Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

>>18395179
The word of God isn't limited to the bible, in the bible.

>>18395413
You just hate God and want nothing to do with him. You hate his laws, you hate his commandments, you hate his people, you hate his prophets, you hate his land, you hate his words.

You just worship an idol called Jesus and another called Mary.

>>18395420
You're hysterical. Not as in humorously laughable, but actually disturbed.

It's written in the bible that the "word of God" is not limited to what is written. That is just a fact.
Scripture witnesses to the word of God, and to the church you hate, which proclaims it. It is a witness, just like the holy Virgin Mary witnesses to the Incarnation and the death of Jesus Christ. She conceived and bore the word of God, and is mother of the church.

>>18395457
NTA but what the fuck is the word of God if not what's written?

>>18395179
Read the next verse.
>But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have: “Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.”
He is quoting Psalm 19:4. Now read Psalm 19:3.
>There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;
Whatever Paul is on about, it isn't a written text that all the earth to the ends of the world has already read in his day.

>>18395471
The inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Of course the bible is inspired, but that inspiration is not limited to the written word but is testified to through it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr_NwgndUFk&t=10

The authority of the church is likewise testified to in scripture, but it cannot be conferred through it's mere reading. A book cannot lay hands on you, or rule as the elders did at the council of Jerusalem. If the apostles believed in Sola Scriptura, Christians would still be getting circumcised and avoiding shrimp, refusing to eat with gentiles and sacrificing animals to remove the penalty of sin.

>>18395178
Average Catholic

>>18395489
How do you check something for inspiration of the Holy Spirit?

>>18395178
And not only was the rich soil required to furnish corn and due sustenance, but men even descended into the entrails of the Earth; and riches were dug up, the incentives to vice, which the Earth had hidden, and had removed to the Stygian shades.32 Then destructive iron came forth, and gold, more destructive than iron; then War came forth, that fights through the means of both,33 and that brandishes in his blood-stained hands the clattering arms. Men live by rapine; the guest is not safe from his entertainer, nor the father-in-law from the son-in-law; good feeling, too, between brothers is a rarity. The husband is eager for the death of the wife, she for that of her husband. Horrible stepmothers then mingle the ghastly wolfsbane; the son prematurely makes inquiry34 12 I. 148-156 into the years of his father. Piety lies vanquished, and the virgin Astræa35 is the last of the heavenly Deities to abandon the Earth, now drenched in slaughter.

>>18395178
The Giants having attempted to render themselves masters of heaven, Jupiter buries them under the mountains which they have heaped together to facilitate their assault; and the Earth, animating their blood, forms out of it a cruel and fierce generation of men.

And that the lofty realms of æther might not be more safe than the Earth, they say that the Giants aspired to the sovereignty of Heaven, and piled the mountains, heaped together, even to the lofty stars. Then the omnipotent Father, hurling his lightnings, broke through Olympus,36 and struck Ossa away from Pelion, that lay beneath it. While the dreadful 13 I. 156-170 carcasses lay overwhelmed beneath their own structure, they say that the Earth was wet, drenched with the plenteous blood of her sons, and that she gave life to the warm gore; and that, lest no memorial of this ruthless race should be surviving, she shaped them into the form of men. But that generation, too, was a despiser of the Gods above, and most greedy of ruthless slaughter, and full of violence: you might see that they derived their origin from blood.

>>18395178
All shouted their assent aloud, and with ardent zeal they called for vengeance on one who dared such crimes. Thus, when an impious band43 madly raged to extinguish the Roman name in the blood of Cæsar, the human race was astonished with sudden terror at ruin so universal, and the whole earth shook with horror. Nor was the affectionate regard, Augustus, of thy subjects less grateful to thee, than that was to Jupiter. Who, after he had, by means of his voice and his hand, suppressed their murmurs, all of them kept silence. Soon as the clamor had ceased, checked by the authority of their ruler, Jupiter again broke silence in these words:

“He, indeed, (dismiss your cares) has suffered dire punishment; but what was the offence and what the retribution, I will inform you. The report of the iniquity of the age had reached my ears; wishing to find this not to be the truth, I descended from the top of Olympus, and, a God in a human shape, I surveyed the earth. ’Twere an endless task to enumerate how great an amount of guilt was everywhere discovered; the report itself was below the truth.”

>>18395520
Good to see that comment made it in just before the site crashed.

In a similar way to how the apostles discerned that Paul wasn't their enemy anymore. He demonstrated the fruits of repentance in his ministry, through his manifest works, that his personal items were made holy and could heal. The power of the Holy Spirit works through the church, that's how the church was able to recognize certain writings as inspired.

You receive knowledge of the truth through Scripture, but that's not the only means available to the Holy Spirit. And also that also doesn't constitute stewardship authority over the visible church. So when people say the bible is the highest authority in the church, that simply isn't biblical. The bible cannot itself confer authority, authority was given to men and not objects. Even if those men aren't perfect.

>>18395492
They unironically say
>god left us a church not a book
A vibes-based religion "adapting with the times" instead of having a bed rock foundation.

To be more precise, it doesn't work with or without the Bible.

>>18395178
Apollo, falling in love with Daphne, the daughter of the river Peneus, she flies from him. He pursues her; on which, the Nymph, imploring the aid of her father, is changed into a laurel.

Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was the first love of Phœbus; whom, not blind chance, but the vengeful anger of Cupid assigned to him.

The Delian God,73 proud of having lately subdued the serpent, 29 I. 454-481 had seen him bending the bow and drawing the string, and had said, “What hast thou to do, wanton boy, with gallant arms? Such a burden as that better befits my shoulders; I, who am able to give unerring wounds to the wild beasts, wounds to the enemy, who lately slew with arrows innumerable the swelling Python, that covered so many acres of land with his pestilential belly. Do thou be contented to excite I know not what flames with thy torch; and do not lay claim to praises properly my own.”

>>18395178
To him the son of Venus replies, “Let thy bow shoot all things, Phœbus; my bow shall shoot thee; and as much as all animals fall short of thee, so much is thy glory less than mine.” He thus said; and cleaving the air with his beating wings, with activity he stood upon the shady heights of Parnassus, and drew two weapons out of his arrow-bearing quiver, of different workmanship; the one repels, the other excites desire. That which causes love is of gold, and is brilliant, with a sharp point; that which repels it is blunt, and contains lead beneath the reed. This one the God fixed in the Nymph, the daughter of Peneus, but with the other he wounded the very marrow of Apollo, through his bones pierced by the arrow. Immediately the one is in love; the other flies from the very name of a lover, rejoicing 40 I. 475-488 in the recesses of the woods, and in the spoils of wild beasts taken in hunting, and becomes a rival of the virgin Phœbe. A fillet tied together74 her hair, put up without any order. Many a one courted her; she hated all wooers; not able to endure, and quite unacquainted with man, she traverses the solitary parts of the woods, and she cares not what Hymen,75 what love, or what marriage means. Many a time did her father say, “My daughter, thou owest me a son-in-law;” 30 I. 481-505 many a time did her father say, “My daughter, thou owest me grandchildren.” She, utterly abhorring the nuptial torch,76 as though a crime, has her beauteous face covered with the blush of modesty; and clinging to her father’s neck, with caressing arms, she says, “Allow me, my dearest father, to enjoy perpetual virginity; her father, in times, bygone, granted this to Diana.”

>>18395719
Let me put it this way.

In the early church, it was never a prerequisite for a particular congregation to physically possess all of the scrolls that would be later codified by the magisterial faculties of the church into one volume. The kind of standardization you are familiar with wasn't always the case, and while it could be a problem from time to time it was never disqualifying.

They often had different writings, but the same word.
Not having what you know as "the bible" today didn't invalidate their ministry, because it's not the bible which authorized their ministry and sent them. It was the chosen men of Jesus, operating through the ordinary means instituted in the church by Jesus. Themselves emulating the pattern formed by the Son and the Father; as Jesus becomes like the Father in sending apostles, so too do those same apostles subsequently become like Jesus by perpetuating that sending with authority.

The rock isn't the bible, it's Jesus who is the cornerstone and called specifically Peter after him. To give him the keys. We are grafted to him not through a stack of paper, but through partaking of his body.

Is the Old Testament law the bedrock upon which the church is built? The circumcision, clean foods, animal sacrifice, etc.

Because that is nigh inseparable from the bible itself but for the IRL means of it's judicial execution, and yet this is not what we find the bible itself saying.

No, the law of Moses is what the Temple of Solomon was built upon. This is the Temple Jesus said would be desolate, and would in fact be destroyed and not one stone left upon another.

The law in which the new covenant church is built upon is written in the hearts of men, and it is there that Jesus builds up the new temple of his body.

>>18395178
The daughter of Peneus flies from him, about to say still more, with timid step, and together with him she leaves his unfinished address. Then, too, she appeared lovely; the winds exposed her form to view, and the gusts meeting her fluttered about her garments, as they came in contact, and the light breeze spread behind herB her careless locks; and thus, by her flight, was her beauty increased. But the youthful God81 has not patience any longer to waste his blandishments; and as 43 I. 532-545 love urges him on, he follows her steps with hastening pace. As when the greyhound82 has seen the hare in the open field, and the one by the speed of his legs pursues his prey, the other seeks her safety; the one is like as if just about to fasten on the other, and now, even now, hopes to catch her, and with nose outstretched plies upon the footsteps of the hare. The other is 33 I. 537-562 in doubt whether she is caught already, and is delivered from his very bite, and leaves behind the mouth just touching her. And so is the God, and so is the virgin;83 he swift with hopes, she with fear.

Are there any cases where Christianity survived as an oral language only? Japan perhaps?

>>18395880
Christianity isn't really a language.
There is a certain kind of language, vocabulary, semantics, symbolic meanings, signs, etc unique to Christianity which take form in the writings for sure. But they also find other kinds of expression to, like in modalities or behavior.

