Question for all protestants

[pocohombre]

Just remember poco that the apostles left us two things. The oral teachings and practices they shared every day.

And the writings they wrote. (The scriptures)

It is these two hand in hand that allows for understanding of Christian truth. It is both of these that the church cares for.

Imagine this.

You go to church on Sunday, and Jesus is there in glory. He tells you and the whole church to offers special prayer every year for the salvation of all and then demonstrates how this should be done.

Your church faithfully does it year after year.

As time goes on and the memory fades, the pastors start writing down some details.

Maybe they write the words Jesus spoke and the date of the year it should be done. Maybe a couple of other clarifying things. But the things without dispute that everyone knows maybe they felt no need to write down.

Likewise with the ancient church.

The scriptures were written, but it is naive to think that the oral and traditional teachings were not kept with equal care.

Yes, both need equal care. But when you place your church above scripture it may show you do not want that kind of care anymore ,that balanced care, that you can only get when scripture rules, and when hold ourselves to be fallible(corporately).

 

[Isaiah45_9]

Jose,
Do we agree that Matthew 3:16-17 is scripture? And did the early council have access to it?
To say that the Church had nothing to do with the Doctrine of the Trinity is obviously false. To say that they did not find it in scripture, ISTM, is highly unlikely.

Jon

Jon,

dronald, first needs to validate what he is using to support his argument - Scripture.

The Church knows what is Scripture because it was revealed to Her. The question is, How does dronald know?

 

[Jon_S_1]

Yes, both need equal care. But when you place your church above scripture it may show you do not want that kind of care anymore ,that balanced care, that you can only get when scripture rules, and when hold ourselves to be fallible(corporately).

So in my example the scripture would be the instructions written down of what Jesus said and some details.

Take it further.

50 years later the head pastor and elders are all dead. And a knew pastor comes in. Reading the writings left he interprets it differently and changes much about the festival discounting the oral traditions of the community.

Would the community be justified to be upset about this?

Are the ‘scriptures’ really “ruling”?

 

[pocohombre]

pocohombre;11385576:

Just remember poco that the apostles left us two things. The oral teachings and practices they shared every day.
And the writings they wrote. (The scriptures)
It is these two hand in hand that allows for understanding of Christian truth. It is both of these that the church cares for.
Imagine this.
You go to church on Sunday, and Jesus is there in glory. He tells you and the whole church to offers special prayer every year for the salvation of all and then demonstrates how this should be done.
Your church faithfully does it year after year.
As time goes on and the memory fades, the pastors start writing down some details.
Maybe they write the words Jesus spoke and the date of the year it should be done. Maybe a couple of other clarifying things. But the things without dispute that everyone knows maybe they felt no need to write down.
Likewise with the ancient church.
The scriptures were written, but it is naive to think that the oral and traditional teachings were not kept with equal care.

Again, this is all possible but it is also Pandoras box, for surely much then can be justified, based on “heresay”. Jesus had to constantly correct “heresay” - "you have heard it said…But he also had to correct scriptural misinterpretations, that developed into practices/tradition. So we have enough problems when we get something in writing, but when you allow things not in writing, that is real trouble. Any lawyer knows that, even God. Give it in writing. It can’t be that important if it is left out. The apostles were privy to the long lasting beauty and usefulness of “scriptures”, from OT scriptures. They also knew that without the Holy Spirit, nothing happens, whether you go to the well of tradition, or the well of scripture.

 

[Jon_S_1]

Jon S;11385608:

Again, this is all possible but it is also Pandoras box, for surely much then can be justified, based on “heresay”. Jesus had to constantly correct “heresay” - "you have heard it said…But he also had to correct scriptural misinterpretations, that developed into practices/tradition. So we have enough problems when we get something in writing, but when you allow things not in writing, that is real trouble. Any lawyer knows that, even God. Give it in writing. It can’t be that important if it is left out. The apostles were privy to the long lasting beauty and usefulness of “scriptures”, from OT scriptures. They also knew that without the Holy Spirit, nothing happens, whether you go to the well of tradition, or the well of scripture.

You forget that Jesus promised God’s spirit would teach and direct the one church. That spirit guards the oral traditions and protects. Them.

If you don’t believe that, I’m not sure how you can believe the New Testament that was collected under this spirit based on purely tradition, nor do I understand how you can accept that Jesus did not really send the Holy Spirit to guard the church.

 

[PRmerger]

So the Trinity can’t be found in Scripture, correct?

If one reads the Bible, from cover to cover, without any preconceived ideas, as some have been claiming they have done…they will never come up with a trinitarian concept of God.

That’s why it’s so dangerous to read the Bible apart from the lens of the Church which gave them this Bible.

Watch this video of this very sincere, earnest young woman who states that she read the Bible and could not honestly remain a trinitarian.

wn.com/non_trinitarian_churches

 

[dronald]

If one reads the Bible, from cover to cover, without any preconceived ideas, as some have been claiming they have done…they will never come up with a trinitarian concept of God.

That’s why it’s so dangerous to read the Bible apart from the lens of the Church which gave them this Bible.

