[Continued]
So, for some of us, then, the NT is not and cannot be the sole arbiter of matters of faith and practice. Indeed, that was the case with the Church in the first few centuries of its existence; in fact in many ways they were worse off than us in that respect. For the first seventy years or so, the entirety of the NT had not yet been written, and the Church did not decide upon or recognise all of the 27 books we have today until the end of the 4th century. Up until then, therefore, Christians had to have some other method of determining the truth of the New Covenant. The key to that other method is the record of what the Church has done and said – its practice in other words; the other reason some of us do what we do, in addition to the NT, is because our ‘spiritual ancestors’, as it were, did it, and so did their spiritual ancestors, right back to the earliest existence of the Church, ‘handed down’ (traditio) from generation to generation and, more often than not, recorded by the ECFs. What these early Christians did and thought was shaped not just by what they were able to read in the pages of the NT to which they had access, but also in reflecting how the truths (to which the Scriptures testify) were lived out in the worshipping communities from the beginning in it's liturgical life of prayer, hymns, catechesis, rule of faith, baptismal confessions, etc. ('Lex orandi, Lex credendi'--"the rule of prayer is the rule of belief"). For instance, the Church in the 4th century knew that the doctrine known as Arianism - the belief that Jesus Christ was a created being, inferior to God the Father and thus not God Himself - was wrong because it taught a different "Christ"--ie, a creature--from the One she had been worshipping and praying to from the beginning as God; this was despite the fact that the author of this heresy, Arius, could justify his position based on an appeal to sola Scriptura. Those who disregarded this ecclesial context/understanding, read the Scriptures differently and thus came to a different conclusion from Arius.
So, for some of us, then, the NT is not and cannot be the sole arbiter of matters of faith and practice. Indeed, that was the case with the Church in the first few centuries of its existence; in fact in many ways they were worse off than us in that respect. For the first seventy years or so, the entirety of the NT had not yet been written, and the Church did not decide upon or recognise all of the 27 books we have today until the end of the 4th century. Up until then, therefore, Christians had to have some other method of determining the truth of the New Covenant. The key to that other method is the record of what the Church has done and said – its practice in other words; the other reason some of us do what we do, in addition to the NT, is because our ‘spiritual ancestors’, as it were, did it, and so did their spiritual ancestors, right back to the earliest existence of the Church, ‘handed down’ (traditio) from generation to generation and, more often than not, recorded by the ECFs. What these early Christians did and thought was shaped not just by what they were able to read in the pages of the NT to which they had access, but also in reflecting how the truths (to which the Scriptures testify) were lived out in the worshipping communities from the beginning in it's liturgical life of prayer, hymns, catechesis, rule of faith, baptismal confessions, etc. ('Lex orandi, Lex credendi'--"the rule of prayer is the rule of belief"). For instance, the Church in the 4th century knew that the doctrine known as Arianism - the belief that Jesus Christ was a created being, inferior to God the Father and thus not God Himself - was wrong because it taught a different "Christ"--ie, a creature--from the One she had been worshipping and praying to from the beginning as God; this was despite the fact that the author of this heresy, Arius, could justify his position based on an appeal to sola Scriptura. Those who disregarded this ecclesial context/understanding, read the Scriptures differently and thus came to a different conclusion from Arius.
If baptism is necessary, grace if voided.