But Christianity is a specific way of life aspiring to holiness and charity more than a collection of books. Language is how this way is taught to those who would learn it.

It would be *far* more difficult now to teach the faith to people without the bible, mostly because we have degenerated compared to the early generations and have come to rely heavily on it's content as a reminder and reference. Also because our cultural norms have deviated significantly from antiquity.

But not impossible. Divine providence will preserve the faith, even if it's writings or even liturgical traditions were unfathomably lost and or suppressed. Because ultimately, as I said above, the law of the new covenant is written in the hearts of men.

Catholics aren’t Christian

Jupiter, pursuing Io, the daughter of Inachus, covers the earth with darkness, and ravishes the Nymph.

There is a grove of Hæmonia,88 which a wood, placed on a 35 I. 568-583 craggy rock, encloses on every side. They call it Tempe;89 through this the river Peneus, flowing from 46 I. 570-587 the bottom of mount Pindus,90 rolls along with its foaming waves, and in its mighty fall, gathers clouds that scatter a vapor like thin smoke,91 and with its spray besprinkles the tops of the woods, and wearies places, far from near to it, with its noise. This is the home, this the abode, these are the retreats of the great river; residing here in a cavern formed by rocks, he gives law to the waters, and to the Nymphs that inhabit those waters. The rivers of that country first repair thither, not knowing whether they should congratulate, or whether console the parent; the poplar-bearing Spercheus,92 and the restless Enipeus,93 the aged Apidanus,94 the gentle Amphrysus,95 and Æas,96 and, soon after, the other rivers, which, as their current leads them, carry down into the sea their waves, wearied by wanderings. Inachus97 alone is absent, and, hidden in his 36 I. 583-600 deepest cavern, increases his waters with his tears, and in extreme wretchedness bewails his daughter Io as lost; he knows not whether she now enjoys life, or whether she is among the shades below; but her, whom he does not find anywhere, he believes to be nowhere, and in his mind he dreads the worst.

>>18395178
Jupiter had seen Io as she was returning from her father’s stream, and had said, “O maid, worthy of Jove, and destined to make I know not whom happy in thy marriage, repair to the shades of this lofty grove (and he pointed at the shade of the grove) while it is warm, and while the Sun is at his height, in the midst of his course. But if thou art afraid to enter the lonely abodes of the wild beasts alone, thou shalt enter the recesses of the groves, safe under the protection of a God, and that a God of no common sort; but with me, who hold the sceptre of heaven in my powerful hand; me, who hurl the wandering lightnings—Do not fly from me;” for now she was flying. And now she had left behind the pastures of Lerna,98 and the Lircæan plains planted with trees, when the God covered the earth far and wide with darkness overspreading, and arrested her flight, and forced her modesty.

>>18395178
Jupiter, having changed Io into a cow, to conceal her from the jealousy of Juno, is obliged to give her to that Goddess, who commits her to the charge of the watchful Argus. Jupiter sends Mercury with an injunction to cast Argus into a deep sleep, and to take away his life.

In the meantime Juno looked down upon the midst of the fields, and wondering that the fleeting clouds had made the appearance of night under bright day, she perceived that they were not the vapors from a river, nor were they raised from the moist earth, and then she looked around to see where her husband was, as being one who by this time was full well acquainted with the intrigues of a husband who had been so often detected.99 After she had found him not in heaven, she said, “I am either deceived, or I am injured;” and having descended from the height of heaven, she alighted upon the earth, and commanded the mists to retire. He had foreseen the approach of his wife, and had changed the features of the daughter of Inachus into a sleek heifer.100 As a cow, too, she is beautiful. The daughter of Saturn, though unwillingly, extols the appearance of the cow; and likewise inquires, whose it is, and whence, or of what herd it is, as though ignorant of the truth. Jupiter falsely asserts that it was produced out of the earth, that the owner may cease to be inquired after. The daughter of Saturn begs her of him as a gift. What can he do? It is a cruel thing to deliver up his own mistress, and not to give her up is a cause of suspicion. It is shame which persuades him on the one hand, love 49 I. 619-647 dissuades him on the other. His shame would have been 38 I. 619-651 subdued by his love; but if so trifling a gift as a cow should be refused to the sharer of his descent and his couch, she might well seem not to be a cow.

lmao at the LARPagan spamming his nonsense here because nobody wants to discuss it in the general he made specifically to push his own personal reconstruction of a Hellenic tradition he will never be truly initiated into but can only imagine what the mysteries entail

>ishygddt
rent free

>>18395713
Do the works of the Catholic church strike you as something that have "demonstrated the fruits of repentance"?

You: We don't need the bible. We can just listen to God.
God: Read the bible please.
You: ermm....

>>18396123
“God is not to be believed apart from the authority of the Church” - Thomas Stapleton

>>18396122
That's called a non sequitur.
You simply have no other response.

>>18395917
le prottie death rattle

>>18396123
"We don't need the church."
"I can just read my bible, that the church produced and canonized for a specific reason, more than a thousand years before protestantism ever existed."

Jesus: I pray that you be one, even as the Father and I are one.

"N-no what he really means is I get to start my own church because I personally disagree with what pastor Bob says about the bible. I know better than my pastor what it really means, after all, because I can read. That gives me every right to poach his congregation too."
"And while I'm at it, I think the worship of God should be done in whatever way I personally think is best. I was personally authorized by Jesus to change that."

"What's a "communion"?"

>>18395178
non-Christard take: I disagree from a utilitarian perspective. The Bible is still a foundational text whether or not your denomination takes it literally. The Nicene Creed itself was just an overgloryfied book club where debates were held on what texts should be included in their new anthology. Every action under Christianity has either been because of the Bible or in response to the Bible. The Catechism is basically just the Christian version of the Talmud, a critical interpretation of the Bible used to inform religious Doctrine. I don't even think there's a term for a form of Christianity divorced from the Bible and focused solely on Church doctrine. Christianity without the Church already has its own term, which is Jesusism or Restorationism, or sometimes just Jewish Christianity

"Pastor Bob isn't a real Christian. You have been deceived by Satan."
"Come to my brand new church instead, the Evangelical House of Zion, where you can hear the *real* gospel preached instead of his false gospel blasphemy."

*repeat ad infinitum*

>>18395178
>Christianity doesn't need Christ to function
Enjoy Hell.

>>18395178


THE THREE PILARS OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH ARE SCRIPTURE, TRADITION, AND MAGISTERIVM, SO, YES, THE BIBLE IS NECESSARY; THE HOLY BIBLE CONTAINS THE MOST IMPORTANT SCRIPTURE.

>>18395713
>He demonstrated the fruits of repentance in his ministry, through his manifest works, that his personal items were made holy and could heal.
Thanks for clearing that up. The Roman Catholic Church, on an institutional level, has engaged in covering for its clergy who rape children. I shall not being following such an organization.

>>18395471
The world and the heavens you fucking hylic retard

>>18396148
>"We don't need the church."
The difference here is that OP says we do not need the bible, while the only one saying we don’t need the Church is your hallucination
>my bible, that the church produced
This is a profession of unbelief. The bible is not the word of the Church, it is the word of God. When you open a bible you hear the voice of God just as much as Moses did when Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh thundered about him. It therefore must be the final judge of the Church, and not the other way around, for “judge for yourselves if it is right that we should obey you and not God”.
>Jesus: I pray that you be one
Which does not mean the slaves of the Roman pontiff.
>N-no what he really means is I get to start my own church because I personally disagree with what pastor Bob says about the bible
Who says this?
>And while I'm at it, I think the worship of God should be done in whatever way I personally think is best. I was personally authorized by Jesus to change that.
You mean, what the pope claims?

File: zoomer tradcath.jpg (54 KB, 680x516)

54 KB JPG

>claiming that your personal interpretation of scripture is infallible and you have personal authority to make up whatever you want in divine worship
):<
>claiming that your personal interpretation of scripture is infallible and you have personal authority to make up whatever you want in divine worship, the pope
:O

>>18395178
Well I mean technically yea if the Bible was destroyed with no copies left, things would still go as planned

>>18396393
The church definitely produced the bible, just as much as you could produce evidence which speaks to the truth in a trial.
The collection of writings you call the bible were once a disparate collection of scrolls, which were gathered together into a single definitive volume and positively declared as inspired through the authority invested in the church by Christ.

It consists, in no small part, of letters sent from the church to itself. That is, from certain members to others.

Not all the letters, but those which the church has formally confirmed are inspired.
You seem to have the idea that the Holy Spirit working through the church means that the church isn't producing these things. It is participation in grace, God chose the church for this purpose.

>the Pope
When did the Pope ever jettison the sacraments?

>the word of God
Is not a book.

The book has the word of God in it, witnesses to it, because the church does and that is the body which has produced it.
But the book is materially just a stack of paper with glyphs on it.

When an unbeliever reads the bible, it doesn't mean that they are suddenly filled with the word from the Holy Spirit. Indeed, scripture itself testifies in 2 Corinthians 3 that when the bible (Moses) is read without the faith that is in Christ, that their minds are blinded.

1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?

2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:

3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.


The word of God is not limited to the confines of a book. It *never* has been understood that way. The bible is not a prison for the Holy Spirit, which only you are allowed to open. The letter of the law is death, but the spirit gives life.

These select writings in the bible are tracts created by churchmen to teach laity their faith, and selected because it is evident that they were supernaturally inspired by God and effective in communicating the truth to those able to discern it through the faith in Christ unique to the church.

