k2aggie07 said:

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Acts 8:17. Act 19:2.

Believe it or not the Church has had the same bible for a while and having read it we still hold the views passed down from the Apostles. If you take scripture or tradition by themselves they are inauthentic and misunderstood.

Scripture, anything, always has an interpretive framework over it. You read with your lense. I read with the lens taught by Orthodoxy, the lens of holy tradition. The variance is not in the scripture, it's in your lens.

Don't you think it's odd that you accept that Pelagius is a heresy but you flirt with joining him on one of the reasons he was condemned?

Don't you think it's weird to base a huge amount of theology on St Augustine while ignoring a great deal of his instructions? This is what I mean when I say, if he spoke in error combating a heresy, what is it to you? You don't generally listen to him in his Orthodoxy, so why follow what may be an error of personal belief?

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k2aggie07 said:

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That's the point though, you really can't.

Christian theology is one massive appeal to authority. None of us can support these arguments based on our own original ideas.

If both sides appeal to the same scripture - and clearly we do - and the answer isn't clear between the discussion, the question becomes who is offering the most authentic interpretation.

So, the test of authenticity of interpretation is in addition to the scriptures:
- Is it what was originally taught by Christ to the Apostles, and by the Apostles to the world?
- Has it always been taught this way? Can we see some evidence of continuous practice?
- Does it enjoy widespread or universal support?

On the other hand, the current evangelical test of authenticity is: does this make sense to me? Is this how I interpret it?

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Please remember that circumcision is a type of baptism. It is not baptism. And, who are you to say that a child cannot have faith in God?

These arguments have been hashed out repeatedly in history. You just don't like the answers that the Church has for you.

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k2aggie07 said:

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It's not just baptism but baptism and chrismation.

How many tiems will you beat you're head against the "I think...because I read.." wall before you see that there's no need for it? The Church didn't fall away from God.

Also, I didn't object to you calling it my view because I felt like you were slighting the church or me. It's important because I'm not trying to synthesize original ideas here. With very few exceptions I'm trying to faithfully represent the teaching of the church and the fathers as opposed to my personal ideas. Now I agree with them, and I believe them. But it's not "I read and I think...".

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dermdoc said:

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Just curious, what church do you go to?

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k2aggie07 said:

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Here's a thought exercise for you re: interpretive lens.
Say a person who has never been exposed to any theology finds the bible. They do not believe in God, they have not had any kind of direct revelation. They're just reading the bible. If you asked them for an exact exposition of the faith described in the bible, do you think they'd get it right? Let's go one step further - do you think it is even possible for them to get it exactly right?

And if you gave it to two people, separately, do you think they would come up with the same exact exposition?

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Solo Tetherball Champ said:

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A little off topic, but I think the intent of some the people in this thread falls under the category of Sealioning.

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I don't view it as "beating my head against the wall" to read and strive to understand God's word, informed by the views of others. It's a tremendous privilege to do so. My only regret is that I can't spend more time doing it, and that I wasted so many years of my life distracted by other, idolatrous things.

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Humans, even when they sit in councils or bear the title of pope, are not infallible. But even if it were established that there is an infallible human, or group of humans, won earth today, then I'd still have quite a dilemma. There are ~6 churches claiming apostolic succession (plus LDS). At least 3 claim some theory of exclusive human infallibility, vested in an individual or group or the consensus as it emerged within their own tradition. But each of those self-styled infallible bodies hold to traditions that do not square with each other on major doctrinal issues. So obviously, some of these supposedly infallible humans have erred.

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But could there still be one of these that actually is infallible? Well, they all hold a doctrinal position or two irreconcilable with the plain teaching of Scripture (like baptismal regeneration). Couple that with the fact that "unanimity" emerged within these churches often under threat of violence and death for dissenters, and no, I cannot be convinced that any one of the churches that claim infallibility actually are.

Only the word of God is infallible. Does that mean I've got a formula for doctrinal chaos? Apparently so. But that's a result of living as a bunch of fallen creatures. So I pray that, according to Romans 8:28, all of the chaos will ultimately work for the good of everyone who truly loves God and His Christ.

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• Relate His knowable and real actions and interactions with creation faithfully and effectively
• Confess that the divine realities about Him are ineffable, and unknowable, and beyond even conception of change or not change, knowable or not-knowable
• And as best as possible express the truths that are supra-unknowable, that by His grace we can experience and have knowledge beyond knowledge of created things, supra-knowledge of the supra-unknowable realities of the divine. (Such as, the inner life of the Trinity, the Incarnation of God, etc.)

k2aggie07 said:

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But here, unlike the Calvinists, we Eastern Orthodox ancient Christians would never say that God arbitrarily chooses some and makes them elect, and he could choose anybody He wants. We do not believe in irresistible grace. We believe grace is resistible. We do not believe that the "sovereignty of God" means he could make anybody into St. Paul if he wanted to. That is simply not true, because our freedom is involved.

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k2aggie07 said:

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I already gave you two verses that have to do very specifically with the Holy Spirit coming at the laying on of hands in the post-resurrection age.

