The Rules of Sola Scriptura

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Whit,

I missed this part of your post:

"From Chapter 31 (Of Synods and Councils), I would add the following rules:

Synods and Councils along with tradition is useful to settle controversies or questions and to aid in Scirpture interpretation, but they are subject to the condition of Ferd’s rule 3a."

Let’s zero in on that. Zactly how are they useful or used? When does an ultimate authority allow a subordinate one to speak in a way binding on believers in a religious body?

You also said:

"I would revise rule 2 to read:

“Revelation is ordinarily closed.”"

What do you mean by that?

Cordially,

Ferd
 
deovindice,

I guess I should have clarified. I meant that you will not believe “purely” Catholic theology. The items you mentioned such as the Trinity, etc I regard as Christian theology which includes Catholics and Protestants.

Jesus said “a house divivded against itself cannot stand”. You cannot believe that The Pope is the Anti-Christ and still accept any purely Catholic theology because it comes from The AntiChrist or his predecessor or his Church. Just as you or I cannot accept any purely Islamic theology. Dispite you claim to judge only on Scripture merit, you would be “divided against your self”.
The debate is pointless.
 
Mornin’ all,

I think this project needs a name. Something on the order of The Manhattan Project. Or what was the name of the computer that the Russian chess camp played? Deep Blue or something? How about the Norddakotah Project (with a nod to my home state) or Deep Purple (for no apparent reason)?

Anyway, it seems that the principles of SS can be organized topically around the attributes or perfections of Scripture.

I. Divinely Inspired
A. Canon definition
II. Infallible
III. Ultimately authoritative
IV. Solely Sufficient
V. Perspicuous

Because it is so important to all the Reformers unnerstanding of hte Bible, I am going to add the following as a primary category for the Rules"

VI. Sola Fide
 
Norddakotah Project cont’d:

Actually, the canon definition sorta stands by itself, so I thing we have a total of 7 organizing principles:

I. Divinely Inspired
II. Canon definition
III. Infallible
IV. Ultimately authoritative
V. Solely Sufficient
VI. Perspicuous
VII. Sola Fide
 
So here we go with our development, in no particular order:

I. Divinely Inspired
II. Canon definition
A. The 66 Books of the Prot Bible only.
B. Regard the Deuerocanonicals as fallible works of men.
III. Infallible
A. OT subordinate to NT?
B. Scripture itself is the only infallible judge of its meaning.
IV. Ultimately authoritative
A. All other authorites are subordinate
1. Church
2. Tradition
3. Creeds, Councils, Canons
4. Reason, history, etc.
B. Relative importance of the subordinate authorities?
C. Rules for admitting a teaching of a subordinated authority.
1. Council teachings prior to a certain date?
2. Consensus?
V. Solely Sufficient
A. Scope. Sufficient for what purposes?
1. Salvation
2. Other?
VI. Perspicuous
B. If it isn’t self evident or deducible from Scripture, do not accept as infallible truth.
VII. Sola Fide
A. Reformt Unnerstanding of it? Luderan?
B. Reject any interpretation that contradicts SF.

Whaddyall think?

Cordially,

ferd
 
I. Divinely Inspired
II. Canon definition
A. The 66 Books of the Prot Bible only.
B. Regard the Deuerocanonicals as fallible works of men.
III. Infallible
A. OT subordinate to NT?
B. Scripture itself is the only infallible judge of its meaning.
C. Infallible in what sense? Absolutely every in the Bible is objectively true?
IV. Ultimately authoritative
A. All other authorites are subordinate (test everything against Scripture)
  1. Church
  2. Tradition
  3. Creeds, Councils, Canons
  4. Reason, history, etc.
    B. Relative importance of the subordinate authorities?
    C. Rules for admitting a teaching of a subordinated authority.
  5. Council teachings prior to a certain date?
  6. Consensus?
  7. ???
    V. Solely Sufficient
    A. Scope. Sufficient for what purposes?
  8. Salvation
  9. Other?
    VI. Perspicuous
    B. If it isn’t self evident or deducible from Scripture, do not accept as infallible truth.
  10. ???
    VII. Sola Fide
    A. Reformt Unnerstanding of it? Luderan?
    B. Reject any interpretation that contradicts SF.
It is apparent to me now that some rules logically flow from more than one attribute, so where I am pigeon-holing the rules isn’t necessarily hard and fast.

It also apparent that we need someone expert in hermeneutics at this point. But since I am not, I will proceed with some common sense guesses, focussing on what would come under VI. B. We could work with relative degrees agreement/disagreement with Scripture and certainty, ranging from self-evidently in agreement to self-evidently in disagreement. e.g.

S/A agree
Strongly Agree
More likely than not agree
Equivocal (plausible argument either way)
More likely than not disagree
Strongly Disargree
S/A disagree
 
But we still have to answer how we arrive at the one or other of the above conclusions.

It does seem, too, the rules interact with each other, and there will have to be rules about that. So maybe at this point we need to pretend we are the computer actually testing some belief or other and get a feel for the flow of steps involved.
 
Hmmm

Let’s assume, just for convenience, that our SS Engine has access to The Database of Christian Beliefs and Practices. (Caffeine is really starting to kick in folks) This data therein consists of the totality of what is believe by every denomination, broken down into categories: Christology, Ecclesiology, Soteriology, etc. and into discrete, bite-sized chunks of information. [For the sake of the people who will compile this info, I will graciously stipulate that the number of denoms is 33. and not tens of thousands]

So take a bit of data from The Database and feed it into our SS Engine. Proposition X, by virtue of being already computerized, will be already in grammatical form, so we don’t have to mess with that.

