Were the Bereans "Sola Scripturists"?

In the light of my post your statement is quite baffling. SS is taught in the Bible. This is demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt.
I know of a Muslim that had memorized the entire New Testament. He also knew what it meant to be saved. Did the knowledge of the New Testament lead him to a saving knowledge in Christ? No.
That has nothing to do with SS. It has everythig to do with an act of the will, just as it had to do with the unbelieving Jews. The ability to prove a doctrine or demonstrated it using the Bible alone has always been there. It has always been the method used of the Christians and of the devout Jews. It was only during the inter-testamental period that the Pharisees and Saduccees arose and began to depend on tradition. Devout Jews used the Word of God, and it alone. Check Isaiah 8:20.

The will to choose to believe has nothing to do with SS. The Catholic Church refuses to believe SS whether or not it is taught in the Bible. They do every thing in their power to deny and discredit Biblical doctrines. Here is a doctrine clearly taught in the Word of God. The Catholic Church denies that it is, as they do many other doctrines. That is nothing new. And no wonder. Their Church confines them to the teachings of the Magesterium thus they must discredit the doctrine of SS, or their whole unBiblical ungodly system of doctrine comes tumbling down.
DHK

 

One thing you seem to fail to understand about the Jews is the regulative principle. We have discussed this here with the Campbellists (and sometimes, Primitive Baptists)regarding intruments in Church. While I do not agree that this carries over today in the way these groups insist, still, to the Jews, the only things that were authorized were those things God specifically permitted, and anything else was autmomatically forbidden. People could not just improvise and take it upon themselves to go and make any other kind of image. So if God told them to make images of those things, they would, but any other image was strictly forbidden, as per their understanding of the second commandment. So any group that would make any image of anything other than those temple items, in the Temple only was obviouly an aberrant sect.

then the didach was wrong on that point, as we are not making a new sacrifice. A person shoudl confess his sins before continuing to fellowship in the body (which of course would include Communion), not only before he takes the bread and wine. (We see the orgins of some of the practices of modern nominal catholics who get religious only on special occasions).

but this "visible" church originally was not defined in terms of an organization or magisterium. The addition of such was only the beginning of the very "denominationalism" you criticize, only it took time for the first one to lose power, and then begin to splinter. Your denomination did not always agree either, as the fracture between east and West began long before the official organizaion split in 1054, and then there were followers of Augustine, and those who did not follow him, etc. Once again, having one all powerful organization did not solve any of this, but helped fuel the problem.

But if all of these denominational organizations are wrong, as you insist, then one you want us to choose becuase of its age could be wrong as well. When Christ said the gates of Hell would not prevail, He was not talking about an organization. In fact, I believe that was one of the very instruments of Hell used to try to destroy the Church and turn it into just another vehicle of men's sinful desire of control (Rev.17). We have to look past the organizations, to see the true Body of Christ, that the gates of hell have nor ptrevailed against, even though the organizations have often obscured its truth.

 

I see. So the fact that a person HAS the Bible does not mean they will CHOOSE to accept what it says. They may CHOOSE to ignore the "details" that don't fit their traditions - and simply cling to man-made tradition and or "self-centered" living EVEN though God the Holy Spirit was "convicting them of sin and righteousness and judgment".

Ok - so that is pretty obvious from the statement you made above.

But "what if" someone doesn't "want" to pay attention to the detail in your post any more than paying attention to the "detail" given in Mark 7 (*scripture vs tradition") or the detail given in Acts 17:11 (NonChristians using SS to test AN APOSTLE!!) or the details given in Gal 1:6-11 (Even though an APOSTLE or an ANGEL FROM HEAVEN should come teaching some OTHER gospel - compared to THIS one - let them be accursed) -??

Will not that person ignore any and ALL "details" that are contrary to the direction of their own preferences?

IF so - then not only would someone HERE turn a blind eye to what you have said above - to the point of "pretending" not to get the point of what was said... but also people in ALL denominations would have a "Tendancy" to "LISTEN TO THE TRADITIONS" of their OWN magesterium in their OWN denominations rather than "the magesterium of someone else".

