Do these passages prove Sola Scriptura?

[Eric B]

The idea of periodic reboots to Christian theology, rather than slow, organic development into greater clarity and depth, robs the average believer, who is not a theologian, of any security his church is imparting to him the real teachings of Christ, thus making him vulnerable to competing teachings, and thus stopping God's appointed teachers of being able to fulfill their mission of anchoring the average believer so he will not be blown about by the winds of contrary doctrinal claims.

Ask all the people burdened down by centuries of corruption how "secure" they felt. The security being discussed here is really that of the leadership to maintain absolute unquestionable control over gullible helpless sheep (Acts 20:29)
The doctrine is contrary anyway, when you have the split between the east and west, and the flow of new doctrines -er, "clarifications" by the Western body.
And it doesn't matter how fast or slow it is; change is change, and it is still "the wind of doctrine".

The program of the Christian Church must thus be allowed to play itself out to the end. Only in this manner can the accuracy of the results be guaranteed.

In other words, just let us spread our error and control over everyone, as we redefine the faith; so long as the change is slow and not sudden.

Thus today we see heresies like Gnosticism, Arianism, Sabellianism, and polytheism reappearing in the guises of New Age Christianity, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Oneness Pentecostals, and the Mormons, all of which began as attempts to scrap historic Christian teaching and reboot the system.

You may have kept out Arianism and Sabellianism, but there is plenty of gnostic influence, and even practical polytheism (praying to saints, exaltation of Mary with some wanting her as "Co-redemptrix")

Once again, why not give all this glory to God, instead of to men.

 

[BobRyan]

According to Bokenkotters "Concise History of the Catholic Church" the same Cardinals that elect URBAN claim that the "mob" altered the elections and so they elected another Pope - free of the mob. And thus began the great schism pg 166-168.

BEFORE the Schism - when Gregory XI died the Romans feared a French Pope "might" be elected. As Bokenkotter states (pg 166)

"Dismay soon gave way to panic as the sixteen Cardinals assembled on April 7 1378. Some of them were assaulted in the street and warned by the bullies to elect (Urban VI) an Italian... The Cardinals quickly elected an Italian, the archbishop of Bari, Bartholomew Prignano, who was not even of their number. In the meantime, a mob in ugly mood had seized the papal wine cellars and invaded the Vatican; while waiting for Prignano to arrive, the cardinals dressed up one of their colleagues and presented him in papal robes to pacify the crowd.
Whether the cardinals were REALLY overpowered by fear and hence unfree when they elected Prignano - as they later charged - will, it seems, remain forever one of the tantalizing but insoluble questions of rc history...

The SCHISM BEGAN when THE CARDINALS - whose original misgivings were greatly exacerbated by Urban's behavior - decided they had had enough. abandoning Rome, they took refuge at Fondi, and then elaborated an encyclical in which they declared Prignano's election invalid and denounced him has antichrist, demon, apostate, and tyrant...on September 20 1378 they unanimously elected a new pope, Rober of Geneva, who took the name Clement VII.


..BOTH Popes received support from civil governments - splitting Western Christendom into TWO camps. The Holy Roman Emperor, England, the Netherlands, Castille, Hungary, Poland and Portugal stood behind Urban, while France rallied to Clement VII, who returned to Avignon in 1379 and was soon JOINED by Scottland, Luxembourg and Austria...(Itally itself was TOO confused for either side to count on)... Urban proclaimed a crusade against Clement and hired the sanguinary Charles of Durazzo to oust the renegade Queen Joan from Naples. The English invaded France in order to break it's allegiance with Clement.


Both popes found military operations to be expensive, and the papal tax collectors where forced to use ever harsher methods to squeeze every penny out of their constituents...Urban turned more violent and savage. Suspecting his own cardinals of plotting against him, he put them to torture, and five of them died shortly thereafter, probably thrown overboard from the pope's warship..Urban returned to Rome where he died in 1389. His fourteen cardinals immediately elected a successor. Boniface ix...
This rupture of the church's unity was a terrible trial for believing Catholics."

Finally they came across the solution "the RESIGNATION OF BOTH POPES". A solution they would try when opportunity was present.