Now at this point, it seems we could save some work by doing a quick search to see if X belongs to the set of already accepted beliefs. For example, coming from a confessional type tradition, we don’t have reinvent the wheel on some stuff like the Trinity. So maybe that would be the first test given to any X.
 
Let’s say that it isn’t within that set of pre-accepted, already qualified beliefs. Then, in accordance with our cardinal rule of SS, we test it against Scripture. To do that we have our scriptural database, of course, and an ability to search it to find those parts of scripture relevant to X. If the proposition being tested is “right on point” with a given passage or scripture, then it can get labelled either self-evidently in agreement or in disagreement, depending on the particular case. If a determination can be made through a clear path of deduction leading to one conclusion, then I suppose it still could be considered self evident. Beyond that, I’m not sure what we end up doing. We need some way to categorize X along the continuum of certainty. We also need to decide what degree of certainty is needed before X is put in the binding dogma category.

Time to get ready for work.
 
[still talking to mahself] Referring back to the Database of Christian Beliefs and Practices, it would be helpful if, in addition to compiling and organizing each denom’s beliefs, each respondent denom would justify each article of faith. IOW, we would keep asking them why, why, why until they can’t answer anymore. That way we tell what the basis is of each belief, whether logic, tradition, bible, Luther, etc. Here’s a thought, if any given belief depended, even in part on tradition or some other extra-biblical authority, could it qualify as dawgma or a belief proposed to be binding on the faithful?
 
“We need some way to categorize X along the continuum of certainty. We also need to decide what degree of certainty is needed before X is put in the binding dogma category.”

Let’s focus on these two questions for a bit:
  1. Whence cometh certitude?
  2. What makes a teaching worthy of being made binding on the believer?
I think something is certain when:
  1. It is obvious or self evident.
  2. It is sufficiently proven by reason and/or evidence.
  3. It is clearly taught by an infallible authority.
In our SS Engine we are concerned with determining whether s.t. is taught by Scripture (with certain excpetions–See set of pre-accepted beliefs). The problem is, given the limitations of the human mind, some issues are not clear-cut. IOW, even after we apply accepted rules of hermeneutics, there can be multiple plausible interpretations. At this point I see no other alternative than appealing to consensus to resolve it. But what degree of consensus and which body are we polling? Since we seem to be working within the Reformed tradition, let’s stick with that. One possiblity is to survey existing writings on a subject. Tap into what the denominational experts, those purporting to write within this tradition, say. Then tally up the scores, and the majority position wins?
 
To what extent should consensus be used?

But we know from history that consensus can lead us horribly astray (e.g. the Arian heresy). Hmmm

I am creating problems as I go along here, but let’s not be discouraged. We aren’t, after all, trying to devise the ultimate truth detector. This is more of a modelling exercise to get an understanding of what kind of intelligence is needed to make any given tradition work.

So maybe the better exercise is to work backwards, reverse-engineer as it were, from a body of beliefs and construct the bases of those beliefs.
 
“Here’s a thought, if any given belief depended, even in part on tradition or some other extra-biblical authority, could it qualify as dawgma or a belief proposed to be binding on the faithful?”

E.G. If my belief in X depends on this particular way of interpreting Scripture which I choose because of historical evidence, or because this expert says so, then can I make that belief binding dawgma? This type of thing, seems to me, is inescapable. Hmm.
 
Let’s redefine our Project.

Begin with the Database of Christian Beliefs and Practices. The unit of observation is the denomination. We will let each denom define itself. Each denom’s beliefs and practices will be identified, categorized according to theology, soteriology, bibliology, etc., and each component will be explained and justified. I.E. the basis of each will be laid bare for all to see. We will ultimately ID the presuppositions, underlying authorities, and the chain of logic for each.

Then we will focus on just one denom, say one coming out of the Reformed tradition, we will try and discern all the different rules which produced this set of beliefs and practices. IOW, we will focus on how a denom acts, what it realy does, how it really thinks.

that would be an interesting study.
 
One neat thing about thought experiments is that we can do anything we want.

For the moment, let’s imagine that we have compiled our DB of Christian Beliefs (DBCB) in which we have exhaustively catalogued each denom’s beliefs and laid bare theri innards, so to speak, so we plainly see the justification for each belief.

It occurs to me that then we could identify which version of SS any given denom practices. On the one extreme we would find the real whacko radicals who purport to adhere to only Scripture. On the other end we would find those tending toward Catholicism, if not practicing just like Cats whether they acknowledge it not.

But I think, even on the extreme, Tradition 0 or solo scriptura end of the spectrum, we will still notice these things:
  1. You cannot construct that denom’s body of beliefs without certain traditions taken as given. Nobody reinvents every wheel.
  2. The traditions accepted as dogma will be deemed “biblical” even though they are not self-evident.
  3. Every denom has a magisterium. Actually, even the “Bible and me alone” types have a teaching authority: ME!.
  4. Because the SS rule of faith, however defined, will subordinate the Church and other extra-biblical authorities to a certain interpretation of the Bible, the final authority rests with the individual in those areas where he feels scripture conflicts with that authority.
  5. All denoms will have their dogmas or non-negotiable beliefs. To one degree or another they will deem something dogmatic even if it depends on extrabiblical authority.
 
The most plausible SS proponent is one that acknowledges he operates just like Catholics do (with the bible, tradtion and teach authority), but simply maintains that his belief system is the right one and that the christian body known as the Catholic Church, while it has been right in many instances, simply got it wrong on SF.

This takes a different understanding of church than what Cats are used to.
 
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