Posted on 08/30/2009 2:03:16 PM PDT by NYer
“Y’all understand that instinctively already. That’s why you quote Spurgeon and Calvin to one another. Once you do that, you’re already admitting the utility of tradition. Now the only question becomes ... whose tradition. “
Completely false. In my 35+ years as a Protestant, I’ve never heard anyone say, “Luther/Calvin/Spurgeon said it; I believe it!” We quote COMMENTATORS who provide ARGUMENTS, not AUTHORITIES.
If the arguments are persuasive, then we change. If not, we do not.
“To reject tradition means that you have to assert, in effect, that the Holy Spirit guides you, but hasn’t been guiding other Christians continuously over the past two millennia. If he did guide them, you should listen to them.”
The Holy Spirit guides, but we are all men of flesh who find reasons not to listen. ALL men discussing doctrine mix good and bad. That is why our rule of truth is scripture - it alone comes from God without human error.
Luther’s writings (and Augustine’s) are interesting. God’s writings are revealed truth. The latter judges the former.
Using the practice of those who deny scripture to judge those of us who do not is like judging the Catholic Church for the positions of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi.
Sola Scriptura doesn’t mean evil men cannot twist words for their purposes. On the contrary - it is repeatedly predicted in scripture, so Sola Scriptura anticipates it.
“So we confidently look to our older brothers and sisters for their wisdom and guidance, because we are not so afraid that God will abandon us, His family. We are not afraid.”
Here! Here! Very beautifully said! Thank you.
Which would include everything following said by the author or commentary by any Protestant pastor or author, no?
When words are taken out of context and misinterpreted it causes confusion and that is why all Scripture can be used to help in our understanding of it. Not just reading one verse, but starting at the beginning of a chapter of the book to get the sense of purpose for the writings. The Holy Spirit is the must important part because, as we study the Word he brings understanding to us.
This Bible study, reading should never be done for idle curiosity but prayerfully and meditatively with a heart seeking after God's truth. As an example, I can tell you the Bible says "god is dead". But the verse actually says "A fool in his heart says God is dead." That's a simple way of showing the point of words in context meaning what they say. Another way may be you read something Jesus said that doesn't make sense to you. You could look up the verse where Jesus spoke maybe in another Gospel about the same subject and see if the wording is a little clearer.
As far as what Scripture were meant for which group, etc. we should read it all because there are parts that God is using to speak directly to a person about something but the truth of what is spoken applies to us as well. How many people quote the 23 Psalm when they are in a bad place. It was written by David to the Lord yet anyone who reads it feels like it was meant for them personally. I see it as God's Love Letter to US and he will ensure it is preserved for all Eternity.
Isaiah 40:8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
Because Christ founded the Catholic Church and protects it from error in teaching to this day. It is His promise.
It's all right there in Scripture.
Bzzzzt.
Fail.
Where does Scripture say sola Scriptura?
Oh wait, it doesn't......how ironic: a doctrine which fails its own test.
Precisely! And that's exactly the problem with the article.
You seem like a curious, open-minded person, who wants to know when and why such an idea can take root in the Church. Well, the only way to answer that question is to study history. Christian history specifically. We need to go back to the earliest generations of Christians, read what they wrote, and trace the development of their ideas down the centuries. In other words, you have to study Patristics. The Church Fathers.
Now here's the problem that many people, including the author of this article, run up against.
When you read the Church Fathers, you find something that is, to many people including myself, rather surprising. You very often see distinctively Catholic idea *right from the beginning*. So you'll read, for instance, Irenaeus of Lyons writing already in the 160s-170s that it was a matter of necessity--necessity--that every Church be in agreement with the Church of Rome because of its foundation by Peter and Paul and because it preserved the Apostolic doctrine in its purity from the very beginning. You read Clement of Rome in the 90s writing to the Corinthians taking an unusually authoritative tone with them. You see Ignatius of Antioch writing with authority to all these different sees until he writes to Rome, where he suddenly becomes deferential. You read in Eusebius that Victor, bishop of Rome in the 190s was threatening to excommunicate the East for its Quartodeciman observance of Easter date.