>noooooooo
>the church clearly did not do that as one of it's vital functions even though it's clear that's one of the services the church is called to perform
>also calling this faithful performance a production of or issue from the body of Christ itself is proof you don't believe

>>18396567
>The church definitely produced the bible, just as much as you could produce evidence which speaks to the truth in a trial.
But that is woefully insufficient to produce the intended result, namely, to silence the tribunal of scripture and subjugate it to the Roman church to absolve it from its condemnation, seeing as it could not survive the examination. For the authority of a king’s decree proceeds entirely from the fact it is the king’s decree, and not the least bit derived from the couriers who distribute it throughout the king’s realm.
>The collection of writings you call the bible were once a disparate collection of scrolls, which were gathered together into a single definitive volume and positively declared as inspired through the authority invested in the church by Christ.
But what they never were was uninspired, inauthentic, unauthoritative, mere human writings, for a man’s word is his own the moment it begins to exist by virtue of his having spoken it, likewise with the word of God which they would not be today unless they also were at the very moment of their writing.
>Not all the letters, but those which the church has formally confirmed are inspired.
The attribution is erroneous, the recognition of the Church is secondary and ministerial, the possession of inspired status is proper to all those writings which are the speech of God and only them irrespective of the judgement of the Church.
>When did the Pope ever jettison the sacraments?
I saw no reference to sacraments, though the pope did add 5 spurious ones as though he thought himself to be Jesus Christ. It is the claim and the historical experience of the Roman pontiff to have the right to modify God’s worship at his leisure.
(1/3)

>>18396567
>The book has the word of God in it, witnesses to it, because the church does and that is the body which has produced it.
>But the book is materially just a stack of paper with glyphs on it.
This is an equivocation fallacy, and a willful one, for you know full well that of which I speak is not a piece of physical matter. It is the text which is the word of God. Your view of scripture expressed here is very different from that expressed by Jesus Christ, who said “Have you not read what God spoke to you, saying ‘I am the God of Abraham’”. Now notice the terms which our Lord chooses, “Have *you* not *read* what God *spoke* to *you*”; He holds these particular Jews accountable to the text of scripture as God’s own speech to them. He says they read what God spoke, yet speaking does not correspond to reading, which use different senses, so His meaning is that it was as though God were speaking it into their ear while they read it, and that it was addressed to them personally at that, for He says it was spoken to them. Likewise, it is contradicted by the apostle Paul, who says “All scripture is God-breathed”, the Greek word meaning to breathe out, not that the text contained or witnessed to the word of God, but that God breathed the text out when He spoke it from His mouth. Nor is the Church relevant to this in any way, but the scriptures are to be believed because they are the word of God.
(2/3)

>>18396567
>When an unbeliever reads the bible, it doesn't mean that they are suddenly filled with the word from the Holy Spirit
Certainly not, none shall be filled with the Spirit except those whom the Father has predestined before all ages. However, the Spirit has promised to work by word and sacrament, and we are to seek Christ nowhere except where He is promised to be, so none shall be filled with the Spirit except by the word alone.
>The word of God is not limited to the confines of a book. It *never* has been understood that way
The word of God is limited to that which was breathed out by Him, which now exists only in the holy scriptures, and this view of scripture has been universal in the Church in every age.
(3/3)
>>18396588
If you do not start with the bible as the word of God, nothing in religion is “clear”

>>18396567
Amen.

>>18396601
>mere human writings

Many if not all of the early congregations in the first few centuries didn't have them all. They had bits and pieces, here and there. If that.
Not having the entire bible, as it exists today in a form that it simply did not in the beginning, doesn't mean that you aren't practicing the Christian faith or that your ministry is invalid or even deficient.

They didn't have the word of God only in part simply because they didn't have the whole bible, but in its entirety, living and growing among them. Because the word of God isn't limited to a book.
Books aren't alive. The word of God is.

>the king
Delegated authority over his household to his steward in his temporal absence. In the bible, both new and old testament, this is symbolized by the handing over of keys. This is true of the Davidic kingship, and in the kingdom of heaven.

>though the pope did add 5 spurious ones
You are ridiculous.

Nobody takes this kind of polemic seriously anymore.
Every genuinely apostolic Christian denomination agrees in this point, they're not an invention of any singular pope. You'd have to find one that predates St Augustine, who testifies to these sacraments as sacraments.

The pope never established sacred tradition, or invested the deposit of faith in the church.

>>18396603
>it is the text which is the word of God
the glyphs on the paper, is what Paul calls ink

his commendation letter isn't a inked scroll, but in the manifest regeneration and right living of his people
this is the word of God, the transformation of their lives is the testimony of the gospel and the confirmation of his ministry

this word of God which in Acts is said to literally grow
to say the church is not "relevant" is to misplace the word of God from a thing which lives in the heart of the faithful, to something that is limited to the number of pages in a book

if you really felt that the text itself was the full extent of the word, then you'd never accept a translation

>>18395178
In what sense? In purely practical terms, the Christian faith absolutely requires some record prophetic and messianic teachings to function as it currently does. Historically speaking, it's unlikely that Christianity would have developed as it did without the existence of the bible.
Theologically? Yeah it doesn't need the bible as in the book, fair enough. It's not like sunni islam with their uncreated Quran business. Islam in general is much more Quran reliant.
>>18396182
>Jesus Christ is the bible
The type of thing a third century egyptian heresy would teach as doctrine.
Maybe some hyper obscure english dissenter sect like the Muggletonians.
>>18396149
Restorationism (leaving aside a few exceptions) is very reliant on close and careful reading of the bible, though. Which makes sense as the NT contains what may be the only record of the very early Christian Church. But ascertaining that is a chicken and egg problem.

>>18396656
Though I think it'r fairly silly to speak of 'the bible' as if it was one unitary book. It's several dozens of different books and no one can even agree how many there are.

you know, all this weirdness about the literal inked signs on a page (text) being just as alive as if not even more so than a real flesh and blood person reminds me inexorably of the pagan conceit of their statues being actually alive

was the bible made in the image of God, or was man
does the breath of God literally animate the bible as a book, or is that the means by which Adam (particularly privileged in this case among all creation), was ensouled

Are we supposed to treat the bible as if it is an actual person, or more to the point, as God? The spiration of the Holy Spirit is essential, in the formal sense, to their person. The divine person is absolutely wrapped up in spiration, it's essence. This is procession, spiration is breath.

How could you entertain this possibility of the bible being equated to the entire person of Christ, insofar as it would have his own life in it? Are you willing to argue that the Tetragrammaton is not only something that points to the thing in itself, but literally is that thing in itself? That the name of God, written in scripture, is God in his fullness of divinity?
Or you might consider it more apt to say it is a condescension to man, something which we can more effectively conceive of.

Clearly holy, but are the written signs in text literally God to you simply because it is said to have been breathed just like the Holy Spirit is?
Whereas it is written, that the whole godhead dwells *bodily* in Jesus.

The word became flesh.
Not paper and ink.

>>18396663
Reminds me of the Sikhs and their belief that the granth sahib is their last and eternal guru. They treat the granth sahib like a person, though this is as far as I know purely symbolic.

>>18396674
That said they still literally carry the book on a palanquin and place it into an actual bed as if it where a person.

And I'm sure there are legends about the book havings its own agency. But I'm pretty sure that isn't official teaching.

>>18396396
Yeah, even now the Pope has too much centralized power.

>>18396631
>Many if not all of the early congregations in the first few centuries didn't have them all.
I don’t know how this could be made relevant to a theological conclusion
>They didn't have the word of God only in part simply because they didn't have the whole bible
Yes they did, it is tautologically true because in part means not in whole.
>Delegated authority over his household to his steward in his temporal absence
According to John 14:16-28, who is the person whom Jesus delegated to lead the Church in His absence?
>Every genuinely apostolic Christian denomination agrees in this point, they're not an invention of any singular pope.
1. Not one of them is “genuinely apostolic”. None of them resemble the apostolic Church, and the apostles would not recognize them 2. Historically the basis of the 5 false sacraments was claimed to be that the Church had the authority to create sacraments, which it does not. Jesus Christ did not institute them, nor do they meet the criteria of a sacrament. The church fathers likewise knew only of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, which they sometimes reckoned as 4.
>the glyphs on the paper, is what Paul calls ink
The ink on the paper is physical matter. I am not talking about physical matter, I am talking about the text, the words, which are abstract things.
>if you really felt that the text itself was the full extent of the word, then you'd never accept a translation
It does not follow, a king’s decree translated into another language remains the king’s decree, likewise the word of God translated remains the word of God, though the intimation is not proper and the word of God in a translation is not able to settle all controversies of religion, only the original version is.
>this is the word of God
This is an abuse of the text. Paul is not talking about the scriptures and does not call it the word of God, only “a commendation letter”.

>>18395828
The bible is the Word of God, not a "stack of paper".

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Just because God created Earth doesn’t mean that it automatically makes it good.

The ecumenist's pill: Christianity doesn't need the bible to function, and that doesn't mean one church institution has supremacy over another

>>18397484
>the modernist liberal’s pill

>>18396129
It is not a non sequitur. You said the Catholic church's authority could be demonstrated the same way that Paul's was and then said this was by: "In a similar way to how the apostles discerned that Paul wasn't their enemy anymore. He demonstrated the fruits of repentance".

So the very most relevant question after such a point is to ask: "Do the works of the Catholic church strike you as something that have 'demonstrated the fruits of repentance'?"

>>18397506
>mad tradcuck crypto proddy larping as cath
Vatican II is like sunlight to vampires like you. Thank God it lifted the Church from your parasitic grip

>>18397547
I am no papist, and you are no Christian. Liberalism and Christianity are religions in contest.

>>18397543
There are many people who exercised authority in the church without leaving inspired writings.

If you're going to concede that ecclesial authority comes from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, just as the bible does, then you simply have to concede that sola scriptura is wrong and the church itself has authority from the Holy Spirit which exists alongside the bible. That the bible is not uniquely the word of God, but that the same word of God works both through scripture and the church leadership who are charged with the mission Jesus gave them.

In short, that the word of God is not scripture alone.

Authority in the church does not stem from an individual's virtue, a particular minister being deficient in virtue or even immoral does not invalidate the sacraments which are worked through him or his ordination precisely because it is the Holy Spirit's power at work and not his own.

