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MarkInOregon
Guest
So I don’t think we changed any of Gods words to fit our needs. We are not the ones who want to add the word alone to scripture–to the book of James.
Peace,
Mark
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Peace,
Mark
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Grace_Seeker
Guest
Just as Paul does in Romans. I am both a creature of the flesh and of the Spirit at the same time. Though I am going on to perfection, I am not there yet. This is true of every aspect of me, including my ability to understand the leading of the Spirit. Sometimes I hear, understand and follow. Sometimes I only hear and understand, but elect to not follow. And sometimes while I may still hear, I neither understand nor follow. This, according to Paul, is the condition of those who are in Christ, but still awaiting glorification.
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eagle_eye222001
Guest
So when and how do you know that you are listening and following?
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Grace_Seeker
Guest
And yet, according to St. Paul, “For if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9, Douay-Rheims). Your statement and Paul’s seem to contradict one another. So, I’m hoping that you’re misrepresenting the actual position of the Catholic Church. But let us say that you are not, and that your statement is indeed the Catholic postion. Then, from a Catholic perspective, one has to decide whether to accept the teaching of Peter or of Paul. How does a Catholic go about making such a choice?
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Grace_Seeker
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No, at least I don’t see it that way. For instance, let us take where Paul says that it is a shame for women to cut their hair. I bring reason, experience, and tradition to this, and conclude that Paul did not mean this as a universal truth applicable to all women in all places at all times in history. Scripture is still primary, it is the source of one’s faith, but I recognize that one must use one reason when interpreting it. And that interpretation can also be informed by tradition. The Didache is not scripture, but I believe it substantiates the rationale for the move from worship on the Sabbath to worship on Sunday. You see, I submit to you that there are really very few people (even among those who claim to) who actually follow sola scriptura. So, that may be why you confuse my position with it.
But let me twist the tables on you. Over the years there have been many teachings represented in the Catholic Church, often contradictory teachings. For instance, Gregory of Nazianzus rejected the notion that Jesus’ blood should constitute a ransom paid by God. Whereas Gregory of Nysaa claimed that Jesus was indeed a ransom paid to the devil. Anselm of Canterbury agrees that Jesus was a ransom paid for our sin, but to God not to the devil. And Irenaus didn’t thought that our salvation was found not in Jesus’ death at all, but in Christ’s resurrection. For Irenaeus the cross was salvific only in that it leads to the victory obtained when Christ rose from the dead, but it was Christ’s resurrection that defeats Satan rather than Christ’s death.
And one then must ask of all of these proposals, since faith named is not specified in any of them as a necessary part of the process by which Christ saves humanity, and since Christ did indeed join himself to humanity (all of it not just some of it) in his incarnation, and since Christ did indeed go to the cross and provide a propitiation for our sins, and since the devil could indeed not hold Christ but he burst forth from the grave to lead the captives therein to new life, then does it not follow that – according to these various teachings which dominated the Catholic Church’s teaching with regard to salvation for extended periods of time – are not all men saved in Christ’s actions? Yet, I don’t think you believe that. Why not? Is it because the Catholic Church is teaching something different today, or is it because scripture demands that faith in Christ be part of one’s salvation? When different teachers in the Catholic Church, authoritative teachers (even if not the Pope), teach different things, how is that any different than the differences you cite among Protestants? To resolve it ultimately doesn’t one go back to scripture? And if the Pope should come out tomorrow with a teaching that contradicted what you understood scripture to clearly say, would you say to yourself, “well I must be wrong because the Pope cannot be” and begin to make a part of your faith something you didn’t believe to be true according to the scriptures?
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Grace_Seeker
Guest
We primarily walk by faith. The Spirit of course testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. But there are times that I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. But despite our failings, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation (not even my imperfect following), will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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qui_est_ce
Guest
How do you know St Paul is inspired? Do you know that some of his writings never made it into the Bible? Why do you elevate Paul’s letter to the Romans above the Gospels and the other New Testament writers?
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qui_est_ce
Guest
The Devil believes in God too. Muslims also walk by faith. How do you know which faith to follow?
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clmowry
Guest
. So, that may be why you confuse my position with it.
