Not By Scripture Alone

[marko_pasa]

I still want to HEAR

from John Smith, or from Hank Haenegraff, or from James White, or from Dave Hunt, or from Ron Rhodes, or from R.C. Sproul, or from James McCarthy, or from Keith A. Mathison, or from Charles C. Ryrie, or from Lee Strobel, or from Josh McDowell, or from John Ankerberg, of from Eric Svendsen, or from Norman Geisler, or from John Armstrong, or from Mark A. Noll, or from David Gustafson, or from whoeverelse

THAT WHERE in the Bible THEY SEE these two words “sola” and “scriptura” come together EVER??

NOT THAT IT IS MEANT OR IMPLIED OR IT TEACHES SO,

But I really need to see it IN BLACK INK ON WHITE PAPER!!

I need to see THE NAME OF THE BOOK;

I need to see THE NUMBER OF THE CHAPTER;

I need to see THE NUMBER OF THE VERSE OR VERSES…

PLEASE…!!!

I’M STILL WAITING A PROMPT ANSWER… :yawn: :bible1:

Let me help you guys a little with an example;

If you would ask me

THAT where in the Bible we see these two words “faith” and “alone” LITERALLY come together IN BLACK INK ON WHITE PAPER, not that it is MEANT or IMPLIED ???

My PROMPT ANSWER would be

JAMES 2:24 :bible1: You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by FAITH ALONE…(The Holy Bible, The New International Version, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1984) CLEARLY LITERAL AND SIMPLE…:yup:

GOOD LUCK

 

[marko_pasa]

Well it seems all of those Stars of Apologetics from the Protestant Pantheon whom I challenged seems dead silent…

How’bout ** myfavoritmartin** !!

Where are ya hiding man ??

Don’t ya have a bible answer to this simple question ??

I’M STILL WAITING :yawn: :bible1:

 

[JoeyWarren]

So am I…

 

[mozart-250]

(Edited by Moderator)
What the hey…

I don’t expect you to understand this, but I am still searching for the Scriptures in the Bible where the Bible explicitely identifies another faith source as its equal. Maybe they exist in Hosea 15 or somewhere, but I have yet to come across them.

Without these Scriptures, if in fact another faith source exists, I have no means to identify and separate it from false sources. From my side of the fence I see no logical difference between accepting the Magisterium of a denomination that is not mine or tradition as defined by a denomination that is not mine than accepting the Book of Mormon or the teachings of David Koresh.

 

[JoeyWarren]

mozart-250 What the hey…I don’t expect you to understand this, but I am still searching for the Scriptures in the Bible where the Bible explicitely identifies another faith source as its equal. Maybe they exist in Hosea 15 or somewhere, but I have yet to come across them.

Faith source? Explicit? Here’s a challenge. Try and find where the Bible explicitly identifies the Trinity, where the Bible explicitly identifies God as one God but 3 persons.

 

[gracelife]

Perhaps this is too simplistic, but at the time of the Reformation, the reformers were not about to recognize the authority of the Magesterium. They had nothing else, but the scriptures to base their faith on, thus sola scriptura.

The same continues today, not necessarily because the scriptures say (don’t) that sola scriptura is the rule to guide faith, but rather that without a Magesterium, there is no other norm they could possibly use. Unless of course, they look to their their own “magesteriums” (watchtower, lds, synods, conferences, etc.)

 

[Letchitsa1]

Randy,

Not to put too big a damper on your thread here, but most Protestants and Evangelicals do not believe that version of Sola Scriptura. The usual version of that doctrine is that Scripture is the final authority (as distinct from Scripture-and-Tradition) and that no doctrine or practice can contradict Scripture. The only time an Evangelical practices the form of Sola Scriptura that you describe is when he is challenging somebody else’s doctrine or practice.

• Liberian

That may be the only time they practice it, but I can tell you from experience that is not the only time they claim to believe it.

