Rules for debating a sola scriptura Christian

[Mishakel]

Let’s ask the question in the way that philosophers do, when they ask the question “why?”. When we ask the question “why does the Book of Genesis exist in the Bible?”, we can certainly point to God. However, what if the inspired author didn’t respond to the inspiration he was given? In that case, he is a cause of the Bible as we know it!

You’re looking at it way more complicated than I am

You have my complete agreement that it’s a historical fact Catholicism helped shape “the Bible” as far as what was considered canon. You are going one step further by saying the following:

Similarly, the Church – utilizing the authority given to it by Jesus – decided to compile a particular set of books and call it “the Bible”. What if the Church hadn’t done so? Would there be a Bible as we know it? (You could respond “well… ya never know…!!!”, but that’s just another way of saying “no, I can’t say that there would.”)

This is where you are in error.

I’ll finish this point and circle back around. I hate assuming things but I will assume you are in agreement with me that God is incapable of lying correct? God is the one who said his Word would last forever (through the prophets). This brings us to the point of our disagreement and I doubt either of us will move from our position. You claim the Church is responsible and I claim God is responsible.

Yes, but those books weren’t the “OT” or “part of the Bible” at that point – they were merely Jewish scripture. They aren’t part of the Bible because of the esteem that Jews hold for them; they’re part of the Bible because the Church discerned that they are. There are many, many more books of holy write in the Jewish tradition, and they’re not part of the Bible. So… just because they existed in print, it doesn’t mean that the OT existed.

I think you’re delving too deep again. We simply have to answer the question, did Jesus hold the Jews accountable to scripture? It’s really as simple as that. The answer is yes time and time again. You are correct in claiming the Bible as we know it didn’t exist when Jesus was here but the OT scripts did and not only does Jesus hold the Jews accountable to them but he quotes from them time and time again.

This is really the key to everything. Were the Scribes, Sadducees, Pharisees, and other Jewish religious leaders practicing Judaism the way Jesus wanted them to? No. All the Jews knew and studied the same texts. It was their consensus the scriptures were inspired and true. Yet, they hadn’t lived up to their standards and Jesus held them accountable.

The earliest of Christians certainly had the scriptures we see now in the NT. Probably most attribute Athanasius with compiling the 27 book list in 367 but Origen wrote in his Homilies on Joshua the same 27 books in 250. The point is God provided the world at the earliest of times his inspired Word.

So in answer to your question:

Yes, without a doubt, if Catholicism never existed God would have still provided his Word to the world.

 

[goout]

It’s not much different than learning about your grandmother.
You have documentation, like family photos.
You have stories that might be written down.
And you have the people that knew her, and the people who knew them that are alive now.

The stories about your grandmother
1 don’t exist without those people
2 are inseparable from the life of the family

And it’s a good thing that the bible is inseparable from the life of the family (or Church Tradition) because the bible can seem contradictory, inconsistent, confusing, perplexing. The bible can’t possibly stand on it’s own without the Church’s continuous authority to write it, canonize, conserve, translate, interpret, and do theology with it.

And any other view of it has to admit that the Jonestown cult and all the other multitude fringe groups are justified in calling themselves bible believers.

 

[TULIPed]

That way of bifurcating scripture from Tradition is foreign to me.

From the Catholic Catechism:

"This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. "

How is it distinct? You’ve done a great job of explaining how they’re interwoven. The OP can find a distinction - whatever that is - and use it to begin a discussion, and then use scripture to amplify your position.

I am a “Sola Scriptura” Christian (really I’m a “I love Jesus because he saved my life” Christian - but for the sake of this discussion, I’ll label myself). Thus, I am an example of the object of the OP. I’m just trying to give you the playbook here…

 

[goout]

goout:

That way of bifurcating scripture from Tradition is foreign to me.

From the Catholic Catechism:

"This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. "

How is it distinct? You’ve done a great job of explaining how they’re interwoven. The OP can find a distinction - whatever that is - and use it to begin a discussion, and then use scripture to amplify your position.

I am a “Sola Scriptura” Christian (really I’m a “I love Jesus because he saved my life” Christian - but for the sake of this discussion, I’ll label myself). Thus, I am an example of the object of the OP. I’m just trying to give you the playbook here…

In addition to them being distinct, they are unified in God’s revelation of him self.

The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously "by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other"4 and shed light on each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

And your quote in context (also a Catholic thing!)

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE

One common source. . .

[80] "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal."40 Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age”.41

. . . two distinct modes of transmission

[81] " Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42

"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."43

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."44

Apostolic Tradition and ecclesial traditions

[83] The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus’ teaching and example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. The first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition.

 

[goout]

goout:

That way of bifurcating scripture from Tradition is foreign to me.

From the Catholic Catechism:

"This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. "

How is it distinct? You’ve done a great job of explaining how they’re interwoven. The OP can find a distinction - whatever that is - and use it to begin a discussion, and then use scripture to amplify your position.

They are distinct, perhaps in the way a man and a woman are distinct.
Can a thing be distinct, or unique…
and at the same time unified?

 

[TULIPed]

All very interesting. And how do you use this to “debate a sola scriptura Christian”? That’s all I brought it up for.