And this is all way before Constantine. Way before Christianity was even legalized in the Empire. This was the time of the catacombs, of the persecutions.
Basically, most people who read these writings find that they show a much more "Catholic" Church than they might expect. And there's a range of responses to that. Some people adopt a little more of a tolerant attitude and respect toward the Catholic distinctives (I think C.S. Lewis is in this class). Others actually convert. What the author of this article has done, however, I think is a little goofy. He looks at these early Christian writings saying these things that he finds a little too "Catholic" and he says..."Well...they are obviously heretics! We shouldn't listen to them!"
That's what's wrong with the article. Instead of revisiting his own assumptions about what the early Church was like, he just labels these folks heretics. Which begs the question--if all these guys were heretics, then who back then was orthodox?
So if you think it would indeed be helpful to find out when all these Roman Catholic ideas originated, I would advise you to do what others have done who have looked into this question and read the Church Fathers yourself. I can't know of course what your response will be to what you read. But not a few people, myself included, who have done so have come to the conclusion that these ideas were contained in the Church from the very beginning.
No Churches, no preachers, no pamphlets, and tracts. No posts on FR asserting Sola Scriptura. No "homecomings", no "Revivals, no stewardship campaigns.
Jesus says to Martha, "One thing is needful; Mary has chosen the good portion," but strangely fails to mention that the "one thing" is the Bible.
And, of course, the whole conversation displays the "binary" preoccupation of the crypto-Manicheans. "Only this one thing." "If it's not necessary, it is harmful."
Oh well. If people are offered butter and insist on margarine, we can still love them, and let them know there's butter for their bread should they ever want it.
Also, technically, we hold that revelation stopped when the last Apostle shuffled off the mortal coil. So the writers assertion:
The teaching of the “church fathers” does not contain one jot or tittle of divine revelation.is a yawner for us. We never said it did.
Then he suggests a meaning of "Church Fathers" which is nonsense to us -- and argues against it.
Similarly, mostly the disagreements are disagreements of emphasis, and the persistent problem of the what I am coming to think of as the protestant binary view, an insistence on a simple-minded interpretation and evaluation of a proposition. E.G.: He suggests we teach the false doctrine that Martyrdom provides forgiveness. Now, IF that means that we think the martyr has no need of faith in Christ, of the Holy Spirit in his life, or of Christ's once for all redeeming sacrifice, then it is inaccurate.
But he will be able to find instances of our asserting that we can be confident that, say, Polycarp is in heaven because of his martyrdom. He will spin that one way, while we hear something quite different.
His citing (without references) Tertullian gives an example of the problem of the sledge-hammer approach. Why doesn't he mention that while we look at Tertullian's earlier works as a picture of Xtian thought in his time, we also think that Tertullian became a heretic? It is dishonest to fail to mention that, or to suggest that we teach that "there was a time when the Son of God did not exist."
So he starts this rant by arguing against something we do not think or teach, and then presents evidence for his argument. The entire thing is built on a shaky foundation.
If I were to start an argument against you by saying "There is NO evidence that The apostle Paul was a red-headed parrot," and then provided reams of evidence that Paul was NOT a red-headed parrot, would you take me seriously? That is more or less what this guy does, and that's why I'm laughing.
Your entire post was excellent, but the part above was outstanding!
The author's ENTIRE thesis is that, "if it sounds Catholic" it's automatically heresy and this seems to based upon a predetermined conclusion that Catholicism is heresy. It really is the most intellectually hollow thesis someone can ever have.
It all means nothing if the church does not teach people to be still like Jesus did and the fhu.com is doing today. The church is weak in our society because it has lost the true way to pray where in all power comes through.
I think you might be surprised if you looked into what the Church actually teaches about prayer.
Very well summarized wagglebee, thanks!
The author is judging the Fathers by his own theological standards. That's a fair theological position. It's a horrible *historical* position though. If these beliefs were heresy, why were they never corrected by later Fathers, Fathers who were happy to correct people like Origen or Tertullian on other matters. If they were out of the mainstream of Christian thought, why didn't mainstream Christian thought repudiate them as it repudiated Cerinthus and Arius and everyone else?
