Sola and Replying to Fundamentalists

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This has already been tossed around a lot, but I’d like to phrase it this way and hope some pithy answers are forthcoming 🙂

Protestants but especially fundamentalists say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God, simple and unadorned.

Catholics say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God.

Fundamentalists say that, since we have God’s Word, there is nothing to add or subtract or to refer to vis a vis the categories of Revelation and Salvation.

Catholics say that, in addition to God’s biblical Word, we have living tradition.

My question is how to “get past” the huge Protestant-Catholic agreement that the Bible is God’s unique Word. If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?

Don’t get me wrong, I take the Catholic side on this. But if the Bible is the Word of God, how can it be explained to Fundamentalists that there is “another treasure” just as valuable as the written Word? That this other treasure is just as divine as the Bible, that is not just spiritual costume jewelry?
 
Remind them that the bible didn’t exist before 397 a.d. Before that, the faith was passed on by word of mouth. The Early Church Fathers have written a great deal about tradition and passing on the faith, including the real presence and the other sacraments. All of this was written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

So, tradition came first. The Church came first.

The bible came out of the church. The Church did not come out of the bible. Well…protestant churches might have, but the Catholic church did not. The Catholic Church produced the bible.

In fact, it is through TRADITION that the bible came to be. Men, inspired by the Holy Spirit, came together and produced the bible. There was no scripture that told them to do this. It was tradition.

That’s how we know the bible is the bible, through tradition. There is no scripture passage that tells us this. So, if sola scriptura advocates insist on bible alone, they are relying on tradition to tell them that the bible is the bible.

Furthermore, the bible itself tells you that the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the Truth…
The bible does NOT tell you that the bible is the pillar and bulwark of the Truth.

Just a few thoughts…😉
 
Great work Mary!

The bible is a great part of our faith. In this inspired compilation of books we have the centerpiece, the Gospels. In one section we can read the documentary where Jesus establishes His church and the officer first appointed to be its head - Peter.

This office and the church it leads created the bible about 365 years later (397 AD). So this church created the bible as a record of revelation. OK, so what comes first - church or bible? The answer is the Church. The church operated through the authority of Jesus and inspiration of the Holy Spirit to prepare the bible.

Now, I ask a simple current-day practical question. As you drive in your car tomorrow and contemplate the manufacturer/dealer and the owner’s manual, can you say with confidence the dealer is more significant than the owner’s manual? Yes, you can.

Our protestant brothers and sisters have taken the owner’s manual and outlawed the dealer. As their car fails and needs minor repair, they try to get by without professional help.

Play along with me a little and now imagine them sitting in a rusted out car with no wheels and stuck in the middle of a field. You drive up in a white Hummer and offer help. They refuse and wave an offensive hand gesture at you. You drive off and say a prayer for them.

I hope it helps!
 
Dont knock costume jewelry,Sclumberger designed fab trinkets for Elsa Schiaperelli,whom ,by the way was no slouch.
 
The unerring, unique, unadorned word of God itself tells us that it is not complete.

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. (John 21:25)

He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days 2 and speaking about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

Jesus appeared to the disciples for 40 days after he had risen. One would assume that the conversations he had were important yet the Bible only records that Jesus told the disciples not to depart from Jerusalem, that it was not for them to know the time of the restoration of the Kingdom and to wait for the promised Holy Spirit.

Bible Christians will quote Paul in an attempt to prove that scripture is sufficient.

*All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)*Some translations render “Useful” as “Profitable” but either way, it does not say that Scripture alone is sufficient for slavation, only that scripture is good for teaching, training, etc. Furthermor, when Paul wrote that passage, Scripture referred to the Old Testament. Much of the New Testament had not been written when Paul wrote those words.

The bottom line is that Jesus fully revealed himself to twelve men. One of them betrayed Jesus and the the full revelation of God to man came through the remaining eleven - what they remembered and told others orally. It was the protoges of these eleven men who gave us scripture and scripture itself tells us that it is incomplete. You gotta ask your Bible Christian friends what all this stuff that is not recorded in the Bible is all about? Is it important? Don’t they want to know what it was? Where do they think it can be found?

