I have a question…
Is it possible that we could be wrong, and some of the books in the Bible don’t belong in the Bible, and some that aren’t in the Bible actually belong there? What if we are wrong, that James, or Hebrews, or Revelations were not Inspired, and the letters of Clement were? How do we know we got it right, for certain… to say, “This book, is the written Word of God, and therefore it is Inerrant and Infallible.”???
It is a very good question. Why are you shouting? I have always wondered what is in the Didache that is not consistent with Church teaching. I wonder if it was not included because it was directed to the clergy, rather than laypeople?
As you see it , so it is for you.
I don’t think I am the only one. In reading the writings of Luther, it becomes quite clear (and more so over the years) that he had increasing disrespect and rejection for the authority of the Catholic Church. He was a dedicated Christian with a love of Scripture, and when looking for another authority that would function more clearly and without guile, Scripture was all he could find to replace the Magesterium. He did not even offer himself for the job, though he did get pretty presumptuous with his authority in some things. I think he genuinely believed that the Scriptures could and would speak for themselves, and get the Church back on track. He was quite appalled and dismayed when this did not turn out to be true. His conflicts with Zwingli and Calvin over the Real Presence were heartbreaking for him.
Luther was by no means the first to advocate reform and a better adherance to the content of the Scriptures. Wycliffe questioned the pope’s authority and attacked indulgences and corruption in the church. He said the Bible, not the church, was the ultimate religious authority. He translated it into English, which ultimately got him killed.
Desiderius Erasmus was a Northern Humanist priest. He wanted to reform the church, and wrote a book, “The Praise of Folly,” a satire of society, including corruption in the church. His attacks on corruption in the church added to people’s desire to leave Catholicism. then ther was Tyndale and Jan Hus, King Henry VIII, Tyndale, John Knox, .etc, etc. Why was Luther able to light the tinderbox when these others, also willing to give their lives for their convictions, did not?
It was a convergence of many factors, including the invention of the printing press, so the message could be carried further and faster, and the political and economic climate at the time. The German princes were eager to get out from under the oppresson of the Catholic hierarchy and saw their chance in Luther’s work.
I see it as the only avenue a magisterium allowed for a reformer to reject, purge leaven (bad doctrine). Another words, SS arouse straight out of the church setting, not from without.
Oh I agree 100%. I often think, had I been living at the time, I would have been one of the first to pounce on criticizing the corruption. My early departure from the Catholic faith into which I was baptized occurred because I did not see in my family or my community the living faith. I was starving for an authentic Christianity, as were all these people that advocated Scripture as the sole authority. In fact, I had never been taught to read the scriptures and did not even have a bible. I fell in with my Baptist siblings, who taught me to read, pray, and live the scriptures.
Despite my experiential learning of the value of the Scriptures, it became clear to me that the Scriptures do not have the properties of persons. They cannot be a “sole authority” for that reason. SS puts every reader in the position to interpret and become their own authority.
JonNC, who is posting on this thread, espouses SS, but he does so with a Catholic attitude. He acknowledges that the Church is responsible for doctrine, and that accurate understandings of what is written is consistent with the Sacred Tradition of the Church (creeds, confessions & councils). This concept is ever so rare, or absent among most of those who espouse this practice.
What did Christ have to finally rest on, from the context of being in the one true religion He set up at the time (Judaism), in combating the leaven? Jesus did not knock their authority but what they had done wrongly with it. Scripture was Hid final norm, within the context of Judaism, not from without. Normative, corrective, defensive, offensive rule was and still is scripture, as it was written, for and within God’s dispensational authority.
I will certainly agree that Jesus used Scripture authoritatively in all these ways, and that it is to continue to be used in this way. But Scripture cannot “rule” in the sense that it can made decisions. For that, He sent them to the Church.
