Sola Scriptura defenders help me out?

[DesertBrother]

I still have yet to receive a response to any of the following points I made yesterday about SS, and I’m geniuinely curious about how a Protestant believes SS is possible considering the following:

1. No established New Testament until centuries after Christ’s death. If the Apostles were teaching SS, the only possible Scripture they or St. Paul could have been talking about (Acts 17:11) would be the Old Testament. That is simply all that existed at the time. They were indeed encouraged to read the revealed Word of God in the OT because it was still nourishing to the soul, but why would any Christian refer to the OT as their final authority? That would mean they’d remain under the Old Law.
2. After centuries of gradual development, the final version of the New Testament was assembled (by the Church) and declared Divinely inspired. Following this, Bibles were hand copied (can you imagine?) by monks and were extremely rare and valuable. Those who had access to them were clergy and the very rich. After the printing press in the 1400’s, they were made more available. If the Apostles truly taught Scripture alone without the authority of the Church, were they speaking to those who could afford it or those who could manage to steal copies from Bishops?
   If there was never meant to be an established Church structure and authority to feed people with the Scriptures, where and how else do you expect they would have encountered the Word of God?
3. Besides being unable to afford a rare copy, your average Christian did not own a Bible, because they couldn’t read. Those who could read were not having Bible studies in their homes trying to decipher the most complex book ever written. It had already been deciphered for them by the Church, and they were too humble to think they knew better than ancient tradition. They heard the Word of God at Mass, or at the Divine Liturgy and submitted themselves in meekness to the authority of the Church until the 1500’s when suddenly those who believed themselves to finally know the truth by trusting in their own private interpretation caused all heck to break loose.

Can anyone please tell me how SS is possible when all these factors are against it? Peace.

 

[DesertBrother]

:yawn:

 

[Odell]

Im waiting for a reply also.

 

[Truthstalker]

DesertBrother,

I think the lack of response may be because these things have been beaten to death repeatedly and recently. I realize you’re new to CAF and haven’t seen some of the threads.

BRIEF Highlights of some SS apologetics with regard to your questions:

1. While the Scriptures were being written, they were not yet authoritative.
   2.) The church’s declaration of the canon was a recognition, not a certification - that is, the Church did not presume to tell God what He had done, but only recognized what had been apparent.
2. SS relates to the authoritative nature of Scripture. It is not necessary for every Christian to have or read the Bible for SS to be true.

There are some good Protestant works on Sola Scriptura you might read to become acquainted with the doctrine, which is a lot more complex, nuanced and thought out than Catholics seem to give it credit for, and more so than a lot of Protestants seem to be aware of. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have problems.

For starters you might read homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/aahsolascrp.htm, sort of a classic presentation on the doctrine. But it ain’t Catholic either.

 

[DesertBrother]

DesertBrother,

I think the lack of response may be because these things have been beaten to death repeatedly and recently. I realize you’re new to CAF and haven’t seen some of the threads.

Oops, didn’t mean to be so passe! Thanks for humoring me though.

**:whacky: :whacky: :whacky:

 

[DesertBrother]

Truthstalker,
I couldn’t figure out how to do individual quotes, so I hope you notice my responses mixed up with yours in the yellow box.

 

[Truthstalker]

Truthstalker,
I couldn’t figure out how to do individual quotes, so I hope you notice my responses mixed up with yours in the yellow box.

Sometimes I do that but I change the color of the text so it stands out - you might try going to the sandbox and play with fonts sizes and colors and stuff.

 

[Truthstalker]

This is really complicated. I may be too dense to get my head around SS after all. Does this mean that during the first couple of centuries, the OT was what was used as authoritative Scripture until the Gospels and Epistles were declared authoritative later on? If so, how was the Church surviving all those years without any scriptural authority other than the Law of Moses? Could it be because the disciples of the Apostles passed down authoriative oral traditions to guide them as well?<

I THINK under SS the traditions were assumed to be absorbed into the NT - meaning that all the important stuff got into the NT. So when you tell a SSer that something is of Tradition, he looks at you sadly, because you are behind the times, and thinks that if it was important, it was written down and made in the Bible, and all else is subject to error. Written instructions versus hearsay.

Somebody who actually believes SS needs to defend it. My position is more Prima Scriptura - where Scripture speaks, it is authoritative; where it does not speak, it is not binding.

I agree with that. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. But by the Church’s authority, they also recognized what books were to be excluded from the Canon. Not just anyone could have made those distinctions The Church held the authority to decide what was or was not the Word of God

In SS, Scripture is self-authenticating. We suddenly shift here from SS to what is the role of the church in the life of the believer.
Rather than the church telling the believer what is Scripture, this is something God reserves to Himself. The Holy Spirit witnesses to the individual believer what is and what isn’t Scripture.

Concerning “private interpretation”, PhilVaz has posted some good material on the Theodoret thread. SS can accommodate a public interpretation, that is, the church’s interpretation over and against the individual’s. This is getting too deep for me.

