lobopride said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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Zobel said:

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John who explicitly closes the canon in Revelation

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wha?

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I think he's misunderstanding Revelation 22: 18-20

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Well I think you're misunderstanding it

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Nm. Someone beat me to it

The Banned said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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Thats a humongous document. I'll look through this later to see if maybe I find anything that changes my mind. As for the way you presented it, I'm not convinced.

1. You ignored Ambrose
2. He just removed her from conversation out of respect for Jesus? So he doesn't have the same respect for the apostles? He notes that she must have had some abundance of grace for the overcoming of sin that no one else had. Why not give a bit more of a nod to the men that Jesus founded the Church on. Why were they not noted for being so abundantly blessed in grace to help the world know about how sin was defeated? In my opinion, this is really reading what you want to into a fairly clear line.
3. You quote from chapter 47 conveniently leaves out Eve in the story of how sin came into the world. "By one man" sin entered the world. And now, when considering humans since, never could it be "said that he had no sin at all" it appears to me this is obviously a generalization, and likely proof texting on your part, but I may be wrong and I will read it in context.
4. The last paragraph will also be one I will search for context on. I could clip "one alone is there who was born without sin" or I can read all of the other qualifiers listed to describe Jesus that Mary would not have.


I'm not just tossing out your post as a whole, but those are my initial qualms. I'll read more when I have time.

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Yeah...maybe instead of hunting out websites that cherry pick quotes you should actually read the Church Fathers....You might be surprised by what you find.

I do find it ironic, you accuse me of "quote clipping" when all you seemingly do is hunt websites.

But go ahead, what I pasted is the start of Chapter 57.

In fact, Here's the whole chapter...

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Chapter 57 [XXXV.]Turn to Neither Hand. Let us hold fast, then, the confession of this faith, without faltering or failure. One alone is there who was born without sin, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who lived without sin amid the sins of others, and who died without sin on account of our sins. "Let us turn neither to the right hand nor to the left."640 For to turn to the right hand is to deceive oneself, by saying that we are without sin; and to turn to the left is to surrender oneself to one's sins with a sort of impunity, in I know not how perverse and depraved a recklessness. "God indeed knoweth the ways on the right hand,"641 even He who alone is without sin, and is able to blot out our sins; "but the ways on the left hand are perverse,"642 in friendship with sins. Of such inflexibility were those youths of twenty years,643 who foretokened in figure God's new people; they entered the land of promise; they, it is said, turned neither to the right hand nor to the left.644 Now this age of twenty is not to be compared with the age of children's innocence, but if I mistake not, this number is the shadow and echo of a mystery. For the Old Testament has its excellence in the five books of Moses, while the New Testament is most refulgent in the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers, when multiplied together, reach to the number twenty: four times five, or five times four, are twenty. Such a people (as I have already said), instructed in the kingdom of heaven by the two Testamentsthe Old and the Newturning neither to the right hand, in a proud assumption of righteousness, nor to the left hand, in a reckless delight in sin, shall enter into the land of promise, where we shall have no longer either to pray that sins may be forgiven to us, or to fear that they may be punished in us, having been freed from them all by that Redeemer, who, not being "sold under sin,"645 "hath redeemed Israel out of all his iniquities,"646 whether committed in the actual life, or derived from the original transgression.

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Your comment on Eve shows how much you're stretching. Eve was formed before the fall in the garden. That does not mean she didn't sin (as we know she did). So while she may have been formed before sin entered teh world, she fell. Nobody is excluded.

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I've read the fathers. I'll always read it in context, with a page or two before and after what line i think are most powerful. If you want to say that i am only qualified to comment if ive read every page of every church father, I hope you hold yourself to the same standard.

It's abundantly clear to me that chapter 57 is exhorting all of us to belief in Jesus and to both avoid sin, and not be overly scrupulous, lest we believe we can earn our way to Heaven. None of this (and I mean none of it) has to do with Mary. I can not see how one could possibly elevate this to some sort of equal standing to what he
Specifically wrote about Mary. "Mary is ……." =\= "all men are….."

Brush away the Eve point all you want. He gives specific deference to Mary. If you want to use a passage where he can't even acknowledge there was a woman beside Adam as an equivalent, be my guest. But you're going to have to show me how a specific deference can be somehow negated by such a vague reference that the actual originator of sin is not named.

And you still have not shown me where Luther disavowed his belief that Mary was sinless at least 12 years prior to his death. I would love to see how he changed his views on this topic while the Bible didn't change at all. I

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Giving deference to Eve does not equate to a claim she was sinless.

