[soc.religion.christian] An Exemplar of What I Meant

mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (07/01/89)

In stomping all over my posting, Pat Ciriello provides a pretty good example
of what I meant by the problems of Sola Scriptura.

>> The problem that immediately arises is that we see that, for a standard, the
>> bible seems in practice to justify almost anything.  In my own experience,
>> it seems that the more isolated a person is in his interpretation, the more
>> bizarre the reading.  

>Then you must be approaching it with a bizarre attitude instead of letting the
>Holy Spirit teach you.  If you look at the Bible as ONE BOOK, which it is,
>then anything that you read in one section has to have support in another, or
>at least an explanation.

Welcome to tradition, Pat.

My original statement, I see, was a little unclear.  It was meant to be in
the context of observing how other people interpret scripture.  My
observation is and was that the more people attempt to turn their back on
"tradition", the stranger their interpretations get.  And the inevitable
appeal to the Holy Spirit as justification is futile-- all of these people
appeal to the H.S. as their guide, and he seems to be leading them in all
different directions.

Unfortunately we don't have an infallible H.S. detector.

>>And there is a second problem, more subtle than the
>> first: scripture isn't motivating.  We don't believe in scripture because of
>> scripture itself; we believe in its authority because the church says,
>> "Here, read this."  In both cases, tradition provides the spark.

>Not for me  ... I was not interested in christianity BECAUSE of all the
>'traditions' and 'dogmas' and church-related beuracracy and B.S.!!!  I
>used to go to church and look around at all the robots reciting
>everything the pompous dudes up front told them to say ... BIG DEAL!

>I didn't get interested in God until I decided ( well, actually, he
>decided ) to read the Bible for myself ... then I started to see ALOT of
>stuff that, not only was it a waste of time (the church I was in), but
>alot f what they were saying was WRONG ... plain and simple.  Sorry, but
>if the Bible doesn't say it, then it ain't so.  Period.

THe bible doesn't say that it is the sole source of truth, and therefore it
isn't so.  Simple enough?

I'm not going to spend all day trying to convince Pat that he is mistaken
here, but my reasons for doubting his view of things here are not
appreciably shaken by his story here.  And there is a lot of covert theology
here (aka tradition).  Pat seems to be implying that The Spirit doesn't
speak through other people, but only directly.  I cannot begin to disagree
with this enough.  And I think that Pat underestimates the influence all
these other Christians had on him in establishing value in the Bible.

>> This is where I think anglicans are most different from other protestants.
>> We look at tradition as *also* being normative, and mistrust the lone
>> christian with his bible.

>In other words, the heck with the fact that God said He would send the Holy
>Spirit. .. you have all the answers, so let's not bother listening to the
>Word of God ... you sound just like a Pharisee .

Pat, I think you would save us both a lot of time by not over-interpreting
what I say.  I think having the Spirit around is important, but I don't
believe, as you seem to, that She only comes to people locked in their rooms
doing individual bible study.  My experience is quite the contrary; the
Spirit is at least as likely to show up speaking through another's mouth.
And as I said at the beginning, people reading the bible on their own come
up with a lot of amazing stuff, wildly contradictory too.  It seems to me
that you are shutting out the Spirit by denying that there is value in
listening to other people.

>I suppose we should all go out and buy weapons and storm Jerusalem again ...
>I mean, that IS part of the church's tradition, isn't it?

I didn't say that you had to OBEY tradition, which is impossible anyway.
From my point of view, the mistakes are in many respects more valuable than
the truths; the appeal of a "new" idea is very strong, and knowing that it
is not new and has problems is obviously useful.

>REASON???????  You gotta be kidding? You really think us poor, pathetic,
>SINFUL, IMPERFECT, human beings could use our LIMITED, NARROW SCOPE
>reasoning to figure out what God is really saying ?

If God intended otherwise, why would we have a bible?  I'm sorry, but here's
exactly where I find the MOST reason not to believe in sola scriptura.  On
the one hand here, Pat is mightly asserting a tradition.  He is stating--
not the bible, but he himself-- that there is this one way that we "know"
things.  That's a tradition.  On the other hand, we have lots of other Pats
running around, all teaching the same tradition, but reading the bible
differently.  It is manifestly obvious that, whatever the Spirit is doing,
It is not leading all of these bible-readers to the Same Truth.

Obviously reason must be guided by the Spirit.


>It is God who gives authority to His own word ... not the church.  God
>gives the church (the ones that follow His word and not their own) the
>authority to preach His Word .. not doubt it.

And whose word is this?  Yours or God's?  Just to end the suspense, I think
it is your word.  The scriptures say something quite different.  Jesus
empowers the apostles to preach in his name, sending the Spirit upon them,
and he promises that whenever there are "2 or 3"-- NOT 1!-- gathered
together, he will be with them.  I see no evidence in the NT of this
doctrine of individual inspiration; what I see is a different doctrine of
the inspiration of *certain* individuals in order that they may teach
others, and a second doctrine of the inspiration of the church as a whole.

>We do not assent to what scripture says unless we are first prepared by God
>to do so, which has nothing at all to do with reason.

It has *everything* to do with reason.  The preparation, in my experience,
is to get reason awakened that it might hear.

>Scripture does not go silent in the absence of tradition and reason ... it
>becomes an unsoiled pillar of faith free from the dirt and cracks of human
>reason and tradition. 

Whenever I hear this, I groan.  If it is such a pillar, than it must be a
whole forest of such pillars, judging from how those who believe this
tradition disagree so.

Not to mention that this Manichaeism.  "Those who do not remember the past
are condemned to repeat it."-- this saying is nowhere so true as it is in
theology.

C. Wingate             +   "The Peace of God, it is no peace,
                       +      But strife closed in the sod.
mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu   +   Yet brothers, pray for but one thing:
mimsy!mangoe           +      The marv'lous Peace of God."