BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
Doc Holliday said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
Doc Hollidayas I said before, you are set in your opinion and I am steadfast in mine for very personal reasons that I have not been asked by the Holy Spirrit to share. said:
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Can we agree that Scripture Trump's all? It Trumps Chirch tradition, Popes, Teachers, Preachers?
No. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth according to 1 Tim 3:15
So the "Church" can go against Scripture?
It cannot and it has not.
How do you know it hasn't?
Because Christ established a visible Church and promised the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). He gave binding authority to that Church. "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" (Matt 18:18). The Holy Spirit was promised to guide it into all truth (John 16:13).
You can see fallible men guided by the Holy Spirit in the first council in Acts 15.
The burden is on you to explain why Christ's own promises and institutional design would fail only until the arrival of your specific theology that only a minority of Protestants hold to.
But again.... how do you know that's what that verse means?
Doc?? Did a light bulb go off?
Yeah that you think the Church immediately went into apostasy and into heresy until Luther came along. Shame on you.
Name the remnant church before Luther. Where were they. What did they teach. Until you can answer that, you're defending a church that has no history before 1517.
Did you answer my question? Did the light bulb go off, and so you're trying to divert away from it?
Ignatius of Antioch, discipled directly by the Apostle John, wrote seven letters around 107 AD describing exactly what the Church is. Visible.
Episcopal. Eucharistic. Unified under bishops in apostolic succession. He said where the bishop is, there is the Church. That's not my interpretation. That's the interpretation of a man who learned Christianity from an apostle.
The real problem with your question is that You're asking me how I know what a verse means. That question destroys your own position before it touches mine. How do YOU know what any verse means? You have no apostolic succession. No council. No binding authority. Just you and your Bible and your private judgment.
You calvinists believe Christ only died for a specific predetermined group and His atonement was never intended for the rest of humanity. It's monergism. That salvation requires zero cooperation from you. God irresistibly regenerates whoever He chose before creation. Your repentance, your faith, your response, none of it matters. You're a spectator in your own salvation. I've heard it preached and the more people learn about it, the more will turn away.
You're working really hard to not answer the question. Can you just be clear and direct, and answer simple questions? The fact that you have to dance around it tells us something.
The other question you and the Roman Catholics completely avoided, which is similar, is this one: If your "magisterium" were to declare that God now blesses murder, rape, and gay marriage - would you be able to discern for yourself that they were wrong? If so, based on what, and by what authority?
To your hypothetical: yes, I would discern that was wrong. And I'd know it was wrong precisely because of the continuous doctrinal tradition the Church has always held. The magisterium isn't a blank check for innovation. It's a guardian of what was delivered once for all to the saints.
Your question actually reveals that you're admitting that private judgment has limits. You just said you would recognize murder, rape, and gay marriage as wrong even if an authority declared otherwise. Meaning you're appealing to something beyond your private Bible reading. You're appealing to a moral tradition so stable and continuous that even you recognize departures from it.
That's exactly what we're saying about doctrine.
Your hypothetical has never happened in Orthodoxy. In 2000 years no Ecumenical Council has declared heresy to be truth. Meanwhile your method, private interpretation of Scripture, has produced denominations that actually do bless gay marriage right now. Not as a hypothetical. As a current reality.
Your nightmare scenario is our hypothetical. It's your present reality. The method that was supposed to protect you from magisterial error has delivered you denominations ordaining women, blessing homosexuality, and abandoning every historic Christian position one by one.
The gates of hell haven't prevailed against the Orthodox Church. Can you say the same for sola scriptura?
Suppose it's the first time this "magisterium" is speaking about the topic. In other words, suppose they are laying down the beginnings of the "continuous doctrinal tradition" that will come afterwards. There is no past tradition to compare it to. Could you discern that they were wrong? If so, how?
Also, notice that in your answer above, you would no longer listen to this "magisterium", because your "private judgement" - that the magisterium should not go against past tradition - would take precedence over their supposed infallible declaration that they actually can go against it.
The magisterium's job is to guard what was received, not generate new content. That's exactly why Rome split and they started generating new content. The East never did this. Your "first time speaking" scenario assumes the Church invented tradition from nothing, which is the opposite of what actually happened.
You're saying my private judgment overrides the magisterium when they contradict tradition. Correct. Because in Orthodoxy that's exactly the check. Vincent of Lerins gave us the standard in 434 AD. What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. That's the test. Any council claiming to overturn that universal consensus would be rejected as illegitimate, as has actually happened historically with heretical councils.
Eastern Orthodoxy is the most theologically and morally conservative expression of Christianity on earth. We have never ordained women. We have never blessed homosexuality. We have never capitulated to secular culture on a single point of doctrine or morality in 2000 years. No female priests. No gay marriage blessings. No progressive theology creeping into our seminaries. No denominational splits over social issues. No statements softening historic Christian sexual ethics to accommodate the culture. You want the most conservative, most ancient, most unchanged form of Christianity on earth? It's not the Southern Baptist Convention. Hell you guys have a Baptist pastor speaking pro lgbt at a woke Baylor event…
The vast majority of mainline Protestants are woke and secular. The very churches the reformers started are woke. How is that possible if their foundational principles are infallible as you claim?
You: " You're saying my private judgment overrides the magisterium when they contradict tradition. Correct."
So then why is it wrong for a Protestant to use his own private judgement to determine for himself if and when a church, like Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy, contradicts Scripture?
If another Orthodox person using their own private judgement disagrees with you and says they are NOT contradicting tradition, then who settles the dispute?
And you're still not answering my question: if you didn't have previous tradition to go by, and your church "magisterium" (or whatever church authority you've submitted to) declares that gay marriage is now okay with God... could you discern for yourself that they were wrong based on Scripture?
You clearly don't understand how Orthodox ecclesiology actually works so let me explain it.
We don't have a pope. No single bishop can bind the whole Church. No single council is automatically valid just because bishops convened. A council is only received as authoritative when the whole Church, bishops, clergy, and laity across all the apostolic churches, recognizes it as expressing the faith delivered once for all.
This is why we only recognize Seven Ecumenical Councils. Not because we stopped having councils but because no subsequent council has achieved that universal reception. The Church itself is the check.
Your hypothetical requires a single authority going rogue and binding everyone. That's Rome's model, not ours. In Orthodoxy a bishop or even a patriarch who teaches heresy gets condemned. It has happened. Patriarchs have been deposed. Councils have been rejected as robber synods. The system has self-correcting mechanisms built into its bones.
The Holy Spirit doesn't guide one man or one meeting. He guides the whole Body over time. That's why Orthodox theology is so stable.
If Baptists had the same conciliar structure as Orthodoxy, with binding councils, apostolic succession, and the universal consensus of the Fathers as the measuring stick, do you think they would have convened and affirmed gay marriage?
Of course not. Because the constraints would have made it structurally impossible.
Let's discuss this when you actually understand it first, because you clearly don't.
