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Nov 2nd, 2008 | By | Category: Blog Posts

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  1. Frank La RoccaNo Gravatar January 15th, 2012 2:58 pm :

    Henry, re#162:

    You wrote:

    Hope this helps

    It does not. All it indicates is that the NT would seem to contradict the OT by offering up three Gods instead of one.

    I assume you are familiar with the Nicene Creed. Here, again, is the question I asked, and which you have not answered:

    Now please please respond to the challenge I gave you in #134 to show me where – in the full doctrinal formulation Christians profess in the Nicene Creed – you can find the Holy Trinity in Scripture. Not just the existence or presence of the Three Persons (as at Jesus’ baptism), but the full understanding of the Three-in-One and how they are related to each other.

    You have given Scripture that shows the existence of the three Persons. That is not what I asked. You have given Scripture that shows God is One. That is also not what I asked.

    Please answer the question I actually asked, not the one you would rather answer.

    “I can’t” is an acceptable answer.

    – Frank

  2. mateoNo Gravatar February 3rd, 2012 8:06 pm :

    David Anders writes: I, for one, can hardly imagine a gospel in which God promises eternal redemption to those who “believe” without giving any guarantee that their belief is true.

    I have met many Protestants that really do imagine such a gospel is “true”. I know of one Baptist man that was honest enough to admit that he believed that salvation was by faith alone, and from God’s point of view, it is enough that one showed faith in order to be saved, even if what one believed might not be true. For the Baptist man, it was having faith that was of supreme importance to God, and not having faith in what was true.

    I believe that this Baptist man was at least being honest in the logical ramifications of two doctrines that he had built his religious house upon – the Protestant doctrines of sola scriptura and salvation of faith alone. There are, of course, thousands upon thousands of Protestants sects that are assuming that these two Protestant doctrines are true, and these doctrinally divided sects express no unity of belief about what the doctrines of Christianity actually are. This Baptist man recognized that this was certainly the case, but he also didn’t want to accept that salvation could in any way be dependent upon accepting correct doctrine, at least not doctrine that was completely correct in ever aspect.

    The Baptist man was clinging to a belief, (a belief that that is not that uncommon among “evangelical” Protestants that I know), that most Protestant sects agree about the “essential” doctrines of Christianity. All one really needs to believe to be saved is to accept the “essential” doctrines of Christianity, without having to have correct belief in all the “non-essential” doctrines of Christianity. Which is why, is seems to me, that church shopping is no big deal for many evangelical Protestants. Sure, the Protestant sects that I am church shopping among don’t teach the same doctrine, but they agree on the “essentials”, right? The problem, of course, is determining what the “essential” doctrines of Christianity actually are. No one can tell you what they are, without a big fight breaking out among the Protestant sects, which is why there are thousands upon thousands of Protestant sects that teach contradictory doctrine! It seems to me, that the Protestant evangelical church shopper has an implicit belief that the “essential” doctrines of Christianity are whatever he or she thinks that they are, and if he or she is not entirely correct, what he or she believes is “close enough”.

    I have even encountered Calvinists with this “close enough” thinking – “No, I won’t admit that there are any teachers in my particular Reformed sect that can teach with an infallibility that is guaranteed by God, so I won’t admit that everything that I confess as a member of this sect is necessarily true. But I do believe that what I believe is ‘close enough’ to the truth that I will be saved.” Which exasperates me, since I don’t believe on some essential matters of doctrine that what the Reformed believe is “close enough”, or even close at all.

    “No one can know everything that we are supposed to believe as Christians, and God wants it that way” – that is also an argument I have heard many times from the Reformed. Who am I to argue with God? God wants us to be in the dark about what we are supposed to believe so that we can be saved by faith. My response to that is to ask the Reformed: Why did Christ personally found a church and command those who would be his disciples to listen to his church upon pain of excommunication? What, exactly, is the point of Christ founding a church, commanding his disciples to listen to her, if no one can ever identify the church that Christ personally founded, or know when his church has taught doctrine the binds the consciences of those who are members of his church?

    To sum up, one cannot deny that Protestants sects argue endlessly among themselves about what constitutes the orthodox doctrines of Christianity. I am asserting that long as these Protestant sects build their houses upon the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, they will never come to any agreement about what constitutes the orthodox doctrines of Christianity. The can’t come to an agreement, since the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is not, primarily, a doctrine that the Protestant bible is both inspired and inerrant, it is, rather, primarily a doctrine that veils an assumption. Namely, the assumption that that after the last Apostle died, the charism of infallibility could never be exercised by any living man, under any conceivable circumstance.

    David Anders writes: Protestants, as the first several paragraphs attest, generally concede that they have no explicit teaching from God authorizing the Canon of Scripture as a rule of faith. Instead, they begin with intuition (we need a rule, it ought to be divine), and proceed by way of inference (Scripture is the only divine rule we know of; therefore it should be the rule of faith).

    The main point of the article is to show that if this is true, then Sola Scriptura cannot be considered an article of faith ON PROTESTANT TERMS since all articles of faith must be established by divine revelation.

    Exactly! Since the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is nowhere taught in the Protestant bible, sola scriptura cannot, therefore, be an article of faith that is a foundation of my faith.

    Henry, Catholics and Protestants do not contest the idea that what is found within the covers of a Protestant bible are inspired and inerrant, since a Protestant bible is but a subset of a Catholic bible. Since Catholics believe that their bible is inspired and inerrant, then they must also believe that the Protestant bible is inspired and inerrant. The real point of contention over sola scriptura doctrine is not about the inerrancy of the Protestant bible, it is about the Protestant’s veiled assumption that after the last Apostle died, that no living man, under any conceivable circumstance, could ever define a doctrine of the Christian faith that is guaranteed by God to be inerrant.

    Henry writes: Church leaders can determine what the truth is about something. They can also err. Agreed?

    I agree that church leaders can err. What I want to know from you, Henry, is how anyone can know that the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is NOT an erroneous doctrine? Nowhere does the Protestant bible teach the doctrine of sola scriptura. So how can anyone know, for sure, whether or not sola scriptura is false doctrine? What “scriptural test” am I supposed to use to test whether or not sola scriptura is “scriptural”, when there are no scriptures that teach sola scriptura?

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