What is the biggest dispute?

[gurneyhalleck1]

You’ll get no argument from me on that whatsoever, T.U. I know the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is a conservative Lutheran body (one whom I respect as far as Protestantism goes) but many of my Lutheran friends and acquantances tell me that the call for ordaining women and loosening things up in LCMS is turning some of them off. But I wouldn’t just open the Bible and point out a verse to justify my argument anyway because for every one verse I pluck, some liberal can pluck some other verse in the context he wishes and so on and so forth. Or I could, as a Lutheran, say, “hey, they spoke in tongues and had prophets in Paul’s church, let’s reinstate that…and let’s seperate the women and men and make women wear veils, etc.” Everyone has a different take on the Scriptures, that’s why I don’t buy into sola scriptura. From where you’re sitting it all seems easy, common sense, but we can see by all the myriad droves of break-offs, splinters and fractures, First Cornerstone Reassembled Holy Harvest East Church of the Saviour type churches that opinions about Scripture are like belly buttons, everybody has one. I’m stickin’ with Rome. I know what you’ll say, I’m just stickin’. Notice I cleaned up that opinions cliche. This is a family show! LOL…

Well, let me ask you a question, gurney. When it comes to the mainline groups, like the ELCA or PCUSA, that adopted the liberal and apostate positions you described… does it take an infallible church body to say “wait a minute, what about 1 Corinthians 6:9?” You have to remember when it comes to “churches” like that, they begin with the presupposition that Scripture is not the infallible, inerrant word of God. They believe it to be a fully human document that is a product of its time, yet is full of pithy moral lessons and social activism. So how can they even seriously figure into the debate of proper, apostolic interpretation, when they don’t even believe that the prophets and apostles actually revealed anything through it?

 

[Bluegoat]

Gotcha. Now I understand your context. But what happens when the “community” of the faithful turns apostate and liberal? In the ELCA the majority of the community has gone loony with ordaining practicing homosexuals, women pastors, and abortion and other things are becoming common place values. How does one trust the community made up of fallible people who will interpret and spin the Scriptures to fit the current agenda and the secular age they live in? I’m reminded of GK Chesterton’s statement that the Catholic Church is the only thing that keeps a man from becoming a child of his own age. The Episcopalians, ELCA Lutherans, some liberal Methodists, and several other formerly “mainline” Protestant groups have fallen in this direction…children of their age…

Or apostate and non-liberal?

There were ways they dealt with this sort of thing in the early centuries of the church. Modern Bishops should probably be glad they aren’t really considered the thing any more.

If whole sections of the church become apostate, which is by no means a modern phenomena, then those people have made their choice about where they see the truth, haven’t they? Catholicism and Orthodoxy really haven’t managed to escape this conundrum - the individual still needs to figure out where truth is residing. The hierarchy may say - we are the ones that only teach truth - but we still have to evaluate that claim as individuals, and re-evaluate it any number of times. We can’t know it’s true in any final and totally objective way.

In the past, even when whole communities, or the majority of the Church, was apostate, Christianity did not fail.

 

[TriuneUnity]

You’ll get no argument from me on that whatsoever, T.U. I know the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is a conservative Lutheran body (one whom I respect as far as Protestantism goes) but many of my Lutheran friends and acquantances tell me that the call for ordaining women and loosening things up in LCMS is turning some of them off.

That’s true, and if that ever happens, as individual believers, we choose to go somewhere else that teaches according to Scriptural revelation about those issues.

But I wouldn’t just open the Bible and point out a verse to justify my argument anyway because for every one verse I pluck, some liberal can pluck some other verse in the context he wishes and so on and so forth.

Yes, but your very statement answers the question. If the person is taking the Bible out of context in order to suit their own personal agenda, anyone who reads the words of the Bible in their context can see that that is what the liberal is doing. I do not agree with saying that the Holy Spirit is required in order to understand what the text is saying. The rules of grammar that apply to any other document also applies to Scripture. There is no Holy Spirit Greek, as they say.

Or I could, as a Lutheran, say, “hey, they spoke in tongues and had prophets in Paul’s church, let’s reinstate that…and let’s seperate the women and men and make women wear veils, etc.” Everyone has a different take on the Scriptures, that’s why I don’t buy into sola scriptura. From where you’re sitting it all seems easy, common sense, but we can see by all the myriad droves of break-offs, splinters and fractures, First Cornerstone Reassembled Holy Harvest East Church of the Saviour type churches that opinions about Scripture are like belly buttons, everybody has one. I’m stickin’ with Rome. I know what you’ll say, I’m just stickin’. Notice I cleaned up that opinions cliche. This is a family show! LOL…

LOL… I wouldn’t try and persuade you to leave Rome to go to First Family Foursquare Bible Church Holy Ghost Worship Center. To convince you to go to St. Martin Luther of the Anabaptist Underwater for 10 Minutes Church, that’s a different story