PROTESTANTS! Answer me this....

[Syele]

The point is this: There is no definitive comprehensive explanation of Sola Scriptura that can be adopted by the entirety of the Protestants.

Yes, but that point is missing the mark. “Protestant” is a very broad term, you cannot find much of anythingthat can be adopted by all protestants, Except some extremely basic things, like the Trinity. But those things are the definition of “Protestant” as opposed to “Non-Christian.”

If you want to argue Unity to protestants, I hardly think Sola Scriptura is a good choice as a jumping off point. You can’t even verify wich definition you want to argue.

So is the idea to try and convert protestants? To argue unity (I can think of better approaches than this and I’m not Catholic)? To just say “HAHA Catholics are better”? I guess I don’t see the point of the thread here.

 

[MrS]

Oh, I get it…

The Eunich really told Philip " How would I know, unless I rely on the Holy Spirit to guide just me in a different direction than He guides others who read the same inspired Word? So, Philip… keep walking."

 

[MrS]

If you want to argue Unity to protestants, I hardly think Sola Scriptura is a good choice as a jumping off point. You can’t even verify wich definition you want to argue.

.

They are unified on one thing… they all think the only Church founded by Christ is wrong.

 

[julebenn]

And what is the Holy Spirt saying to you when you read His inspired word given only to the Catholic Church… where He warns you of your self-interpretation.??

God did not give a body of truth, different and apart from teaching of the Bible, which was carried intact through the centuries in an oral, unwritten form?

can I add new revelations? From the prophet Malachi to John the baptist, God did not give them new revelations. The Jews were responsible to obey the Word of God preserved in the Holy Scriptures, and nothing else.

Jesus did not expect expect the Jews to believe some extra-scriptural doctrine which was supposedly transmitted from the prophets of old by word of mouth. Jesus used the
**Scriptures **It is written’ - but He never appealed to tradition as if it carried equal authority.

He rebuked the Jews for adding traditions which in effect undermined the plain teaching of the Scriptures: Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition’ (please read Mark 7).

Whygo beyond what is written;he Bible is the Word of God, there is nothing of equal authority.Christ rejected tradition as an additional channel of revelation. (a demonstration of divine will) Jesus showed that the religious teachers were fallible - and how! Christ had absolute confidence in the Scriptures as the Word of God.

 

[julebenn]

They are unified on one thing… they all think the only Church founded by Christ is wrong.

Hmmm, We read about churches like Corinthian and the Galatian churches from the new Testament that had made mistakes and abd errors.

St. James humbly admits that even he, who was one of the greatest teachers in the early church, was liable to make many mistakes. We can also mention the apostle Peter who led others astray by his inconsistent behaviour (Galatians 2:11-21). The mission of the church is to faithfully uphold, defend and proclaim the teaching of the Bible.

If I assume that “the church” refers to the Roman Catholic bishops and not to all Christians, then “the truth” is whatever the Roman magisterium teaches. But if I assume that “the truth” is the Gods message written infallibly in the Scriptures, then you can check out whether the Roman magisterium is faithfully teaching God’s message.

For me believe and do whatever the magisterium says is not the leading of the Holy Spirit and private interpretations of the Scriptures. The apostles did not say believe and obey what we’re teaching because we are apostles.

That did not say we should Believe and obey what there teaching because they are apostles. why is it that ordinary Christians cannot rightly interpret the Bible. Christian pastors exercise teaching authority while admitting that they too are liable to make mistakes. They encourage ordinary Christians to test all things, including their teaching, and to study the Scriptures for themselves.

No way I can put my trust on the authority of the Vatican leaders because Rometeaches so and so.I believe because the Bible say so.

 

[jmcrae]

Hmmm, We read about churches like Corinthian and the Galatian churches from the new Testament that had made mistakes and abd errors.

St. James humbly admits that even he, who was one of the greatest teachers in the early church, was liable to make many mistakes. We can also mention the apostle Peter who led others astray by his inconsistent behaviour (Galatians 2:11-21). The mission of the church is to faithfully uphold, defend and proclaim the teaching of the Bible.