*Sola scriptura *is heresy, just as the theory “once saved, always saved”.

 

[mikeledes]

What the hey…

I don’t expect you to understand this, but I am still searching for the Scriptures in the Bible where the Bible explicitely identifies another faith source as its equal. Maybe they exist in Hosea 15 or somewhere, but I have yet to come across them.

Without these Scriptures, if in fact another faith source exists, I have no means to identify and separate it from false sources. From my side of the fence I see no logical difference between accepting the Magisterium of a denomination that is not mine or tradition as defined by a denomination that is not mine than accepting the Book of Mormon or the teachings of David Koresh.

The difference being that the Mormons or David Koresh do not have the history or the apostolic “pedigree” to back up their claims. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are the only churches that can claim continuity with the Apostolic age and BOTH deny the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura teaches that all teachings that Christians hold as true must be found in the Bible, and yet Sola Scriptura is not found in the Bible. That is a blatant contradiction.

God Bless,
Michael

 

[Redbandito]

What the hey…

I don’t expect you to understand this, but I am still searching for the Scriptures in the Bible where the Bible explicitely identifies another faith source as its equal. Maybe they exist in Hosea 15 or somewhere, but I have yet to come across them…

Why does the Bible need to do this? You are forcing the debate into sola scriptura terms. If the Bible is not the sole infallible source of our faith, then the Bible need not identify the other source in order for us to believe it.

Secondly, the Bible does identify the other source. This source is oral tradition as Paul talks about in 1 Thess 2 and 2 Thess 2. Catholics call this Apostolic Tradition today. And while neither of these answer the polemics of sola scriptura explicitly, Paul does state that the words he preached were not the word of man, but the Word of God. This follows right along with his thought in his second letter to the Thessalonians where he states that they need to hold on to this “preached” Word of God, which he states is by “Word of Mouth,” or Oral Tradition.

Without these Scriptures, if in fact another faith source exists, I have no means to identify and separate it from false sources. From my side of the fence I see no logical difference between accepting the Magisterium of a denomination that is not mine or tradition as defined by a denomination that is not mine than accepting the Book of Mormon or the teachings of David Koresh.

Actually, you have it backwards. Since the Church preceded the completion of the Scriptures as is evidenced by the fact that the Book of Acts is witness to the first Church Council, our means for knowing and relying on the authenticity of Scripture is through the Church.

The comparison to David Koresh or Mormonism is quite silly considering both have their roots in the last two centuries. Catholicism can at least make a valid historical claim to having roots from the first century Church since we can trace our Papacy from Peter to Linus to Anacletus to Clement to…

Finally, as Augustine stated, “I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”

 

[mozart-250]

The difference being that the Mormons or David Koresh do not have the history or the apostolic “pedigree” to back up their claims. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are the only churches that can claim continuity with the Apostolic age and BOTH deny the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura teaches that all teachings that Christians hold as true must be found in the Bible, and yet Sola Scriptura is not found in the Bible. That is a blatant contradiction.

God Bless,
Michael

For the record, the term “Sola Scriptura” is really not in the lexicon of the church I now attend. Given the inconsistent definitions of this term that exist, I am not prepared to defend a title that my church does not use and that has no consistent agreed-upon definition.

What I am prepared to defend is that the Bible does not identify any other faith sources that are guaranteed to be infallible. And I will defend my reasoning not to accept a faith source as guaranteed infallible without the Bible identifying it as such.

My primary reason is that without the Bible identifying a faith source as its equivalent, I have no way to verify a claim of equivalency as true or false. Therefore I stick with what I know to be true thank you.

As far as an apostolic pedigree (assuming for now it is a true statement that the RC denomination has apostolic roots), that does not mean that this is a governing metric that means therefore I should accept the RC denomination’s interpretation of tradition and magisterium as infallible above those of every other branch of Christianity.

If God has a favorite denomination of Christianity now, sheesh I have no way of knowing what it is.

