**
Zooey:
Well…Actually, you see, Irenaeus ( and
Co. ) had tradition as well. In fact, Tradition is older than the [Christian] Scriptures. So, often enough, Tradition was all they had…And yet they managed to refute heresy left, right, and center…
Sounds like they were managing just fine that way, too.
Nay, laddie; ye dinnae ken how this all works. It goes like this:
OS is giving us speculations mixed with cherry-picked verses from the Scriptures. This is a big No-No, because OS is the one who is claiming that everything has to be word for word from Scripture.
The
rest of us are pointing out, that it has been the consistent witness of the Church from the very beginning, before the Scripture even was written, that we are to “hold fast to the Traditions which you were taught, whether by [spoken] word or by our [written] epistle”.(2 Thessalonians 2.15).
Which is to say, yean, that Zooey can quote all the Tradition she pleases, because Zooey, following in the footsteps of Father John Wesley of blessed memory may he rest in peace), is continuing to declare that Tradition & Scripture are both part of one undivided deposit of faith.
Now, I know you don’t like that; in fact, it is probably driving you wild just to read a Nice Methodist Girl saying that. But Sola Scriptura is NOT, no matter how much you may wish it were otherwise–SS is not, I repeat, sound Christian doctrine. It is
not the “faith once delivered unto the saints”. (Jude 3).
Indeed,
SS is unscriptural. The Bible never says that the Bible & only the Bible is the only rule of faith; it says just the opposite, in fact.
So, OS, you will need to find yourself some different ammunition to shoot in this direction. Zooey was reading her Bible, I suspect, when Old Scholar was toddling around in short pants yet. I know what it says. And what it does* not* say.
And one of the things that Scripture never ever says, is that the soul sleeps until some future date. Otherwise, who are the “so-great a cloud of witnesses” that the author of Hebrews cites as watching over believers?? And all that, after listing a whole panoply of names & faces, of those dear faithful followers of God, who have gone before us, signed with the sign of peace with God??
Hint: They are more alive than you & I.* And* they are in the Presence of their Saviour. That, OS, is what** the entire witness of Scripture **testifies to.
You can yank verses out of context to mean anything…like the man who every morning opened Holy Writ at random for a “message from God”, only to read: “Judas went out & hanged himself”, and then, wanting further clarity, tried again, only to find the words: “Go, and do thou likewise!”.
Sheesh. Some people’s children…
Problem is that you can’t support anything you said with Scripture or tradition. You may as well believe anything anyone says because you have no standard to follow. Tradition was never to be used to supplant Scripture as many have done. Scripture is the standard and John Wesley thought so.
I can’t even argue with someone who doesn’t believe Christ’s own words—especially some one who claims
Zooey was reading her Bible, I suspect, when Old Scholar was toddling around in short pants yet. I know what it says. And what it does* not* say.
Well Zooey, if you think it says anything about sacred tradition, then perhaps you should read it again.
Methodism came to a different theology in America than Wesley left it in England. Francis Asbury was a Wesleyan missionary who helped Methodism recover from the Tory imagery Wesley left it in. Methodism became Armenian though it started as Calvinist. It is the human striving for perfection that disrupts God as the sole agent of salvation. Also the ‘episcopally organized’ church is not the way taught by Scripture.
I hope you are not a member of the “United Methodist Church.”
Yes, the Tradition of the Church which gave us the Bible.
