To our Roman Catholic friends

I would love to hear which church fathers you consider legit. The bible did not fall out the sky. The way you know your bible is the most accurate bible is how? You grab the bible from the guy next to you, it matches so it must be right? right?

The copy you have was copied from another copy who copied from another and when we track down who has the list of scripture so you know what books belong in the bible eventually you end up barking up the tree of a early church father. You have to trust HIS authority in the precise selection of the written works from among hundreds of fakes, forgeries, other gospels that are rejected, etc. There is always an scholar authority, he knows your gospel of Luke is genuine because it matches what?

As I understand we currently 5 generations from the original autograph. The original the author wrote, someone copied it, someone copied that, someone copied that, someone copied that, someone copied that. Bout the closest you will get. Now who is holding that book? When you find out its some Russian Orthodox Catholic can you accept his word that it was not tampered with, that it is genuine copy of the gospel.

When you say yes, that is the authority of tradition in action.


I also agree that where views do not agree with scripture, I have to go with scripture.

One of these views is "the bible is the only authority".

2 Timothy 3
16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

All scripture is PROFITABLE. Meaning scripture HELPS. It helps teaching, reproof, correction and training.

Those things the teaching, reproof, correction and training make the christian adequately equipped for GOOD WORKS.

Scripture is God-breathed, it is perfect and materially sufficient.

What I don't see is Scripture is REQUIRED, that WRITINGS are superior to all other mediums of communication, nor is anything ever remotely mention that scripture alone and only scripture is the authority.

Rule #1 is that for something to OFFICIALLY be a Christian teaching the teaching itself must be biblical.

So if RULE #2 is not found in the bible, it is an unbiblical teaching therefore not a christian teaching.

Here lies the problem. RULE#1 is not biblical.

We can find the word of God is true. Scripture is helpful. Scripture is perfect. Scripture is true. Scripture is great.

We should not go beyond what is written in scripture. we should not add false teachings.

You name it, the scripture is best thing since flat bread. (sliced bread comes later).

Rule #1 does not exist. It is a common mistake and assumption made. Jesus Christ did not teach it, niether the apostles, nor the jews and hearers of our Lord, not the early church not the church today either.


A teaching cannot go against scripture. That is true.

A teaching must be found in scripture . That is false.


The TEACHING-->"A teaching must be found in scripture" Does not exist in scripture. It is unbiblical.

The idea that something must be biblical IS UNBIBLICAL.

This is called SELF-REFUTING.

Let me be clear I LOVE HOLY SCRIPTURE. It is why all the more I defend against unbiblical additions.

 

Don't forget the American Catholic.

 

I was unable to respond to Martin as the thread was closed but I wanted to make my final point. Which is with the OT. That he says all 39 books were categorized under the "Law and the Prophets" I agree all scripture was categorized under those two categories in Jesus day. I think I quoted Norman Geisler as well in saying this. My objection to this is that there is no definitive way to determine which OT books were considered with in the "Prophets" as the Torah is obviously the first five books. In order to say the 39 books were either included or not is speculative. The only source one can point to is Talmudic Tradition as it is clear early Christians looked at books in the LXX not covered in the Masoretic text. Certainly, that is what Norman Geisler points to. And there is another point with regard to scriptures. In the Catholic Faith the Gospels hold a more prominent place than the other scriptures. Not that the other scriptures are not inspired by God.

 

The only inspired scriptures are the 66 books of the Canon...