>could be demonstrated the same way that Paul's was
Paul's recognition required a kind of unique demonstration precisely because his ministry began without the blessing of the apostles. And he had previously been murdering Christians.

Obviously, in this case extraordinary evidence of regeneration was important to have. Because Jesus never personally blessed him during his earthly ministry, and he did not follow him in that time like the others did.

The Catholic church has never not had apostolic succession.
You don't get to question their authority just because some of them happen to be sinners.
They have the ordinary means, whereas Paul had extraordinary means.

>>18397633
>people who exercised authority
Are not thereby guides to truth. The Pharisees sat in Moses's seat, after all, as Matthew 23:2 says.

>the same word of God works both through scripture and the church leadership
This is demonstrably false since Catholic teachings are self-contradictory. Vatian I declared (https://web.archive.org/web/20071012074717/https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm#Chapter%204.%20On%20the%20infallible%20teaching%20authority%20of%20the%20Roman%20pontiff)

>when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.

Pope Francis amended the Catechism to say (https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/08/02/180802a.html)

>the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide

However, Pope Leo X in Exsurge Domine had said (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo10/l10exdom.htm):
>That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.
Is something that
>not Catholic, as mentioned above, and are not to be taught, as such; but rather are against the doctrine and tradition of the Catholic Church, and against the true interpretation of the sacred Scriptures received from the Church

Both are declarations on faith and morals held by the church itself by Popes and both are contradictory, making Catholicism's truth a formal logical impossibility.

Question anon: Orthodox saved?

>>18397426
>Not one of them is “genuinely apostolic”. None of them resemble the apostolic Church
You're projecting.
Also that isn't an argument, just something blatantly false you're asserting.

Moreover, the kind of superficial resemblance you seem to think is important is your whited sepulchre.
There is an unbroken like or succession between the apostles and the Coptics, Armenians, Greek, Latin, etc members of the apostolic faith.

It is one you do not, and will never, have so long as you persist in one of many counter-churches.

>tautologically true because in part means not in whole
If I rip a page out of your bible, it would not mean you are suddenly deprived of a part of the word of God.

Because the word of God is not exclusively identifiable with the bible.
In fact, if we were to take your ridiculous headcanon as fact it would mean that "Christianity" did not exist for centuries after the birth of Christ because no one congregation had immediate access to every single scroll that forms the volume you know today as the bible.

Your identification of the word of God exclusively with the bible is monumentally incoherent and ironically not what the bible itself teaches about the word of God.

>Who is the person Jesus delegated
Peter. You are deliberately confusing the Holy Spirit with the apostolic office. You'd have to say your pastor or elder or whatever has no place leading anyone simply because the Holy Spirit exists.

That you are just as immediately qualified to lead, despite never having received that blessing.
The SAME blessing that Simon Magus was willing to pay money for.

Jesus literally breathed on the apostles as a visible sign of this power.

>text, words
>abstract
That is not a coherent definition of abstract.
Text is nothing more than glyphs.

>abuse
No, the passage indicates the word of God writing the law of the new covenant in the hearts of faith.

>>18397434
We've been over this.
The word of God is not simply a book.

>>18397649
It's pretty funny how you think these weak gotchas are convincing. I don't find this heretic's facile attempt at reckoning with the canon law entertaining or enlightening. I'm not going to waste my time pretending your particular complaints are even relevant to the discussion.

To me, you're just like those enemies of truth who try to attack the faith by pointing out seeming contradictions in scripture without having the most basic understanding of what it is they're reading. You are using the same tactics as they are, and it's a phenomenally weak kind of attack.

The Pharisees did not have the faith of Christ, which was deposited in the church itself by Jesus. It's not their rule which binds the faithful together in one body.
Moreover, Jesus' priesthood is of Melchizedek and not Levi. An important difference.

>Orthodox saved?
That's a funny question, it reminds me of the Pharisees trying to entrap Jesus.
It's not my place to judge, but I will affirm that their authority is apostolic and that they still worship God in the way Jesus instituted even if they are in schism.

Why ask? Who decided to bring up Catholicism specifically in the first place? Me linking to a Catholic video because it happens to answer the question doesn't mean we suddenly are debating Catholicism itself. We are debating the word of God.
Is it somehow easier for your flowchart if you only have to rag on Catholics and simply don't have to acknowledge the Copts existing?

Not all of them will be saved obviously, just like not all Catholics will be, but tbqh imo invincibly ignorant heathens have more hope than protties because they don't explicitly define themselves in opposition to and animosity for the apostolic church and it's sacraments.
The amount of lip service they pay Jesus doesn't excuse them when they have rejected his faith and denied his body.

Not giving up on hope for you though.

>>18397664
>Also that isn't an argument, just something blatantly false you're asserting.
It is something blatantly true, correcting your error, and uncontroversial to any who are not deceived in your system. Now, I ask, what does “apostolic” mean? Why the answer is very simply for every Romanist, a thing is “apostolic” if it pertains to the faith, practice, or structure of the Roman church. So when we ask the question if the Roman church or those churches which are in some ways substantially similar to it by virtue of common historical accretions are “apostolic”, the evaluation is very simple under their definition: to be apostolic is to be the Roman church, therefore to be the Roman church is to be apostolic! How could they not pass this test they set for their own success?
(1/3)

>the kind of superficial resemblance you seem to think is important is your whited sepulchre.
>There is an unbroken like or succession between the apostles and the Coptics, Armenians, Greek, Latin, etc members of the apostolic faith.
Actually having common faith, practice and structure in common with the apostles is not a “superficial” similarity under any definition I know, indeed this is the only sense in which I desire to have the apostolic religion. But you declare the reality of your opinion plainly enough, not that these churches are apostolic because their medieval superstitions were actually held by the apostles (for who could defend that?), but only that they are the apostles’ “successors”, and as apostolic “successors” they have an “apostolic” authority to invent whatever novelties and innovations they so please. But this is a pernicious falsehood, for not only are the priesthood and prelacy you imagine to be derived in an unbroken chain from the apostles found nowhere in their writings, their teachings found therein are outright irreconcilable with them which if they had lived to see would decry them with the anathema. Therefore, we cannot call these novel human traditions “apostolic” without injury to truth.
>If I rip a page out of your bible, it would not mean you are suddenly deprived of a part of the word of God.
Every word of the bible is the word of God, if you ripped out a page I would be deprived of it, therefore if you ripped out a page of my bible I would be deprived of a part of the word of God.
>it would mean that "Christianity" did not exist for centuries after the birth of Christ because no one congregation had immediate access to every single scroll that forms the volume you know today as the bible.
It is a strawman,the bible alone is the word of God,it is the supreme judge in all controversies of religion and the only rule of faith, but it is not somehow contingent on me personally having access to it for it to be so.

>>18397664
>Your identification of the word of God exclusively with the bible is monumentally incoherent
Your bloviating rhetoric is monumentally empty.
>Peter
Found nowhere in the entire bible, we read not one word of Peter being invested with this authority and role, while Jesus expressly declares He was sending the Holy Spirit to be with us in His place as long as He dwells at the Father’s side, to guide us into all truth? This man has arrogated to himself the ministry and authority of the Holy Spirit, he has usurped the place of Christ as the sole Head of the Church, and he permits himself to be called “Holy Father”. Is there any doubt this man is the one whom Paul said would declare himself to be God in the temple of God?
>You'd have to say your pastor or elder or whatever has no place leading anyone simply because the Holy Spirit exists.
No sir, there are two category errors here. First, the Holy Spirit has existed since eternity past and was not created at the day of Pentecost. Second, I indeed say and insist against your pope that no pastor has any place claiming to be the vicar of Christ and bishop of the universal Church.
>That you are just as immediately qualified to lead, despite never having received that blessing.
The pope of Rome has never received this blessing, he gave it to himself (or rather received it from the dragon).
>Text is nothing more than glyphs.
Your objective is obvious to everyone although I doubt you will be honest enough to admit it, namely to deny the inspiration of the holy scriptures. You are reducing yourself to absurdity pursuant to that goal. A word is an abstract thing in which a sign is loaded with meaning of which it serves as the vehicle to communicate it to other minds. Now if the sign is divorced from any meaning it is not language but gibberish. So either scripture is meaningless gibberish, or the text is not mere glyphs.
(3/3)

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>>18397706
>It's pretty funny how you think these weak gotchas are convincing. I don't find this heretic's facile attempt at reckoning with the canon law entertaining or enlightening. I'm not going to waste my time pretending your particular complaints are even relevant to the discussion.

>To me, you're just like those enemies of truth who try to attack the faith by pointing out seeming contradictions in scripture without having the most basic understanding of what it is they're reading. You are using the same tactics as they are, and it's a phenomenally weak kind of attack.

>The Pharisees did not have the faith of Christ, which was deposited in the church itself by Jesus. It's not their rule which binds the faithful together in one body.
Moreover, Jesus' priesthood is of Melchizedek and not Levi. An important difference.
Translation: “I literally can’t defend my religion, you have defeated me”

>>18397426
>Historically the basis of the 5 false sacraments was claimed to be that the Church had the authority to create sacraments, which it does not.

This is claimed by absolutely nobody. You have no source at all on any church father claiming the church "created" the sacraments. I'd be willing to put money on it. There is not a single Catholic in the entire history of the church going back to the apostles who claimed the Pope of any other bishop can invent an entirely new sacrament tomorrow.

Ecclesial traditions are not the same as Sacred tradition. You probably wouldn't get that, and it might be the first time hearing about it.

It's okay if you admit you don't belong to the same church St Augustine does, and that you reject as blasphemy all the same sacraments which he identifies and upheld as such.
Just do everyone a favor and never cite him or claim he would have supported anything at all to do with your counter-church ever again.

>The church fathers likewise knew only of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, which they sometimes reckoned as 4.
Again, you're just blatantly lying about what St Augustine wrote.

