Protestants and a Churchless Tradition: “Sola” vs. “Solo” Scriptura

[TER]

The laying on of hands does not make one a "Bishop" as the EO/RCC defines it.

I am not saying that the laying hands makes one a Bishop, I am saying that according to the Scriptures and the writings and experience of the Christian Church since the beginning, to become a Bishop required the laying of the hands. I am just trying to establish the point that to deny this fact is a rather recent phenomenon born from Solo Scriptura.

A former church we attended spent a whole day in fasting, prayer and laying on of hands before sending out two holy women who were called to help in a dangerous region.

That is great! I am not going to straight away deny the Holy Spirit was at work! I hope they served Christ well! I am simply stating that the Apostolic practice in the ordination of the ministers and clergy of the Church employed sacramental laying of hands, just as the Scriptures describe, and that there very much truly indeed existed a cognizant appreciation and reverence of the direct and uniform grace-filled succession from the Apostles which Christ chose to establish His Church. Indeed, this was a marker for authenticity and apostolic grace.

The action of laying on of hands is for the whole church. IMHO.

Yes, indeed, and for the ordination of the clergy as described, understood, and practiced in the first centuries and since, it required a sacramental unity with the saints before them all the way back to the Holy Apostles and sealed and realized through the shared Body and Blood of Christ, which is the Holy Eucharist. This is how St. Paul and every Christian saint of the early centuries approached the Church according to the writings we have available.

 

[Eagles' Wings]

That is a very Protestant understanding which is extremely incomplete compared to how the early Christians who you are reading about understood the Church to be, which according to their writings was a community striving to be in one faith and one Spirit around the heavenly worship of God in the Holy Eucharist. The Church was not just a vehicle for evangelism, it was the very Body of Christ and their salvation was as members of this Body United to one another and in Christ, as branches on a vine finding life through Him Who is the Tree.

How more complete could it be to gather daily to read the Word of God, break bread (not Eucharist as you believe it to be) and then begin the toil of just trying to stay alive. The one, holy, catholic and apostolic church was alive and well and growing. They had to learn from Paul what it meant to be united. They came from many races, regions and "creeds" to learn what their Savior meant for them. Their salvation was in their Savior, not in the church.

Ter, I think there is much we find agreement with in loving and being loved by our Lord, Jesus Christ. I won't go back and forth with you any further.

 

[osan]

Two simple questions. One, what do you believe the apostle John meant by this?

But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don't need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true--it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.

I know this was not addressed to me, but I will toss in my plugged kopek. The quote tells me what I have believed since about age 10: I am born with everything I need to lead the proper life of a man. My instincts of right and wrong have been with me since I can remember and I still recall when I was 2, perhaps a little younger. It tells me there is no third-party intervention required for this, though it does not suggest that such external influences are of necessity bad or wrong - only unnecessary. It suggests to me, in the context of my experience, that much of the interdependence we have come to believe to be a necessary part of the "human condition" is, in fact, an induced perception, the product of teaching and not of absolute nature.

I was given everything I need to know and thereby to live well; to know truth when I encounter it and, by extension, falsity. As my life experience confirms, all of my problems have arisen through the falsity of things others endeavored to have me accept but which, under closer scrutiny, have demonstrated themselves to be erroneous and misleading in point of practical fact.

"Fellowship with Christ" suggests to me nothing more than treading a fundamentally equivalent path as per the rest of my understanding that arise from the so-called "holy spirit". That removes all things superfluous and what I perceive as profoundly misleading.

One of the stupendous failures of the Christian "church" (I quote the term because it holds many different meanings and is, therefore, a tricky word of which to make such use) has been the strategy of promotion over that of attraction in terms of seeking converts. Promotion reeks of everything that is worst in peddling - ulterior motives, dishonesty, fraud, and ultimately force. Attraction is its diametric opposite, though it, too, can be maliciously applied and force being its ultimate endgame tactic. But the honest and well-applied use of attraction is underpinned in the main with leading by example, vis-à-vis attempting to ram something down one's throat, which is a very common Christian tactic, and one which never works as one would wish it. Force leads to nothing better than fear and resentment. People may outwardly toe your line, but inwardly - inaccessibly - they reside in difference to your wishes. Fear and anger have their ways of bringing this result.

Question two. Do you believe that the one and only purpose of the church is to interpret the Bible for you? Because if you believe there are other reasons for the church than that then you should where the "church fits into all of this" for those of us that don't believe God meant the church to take over the role of the Holy Spirit.

