SS practicing Christian: What do you say Scripture is?

[alwayswill]

Hmmm… this is a difficult question to get a straight answer.

I did NOT ask about approval from men. I am asking about authority from God. Do you have authority from God to preach interpretations which are contrary to what the Church has Confirmed?

if by Church you mean the Roman Catholic Church : then yes I absolutely have authority
to preach interpretations which are contrary to what the Roman Catholic Church has Confirmed

I am commanded by Christ to…
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

I have never preached or taught an interpretation that is contrary to the whole council of Scripture.

I will never preach interpretations which are the Roamn Catholic Church has Confirmed but is contrary to Scripture.

If I agreed with all the interpretations which Catholic Church has Confirmed I would be Catholic.

 

[clem456]

if by Church you mean the Roman Catholic Church : then yes I absolutely have authority
to preach interpretations which are contrary to what the Roman Catholic Church has Confirmed

You receive this authority from…?
You will say scriipture itself below, which also must evidently give me authority if it gives you authority. In fact any Jane Blow can claim it, which by definition means it is not authority, if everyone claims to have it. If everyone has it, it is authority compared to what exactly???

I am commanded by Christ to…
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

You realize authority here refers to Christ? Not to the bible alone.

I have never preached or taught an interpretation that is contrary to the whole council of Scripture.

And you know this because?
This is a preposterous claim to make.

I will never preach interpretations which are the Roamn Catholic Church has Confirmed but is contrary to Scripture.

And how would you know? What if someone says you are contrary to scripture?

This is radical individualism.

 

[jmcrae]

Forgive me rc if I am interrupting here but since you did not yet get an answer I thought I might chance it. If the “I” in your question is a Catholic I would say you do not have the authority to preach it unless you want out of the Catholic church. If your not Catholic you have just as much authority to teach it as any man. Am I wrong?

How much authority would that be, then?

Where does this authority come from? How is it regulated? Who gives it and who takes it away? How can you know who has it and who doesn’t have it?

 

[rcwitness]

I probably muddied the water for which I apologize. To be honest rc, I am not sure that I believe there is any one church or denomination that has 100% of all things figured out exactly right 100%.

it’s ok. I know you are seeking. And you know I am seeking in areas that I don’t understand (referring to the meat on Friday thread, which I have trouble justifying with Colossians 2).

I do believe the Church has an office of authority, and I don’t believe it’s only relative to local churches. We can appeal to the “Supreme Court” of the Church for holy confirmation.

This doesn’t mean we are constantly relying on her to know what the Spirit Teaches. But we must accept that we have a body which we belong to. Jesus is our head, if we are personally in communion with His body. We are to be a Lawful people, even if the law of love, forgiveness and mercy are always necessary. It’s not a pretense to be without His govenment.

 

[alwayswill]

You receive this authority from…?
You will say scriipture itself below, which also gives me authority, in fact any Jane Blow can claim it, which be definition means it is not authority, if everyone has it.

You realize authority here refers to Christ? Not to the bible alone.
And you know this because?
This is a preposterous claim to make.

And how would you know? What if someone says you are contrary to scripture?

This is radical individualism.

and how do you know you are interpreting Amoris Laetitiae correctly?

and how do you know you are interpreting Unam sanctam correctly?

 

[jmcrae]

yes; I have the approval of that particular community to preach/ teach

Where did they get that authority, to be able to give to you?

or I can stand on a street corner and preach.

And who gives you that authority? What protects you from preaching heresy? Who corrects you if you misunderstand something and preach incorrectly? Are you accountable to God for any souls who are led astray by your incorrect preaching, if that happens?

 

[jmcrae]

and how do you know you are interpreting Amoris Laetitiae correctly?

If there is something I don’t understand, I can ask my Bishop, and if he doesn’t know, he will ask the author of the document, the Pope.

and how do you know you are interpreting Unam sanctam correctly?

By the teaching of my Bishop.

We don’t read or interpret in a vacuum. We have an interpretive community (the Bishops) who help us understand these things. We don’t sit in a room all by ourselves and try to figure everything out all alone.

 

[alwayswill]

Where did they get that authority, to be able to give to you?

And who gives you that authority? What protects you from preaching heresy? Who corrects you if you misunderstand something and preach incorrectly? Are you accountable to God for any souls who are led astray by your incorrect preaching, if that happens?

nothing stops me form preaching heresy.