>>18397726
>what does “apostolic” mean

Clearly not what you think it means.
You *might* pay lip service to the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church" witnessed to in the Nicene Creed on Sundays, and that's being very charitable when dealing with protties let me tell you.

But you don't actually believe in the apostolicity of the true church, because your own counter-church is absolutely bereft of it.

And you don't believe in the office of bishop either, which every single member of that council recognized. They were invited to the council in the first place because it was commonly recognized that they indeed had apostolic succession, unlike say the gnostics.

You are simply put an imposter Nicene Christian, that is if you even uphold that creed at all.

>>18397729
>strawman,the bible alone is the word of God

Where exactly is that written in the bible?
This is not a trivial question. It cuts right to the heart of your confusion and error.

Luther adds exclusivist language (alone) to the bible 500 years ago because he is so mentally tormented by the cognitive dissonance of his error ridden doctrines born of a unique responsibility avoidant response to his personal extreme scrupulosity, that is how he decided to cope with not finding abundant confirmation of his error in scripture.

He also feels the need to extirpate the entire Epistle of James, since he is his own personal magisterium and can determine for himself what is and is not inspired. Instead of taking it on faith that those who came before him were both more learned and holy than he. He simply could not trust the church to have gotten it right, he just had the feeling they were wrong about James and that was enough for him to consider it "disputed" and "straw".

Protties keeping up his tradition of error and hubris to this day.
The bible *alone* is the only word of God, so they say. In so far as one does not have the entire bible as it exists today, in fact each and every last letter of it, they cannot and do not have the whole word of God.

That, since a great many particular congregations in the early centuries of the church were deprived in some form or another of possessing each and every last scroll that would later be considered part of what we now call the bible, that they were deprived of the whole and unbroken word of God which indelibly marks the ministry of the church wherever it happens to exist. In short, that without the bible as we have it now, they had no real ministry at all.

You have seen it written in this thread, by one unfortunate victim of this confusion.

But that's simply not what the bible itself has to say about it.
Do they even care? They seem at a complete loss to reconcile the bible's own characterization of the word of God with this false doctrine of theirs, and will not admit this is so.
Which is to their discredit, they are not sending their best.

>>18397735
>You have no source at all on any church father claiming the church "created" the sacraments
This may be shocking to you in your ignorance, but the church fathers have nothing to do with Romanism, every single one of them would stand at my side were they here today.
>It's okay if you admit you don't belong to the same church St Augustine does, and that you reject as blasphemy all the same sacraments which he identifies and upheld as such.
1. You do not belong to the same church as Augustine, who had no pope nor the sacrifice of the mass, and who would regard you as a Pelagian heretic 2. The 5 false sacraments were not regarded as sacraments properly speaking in the patristic age. Augustine defined a sacrament to be the visible sign of a heavenly grace, but several of your sacraments have no visible sign.
>you're just blatantly lying about what St Augustine wrote.
1. Augustine is not the only church father who ever lived 2. I highly doubt you have ever read a single thing he read, and if you did you would not understand it 3. I was referring in particular to Ambrose, whom I have actually read, who enumerated 4 sacraments of water, oil, bread, and wine (that is, baptism and the Lord’s supper).

>>18397764
>Clearly not what you think it means.
I see zero engagement let alone refutation of what I said, so I take this repetition of empty question-begging rhetoric to be a concession as to the whole
>And you don't believe in the office of bishop either, which every single member of that council recognized.
This innovation appeared extremely early, within a few decades of the death of the last apostle, for which reason it is universally retained in the unreformed churches. However the particular conception and importance of this office in your church had not yet developed, as Jerome notes this office was novel and established through custom rather than the authority of Christ, therefore he warned bishops not to be prideful and think themselves above presbyters.
>Where exactly is that written in the bible?
This question is erroneous and merits no response, for not every true proposition which exists is contained in scripture. So it would not be necessary for scripture to say it was the only extant word of God, only for it to be true. And our opponents must concede the point, for the Roman church expressly denies the judgements of the magisterium to be new revelations from God, nor do they claim their human traditions contain a single word, but only a nebulous body of ideas, therefore by their own admission the word of God is found nowhere else than the sacred scriptures which alone are inspired. But even if we were placed under this false burden, we can answer it, since we are directed in 2 Timothy 3 to nothing besides the scriptures to guide us through the last days which uniquely are called God-breathed, the reason being that the spoken word of God was to cease and the Church left with the written word of God alone after the apostolic age until the return of the Lord.

>>18397847
>In short, that without the bible as we have it now, they had no real ministry at all.
This was said by nobody but the voices in your head
By the way, the stuff you claimed about Luther are just outright lies, do you not fear the wrath of God?

>>18397854
Both Ambrose and Augustine wrote, for example, of Christian marriage as a sacrament. And not just that one alone, mind you. Augustine also recognizes the sacramental character of ordination.

Marriage and ordination are in fact highly related.
This is not difficult for anyone to check for themselves.

This entire affair really is an embarrassment to your entire counter-church.
It is actually a blessing to have an enemy of the faith operating in such an openly debased and easily refutable way.

I wish only that you were stronger, so that God could be all the more glorified in delivering the faith from these attacks.

You reluctantly concede the bible simply does not teach your error, and substitute it's solemn testimony with your own weakness of reason which you are forced to admit you must rely upon to prop up this manifest falsehood. Sola Scriptura is not biblical.

In fact, you're really saying that the bible does not say everything true that can be said specifically about the word of God. A real head scratcher there, considering you identify the two with extreme exclusivity.

You'd think that if it were actually true that the word of God is expressly limited to the bible as the word of God, then this exclusive word of God would say so in no uncertain terms and that it would be trivial to prove. It seems this is simply not so, given the fact you have refused to do so.

>oil
Do you understand what you have admitted here?
Which sacraments use oil as an essential element?

Ambrose certainly does identify the rite of confirmation following baptism (he uses that very word confirmation in fact) as a sacrament in it's own right, following baptism, which strengthens and spiritually seals the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit.

>Jerome addresses the schismatic status of this sect begun with a man named Lucifer, once bishop of Cagliari (in the island Sardinian southwest of the Italian peninsula). This Lucifer broke away from the Church, and had an associate deacon named Hilary. ... community that sought to continue the legacy of Lucifer/Hilary ... no ontological means to establish a real Church ... Let me cite what Jerome says:

"“Since Hil𝘢ry when he left the Church w𝘢s only 𝘢 de𝘢con, 𝘢nd since the Church is to him, though to him 𝘢lone, 𝘢 mere worldly multitude, he c𝘢n neither duly celebr𝘢te the Euch𝘢rist, for he h𝘢s no bishops or priests, nor c𝘢n he give b𝘢ptism without the Euch𝘢rist. 𝘈nd since the m𝘢n is now de𝘢d, in𝘢smuch 𝘢s he w𝘢s 𝘢 de𝘢con 𝘢nd could ord𝘢in no one to follow him, his sect died with him. For there is no such thing as a Church without bishops. ” (Di𝘢logue with the Luciferi𝘢ns, 21)"

>>18397973
I will personally add here, that this same Lucifer was in fact one of the few staunch allies of Athanasius and orthodoxy during the Arian crisis.

Among such metaphorical titans as St Anthony, the progenitor of organized monasticism I might add.
Whose rule was massively popularized by the widely disseminated biography authored by Athanasius himself, in which that venerable saint whole heatedly endorses both Anthony himself, his lifestyle, and the community that grew up around him as a result of his virtue.
Yes, Athanasius himself was responsible for the spread of Anthony's kind of monasticism around the entire Mediterranean and even beyond.

Much to the chagrin and embarrassment of certain enthusiasts of his which suffer from a particularly calvinist extraction and hence the baggage of hatred of monks and their life, this Life of St Anthony was an antique "best seller" and by far the most broadly read of his own works in his own time.

This Lucifer of Cagliari inadvertently initiated a schism in the church at large, because he opposed the forgiveness and mercy shown to bishops which entertained and even perpetuated that heresy and instead supported a rival claimant to a certain see who never wavered.
He would have preferred these heresy afflicted bishops be deposed, while Athanasius himself advocated that they retain their sees provided they repent.

They had genuine apostolic succession, after all, even if what they taught for a time was not actually the apostolic tradition.

>>18397932
>Both Ambrose and Augustine wrote, for example, of Christian marriage as a sacrament. And not just that one alone, mind you. Augustine also recognizes the sacramental character of ordination.
They were using the word but not the sense, as Augustine says “every sacred sign is a sacrament”. In this general sense they applied the term, and not in the specific sense of an efficacious sign and seal of grace instituted by Jesus Christ. Ambrose in his treatise On the Mysteries knows of no sacraments besides baptism and the Lord’s supper.
>It is actually a blessing to have an enemy of the faith operating in such an openly debased and easily refutable way.
You are an embarrassing clown
>You reluctantly concede the bible simply does not teach your error
Only in your own delusional mind did this happen
>you're really saying that the bible does not say everything true that can be said specifically about the word of God
1. I did not deny scripture answered this, I denied we bore such a burden. All reading this see through you 2. The proposition in question is not about scripture, it is about non-scriptural words of God (namely, the negation thereof)
>You'd think that if it were actually true that the word of God is expressly limited to the bible as the word of God, then this exclusive word of God would say so in no uncertain terms and that it would be trivial to prove
You wickedly put the Lord to the test by making this demand of Him, and what you demand is an impossibility, since it would be impossible for any book of scripture to explicitly deny further revelation without denying its own self, since at the time of its writing it was a further revelation. It does, however, implicitly deny it, as I demonstrated.
>Which sacraments use oil as an essential element?
Your interpretation is an anachronism. In the early Church there was a tradition (which the Greeks retained) of mixing oil with the water of baptism, it is to this Ambrose refers.

