Scripture Plus..?

[mackbrislawn]

How do I help some friends and family come to understand that The Church is needed for the interpretation of Scripture? I had a discussion with them and one of their family this weekend and they just went through the bible but when I tried to show them other verses they bounced to others and basically saym “Scripture interprets scripture”… That is totally hard to defend for me because they don’t accept there was any Church after The Apostles all died. That it was basically a “God Inspired” Text that was somehow protected to what we have today. Whew!!! What a leap of “Faith” that is…no pun… What can I add to this conversation? Anybody?

You can ask, how do you even know what scripture is? Because the original scriptures were a scattered collection of writings, on individual scrolls. And they were mixed in with a lot of other early Christian writings. So, how do you know you have the right inspired writings, especially since they were gathered together long after the apostles died, obviously by apostates? How then can you trust a collection of writings put together by false religionists?

You can ask, “Was that the purpose of the original Church, to die after the apostles had gone to all the trouble to establish it? You mean the Church was merely to act as a forum for some apostles to write in, and subsequently go out of existence as a true church? And then for future generations 1500 years later to discover the written residue and from this residue, recreate the true church?”

This question reveals the silliness of the idea that Christ’s Church, which was built upon a Rock, simply disappeared when the apostles died.

You can also ask, to whom does the bible belong? To whom was it written, and for? And by?

Historically, we know that it was written by members of God’s people, the community of the faithful, to and for God’s faithful. In other words, it was not written for outsiders, but for the benefit of those were were already part of God’s community. God’s community, His family, is the proper possessor of His Word. And the proper ones to understand it.

You can see how this is true for both the old and the new testaments.

So, if you are not already part of God’s faithful, His family, Scripture is not written to you; because scripture is not written to everybody. 2nd Peter makes this clear, “the ignorant and unstable twist the writings of Paul to their own destruction, as they do the rest of the scripture.” Outsiders, non-Christians, would be among the ignorant. Peter is therefore telling us that an ingorant non-Christian does not become a Christian by reading a Gideon bible in his motel room. Because in all probability he will misunderstand it, to his destruction.

Of course, even though scripture itself was written by and to Church, God’s people, that doesn’t mean that the message in scripture is not for everybody. God’s message is for everybody, and He commissioned His Church to preach it to all the world, using Scripture as a tool to complete the man of God who spreads the message.

 

[Gracealone]

There is a lot of different posts here about a whole heap of different questions and issues, and because of time I won’t get a chance to address all of people’s points.

A couple of things however, I am continually awestruck by what God is doing through people reading His Word, and I praise God that He DOES work powerfully through it to save unbelievers a’la 2 Tim 3:14-17 , “…holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation…” (NIV), so thanks be to God for the Gideons, I know that God graciously works powerfully through your hard work. I know people who have been saved because they started reading a bible, my mother being one of them (so let’s not limit God & how powerfully He works hey?)

I think that it is wonderful that we have the Bible, that it is even translated into english & that people in this forum today are able to read it and read God’s truth for themselves, thanks God for those who lived & died to make God’s saving Word available for everyday people to understand.

We could quote scripture back and forth about the church/scripture, it is easy to read back incorrect theology into the bible instead of missing the often straightforward meaning which it is actually saying. We need to recognise because of still sinful Christians it is a sinful church this side of heaven, that it doesn’t always get God right, that it will twist the truth (remember things like 2 Peter Galations, Timothy etc) twisting & distortion comes from within the church). We know that even in the early church they were twisting & distorting the truth (hence just about all of Paul’s letters & charges to Timothy). Because of such I think that the Bible is an awesome test to see if we’re holding fast to what Jesus and the first apostles were telling us was God’s truth.

So If a child is making cookies/biscuits and has a pattern/mould/die to cut shapes from the dough, the way to see if their cookie has been tampered with by their sibling is to put the pattern back over the cut shape & see if it still fits. A clothing pattern maker does the same, if they are unsure if they are doing the right thing they stick the pattern back over the garment & see if they’ve strayed from it. The bible is similar that in that to test if what our church is teaching is true or false we can do the same thing by seeing if the teaching fits the original pattern/mould, the Bible which is what we know about Jesus & what he taught & his early churches.
(aka Pauls charge to Timothy “What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching…”)

I praise God that He graciously uses his christian church for his glory, for being his light & workings in the world, christians of many denominations, all sinful but graciously used by him. Thanks be to God for his Holy Spirit, that by Spirit we are being made more like Jesus, where we will one day be completely unified in the truth, without sin as Jesus church in heaven.

