fcfahs,
Here’s another… The doctrine that the Son of God is “
eternally begotten of the Father.” You may disagree that this is salvationally-critical, but the Church has insisted otherwise.
You may also disagree that this is not explicit in Scripture, but a Calvinist theologian I know is not the only Protestant theologian who rejects it precisely because it is not explicit in Sacred Scripture. He and the “Bible only” Christians just like him insist that the Divine Father-Son relationship was not eternal, but began only with the Incarnation, thereby rejecting his own denomination’s teachings and the Nicene Creed as “traditions of men.” Unless it can be proved to him by Scripture, he will not believe it.
The point being, what you and I may think is implicit in Scripture and confirmed as such by apostolic tradition is rejected by many who call themselves Christian.
Infant baptism is another example. Anabaptist tradition rejects it, yet Sacred Tradition insists upon its salvational significance.
That the
Eucharist is a transformed Passover meal for Christianity is another example, which insists upon its sacrificial nature and that we really eat the Lamb of God and not bread. St. Cyril of Jerusalem insisted that although it appeared to be bread
it wasn’t.
Another example is illustrated by a protestant sect called the
Christadelphians, who reject that Jesus is Divine. I’d say that’s a major departure from a savlationally-critical dogma. Yet, they understand Scripture as teaching that Jesus was a human God-representative. Holy? Yes. Divine? No. Sacred Tradition clearly demands otherwise. But they, like others, have taken Luther’s “Scripture alone” epistemology to its logical extreme and have rejected that which Christianity has held to be an article of faith from the advent of Christianity.
Another example is
Universalism (Gk “apokatastasis”). The passages of Scripture which insists upon everlasting punishment of the damned derives from a word in Scripture that can also mean “ages upon ages” but not necessarily everlasting. The Bible is
ambiguous as to whether AIONAS of the AIONON means “everlasting” or “ages of the ages.”
If you’ve ever had a debate with a Universalist, they really are taking Luther’s “Scripture alone” epistemology and applying it strictly. They say that they only teach what the Bible teaches. They are correct about one thing: aion does not HAVE to mean forever, but can mean “a long time that terminates.” So, Christ’s reign being
aionas of the aionon can mean only for a long time, not forever, according to their plausible yet false interpretation using ONLY the Bible alone.
Aion is an ambiguous koine Greek word. It can mean a “long time” which ends, or it can mean “everlasting.” The only reason we know that it means everlasting is because of Sacred Tradition. The koine Greek ALONE is too ambiguous to arrive at the correct understanding of Christian teaching.
The word in Greek that
unambiguously means “everlasting” is
ateleutetos. We know from St. Irenaeus’ text “Against Heresies” that what was handed on by Sacred Tradition is that punishment of the damned (and the reign of Christ) is everlasting. Thus, St. Ireaneus makes the gems of Sacred Scripture even brighter with Sacred Tradition, with regard to the everlasting nature of Christ’s reign and hells torment:
“… But on as many as, according to their own choice, depart from God, He inflicts that separation from Himself which they have chosen of their own accord. But separation from God is death, and separation from light is darkness. Separation from God consists in the loss of all the benefits which He has in store. Those, therefore, who cast away by apostasy those forementioned things, being in fact destitute of all good, do experience every kind of punishment. God, however, does not punish them immediately of Himself. But that punishment falls upon them because they are destitute of all that is good. Now, good things are eternal (aionios) and without end (ateleutetos) with God, and therefore the loss of these is also eternal (aionios) and never-ending (ateleutetos).” [St. Irenaeus, *Against Heresies
, Book 5, Chapter 27)
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