>>18397973
>For there is no such thing as a Church without bishops
That is, without elders. Jerome did not maintain a proper distinction between bishops and presbyters, see https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm
“Of the names presbyter and bishop the first denotes age, the second rank. In writing both to Titus and to Timothy the apostle speaks of the ordination of bishops and of deacons, but says not a word of the ordination of presbyters; for the fact is that the word bishops includes presbyters also.”

>>18398012
>in the early Church there was a tradition
Cool.
So there is nowhere in the bible where baptism is performed and oil is even mentioned as being involved.
Right? To be clear that I'm not actually misremembering something here, and that is just a fact.

IIRC, it's always just water. And yet you appeal as a prottie, to tradition of all things, for it's identification with baptism to the exclusion of all else.
Ironic.

Ambrose is explicitly sacramentalizing confirmation.
He sacramentalizes marriage too, elsewhere, saying it is protected by God and connected to the divine grace.
You have no genuine sense of the sacraments, which is why the use of the Latin word for mystery confounds you.

Your empty and petulant insults mean absolutely nothing to me, you despondent heretic. They merely indicate that you have reached the limit of your patience, and are being induced to emotional outbursts unbecoming of your task here.

There is nothing in the bible which supports your ridiculous assertion that the word of God is exclusively identifiable with a book.
Moreover, I predict there are no church fathers either who share in this disastrous error of confusing the letter with the spirit.

Your false doctrine is a modern invention of men who needed to claim authority for themselves where none had been given to them through that same blessing which was also rightfully withheld from Simon Magus.
So they claimed their authority was gotten through the bible, which itself does not grant any authority since it cannot lay hands but is instead authoritative, being authorized for the ministry of teaching by the church through the power of the Holy Spirit, abusing this manifestation of the word of God in their impiety and greed.

Let's pose a hypothetical question.

If I recite a single word from the bible, is God necessarily speaking through me? Now suppose I were some kind of unbeliever.
What if the word is merely in the bible?

How about one letter?
Is that one letter or word, the whole word of God exclusively?

Let's expand this question.
What if I speak five words from the bible with understanding, or an entire verse?
Is that the word of God in its entirety?

Or would it only be the full word of God if I recited the entire bible from beginning to end without making a single error or even taking an extra breath?

I hope you get the point I'm driving at here.
The word of God is not merely confined to the text of the bible.

The bible is a particularly chosen emanation of that ineffable word.
But not necessarily the only possible or realized emanation of that word.
In fact, that the word of God is in it's divine completeness ineffable actually precludes the possibility of the bible as being the exclusive word of God. Since it is obvious that everything written in the bible is in fact, effable by definition even if the transcendent mysteries it points to are not.

God condescends to man though his word, which he presents in a way that is intelligible to your limited faculties, since he is charitable and asks for your participation.
What this doesn't mean is that this same word, God's breath, is somehow limited exclusively to what you are naturally capable of understanding. Neither would it mean that those who are naturally less able to understand the bible due to extenuating factors are necessarily bereft of this living word. Since God may, of his own goodness, make certain provisions for them personally.

>>18395178
Why would that be a hard pill to swallow? Religion is made up, and changes all the time. The holy books get in the way, because they have to go to different verses to justify their new beliefs and change the meaning of old verses.

>>18395489
>Christians would still be getting circumcised
Anon, I have something to tell you.

Finally, one more point.
And this is a personal take I'm willing to entertain mentally, but am open to correction regarding.

The word of God is uncreated.
The bible is created.

So we can see that insofar as the bible is one uniquely privileged extension or repository of the word of God into creation, it cannot be said to be exclusively the word of God.
Because that would mean the bible existed before creation, co-eternally, as the word of God did.

Whereas we know for a fact that it came into being at a specific time, for a specific reason, and through inspiration details the process of not only it's own creation but also that of the whole world.

If man is made in the image of God, and was animated through the breath of God, then the bible in some related sense was made in the image of man, for men. It reflects human values, flaws, and perspective. And what's more it reconciles this perspective to God's own in persona Christi.

bump

>>18397706
>weak gotcha
This is not a weak gotcha. This is a logical contradiction in Catholicism. There are many, many examples of things like this. But this is one that's especially pertinent since you've been appealing to "fruits of repentance" as a mark of authority, which Exsurge Domine patently does not demonstrate.

So it refutes that point of your's, and Catholicism itself, all at once.

>you're just like those enemies of truth who try to attack the faith by pointing out seeming contradictions in scripture
They have to try to look for contradictions by omission, things like "well this one doesn't mention the other possessed man" and such. Here however we have two documents both of which must be infallible both of which directly and intentionally contradict what is stated by the other.

>The Pharisees did not have the faith of Christ
In other words: no, being in a position of religious authority, even if legitimate as Jesus says the Pharisees' was, does not thereby mean a source of truth.

>It's not my place to judge
So you can't even answer basic questions about who is saved, but you have the Holy Spirit directly guiding your teachers?

>>18398985
>"fruits of repentance" as a mark of authority
Again, that's you misrepresenting the entire premise of my original response.
You are conflating inspiration with authority.

One may be inspired, that is to say have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we rightfully call the word of God, and not have the blessing of leadership and binding authority which Simon attempted to purchase.

Though the indelible mark on the soul which is the consequence of sacramental participation in the body of Christ and ordination, the power of the Holy Spirit works through the ministerial faculties of an individual so invested with that responsibility, that individual himself may still be damned as a consequence of his own sin.
This does not thwart grace, which is effective despite particular deficiencies of a given minister.

The work of the Holy Spirit in Paul's ministry became evident to the other apostles because the word of God was present in the hearts of his transformed people.

>source of truth
The Father, from whom the Son who embodies it proceeds.

>you can't even answer basic questions about who is saved
That's just not my job. I don't have to speculate to satisfy your need for a target.
To pretend like it is constitutes a rhetorical polemic that betrays your atavistic intent.

>position of religious authority, even if legitimate as Jesus says the Pharisees' was
The Pharisees might have been authorized to teach, but they were not priests and could not offer sacrifices at the Temple. In this sense, authority was delegated to them rather than natural as the result of holding a certain office.

In short, their domain was the synagogue.
The Sadducees on the other hand, were true priests, even if their ministry was beset by their particular deficiencies.

You should respond to my post here >>18398112, since I actually am looking for a substantive critique of my idea. Since this thread is not about the Catholic church, but pertains to the "word of God".

To be perfectly clear, I would respectfully submit that the bible was created through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit via the hand of men chosen by Jesus Christ to lead his people on earth, the word of God working through the faculties of the church.

In a word, it is inspired.

But the bible cannot to be said to be the inspiration of the Holy Spirit *in itself* to the total exclusion of all else, and in fact this is not what the bible teaches. It is both evidence of and a witness to that word of God at work in the apostolic ministry, which transforms the lives of regenerate men and conforms them to the image of Christ.

Anyone can purchase a bible. This does not mean they have purchased the word of God, or the blessing Simon desired, or that they necessarily enjoy the indwelling of the same merely through possession of the text.

>>18395178
Of course it doesn't, it's all made up shit.
Made up shit doesn't need anything to function, because it doesn't function from the start.
The only thing you can get near the state of "functioning" is the system where the grifter yaps about magic invisible guys in the sky and the suckers eat it all and donate their money, because they are stupid.

>>18399098
>Again, that's you misrepresenting the entire premise of my original response.
Then what was it? As written your only point was about Paul's moral behavior.

>The work of the Holy Spirit in Paul's ministry became evident to the other apostles because the word of God was present in the hearts of his transformed people.
Is the word of God present in Exsurge Domine?

>That's just not my job.
So you have leaders guided by the Holy Spirit himself, who have written teams of theological material, with salvation being the primary practical goal, and none of it lets you answer the basic question about who is saved?

>The Pharisees might have been authorized to teach, but they were not priests and could not offer sacrifices at the Temple.
What are you talking about? Tons of priests were Pharisees. Josephus for the most well-known example.

>>18398112
>The word of God is uncreated.
That doesn't make much sense. When God inscribed the ten commandments, that was him creating words.

addendum

In short, it would be necessary for the authors of these epistles to themselves have the word of God in them first for it to work through them and produce scripture.

In short, the word of God actually precedes the act of writing a particular work which may be thereby confirmed as inspired scripture by that same power at work in the life of the church. The same word of God which inspires scripture is the same power which confirms it.

Ergo, the bible itself cannot be identified *exclusively* as the word of God since this same word was at work in the hearts of it's authors before any one of the writings which constitute it were finalized.

>>18399123
>That doesn't make much sense.

So you say the breath of God is a creature?
Is Jesus, called this word of God, compared in his parables to a seed, also a creature?

Are you an Arian, or a Nicene Christian?

>none of it lets you answer the basic question about who is saved
The bible tells me not to judge lest I be judged.
And through the working of this word, one learns some small degree of humility. Enough to know that judgement belongs to Jesus, and that it will be finally revealed on the last day who ultimately goes where.

Mere speculation on that point serves no useful purpose, and is actually a distraction from the holy life which Jesus the good doctor recommends his patient.

>Josephus
The Pharisees were a kind of faction. Some of them were Levites.
That doesn't mean they all were.

Whereas the Sadducees were in fact, priests of the Temple. Lead by the high priest in fact, and dominated the Sanhedrin before their nigh annihilation at the hand of Rome. Called this way, after Zadok IIRC.

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>>18399104
>It is both evidence of and a witness to that word of God at work in the apostolic ministry, which transforms the lives of regenerate men and conforms them to the image of Christ.
The holy apostolic ministry you're referring to

>>18397735
>It's okay if you admit you don't belong to the same church St Augustine does
That sounds good to me. God said
>Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
and
>Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
But Augustine made all these copes as to why it's okay for Christians to kill people in war. He was also a predestinationist. He'd be burned at the stake by the very same organization you love so much if he lived in a different era.

>>18399137
>So you say the breath of God is a creature?
This response doesn't make any sense. I don't even mean that as an insult, I mean I genuinely can't tell what you're trying to say and how it relates to what I asked. When God inscribed the Ten Commandments, that was him creating words. It's a fairly simple statement.

