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I understand what you are saying, but the fact is that we are not in a position to be directly taught by Paul (or Jesus, or any of the disciples). Words that are not written down but just passed by word of mouth from one person to another tend to get added to, taken away from, and just mixed up, like the children's game of Telephone. The Reformers saw that some of the "traditions" contradicted the truth of the Scripture, and some were obviously the inventions of men (paying for indulgences...) After all, people in high positions can say whatever they want and claim it is the word of God. So the Reformers went back to what they knew they could trust, which was the written word of God.
Which of the written Scriptures were judged to be inspired and why is a different topic.
In the churches that accept Traditions, there is a difference between Traditions ( capital T) , and traditions (lower case t). The Traditions are specifically what came down from the Apostles and early church Fathers. It is set in stone and does not change. Little t traditions are teachings that dont carry the same weight and can be modified by the church over time as they see fit.
One must distinguish between which sort of Tradition or tradition is being discussed with these churches.
Fair enough. I'll go with that definition. I respect that site. I should have processed it more in my mind. I do not disagree with the idea that yes--Scripture is adequate to know God.
It was John Owen that said "If private revelations agree with Scriptures, they are needless. If they disagree, they are false."
Owen's view strikes me as too utilitarian. I mean technically there's a lot of content even in Scripture itself that's not necessary for salvation, but do we just discard it as "needless"? It can still be helpful even if not fundamentally necessary.
Because of that, I don't think "necessity" can be the measuring stick when evaluating private revelation.
You can’t agree with it because of your own religious indoctrination. If you did agree it would mean that very thing that is at the core of your religious beliefs is false. It’s a tough spot to be in.
Believing Sola Scriptura is the benighted belief that places you in a tough spot! It stagnated spiritual understanding at the "carnal milk" level required by our primitive ancestors so that the "spiritual solid food" was never discovered. You are the unenlightened one as a victim of the ignorant use of heresy to prevent any revision of the primitive "carnal milk."
Words that are not written down but just passed by word of mouth from one person to another tend to get added to, taken away from, and just mixed up, like the children's game of Telephone.
As opposed to written words that are copied, and copied, and copied? Where is the accuracy there?
And nowhere in Scripture do we see it state that "the Church" is the Roman Catholic Church or any other church or denomination.
Naturally, because the authors of the New Testament would not have had need to define it as such. What we do see is Jesus handing the keys to Peter, endowing His Apostles with certain authority, making certain promises with regard to His Church, instituting certain practices, and a precedent being set of the Apostles appointing successors. We can read early Church Fathers to see what was the nature and practices of the Church after the original Apostles had died.
Believing Sola Scriptura is the benighted belief that places you in a tough spot! It stagnated spiritual understanding at the "carnal milk" level required by our primitive ancestors so that the "spiritual solid food" was never discovered. You are the unenlightened one as a victim of the ignorant use of heresy to prevent any revision of the primitive "carnal milk."
I’m not even gonna try to decipher this milk shake.
It was John Owen that said "If private revelations agree with Scriptures, they are needless. If they disagree, they are false."
John Owen must not have thought things through very carefully. Scripture says what it says. People understand various passages of scripture differently. You would interpret a passage one way, I would interpret it a different way, EscAlaMike would interpret it differently still. This is probably the number one reason why we have as many different Christian denominations as we do (and no, I'm not saying how many there are; I don't want to go down that particular road even one more time). Private revelation is what helps us understand scripture. It's not a matter of whether they "agree with" scripture or not.
Even RC Sproul, one of the most well respected Reformed pastors in recent memory and a strong advocate for sola scriptura conceded that the canon was a "fallible list of infallible books".
Sola scriptura doesn't seem to work, nor does it seem like a scheme God would come up with
To me, it's just man's attempt to put a gag order on God.
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