Sola Scriptura

[thessalonian]

EA_Man:

So the members of the visible church (aka Rome) are those “that Christ has sent”?

Interesting.

Tell me are those in the Roman Catholic Church that Christ has sent the same ones that ran the Inquisition, called for the Crusades, and were involved with and helped cover up the sexual abuse scandals?

Hmmm… it seems that you have the same problem of having to find the ‘invisible church’ as the rest of us, doesn’t it?

By their fruits you shall know them.

Peace

Red Herrings EA_MAN. Ever heard of Servetus? John Calvin gave the thumbs up to a match and woodpile for him. Ever heard of 5 points calvinism. And with Luther’s approval the German army killed 100,000 peasants. (I got this from public TV so don’t call it catholic propoganda). These were even people that were a part of his movement. England, the source of the King James Bible killed Catholics and threw priests in prison for saying Mass. Simple fact.

At least our documents existed before the ones that you think were out of line. Bible + Tradition was not a creation of anyone who participated in the inquisition no matter what the historical view of it.

No EA the fruits of Sola Scriptura is division like a cancerous sore. You ever hear of the strategy called “divide and conquer”. You shall know them by their fruits all right.

Blessings

 

[EA_Man]

thessalonian:

Red Herrings EA_MAN. Ever heard of Servetus? John Calvin gave the thumbs up to a match and woodpile for him. Ever heard of 5 points calvinism. And with Luther’s approval the German army killed 100,000 peasants. (I got this from public TV so don’t call it catholic propoganda). These were even people that were a part of his movement. England, the source of the King James Bible killed Catholics and threw priests in prison for saying Mass. Simple fact.

At least our documents existed before the ones that you think were out of line. Bible + Tradition was not a creation of anyone who participated in the inquisition no matter what the historical view of it.

No EA the fruits of Sola Scriptura is division like a cancerous sore. You ever hear of the strategy called “divide and conquer”. You shall know them by their fruits all right.

Blessings

Red Herrings alright.

The proof of the rightness of Catholicism is that Protestants are just as bad?

Again, not very convincing.

Peace

 

[Fiat]

EA_Man:

So the members of the visible church (aka Rome) are those “that Christ has sent”?

Interesting.

Tell me are those in the Roman Catholic Church that Christ has sent the same ones that ran the Inquisition, called for the Crusades, and were involved with and helped cover up the sexual abuse scandals?

Hmmm… it seems that you have the same problem of having to find the ‘invisible church’ as the rest of us, doesn’t it?

By their fruits you shall know them.

Peace

EA_Man:

Sins have been committed by members of the Catholic Church and in the name of the Catholic Church throughout her 2,000 year history. Thankfully, the Catholic Church acknowledges these sins and owns up to responsibility. You seem to think that because wrongs have been committed through her and in her name, that this must by necessity preclude her from being the Apostolic Church. Do you think the true Church must be a sinless Church? If there is such a sinless Church, I promise you it won’t be sinless once you or I join it.

You clearly have been hurt by the Catholic Church or by some of her members in some profound measure because your posts, regardless of the thread topic, seem to come to the conclusion that the Church cannot be the Church of Christ because she has erred. I am thankful that Jesus expressed more patience with His Church than you have. I pray that at some point in your spiritual walk your heart will be softened and you will be able to forgive the Church or those members of the Church who may have wronged you in some way.

You say “by their fruits you will know them.” How true, indeed. Just look at all the hospitals and food shelters and social services named after our many holy CATHOLIC SAINTS! Praised be Jesus!
Back to the topic at hand…Do you really have a defense for sola scriptura?

May Our Lady embrace you.

Fiat

 

[thessalonian]

EA_Man:

Red Herrings alright.

The proof of the rightness of Catholicism is that Protestants are just as bad?

Again, not very convincing.

Peace

Apparently you don’t know what a red herring is. I was proving nothing by speaking of the sins of the “reformers”. I was only using your tactic to show you what kind of trouble your getting yourself in to. You were attempting to use the sins of men to prove Catholicism wrong. Well touche! I was just proving that your arguement was not very convincing because it is tangential to the discussion and it is a valid arguement that those who’s sins you point to weren’t the founders of the doctrine. I do think that all the division of Protestantism is not tangential, but it stands on it’s own and I don’t usually feel the need to bring up the sins of the reformers. Division is simply not of God. We can find sinners in every denomination. That does not prove that any particular doctrine or denomination is wrong. It mearly proves that men are sinners badly in need of a savior and even after we get “saved” we have alot of things to weed out of our lives. You seem to have trouble sticking to the Bible alone and seem to need to go in to the mud. Hey, it’s your doctrine.

Blessings

By the way I do find these discussions interesting. From my understanding you guys see stealing a cookie as being as bad as robbing a bank. Yet you always like to list these evil deeds of the Catholic Church. Why don’t you just say “oh mother teresa stold a cookie, what a scandal!”. " No it is because it is intuitively obvious that there are greater and lesser sins and some sins are so heinous that it even seems to us as if they cannot be forgiven. Of course we know that we are limited creatrues and God is not.

