Can we have a thread discussing sola scriptura? I know that Catholics and orthodox deny this doctrine but I've been reading the bible and a few passages caught my attention and seem to be promoting the idea of sola scriptura. I'm making this thread to kinda share some verses, expand on what they mean and see your opinions on them.
First verse would be 1 Corinthians 4:6
Hi OP, Orthodox here.
The reason why we have the Tradition is so we can understand the Scripture in context, for even heretics can cite verses from Scripture to support their errors. I'd also add that it's important to have the orthodox understanding of the Gospel which the Church maintains through tradition, it's one of the ways we can identify heresies.
Now for the verses:
The problem is that people need teachers, left on our own it's too easy to fall into self delusions. We have to start from the assumption that the correct interpretation of scripture has been held by one of the apostolic traditions that go back to Christ himself. Jesus didn't tell his apostles to give a kjv to every man, woman, and child.
You forgot 2 Thessalonians 2:15
Paul rejects it in favor of Holy Tradition
I'm a Lutheran, and I believe that Sola Scriptura is nearly impossible to achieve, especially in the modern society. You can sperg out as much as you want, but it's true, unless you're of course willing to become an Andersonite that is. But I must emphasise that I have a bias, I would probably be a Papist or Orthodox if only the wouldn't "venerate" Mary & Saints, and come with some dubious claims like "Mary never sinned" etc.
This is often claimed but it's plainly untrue. If that were the case, we would expect this tradition to come in the form of commentaries, and scripture to remain the center of doctrine, but so often the bible is set aside for traditions of men, and so often things admitted to not be in scripture are justified on the basis of tradition.
Despite OP's miscitation the important verse of the passage which explicitly teaches the sufficiency of scripture is verse 17. For our purposes, the only value of verse 16 is setting context, in that verse 17 is not a complete sentence.
No He is not. He is pointing out the error of the pharisees and condemning them for ever making that error in the first place, blaming it for their disobedience of the law, and this error was not "the traditions of the Pharisees", something never mentioned in the passage. What the pharisees had done was exalt a human tradition to equality with the word of God, and in so doing subjugate the latter to the former, forcing it to conform to their teachings. This led them away from God, since when their tradition contradicted God, they were forced by their dedication to tradition to not abandon that which was against God's will, but to attempt to harmonize the law with themselves and in so doing justify their sin, not by denying the law outright, but by denying God had ever condemned them at all. The protestation that this does not apply to Greek or Roman tradition because it is about human tradition, not divine tradition, holds no water, since there is no means under those systems to ensure the stream of tradition is not corrupted by mixing false traditions in with the allegedly true traditions. Since it holds an arguably even more fanatical devotion to tradition, whenever it is mixed with false tradition, the traditionalist believer will be just as devoted to those new false traditions, decrying any opposition to it as novel and heretical. The traditionalist requires no evidence to prove his false tradition is true or harmonious with scripture or even ancient, the fact it is part of the tradition stream is sufficient. Thus the Greeks repeat the error of the pharisees, since they likewise forbid themselves any means whatsoever of testing their traditions. And to preempt an objection, "that can't happen to OUR tradition", the objection is invalid, since it is a pure cop out and utterly fallacious logic.
I agree. Traditions of men hold considerably less weight at the outset than new revelation. Other than that largely the same, they were measuring the truth of what they heard by what God revealed.
That's a rather bold accusation, what about OP's post suggests that?
Why do we have to take an extra biblical tradition and impose it on the biblical text which preceded it by centuries?
Not much of a Lutheran. On what basis do you object to those when you've already conceded the only ground that validates those objections? It's pretty schizophrenic.
The bible can only be understood objectively by the apostolic church which is the Orthodox Church. When you take the bible outside of it's context, you get bad interpretations, cults, and stupid man made traditions. There are things in the bible that protestants don't understand or immediately see, the Eucharist is an example of something clearly scriptural that protestants are blind too. An Orthodox christian will start out with faith like a mustard seed, instead of rebelling against and rationalizing everything they don't immediately understand in their tradition, they humble themselves and the truth is revealed to them over time.