"Hopes were stirred when the Avignon Pope, Clement VII, died in 1394 and each of the candidates to succeed him swore an oath that if elected he would RESIGN his office. But the one elected Benedict XIII...soon showed that he had NO intention of honoring his pre-election oath"

At this point WAR breaks out between France and the French Pope!! "They even laid seige to his palace, but all in vain...France totally capitulated and returned to his (The French Pope Benedict) obedience"...

Hopes were once again renewed in 1406 with the election of a new Roman Pope, Gregory XII who had sworn to resign IF "his rival at Avignon would do the same...so finally realistic negotiations seemed about to begin; Both Popes agreed to meet to discuss their joint resignations. But then the insincerity of both men surfaced".

At this point a concilar solution was sought whereby a council would meet without approval of either pope to solve the problem. March 25 1409 "..after a brief pause, the POPES were then declared contumacious and schismatical, notorious heretics, guilty of scandalizing the universal Church and therefore deposed. The townspeople reacted with wild joy… a New Pope was elected Alexandar V.
The miracle was premature. By their haste in electing a Pope the cardinals only aggravated the sickness.. The new Pope Alexandar V, did not even manage to reach his see of Rome before dying at Bologna May 3 1410. His successor took the name John XXIII."

Eventually Sigismund of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor[/b] and called a council that pronounced itself in superiority to all Popes.

"Great indeed now was the humiliation of the papacy in all THREE lines of Papal (lines) clamants."

<<All three successors to the three Pope system were in effect - deposed. >>

<<At this time they also burned John Huss at the stake!! What a fitting crime.>>

On November 11, 1417 the used a NEW system - The cardinals were joined by six delegates of each RC nation - thirty in all - . That group then selected the next Pope - a complete break from all THREE Papal lines !

 

[BobRyan]

"Of the twenty-five popes between 955 and 1057, thirteen were appointed by the local aristocracy, while the other twelve were appointed (and no fewer than five dismissed) by the German emperors. The ancient axiom that no one may judge the Pope was still in the law-books, but in practice had long since been set aside. The popes themselves were deeply embroiled in the internecine dynastic warfare of the Roman nobility, and election to the chair of
Peter, as we have seen, was frequently a commodity for sale or barter. The Ottonian era had led to a temporary improvement in the characters of the popes, but by the second quarter of the eleventh century standards had crumbled once more. Benedict IX (1032-48), whose election was the result of a systematic campaign of bribery by his father, the Tusculan grandee Count Alberic III, was as bad as any of the popes of the preceding 'dark century'. Like
his uncle and immediate predecessor John XIX, Benedict was a layman, and was still in his twenties at the time of his election. He was both violent and debauched, and even the Roman populace, hardened as they were to unedifying papal behaviour, could not stomach him. He was eventually deposed in favour of Silvester III (1045). With the help of his family's private army, he was briefly restored in 1045 amid bloody hand-to-hand fighting in the streets
of Rome. He was evidently tired of the struggle, however, for he accepted a bribe to abdicate in favour of his godfather, the archpriest John Gratian." - Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale University Press, 1997)

"During the last two years of his pontificate, Sixtus V (1585-90) rewrote the entire Latin Bible, adding phrases and sentences at whim, leaving out entire verses, changing the titles of the Psalms, and inventing his own system of chapters and verses. In a Papal Bull Aeternus Ille (an allegedly infallible declaration on faith and morals to the entire Church), he declared by 'the fullness of Apostolical power' that this new 'translation' of the Bible
must be 'received and held as true, lawful, authentic and unquestioned in all public and private discussions, readings, preachings and explanations.' Anyone who disobeyed was to be excommunicated. Of course, when the clergy saw the pope's astonishing handiwork, which instantly had made obsolete the Council of Trent's approved Latin Bible and all textbooks based upon it, they were horrified. Fortunately, Sixtus died a few months later and a cover-up
was devised by Bellarmine....Bellarmine and a group of dedicated scholars sworn to secrecy went to work and in about six months corrected the past pope's errors. A new edition of the 'Sixtus Bible' was published as though it were merely another printing of the same, and a massive effort was made to recover the original copies of the heretical publication, which were then destroyed. As one would suspect, a few copies escaped the search and have been preserved (one in the Bodleian Library in Oxford). These 'Bibles' constitute one more proof that popes are not infallible and that to maintain this lie the [Roman Catholic] Church is willing to tell other lies as well." - Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast (Harvest House, 1994)
[/quote[

 

[Matt Black]

Ask all the people burdened down by centuries of corruption how "secure" they felt. The security being discussed here is really that of the leadership to maintain absolute unquestionable control over gullible helpless sheep (Acts 20:29)
The doctrine is contrary anyway, when you have the split between the east and west, and the flow of new doctrines -er, "clarifications" by the Western body.
And it doesn't matter how fast or slow it is; change is change, and it is still "the wind of doctrine".