No - the mission of the Chruch is to faithfully uphold, defend, and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church created the Bible for the purpose of making this job easier. But they didn’t intend to replace the Gospel with the Bible.

Not everything in the Gospel (message of good news about Jesus) is found in the Bible. Some things remain in the form of oral tradition - that is, rituals, creedal formulae, and memorized prayers that come down to us from the time of the Apostles, or which were put together by the same Church that put the Bible together, to make the teachings of the Apostles easier to remember.

 

[julebenn]

No - the mission of the Chruch is to faithfully uphold, defend, and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church created the Bible for the purpose of making this job easier. But they didn’t intend to replace the Gospel with the Bible.

The **BIBLE **is inspired by GOD. The church did not create the BIble, but rather the Bible was given to the church.

The First Vatican Council declared: The books the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.

The Scriptures are the rule of faith because they are the Word of God and not because they were approved by the authority of the church.

How come Roman magisterium exalts itself to the highest? None can challenge their teaching by appealing to the Bible, since they claim that only the magisterium can interpret the Scriptures correctly, and magisterium can always go back ‘Sacred Tradition’ NO one knows contents of this Tradition apart from the teaching of the magisterium.

 

[ALLFORHIM]

Great job keeping up with the bombardment!

the natural next question is how do they come to such conclusions with the same conviction that you come to your conclusions with? they believe the same holy spirit guided them to all truth with the same scriptures as you but have different beliefs. the holy spirit can not speak out of both sides of its mouth.

jesus said to peter: “feed my sheep” and “tend my flock”

We are the sheep. sheep are not shepards. Peter and the apostles were the shepards and they feed us. We are sheep. it was so in the beginning and it is so now.

Hi,

Thanks I must be having help from the Holy Spirit because I surpringly dont feel overwhelmed.

I would suggest they do not have the Holy Spirit. I will even go further and say if God called a JW or Mormon to salvation He would also pull them out of those churches.

Ministers who are filled with the Holy Spirit are the shepards. Your right Im just a sheep. Peter and the Apostles cannot feed us anymore as they are in heaven. It is Jesus Christ that is feeding us. Actually it has been Christ feeding us all along.

 

[DARichards]

I PETER 1:20:

***20
Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, ***

I TIMOTHY 3:15

15
But if I should be delayed, you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.

Notice that he didn’t state that the Scriptures are the pillar and foundation of truth…

 

[BBoy]

Hi,
NOOO Of course Im not the final authority God is and He gave us His Word:thumbsup: I trust the bible to be the truth and that I have the Holy Spirit as God told me/us we would get if we believe in His Son. Therefore I trust that the Holy Spirit guides me into all truth.

How can all private Biblical interpretation be led by the Spirit if Protestants can’t agree on whether it is biblical to baptize infants?

 

[ALLFORHIM]

Not everything in the Gospel (message of good news about Jesus) is found in the Bible. Some things remain in the form of oral tradition - that is, rituals, creedal formulae, and memorized prayers that come down to us from the time of the Apostles, or which were put together by the same Church that put the Bible together, to make the teachings of the Apostles easier to remember.

Are these Oral-Sacred Traditions written down some where that I could read ? Did the CC actually write them down somewhere so they could remember them? Can the CC prove these oral traditions exactly back to Christ. Notice I didnt say the apostles. Because quite frankly unless it came from Christ it is not true or necessary to follow. If their is official Vatican proof could you give me a link as to where I could find it?

Thank you

 

[ALLFORHIM]

How can all private Biblical interpretation be led by the Spirit if Protestants can’t agree on whether it is biblical to baptize infants?

Hi,
I think the problem here is we group people together too much. I personally follow the bible as does my church. In the bible there is no evidence of babies being baptized. There is mcuh evidence that a person has to believe and then be baptized. Babies just cant do this yet. It is up to the parents to train them and then hopefully when they understand they will believe and be baptized.

Not all protestants are necessarily teaching the right stuff either. It doesnt mean they are teaching all wrong doctrine. I dont feel the CC teaches all wrong stuff either.