 

[praxis62]

javelin:

I don’t think that is true at all. Vatican II restated that salvation outside of the Catholic Church is not possible. It then went on to further define what that really means. The assumption by some of what the previous doctrinal statement meant was that only “card carrying members” were “in” the Catholic Church. That assumption was, and is, incorrect. The intention was that no one is saved separate from Christ’s Church (and in 1302, the ONLY church claiming to be Christ’s Church was the Catholic Church), which is His body and the vehicle through which the grace of redemption is given. He says that any branch cut off from the vine (His Body) will perish, and Catholic doctrine fully affirms this.

But we also realize that we cannot limit the Grace and Work of our Lord God. There are some, though most likely few, who can come to know Jesus and be in union with Him through the Holy Spirit without having ever stepped foot in any church. His Body transcends the earthly Catholic Church by virtue of His Spirit which is available to all.

Just look at Jesus’ accounting of the Final Judgement in Matthew. He says the sheep are rewarded because they served Jesus (you fed Me, you gave Me drink, etc.). To which the sheep responded “When did we serve you?”. Jesus replies “Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, you do to me”. Critical point – the sheep didn’t even recognize Jesus! Yet they were saved. Catholic doctrine makes this scenario possible, while most protestant doctrine does not. By keeping the commandments (which Jesus says is how we love Him) and serving others in love (which, again, is how Jesus says we love Him), one is loving our Lord Jesus and availing themselves to the Sactifying Grace that Christ freely offers to all of mankind.

So we do not, and will not, presume destruciton or salvation for anyone – God’s Grace is His alone to give how He sees fit.

Peace,
javelin

 

[DaveD]

EA_Man:

Red Herrings alright.

The proof of the rightness of Catholicism is that Protestants are just as bad?

Again, not very convincing.

Peace

EA_Man,

Apologetic squabbles can many times get in the way of what are really the spiritual issues at stake. Protestants aren’t bad. Many of them are devoted Christians who follow their faith as best as they can. A Christian should never try to convince someone. We simply must be prepared to answer questions when people have them. A person is going to believe what he wants to believe. Truth is rarely a religious motivator. We can only trust in the Holy Spirit to guide people to truth. As people we are very flawed. Especially when we try to argue a case!

Please don’t let any of this kind of stuff discourage you. Follow Christ with all your heart! Ask him for his continued guidance everyday. Remember that Christ is the light of the world, a light that burns in the darkness. The light will never go out.

Peace be with you,

 

[Contarini]

praxis62:

It seems to me that in any debate about Sola Scriptura the real, fundamental question isn’t what does a given passage of scripture mean, but rather why should we refer to the “canonical scriptures’ at all. Instead of citing, and then debating the meaning of I Thessalonians, or Matthew 13, the first question is: why don’t we cite I Enoch, or the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, or the Diatesseron, etc? The answer is obvious: The Church, the Body of Christ indwelled by the Holy Spirit, gave us the individual books of the bible, formed the canon of scripture, told Marcion and others, “this but not this”, and it is the Church that determines what that body of writings means. The Church existed before the first word of the New Testament was ever written. Scripture presupposes the Church. Scripture is an outgrowth of the lived experience of the Catholic Church, and this is the context that is needed to really understand the Word of God. True, scripture and Tradition flow from the same source, two strands of the same rope, but in terms of historical precedence the Church comes first. Why do we call the Gospel of Matthew, “Matthew”, why don’t we call it, the Gospel of Jesus, or the Gospel of Mary, again, the answer is obviously, “the Church”. When we engage in Sola Scriptura debates with Protestants as soon as we begin to argue about what a given passage of scripture means we are playing on their field, we have implicitly adopted their rules, and to “some extent” have compromised the main strength of the Catholic position. Questions about the material, or formal, sufficiency of scripture, take second place to the real question of why do we have this scripture at all, why not the book of Mormon, the New World bible, etc.
I would appreciate any feedback can I get on this?
Thanks

“First” can mean several things. The historic Christian view is that Holy Scripture is the primary and supremely authoritative repository of apostolic Tradition, handed down by God to the prophets and apostles. This is what Protestants were trying to recover, in the face of canon lawyers who acted as if the ecclesiastical laws and traditions of the Church were of primary importance. Unfortunately, no one was approaching things from quite the right angle, and there was a lot of shouting past each other. In the end, I think the Anglicans wound up with probably the best understanding of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition (this is one of the few good theological reasons to be an Anglican). The problem, of course, is that we had a hopelessly inadequate ecclesial basis on which to practice this understanding (being a schismatic national church with an idolatrous subservience to the civil authority).

But there’s no need to keep shouting past each other now. The right basis from which to start, I firmly believe, is the question “what is apostolic Tradition”? The big problem with the Tridentine definition is that it doesn’t analyze the concept of “Tradition.” Of course all apostolic Tradition is to be regarded with equal veneration. But the question is, how do we get apostolic Tradition? Many things that the Church teaches are clearly a development of the original deposit, which should not be confused with the deposit itself. Newman’s theory of development has been (mis)used to give all later developments the same authority as the original deposit. On the Tridentine model, this is hard to avoid.