Regarding tradition being used to understand tradition because the bible itself lacks the ability to be sufficient to guard itself against heresy is something that I have to say I disagree with. Reason being is because I think the bible has perspicuity. This means that the bible defines itself. It explains itself and can defend itself. Yes, heretics can come along and cite verses to prove their doctrines but soon and surely the truth will be revealed.
It doesn't necessarily matter what Paul's canon was. It seems clear to me, although you do have the right to disagree, that Paul sees the bible as the ultimate guide for our faith. We cannot go beyond it either by creating innovative prayer methods or vain teachings and philosophy that aren't found in scripture such as the aforementioned things. If you say that Paul believed that only what he had of the cannon at the time we can not go beyond, are you saying that we can go beyond other parts of scripture?
From the bible? That's the main thing in concerned with.
Yeah, so is your point that we cannot go beyond the book or revelations but we can go beyond the rest of the bible? I believe in Tradition but even that is under the authority of the church.
I agreed with you up until your conclusion. Paul and the NT disciples are apostolic and what we have from them has been handed down to us in the form of written scripture. Now that their teachings, doctrines and examples have been given to us it is now our ultimate rule of faith that we must structure our theology, tradition and teachings around. We cannot go beyond it.
I believe in Tradition too, but what Christ is here condemning is having something above scripture. Believing that you can add innovative prayers, traditions ecclesiology onto Christians and say that it is binding on the faith is similar to the Jews who also had their tradition which they followed more strictly than the word of God itself.
I'm no not sure you are aware of what you have just said. Matthew 23:23 is just Jesus condemning the Jews again and are you saying they could have responded to Christ's condemnation by saying that they don't believe in sola scriptura? Are you taking the side of the jews?
I don't think you quite understand Protestantism or acts. The whole point is that Paul and silas are preaching the gospel to the Greeks and using It evidence to support their view. The berean Jews test these claims by looking at the scriptures to see if they're true. This is exactly what we do with Catholic or orthodox beliefs. We search the scriptures to see if the Catholic/Orthodox beliefs are true. You say "It's not quite the same thing you're doing." But what do you think we do if not search the scriptures diligently? According to your belief only the church fathers have the right to interpret the bible and the infallible magisterium the right to dogmatise it. This isn't a biblical attitude since all people OT and NT are told to read the word day and night and to meditate on the word.
Are you sure these do not contradict scripture? Show we there scriptural evidence for your liturgies, veneration of saints and iconography.
I won't respond to the following statements since you're speaking presumptuously and don't understand me or my position at all.
Can you not use the kjv as some straw man? I'm not even a Baptist. But I do have more faith in the bible that Catholics and orthodox do. I don't fear heresy and believe that the bible has the scriptural perspicuity to be understood and naturally, by the grace of God, heresy will naturally die out of make no real presence in Christendom.
This is by far the most abused verse I've seen posted by cathodox and as soon as you get look at the context you'll soon realise exactly what is being spoken of here.
First of all of you start reading 2 Thessalonians 2 from verse 1 you'll see what this tradition is. It states
You sound prideful and delusional
You should
It does within the Orthodox faith. The Jew's supposedly understood the old testament, but they rejected their messiah and his church when the time came. They still hold a false interpretation of the scriptures.
Is that why every protestant nation is atheist?
Then what right did the berean Jews have to read the bible and even put the teachings being proposed by Paul under testing?
Pride is faith in oneself. I have faith in the persevering word of God.
I do, only because it puts people's eternal salvation at stake. But the gates of hades can not take over the church.
Actually, contrary. It's why you have to rely on the church fathers because you believe no one else is capable of interpreting the bible.
Actually, this is explained in Romans. The Jews were hardened so that they may not accept the word so that God would allow in more from the gentiles. This was to make them jealous and hopefully they might also come in.