 

[JM3]

There is a lot of different posts here about a whole heap of different questions and issues, and because of time I won’t get a chance to address all of people’s points.

A couple of things however, I am continually awestruck by what God is doing through people reading His Word, and I praise God that He DOES work powerfully through it to save unbelievers a’la 2 Tim 3:14-17 , “…holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation…” (NIV), so thanks be to God for the Gideons, I know that God graciously works powerfully through your hard work. I know people who have been saved because they started reading a bible, my mother being one of them (so let’s not limit God & how powerfully He works hey?)

I think that it is wonderful that we have the Bible, that it is even translated into english & that people in this forum today are able to read it and read God’s truth for themselves, thanks God for those who lived & died to make God’s saving Word available for everyday people to understand.

We could quote scripture back and forth about the church/scripture, it is easy to read back incorrect theology into the bible instead of missing the often straightforward meaning which it is actually saying. We need to recognise because of still sinful Christians it is a sinful church this side of heaven, that it doesn’t always get God right, that it will twist the truth (remember things like 2 Peter Galations, Timothy etc) twisting & distortion comes from within the church). We know that even in the early church they were twisting & distorting the truth (hence just about all of Paul’s letters & charges to Timothy). Because of such I think that the Bible is an awesome test to see if we’re holding fast to what Jesus and the first apostles were telling us was God’s truth.

So If a child is making cookies/biscuits and has a pattern/mould/die to cut shapes from the dough, the way to see if their cookie has been tampered with by their sibling is to put the pattern back over the cut shape & see if it still fits. A clothing pattern maker does the same, if they are unsure if they are doing the right thing they stick the pattern back over the garment & see if they’ve strayed from it. The bible is similar that in that to test if what our church is teaching is true or false we can do the same thing by seeing if the teaching fits the original pattern/mould, the Bible which is what we know about Jesus & what he taught & his early churches.
(aka Pauls charge to Timothy “What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching…”)

I praise God that He graciously uses his christian church for his glory, for being his light & workings in the world, christians of many denominations, all sinful but graciously used by him. Thanks be to God for his Holy Spirit, that by Spirit we are being made more like Jesus, where we will one day be completely unified in the truth, without sin as Jesus church in heaven.

This is a clear denial of the Holy Spirit.

St. John Chrysostom wrote:

“And if by grace, it will be said, how came we all not to be saved?
Because you would not. For grace, though it be grace, saves the willing, not those who will not have it, and turn away from it, who persist in fighting against it, and opposing themselves to it.”

 

[NHInsider]

We could quote scripture back and forth about the church/scripture, it is easy to read back incorrect theology into the bible instead of missing the often straightforward meaning which it is actually saying. We need to recognise because of still sinful Christians it is a sinful church this side of heaven, that it doesn’t always get God right, that it will twist the truth (remember things like 2 Peter Galations, Timothy etc) twisting & distortion comes from within the church). We know that even in the early church they were twisting & distorting the truth (hence just about all of Paul’s letters & charges to Timothy). Because of such I think that the Bible is an awesome test to see if we’re holding fast to what Jesus and the first apostles were telling us was God’s truth.

Which is why the Apostolic Church set the canon of Scripture in the late fourth century, so that there would be a fixed collection of apostolic writings for proclamation and edification.

So If a child is making cookies/biscuits and has a pattern/mould/die to cut shapes from the dough, the way to see if their cookie has been tampered with by their sibling is to put the pattern back over the cut shape & see if it still fits. A clothing pattern maker does the same, if they are unsure if they are doing the right thing they stick the pattern back over the garment & see if they’ve strayed from it. The bible is similar that in that to test if what our church is teaching is true or false we can do the same thing by seeing if the teaching fits the original pattern/mould, the Bible which is what we know about Jesus & what he taught & his early churches.

Except that the Church checked the books against the pattern of the deposit of faith handed down by the apostles, not the other way to.

I praise God that He graciously uses his christian church for his glory, for being his light & workings in the world, christians of many denominations, all sinful but graciously used by him. Thanks be to God for his Holy Spirit, that by Spirit we are being made more like Jesus, where we will one day be completely unified in the truth, without sin as Jesus church in heaven.

We can and should glorify God for the spread of his word throughout the world. We cannot and should not pretend that everything that is taught in his name is authentically his word - and the way we discern that authenticity is precisely the issue here.