Sola Scriptura means that only Scripture contains apostolic tradition–everything else is the Church’s understanding, which may be helpful but is not of the same authority. The Catholic Church clearly does not hold this view. But that does not prevent Catholics from holding to the primacy of Scripture, which was clearly the teaching of the Fathers. In other words, Scripture is the most reliable and authoritative source for Sacred (Apostolic) Tradition. The Church’s oral teaching, the writings of the Fathers, etc., function primarily to interpret Scripture. We can’t make a sharp division between ideas found in Scripture and ideas not found there, because all Christian doctrine flows out of Scripture and hence is present in it in some form. But some ideas, such as the NT ministerial priesthood, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, devotion to the saints, etc., are certainly not found in Scripture in a clear and explicit way.

Sorry for the digression. The answer to your original question is that we refer to the canonical Scriptures because the Church has taught us to do so. That is only fatal to a simplistic understanding of Sola Scriptura. It does not address the question of whether there is apostolic Tradition not found in Scripture, which is the question posed by Sola Scriptura.

Edwin

In Christ,

Edwin

 

[DeFide]

Contarini:

Sola Scriptura means that only Scripture contains apostolic tradition–everything else is the Church’s understanding, which may be helpful but is not of the same authority. The Catholic Church clearly does not hold this view. But that does not prevent Catholics from holding to the primacy of Scripture, which was clearly the teaching of the Fathers. In other words, Scripture is the most reliable and authoritative source for Sacred (Apostolic) Tradition. The Church’s oral teaching, the writings of the Fathers, etc., function primarily to interpret Scripture. We can’t make a sharp division between ideas found in Scripture and ideas not found there, because all Christian doctrine flows out of Scripture and hence is present in it in some form. But some ideas, such as the NT ministerial priesthood, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, devotion to the saints, etc., are certainly not found in Scripture in a clear and explicit way.

Sorry for the digression. The answer to your original question is that we refer to the canonical Scriptures because the Church has taught us to do so. That is only fatal to a simplistic understanding of Sola Scriptura. It does not address the question of whether there is apostolic Tradition not found in Scripture, which is the question posed by Sola Scriptura.

Edwin

In Christ,

Edwin

1. Sola Scriptura-ists cannot agree on the definition of Sola Scriptura
2. None of those Sola Scriptura definitions are found explicity (or even implicitly) in Scripture
3. Those “Unscriptural” Catholic beliefs that you cited are only such in your personal interpretion. Catholics have tons of verses to support their beliefs.
4. Personal interpretation of the Bible is condemned in Scripture (2Pet3:15-16 & 2 Pet 1:20)
5. Jesus said the Church, not the Bible was the final authority:

‘If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. . . . But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. . . . If he refuses to listen . . . tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector’ (Mt 18:15-17).

The Bible is very clear to me about what to do if we have a disagreement with one another over some issue pertaining to the Faith. And please remember: To lead someone into heresy is a grievous sin against your brother according to Galatians 5:19-21! The Bible tells us that the Church, not the Bible, is the final court of appeal.

source: http://www.geocities.com/thecatholi…ascriptura.html

1. The canon of scripture is not defined in the Bible, so I guess you’d say that a Christian may carve out a Bible to his own liking, correct?

geocities.com/thecatholicconvert/solascriptura21.html

 

[praxis62]

Contarini: Thanks for your very thoughtful reply.
the Catholic understanding rests on 3 legs: scripture itself, magisterium, Tradition, all three are necessary. The Church is very clear that she sees scripture and tradition as flowing from the same source. As I have previously stated scripture is considered normatitive because the Church said so, not because scripture said so; It’s Church first.
For the Catholic, development of doctrine is not opposed to sacred scripture, but is rather sacred scripture’s unfolding in history. The teaching of the Assumption of Mary, would not be placed on a lower level of authenticity, simply because it developed over time. Maybe we are misconstruing words like Dogma and doctrine? In the Roman Catholic view dogma does not change, it’s doctrinal implications may.
You say that Newman did not place the development of doctrine on the same level as the origional deposit. May I ask, what are your sources for that and how does it apply to the Tridentine model? Newman certainly did not disavow the Council of Trent. From his Tractarian days onward, he recognized the importance of the “Apostolicity” of the Roman Catholic Church ( and conversely the Anglican Churche’s lack of it) and the legitimacy of the Development of doctrine. All of this seems to be clear in his comments on the Monophysite, Nestorian and the Arian heresy.
You state that: Primacy of Scripture was the teaching of the Church Fathers. If you take the reading of Fathers in full, you will see that the primacy of scripture is predicated on the idea of the Church as undergirding the role of Sacred Scripture, and also supplying the necessary interpretative context for reading scripture. The Fathers do cite scripture as proof of their positions but they always do so from within the context of the Church.
There is a lot to talk about here, and I look forward to doing just that, but like you say, without the yelling.
God Bless You
Praxis62