Watch this video of this very sincere, earnest young woman who states that she read the Bible and could not honestly remain a trinitarian.

wn.com/non_trinitarian_churches

So if the Word was with God (meaning not just God but with God) and the Word was God (so fully God and with God at the same time) and the Word became Flesh… and we baptize the Word with the Father and the Holy Spirit…

Throw me a bone here?

 

[adf417]

So if the Word was with God (meaning not just God but with God) and the Word was God (so fully God and with God at the same time) and the Word became Flesh… and we baptize the Word with the Father and the Holy Spirit…

Throw me a bone here?

Hey dronald, understand it or not, people are leaving the Trinitarian faith everyday because they can’t see it in scripture and therefore no longer believe it. This is a fact that you can’t dispute.

Peace!!!

 

[dronald]

Hey dronald, understand it or not, people are leaving the Trinitarian faith everyday because they can’t see it in scripture and therefore no longer believe it. This is a fact that you can’t dispute.

Peace!!!

Do you have an actual statistic to back up your claim that people are leaving Christianity due to them not seeing the Trinity Scripture?

If anything, I thought Trinitarian Churches were growing and most of the decline in Christianity is due to Churches being too liberal.

 

[adf417]

Do you have an actual statistic to back up your claim that people are leaving Christianity due to them not seeing the Trinity Scripture?

If anything, I thought Trinitarian Churches were growing and most of the decline in Christianity is due to Churches being too liberal.

No I don’t dronald but the whole of my once Christian family is very quick to point this out deriving from the more broad reaching propaganda net of…

The very features that Christendom lacks abound among Jehovah’s Witnesses! Theirs is a living faith, a genuine faith, and a faith that is based on Bible truth that they feel impelled to share with all who will listen.—1 Timothy 2:3, 4.

wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2001244?q=growing+religions&p=par

Peace!!!

 

[Jon_S_1]

Do you have an actual statistic to back up your claim that people are leaving Christianity due to them not seeing the Trinity Scripture?

If anything, I thought Trinitarian Churches were growing and most of the decline in Christianity is due to Churches being too liberal.

I think you will find this paper from Stanford very interesting. I think we could say it is a relatively neutral source on the issue.

Early Christianity was theologically diverse, although as time went on a “catholic” movement, a bishop-led, developing organization which, at least from the late second century, claimed to be the true successors of Jesus’ apostles, became increasingly dominant, out-competing many gnostic and quasi-Jewish groups. Still, confining our attention to what scholars now call this “catholic” or “proto-orthodox” Christianity, it contained divergent views about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No theologian in the first three Christian centuries was a trinitarian in the sense of a believing that the one God is tripersonal, containing equally divine “persons”, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The terms we translate as “Trinity” (Latin: trinitas, Greek: trias) seem to have come into use only in the last two decades of the second century; but such usage doesn’t reflect trinitarian belief. These late second and third century authors use such terms not to refer to the one God, but rather to refer to the plurality of the one God, together with his Son (on Word) and his Spirit. They profess a “trinity”, triad or threesome, but not a triune or tripersonal God. Nor did they consider these to be equally divine. A common strategy for defending monotheism in this period is to emphasize the unique divinity of the Father.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html

It gives a lot of insight of how long this doctrine took to develop and how various church fathers and early Christians grasped to try to understand who Jesus was and who the Holy Spirit was.

As for a statistic on people leaving Trinitarianism for Non-Trinitarianism.

Year 1500- Virtually no Non-Trinitarian “Christians”
Year 2013- Millions of Non Trinitarian “Christians” in many denominations.

 

[EvangelCatholic]

I think you will find this paper from Stanford very interesting. I think we could say it is a relatively neutral source on the issue.

It gives a lot of insight of how long this doctrine took to develop and how various church fathers and early Christians grasped to try to understand who Jesus was and who the Holy Spirit was.

As for a statistic on people leaving Trinitarianism for Non-Trinitarianism.

Year 1500- Virtually no Non-Trinitarian “Christians”
Year 2013- Millions of Non Trinitarian “Christians” in many denominations.

The section of the document traces the root of all Christians to a “catholic” movement

Early Christianity was theologically diverse, although as time went on a “catholic” movement, a bishop-led, developing organization which, at least from the late second century, claimed to be the true successors of Jesus’ apostles, became increasingly dominant, out-competing many gnostic and quasi-Jewish groups. Still, confining our attention to what scholars now call this “catholic” or “proto-orthodox” Christianity

 

[PRmerger]

So if the Word was with God (meaning not just God but with God) and the Word was God (so fully God and with God at the same time) and the Word became Flesh… and we baptize the Word with the Father and the Holy Spirit…

Throw me a bone here?

There are about a million answers to this–each one, of course, based on one’s personal interpretation of the verse.

Something, of course, which comes from the Prot Reformer’s mantra of “Magisterium? We don’t need no stinkin’ magisterium to tell us what the Bible says!”

