“That, dear eal, is acting as your own personal magisterium, which I think you think is a bad thing.”
Must disagree. No where in God’s Word to the church is there a magisterium between the Scriptures and the believer.
***
Well, we’ve seen many times over how people have ‘interpreted’ Scripture to mean what they want it to say and not what it actually says. See: Pope Frank, liberal so-called theologians, et cetera.
On the other hand, if we all have to agree to put just one entity’s interpretation as foremost and demand that we have to believe THAT in order to be saved, that runs a serious risk of the gospel getting corrupted, and then no one will have the truth.
It’s good that we have Scripture—Prophetic and Apostolic teaching, much of which is directly from the Lord—in the original languages that we can compare our theology to. But as we’ve seen in other threads, even people who believe in the primacy of Scripture can come to loggerheads over points of doctrine.
It’s not an easy problem to deal with.
And what did they have before Scripture was written.
The word of mouth, person to person, spread the Gospel — this is called Holy Tradition.
“It’s good that we have Scripture—Prophetic and Apostolic teaching, much of which is directly from the Lord—in the original languages that we can compare our theology to. But as we’ve seen in other threads, even people who believe in the primacy of Scripture can come to loggerheads over points of doctrine.”
And thankfully, the disagreements among believers are about non-essential issues.