The simpler historical explanation is that the Fathers weren't the heretics. Way of Life are the heretics. ;)
Ping for the orthodox laugh of the day. The posts are funny too and not only the protestant ones.... :)
They weren't even "corrected" by any of the Protestant Reformers.
From a historical perspective, modern-day anti-Catholicism requires one to deliberately IGNORE verifiable facts. Here are a few FACTUAL instances:
1. If the Rapture and Dispensationalism is so obvious, why didn't ANYONE make mention of it prior to the 19th century?
2. The basis of sola scriptura is predicated on two fundamental necessities, FIRST that everyone actually has a Bible to read and SECOND that they can actually read it (I'm not talking about having the capacity to interpret it, I mean the simple ability to read it). And the FACT is that neither of these conditions existed for well over 90% of the population prior to the 15th century. Before Gutenberg Bibles simply were unaffordable to all but the wealthiest families, this was not because of some conspiracy by the Church it was simply because the cost of inscribing them by hand was incredible (a true handwritten Torah costs around $40,000 today, but keep in mind that this really only contains the first five Books of what would go into a Bible). Because books were basically unavailable prior to the 15th century, the average person had neither the opportunity nor the reason to learn to read, people learned math that was necessary to their commerce and that was about it. Now, God obviously would have known that Gutenberg would not invent the printing press for fourteen hundred years after the Resurrection; so one must wonder why, if sola scriptura was so vital, He would be so cruel as to wait so song before it became genuinely possible.
“When you read the Church Fathers, you find something that is, to many people including myself, rather surprising. You very often see distinctively Catholic idea *right from the beginning*.”
Incorrect. What you find is that people who read church fathers thru a modern lens can see pretty much whatever they want. There are passages showing they believed in a spiritual approach to Eucharist, and passages from the same authors showing a more literal approach.
Augustine wrote 4 books on how to develop your own personal interpretation of scripture. He argued that difficult passages of scripture should be interpreted by other passages of scripture - not by resorting to the ‘church’ interpretation. Did that make him a Protestant?
No, but both Protestants and Catholics can read modern phrases into writing that had nothing to do with it.
When they wrote of the Catholic Church, they did NOT mean the Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope over all. When someone under Rome’s jurisdiction talked of the Bishop of Rome being supreme, it didn’t mean supreme over other jurisdictions.
It is also obvious that many church fathers had some pretty screwed up doctrine. You don’t have traditions passed down from the Apostles. You have traditions that developed over hundreds of years as various men tried to explain their beliefs.
My reply is to put those traditions to the test of scripture, which seems fair enough if they are to be given equal regard. What is the canon? Which writings are traditions, and which are not? For scripture, the tests were acceptance by all the believers, and intimate association if not directly coming from the hand of an Apostle.
So when people go from praying for the dead - which I’ve done, since the God who knows the future before it happens knew I was going to pray that prayer before the person died - to a belief in Purgatory, with temporal punishment for sins which were forgiven but still need punishment...sorry, that is a leap from faith into denial of the power of God.
All believers didn’t accept Purgatory - see the Orthodox Church, or various others outside Rome’s influence. No Apostle taught it. All scripture denies its basic premise - that God punishes in the afterlife those whom he has forgiven.
Real presence? I see no indication it was widely taught or even thought about by church fathers. And why believe a church father writing in 350 AD over the words of Christ, or the Apostles?
Those who believe tradition is equal to scripture ought to show tradition meets as rigorous a test as scripture. Where is the Apostolic authority for traditions developed hundreds of years later?
“The basis of sola scriptura is predicated on two fundamental necessities, FIRST that everyone actually has a Bible to read and SECOND that they can actually read it”
Incorrect. Sola Scriptura does NOT say everyone has to read the Bible and form their own opinion. It DOES say that church doctrine must be in agreement with scripture.
A teacher who teaches illiterate people from scripture allows all of his listeners to grow IAW Sola Scriptura.
The problem the young church faced wasn’t illiteracy, but vain philosophical fancies.
“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” ( referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” - Colossians 2
Too many have ignored that to their eternal peril.
You mean like the words of John 6 and 1st Corinthians 11?
The reality is that NOBODY even questioned the Real Presence until Calvin came along.
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