>The bible tells me not to judge
Do you accept the Creeds of the Catholic church?

>Whereas the Sadducees were in fact, priests of the Temple.
What on Earth are you talking about? Again: Josephus. Pharisee. Priest. Lots of them were. Saying no Pharisees were priests is simply an outright historical error.

>>18399160
>Augustine made all these copes
Pretty much. His role was to make the rapidly expanding religion more popular and coherent in the Roman Empire. After his death the Empire was also collapsing so because of that timing he ended up being the preeminent theologian of Roman Christianity.

>>18399165
That's one of the most evasive non-answers I've ever seen.

How can you not recognize the impossible to miss connection between the breath of God and the very same inspiration of the word of God at work?

The process of generation from which the Holy Spirit proceeds is literally called spiration. That is to say, etymological with inspiration or aspiration or spirit or perspire, the issue of breath.

So that same word of God which is God breathed, is not created but co-eternal with the Father. As it is written in John, that the word was with God and by him all things were made.

One of those things being made is the bible.
It was accomplished through men, who are uniquely privileged among all creation as having been given life through the breath of God himself.
It was made for men, to proclaim the birth and death of Christ to all men.

While the bible is not made alive like men are by the breath of God in which it is said to have been inspired, we know that the word of God is alive in part because that's what it inspired men to write in the bible, but not for that reason alone.

You are mistaking the created thing with the essential mode of its creation.
If someone takes away your bible, the word of God is still with you.

So, it's clear the bible is created and the word of God is not created. That one can be said to exist only locally or at best intelligibly in part and even in different forms which aren't entirely reconcilable in the text, whereas the word of God itself is not limited to specific dimensions and isn't necessarily bound to the parameters of your particular frame of reference.

>>18399358
>If someone takes away your bible, the word of God is still with you.
You seem to be trying to argue against a non-existent position? No one (well, it's /his/ so maybe SOMEONE here, but no major denomination) says Bibles are somehow literal and direct physical manifestations of some metaphysical aspect of God. They're just written records of God's messages to humanity.

You seem to be conflating God's ability to communicate with God's communications, calling them both "word of God", and then thinking most people are talking about God's ability to communicate rather than God's communications when they talk about the word of God in this context.

>simon says: the religion

>>18395178
Nah.
As an atheist who abides by delphic maxims, you are doing them dirty, and attempting to steal their definitional qualities away.
Leave the bible bashers alone, you weirdo.

Christian doctrine can never contradict the Bible, therefore making the Bible the ultimate authority of Christianity.
Catholics are still sola scriputra but with extra steps.

>>18400016
Maybe?
There are many protestant denominations who say this. It's one of the reasons they collectively reject ecclesial authority and say it is not invested with any binding power through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Including the forgiveness of sins, a definitional issue for Sola Fide. For the protestant, the church does not forgive sins.


20 And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.


Jesus breathing in them is a visible sign of his empowering them to forgive sins, of being sent with the same authority with which the Father sent the Son. *That* power is God breathed too, not scripture alone.

They conceptually limit the word of God to the scriptures. It cannot be thought to be at work through anything else in the church.

Thread is filled with examples of this line of thinking, which exclusively restrict the word of God to only the words found in the bible alone.

Would you say that without the bible, there is no ministry of the spirit?
That is to say, that genuinely Christian religion and life cannot be had without access to the bible.
Because that is what Sola Scriptura really is saying, when you peel back the layers a little.

I say no, in limited agreement with OP, because the ministry of the spirit isn't dependent on the letter of epistle.
The word or God is at work even in lieu of the bible.

Christianity certainly needs the word of God to function. No dispute.
But thankfully for many, that does not mean the bible itself is the sole source of this same word or can be identified exclusively with the word of God as the thing in itself.

https://davenantinstitute.org/bible-religion-protestants

“The Bible, I say, the Bible only is the religion of Protestants.”

So wrote English Protestant apologist William Chillingworth in 1637, but the same words might just as well have been written in 1537 or 1937.

...newfound freedom of a church that had cast off the authority of a papacy began to breed new uncertainties. After all, the Roman church had not claimed merely to tell believers what they must do to be saved, but had offered authoritative doctrinal and moral guidance on a host of matters, and also helped define the proper scope of other lesser human authorities—from parents to parliaments and everything in between. Without such guidance came the risk of moral uncertainty. And the obvious solution was to turn to the same guide that had banished uncertainty from the realm of salvation: Scripture.

...

The great English theologian Richard Hooker worried that if Scripture was to be our guide in everything, to the point of replacing other rational and human authorities, “will not Scripture be a snare and torment to weak consciences, filling them with infinite perplexities, scruples, insoluble doubts, and extreme despairs?” (II.8.6)

It was these symptoms that he thought he witnessed in the Elizabethan Puritan movement, which claimed to find in Scripture a complete model for church government and liturgy, a complete solution to the various ills they saw afflicting the English church and society.

While their claims were in his view harmful enough even in the narrow context of debates over church government, his greatest worry was that there was little to stop this logic being extended into every area of life. Once one adopted the syllogism: “Scripture tells us everything that is necessary. It seems to us necessary to know X. Therefore, Scripture tells us X” there is no theoretical limit to what truths one may insist on reading into Scripture.

...

>>18400560
The consequences of such reasoning are not merely destructive to our understanding of Scripture itself, but to our lives together as believers. Once one contends that Scripture simply must provide the answer to some question or other, and claims to have found the biblical answer, the stakes of any disagreement are raised immeasurably. No longer is failure to agree a mere matter of poor reasoning, inattentiveness to the evidence, or just plain stubbornness; no, it is a matter of basic obedience to God, basic faith in His Word. Thus every disagreement becomes grounds for a potential ugly church split, for why should we maintain fellowship with someone who doesn’t take God’s Word seriously?

You do not have to be a professional church historian to recognize that this is hardly a mere hypothetical danger. On the contrary, schism has been a pervasive characteristic of Protestant churches—and especially those influenced by the kind of Puritanism Hooker here opposes—right down through the centuries. Already in the nineteenth century, American theologian John Nevin decried the epidemic of “private judgment” that led a whole string of would-be religious reformers to found new sects founded, as they fervently insisted, upon the Bible alone, freeing it from the layers of superstition and confusion that centuries of interpretation had added.

...

Ironically, though, the unshakeable faith in Scripture’s comprehensiveness, simplicity, and perspicuity was on the rise just at the same time that the latest developments in scholarship were undermining such faith. With the rise of higher criticism in the late 1800s, theological liberalism ...

>>18400564
.. response to the rise of liberalism, the ordinary rank-and-file of the American churches, along with a few of their more conservative leaders, doubled down on their faith in Scripture, insisting that the Bible, interpreted according to its plain “literal” sense, could tell us everything we needed or even wanted to know—the date the earth began, the date it would end, and everything in between. Contemporary Protestantism remains bitterly divided ...

... false confidence in Scripture’s perspicuity continues to fuel arrogant and abusive Christian leaders who dismiss any kind of opposition as infidelity. Countless converts away from orthodox Protestantism cite their weariness with the seemingly intractable disagreements that fracture our churches today ...

Many Christians today err in exactly the same way, although we are less likely to focus on the issues of church government and liturgy that generated such conflicts in the decades following the Reformation.

>>18397854
>>18398012
>Ambrose, whom I have actually read
Then read this too, and then claim you understand the sense in which he speaks of grace and the sacraments.

"Concerning Repentance"
t. St Ambrose
>St. Ambrose, in writing against the Novatians ... speaks of the power committed to the Church of forgiving the greatest sins ... refutes the arguments of the Novatians based on certain passages of holy Scripture ... after urging the necessity of careful and speedy repentance, and the necessity of confessing one's sins, St. Ambrose meets the Novatian arguments based on Heb. vi. 4-6, from which they inferred the impossibility of restoration; and on St. Matthew 12 ... concerning sin against the Holy Spirit.

"... as the Lord Jesus Himself said in theGospel:Receive theHoly Spirit: whosesoeversinsyou forgive they are forgiven unto them, and whosesoeversinsyou retain, they are retained,John20:22-23who is it that honours Him most, he who obeys His bidding or he who rejects it?

7. The Church holds fast itsobedienceon either side, by both retaining and remittingsin;heresyis on the one side cruel, and on the other disobedient; wishes to bind what it will not loosen, and will not loosen what it has bound, whereby it condemns itself by its own sentence."

...

"Each is allowed to the Church, neither to heresy, for this power has been entrusted to priests alone. Rightly, therefore, does the Church claim it, which has true priests; heresy, which has not the priests of God, cannot claim it. And by not claiming this power heresy pronounces its own sentence, that not possessing priests it cannot claim priestly power. And so in their shameless obstinacy a shamefaced acknowledgment meets our view."

...

"The office of the priest is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and His right it is specially to forgive and to retain sins. How, then, can they claim His gift who distrust His power and His right?

9. And what is to be said of their excessive arrogance?"

Chapter 7
>St. Ambrose, addressing Christ, complains of the Novatians, and shows that they have no part with Christ, Who wishes all men to be saved.

30. So, then, Lord Jesus, come wholly to Your Church, since Novatian makes excuse. Novatian says, I have bought a yoke of oxen, and he puts not on the light yoke of Christ, but lays upon his shoulders a heavy burden which he is not able to bear. Novatian held back Your servants by whom he was invited, treated them contemptuously and slew them, polluting them with the stain of a reiterated baptism. Send forth, therefore, into the highways, and gather together good and bad, Luke 14:21 bring the weak, the blind, and the lame into Your Church. Command that Your house be filled, bring in all unto Your supper, for You will make him whom You shall call worthy, if he follow You. He indeed is rejected who has not the wedding garment, that is, the vestment of charity, the veil of grace. Send forth I pray You to all.