So some of the bones that I can throw you, based on my conversations with non-trinitarian Bible readers are:

-Jesus is a manifestation of God, but not actually God
-this is a mistranslation
-Jesus is God but that doesn’t make him a separate person from God
-it’s the same God as Yahweh or Elohim, just going by a different name: Jesus
-the writer of John was a human being who embellished the stories he heard about Jesus
-it just is too weird to wrap your mind around–3 persons/1 God, therefore it just can’t be true



I guess that is the fruit that has been wrought be the belief that one can read the Bible without the guidance of the Church.

 

[dronald]

There are about a million answers to this–each one, of course, based on one’s personal interpretation of the verse.

Something, of course, which comes from the Prot Reformer’s mantra of “Magisterium? We don’t need no stinkin’ magisterium to tell us what the Bible says!”

So some of the bones that I can throw you, based on my conversations with non-trinitarian Bible readers are:

-Jesus is a manifestation of God, but not actually God
-this is a mistranslation
-Jesus is God but that doesn’t make him a separate person from God
-it’s the same God as Yahweh or Elohim, just going by a different name: Jesus
-the writer of John was a human being who embellished the stories he heard about Jesus
-it just is too weird to wrap your mind around–3 persons/1 God, therefore it just can’t be true



I guess that is the fruit that has been wrought be the belief that one can read the Bible without the guidance of the Church.

You see though, all this does is prove my point.

You’re saying that private interpretation can lead to many beliefs based on John 1, therefore if a Church comes to the same interpretation as the Catholic Church one cannot simply give the CC full credit.

The Catholic interpretation IS the correct one, as is my Church’s. We reach the same conclusion with what’s availible.

 

[PRmerger]

You see though, all this does is prove my point.

I’m not sure what your point is.

You’re saying that private interpretation can lead to many beliefs based on John 1, therefore if a Church comes to the same interpretation as the Catholic Church one cannot simply give the CC full credit.

The bolded is correct.

The “therefore” part, though, is not my conclusion.

Are you saying that a church is free to come to any conclusion it deems biblical, or that it is important that the conclusion a church reaches is consonant with the Truth, as proclaimed by the CC?

I am confused about what your point is here as well.

The Catholic interpretation IS the correct one, as is my Church’s. We reach the same conclusion with what’s availible.

Except that your church reached it not through the Bible Alone, but through deferring to the authority of Sacred Tradition, dronald.

 

[dronald]

I’m not sure what your point is.

The bolded is correct.

The “therefore” part, though, is not my conclusion.

Are you saying that a church is free to come to any conclusion it deems biblical, or that it is important that the conclusion a church reaches is consonant with the Truth, as proclaimed by the CC?

I am confused about what your point is here as well.

Except that your church reached it not through the Bible Alone, but through deferring to the authority of Sacred Tradition, dronald.

My point is that not every Church that comes to the same conclusion as the Catholic Church only did because of the CC.

You’ve proved that point by explaining how many different conclusions one can reach by private interpretation. The Trinity is one of them.

 

[PRmerger]

My point is that not every Church that comes to the same conclusion as the Catholic Church only did because of the CC.

You’ve proved that point by explaining how many different conclusions one can reach by private interpretation. The Trinity is one of them.

I think what I have proved is that if you read the Scriptures without the lens of the Church/Tradition, then you come to all sorts of erroneous conclusions.

When you come to the correct conclusion, such as your pastor’s belief in the Trinity, it is ONLY because he has read the Scriptures through the lens of the Church.

That’s why the Protestant model is so diabolical. It permits such diverse and erroneous (and often bizarre) interpretations.

If you follow the Protestant model, you have to say, “Well, you’ve done exactly what the reformers said, and I cannot tell you that your view is wrong.”

If you follow the Catholic model you can say, “Your interpretation is incorrect, Bible Reader.”

 

[adf417]

My point is that not every Church that comes to the same conclusion as the Catholic Church only did because of the CC.

You’ve proved that point by explaining how many different conclusions one can reach by private interpretation. The Trinity is one of them.

dronald once a discovery is made known to man the discovery period is over and enlightenment of that discovery may begin.

Here…
washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/14/christopher-columbus-3-things-you-think-he-did-that-he-didnt/
is the example of how Columbus **did not **discover the earth was round but he did add to our understanding of its size and much more.

Peace!!!

 

[jmcrae]

My point is that not every Church that comes to the same conclusion as the Catholic Church only did because of the CC.

Every Church in existence today started out with the teachings of the Catholic Church. None of them ever “arrived at them” independently - they simply retained them.

How they came to be separated from the Catholic Church was by rejecting various teachings of the Church, and arriving at different conclusions than the Church by means of private interpretation of the Scriptures.

You’ve proved that point by explaining how many different conclusions one can reach by private interpretation. The Trinity is one of them.

Those churches that continue to believe in the Trinity today do so because it is one of the teachings that they didn’t reject when they departed from the Catholic Church.

 

[dronald]

So, my discovery that Earth is round is only because of those who knew it before I?

I can’t just take evidence I have and make that conclusion without giving credit to the first person who claimed such a thing?