If you're Catholic are you aware that the scholastic age is was brought about new atheism we see today? Your statement is an oxymoron. If the nation is protestant then it wouldn't be atheist. What eastern orthodox or Catholic nation is there that is completely traditional and Christian?
Aka, don't do apocrypha.
How does one define apocrypha, however…
I'd imagine they'd be more perplexed on how the Karaite movement time-travelled back in time a millennia.
Also, if the scriptures were self-explanatory, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE EPISTLES TO QUOTE FROM, SINCE THEY WERE MOSTLY CREATED TO SETTLE DISPUTES IN EARLY CHRISTENDOM.
You have faith in your own novel understanding of the scriptures
If the entire church since it's inception believed in something, and there's scriptural evidence to back them up, we don't try to reinvent the wheel and believe that we have a unique enlightened understanding of what's always been taught.
I'm not Catholic
Its context is not the writings of Greek monks over a millennium later
Tradition. But I define Tradition differently.
That goes further to prove the self explanatory power of the scriptures. The scriptures are sufficient in defining themselves. The sun comes when you add on to them. We have the scriptures that was handed down by to apostles to us and now we revolve our entire tradition, doctrine and life around it.
I do not fear those who seek to test the scriptural basis of my theology. If it's wrong then I'm sure it must be easy to refute it from a biblical basis. I honestly think the only argument that Catholics actually have is that they existed for longer. It's why you scream "well, that's just your private interpretation!" whenever you are proven wrong from the bible.
Depends on how you define the church. Is the church Rome? Is the church the majority or is the church the mystical body of Christ that only God can truly see. Also, there's a lot of politics that goes on in the early church that definitely influenced some of your theology.
Now why did supposed "sola scriptura early christians" have these massive theological disputes, if they could have explained it themselves, via recourse to the Bible?
Here, it may be, someone will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and is in itself abundantly sufficient, what need is there to join to it the interpretation of the Church? The answer is that because of the very depth of Scripture all men do not place one identical interpretation upon it. The statements of the same writer are explained by different men in different ways, so much so that it seems almost possible to extract from it as many opinions as there are men. Novatian expounds in one way, Sabellius in another, Donatus in another, Arius, Eunomius and Macedonius in another, Photinus, Apollinaris and Priscillian in another, Jovinian, Pelagius and Caelestius in another, and latterly Nestorius in another. Therefore, because of the intricacies of error, which is so multiform, there is great need for the laying down of a rule for the exposition of Prophets and Apostles in accordance with the standard of the interpretation of the Church Catholic.
They did and they btfo heresy after heresy. In the ecumenical councils. Only one I have issues with would be 2 nicea.
A lot of those heresies have been defeated and are left to nothing but history now. Most people are pelagians or modalists not out of conviction but ignorance. Like, even tertullian understood the insanity of modalism and it's implications. Arius even abandoned his belief and accepted the deity of Christ. Really, it's all about education. But there will always be those who have hardened hearts and will not listen. God has not predestined it so that all men may believe but we can still have faith the the truth shall always prevail against the gates of hades.
The truth will be revealed by whom? You and the heretic disagree and both claim to be correct with Scriptural references to back your arguments. Who is right?
Wouldn't Tradition and the authority of a council of bishops ultimately put to rest who is correct?
What I'm saying is that verse had a particular context, in this case it was about humility.
Really I'm asking you, what right did the future Gospel writers have in going "beyond what is written" when they started writing? It's the context of the passage that matters, Paul is talking about the spirit of the law, just like Christ. If you're going beyond "love God" and "love thy neighbor", i.e. sinning (in this case with pride), then you're going beyond what is written.
It's the spiritual interpretation of Matthew 6:6.
No.
They didn't say anything else to their disciples? You know we have the writings of the Fathers from the 1st century, people who knew the Apostles personally and who were ordained by them. Are these people not trustworthy just because they're not Apostles, even if they died for Christ? It's important to know what the consensus of the Church was especially in the first centuries regarding these issues.
