These are about the only parts that are really worthy of response. The rest is just more rhetorical preaching.
One reason that this seems to go over your head is that it’s essentially nonsense.
The interpretations that he offers are largely poorly expressed disjointed thoughts that actually contradict his own case. (He would HATE talking to me, but he’d very likely say that I rely on human reason and not the fullness of the Spirit. The problem there is that I was a deacon of the Assembly of God and I
am filled with the Holy Spirit,
have spoken in tongues both as prophecy and prayer, and
still today excercise some prophetic gifts of the Spirit.
)
Through His word the bible He teaches us.
No argument from Catholics, just that we are smart enough to include the writings of the early church and the rest of Christianity’s 2,000 years history in order to insure that we “rightly divide the word of truth” I am forever telling other catholics to follow this verse of St. Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy (2:15) which reads, “Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” One problem though. Did ya notice that St. Paul
doesn’t tell Timothy to
only study the scriptures?
I discovered this myself in reading my Bible.
Teachers of men can help with interpretation if they are correct in their interpretation
but God is the one that teaches.This is where he really starts getting into theological trouble. He offers no measure as to how to discern when any given teacher is correct. Who is the authority for this? Him? What makes
his interpretation more valid than mine or yours. I have a lot of Bibles and have read it many times and still am reading it again and again. So, am I qualified to offer authoritative and inerrant guidance as to the meaning of any given passage? See the messed up logic here? The Catholic interpretations of the Bible are based both on the original languages and the ECF’s writings that tell us what they learned directly from the apostles.
Polycarp,
Ignatius of Antioch and the
Didache are excellent examples of very informative early church writings since they date from the late first and early second century and are verifiably Christian. (Unlike the Gnostic writings which are verifiably NOT.)
His Spirit is the one who reveals truth to us.
Catholics would agree with this. However, you can simply point out that
the Holy Spirit’s leading is precisely why you and your wife are Catholic. He can babble his head off, but he cannot refute that…though you can rest assured that he will try. In fact…he runs afoul of a very important passage of scripture here. Watch… 1st Corinthians 14 says, "29:
Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. What “others”? He’s speaking of the church. And since the church has already dealt with the errors of the reformers, it has also dealt with the errors of all their subsequent step-children as well, in this case Sola Scriptura.
Here he’s off his own topic since the fact is that the issue of correct authoritative interpretation is not all that related to the idea of SS itself, but even so…he’s in theological trouble here because he cannot validly assert that his interpretations are correct since he does not consult (or perhaps even consider valid!
) the ECF nor the history of the Christian faith.
Interpretations of the Bible are like walking through a door and behind that door is another door and behind that another it goes deeper and deeper as the Spirit will instruct.
Interesting…but actually nothing more than rhetorical irrelevence. It’s his opinion…big deal.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
Here he’s messed up his own case again because that verse (Romans 10:17) plainly says that faith comes by what? Hearing, right? Not written…do you see where that leads? If one has to be able to read a Bible to be saved then there will be alot more folks in hell than some n-Cs think because (even today) not everyone is literate…but everyone comprehends their spoken language, don’t they? Consider the low literacy levels of most people throughout human history. How was the Gospel spread?
The printing press didn’t come along until 1447, so there weren’t Chick tracts or even many reasonably affordable Bibles to be had until after that.
His passage just doesn’t wash, does it?
(Cont’d)
[/SIGN]
). Unless I just dont know what I am doing. Hopefully though he does respond to the email so I have back what I wrote.
