not mean that every single person was confused.
All you have to say is that you’re giving authority to a certain group of people and you’re ignoring the authority of others who disagree with the first group. But, Bible Alone folks are very disconnected from this reality.
That’s great, but I didn’t realize we were talking about Fatima. Since I’m not catholic I have no real reason to believe anything about Fatima, so I can’t really comment.
Oh, well, that’s not a problem for you. You need not take the word of the Catholic Church! You can just read the reports from the Atheist-Communist government run newspaper. They provided some of the photographers, reporters, and pictures that we have of that day and much of the information that we have about that event. It was the government, by the way, that stationed armed troops to try and prevent people from getting to the field to see the miracle.
Fatima didn’t happen inside a church. Fatima happened in history. Your rejection of it being something tied to the Catholic Church does lack a reasonable foundation.
Well, do catholics have to be biologists? The question works both ways. We can learn about the problems with birth control pills by reading the research on it, the same as a catholic would.
Catholics? No, of course not. The Catholic teaching is: do not use contraceptives. And, in following our Church’s teachings, we simply stay clear of killing tiny humans. But, not so with the Church of Christ. Each person is on their own - and unless they understand the details of the consequences of their actions, they’d have no idea that they were killing people. A Church of Christ member has no support for these kinds of issues - they have to go it alone, according to what you say. Keep in mind the consequences of taking “the pill” were not known at the time the Church was teaching in opposition to this form of killing. Even if a Church of Christ member was totally up on all the current science, they still would have fallen into the trap of killing in this fashion.
Do you see the difference here?
The Church of Christ is not an every man for themselves church. It’s a “we’re all in it together” church. Fellowship is important. Talking to each other is important. Taking communion together is important. Praying together is important. If we’re not edifying each other we’re only coming together for the worse.
But, what you’re doing is saying that any given person in that fellowship is not at all equipped to help another person avoid error.
Fair point. The problem is I never said that. Believing that the bile is the ultimate authority is not the same as building a church on top of it. It is not the same as discarding the keys. It’s not the same as denying there is one church.
The church is built on Christ. We can learn what God wants us to know through His word. And we can exercise the authority of running the church because we’ve been given the authority to bind and loose. I just think bind and loose doesn’t mean “teaching authority” so much as “authority to act.” The second time bind and loose comes up in the bible it is discussed in the context of putting out the unrighteous man, something pertaining to church discipline.
So, a vote is taken, then, among the members of any given Church of Christ congregation? How is it determined if a person is “unrighteous” or not?