 

[Randy_Carson]

What the hey…

I don’t expect you to understand this, but I am still searching for the Scriptures in the Bible where the Bible explicitely identifies another faith source as its equal. Maybe they exist in Hosea 15 or somewhere, but I have yet to come across them.

Without these Scriptures, if in fact another faith source exists, I have no means to identify and separate it from false sources. From my side of the fence I see no logical difference between accepting the Magisterium of a denomination that is not mine or tradition as defined by a denomination that is not mine than accepting the Book of Mormon or the teachings of David Koresh.

You don’t expect us to understand?

My friend, you fail to consider that many of us are converts to Catholicism from various Protestant denominations. We understand BETTER than you realize.

We understand that Jesus did not leave a written book to guide His Church; He left living men empowered by the Spirit to teach infallibly. The Church is not built upon the Bible, it is built upon the Apostles and Prophets. The Bible is not the “pillar and foundation of truth”, the Church is. (1 Tim 3:15) The Bible did not produce the Church, the Church produced the Bible. This Church, founded upon Peter and the Apostles, still exists today through the unbroken chain of Apostolic Succession from one Bishop to the next - from Peter to Linus to Anacletus to Clement and so on down through history to our current pope, Benedict XVI - through consecration or “the laying on of hands”.

By contrast the novelty known as “sola scriptura” is not taught in the Bible itself and was not taught at any time during the 1500 year period prior to the so-called “Reformation”. It is a self-refuting “tradition of [Protestant] men” that has lead to division, denominationalism and the development of a false theological system that is incomplete, insufficient and incoherent.

 

[Redbandito]

For the record, the term “Sola Scriptura” is really not in the lexicon of the church I now attend. Given the inconsistent definitions of this term that exist, I am not prepared to defend a title that my church does not use and that has no consistent agreed-upon definition.

What I am prepared to defend is that the Bible does not identify any other faith sources that are guaranteed to be infallible. And I will defend my reasoning not to accept a faith source as guaranteed infallible without the Bible identifying it as such.

My primary reason is that without the Bible identifying a faith source as its equivalent, I have no way to verify a claim of equivalency as true or false. Therefore I stick with what I know to be true thank you.

As far as an apostolic pedigree (assuming for now it is a true statement that the RC denomination has apostolic roots), that does not mean that this is a governing metric that means therefore I should accept the RC denomination’s interpretation of tradition and magisterium as infallible above those of every other branch of Christianity.

If God has a favorite denomination of Christianity now, sheesh I have no way of knowing what it is.

I understand the confusion. There is a lot of misinformation out there on this stuff. Regardless, the point remains that you assume the Bible is infallible. How is it that you assume that? Because the Bible itself declares that is infallible? Kind of circular reasoning to say the Bible is infallible because the Bible says so, isn’t it? Not to mention, 2 Tim 3:16, which is the verse one would quote to make such a claim, does not mention what books make up Scripture. So again, how is it that you have an infallible canon of infallible books? The only way to be able to say this is to either claim that the Bible fell from the sky, gold embossed and leather bound, OR to admit the historical fact that the Catholic Church, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and in accordance with Apostolic Tradition, infallibly canonized Scripture in the 4th century councils, affirmed this canon throughout the centuries, and finally infallibly declared it at Trent. Without this, you have no basis to claim that the Bible is infallible. Thus, your claim that the Bible does not discuss any of it’s equivalents would be superfluous. As previously stated, the Church preceded the Bible (at least the NT canon). Therefore, I stick with Augustine who said, “I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church” ( Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental, 5,6).

So again I ask the question, where do we get the Bible?

 

[mozart-250]

Why does the Bible need to do this? You are forcing the debate into sola scriptura terms. If the Bible is not the sole infallible source of our faith, then the Bible need not identify the other source in order for us to believe it.

I don’t think you are following my logic here.