-Tim-
 
The Bible is the word of God, but Jesus is the Word. John 1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was nothing that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

John also tells us in ch. 21:25 “There are, however, many other things that Jesus did; but if every one of these should be written, not even the world itself, I think, could hold the books that would have to be written.” These things are the basis of Apostolic Tradition - things handed down by the successors to the Apostles (the bishops) and the successor of Peter (the Pope).

Jesus didn’t write a book - he founded a Church Matthew 16:17 “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but my Father in heaven. And I say to thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
 
Two things come to mind:
  1. Proponents of sola scriptura are not aware of the hue amount of discussion that went on among the early Church Fathers attempting to interpret the “few words” in the gospels and Epistles (and the Old Testament writing as well for that matter) how they were to be applied to the realities of this formative Church.
As Catholics, we see the product of all of those writings without knowing how Catholic dogma was derived from the Bible (after 397AD). We see the begin point (Scripture) and we see the end point (7 sacraments, Mary and the Saints, Purgatory, etc. But with an awareness of the “middle,” it is difficult to see how we got here.
  1. Proponents of sola scriptura also overlook the fact that all of the Protestant movement started with Martin Luther and company, who himself added to the Scripture. To emphasize how he wanted the Bible to reflect his interpretation, he added for instance, the word “alone” to Paul’s discourse on the importance of Faith to emphasize that Faith alone, Sola Fide, would get us to heaven, and de-emphasize works, which he equated to indulgences in the 16th Century Church.
Without adding more on this than anyone would want to read, these are the points I like to make when I teach Church History in RCIA.

Stay blest.
bob
 
steveb1 said:
This has already been tossed around a lot, but I’d like to phrase it this way and hope some pithy answers are forthcoming 🙂

Protestants but especially fundamentalists say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God, simple and unadorned.

Catholics say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God.

Fundieprots say that, since we have God’s Word, there is nothing to add or subtract or to refer to vis a vis the categories of Revelation and Salvation.

Catholics say that, in addition to God’s biblical Word, we have living tradition.

My question is how to “get past” the huge Protestant-Catholic agreement that the Bible is God’s unique Word. If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?

Don’t get me wrong, I take the Catholic side on this. But if the Bible is the Word of God, how can it be explained to fundieprots that there is “another treasure” just as valuable as the written Word? That this other treasure is just as divine as the Bible, that is not just spiritual costume jewelry?
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Simply put, without it you get 33,000 denominations.
 
steveb1 said:
If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?
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I think we tend to think that the Bible is part of Tradition. A more apt analogy from our point of view is that sola scriptura is like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure in the world, then prying a single diamond out of the center and discarding the rest.
 
steveb1 said:
My question is how to “get past” the huge Protestant-Catholic agreement that the Bible is God’s unique Word. If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?

Don’t get me wrong, I take the Catholic side on this. But if the Bible is the Word of God, how can it be explained to fundieprots that there is “another treasure” just as valuable as the written Word? That this other treasure is just as divine as the Bible, that is not just spiritual costume jewelry?
Click to expand...
The bible is incomplete and tells us so in many places (Luke 3:18, John 20:30, John 21:25, Acts 2:40, 1 Corinthians 11:34 and others). Is God’s revelation then incomplete? Conversely, do we believe that all truth is in the bible?

Since God is infinite, His Truth is also infinite Thus, any man-made object, such as a book, cannot contain all truth. Since the world would not contain all the books that would be written about what Jesus said and did, this brings up a major problem. Each and everything that Jesus did was a form of revelation. A tiny fraction of it is in the bible. Did God reveal Truth only to have it lost to posterity? Or disregarded? Once revealed, it must remain somewhere, since His Word will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

So, where is it? Answer: Outside of the bible. The bible testifies to the Church, not the other way round. The Church existed before the bible and is greater than the bible. Saint Paul tells us that the Church is the living Body of Christ on earth - thus superior in both nature and content to any condensed version of revelation. The first decades of the Church had no bible. What did they have?