He condemned them for placing their traditions above the commandments and I agree with Him. Regular fasting is a part of the Tradition, but I would never regard fasting to be more important than loving God or loving my neighbor.
Jesus said in Matthew 23:23 "These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone." He said that they should have fulfilled the tradition (paying the tithe) and the spirit of the law (mercy and faith).
The heretics do the same and only to try and confirm their particular view.
Where there is consensus among the Fathers going back to the beginning, we must stay within that consensus and not assume that we know better than the Church, especially on those issues which have been ratified at the Ecumenical Councils. We believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church, just like He did in Acts 15.
Orthodox worship is modeled after Temple worship and early Christian practices like the eucharistic meal.
This is a very early practice going all the way back to Polycarp in the Christian era. It's in Maccabees too but you don't consider it Scripture.
Icons were used in the Temple and the tradition was continued in the Church. The very first known Christian icon is attributed to St Luke the Evangelist and it's of the Theotokos holding the infant Christ.
Is this not presumptuous?
I was talking about the flock of the original apostles.
But anyway, the councils were just as much showing an unbroken tradition, as it was recourse to the Bible.
But contrary to your logic, the churches that did participate in them, and consider Holy Tradition to be paramount, have been kept largely consistent for the past 2k years, even acknowledging they have the same faith after 1500 years of separation(the Eastern-Oriental Agreed Statements)
On the other hand, sola scripturists can't agree on monergism vs sinergism, what day of the week to meet in, and still debating what it means to be saved(lordship salvation controversy)
And would have stayed history, if the "bible-only" groups hadn't resurrected them, insisting on nestorianism being true just to be anti-catholic, Anderson's church splitting into modalists vs trinitarians, Arabici judaizers now giving us tips on healthy eating, arians now sitting on street corners with pamphlets, etc.
This is self defeating. If Holy Tradition comes from Scripture, what was written?
Sola Scriptura seems rational on the surface, but there are problems.
The gist of Biblical infallibility (concerning the New Testament anyway) is that the Holy Spirit came down upon a select group of mortal men: the four evangelists, Paul of Tarsus, Simon Peter, James and Jude; and gave them the charism to write documents about Jesus' life and Church teaching that was not merely "reliable", but supernaturally perfect, and on par with the Old Testament documents in their infallibility.
But then you have to ask, "says who?". Who can declare that these documents were inspired by the Holy Spirit? And that these documents even came from these authors? It was the Church hierarchy back in the day that did. They were the ones who decided that these documents were God breathed, and the other documents like the Didache and the Epistles of Clement, which were candidates for Biblical canon, were not.
To declare the Bible infallible, the Church had to have the charism of infallibility. How can a group of fallible men declare something infallible? The Catholic position is that the Church never lost this charism.
In short, scripture is tradition.
The proof is in the putting on Sola Scriptura being a misguided idea. The Christian world is much worse off (and thus, the world itself), illustrated by showing numerous examples. Denomination after Denomination after Denomination - and then offshoots and sub-offshoots – and sub-sub-offshoots of those denominations! It's madness.
It's not the Scriptures' fault, of course. That's what defenders of Sola Scriptura instantly want to jump on. But there is no one saying there is anything wrong with holding Scripture in such lofty regard. The real problem is holding MAN in high regard. That's what the doctrine does implicitly. In practice, it ends up becoming more about Sola Humana than Sola Scriptura.
Protestants want to say their opponents put Man on a pedestal, but they're hardly immune to it. They're the ones with more disunity among themselves and multiple egos… and sadly more freakshows too. In the medieval era, there weren't even the type of cults you see now. Tradition (and society itself) didn't allow it.
Good point, I'd have to think about this one some more.
Yes, it's about humility but once you go beyond what is written you are following your own laws and becoming arrogant.
They weren't going beyond what is written. They were living in a time when scripture was still being revealed. Whether they knew it or not by the Holy Spirit they were living out God's word then it finally was written down for our instruction and we are not to go beyond it.