Well I guess I would have to agree this is not “sola Scriptura” this is more like “sola mea.” Whether you are appealing to scripture or tradition, what is consistent in all of the examples is that you are the final authority in determining what is or is not your truth.
How does the unsubstantiated assertion that the Catholic Church has had “contradictory teachings” “turn the tables” on Catholics?
If I presumed that every Pope in History taught something diametrically opposed to every other Pope in History, this would be an argument against Papal Infallibility in particular and Magisterial Infallibility in general.
This would in no way help prove the case for individual biblical interpretation being a sound rule of faith?
All this would prove is that Popes were not any better at individual interpretation than your average protestant.
If you could prove your claim, all it would do is help one to conclude that God has not provided ANY sure rule of faith to man.
Chuck
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SteveGC
Guest
I think this becomes the ultimate conclusion of the sola scriptura dead end. So many times I have seen Bible-alone Christians trapped at the end of their road trying to justify SS, and the escape route that miraculously appears is that God is leading people down different paths of His Truth, and it’s OK that someone believes one thing, and another believes something else…the Spirit works with our limitations of understanding and reveals to us things about the faith that we can grasp over the course of our lives…but there is no real deposit of faith…there is no set doctrine of faith and morals revealed to a Church…we are all individually led by the Spirit to those things which God wants us to know and believe…but if I am led to believe in baptism as required for salvation, then I get baptized…and if my brother is led to believe it is not required for salvation, then God allows him to be saved despite not being baptized…so long as we all just have sincere faith in Christ, that’s the only common teaching we need to know…
Someday I pray they see the error in this thinking…
…OR…
they believe that if you don’t believe what they believe, then you’re not really letting the Spirit guide you like they are…
which begs the question ‘how do you KNOW your faith is superior and that therefore your understanding of truth is authentic’?
…all of this would hopefully lead one to finally grasp the reality that God did indeed reveal His authentic teachings to specific, anointed and sent men, deposited it divinely into their hearts and minds, protecting it always with the Spirit…and it becomes not so much a question of what are the authentic teachings…but *in whom *did God entrust them?
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Grace_Seeker
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How do you or anyone know Paul to be inspired?. I don’t know it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even said that I actually believe it to be so within the context of this thread.
I do happen to accept that the Paul and the rest of what is in the Bible is inspired because of I understand it to be a record of God’s revelation of himself to humanity. I accept that the books we have included in it today are appropriate for inclusion because (with regard to Paul and the rest of the NT) of the acceptance of these writings by the early church to be a standard of its faith and practice. This is something I trust the early church to work out for me generations ago. And I trust them to have done the job as well as it can be done, but admit that they were imperfect people who often had conflicting ideas about what to include and not include in the canon. I suppose if I had been a Christian in the 2nd century I might not consider as much as half of the present NT as canonical. Do you think that the church was teaching infallibly then when they said that Revelation should NOT be included and that Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermes should be?
As far as the OT goes, its a little more diifficult. Do we accept that which was used by the early church or do we accept that which was finally declare canonical by the Hebrew community from which we appropriated it? Personally, I think good cases can be made either way. Since I am one who accepts not just scripture, but also reason, experience and tradition, I am willing to cede this one to the tradition I grew up in, just as I previously ceded the determination of what was and was not to be accepted as part of the NT to that same tradition.
Don’t we all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us? Aren’t all of those the shoulders of fallible men and women? And yet, somehow, God works through all of (maybe inspite of) these imperfect people be they writers, librarians, or canonizers.
Yes, but what’s your point? Do you know that some of that which is attributed to him may not have been written by him? I don’t see how that is germane to the discussion.
Why do you accuse me of something that I never claimed to be so?
Why do you ask questions that have no basis in reality?
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loyalservant
Guest
To Grace Seeker,
What a gracious response.
What a gracious response.