Paradosis

The oral teaching Tradition of the Apostles. Jesus founded a Church and sent forth His Apostles. He neither wrote, nor did he tell them to write scripture. He told them to teach, by the leading of the Holy Spirit. They did - without error, and without New Testament scripture.

When they began to be martyred, a written record was needed, as the witnesses themselves were dying off. There are at least two examples of the oral tradition in scripture that “bible alone” Christians seek to avoid, or cannot explain. Saint Paul wrote of two men named Jannes and Jambres, who opposed Moses during the exodus (2 Timothy 3:8). Yet, these men are not named in the book of Exodus, or any other. How were their names and their acts known 1,250 years after the fact? Paradosis.

Again, Jude wrote (Jude 1:9) that Michael the Archangel disputed with the devil over the body of Moses. This is not recorded anywhere else in the bible. How did Jude know about this 1,250 years after the fact? Paradosis.

Sadly, the Sacred Tradition, or Paradosis, which facilitated the writing of the New Testament, has been confused with the “traditions of men” which Christ condemned the Pharisees for clinging to. They are two vastly different things. And sadly, many who love Christ choose to ignore much of the bible, since it appears a little too Catholic.
 
Wow 🙂

Thanks to all who posted - what a great bunch of answers, they’re appreciated.
 
The Bible and the Sacred Tradition, both compliment one another. Saying that the Sacred Scripture mean no need for Sacred Tradition is as if saying because we have the Holy Spirit, there’s no need for the Son or the Father. The Trinity is the representation of this combination, three persons, but one God. No Sacred Tradition can contradict the Sacred Scripture, the Sacred Scripture IS the foundation of the Christian faith as the recorded words of God. But how does one interpret the Holy Scripture? Many times I ask my Protestant brothers and sisters, and never get a full answer. God is one, united, and as my name suggest: Unity of Trinity. God can’t be the God of confusion, 2 things that contradict one another can’t both be true. Sacred Traditions, therefore, become a guideline for Scriptural interpretation.
 
steveb1 said:
This has already been tossed around a lot, but I’d like to phrase it this way and hope some pithy answers are forthcoming 🙂

Protestants but especially fundamentalists say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God, simple and unadorned.

Catholics say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God.

Fundieprots say that, since we have God’s Word, there is nothing to add or subtract or to refer to vis a vis the categories of Revelation and Salvation.

Catholics say that, in addition to God’s biblical Word, we have living tradition.

My question is how to “get past” the huge Protestant-Catholic agreement that the Bible is God’s unique Word. If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?

Don’t get me wrong, I take the Catholic side on this. But if the Bible is the Word of God, how can it be explained to fundieprots that there is “another treasure” just as valuable as the written Word? That this other treasure is just as divine as the Bible, that is not just spiritual costume jewelry?
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One of the best analogies to consider is the U.S. Constitution. When you read it it seems pretty clear what the govt is and is not allowed to do yet the govt has greatly overstepped the boundaries placed on it by the Constitution. Its never so simple and to claim to have the truth and then live like nothing else impacts on that truth. It used to be a truth that when a ship sailed too far from shore it fell off the edge, it was obviuos since you could watch it happen. And it was a truth that the solar system revlved around the earth.
 
steveb1 said:
This has already been tossed around a lot, but I’d like to phrase it this way and hope some pithy answers are forthcoming 🙂

Protestants but especially fundamentalists say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God, simple and unadorned.

Catholics say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God.

Fundieprots say that, since we have God’s Word, there is nothing to add or subtract or to refer to vis a vis the categories of Revelation and Salvation.

Catholics say that, in addition to God’s biblical Word, we have living tradition.

My question is how to “get past” the huge Protestant-Catholic agreement that the Bible is God’s unique Word. If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?