You know this is an argument that could and will go on forever until Christ comes back.

I should add that the Holy Spirit is only in people who are believers in Christ and have accepted Him as their Savior. The Holy Spirit is not in everyone who goes to church or read the bible. Obviously we do not know who has the Spirit in them. However we should be able to tell by their fruit(Galations 5:22)
Many people have a head knowledge of Jesus and biblical truths but if they dont have a heart knoledge then they do not have the Holy Spirit in them.

 

[jmcrae]

Are these Oral-Sacred Traditions written down some where that I could read ? Did the CC actually write them down somewhere so they could remember them? Can the CC prove these oral traditions exactly back to Christ. Notice I didnt say the apostles. Because quite frankly unless it came from Christ it is not true or necessary to follow. If their is official Vatican proof could you give me a link as to where I could find it?

Thank you

The reason it’s called “oral” is because it’s not the sort of thing you can write down. For example, the Mass is part of the oral tradition that comes down to us from the Apostles.

It’s not possible to write down much more than an outline of the Mass - you have to go and participate in it, in order to experience it. But we know from Scripture and from the writings of the Early Fathers that their Mass and ours are the same thing - after having experienced it, you can read the description of the Mass in Justin Martyr’s First Apology (153 AD) and recognize it as something familiar - even though it would not be possible to reproduce a Mass sight unseen from what he wrote - he skims over a lot of the details, but those he includes are things that we still do at Mass today. Justin Martyr’s writings are consistent with other writings about the Mass of that era, as well - and when reading St. Paul’s description of the Mass at Corinth, again, there is that sense of deja vu - again, not a lot of details, but such as there are conform to what we experience at Mass.

That’s just one example.

 

[julebenn]

I PETER 1:20:

***20
Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, ***

What you really want to say is this: Read the Bible as much as you like, as long as you don’t question any doctrine taught by the Roman Catholic magisterium.

Why are you not bothered by the fact that, dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, auricular confession, purgatory and the veneration of statues are absent from the pages of the Bible. why oral Tradition?
you have no way to verify whether a particular doctrine is really based on the Word of God or not.

Please note this verse you quote above means no prophecy of Scripture came into being’ by any private interpretation. The apostle Peter is here speaking about the process by which the Scriptures came into being, namely, their origin, and not about the understanding of Scripture already given.

It is the reader he has in mind Peter is speaking about the origin of Scripture, it seems likely that he is talking about the prophets themselves. In other words, Peter is saying that the Scriptures did not originate in the prophets’ own understanding.

If you continue reading prophecy never came by the will of man. The prophets did not invent the scriptures. Rather, they were God’s instruments to write his Word: “…holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

 

[mrs_abbott]

ALLFORHIM:

Are these Oral-Sacred Traditions written down some where that I could read ? Did the CC actually write them down somewhere so they could remember them? Can the CC prove these oral traditions exactly back to Christ. Notice I didnt say the apostles. Because quite frankly unless it came from Christ it is not true or necessary to follow. If their is official Vatican proof could you give me a link as to where I could find it?

Thank you

I am interested in knowing this too, as I am sadly unfamiliar with Catholic Tradition, despite being a Catholic.

 

[ALLFORHIM]

The reason it’s called “oral” is because it’s not the sort of thing you can write down. For example, the Mass is part of the oral tradition that comes down to us from the Apostles.

It’s not possible to write down much more than an outline of the Mass - you have to go and participate in it, in order to experience it. But we know from Scripture and from the writings of the Early Fathers that their Mass and ours are the same thing - after having experienced it, you can read the description of the Mass in Justin Martyr’s First Apology (153 AD) and recognize it as something familiar - even though it would not be possible to reproduce a Mass sight unseen from what he wrote - he skims over a lot of the details, but those he includes are things that we still do at Mass today. Justin Martyr’s writings are consistent with other writings about the Mass of that era, as well - and when reading St. Paul’s description of the Mass at Corinth, again, there is that sense of deja vu - again, not a lot of details, but such as there are conform to what we experience at Mass.