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For God, there is no past, present, and future. All knowledge of God is in God before anything even happens. All the whole knowledge of creation, the whole knowledge of everything that could be, and would be, and how it will be, is in the divine mind of God before anything creaturely even exists. That would be a dogma of ancient Orthodox Christian faith; there is no doubt about that.

But what we want to see now is that things do not happen because God knows them, God knows them because he knows they will happen. He knows what we will freely do, but our freedom is incredibly important. It is essential to remember that. If God decides to create angels and human beings, and, in some sense, even animals, but certainly let us just focus on human beingsif God creates human beings with freedom, that we can pick and choose to decide what we do or do not dolike whether I'll go to vespers, or whether I won't; whether I will help my neighbor, or whether I don't; whether I will tell the truth, or whether I will lie; whether I will be kind to someone, or whether I will be meanI have that actual freedom.

Some writers, in fact some very important Christian writers, will say, "God will never violate the freedom of his creature. Once he gives the freedom, he will not violate it." But I think that we would have to go a step further, on the basis of Scripture and understanding of Scripture in the Tradition of our Church, by our great spiritual teachers, and that is that it is not simply the case that God will not violate our freedom. We have to say something stronger. We have to say, "God cannot violate our freedom." God cannot force us to do anything at all. He simply cannot do it.

He can do things in the natural order, for example, cause me to break my leg or something like that, but God cannot determine, in any way, how I will relate to my leg being brokenhow I will act, what I will choose, what I will do. We have this sovereign freedom given to us by God, that he not only will not violate, but he cannot violate.

What we want to focus on now is that God knows all those things. He makes us free and he knows what we will freely do, in any given circumstance, under any given possibility, within any given condition or situation, God literally knows what we will or will not do, and he knows what we will or will not do before we actually will or will not do it. But he doesn't cause us to will it, or not to will it.

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If we wanted to define "divine providence"I used to like to define "divine providence," when I taught in seminary, as "God doing the best he can with what he's got, and what he's got is us." In other words, God doing his best with us, in our freedom, and we are very volatile people. Some are very faithful, and they are with God. Others are not faithful at all, and they apostatize, and they hate God and they fight against God.

Most of us, or at least a lot of us, are waffling back and forth. Sometimes we are with God, sometimes we are against God. Sometimes we believe in him, sometimes we doubt him. Sometimes we surrender to him, sometimes we flee away from him. But God knew all that. He knew all that from all eternity, and here is the point; the point is: he makes his plan on that basis. That is what he does. He orchestrates the whole thing, and he orchestrates it according to what we will or will not do, and how we will or will not be, at any given moment.

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But in any case, the theological point is absolute, and it is, in my opinion, beyond doubt, as a teaching of the Church. People may doubt the teaching, but the teaching is very, very clear: God designs everything on the basis of his knowledge, his foreknowledge. Then he calls all to be with him, and then he selects the elect, whom he knows will cooperate with him freely. That's how it works.

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Generally speaking Christians do not, have never, believed that the scripture was given to us in whole or dictated word for word by God.

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But even so, if we are going to use circumcision as the rule - was Abraham the rule or the exception? When were Israelites circumcised? On the 8th day, no?

I already gave you two verses that have to do very specifically with the Holy Spirit coming at the laying on of hands in the post-resurrection age. You provide some ancillary support calling on Abraham's circumcision as a one-off.

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We don't worship a book my friend. We worship God. We aren't even baptized into a Church but baptized into Christ. Unamity is not the hallmark of truth; Union is. I think there is quite a bit here that is misunderstood.

Likewise, scripture is not infallible in and of itself. Generally speaking Christians do not, have never, believed that the scripture was given to us in whole or dictated word for word by God. Muslims believe this, Mormons believe this about their books. Scripture was delivered through infallible men. It's trustworthiness is borrowed from God. It is not God. So no - and understand very clearly what I'm saying here - the word of God is not infallible. The Word of God, the Logos of God is infallible. And so, what the Church does, what the fathers do, is try to do three things:

• Relate His knowable and real actions and interactions with creation faithfully and effectively
• Confess that the divine realities about Him are ineffable, and unknowable, and beyond even conception of change or not change, knowable or not-knowable
• And as best as possible express the truths that are supra-unknowable, that by His grace we can experience and have knowledge beyond knowledge of created things, supra-knowledge of the supra-unknowable realities of the divine. (Such as, the inner life of the Trinity, the Incarnation of God, etc.)

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k2aggie07 said:

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It's silly to say "well God preserved the scriptures" and to ignore how he did it - that is, with the Church. And again, infallible men is your (mis)understanding.

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North Dallas Forty oz. said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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It's silly to say "well God preserved the scriptures" and to ignore how he did it - that is, with the Church. And again, infallible men is your (mis)understanding.

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I didn't say God preserved the Scriptures. Men did so, though with the minor variations in manuscripts, they didn't always do so perfectly. If they couldn't preserve written matter perfectly, without addition or alteration, that further shakes confidence in the idea that men perfectly preserved a tradition.