So the "proposal" that we abandon the objective rule of SS - leads to MORE intrenched denominationalism -- not less!

In Christ,

Bob

 

So without SS, as the Catholics have it, every person of the Mafia makes a good Catholic because they pay lip service to the Catechism no matter how they live. You can live like the devil, be what ever you want in life--hit man, adulterer, thief, etc, and still be a Catholic. Why? You have a Catechism you can pay lip service to. If your conscience bothers you sometimes you can always avail yourself of confession and then go back to your practice of murder or being a hit man. SS is not welcome in the Catholic Church. SS (because of the Bible) convicts people of their sin, and urges them to do right. It has a much higher success rate. It would cause people (like Luther) to revolt against the Catholic Church, because he, through SS, could see the heresies that the Catholic Church was teaching.
DHK

 

That is a well known belief of orthodox Jews.

That is the way I would take it. But the way they looked at it was that any image could possibly become an object of worship, or at least be mistaken for one ("appearance of evil"). The thing about their reading of the Law, was that they they didn't take any chances.
And their use in Christian Churches, which is what we are diuscussing, certainly would be seen as crossing the line into "worshipping as gods" anyway. A "god" being any supposedly exalted individual ("even leaders of Israel were sometimes called "gods", and glorified saints would definitely count as such).

the Pharisees, Whom Jesus acknowledged as "sitting in Moses' seat" would not have had any images.
And let's not forget, Mosaic oral traditionapparently said so, as well!

Romans 12:1 "I plead to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that all of you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." That is the "re-presentation of and participation in Christ's once-for-all sacrifice". Once again,; it's all about the members of the Body; not inanimate objects "which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk" (Rev. 9:20)

So how do you prove that yours is that one Church? Because you find a couple of your practices in the early fathers, then claim they must have gotten these practices from an "oral tradition handed down" from the apostles, but when we question this, it is proven because "the gates of hell shall not prevail against the true Church". See how cyclical this is? You use one argument to prove another, in a circular fashion.
This to me further proves that your group is just another part of that manmade "conglomeration of competing denominations" in the same game as all the rest, and that the best (though not perfect, given our sinfulness) way is SS. Anybody can claim their group is the original Church Christ founded. The Church of Christ does it. The JW's do it. Armstrongism did it. The Mormons, too, I believe. You can appeal to "their doctrines are heresies, and the early Church stood unanimously against them, but another point is suppose one of those "heresies" was actually the truth, and the "big corrupt Church" oppressed it, as most of these groups maintain. (I.e the JW's would say Arianism was the truth, and since it existed back then, it could be traced to the apostles, (Barnabas' and Hermas' statements on the preexistence of Christ really do not specify His full deity, and thus could be compatible with Arianism, and even Ignatius' statements on "Christ our God" could be construed in light of the way the JW's take John 1:1); and then claim that the gates of hell never prevailed against the truth. They can even appeal to prophecy, of the "Mother Babylon" Church oppressing the truth.
Once again, all of these organizations are playing the same game, the EOC included. That one just happens to be older. It's all about control and self-exaltation, anyway. The truth Church of Christ must be an invisible organization of a visible body. Man's organizations just get in the way, and what have caused all of the problems. But at least ours reconizes others in Christ, despite some of the other doctrinal differences. You want perfect adherance in every single belief, and while that is an ideal in the NT, still, the only way we can bring that about it to control and force everyone into a particular mindset. --like cults aim to do. Even then, the people would not really be convinced, but rather go through the motions and not really be sanctified; hence the nominal "cultural catholics" DHK describes above.

[ July 13, 2005, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Eric B ]

 

We are talking about the Jews now. With them, it was not a matter of "the heart", but the letter of the Law as seen through their supposed Mosaic oral tradition". It certainly was a double standard if they were kissing the Torah scroll back then (I know from the service I attended once, that their reverence of it is something I would question). I could also understand the JW's concerns about the flag. Chrsitan author Michel Horton mentions the "mixed message" we send hy huddling to pray around it, and the "american faith" of many conservatives that this partiotism is apart of certainly is something I would say goes too far sometimes.
And none of this is to be the example for Christians who want to do what is right.