That’s just one example.

Hi,
That was fast. Thanks. That is what I thought and that is why I have a hard time believing in oral tradition because for all we know it could have been tweeked over the past 2000 years. God knew we as humans needed to see things to believe IMHO that is why I think he gave us the bible. He knew we werent going to be eyewitnesses of Jesus so He inspired the bible so we could understand better.

 

[mrs_abbott]

Hi,
That was fast. Thanks. That is what I thought and that is why I have a hard time believing in oral tradition because for all we know it could have been tweeked over the past 2000 years. God knew we as humans needed to see things to believe IMHO that is why I think he gave us the bible. He knew we werent going to be eyewitnesses of Jesus so He inspired the bible so we could understand better.

I think this is one of the aspects of the CC that I’m having a hard time understanding and accepting myself for that very reason that you just listed.

 

[jmcrae]

Hi,
That was fast. Thanks. That is what I thought and that is why I have a hard time believing in oral tradition because for all we know it could have been tweeked over the past 2000 years.

They weren’t playing “telephone.”

The Mass has always been a public event, and any “tweaking” (changing it from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to vernacular languages, changes in the order of service, etc.) have always been totally public and well documented. Special care has always been take by the leaders of the Catholic Church to preserve the essentials, which are the words of Consecration and the actions on the Altar.

God knew we as humans needed to see things to believe IMHO that is why I think he gave us the bible. He knew we werent going to be eyewitnesses of Jesus so He inspired the bible so we could understand better.

Certainly the Bible is important, and it’s there to help us, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. We also need qualified helpers to teach us what it means, which means that we have to know that these teachers are reliable - it can’t just be anybody that comes along with an insight from the “Holy Spirit” - hundreds of cults have come into existence on a “word of the Holy Spirit” where someone “discovered” something in Scripture that nobody had ever seen before (ie: re-interpreted it according to his own liking, such as Joseph Smith and his many wives) - the oral tradition helps us with that.

For example, the reason a Catholic can’t reinterpret the Eucharist to be symbolic is because he reads it in the context of the Mass.

It’s only by first throwing away the Mass that Protestants can then isolate those verses and come up with a symbolic interpretation.

But the Mass came first, and the Bible came later - the purpose of the Bible was to help explain the oral tradition; not to replace it.

 

[jbuck919]

I do have to question the usefulness of beating this dead horse. Modern mainstream protestants and most modern Catholics in most countries coexist (and in practical matters often cooperate) without raising a debate on this level.

As a Catholic, I have no problem with telling a Protestant who asks me why I believe things that cannot be justified in the Bible that it was you, dear, who threw things out, not us who brought them in. As a mainstream (non-proselytizing, non-fundamentalist) Protestant (and I have a long association with such including the very greatest friends), if I were asked why I believe in sola scriptura I would be rather hard pushed for an answer that was not circumlocutory. In other words, I agree that Catholics win this debate.

However, I do question the usefulness, perhaps even the charity, of confrontation on the matter in this day and age. I am convinced that the genius of Vatican II was based on the charism of John XXIII, who, when he met a fellow man of the cloth, saw not an opponent, but a brother. We can spend all the time we want on a site like this in the smug self-satisfaction of being, as we suppose, technically right. But commonality of purpose in the service of the Lord and of each other, as well as the fact that we are, to all intents and purposes and even in a scientific sense, literally brothers and sisters, trumps everything.

However, I am not sure it is a worthwhile

 

[julebenn]

I think this is one of the aspects of the CC that I’m having a hard time understanding and accepting myself for that very reason that you just listed.

Here is the diffrence as Protestant we do not consider tradition doctrine divinely revealed just because it was past down on from generation to the next, there must be a more reliable standard to evaluate and confirm the truthfulness of our beliefs.

We use Scripture to prove teaching… Jesus also challenged the traditions of His day by appealing to Scripture. Roman Catholic “Sacred Tradition” cannot be checked by the Scriptures, because it is considered to be of equal value to the written Word of God.

I value tradition, but it is subordinate to the Bible