31. Your Church does not excuse herself from Your supper, Novatian makes excuse. Your family says not, I am whole, I need not the physician, but it says: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. Jeremiah 17:14 The likeness of Your Church is that woman who went behind and touched the hem of Your garment, saying within herself: If I do but touch His garment I shall be whole. Matthew 9:21 So the Church confesses her wounds, but desires to be healed.

cont

>>18400750
32. And You indeed, O Lord, desire that all should be healed, but all do not wish to be healed. Novatian wishes not, who thinks that he is whole. You, O Lord, say that You are sick, and feel our infirmity in the least of us, saying: I was sick and you visited Me. Matthew 25:36 Novatian does not visit that least one in whom You desire to be visited. You said to Peter when he excused himself from having his feet washed by You: If I wash not your feet, you will have no part with Me. John 13:8 What fellowship, then, can they have with You, who receive not the keys of the kingdom of heaven, saying that they ought not to remit sins?

33. And this confession is indeed rightly made by them, for they have not the succession of Peter, who hold not the chair of Peter, which they rend by wicked schism; and this, too, they do, wickedly denying that sins can be forgiven even in the Church, whereas it was said to Peter: I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven. Matthew 16:19 And the vessel of divine election himself said: If you have forgiven anything to any one, I forgive also, for what I have forgiven I have done it for your sakes in the person of Christ. 2 Corinthians 2:10 Why, then, do they read Paul's writings, if they think that he has erred so wickedly as to claim for himself the right of his Lord? But he claimed what he had received, he did not usurp that which was not due to him.

>b-but even though he used the word sacrament he really didn't mean it in the same "sense" you do

This is my *first* time reading St Ambrose's tract on the sacrament of reconciliation.
And I find that every single thing I have read so far absolutely confirms everything I know about it.

In what sense am I lacking, that you have enlightened me? None at all.
I didn't need to read St Ambrose to believe the exact same thing about grace he does. Because the people who taught me about it faithfully preserved this common and truly catholic doctrine.

37. But you say that the grace of the mysteries works in the font. What works, then, in penance? Does not the Name of God do the work? What then? Do you, when you choose, claim for yourselves the grace of God, and when you choose reject it? But this is a mark of insolent presumption, not of holy fear, when those who wish to do penance are despised by you. You cannot, forsooth, endure the tears of the weepers; your eyes cannot bear the coarse clothing, the filth of the squalid; with proud eyes and puffed-up hearts you delicate ones say with angry tones, Touch me not, for I am pure.

>>18400510
>Jesus breathing in them is a visible sign of his empowering them to forgive sins
Sure but the Apostles could do much that nobody since them can. They could perform overt and visible miracles such as raising the dead or healing the blind. No one since them can so no one since them has their same power. It would be very silly to say the only powers people after them don't have are all the ones we just so happen to be able to actually see.

>Would you say that without the bible, there is no ministry of the spirit?
Right, I don't think the Holy Spirit directly does anything at all today. When the Holy Spirit was directly acting there was no doubt: people had miraculous powers like being able to speak in languages they didn't know. But 1 Corinthians 13 says this was going to come to an end, and it clearly has since out of the billions of Christians in the world today no one can do this.

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>>18395178
Based C.S Lewis fan.

>>18401216
You're not seeing the problem here.
Leaving your cessationism aside for the moment.

Why would Jesus give the apostles the power to forgive sins in the first place, if according to Sola Fide they had already for all time been forgiven to the faithful through his death on the cross?
That would be completely pointless, unless this is a clear indication that function is to be a critical element of the ministry of the Holy Spirit working through his church and this represents the ordinary visible means of reconciliation which Christians are supposed to participate in?

As he says in the Sermon on the Mount forgive and you will be forgiven, whereas if you do not forgive neither will you be forgiven.

>>18396182
>The Bible isn’t Jesus
So you worship another Jesus. Tick tock. You’re so fucked. :D

>>18401758
Sorry, meant for this rodent >>18396656

>>18396182
>>18401758
>>18401760
Jesus Christ isn't a fictional character who exists only in a book.

>>18395178
That's like saying the internet can be managed without literacy.

>>18401983
Correct, he is a fictional character that appears in numerous books and a wide range of mixed media.

>>18401758
Jesus is not sitting on my bookshelf, no. My Jesus Christ is not erotic poetry, I am sorry. You'll have to sort that out with your creator.
>>18402458
Seth McFarlane over here.

>>18402463
>Jesus is not sitting on my bookshelf
Yet you only know about jesus because of books on shelves, not because you have ever directly interacted with jesus.

>My Jesus Christ is not erotic poetry
Then why does he have so many prose about lusting after women and mutilating genitals and becoming a eunuch for god and the like attributed to him?

>>18401628
>if according to Sola Fide they had already for all time been forgiven to the faithful through his death on the cross?
Because they're instruments of the Holy Spirit now, having just received. Just like with scripture in their writings, they speak with God's words now. What they say, God says. Same if those words are "you're forgiven" or "you're not forgiven".

>unless this is a clear indication that function is to be a critical element of the ministry of the Holy Spirit working through his church
Then so would the miraculous powers the Holy Spirit gave people.

>which Christians are supposed to participate in
We don't participate in being able to write scripture, give sight to the blind, or raise the dead like the Disciples could.

>>18402977
Teaching is not something the church does anymore?
Administrations of church government?

These things too are works of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12. No distinction is made.
To be clear, you're saying that the Holy Spirit no longer works through the church. Do I have that right?

That there is no inspired ministry, no guide to the truth, that you are forced to rely on your own flawed reasoning to arrive at the truth and understand the bible under your own power as opposed to God's. That the same Holy Spirit which Jesus said would be with the church forever no longer does anything but is inert.
Being bereft of the active helps of the Holy Spirit and the word of God in your heart, you are no different than an unbeliever who just happens to be in possession of a bible.

That when the church collectively confirmed these writings as scripture, the Holy Spirit was not assisting them. This is not how any Christian understood the faith in antiquity, it's a modern heresy to say the Holy Spirit no longer works.

Simply because you might not see visibly miraculous signs of the spirit's working does not mean it has ceased.
Because if you had, what you would have is not the ministry of the spirit but that of the letter Paul writes about, graven in stone and not the heart. Which is where the Holy Spirit deposits the word of God.

cont below

>What they say, God says. Same if those words are "you're forgiven" or "you're not forgiven".
They aren't repeating a verdict that has already been made, as a mouthpiece with no agency would.

Jesus is telling them that what they *bind* and *loose* on earth is what is bound and loosed in heaven.
*They* are the ones remitting sins. The Holy Spirit empowers them to do that for the church.

You have to completely ignore the fact that they are actually being given power and authority to do these things. In the same mode as Jesus was given by the Father, he gives to them, and they subsequently give to others in emulating Christ.

>>18395420
"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees."

>>18403222
>>18402977
>The Holy Spirit deposits the word of God in the heart.

It is this continuing act of the Holy Spirit which is responsible for regeneration, and the life of the Church. Denying this gift means you spiritually die.

You would have to say that whoever taught you this was not inspired to do so by the Holy Spirit, since this function of the church depends entirely upon the spiritual gifts.
This would make them a false teacher, who cannot understand scripture because they do not read it with the same faith that Jesus deposited in the church through the revelation of the word of God, namely the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Have you ever blessed someone, or received a blessing?
That is only possible through the Holy Spirit. When you say this spirit does not directly act in the church anymore, you are asserting the impossibility of blessings. And more than that, even denouncing baptism as spiritually empty.

Anyone who would say that the Holy Spirit no longer works in the church is a manifest heretic. Through their own admission that they are deprived of this essential indwelling which makes every function of the church Jesus founded possible, they admit they don't belong to that same faith. And would have all the same authority as an infidel who has taken possession of the bible only through financial purchase or theft, rather than receiving it legitimately with blessing of mission.

Faith itself is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Has that work stopped too?

>>18395420
You are Retarded. All is love. do unto others as you would do onto yourself.. Don't Jew others. if you don't want to be Jew'd (lie, interest/usury. betrayal) Love one another.

>>18403238
What do you see as the rightful church? This currently-presiding system of literalistic spewing at the behest of Jesuits and Masons? I haven't personally read this full argument, but your statements here come off as though you sincerely believe the modern system represents core Christian values in the first place. This seems like you aren't arguing for the faith in Word, and those who are attuned to the underlying meanings of the Word as the Church, or even Mind as Church - but rather advocating for trust in those who even Christ Himself openly spake against vehemently; those who would rather cut off their own tongues than relinquish one sector of truth from their mouths concerning this place.

13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.

14 Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:

15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:

16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)

17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,

19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.

20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

>>18403257
Why is it always when I ask questions that people want to post indirect replies mischaracterizing my arguments?

I am still kindly, patiently waiting. I was asking for the sake of sincere clarification.

Telling silence. Well I will continue onwards following what Christ says, and not just the words of whomsoever comes my way claiming to have authority from God, or to be descended authority from something they semantically abstract to claim said authority - like the term Church.

look at how patient and sincere I am btw
lmao

>>18403289
I have sat here for twenty minutes waiting for a response, because - yes - I was being wholly and completely sincere. I can continue waiting if you so wish.

>>18403292
I wasn't responding to you at all when I posted that passage from Acts 8.

Get a grip, I have absolutely no reason nor desire to entertain or reinforce your delusions.

>>18403300
What delusions? It seemed like you were just posting a vaguely related but albeit misconstrued retort in kneejerk reaction to that first post I made. Which now only seems further confirmed by the extremely emotional following two posts you decided to make.

>>18395178
It's basically the only source of info they consider valid about Jesus, the guy the religion is based on worshiping.

>>18403351
Genius wordplay, really.

>>18398110
>implying

bump

>>18403238
If the Holy Spirit is still doing the same things today as during the first century, we would see people able to speak languages they do not know today. Who is currently doing this?