Replace my Worry with Wonder: Sola Scriptura or Tradition
before me asking
"How do you know you have the right Bible?"
No, No, No - un uh.
Wait.
Waaaa-iiiiii-tttt!!
So an entire conversation began to open up before me about Church History - Protestanism and Catholicism..and then even the fracture with Eastern Orthodoxy. Oh my.
I really was just getting so cozy and so confident of the WORD, and my reading and eating of it. I don't want to venture out.
2Timothy 3.16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped unto all good works.
Right?
I read it just right there in Timothy!
I honestly thought my next growth stage would be more...wisdom and discernment - and, memorizing some of these verses that I have bouncing lamely around my thoughts without more effort to hold them fast.
These verses assure us we are "thoroughly equipped"... apart from sacred "tradition"
Right?
But no!
To WONDER if I HAVE THE RIGHT BIBLE?
To WONDER if SCRIPTURE is truly GOD-BREATHED and HOLY and COMPLETE?
Timothyy 2, "God-Breathed" truths refute the...human teachings I fight with so much in Catholicism, and what I am learning about Eastern Orthoidoxy.
Does not this verse establish SOLA SCRIPTURA as well as acknowledge that both salvation and faith precede.... and works are the outcome of this choice, not the foundation and builder of the choice?
"Faith with out works is dead" is because I AM BORN AGAIN-> Me, I am NEW.
Right?
Again:
2 Timothy 3.16-17:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
He, Jesus, taught Sola Scriptura, didn't He?
He, Jesus, used scripture to fight every battle and throw-down He was in, right?
To believe that tradition is on equal power to The Word - when Jesus said The Word was above his own presence on earth... well, that is worse than just bad conclusion.
Right?
Matthew 4:1-11:
Jesus resisted the temptations of the devil by quoting Scripture three times, saying “It is written” (v. 4, 7, 10)
He, Jesus, did not allow for human conditions to dictate the Word and the Truth.
It, the Word, was His Weapon and His Defense.
Period.
He, Jesus, said He did not come to Abolish the Law of the Prophets but to Fulfill it.
He, Jesus, said the last in the Kingdom of Heaven would be anyone who breaks, or teaches others to break the least of the commandments.
Right?
Matthew 5:19
Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.showed his high regard for the authority and permanence of Scripture.
He, Jesus, rebuked the leading scholars, the Pharisees and other teachers of the law for NULLIFYING the Word of God by..... their Human Teachings.
Right?
Elevating Human teachings over Scripture.
Right?
Mark 7:13
....thereby invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.
Isaiah 29:13:
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.
I am struggling with what seems to be a reading of religion into Scriptures where it is not existing. Human Traditions or Values. Even conveneince. Certianly Financial gain.
(That is big that statement - I will come back another time for this. I also will return to The Eucharist and The Living Jesus.)
But for now, I see "tradition" and "church history" being sort of forced over and into the Word. It does not feel to be a natural pathway or conclusion.
The Word says nothing of additional requirements, rituals, higher priests.
Right?
John 8:31-32
If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Psalm 138:2
I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name.
Matthew 24:35
.....Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.
There is no room for eisegetical interpretation of that passage.
And what I understand about the Berean church is minimal - really only that they Tested the Scripture.
Right?
He, Paul, won the Bereans over to belief because what he was teaching was actually validating Scripture.
Right?
I am exhausted and not even at the center questions yet:
How can we know what the true, valid, God-breathed scriptures are, and what am I to learn from them?
I am new to all of this, and yet I do know the direction my answer comes from is trust, reliance, and listening to - hearing - the Holy Spirit.
I am far from that ability, but I am so glad God has given me friends that provoke the questions and cause me to open wider and wider to Him.
RIGHT!
The Top-Down Catholic Church does not.... in any way... seem right to me.
But I have self-decieved, before.
Right?
And I can admit the fractured Non-Dom churches, (on recently have I understood this to be "Protestantism") often lack...Holiness. Reverence. The Sacred.
But, is that to be brought into the communcal church by ME or by tradition/rituals?
Or for me to recognize "it" - Like, Jesus snatching me UP in a mega-church that barely mentioned His name? But He did.
Right?
What is so incorrect about Individualism, and the power/authority to be found in it?
I will be alone, an individual, when I stand before my Lord.
Right?
I am searching.
Holy Spirit, I AM Listening.
Help me.
God and God's Word and Teaching IS in Written Format!
This has my full attention.
Isaiah 28:10“Whom will he teach knowledge?
And whom will he make to understand the message?
Those just weaned from milk?
Those just drawn from the breasts?
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,
Line upon line, line upon line,
Here a little, there a little.”For with stammering lips and another tongue
He will speak to this people,
To whom He said, “This is the rest with which
You may cause the weary to rest,”
And, “This is the refreshing”;
Yet they would not hear.