Oh, I'm familiar with this argument. I spoke with an eastern orthodox about this. This verse is talking about hypocrites. Those who pray out loud in front of many people in order to seem right and holy. Christ tells us to go into private, not heighten our senses or do use breathing patterns, but to pray to Him sincerely and not because we want to seem holy to man. And you have to bear in mind that Christ is hyperbolic a lot of the times and so this verse we shouldn't take it literally. Just like you shouldn't take the passages where Christ tells us to take out our eyes and cut off our hands literally. They're hyperbolic.
What do you mean? I'm sure they said other things but nothing that isn't found in scripture. The first century apostles said nothing wrong. I've read Clement and Ignatius. They're pretty orthodox. I don't think I quite get your point? Perhaps you have misunderstood me.
Yes, and how did they do so? By adding on to the commandments of God. I see this in the eastern orthodox church with how they tell their bishops to be celibate, they believe in 7 sacraments when Christ only initiated 2 and other things that are not found in scripture. The tradition Christ speaks of can all be found I scripture but yours can't.
Fair point. But how often have you seen nestorians, arians or pelagians in your life? Seems that time will reveal who the truth holders are.
What if your church fathers are wrong? And what if your church isn't the true Church?
That's not scripture but I've read polycarp, where does he venerate the Saints? Also, give me the quote by maccabees?
What evidence do you have?
How? If you were to go against your church would you still be an orthodox?
That's actually not true. Anyone who has actually read the church fathers knows that it's not as clean and fluid as Catholics and eastern orthodox like to say. A lot of the church fathers would have been considered heretics today. The idea that all church fathers agreed on everything and they held hands and were in perfect harmony isn't true. Church history is as confusing and complex as any other countries history.
The reformed sect agree. But a lot of this can be due to ignorance. If they just studied then it would be solved quite simply.
We all meet on Sunday. If you're talking about seventh day Adventists then you really don't know what you're talking about.
Lordship salvation is monergism
Not nestorian.
Not a Baptist either but in their defence it wasn't a split. One guy became a modalist and left the church. Was barely a split.
He ever heard of them
Not one of them.
The scriptures are the eternal words of God now brought down to us in written form. Once we have received it( and this is how the early church described the scriptures, as something received not made by tradition) we then form our theology, tradition and morals based on it.
"Tradition" doesn't mean "everything the church fathers" said. It's the councils and canons. Anything they ileft out of debate in the councils was intentional and meant to be openended… because they acknowledged themselves that they could see some things differently. For example, they never made a "tradition" out of the process of afterlife. At least not until later when Roman Catholics decided that their particular version of it was the EXACT truth (i.e. Purgatory). But the Church fathers had varying views on death and loved musing over them.
Thanks for your answer. I like how you say "how did we recognise what is scripture" instead of the usual Catholic and orthodox statement that the church created the scriptures. Not only is this anti scriptural but also goes against the beliefs of the early church fathers. Now there are two views on how we recognise scripture. One more materialist in tone and the other more spiritual. The materialist view is that we look at the historical document, see if it was written by an apostle. We'll look at dating, look at the grammar of the text, look for events or things referenced in the text that may allude to the dating and if they're written by the apostles then we accept it and the reason why we listen to the apostles is because they knew Christ.
The second view is that Tradition is what identifies the scriptures. It takes a passive role, not a authoritative one, and shows us what scripture is. The Tradition is not above the scriptures but by the Holy Spirit reveal to us what scripture is. This is why we can accept the same NT canon as Catholics and orthodox but deny their teachings which are not found in scripture because they are now putting their tradition above scripture.