Nothing stop Catholics from reaching complete opposite interpretations of Catholic teachings

Nothing stops Voris from saying Liberal Catholics are preaching heresy:
Nothing stop NCR from saying conservative Catholics are preaching heresy:

and yes; I am accountable to God for any souls who are led astray by my incorrect preaching, and so is the Catholic Church

 

[alwayswill]

If there is something I don’t understand, I can ask my Bishop, and if he doesn’t know, he will ask the author of the document, the Pope.

By the teaching of my Bishop.

We don’t read or interpret in a vacuum. We have an interpretive community (the Bishops) who help us understand these things. We don’t sit in a room all by ourselves and try to figure everything out all alone.

We don’t interpret is a vacuum either

Scripture is considered the primary source and standard for Christian doctrine.
**Tradition is experience and the witness of development and growth of the faith through the past centuries and in many nations and cultures. **
Experience is the individual’s understanding and appropriating of the faith in the light of his or her own life.
Through reason the individual Christian brings to bear on the Christian faith discerning and cogent thought.
These four elements taken together bring the individual Christian to a mature and fulfilling understanding of the Christian faith and the required response of worship and service

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

 

[jmcrae]

if by Church you mean the Roman Catholic Church : then yes I absolutely have authority
to preach interpretations which are contrary to what the Roman Catholic Church has Confirmed

I am commanded by Christ to…
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

If you are interpreting the “you” as meaning, the person reading the words, rather than the Disciples, and you are thinking that this literalistically means YOU, the reader, then how did YOU the reader get commands from Christ that you are now being commissioned to teach?

I have never preached or taught an interpretation that is contrary to the whole council of Scripture.

If you have no authority outside yourself and your own idea of what you think God would say, then how would you even know whether you had done so, or not?

I will never preach interpretations which are the Roman Catholic Church has Confirmed but is contrary to Scripture.

The Roman Catholic Church wrote the New Testament and set the canon of the Bible. There is nothing in it that is contrary to Roman Catholic teaching, since it is a Roman Catholic book.

If I agreed with all the interpretations which Catholic Church has Confirmed I would be Catholic.

Yes, you would. You would also have the assurance that you agree with the Apostles and with Jesus about the meaning of the words.

 

[Wannano]

If there is something I don’t understand, I can ask my Bishop, and if he doesn’t know, he will ask the author of the document, the Pope.

By the teaching of my Bishop.

We don’t read or interpret in a vacuum. We have an interpretive community (the Bishops) who help us understand these things. We don’t sit in a room all by ourselves and try to figure everything out all alone.

And with all due respect I have read several posts at caf that indicate the person does not agree with this or that that the Pope has put forward and they have no plan to change their mind.

 

[rcwitness]

if by Church you mean the Roman Catholic Church : then yes I absolutely have authority

How do you know this?

to preach interpretations which are contrary to what the Roman Catholic Church has Confirmed

And this?

I am commanded by Christ to…
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

You realize He was talking to the Apostles? And only those “sent” through them had His authority.

I have never preached or taught an interpretation that is contrary to the whole council of Scripture.

By who’s authority do you make this claim?

I will never preach interpretations which are the Roamn Catholic Church has Confirmed but is contrary to Scripture.

I don’t think anyone will…

If I agreed with all the interpretations which Catholic Church has Confirmed I would be Catholic.

Sure, I realize.

 

[clem456]

and how do you know you are interpreting Amoris Laetitiae correctly?

and how do you know you are interpreting Unam sanctam correctly?

I defer to those who know what they are talking about.
Competence and authority. Community.
We are not isolated individuals asserting our way through life.

There is no other area of life where people act on their own individualistic prowess.
A physics lecturer gets a degree at least.
Do you not consider the transmission of your faith of at least as much weight as a physics class?

 

[rcwitness]

And with all due respect I have read several posts at caf that indicate the person does not agree with this or that that the Pope has put forward and they have no plan to change their mind.

remember, “what the pope puts forward” is not necessarily Infallible. Like I said before, he is not Infallible. And Catholics aren’t always good Catholics.