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Grace_Seeker
Guest
I called the Pope and he said that your are right, he does believe in God too. But just because he believes in God doesn’t mean I’m going to take instruction from him. But Jesus didn’t leave us without guidance:
So, first Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to not just his immediate disciples but to all who seek to keep his command to love as Christ loved us. Then Peter tells us that those who repent and are baptized in the name of Jesus will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And now, I can testify that this is indeed true in my life. I have experienced what Paul talks about of God’s Spirit testifying with my spirit that I am a son of God, and I know that he therefore interceeds on my behalf with the Father. So, I claim the same Holy Spirit to guide my life that you claim is guiding the Catholic Church, for we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Considering this is said in the larger context of a letter that began with asking why some said they followed one teacher of God’s word and some followed another, when in fact all belonged to Christ, and in the immediate context of talking about the body of Christ being made up of many memberes, none superior to any of the other members. It tells me that Pope, priest or penitent, Jew, Greek, Catholic or non-Catholic, we are all on equal footing before God because we are all one in Christ. So, I have the same resources of the infallible Holy Spirit available to me as an individual follower of Christ as does the teaching magesterium of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. But despite that gift and guidance, I think that still we have both made mistakes primarily because as still imperfect humans we don’t always discern the Holy Spirit’s guidance correctly.
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Grace_Seeker
Guest
Aren’t we all. Do you know anyone who believes that which he doesn’t believe to be true?
First I gave examples of teachings that have been the dominant teaching in the Catholic Church at multiple points in its history that are indeed at odds with each other. Second, I wasn’t turning the tables on Catholics. I was turning the table by asking a question of my own, of a person who had asked one of me.
And that is all that I do claim. I think that there are indeed serious problems with individual interpretation. Yet that is all we have, for each person is just one individual – at least that is all that we are until we begin to put our heads togethe as the Church, the body of Christ, and begin to reason together. I’ve got no major problem with the Catholic Church having adopted the pattern that it has. It makes sense, and is indeed a lot better than every flight by night person who comes along and decides to start his own church as a reaction against some small thing in another congregation. But I also think that yes, despite these wonderful safeguards, that the Catholic Church can err. And I think it is particularly at risk of that when powerful men take on a powerful seat and act in power grabbing ways. If there is none who is able to raise his or her voice to be an equal in challenging such a person’s error, then the administrative system (which is not of divine origin) of the Catholic Church becomes its own worst enemy and risks allowing for error to propagated as truth. It doesn’t even have to be intentional, it could be truly unawares and convinced of its own rightness and authority for what it does. But that self-deception does not make it so. And yes, in a 2000 year history, I think this is likely to have been so for the Catholic Church.
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clmowry
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sandyelder
Guest
The simple answer, for most, is No.
God speaks to His children and gives them guidance via prophets. Adam, Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, etc. up to and including Christ. He says in Amos 3:7 that that is how He operates. The Bible that we have today (I use KJV) is the sum of that written direction and guidance up to that point. In the CCC, there are to be no more prophets and revelation is deemed to have ceased.
Premise 1: God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Premise 2: God reveals His will through prophets with authority to speak in His name
Conclusion: Any “extra-scriptural” (non-Biblical) doctrine or tradition MUST be revealed and declared by a designated prophet. Since there are no prophets, such tradition or doctrine is suspect.
Persoanlly, I believe there has been 2,000 years of confusion over what Christ meant when He spoke to Peter about the rock. IMO, the “rock” is revelation, not Peter the man. Christ was telling Peter that He would establish His church on a foundation of truth being revealed from heaven, as it always had been. Jesus prefaced His comment by declaring that Peter’s knowedge of Christ was from the Father, who told (revealed to) Peter that Jesus was the Messiah. The fact that Peter also means rock was a double entendre as Peter was the Chief Apostle and became the de facto leader of the church upon Christ’s Ascension. Through the doctrinally foundational rock of revelation from God, Peter the rock would provide guidance to the church.
Too much of what is taught as doctrine today was put forward without the benefit or imprimatur of prophets, beginning with Nicea and continuing to the present day. A reading about the end-times in Revelation indicates prophets will lie dead in the streets of Jerusalem for 3 days prior to the Lord’s Second Coming Appearance to save Israel.
Who are those prophets and where will they come from? Is there anything we should be doing to ready ourselves for that day? Without a prophet to reveal God’s will, we will never know.