In other words, just let us spread our error and control over everyone, as we redefine the faith; so long as the change is slow and not sudden.


You may have kept out Arianism and Sabellianism, but there is plenty of gnostic influence, and even practical polytheism (praying to saints, exaltation of Mary with some wanting her as "Co-redemptrix")

Once again, why not give all this glory to God, instead of to men.

:thumbs: Good points all.

Stan, it's not a question of rebooting but a question of resetting to the plumbline of Scripture - which we all need to do from time to time.

 

[Eliyahu]

sola scriptura

"During the last two years of his pontificate, Sixtus V (1585-90) rewrote the entire Latin Bible, adding phrases and sentences at whim, leaving out entire verses, changing the titles of the Psalms, and inventing his own system of chapters and verses. In a Papal Bull Aeternus Ille (an allegedly infallible declaration on faith and morals to the entire Church), he declared by 'the fullness of Apostolical power' that this new 'translation' of the Bible
must be 'received and held as true, lawful, authentic and unquestioned in all public and private discussions, readings, preachings and explanations.' Anyone who disobeyed was to be excommunicated. Of course, when the clergy saw the pope's astonishing handiwork, which instantly had made obsolete the Council of Trent's approved Latin Bible and all textbooks based upon it, they were horrified. Fortunately, Sixtus died a few months later and a cover-up
was devised by Bellarmine....Bellarmine and a group of dedicated scholars sworn to secrecy went to work and in about six months corrected the past pope's errors. A new edition of the 'Sixtus Bible' was published as though it were merely another printing of the same, and a massive effort was made to recover the original copies of the heretical publication, which were then destroyed. As one would suspect, a few copies escaped the search and have been preserved (one in the Bodleian Library in Oxford). These 'Bibles' constitute one more proof that popes are not infallible and that to maintain this lie the [Roman Catholic] Church is willing to tell other lies as well." - Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast (Harvest House, 1994)
[/quote[

Bob, It is a very useful Quote.
Was Sixtus V poisoned ? Why did he die so soon ?
Is there any fraction of the publication of his Bible remaining ?

 

[FollowMeHome]

None of them prove sola scriptura. (They are all consistent with "prima scriptura" however.)

I was under the impression that sola scriptura was scripture only. How is that reflected in scripture?

What is prima scriptura?

 

[Matt Black]

Prima Scriptura asserts the supremacy of Scripture in matters of faith and practice but acknowledges the necessity of some other kind(s) of doctrinal tools such as reason, experience or some kind of church tradition to act as an interpretative tool of that Scripture; in this model tradition is the servant of and subordinate to Scripture but is nevertheless important. So Scripture is not the only doctrinal authority here, but is the most important.

Sola Scriptura however asserts that Scripture is the only authority for determining doctrine and practice and rejects the role of tradition or any other source of doctrine (kind of like "Me, Jesus and my Bible") - although in practice nearly all Christians do acknowledge some kind of tradition, even if many deny this...

 

[BobRyan]

Sola Scriptura as used by Christians like me - means that all faith doctrine and practice is judged against scripture. Anything in contradiction to scripture is condemned.

Suppose Priest Matt Black declares -- all the saints in church must wear pink tennis shoes. We would not take that as a Bible command even though members of his parish might choose to follow along with that rule. BUT IF Priest Matt says "Those who do not wear pink tennis shoes are sinning and will burn in pratcheatory for an unspecified amount of time" -- THEN we conclude that Matt is promoting man made tradition and man made commandments "as doctrine" and his teaching is condemned.

It really is that simple!

 

[Matt Black]

Thanks for ordaining me, Bob! Are your Holy Orders recognised by any other denomination? And do I get a lease car thrown in as part of the job spec?:smilewinkgrin: