sola scriptura

[rusmeister]

Josh, it all comes down to this:

You see no difference between the Church and individuals. To you, the Church is just the (living) people around you that screw up, make mistakes and need correction.
If that were so, I would agree with you.

We see the Church as something that transcends time, in Lewis's words:"...as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners." It is established by Christ and includes all members, living and dead. We are simply members of that Church. We are NOT (as such, on our own) the Church.


If the Church issues a teaching, and we both disagree, I say: "I'm wrong and the Church is right." (My wisdom is not enough, not better than the Church's.)
You say, "I'm right and the Church is wrong." (But I'll go along for the sake of peace and unity.)

No point discussing details until that root difference is clarified.

[AllanS]

Rus,

Who decided to join the Orthodox Church? You did. Are you fallible? Yes. So your decision to join might be wrong? Yes. Is it conceivable that your present contentment with this Church might sour, just as your contentment with being a Baptist (?) soured? Yes. So what possible sense is there in talking about an authoritative Church?

Some Church out there might indeed be infallible. I have no way of knowing which one it is. To quote scripture about Peter etc is to give authority to the text which it might or might not have, since it was itself transmitted to us via a Church that claims infallibility.

Bah humbug. You go around in circles. There is nothing for it but to gird up your loins like a man and think for yourself. Learn from experience. As Jesus himself said (or so we're told) "Are you so DULL?" What a wonderful hermeneutical principle. Plain common sense.

[rusmeister]

[Kolbitar]

[AllanS]

[rusmeister]

Wow. Is there anything at all that Lewis wrote that you find to be true?

[AllanS]

Yes.

[rusmeister]

[Kolbitar]

[AllanS]

"The argument with Anscombe taught him a valuable lesson, that he was not able to prove the existence of God through reason. This was a shock, for he had relied very much on reason ever since his years with Kirkpatrick in Surrey. He came to realise that it is absurd to suppose that if a particular argument for the existence of God is overturned, this means that God does not exist. He relied henceforth on intuitive experience. What had happened to him is splendidly described in one of his finest poems, The Apologist's Evening Prayer. A belief that God was intellectual and rational had been replaced by an intuitive knowledge." George Sayer (Head of English at Malvern College, fellow Inkling and long-time friend of CSL.)

The Apologist's Evening Prayer

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

[Josh]

[AllanS]

[WolfVanZandt]

[rusmeister]

[AllanS]