 

Well, I'm not saying they were particularly right. They are the ones who claimed to follow "oral tradition". They could show you ways in which all of God's "commandments" weren't always written (e.g. murder already wrong even though no written command was given to Cain or reecorded in the Torah, etc). From this, they would rebuff your claim that their tradition "originated in themselves" just like you try to do with us. So if they were right, and Jesus and His followers' teachings contradicted this "equally authoritative" form of God's word, then no amount of claims of truth or miracles they did would authenticate them. There would be no way to tell who had the truth except that "we said it, it was handed down to us, that settles it". I don't know why you can't see that what you're doing is the same exact thing as they! The "catholic" churches have shown themselves not to be the faithful followers of NT "Christianity" that they made themselves out to be, even though, they could trace themselves all the way back, just like the Pharisees could. That's what I mean in not looking at a visible organization. Even when founded by God, and initially endowed with His truth; they go astray. The whole point of Christ's Kingdom was that it would no longer be institution based like Israel.

Sorry, but our "sacrifice" is what is made the re-presenation of Christ's sacrifice. Why do you think we are instructed in terms of "take up our Cross"? Once again, after a whole Milennium and a half, the Church largely became a cultural/sentimantal element, that did not change most people's lives anymore, because these principles became focused on lifeless physical elements, and not the life-changing power of God in our lives.

I don't venerate crosses, and none of us claims to have any of His actual spilled blood preserved anywhere in order to make such an idol of it. The Cross and blood are legal concepts that purchase our spiritual salvation. The physical objects themselves did not do anything for anyone. Before anyone, even some Baptists and others flips over this, just think of it this way. The other thief on the Cross, the one who mocked and did not repent, could very well have gotten some of Christ's blood on him. But that would not save him. This "blood" is applied spiritually, not physically. The physical application of blood (on the doorposts in Egypt) was the type.
So for Churches to make virtual idols out of all of these other things: the Cross, or supposed pieces of it they think they have, or a claim to have a vial of His original blood preserved, or the cup He drank out of, or the shroud he was buried in, as well as bread, wine and baptismal water; is all apart of the shift from the Spirit as the center of things of the Spirit to material items, and this is what promotes the nominalism where people think they are saved by the Church through these items, no matter their actual relationship to Christ.

There has not been a consistencey of doctrine and practice. Only basically baptism and communion, and perhaps Mary and icons. Then, you try to prove those things are from the apostles by this "consistency", which begs the question of whether they are really consistent with the apostles. If we do not have any statement from they themselves, then there is no real PROOF at all they believed these things. You are basically asking us to place our faith in the organization of the Church, based on the premise that God would not let it depart from the truth, but when we see it looks like it did, then we are pointed to a bunch of truths that were omitted from writing by the apostles. So then we are right back where we started. How can we know that? We have to haveve faith in the later church's word.
Also, the Church teaching was "consistent" on the world being flat and at the center of the universe; until the physical evidence forced them to eventually drop it. But that was seen as right up there with the other doctrines.

But I have not even been arguing that here. You are hearing something others may have said, and trying to throw something I said back at me with it, but I have not emphasized that idea. As I have just said in one of these discussions; a lot of things were not clearly understood even in the early Church, and became official statements as time went on. The Trinity is a perfect example. The dosctine as we know it was formulated in the fourth century. Before then, more and more of the statements associated with it were beginning to be coined, as people tried to put togethter the truths from the scriptures, as they were becoming more available (not oral tradition)!. At one point, the Church did not even think of Jesus as "being" God, but rather linked God and Jesus in terms of doing the same works. You can see this addressed in Shirley c. Guthrie's Christian Doctrine. Then, we see 2 Clement come and tells us "Bretheren, we ought to think of christ as of God, as the judge of the quick and the dead". We know we can say that Christ is God, but people in the beginning saw it in completely different terms. If it was about a "tradition" passed down from the apostles, then there would never have been any such development or problems. We should not see fathers and apologists framing statements in reaction to heretical views. It would simply be "the apostles told us thus themselves, and it is not in the scriptures, so you are missing some of the revelation; so that settles it". (I have not studied up upon baptism, Eucharist, icons, and the rest of that stuff, you you could challenge me more on those, but the history of the Trinity I am well studies in).