Everyone should give deference to Eve. She is clearly set aside in the Scriptures and should be honored for what she did.

But Augustine does not make an affirmative statement about her that I've seen, and he only equates Jesus or really God as being sinless. Your sources do not change that.

Btw...on Ambrose...most of the quotes you tried to use only talk of her virginity. Ambrose rights a whole book documenting the virginity of different women and what we can take away from that. It has nothing to do with sinlessness, and she's not the only woman used as an example. So again, a strikeout on your part.

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I assume you mean deference to Mary and that was a typo? I show no deference towards Eve lol

It's clear we arent going to come to any sort of agreement. I don't see any of your points as holding any weight and you clearly see mine the same way. I'm going to drop it. I'll pray for you, you do the same for me and we'll all be on the same page one day.

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Yes, I meant Mary. Sorry. Was typing fast and mistyped.

The challenge is you've made claims. You've appealed to Church Fathers, specifically Augustine and Ambrose, as proof your claim is historical. Neither claim has held up and certainly Augustine makes more claims (as I've shown) that limit sinlessness to only Jesus (or God).

This ends up being the fundamental issue I have with Rome. Your claims are overstated. Where there is disagreement, it can almost always be traced to a lack of support in the ancient fathers, let alone Scripture.

So you will end up having to appeal to Rome as its own authority.

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Yet again you prove yourself to be one of (if not the only) Christian that is impossible to converse with on this board. I tried to give a tidy ending despite your multiple uncharitable posts.

You routinely ignore clear questions/statements, often times when they have been repeated. All the questions levied against you just disappear. It's annoying. When a poster believes you've misread something, you charge full steam ahead in restating your position, never clarifying the point that you are questioned on

You are extremely hostile. Most of the atheists/agnostics respond with more decorum than you do. It would appear that you believe Catholics as some sort of enemy that the world needs to be rid of. I'm used to this by now, but those are in person conversations where people tell me I'm an idolator in the heat of the moment. Here you have all the time in the world to type a response and you seem to actively choose to fight.

Let me be clear: I believe every counter point you posted to severely lack in substance. I believe you've completely misread Augustine, and it seems to either be intentional, or poor comprehension. Your point on Ambrose screams "I'm going to ignore the part where he says she's 'free of every stain of sin' because I can point to other writings on virginity, despite them never talking about Mary or her sinless life". It seems to me that you either do not have an understanding of the material, or you are so intensely focused on making your point that you don't care one bit what I actually type in response. I see no reason to continue this discussion with you in its current form.

Please feel free to have the last word. I promise not to respond.

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I'm catching up on all the different threads.

To be clear, it's not uncharitable to disagree with you, or to challenge the Roman Church. I reread my post, and in no way was it hostile.

I will note that in this thread, I have been responding to multi followers of the Roman Church. Just simply from a time standpoint, I do have to be quicker in some of my responses than others.

But what I do take great offense to, is the constant claims from Rome that my responses are insufficient or avoiding an issue, when from where I stand, I am responding to many more posts than yall and also backing my posts with direct historical references.

I went back to the first post you responded to me and it was this:

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She was written of as the new Eve, or perfect Eve or advocate for Eve since the beginning. Eve came into the world without sin. There is connection one.

Ambrose and Augustine say it plainly. I could lean on their understanding of scripture and tradition, or I can listen to AgLiving06. And while I have looked, I have found nothing conclusive on Luther ever changing his views, so I'm not sure where you got that. Maybe you have sources you could point me to.

We're all believing something based on someone else's say so. You believe in sola scriptura because Luther said so. Or maybe you believe you could have come to this conclusion by yourself. Then it's still your say so. All we can know for sure is that the Bible definitively does not state that it is the sole infallible source of the faith, so I will trust the Church Christ founded as having the Holy Spirit as its guide.

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When we looked at the context of Ambrose and Augustine, it does not appear that either "say it plainly." Augustine actually makes the argument that he's not going to comment and Ambrose is talking about Mary into he context of the virtues of virginity, which he also applies to other women.

The link you tried to use for support is cherrypicked information that doesn't support the claim. The Augustine quote most relevant to the discussion actually makes the point that he wouldn't comment on her nature. The Ambrose quotes are from books about the virtues of virginity.
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I do want to be clear though, that you haven't countered any claims. I see that often from many on the side of Rome on this forum. There is a lot of groupthinking going on here (have to be more supports of Rome on here than any other group) and I know it can be jarring to have people see flaws in your church.