Depends on the definition of "church" at play here. If I assume you mean the formal organization that owns the buildings and administers the ceremonies, then no. Were I to consider this in my own way using that word, I would call the "holy spirit" the real church, which for the priests and the rest I am sure would be viewed as heresy worthy of the stake even today, given how egregiously such a suggestion pisses in the ecclesiastic cornflakes of their vested personal interests.

Here is the main purpose for the church.

Hebrews 10:23-25
23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised

24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:

25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

These lines may or may not be problematic in terms of properly understanding the writer's actual and true meaning. But if allow myself the risky indulgence of assumption in accord with my own take on things, I would say that it confirms my personal view (how surprising!) that the "church" is me. And the "church" is us, in voluntary congregation, leaving us as the ultimate arbiters of faith and action when made in accord with that which the "holy spirit" has imparted unto each of us. This speaks to me of open and proper human freedom, the gift of "God" which no man may put assunder. Proper freedom, guided and sustained by the "holy spirit" leads to proper human relations, which in turn lead to optimum prosperity and worthiness in the lives of each man in accord with his ideas and desires for such. There is no force with which to be reckoned, save where one man breaches faith with his fellows by violating the boundaries of others where no authority to do so exists.

The principles of proper human relations were born into us. Call it the gift of "God", "holy spirit", or "the kitchen sink", it matters not; for this is all mystery beyond our human ken. We were given the tools for navigating the lives of men, but not to sitting down to dinner with "God" as his equal. The principles of proper human relations are simple and well summarized by the Golden Rule. It is the ambition of the corrupt; those who wish to take by stealthy fraud or by overt force that which is not theirs to possess, that brings woe to men. Such men violate the "holy spirit" in not only their fellows, but most pointedly in themselves through their thoughts, words, and deeds. Perhaps their greatest transgressions are the ones committed against themselves by polluting and contaminating the greatest gift, the receipt of which came at no cost to them. It is that of their lies and rationalizations they make to themselves, justifying the evils which they commit against their fellows. Such lies, etc., are necessary precisely because at the bottom of all things the "holy spirit" lives on and therefore they know that what they do is wrong. But so strong is their avarice that they tell themselves what they must in order to support the greed that drives them to nefarious states of being, ignoring the true voice within.

My personal term for what I take to be the "holy spirit" is "radiating spirit" - something I coined long ago when in some sort of flash the true nature of what we are was revealed to me, albeit faintly from the farthest corners of my mind's eye. The radiating spirit lives in all of us, no matter how misguided or evil we may devolve into filth. It cannot be killed, but rather only masked with layers of that which morbidly contravenes the most fundamental of all human nature as described by the notion of that gift of which we speak. You can cover it in feces, but you cannot destroy it, for it is beyond you. Imagine that - you are beyond yourself. I believe that is something with which Jesus would have agreed, laughing with delight in the process of experiencing its truth.

 

[TER]

Their salvation was in their Savior, not in the church.

I am not saying their salvation was not in their Savior, so your insistence on creating this false dichotomy makes little sense to me, especially in the light of what the Scriptures and the Church Fathers say. Our salvation is in Christ as grafted members of His Body, the Church. See how there is no dichotomy there, but rather the one is the actualization of what the other is? You have a nontraditional and ahistorical understanding of the Church which is borne out of the extremes of the Reformation and you can choose this understanding if you will. But this doesn't mean it was the understanding of the early Church, and indeed the writings of those early Christians and history of the 'One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church' witness against you in this regard. Again, you would have to make all the great Saints to be liars and fools so that you can justify your position. I simply cannot do that.

If you find peace in your religious path, then may it be blessed! While I cannot place your traditions and beliefs above the teachings and traditions of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, I do not wish you ill-will. I just simply believe after studying the Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers that the Orthodox faith is the greater and more assured path to the truth, and I can do this not at the expense of the Saints, but in very sacramental communion with them in unity of faith and love as baptized members of the same Body, which is the Church. This is not to the exclusion of anyone, but open to all who are willing. Neither is this an automatic judgment on your eternal soul. God will save Whom He will and graft whomever He wants upon His Body, and we won't know until the Final Day the fullness of this Body.

 

[jmdrake]

[/I]

I believe it supports my heretofore (and likely thereafter) completely ignored multiple rebuttals to the idea that the Church is a hierarchy that dictates doctrine.

It doesn't. But you are certainly free to believe that it does.

I believe it says very likely the same thing that you believe it says: that the Holy Spirit teaches believers.
The question then is "how?"