I am not claiming the Bible identifies itself as the only infallible faith source; if it does, it does not do so clearly enough so a dummy like me can understand it.

All I am saying is that if any denomination claims another source is equal to the Bible, I need a means to verify that. Since the Bible does not identify any other sources as its equal, I don’t know what that means is.

Otherwise I could just as easily be following the Book of Mormon.

Secondly, the Bible does identify the other source. This source is oral tradition as Paul talks about in 1 Thess 2 and 2 Thess 2. Catholics call this Apostolic Tradition today. And while neither of these answer the polemics of sola scriptura explicitly, Paul does state that the words he preached were not the word of man, but the Word of God. This follows right along with his thought in his second letter to the Thessalonians where he states that they need to hold on to this “preached” Word of God, which he states is by “Word of Mouth,” or Oral Tradition.

I think I added (or should have added) the qualifier “identifiable faith source”. The problem with “Apostolic Tradition” is that it is not identifiable. Outside of the Bible, I have no way of determining what traditions originated from the apostles and which are nice ideas.

2000 year old games of telephone do not work very well. Fortunately God knew that and acted in the same common sense way we humans do when we want to preserve oral communications; He had it written down.

Actually, you have it backwards. Since the Church preceded the completion of the Scriptures as is evidenced by the fact that the Book of Acts is witness to the first Church Council, our means for knowing and relying on the authenticity of Scripture is through the Church.

The comparison to David Koresh or Mormonism is quite silly considering both have their roots in the last two centuries. Catholicism can at least make a valid historical claim to having roots from the first century Church since we can trace our Papacy from Peter to Linus to Anacletus to Clement to…

So I should take your interpretation of tradition and your magisterium as infallible because you claim your lineage comes from Peter.

Even if your assertions about your lineage are true, it does not mean your interpration of tradition and your infallible pronouncements “ex cathedra” are in fact infallible and equal in authority to the Bible.

It seems to me that Implicit in Catholic thinking is the assumption that lineage is the governing metric and that somehow the Roman Catholic denomination is God’s favorite denomination. But what if the Roman Catholic Denomination ticked off God at some point in time and now His favourite denomination is Presbyterian. Although I am not a rabid anti-Catholic that believes that in fact is the case, I see nothing from Scripture that precludes that possibilty at least in theory.

If lineage is not a governing metric, then there is nothing that separates your claims from the claims of the Mormons and David Koresh.

Maybe I am too simple minded, but I assume that at least today God does not have a favorite denomination; and I put my skeptic hat on when any denomination makes statements that imply that He does (and that their denomination just happens to be it).

Finally, as Augustine stated, “I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”

Yes, when Augustine stated that there was one universal (Catholic) church. Since that time the universal church has split into several different ecclesiastical organizations that we now call denominations. So any comparison between the present and the time of Augustine is apples to oranges.

 

[mozart-250]

So again I ask the question, where do we get the Bible?

Yeah, I have seen that argument, but I really don’t know what it demonstrates.

Even if I temporarily put my Catholic hat on and say that God used the Catholic (universal church) to determine what the books of the NT are, what does that really prove.

Sometimes God can work through humans and (surprise) us humans can get it right. There is no disagreement on that point.

 

[JoeyWarren]

The Power that **Jesus **bestowed upon Peter with the Keys and the same Power bestowed upon the other Apostles without the Keys is the “Binding and Loosening” is that other Faith Source you have not found.

There are several Faith Sources to considered.

The Written Word of the Lord.

The Oral Unwritten Word of the Lord.

The Power to Bind and Loose as guided by the Holy Spirit.

Here are some straight up facts about Jesus and the Bible.

If you take the all 4 Gospels and combine them into one fluid book, you would only have just about enough material for a 2 hour play or it could be read in it’s entirety in 2 hours.

Jesus’ ministry was for 3 years. Assuming Jesus only taught for 2 hours a day every day, then the Gospels contain only 0.09 % of what Jesus said and did.