Even in your post I quoted above, you make a claim. A claim that much of the Christian church has disagreed with since the claim was first made. Instead of trying to defend it, you simply just appeal to your church as a defense of a claim. For all the claims against Sola Scriptura, where you land is Sola Ecclesia or simply you appeal to your Church alone as your source.

The Banned said:

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Jabin said:

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So you are saying that the Holy Spirit's inspiration to John was limited to what John knew at the time he was writing?

It's too bad that God and his spirit didn't realize that there would eventually be a Bible and that Revelation would be part of it.

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It's too bad God and His spirit didn't realize that people would interpret scripture incorrectly and leave a Church behind that could help settle these matters

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I have been pondering this statement for a few days, and I am not sure what I think about it. Specifically, the role of the church being to "settle these matters."

Good arguments, but then what happens when tradition strays from the canon and/or strays from God's way?

St. Vincent wrote before seeing the terrible harm that the passage of time could do in terms of accumulation of errors in tradition.

In other words, tradition cannot be and is not an independent standard for truth. It must be evaluated by a truly independent standard, and that is God's word. Christian tradition post-Christ is no more reliable than was Jewish tradition pre-Christ.

Zobel said:

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I think if you read St Vincent's advice, it guards against the drift you're talking about.

The Apostolic Tradition is a concrete thing - it is a public ministry and teaching that they deposited in the Church. The Faith was passed down once for all to the saints. The tradition can't change. That's the "antiquity" part of it.

Christianity is not different today than it was in St Vincent's day, and Christians today - whether laymen or clergy - have the exact same responsibilities and duties that they did then. If your line of thinking leads you to conclude you need to behave differently, I would say it is almost certainly in error. Because there is only one Faith, deposited one time.

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In other words, tradition cannot be and is not an independent standard for truth. It must be evaluated by a truly independent standard, and that is God's word.

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This is completely unworkable, though. The scriptures cannot be an independent standard any more than the US constitution can. Both require application and interpretation, and judges. That independent standard itself is subject to dispute over what is and isn't contained within - the topic of this thread - which went on for centuries after the Apostolic era. The scriptures themselves are subject to the interpretation of the person reading them, which makes that person the authority structure if no other authority exists over them. This isn't a theory - it is a demonstrable fact. People simply cannot agree on this independent standard, which makes it useless. Based on scripture alone Christians can't even agree on Baptism and the Eucharist, the two fundamental core expressions of the faith we see in the NT! That is as basic as it gets!

The Apostolic Tradition, however, is a demonstrable historical fact. We can examine and see, unequivocally, what people taught, what people prayed, and how people lived the Faith in history. This includes what writings they used as scriptures, too, by the way.

There is no debate when you ask questions that are of the form St Vincent proposes, because they're not really subject to interpretation (oh sure, you can find disputes and variations in the margins, but not in the meat). What did the churches confess everywhere? What was taught? What was preserved? What did the councils say and were they accepted by the churches? What scriptures did they use, and quote from, and teach from? What church fathers did they consider reliable? How did those people worship? How did they practice their faith?

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Christian tradition post-Christ is no more reliable than was Jewish tradition pre-Christ.

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I don't agree at all, and the reason is that Christ is the head of the Church, and its high priest. He didn't abandon us. Moses and certain prophets had the Holy Spirit to guide them as they led Israel and later Judaea. The Christian Church has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for all of us. As St Paul says, we have the mind of Christ. That is a completely new and different paradigm, and it is one that Protestantism seems like it has to reject in order to self-justify.

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So that is what is confusing. I agree that believers in Christ have the Holy Spirit dwelling within.

My initial thoughts were around the idea of the church "settling these matters." How does that happen within all the Christian sects we operate in? My initial reaction would be that is the role of the local church, which is how I have operated under.

The link provided has a whole chapter on the authority of Apostolic See,

"[84.] The foregoing would be enough and very much more than enough, to crush and annihilate every profane novelty. But yet that nothing might be wanting to such completeness of proof, we added, at the close, the twofold authority of the Apostolic See, first, that of holy Pope Sixtus, the venerable prelate who now adorns the Roman Church; and secondly that of his predecessor, Pope Celestine of blessed memory, which same we think it necessary to insert here also."

What do you mean then that his use of the word, "Catholic" with a capital "C" should mean universal, when it appears to me that it indeed means the Catholic Church led by the Bishop of Rome?