I didn't say that it was a conglomeration; but that it was just another part of that conglomeration )called "Christendom". Just like any other particular denomination that claims to be truer, and is unified on matter of faith within its own group.

They all claim to. You use your group's age and proximity of some of the teachings ot the apostles. Others, as I said, will claim one of the "heresies" was really the truth that was suppressed by a corrupted institution. It could go either way, as the Church did often wrongly quash practices that were not really heretical (quartodecimanism and other Jewish practices kept as per Rom.14, for instance).

Yes, those groups are often conspiratorial. (I don't know who this "dan Brown" is, though). But if they happened to be right, that the truth would have been kept by these small groups, or at least preserved in the written Word, as I maintained. Either way, we would have to choose one side and have faith in what they are saying. None of us were around back then, so we can;t see for ourselves. You have to have faith in something. So many of us see it is better to go back to the source, and try to decipher it for ourseolves. Now you say this is just everyone going by their own personal opinion and produces hundreds of conflicting groups. Well, then, the people will be judged for how they handle the Word. If all are wrong, all will give account. But the solution is not to place our faith in any of these goups claiming to have the monopoly on the truth. All that is is another set of individuals going by their own personal opinions, but forrcing them on others ont he premise of an unprovable, untestable apostolic tradition.

And that's what all of those goups you are dismissing are saying; espcially the cults and fundamentalists (who are hardest on catholic groups).

You yourself attest to the same things, in different words/indirectly. On one hand; it is possible for those in the visible church to go astray, oof ro there to be some conflict, until they sit down and decide on the issue; but God still prevents all from going astray. A whole section of the Church apparently fell away from the true "East" church, even though it descended from the apostolic Church as well. What you have is an invisible organism, which to you is now embodied in the visible EOC oraganization. If Constantinople were to go astray, and Jerusalem were to maintain the practices, then iot would be embodied in Jerusalem. God's Spirit is invisible, and the spiritual Body He maintains is invisble, but manifest visibly through its members.

I think you may be confusing what I mean by "visible Church". A visible body of Christians is Christ's body. It's the "organizational and instutional aspects" I;m etting at, and yes, it should be "more than that", but in practice, it comes to be defined by that. So likewise, you look at a "conglomeration" of oraganization and then deny that we are one Church, claiming that only your one organization represents it. That is making the Body "no more" than just an organization. If you really saw it as more than that, we wouldnt be having this debate over multiple oragnizations versus one organization. All of this is why I say organizations get in the way.

Heretics, immoral, and false teachers are free to leave, bu those who do not fall into such catefories then are forced into this body with all its trappings, if they would be saved (in Christ). I'm sorry, but that is still control and manipulation. Christ is not about a legally incorporated institution (to make it more clear what I mean by "organization".

 

BTW - do those who reject the scripture as trustworthy and reliable for doctrine ALSO reject it as a "primary source"??

 

No, Bob.

DHK, your last post was a blatant straw man. Surely you know from your Catholic days that Catholic doctrine condemns the unrepentant murderer, especially if he be a baptised Catholic, to Hell?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

So how does believing or non-believing in SS (as the unrepentant murderer), affect the fact that it is a Biblical doctrine. It is you who has the straw man.
DHK

 

Didn't a famous Catholic by the name of Martin Luther make that same charge as Tetzel came around selling indulgences at the direction of the Pope?

Surely all those good folk just "listening to their magesterium and doing whatever a SUCCESSOR said was ok to do" could not have known to "search the scriptures and SEE IF what they were being told is valid".

IF they had been given the "primary source" Scripture in their own language - the way the non-Christians in Acts 17:11 had it given to them - "maybe" just "maybe" they would not have been so duped as to need Martin Luther to disabuse them of the myths and errors handed to them by their own magesterium.

In Christ,

Bob