Nope, the whole 33 gazillion denomination lie had already been refuted. The number comes from an encyclopedia of world religions and the way it defined a denomination was quite weird. Mormons were considered Christians according to that book. It's using secular definitions to define Christianity. In fact eastern orthodox are counted in the 33k denoms. In fact some of the denoms actually agree with one and other and would consider the other Christians but are devided if you look at them as different denominations. I was formerly a reformed Baptist and I attended a Presbyterian church and sat alongside a Anglican. Yet, we were unified in our core belief. Most of the things that do divide the Christian denomination are what are known as adiaphora, non essential issues that do not affect one's salvation. Such as predestination, infant baptism, ecclesiology and other things that aren't detrimental to the soul.
It was tradition itself that helped create a bulwark (and ecclesiastical stigma, if you will) that aided in understanding the difference between Apostolic language and pretenders.
Without them, we'd be all waylaid with some of the Gnostic scriptures in the canon. You can see it right in your face, with modern people trying to push gnostic texts again. People outside the actual arms of the church don't see the wrong in them (let alone the evil).
This is sola ecclesia.
You are saying that not only can the church define the bible, what it says and how to interpret it but you're also saying that it can define history. But the thing is, there are multiple self proclaimed apostolic churches that define tradition in their own way. History can be interpreted too and you can choose which church you would like to interpret history for you.
Protestants have the same canon as the Catholics and we used different means to identify it.
I like how we keep having these bible vs tradition threads and I keep making knock out arguments like this and Cathodox keep just moving on with the thread like the post was never there.
That's not what the verse says or means. If someone follows set times for prayer and fasting, for example, but this "tradition" if you will, isn't found chapter and verse in the Bible, is this person sinning by "going beyond what is written"? Hardly. There's nothing wrong with setting a rule and keeping it so long as your obligations to God come first.
Indeed, but as we see much in Scripture there are layers of meaning. The Hesychasts take "go into your inner room" to mean "go into your heart" and pray to God, since your body is a Temple and the Temple is where God resides.
This is a tradition that's been around in the east from very early on, first centuries, particularly in the monastic community but not exclusively.
How do you know? There's more evidence to suggest that the Apostles had a tradition than evidence that supports the idea that they had a sola scriptura position.
Ignatius believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a universal catholic Church, and in a clear Church hierarchy.
The Pharisees were condemned for following their traditions instead of following the commandments of God, not for having traditions. Read Matthew 23:23 again, and the rest of the passage for context.
This is a rule which came about because of concerns about nepotism and the reality that bishops were expected to be constantly traveling and working, yet also be good heads of their households. It can be changed back and there's nothing stopping the Church from doing so if she wishes.
More than that. We have a different idea of "sacrament" than what is believed in the west.
Never in Orthodoxy, because the Church doesn't budge on her dogma. Whereas I have seen many ancient heresies rear their ugly heads within protestant circles.
There's over 30,000 denominations as of now. It seems as time goes on there seems to be more splintering and less real unity on doctrine.
Wrong about what? If there's a consensus that goes back all the way to the beginning I don't know how that can be wrong. Rather, I don't know how the Holy Spirit which is present in the Church can be wrong. I'm a Christian.
If you trust what the Scripture says to be true then you know that hell shall never prevail against the Church.
At the end of the Martyrdom of Polycarp it says:
That is true but if this was all the eastern orthodox or Catholic church was doing then it would be fine. But it's more than simply just set times to pray. What going beyond scripture means is adding rules and regulations as well as following vain philosophies and putting things on the same importance as scripture and saying that one needs to do X(sacrament) acts in order to be saved.
True, but there's a point where you're digging for more layers than are actually there. And when you look at the context it has nothing to do with hesychasm or anything like it. In fact, hesychasm is more than just going into a dark room. It's doing breathing patterns and looking at the naval to somehow feel God or something.
Because of Jude 1:3 which states:
I'm not anti tradition. I too believe in and have a tradition but do not think it should be equal to or above scripture. And you're right in saying that they followed their own tradition as opposed to the scriptures, which I think Cathodox do, but still you're missing the point. What Christ is doing is is actually using the Bible as an authority to condemn others. The Bible can be used to judge even our traditions if they contradict and so I think here Christ was stating the scriptural authority of the Bible.
