We are told to be like the Bereans to avoid false teaching and to know what is true in light if Scripture…right?
The Bereans also listened to the Holy Tradition of the Apostles, or else they never would have become Christians. What they saw in the Scriptures (holy writings - what we call
the Bible did not yet exist; the Bible came into existence by the infallible decree of Pope Innocent I, in about 405 AD) was the prophetic message about Jesus - but they did not see anywhere that said that Jesus would overturn the ceremonial law. If they had been going by “Scripture alone” (there was no canon, so they really didn’t even have a defined notion of Scripture - it was simply “the holy writings” which varied in number between the various different Jewish communities of the time), they would have rejected Christ and the Apostles, because Christ and the Apostles commanded things that were opposite to or not in line with the Law of Moses.
However; I do agree that we end up with a thousand and one interpretations, you can see that all over this forum for example. The question becomes why? The Bible answers this in no uncertain terms. 1 Corinthians 2:12-15 12 “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, **so that we may know **the things freely given to us by God, 13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual {thoughts} with spiritual {words.} 14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.”
Do you understand what Paul just said?
Yes; he said that we must not lean on our own interpretation, but we must hear the Holy Spirit, which moves through the leadership of Paul himself and the other Apostles - the Catholic Church leadership.
I guess Moses was Catholic…do you listen to your self?
Moses had no concept of a “Bible.” His writings, which in the late 300s AD became included in the Catholic Bible, were used in the liturgies of Jewish worship and studied by the Rabbis, and of course they were seen as being very special, and set apart, but that’s how they were referred to - the writings, or the books, of Moses. Moses
himself had no holy books of
any kind to read - he was the first one to write anything down. He certainly would never have used the phrase, “Go and look that up in the Bible.”
That is showing you have a lower view of Scripture than one ought to. The Bible claims that it is Supreme in authority and infallible; so to say something is of equal value is an insult to the author of Scripture, which is not the Catholic Church, but the Holy Spirit.
The Bible never says any such thing; in fact, it says that the pillar and bulwark of Truth is the Catholic Church, (ekklisia kaholoika) in I Timothy 3:15.
**Isaiah 29:13 **Therefore the Lord said: "Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths And honor Me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me, And their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men, - sound familiar?
I have never seen what is wrong with saying the right words. I don’t think Isaiah is condemning the people for saying the right words - rather, he wants them to both say the right words, and mean them. But it’s still better to say the right words for the wrong reasons, than to say the wrong words, even for what may seem like good reasons. It is not “more virtuous” to sin openly than it is to sin in secret, or to not know what’s going on.
I and my church members accept the authority of God as revealed in Scripture; not a “Church” made of fallible people.
Every time you pick up a Bible and say, “This is Holy Scripture,” you are simply repeating the infallible words of Pope Innocent I, when he compiled together the 46 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament, and declared them infallibly to be the Bible.
What happens if we don’t have that single standard?.. then anything goes and does…then who is to say which revelation(s) outside of Scripture are correct?
What Christ did was “outside of Scripture” at the time that He did it. Should we reject it, on that basis? The books that were written about Christ in the decades following His death and resurrection did not become “Scripture” until nearly 400 years later.
It was the Catholic Church who declared these things to be true, and these books to be inspired of the Holy Spirit.