 

[jmcrae]

We don’t interpret is a vacuum either

Scripture is considered the primary source and standard for Christian doctrine.
**Tradition is experience and the witness of development and growth of the faith through the past centuries and in many nations and cultures. **

Wesley followed tradition. He baptized infants, required families to attend Church services on Sundays, acknowledged that Holy Communion is a Sacrament, forbade divorce, homosexuality, and birth control, and appointed Bishops to regulate the preaching in his churches. He affirmed the Apostles’ Creed and prayed the Lord’s Prayer.

Do you follow tradition like he did?

Experience is the individual’s understanding and appropriating of the faith in the light of his or her own life.

I agree. An authentic Christian life is experienced in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer, Scripture reading, and the Sacraments.

What is your experience of Christ? Is the “Jesus” you follow a buddy-buddy who winks at your sins and affirms you in heresy? Or do you confess your sins and follow the teaching of the Apostles in order to come to know the real Jesus?

Through reason the individual Christian brings to bear on the Christian faith discerning and cogent thought.

Catholics would certainly not disagree with this.

Indeed, without the assumptions about the Universe that are given to us by the Roman Catholic faith, neither engineering nor mathematics would be able to exist, since both are predicated on the assumption that God created a rational universe with rules that never change.

These four elements taken together bring the individual Christian to a mature and fulfilling understanding of the Christian faith and the required response of worship and service

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

I have always liked John Wesley and I think he would have made a good Catholic.

 

[jmcrae]

And with all due respect I have read several posts at caf that indicate the person does not agree with this or that that the Pope has put forward and they have no plan to change their mind.

You are correct that such “Catholics” are no better than Protestants, and are a scandal to the Church.

 

[SyroMalankara]

The last Two pages saw the elevation of the Bible to Quranic proportion. This is not the Christian faith handed down to us from the Apostles. This is the Islamic idea of the ‘eternal Quran’ taken to an absurd protestant context. Now Writ isn’t the written Scripture but an Eternal figure coequal to the Trinity.

 

[Abu]

Wannano #419
To be honest rc, I am not sure that I believe there is any one church or denomination that has 100% of all things figured out exactly right 100%.

As you know that the Son of God founded His Church, and no other, on St Peter, you should know also that She teaches infallibly only as Ecumenical Council Vatican I defined – for infallibility to be exercised the Pope must teach as the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor Aeternus), 1870, defined:
(a) ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter), that is as Shepherd and Teacher of all Christians,
(b) speaking with Peter’s apostolic authority to the whole Church,
(c) defining a doctrine of faith and morals.

And with all due respect I have read several posts at caf that indicate the person does not agree with this or that that the Pope has put forward and they have no plan to change their mind.

Such an attitude, if it be on dogma or doctrine, changes nothing that Christ has taught through His Catholic Church, but would make such a person a dissenter.

 

[jmcrae]

nothing stops me form preaching heresy.

Nothing stop Catholics from reaching complete opposite interpretations of Catholic teachings

The Catholic has a way of knowing whether he is doing so or not, though. You don’t have any way of knowing, one way or the other, whether your interpretation is what God actually intended to convey.

Nothing stops Voris from saying Liberal Catholics are preaching heresy:

And he is well aware that he is outside the mainstream of Catholic thought.

Nothing stop NCR from saying conservative Catholics are preaching heresy:

They, too, are well aware of their situation.

and yes; I am accountable to God for any souls who are led astray by my incorrect preaching, and so is the Catholic Church.

The difference is that the Catholic Church takes all kinds of trouble to make sure that its message is consistent with that of Jesus and the Apostles, by comparing them to what was actually taught by the Early Church.

You don’t even have access to any of that material.

 

[alwayswill]

The Catholic has a way of knowing whether he is doing so or not, though. You don’t have any way of knowing, one way or the other, whether your interpretation is what God actually intended to convey.

.

and yet Catholics disagree on the meaning of the teachings of the RCC (not the rejection of the teachings; but the interpretation of the teachings)

Protestant model:
The highest authority is Scripture:
Catholics and Protestants agree it is impossible for Scripture to teach conflicting doctrines
Different Protestants have different beliefs on what the Bible teaches.
Sola Scriptura has not produced unity of belief

The Roman Catholic model
The highest authority is the Roman Catholic Church :
Catholics claim it is impossible for their Church to teach conflicting doctrines
Different Catholics have different beliefs on what the RCC teaches.
Sola Ecclesia has not produced unity of belief.

Can Catholics admit that the “well catechized” Catholics personally interpret the teachings of their authority (which is the Catholic Church) and reach different conclusions?