This is a rule which came about because of concerns about nepotism
Interesting, but still the rules you enforce on your clergy is unscriptural and man made.
It's pretty much the same but you call it a mystery. The mass is by far the worst sacrament in my opinion.
I really do hate this meme. Do you know where that number is from? If you look into there it even says that there are multiple denominations within Catholicism and Eastern orthodoxy. That should tell you something about how they define a denomination.
That's a very nieve view of history. Very rarely is there a consensus in church history. It's filled with disagreement and debates and a lot of it is out to your personal interpretation of history. And choosing an apostolic church is equivalent to which church you want to interpret history to you or at least which one goes most inline with your interpretation of history.
Nothing about relics. It does show the early development of the ideas of the sacred body parts of the dead saints but the concept of relics was not yet established although getting there. This is how most historians view things both Catholic and Protestant.
Not saying that. That implies some Mal intent. I'm just saying that the read the scriptures wrong and came to the wrong conclusions due to their tradition effecting their reading of scripture.
lol you tell yourself that kiddo
I love the Scriptures.. but Sola Scriptura is more about putting Literacy on a pedestal. Not the Scriptures. It sets some weird premise where God can't communicate except through one medium…and assumes that medium always existed for everyone. And denying it was somehow someone's fault. It also assumes God was somehow incompetent to communicate any other way (even though the Scriptures themselves EXPLICTLY said Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to guide us).
For religious instruction, people had guidance in other ways. Via church homilies, art, music and praise, exemplary people to model after, etc..
And was it REALLY so bad? The proof is in the putting. Those people lived simple, decent lives for a large part and entire cultures were Christianized. But we now live in a world where the Bible is more available than ever, yet we are literally assailed and literally RULED by fags, Jews, and other degenerates day in, day out. Nothing that Protestants have done have warded it off. All they did was open Pandora's Box, rather than the Scriptures. There has been NO GOLDEN AGE brought on by Sola Scriptura… as much as I would have liked that. Because the same people who propped that up somehow separated it from the Church and gutted the entire system that was working. It was part of a whole package and they broke it.
You do not need to be able to read to adhere to Sola Scriptura
No it doesn't, it sets the standard that the teachings contained in the Bible are the premier authority for the Christian. Any Christian teaching, practice, or experience should be examined alongside scripture to see if it lines up, and if it doesn't then it's not necessary
No it doesn't, we can adhere to Sola Scriptura today because we have the complete Bible and know that no new revelation is necessary for us to become saved. Before and during the writing of the scriptures, God was still delivering revelation
No it doesn't
Thus proving your previous point wrong
Sola Scriptura doesn't mean you can't be taught by someone else, it means the teachings have to be from the Bible
We live in the world that was prophesied about in the scriptures, not sure why you would expect something else
Because I'm an Amillenialist.
I posted this in the media thread, but it's useful here too. And this is from a Protestant, so I'm trying to be fair.
As for the rest of your responses, "yes, it does". One look at typical Sola Scriptura teaching and they think the Church started with the proto-Protestants or something. Like God only had a small window in the "Pre-Nicene" period of martyrs (which everyone loves.. that's one good thing), but somehow succumbed to darkness for a thousand years before people like Wycliffe. It's blasphemy.
One would think that a stupid prank from the 1500s would come to an end after 500 years, but it doesn't.
Sola Scriptura means that all the information we need in order to be saved is contained within the Bible. It is literally that simple. It is nothing more than that so please no more strawmen.
Whenever we talk about Tradition it's way too abstract imo. Protestants need to spell out exactly which tradition they're referring to and why it's wrong, otherwise it's just a bunch of hot air.
not
It's not only hypocritical, because every Protestant church follows their own tradition in regards to the mode of baptism for example, and have their own patristic commentary they follow, but it's also intellectually lazy. Seriously, if Luther and Calvin were alive today they'd probably be ashamed that they're even associated with you.
Why do so many people miss the Protestant point entirely? The last guy missed the point about what Sola Scriptura is, now you miss the point about 'objecting to tradition'.
