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Zenkai
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Protestants generally have beliefs that more closely resemble Scripture than Catholics do. However, Protestants do not have Tradition; all they have is Scripture, so they try to follow it as closely as possible.
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CDB1718
Guest
The Catholic Church compiled the scriptures and lives them out daily. The Protestants interpret the scripture according to their own teachings, culture, and biases because they don’t have anything else. They talk about it directly a lot more because that and Baptism is all they took when they left the Church.
It’s such a part of our lives that we don’t have to make a point of saying that what we do comes from scripture. Every bit of it does, though. For example, here’s a list going through our entire liturgy line by line, showing where it is in scripture. stsophiaukrainian.cc/resources/bibleinliturgy/
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Zenkai
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Yes, I know Catholics follow Scripture very well. I just meant that Protestantism resembles Scriptural Christianity more than Catholicism does.
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Anna_Scott
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Zenkai,
I don’t really think Protestantism resembles Scriptural Christianity more than Catholicism. Holy Scripture is very important in Catholicism. The CCC is full of references to Scripture, and states, 81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42
**CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION
II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE
**
One common source. . .
80 "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal."40 Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age”.41
. . . two distinct modes of transmission
81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42
"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."43
82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."44
Peace,
Anna
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Annabelle_Marie
Guest
Not when it comes to John 6…that is what I always find so amazing…they will take certain verses literally but when it comes to John 6 they won’t do that at all…much like many of the people Jesus was talking to that left Him because it was too hard to believe. I didn’t see Him correcting or clarifying Himself to bring them back…
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Link0126
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You mean it resembles YOUR understanding of Scriptural Christianity more closely. All protestant denominations search the scriptures 1500-2000 years later in an attempt to learn the truth as taught by the apostles. However, The Catholic Church has the truth as handed down from the apostles themselves. The Bible is a product of the faith, not the other way around.
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Zenkai
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No. It does resemble biblical Christianity more. Catholics use traditions that are not included within the Bible.
I’m not saying anything against the Catholic Church, I’m just saying that Protestants follow Scripture very closely and do not add anything from outside it.
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Link0126
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How do you follow scripture more closely WITHOUT tradition? Tradition helps us understand how to interpret scripture:
How do they follow scripture very closely when they deny that baptism saves? (most of them anyway) (1 Peter 3:21)(John 3:5)
Deny the real presence (most of them anyway) (John 6), (1 Cor 11:27) (Mat. 26:26 etc…)
Deny Confession? (John 20:23)
Deny the role of works in salvation (James 2:24, and almost every other verse in the entire Bible, way too many to list)
Deny Apostolic succession (Acts 1:25, 2 Tim. 4:1-6, and others)
The only way to say they more closely resemble the Bible is to have a totally different understanding of the Bible and the early church. They have this understanding b/c they try to make sense of words on a page WITHOUT the Tradition that has been passed down in the Catholic Church.
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Zenkai
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What I was trying to get across was that Protestants are more Scriptural because they follow Scripture and nothing else. The Catholic Church has some traditions that are not recorded in the Bible, such as the Marian dogmas, etc. That’s why Protestants resemble Christianity as recorded in Scripture better than Catholics do. As for those verses, Protestants consider them somewhat ambiguous.
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Darran
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That’s not true Zenkai, just because we have another infaliable source doesn’t mean that we use scripture less. We are the only ones to live scripture in it’s real context instead of personal interpretation (Catholic New Testament writers afterall), not having to contend with and avoid passages that contradict our own reasoning or prove the protestant founders to be wrong (the 5 solas, justified by faith -]alone/-] etc).
On the contrary, we understand the scripture because we have the Church, whereas without the Church there is no possible way of understanding and putting into practice what we are taught. 44,000 protestant churches all claiming divine inspiration are proof of this.
But to get back on the topic, it would seem to be an attempt to use the “the more outlandish the claim, the harder it is to disprove” method to make a pseudo convincing argument.
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Link0126
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Just b/c they claim to follow nothing but the scriptures doesn’t actually make them more scriptural. If they are incorrectly following the scriptures are they more scriptural? Which protestant group is the MOST scriptural? They all claim to be following only scripture and they all believe different things.
Besides, following only the Bible invalidates ones as MORE scriptural b/c the Bible tells us to follow the teaching of the Apostles through word or letter and through tradition.
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Zenkai
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I’m not saying that Catholics use less Scripture. My point was: to resemble Christianity as recorded in the Bible, you have to use ONLY the Bible, otherwise you will not resemble biblical Christianity.
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Darran
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But you can’t, when, as Link says, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 1 Corinthians 11:2 both tell you to hold to the apostle’s traditions. If you used only the Bible and not tradition, you wouldn’t be only using the Bible.
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Zenkai
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“Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15
-Yes, Protestants follow this. They follow the apostle’s epistles(New Testament) and they would also follow the 12 apostles in person if they were still alive.
“Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you.” 1 Corinthians 11:2
-Same as above.
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Darran
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Yes, but they don’t follow the traditions. “By word” implies that it is passed on to you as a tradition is. Their only tradition, unfortunately for them, ended at Luther.
Perhaps we are misunderstanding you though, do you maybe mean to say that they have the Bible as a sole dependancy? At the minute you sound as though you are saying that the protestants are greater than us in scripture, but I don’t think that’s what you mean, just how it comes across.
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SecretGarden
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To get back to the original point, I think that most Christians regardless if they are Catholic or not, do not know their church history nor are they taught to question what they are taught because church leaders regardless of their position, can be wrong sometimes and it’s up to us to use discernement and question the things we are taught to ensure it is indeed correct church teaching. It’s the idea that the leader knows best and this isn’t always the case. Even popes make mistakes.
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Nicea325
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Small underground “true Christians” group existed? And I am sure those folks have the overwhelming evidence supporting such a position-right? It is a pipe dream!
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Link0126
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No, the Christians in the Bible didn’t even yet have the Bible. They had the old testament only, and while of course they used the Old Testament, they also had to deal with issues that the Old Testament didn’t necessarily help them with.
Look at Acts 15, they are trying to determine what is the role of circumcision in Christianity. They have no scriptures to look to which say circumcision is no longer valid, in fact, all of the scriptures they had at the time told them otherwise. They only way they came to the decision that it was no longer necessary was b/c Peter stood up and made that decision. James quotes a very obscure verse that has nothing to do with circumcision. There is no way anyone would accept this verse as valid for this decision had it not been for the authority of the apostles interpreting it. Do you see what I’m getting at?
After it was finally agreed upon, they wrote up a letter and sent it to all the other churches telling them their decision. This doesn’t sound anything like Protestantism. But it does sound very much like a Catholic Council.
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Nicea325
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What Bible did Christians use in 70 A.D.? The OT right? So how can they only use the Bible when the NT was not even complete? Second,when and where does the Bible say Christianity is book-only faith?
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Link0126
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Exactly. And come to think of it, the version of the OT that most of the early Christians used was the Septuagint, which included the 7 books rejected by the protestants. Despite their claim they simply are not more like the Christians as described in the Bible.
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