 

[goout]

All very interesting. And how do you use this to “debate a sola scriptura Christian”? That’s all I brought it up for.

It’s difficult to answer such a broad question. Are we debating a specific theological topic like purgatory, or we debating the validity of “sola Scriptura”.
I think sola scriptura fails on common sense grounds.

Rules for debating a sola scriptura Christian Sacred Scripture

Common sense goes a long way. The bible was written and compiled by human beings in human words, correct? Before you had a bible you had people. Who were they, how were they connected, how did they cooperate with one another? If you run into folks who refuse to explore this you are working uphill.

 

[TULIPed]

That’s not the point of the thread I don’t think. The point is - how do you get someone (like me!) in a productive discussion ABOUT Sacred Tradition and Sola Scriptura? I would argue that to do this, you need to start out with explaining what Tradition is, and how - no matter how little - it is distinct from scripture. AND THEN, link it with scripture. This would be illuminating I think to many Protestants (LIKE ME).

Perhaps you are a former Protestant, in which case, I’m interested to hear how you would debate these things prior to becoming Catholic. If you aren’t a former Protestant, then I would say that perhaps, I have a leg up on what would work with a Protestant, no?

 

[goout]

That’s not the point of the thread I don’t think. The point is - how do you get someone (like me!) in a productive discussion ABOUT Sacred Tradition and Sola Scriptura? I would argue that to do this, you need to start out with explaining what Tradition is, and how - no matter how little - it is distinct from scripture. AND THEN, link it with scripture. This would be illuminating I think to many Protestants (LIKE ME).

Perhaps you are a former Protestant, in which case, I’m interested to hear how you would debate these things prior to becoming Catholic. If you aren’t a former Protestant, then I would say that perhaps, I have a leg up on what would work with a Protestant, no?

As I said earlier, the protestants that I’ve talked with about this are threatened by the idea that the bible doesn’t stand on it’s own without human interaction. Doesn’t mean all. I am not a theology prof so I am relating to rank and file protestants.
The authority of human beings scares them and the discussion is a no-go. If you make that common sense argument above the subject gets changed real quick.

I’m probably the same way. None of us likes to have devout beliefs challenged. It knocks our day off course.

 

[TULIPed]

The authority of human beings scares them and the discussion is a no-go.

I’m curious about something - I’m straying a bit off the OP’s original thread, so forgive me. If I wrote something like this about Catholics:

“The authority of scripture scares Catholics, and the discussion is a no-go.”

In fact - stretch it a little:

“The ______________ scares Catholics, and the discussion is a no-go.”

How would that set with you? What does it make Catholics - all Catholics - sound like?

 

[poche]

A good rule would be to use their own rules.

 

[Gorgias]

TULIPed:

For example - take the concept of Purgatory. Would that be more and example of Sacred Tradition or Sacred Scripture?

I’ve had this discussion with several,“Sola Scriptura,” proponents. This is a valid distinction.

St Paul prayed for the repose of the soul of his friend Onesiphorus. Where did he get that idea from?

This is where you are in error.

In my experience, that’s the usual response from adherents to sola scriptura.

You claim the Church is responsible and I claim God is responsible.

On the face of it, I think I would have to ask whether God forced the Church to create the Bible…

not only does Jesus hold the Jews accountable to them but he quotes from them time and time again.

All of the books of the OT that are in the Bible? If, as you say, Jesus only quoted from 24 of them, how do you know that the other 15 that you consider canonical are, in fact, so? (Let’s take it a bit further: how do you know that the parts of the 24 that Jesus doesn’t quote in the NT actually belong with those books?)

The point is God provided the world at the earliest of times his inspired Word.

No He didn’t! You’ve shifted over to the NT now. The NT didn’t exist in the first 30-40 years of the life of the Church! What God ‘provided’ was the oral teaching of Jesus, which was then passed on by the apostles (based on Jesus’ command to them, which had nothing to do with written Scripture)!

Yes, without a doubt, if Catholicism never existed God would have still provided his Word to the world.

Yep. That’s the usual answer. How do you argue that it’s true, though? It makes for a nice statement, and it speaks to a deep, abiding faith in God, but how do you come to that counterfactual? (And besides, haven’t you just moved the goalposts? You only claim that “God would have still provided his Word”, not “God would have caused the Bible to exist”, which is what we’re talking about! After all, Catholics would agree with you that God provided his Word – Jesus! – to the world, and the world was learning His Word through the Church and its Apostles!)

 

[Gorgias]

I would argue that to do this, you need to start out with explaining what Tradition is, and how - no matter how little - it is distinct from scripture. AND THEN, link it with scripture. This would be illuminating I think to many Protestants (LIKE ME).

Let’s go back to the teaching of the Church, then. In the catechism, right around where ya’ll have been discussing:

In keeping with the Lord’s command, the Gospel was handed on in two ways:

• orally “by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received - whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit”;
• in writing “by those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to writing”.

And further:

“In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them their own position of teaching authority.” Indeed, “the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.”

This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through Tradition, “the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.”