God speaks to His children and gives them guidance via prophets. Adam, Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, etc. up to and including Christ. He says in Amos 3:7 that that is how He operates. The Bible that we have today (I use KJV) is the sum of that written direction and guidance up to that point. In the CCC, there are to be no more prophets and revelation is deemed to have ceased.
Premise 1: God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Premise 2: God reveals His will through prophets with authority to speak in His name
Conclusion: Any “extra-scriptural” (non-Biblical) doctrine or tradition MUST be revealed and declared by a designated prophet. Since there are no prophets, such tradition or doctrine is suspect.
Persoanlly, I believe there has been 2,000 years of confusion over what Christ meant when He spoke to Peter about the rock. IMO, the “rock” is revelation, not Peter the man. Christ was telling Peter that He would establish His church on a foundation of truth being revealed from heaven, as it always had been. Jesus prefaced His comment by declaring that Peter’s knowedge of Christ was from the Father, who told (revealed to) Peter that Jesus was the Messiah. The fact that Peter also means rock was a double entendre as Peter was the Chief Apostle and became the de facto leader of the church upon Christ’s Ascension. Through the doctrinally foundational rock of revelation from God, Peter the rock would provide guidance to the church.
Too much of what is taught as doctrine today was put forward without the benefit or imprimatur of prophets, beginning with Nicea and continuing to the present day. A reading about the end-times in Revelation indicates prophets will lie dead in the streets of Jerusalem for 3 days prior to the Lord’s Second Coming Appearance to save Israel.
Who are those prophets and where will they come from? Is there anything we should be doing to ready ourselves for that day? Without a prophet to reveal God’s will, we will never know.
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Grace_Seeker
Guest
Well, that isn’t my fight. I don’t practice Sola Scriptura. I don’t believe that anyone actually does, for everyone I know acknowledges the importances of at least using a certain amount of reason to make sense out of the scriptures. And I’ve already explained that the only reason I am currently engaged in conversation in this thread is because people keep asking me questions with regard to my posts.
It doesn’t particularly bother me that Catholics place the stock they do in their understanding of a co-existing oral and written tradition apart from the scriptures, for I find that the other writings of Christians from the NT era speak to me as well.(Edited as off topic)
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rinnie
Guest
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You got that right. Confess with thy mouth. And we do to. Its called a sacrament in our Church we call it confession. We confess by thy mouth to the Priest the way we were taught. How about your church?
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rinnie
Guest
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THere would be no reason for this site. There would be only one CC the way it started in the beginning and we would all be united in faith. There would never be one thing about the teachings of the Church that we would disagree with.
Show me One. Just one protestant church that has the exact same teachings as the other.
The CC all have the same teachings.
If this is true how in the world can there be so many different faiths? If we all had the same teaching’s and were all led by the HS then how could we be separated in brothers.
THere would be no reason for this site. There would be only one CC the way it started in the beginning and we would all be united in faith. There would never be one thing about the teachings of the Church that we would disagree with.
Show me One. Just one protestant church that has the exact same teachings as the other.
The CC all have the same teachings.
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rinnie
Guest
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I just don’t know where to begin,
Lets start with the Prophet to reveal Gods will. Thats a good start. What would you call the Pope and Bishops in communion with him? Chopped Liver:shrug:
Isn’t a Prophet a person sent by God to reveal Gods words. God sent us the Holy Spirit. There is no Prophet as you call it that can top the HS sorry. So all we have is the Pope and Bishops to reveal what are TRUE PROPHET as you call it the HS reveals to us. I would say we are in good hands. Jesus promised us the HS to lead us into all truth. What more could we possibly need for goodness sakes?
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I just don’t know where to begin,
Lets start with the Prophet to reveal Gods will. Thats a good start. What would you call the Pope and Bishops in communion with him? Chopped Liver:shrug:Isn’t a Prophet a person sent by God to reveal Gods words. God sent us the Holy Spirit. There is no Prophet as you call it that can top the HS sorry. So all we have is the Pope and Bishops to reveal what are TRUE PROPHET as you call it the HS reveals to us. I would say we are in good hands. Jesus promised us the HS to lead us into all truth. What more could we possibly need for goodness sakes?
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