Because in the 400s the Catholic Church was not led by the bishop of Rome. There was one Catholic Church, not the Roman Catholic Church. 4th ecumenical council canon 28 is quite clear on this matter.

The Bishop of Rome would have been St Vincent's patriarch, as he was from France.

To be sure, the Bishop of Rome's expression carries weight. That's why Pope Leo's Tome was so important. St Irenaeus calls out the Bishop of Rome as the guard of tradition by virtue of the ancient seat, and the continuous teaching. Read what St Vincent says - his appeal is not that "the Pope said so, and so it is" - St Vincent says the reason those Bishops were right was because they said:

"Let there be no innovation -- nothing but what has been handed down."

"Therefore, because, as the Apostle says, the faith is one -- evidently the faith which has obtained hitherto -- let us believe the things that are to be said, and say the things that are to be held...Let no license be allowed to novelty, because it is not fit that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."

"We are deservedly to blame if we encourage error by silence. Therefore rebuke these people. Restrain their liberty of preaching...If the case be so (that is, if the case be so as certain persons complain to me touching your cities and provinces, that by your hurtful dissimulation you cause them to consent to certain novelties), if the case be so, let novelty cease to assail antiquity."

So is this an appeal to papal authority or papal infallibility? No.. this is an appeal to Apostolic Tradition.

St Paul speaks to that too. "It is necessary for there to be factions among you, so that also the approved should become evident among you."


The hallmark of the Spirit is unity - Jesus prays "that all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, so that they may be one, as We are one -- I in them and You in Me -- that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me."


This unity comes through being united to Christ in Baptism and in the Eucharist. St Paul says "one body and one Spirit...one Lord, one faith, one baptism" and in another place "Because there is one loaf, we the many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf" and in another "we, the many, are one body in Christ; and individually members one of another."


That is precisely where we should be focusing: why are we not in communion with each other? What divides us from partaking of one loaf, so that we can be one Body in Christ, and therefore members of one another?

Well we have a group that thinks they are eating the actual flesh and blood and another that believes that is heretical. And vice versa. How do you get unity if you don't even agree with the basics?

Groups of believers that think baptism is essential for salvation and others that believe it is elective.

I think most believe in unity.

But what does unity mean?

Each group says that they believe in unity, but then contend that everyone has to agree with them on every minor point of doctrine in order for there to be unity. Or agree to join them and partake of their form of worship in order for there to be unity. That form of unity is actually divisiveness.

Obviously, there are core fundamentals of the faith that one must agree with in order to even be a Christian. But it seems like every group claiming to be Christian ends up adding to those fundamentals, insisting that everyone must also agree to those additions, and then pointing to those who don't as being "divisive".

I suspect that unity looks more like love and acceptance than it does in endless arguments about doctrine and insistence on being right.

The problem with "love and acceptance" is that it is basically the mantra of liberalism. So that seems to be quite a line to walk - maintaining truth and also accepting "minor" disagreements in the name of accepting and loving others for what they want to believe.

10andBOUNCE said:

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The problem with "love and acceptance" is that it is basically the mantra of liberalism. So that seems to be quite a line to walk - maintaining truth and also accepting "minor" disagreements in the name of accepting and loving others for what they want to believe.

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True, but it is also the mantra of Christianity. Just because it has been corrupted by liberalism does not mean we should abandon what Christ taught.

Jabin said:

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Good arguments, but then what happens when tradition strays from the canon and/or strays from God's way?

St. Vincent wrote before seeing the terrible harm that the passage of time could do in terms of accumulation of errors in tradition.

In other words, tradition cannot be and is not an independent standard for truth. It must be evaluated by a truly independent standard, and that is God's word. Christian tradition post-Christ is no more reliable than was Jewish tradition pre-Christ.

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Even better...St Vincent rejected much of Augustine, which shaped the Western Church...

So in his mind, the "church" or "tradition" were not even reflective of the multiple traditions at that point in time.

OK, here goes. First, Zobel, you keep citing obscure people that you classify as church "fathers" as authority. They are not authoritative any more than Billy Graham or Tim Keller were.

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I think this is a really important point. We are talking about the unity of the faith. This is something St Paul says we will grow into, so this is a goal for us. This unity in faith is found, as the scriptures said, in Christ, through Baptism and the Eucharist.

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Please cite the Biblical verses that say that unity in the faith is found through Baptism and the Eucharist. I don't remember the word Eucharist being found anywhere in the Bible. Paul does talk about one Baptism in Ephesians, but what are you claiming he means by that?