You ain’t kiddin. This is some tedious stuff. My brain is throbbing right now trying to see both sides of this thing. What I gather is you think of SS as teaching that Scripture is simply the highest authority, while most other SSers I’ve encountered believe it’s the ONLY authority, to the exclusion of all Tradition. I was arguing against the latter position in my OP, so give me a moment to get my bearings here. I’ll do my best to read up, but at the moment the idea isn’t sounding too appetizing!

Sometimes you have to read it slowly numerous times to figure it out, especially with the older writers. I tend to shift into defending Prima Scriptura rather than SS due to my personal sympathies, but SS is underrated around here, so at times I get provoked into defending or explaining something I don’t believe or even understand as well as I should.

In the mean time thanks for the responses TS.

You’re welcome.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Truthstalker,
I couldn’t figure out how to do individual quotes, so I hope you notice my responses mixed up with yours in the yellow box.

Try this:​

quote]quotation follows, & ends/ quote] - but with out leaving the spaces.

For URLS:

url= thisisthelinkbeingposted .com] this is the link being posted/ url]

• but w i t h o u t s p a c e s - apart from the text of the message, of course ##

 

[DesertBrother]

Okay, I read some of the website you posted.

First of all, in paragraph #4, Hodge states that “it’s improbable that God would have supplemented Scripture with tradition”. Why is this so improbable when it’s the way God had always done things before? Jesus held the Traditions of the Law of Moses close to His heart and sought to fulfill them and bring life to them, not abolish them. Hodge sites Matt. 15 and Mark 7, where Jesus ridicules the Pharisees for being hypocrites and making an idol of their traditions. He’s rebuking the Pharisees themselves, not the Law they follow as Hodge interprets. If Jesus was anti-tradition, why did He even bother to mention starting a Church in the first place?

Also, why is his attack just on the “Romanists”? Why does he as so many others, ignore the Eastern Churches use of oral Tradition which developed apart from Rome but is nearly identical in every way?

He also states when arguing against the Romanists that " Scripture, as will be shown below, is certain, definite, complete, and perspicuous". Wasn’t it the Church that recognized what books exhibited all these things and made the judgement as to what other books did not? Didn’t Tradition provide the necessary human middle-men in that situation?

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

1. While the Scriptures were being written, they were not yet authoritative.

Actually, I’ve recently come across a few things which might actually dislodge this claim. I’ll wait to see what others have to say first.

Please note, I don’t actually believe in Sola Scriptura-- unless one equates Sola Scripturea with Sacred Tradition. You can check out my thoughts here.

Anyway, I generally agree very much with what you’re saying. I’m all for the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church. I’m just noting the possibility that while the Scriptures were being written, they were indeed authoritative.

 

[DesertBrother]

In SS, Scripture is self-authenticating. We suddenly shift here from SS to what is the role of the church in the life of the believer.
Rather than the church telling the believer what is Scripture, this is something God reserves to Himself. The Holy Spirit witnesses to the individual believer what is and what isn’t Scripture.
.

But since we as individual believers are prone to such great error when rightly discerning the guidance of the Holy Spirit, wouldn’t this imply in most cases each man’s idea of Scripture would be completely different from one another? Every man would have had completely different ideas of what Christianity was based on what he thought valid Scripture was.

Without the Church telling us what Scripture was valid, people would have been free to use the Gnostic gospels and no dogmas would have been established at all in those early years. Actually, as the Gospel spread to every nation, without Church structure and guidance, it would have become misinterpreted and distorted beyond recognition. There would have been no way to define what was legitimate Christian doctrine. The idea of Christ’s Divinity would probably have been lost right away by people using unapproved Scripture, and/or private interpretation. It would have been anarchy. :bigyikes:

 

[JOE_OBERR]

The biggest problem with SS is that it is a tradition of men which nullifies the holy Word of God, in Tradition, which was passed down by the Apostles & their successor bishops, under the leadership of the Pope.

Nor does Jesus anywhere say to become saved by using your personal guesswork on bible verses. He said to listen to the Apostles upon whom the Church was founded & is the pillar & bulwark of truth (1 Tim 3:15). Jesus nowhere said to guess on bible verses to get to heaven.

What book of the bible summarizes the gospel as preached by the Apostles (Mt 16:15-16) which Jesus said we had to hear, believe & then receive baptism in order to be saved? There is no book in the bible which summarizes this oral gospel which explains why our seperated brethren are so divided. The bible is a narrative of salvation history, it is not a catechism.

The bible is great for illuminating & nourishing the oral Word of God as handed down by the Church in the Gospel. It is great for learning about the person of Jesus, his love for us, how he related to us and died for us. But until a Roman Catholic priest in 1520 came along & protested against the Church Jesus founded, everyone learned the Gospel the same way - by hearing, which is what St. Paul said somewhere (forget the verse) “… faith comes by hearing”.

Joe