365 days times 3 years times 2 hours a day =
2190 hours. 2 divided by 2190 times 100 yields 0.09 %

And that is conservative.

Assuming Jesus taught a minimum of 8 hours a day every day, then what do we have?

365 days time 3 years times 8 hours a day = 8760 hours. 2 divided by 8760 times 100 yields
0.02 % of what Jesus said and did.

Using the conservative value of 0.09% rounded up to 0.1 % then we can say that the Gospels contains only a tenth of 1% of all that Jesus said and did.

Everyone agrees that General Revelation ended with the last Apostle, that being John, but you will not find that bit of information in the Bible at all.

Food for thought.

 

[mozart-250]

By contrast the novelty known as “sola scriptura” is not taught in the Bible itself and was not taught at any time during the 1500 year period prior to the so-called “Reformation”. It is a self-refuting “tradition of [Protestant] men” that has lead to division, denominationalism and the development of a false theological system that is incomplete, insufficient and incoherent.

Isn’t that a tad polemic?

Now I guess I should accept as a given that the RC denomination has no logs in their own eyes, so that makes you well qualified to pick out the specks from your brothers eyes.

Still, I think you are giving us too much credit to assume that all problems that exist in the super bucket of “Protestantism” are due to an undefined abstraction called “Sola Scripture” (particularly when many of us really don’t use the term).

These problems couldn’t exist because our arrogance, bullheadedness, nitpicking, and lack of love could they?

But if you want to claim to us that your magisterium and your interpretation of tradition is exactly equivalent in authority level to the Bible, I for one am going to put on my skeptic hat and will not buy into it until and unless it is confirmed.

 

[JoeyWarren]

Yeah, I have seen that argument, but I really don’t know what it demonstrates.

Even if I temporarily put my Catholic hat on and say that God used the Catholic (universal church) to determine what the books of the NT are, what does that really prove.

Sometimes God can work through humans and (surprise) us humans can get it right. There is no disagreement on that point.

God chose fallible men to write infallible documents. When Paul was writing his letters to those churches, was he not in a state of infallibility during the actual writing?

 

[JoeyWarren]

Still, I think you are giving us too much credit to assume that all problems that exist in the super bucket of “Protestantism” are due to an undefined abstraction called “Sola Scripture” (particularly when many of us really don’t use the term).

Okay they don’t use “Sola Scriptura”.

They do use terms such as “Bible Believing” or “Bible Alone” with the underlying tone that the Bible contains the whole truth and that God’s truth comes from nothing else but from words of ink on parchment.

 

[joshua_b]

Isn’t that a tad polemic?

But if you want to claim to us that your magisterium and your interpretation of tradition is exactly equivalent in authority level to the Bible, I for one am going to put on my skeptic hat and will not buy into it until and unless it is confirmed.

I have a problem with this argument. If you are going to claim that the Bible is the sole or even “ultimiate” authority, then I would like to see that claim substantiated scripturally (book, ch, verse please).

 

[mozart-250]

I have a problem with this argument. If you are going to claim that the Bible is the sole or even “ultimiate” authority, then I would like to see that claim substantiated scripturally (book, ch, verse please).

You are misunderstanding me. Perhaps I am not making myself clear. So let me try again…

• I accept (and am in agreement with the RC denomination) that the Bible is God’s inspired word.
• There are many conflicting claims out there in ChristianityLand concerning faith sources that claim to be equivalent to the Bible (RC tradition, RC magisterium, Book of Mormon, writings of Mary Baker Eddy…).
• The Bible in 1 Thess 5:21 instructs me to examine everything carefully and hold fast what is good. I have no way of examining these conflicting claims of equivalency and verifying what if any of these claims are actually true. In absence of verification, I would reject these claims.
• I am skeptical that any future claims would be any more credible than those that have already been made, but who knows. Maybe there is a verse in Ezekiel 49 or some place that I have not encountered.