In the Gospel of John, we read, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” Does Jesus command the apostles to teach only the subset of His teachings that appear in the Gospels, then? No – he commands them to “teach [the world] to observe all that I have commanded you.”

So: Sacred Tradition is the teaching of the apostles (who were commanded to teach all Jesus had taught them) and of the successors of the apostles (who were given the authority to do so by Christ himself, and the passing on of this proxy fits within that grant of authority). It is distinct from Sacred Scripture, since Scripture itself identifies that it does not contain all that Jesus did.

So, the link is… Sacred Tradition : Sacred Scripture :: superset : subset

 

[Sundiver]

I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”

I’m going to add this to my notes. This is a good perspective.

 

[TULIPed]

This is a good example of one way to discuss Tradition and Scripture with a Protestant. Using your Catechism in tandem with scripture to make the point.

If nothing else, you always get our attention when you use scripture. We may disagree with your interpretation, but at least we’re talking about it.

 

[goout]

goout:

The authority of human beings scares them and the discussion is a no-go.

I’m curious about something - I’m straying a bit off the OP’s original thread, so forgive me. If I wrote something like this about Catholics:

“The authority of scripture scares Catholics, and the discussion is a no-go.”

In fact - stretch it a little:

“The ______________ scares Catholics, and the discussion is a no-go.”

How would that set with you? What does it make Catholics - all Catholics - sound like?

I was answering your question directly. And if you read the answer I didn’t in any way typecast all protestants as you seem to have read it.
I am speaking about the actual encounters I have with those people…friends most of them. I have three very close friends who are protestant pastors. Two of them are somewhat in line with CC thinking. My closest friend in the world is a UCC pastor his theology is as off the edge left as a Christian can be. And he’s loves people.

If you told me that many Catholics are fearful of submitting to the authority of the Church’s magisterium, I’d say “good observation”.

Things that threaten entrenched viewpoints unsettle people. Me included. Especially when you start talking about one’s interface with their faith.

That’s my experience with the protestants that I know. Talking about personal authority beyond the authority of the word, as written, scares them. It challenges a fundamental assumption about revelation.

So, my UCC friend will use the bible to support generous social justice initiatives that have heavy (Democratic) political influences. He will use the same bible to say “nowhere in the scriptures is abortion condemned”.
If you make an appeal to any kind of authoritative theology or Tradition, he resorts to his interpretation of the bible.
If you reference Church fathers or anything like Theology of the Body, no go.
“Christ is still speaking…” the UCC says. But apparently he only started speaking in the last 80 years?
Anyway…going beyond his use of the bible shatters his contradictory theology.

 

[goout]

That’s not the point of the thread I don’t think. The point is - how do you get someone (like me!) in a productive discussion ABOUT Sacred Tradition and Sola Scriptura? I would argue that to do this, you need to start out with explaining what Tradition is, and how - no matter how little - it is distinct from scripture. AND THEN, link it with scripture. This would be illuminating I think to many Protestants (LIKE ME).

Perhaps you are a former Protestant, in which case, I’m interested to hear how you would debate these things prior to becoming Catholic. If you aren’t a former Protestant, then I would say that perhaps, I have a leg up on what would work with a Protestant, no?

I hope you see that you asked me this question, and I responded with my practical experience in speaking about these issues with the people that I know.
The discussion of Tradition and Scripture you are asking about is simply a non starter, in my experience. It is seen as an attempt to desacralize scripture.

And honestly, I’d rather keep the Christian friendships than push an uncomfortable issue.

 

[EndTimes]

I’m debating with another ,“sola scriptura Christian.” They keep moving the goal post

The New Testament clearly evidences people who were Saved via Faith -
before the New Testament or even any Written Form of the Gospel - existed~

A Chronology

Jesus’ Actual Teachings and Miracles Performed
Apostolic Oral Accounts beginning Post Pentacost
Separate Written Accounts occurring until the end of the 1st Century AD
NT Canon - circa 400 AD

Keep in mind that any individual ‘books’ of the NT were Scribed…

Printed Bibles? Post-Gutenberg… ’

German Gutenberg’s first Bible? circa 1455 A.D.

First Bible in English? Tyndale circa 1526 A.D.

POINT … From Post-Fall Times onward,
Some People were saved Before and Without the Bible as we know it today…

ERGO - Sola Scriptura can not be so.

That Said? Yes… The Bible is Sacred…

)_

 

[nafatyuk]

All of the books of the OT that are in the Bible? If, as you say, Jesus only quoted from 24 of them, how do you know that the other 15 that you consider canonical are, in fact, so? (Let’s take it a bit further: how do you know that the parts of the 24 that Jesus doesn’t quote in the NT actually belong with those books?)

Additionally, I seem to remember that Jesus quotes from the book of Enoch, which isn’t in the canon. The question for people utilizing this line of argument would then be why isn’t Enoch included.

 

[EndTimes]

Additionally, I seem to remember that Jesus quotes from the book of Enoc, which isn’t in the canon. The question for people utilizing this line of argument would then be why isn’t Enoch included.

Tell them that the Bible says that not everything Jesus ever said - is recorded…

It’s far more important to get to know Jesus’ Mind and Teachings.