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But unity in faith does not mean complete straightjacket uniformity in theology broadly speaking. But there is a place where unity is required and that is in dogma. This is the core of the faith, and takes its form in things we confess in each and every liturgy like the symbol of faith. This is defined primarily through the Ecumenical councils.

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What do you consider the Ecumenical councils? Do the EO and the RCC agree on the dispositive/authoritative councils? What about modern councils? Do you consider the work of the conservative Protestants in the early 20th Century that established the "fundamentals of the faith" to be an ecumenical council?

Do you agree with those fundamentals? If not, which ones do you disagree with and why?

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Dogma doesn't change, it is dogmatic fact - the fact of the principles which are part of the reality of the life in Christ, the life in the Church. Dogma is what the church has always believed - what St Vincent describes "everywhere, always, by all". Dogmatic formulas and definitions come out of those Ecumenical councils in response to heresy as a way to put forward barriers or guards around those beliefs over and against heretical teachings - to crystallize them.

The truth is these dogmatic teachings are relatively limited.

There's a good article about this from the Orthodox perspective written by Fr Andrew Stephen Damick here:
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2014/03/05/is-orthodoxy-the-same-everywhere-understanding-theological-controversy-within-the-church/

He gives an explanation here about how dogma, doctrine, and theology relate - here is an example he gives:

• Dogma: Jesus Christ is fully both God and man. (This is non-negotiable and pretty simple.)
• Doctrine: We refer to this as the "Incarnation," which literally means "enfleshment," an emphasis on how divinity has become truly united with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. (Note here the emphasis is actually on how God became human, not on a precise insistence on the fullness of both natures. The emphasis on calling this the "Incarnation" and describing what that means is for teaching the dogma, not because the humanity is more important than the divinity.)
• Theology: Because of the Incarnation, we engage God sacramentally and physically. We adorn our churches with icons, ordain clergy, venerate relics, etc. We believe that salvation consists in theosis, which joins the human person to God through the Incarnation. (None of this is controversial in Orthodoxy, but the model of using the Incarnation to link all these things together and especially as the basis for theosis is not itself dogma. One might alternatively give a theology of the goodness of creation and approach the question cosmologically rather than soteriologically.)

That's ultimately why centuries of claims of papal supremacy did not result in the schism. Nor did centuries of differences in expression of praxis between East and West (for example, whether or not to use leavened bread in the Eucharist). What resulted in the schism was a difference in dogma - the filioque, which is both an issue relating to ecumenical councils, dogmatic formula, and in the end a different understanding of God.

The issue is that much of the disunity comes at the dogmatic level. We have to start there.

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A bunch of words which convey little meaning. You like to use the vernacular of the EO to try to communicate to us Protestants, which is a non-starter. Surely, as a former Protestant, you can do better?

Of course we all have to agree to the fundamentals of the faith, otherwise one is not even a Christian. But from my perspective, the EO and the RCC have added a lot of baggage to the fundamentals. That baggage may not be dogma, but you refuse to "have communion" with us, which is the essence of divisiveness.

The EO likes to accuse the RCC and Protestants of being divisive but ignores the beam in its own eye. The EO is not only divisive within its own ranks, but also makes little to no effort to bridge the gap that exists between it and the other main groups of Christendom.

It just rankles me how you and the other EO folks on here constantly post about how Protestants are wrong about this and that and then accuse us of being divisive!

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Protestantism, and specifically the idea of Sola Scriptura, introduced an entirely new paradigm that is completely foreign to Christianity for the first 1,500 years.

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Your history is completely wrong. It wasn't a new paradigm but a return to the original paradigm as the Thessalonians were described as doing in Acts 17:11. It's interesting that the RCC folks on here seem to object so strongly to God's own word having more authority and providing better guidance than men in a man-made institution.

Thanks. I had not even heard of "Saint" Vincent before. I wonder why anyone would consider his opinions authoritative as to anything?

The Banned said:

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10andBOUNCE said:

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Well we have a group that thinks they are eating the actual flesh and blood and another that believes that is heretical. And vice versa. How do you get unity if you don't even agree with the basics?

Groups of believers that think baptism is essential for salvation and others that believe it is elective.

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This is exactly why the Protestant reformation was so damaging. Had Luther been committed to changing the church for the better, it would have been the Catholic reformation.

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The way I understand it, this basically was his intent.