Protestants as a whole don't have a problem with traditions, like you said every church has it's own way of doing things.
The problem comes when we are told to rely on extra-biblical traditions, and especially when adherence to those traditions are said to have some part in salvation.
The tradition of praying to saints is not in the Bible
Confessing to a priest is not in the Bible
The ritual of Confirmation is not in the Bible
The sign of the Cross is not in the Bible
Transubstantiation is not in the Bible
Does that mean that all of those traditions are bad? Not necessarily, but don't ever tell me that I have to believe they're important, because everything I need to know about Christianity is in the Bible and those things are not.
It's not a strawman. I could point to one of the well known docs rife with this kind of talk. "A Lamp in the Dark".
It doesn't celebrate the works of God through the centuries. God was apparently gone and let the world live in darkness. Jesus' promise of sending the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, and of building his church, was apparently taken away. It can't even acknowledge what an awesome victory it was for the Church to go from tortured to converting the emperor of Rome. Instead, it denounces God's victories. And these narratives are the source of all kinds of conspiracies around those times. Maybe the biggest one is the idea that "Rome was just using the Christians" or just simply the whole notion the "Dark Ages", which infects even the secular world too. Protestants should call themselves Cynics, rather than Christians.
No, Sola Scriptura/Protestantism just celebrates it's own short timeline. Even your own hymnbooks or art can't go back farther than yourselves. It's sad. Because I'd love to see you share in all of it.
I can't exactly find it, but I swear I've seen some kind of slogan or cheesy bumper sticker that said "Christianity established AD 30. Restablished AD 1517" or something like that. :D
Is that what the first Christians believed?
It is a strawman, your documentary doesn't change the definition of Sola Scriptura
Again, everything necessary for salvation is in the Bible. That's it, Sola Scriptura means nothing more than that, and you haven't acknowledged that fact. That is literally the only claim of Sola Scriptura. It doesn't make any claims about church history. That whole paragraph you wrote is irrelevant to the one claim of Sola Scriptura. You are arguing against something, I don't know what, but it isn't Sola Scriptura.
The first Christians are the ones who wrote the Bible, I'm just going by what they wrote in their inspired scriptures. Maybe you should ask them why they failed to include all of those traditions I mentioned if they're so important
That's not "my" documentary. That's some hardcore Evangelical stuff.
Well I hope you understand what Sola Scriptura means now that I've explained it to you twice. If you don't like the documentary then contact the guy who made it and tell him why it's wrong, not me
You didn't answer my question.
Is that what the first Christians believed? Yes or no.
You don't have to explain Sola Scriptura. It's been around for 500 years now. I'm just showing it's day to day implications in stuff like the vid above. How it gets applied to the mind of the average evangelical or fundamentalist. Which is mostly just a general theme of distrust and conspiracy about the Church and propping up individualism as some kind of heroism (individualism hiding under the guise of the "scriptures", that is). The pattern keeps repeating itself as well, with multiple permutations of individuals creating new denominations, all saying "Sola Scriptura". It's chaos on a level that even the original Protestants themselves already saw as a nightmare in their own day, when the Anabaptists popped up, and they went to war with each other.
While it's implications in the secular world are even worse: They didn't care about your doctrine. All they learned from you was that it was finally OK to attack the church. That nothing is sacred. Except they took it a step further, and attacked not only the Catholics or Orthodox or history in general but you too. Protestants thought they were going to be heroes, but they were the butt of jokes all the same. All they did was open the gates to Atheism and Liberalism.
People should have seen this coming right off the bat though. Luther himself was quite the fan of William Ockham (of Ockham's Razor fame) and Duns Scotus, and this notion of simplifying and breaking things down to their essence. He merely stopped at the Scriptures. But what the world learned was not where he stopped, but why he did it in the first place. Or that he DID do it.
Where he stopped, Atheism simply picked it up and took it a step further.
"To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." - John Henry Newman