Don’t get me wrong, I take the Catholic side on this. But if the Bible is the Word of God, how can it be explained to fundieprots that there is “another treasure” just as valuable as the written Word? That this other treasure is just as divine as the Bible, that is not just spiritual costume jewelry?
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You might know that the first scriptures appeared round 50 to 150 years after Jesus’s death. Oral and Living traddition is the base of Christianity. Like for example the way the Mass is celebrated. That is something not explicitely stated in the Bible.

Another currious aspect is: Saint Constantine(Roman Emperor) gathered all Bishops of the Christian Churches at that time and united them in the Council of Nicae in the year 395 AD (or so) to creat one standard world wide (Catholic) religion with one Crede, and one Holy Scripture and with specific traditions concerning the mass, the hierarchy of the clergy, etc… more than a1000 years later, all of the sudden, these traditions are not valid anymore and the intepretations of the scripture are not of the Catholic Church anymore. That is silly, considering the fact that the Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church. If you think the Bible is the Word of God, you must also agree that the Catholic Church and all its traditions are of God also… Don’t get me wrong on this part. I do think some traditions and actions of certain Clergy members and some Popes are or were an outrage. Nevertheless, if the Catholic Church established the Holy Bible and the Traditions, than both go together as one.
 
steveb1 said:
This has already been tossed around a lot, but I’d like to phrase it this way and hope some pithy answers are forthcoming 🙂

Protestants but especially fundamentalists say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God, simple and unadorned.

Catholics say that in the Bible, we have the unique Word of God.

Fundamentalists say that, since we have God’s Word, there is nothing to add or subtract or to refer to vis a vis the categories of Revelation and Salvation.

Catholics say that, in addition to God’s biblical Word, we have living tradition.

My question is how to “get past” the huge Protestant-Catholic agreement that the Bible is God’s unique Word. If we have that, what possible need is there for Tradition or anything else? Wouldn’t that be like having the single, most unique, greatest treasure collection in the world, then having someone coming along and wanting to mix costume jewelry in with the treasure?

Don’t get me wrong, I take the Catholic side on this. But if the Bible is the Word of God, how can it be explained to Fundamentalists that there is “another treasure” just as valuable as the written Word? That this other treasure is just as divine as the Bible, that is not just spiritual costume jewelry?
Click to expand...
My pithy:) answer
CONTEXT and INTERPRETATION

What good are the NT writings without understanding how they functioned in the early church, how they were interpreted by the early church and how they were selected by the early church? To divorce the Scriptures from the Catholic Church and return to authentic unadulterated NT christianity is the fundamentalists desire. History proves otherwise… Better to be a fundamentalist than an atheist.
 
I’m keeping up with everybody’s pithy answers… an intelligent collection of effective objections to sola scriptura. This illlustrates how very “traditions of men”-dependent many fundieprots are. They rely on Reformation traditions and the ideas of pastors/congregation founders rather than the fulness of their own scriptures. If only they could see that. But of course, they have a vested interest in NOT seeing it, because they imagine that their salvation is dependent on their sectarian scriptural views.
 
Here are some Bible verses I found on the subject (with the help of the NAB Bible and Biblia Clerus computer program 🙂 lol).

2 Thes 3:6: “We instruct you, brothers, in the name of (our) Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who conducts himself in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.”
Early Christians were to follow the traditions of Paul, not just his writings.

1 Cor 11:2: “I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions, just as I handed them to you.”
Pretty much the same point as the last verse.

2 Thes 2:14: “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.”
In all my days as a Protestant, I don’t recall reading this verse…

If I find more, I will post them! 🙂
God bless! 😃
 
I think what we have to remember is before the Scripture, before the Tradition was Jesus Christ. Jesus came, He walked and talked and said very specific things.

I trust that the Church has the message of Jesus Christ–as it’s the same message unadulterated for the last 2000 years. Fundamentalists view Scripture (correctly) as the word of God. However, what they have done is interpret it for themselves and forget that it all points back to a person. So, they read Scripture and then interpret it for themselves. Not necessarily thinking about what Christ’s intention was but rather how they interpret it. That’s the weakness in their belief system.
 
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