The saints of the church are authoritative in my tradition. I didn't quote St Vincent of Lerins because I expect you or anyone else to listen to him because we consider him a saint. If that were the case, I would have just said "St Vincent says x, you have to do it." I put those quotes because what he wrote was thoughtful, introspective, and came at a challenge issue from multiple angles in a way that makes a lot of sense. I don't think you need to think he is a saint to consider the value in what he wrote. And, as far as I can tell, you haven't actually voiced any objection to what he said.

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Please cite the Biblical verses that say that unity in the faith is found through Baptism and the Eucharist

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I already referenced the scriptures above. I quoted John 17:21-23, Ephesians 4:4-6, 1 Corinthians 10:17, and Romans 12:5. That's not really exhaustive, but the most direct and unarguable one is that St Paul says quite clearly "because there is one loaf, we are united into one Body." That is explicitly about the Eucharist. As for baptism, one baptism because there is only one baptism into Christ Jesus. St Paul says with regard to unity (which is where this began) that we find it in the Spirit in the bond of peace, one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. The Body is Christ's body, we are members of it. That body is animated by the Holy Spirit. Unity is achieved in that same Spirit. That body has one faith, one baptism, and one God.

Just like you cannot become an Israelite without circumcision and cannot eat the Passover without being circumcised, you cannot become a Christian without baptism and cannot eat the Eucharist (the New Passover) without being baptized.

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What do you consider the Ecumenical councils? Do the EO and the RCC agree on the dispositive/authoritative councils? What about modern councils? Do you consider the work of the conservative Protestants in the early 20th Century that established the "fundamentals of the faith" to be an ecumenical council?

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We recognize seven ecumenical councils. The EO and Roman church agree on the seven before the schism. There is an eighth that got contentious after the schism. After the schism Rome held councils without the East which we do not agree are ecumenical.

Not sure what you mean by modern councils. And no, I don't consider the councils of the 20th century from people who are outside of my faith - removed by over a thousand years of schism - with no input from my faith - to be ecumenical in any sense or meaning of the word.

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Do you agree with those fundamentals? If not, which ones do you disagree with and why?

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I don't know what they are, so I don't know if I agree with them or not.

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A bunch of words which convey little meaning

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Which words don't you understand?

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Of course we all have to agree to the fundamentals of the faith, otherwise one is not even a Christian. But from my perspective, the EO and the RCC have added a lot of baggage to the fundamentals. That baggage may not be dogma, but you refuse to "have communion" with us, which is the essence of divisiveness.

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Yeah. Let's start with Baptism and the Eucharist. You don't practice baptism the way I do. You don't believe the Eucharist the way I do. You may not even accept the Nicene creed, which is THE criteria of the Christian faith and has been for 1700 years. If we can't get over that, who cares about the alleged "baggage"? What is more fundamental than Baptism and the Eucharist?

You can get rankled if you like, but again - the scriptures are clear. The "faith passed down once for all to the saints" that contains "the teaching of the Apostles, the communion in the breaking of bread, and the prayers" is the faith of the Apostles as taught by Christ and there can be no other. This is a question of fact, not opinion. The Apostles taught something. The people of their day practiced their faith in a certain way. They used certain writings as scriptures, and considered the teaching of certain people authoritative.

If your faith does not align with that, it cannot be the faith that was passed down from the Apostles.

Jabin said:

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Thanks. I had not even heard of "Saint" Vincent before. I wonder why anyone would consider his opinions authoritative as to anything?

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He's more favored in the east because he was against Augustine and more in alignment with John Cassian. Both have had to fend off semi-pelagian accusations.

He's essentially known for this quote:

"In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always by all."

Which sounds nice, but doesn't really mean anything when you consider that:

1. There's very little the early church believed that meets that criteria. One only has to look at all the capital T traditions that disagree with each other to see that.

2. He was writing this against Augustine, essentially implying Augustine was not catholic or orthodox in teaching (lower case in both cases). The irony is palpable.

Interestingly, I'm doing a study on the role of faith in the early church and Prosper wrote against Vincent. The original leader from Vincent doesn't seem to exist anymore, so curious to see how Prosper responds to it.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Even in your post I quoted above, you make a claim. A claim that much of the Christian church has disagreed with since the claim was first made. Instead of trying to defend it, you simply just appeal to your church as a defense of a claim. For all the claims against Sola Scriptura, where you land is Sola Ecclesia or simply you appeal to your Church alone as your source.

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Which why it's so ironic that he actually has a passage from scripture to point to in support of "sola ecclesia" as you describe it, but you have no such scripture passage to point to for sola scriptura or sola fide.

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So you agree in Sola Ecclesia, that is "the Church is the ultimate authority above Scripture."

Bold move.