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dermdoc said:

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North Dallas Forty oz. said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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It's silly to say "well God preserved the scriptures" and to ignore how he did it - that is, with the Church. And again, infallible men is your (mis)understanding.

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I didn't say God preserved the Scriptures. Men did so, though with the minor variations in manuscripts, they didn't always do so perfectly. If they couldn't preserve written matter perfectly, without addition or alteration, that further shakes confidence in the idea that men perfectly preserved a tradition.

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But would not that damage sola scriptura?

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At some time, at least to me, you have to look for help in interpreting the Scriptures. And to me the Church fathers would seem the most reasonable choice.

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North Dallas Forty oz. said:

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dermdoc said:

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North Dallas Forty oz. said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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It's silly to say "well God preserved the scriptures" and to ignore how he did it - that is, with the Church. And again, infallible men is your (mis)understanding.

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I didn't say God preserved the Scriptures. Men did so, though with the minor variations in manuscripts, they didn't always do so perfectly. If they couldn't preserve written matter perfectly, without addition or alteration, that further shakes confidence in the idea that men perfectly preserved a tradition.

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But would not that damage sola scriptura?

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No, the original autographs are God-breathed, not the manuscripts and translations.

Now, if your theology hinges on one of the passages that are called into question by older manuscripts, then that would be cause for reexamination. For instance, I think handling snakes and drinking poison should definitely be reconsidered, if that's part of your worship practice, based on the more recently discovered, older manuscripts.

As it stands, the manuscript variations only illustrate that men, even when banded together as a church body, make mistakes.

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At some time, at least to me, you have to look for help in interpreting the Scriptures. And to me the Church fathers would seem the most reasonable choice.

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Sure, that's what the reformers aimed to do. They just didn't elevate anything else to the level of Scripture itself. The reformers' view of sola scriptura was not "me and my Bible," just as their view of sola fide was not that works play no role in salvation.

Sola scriptura is balanced between: (1) the RCC's view that church tradition is a second source of equally authoritative revelation, or the EOC's and OOC's views that Scripture is simply one derivative of the infallible church tradition, on one hand; and (2) the "solo scriptura" approach of many evangelicals on the other. Sola scriptura is not the approach of, for instance, Alexander Campbell, who once infamously said, "I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me; and I am as much on my guard against reading them today, through the medium of my own views yesterday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system."

Sola scriptura includes a respect for church fathers, but without elevating them to the level of God-breathed Scripture. It's well reflected in CS Lewis's intro in one publication of St. Athansius's "On the Incarnation," where Lewis says that for every modern book, the Christian should read an old/ancient book, as a guard against cultural preconceptions. (He goes on to joke that books from the future would also be helpful for that purpose, but they're harder to obtain.)

The reformers respect the teachings of the fathers; otherwise they wouldn't have bothered citing any of them to show that their teachings were not innovative. But the reformers also recognized that the fathers didn't all speak with one unanimous voice on all issues. If they had, we never would've had Schisms (far east & Africa / east / west), over disagreements regarding exactly what was believed always, everywhere, and by all.

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AgLiving06 said:

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What canonical teachings do you think are excluded with Sola Scriptura?

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North Dallas Forty oz. said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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What canonical teachings do you think are excluded with Sola Scriptura?

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Not really sure what you're asking. No teaching of Scripture is excluded under Sola Scriptural.

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This is not what we believe about the fathers. The fathers err, all of them. They're holy fathers not holy spirits. Their writing is not scripture.

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You are extremely white washing the case during the Reformation. Some reformers referred to some teachings of some fathers, yes. But I quoted Calvin above. Where he found that he disagreed with them, he simply ignored them. And much of the reformers truly didn't have access to the majority of Patristic writing. We can tell this by how few they quote from.

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As for "schisms" St Augustine is a great example. He came close to - if not outright - expressing Modalism in De Trinitate. He found himself at odds with St John Cassian and the rest of the fathers on free will. But he is not a heretic and the later eastern writers call him blessed and enlightened. You seek to drive a wedge between the fathers as an excuse for what your church fathers did. I abhor the schismatics of the Reformation and point to the unity of my church as the justification.

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The fathers didn't speak with one unanimous voice on all issues, sure. And some later fathers worked to correct ambiguities in earlier fathers teachings. But what is an absolute mistake is to point to different statements by different fathers and say well they didn't speak in unison on these things so they're wrong and no one knows the answer.
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Again, instead of looking for variance our job is to look for consensus. Where we find consensus we are safe. The reformers didn't give a whit about consensus, because if they did they wouldn't have put themselves outside of the church. Even items of extremely universal acceptance such as free will, baptism of infants, confession, and Holy Communion are chopped and sliced and diced - and in many cases jettisoned entirely.

Having a different belief isn't heretical. Driving that belief to the point of schism against the church is. This is the problem of the Reformation.

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But true authority, the action of the Holy Spirit as evidenced in the unified revelation of Scripture and Tradition, is wholly mystical. Thus advisedly (since his point can be misunderstood) we can quote Professor Hromadka's contention that: "Not even Christ should be understood and looked upon as an authority to which the Church is subordinated."

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