Let me guess. You believe the Holy Spirit teaches the believers through the priests even when some of the priests clearly lack the Holy Spirit? Okay. You can believe that. It's wrong, but you can believe it. The role of the church is to introduce the sinner and then the new Christian to the Holy Spirit. At some point the Holy Spirit is supposed to actually live in the believer and not be bound up at the church. It's interesting that you and osan take such polar extremes. One extreme is that the person is the church. Not true because Biblically you can't be a church of one. You seem to believe that the church is the vessel of the Holy Spirit. Not true because the Bible teaches that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

A most emphatic no.

Good. Well then you are on your way to Sola Scriptura.

When I was a Lutheran I believed that the Holy Spirit moves believers to faith. I still believe that.
What has changed (one thing, anyway) was that I now realize that the Holy Spirit does not work strictly through the Word. We have tangible things we can do and experience.
On Sunday last when sunlight was coming through the window and illuminated the incense in the air, and my daughter blew it and watched the patterns swirl, I was able to bend down and say "You've heard us sing 'let my prayer arise in thy sight as incense, o Lord, and the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice'".

I believe that the Holy Spirit worked a little in both of us that morning, because we were doing it. We weren't just reading Psalm 141, nor were we preaching it or even hearing it at the moment. We were doing it.

In Church.

The Holy Spirit moves everywhere. In church. In nature. The Holy Spirit has been known to knock a man off his horse when he as on his way to kill Christians. The Holy Spirit has been known to show up at a drunken party and write the doom of a nation on a wall using a disembodied hand. Nobody is claiming that the Holy Spirit can't reach someone in church. He can reach someone in a Baptist church, a Seventh Day Adventist Church, an Eastern Orthodox Church, a Roman Catholic church and even in churches that don't acknowledge Jesus. Sometimes the message of the Holy Spirit to the person in church is "Come out of her my people."

I don't believe that Lutherans in general teach that the only moving of the Holy Spirit is in the Word of God. You might have been taught that I don't know. Certainly Protestants in general don't believe that. If they did there wouldn't be a Pentacostal movement. The question is, does the church control the Holy Spirit? I say no.

 

[Eagles' Wings]

May God be praised, in His name and in His gift of salvation. May true believers carry on the teachings of the apostles, in the name of Christ.

Solo Christo (through Christ alone)

 

[jmdrake]

Okay. Thank you for your reply. There's one thing I really want to respond to. You said "the church is me" then you elaborated to "the church is us." You can't have a church of one. Jesus said "Where two or three are gathered I am there in the midst of them." The very nature of Christianity is community. Also the Bible says "There is wisdom in a multitude of council." Christians need to fellowship with each other, read scripture together, learn from each other etc. I'm sure you had a guiding voice when you were very young. That's called your conscience at it is, or should be, guided by the Holy Spirit. But when we are born there is much about the world we do not know. We learn from our community and that includes our Christian community. The question, for me anyway, is that at what point to Christians start self learning? Learn from as many sources as possible. Evaluate everything. The problem comes in when a source becomes the authority because it says it's the authority. As the Declaration of Independence states, certain truths should be "self evident."

I know this was not addressed to me, but I will toss in my plugged kopek. The quote tells me what I have believed since about age 10: I am born with everything I need to lead the proper life of a man. My instincts of right and wrong have been with me since I can remember and I still recall when I was 2, perhaps a little younger. It tells me there is no third-party intervention required for this, though it does not suggest that such external influences are of necessity bad or wrong - only unnecessary. It suggests to me, in the context of my experience, that much of the interdependence we have come to believe to be a necessary part of the "human condition" is, in fact, an induced perception, the product of teaching and not of absolute nature.

I was given everything I need to know and thereby to live well; to know truth when I encounter it and, by extension, falsity. As my life experience confirms, all of my problems have arisen through the falsity of things others endeavored to have me accept but which, under closer scrutiny, have demonstrated themselves to be erroneous and misleading in point of practical fact.

"Fellowship with Christ" suggests to me nothing more than treading a fundamentally equivalent path as per the rest of my understanding that arise from the so-called "holy spirit". That removes all things superfluous and what I perceive as profoundly misleading.

One of the stupendous failures of the Christian "church" (I quote the term because it holds many different meanings and is, therefore, a tricky word of which to make such use) has been the strategy of promotion over that of attraction in terms of seeking converts. Promotion reeks of everything that is worst in peddling - ulterior motives, dishonesty, fraud, and ultimately force. Attraction is its diametric opposite, though it, too, can be maliciously applied and force being its ultimate endgame tactic. But the honest and well-applied use of attraction is underpinned in the main with leading by example, vis-à-vis attempting to ram something down one's throat, which is a very common Christian tactic, and one which never works as one would wish it. Force leads to nothing better than fear and resentment. People may outwardly toe your line, but inwardly - inaccessibly - they reside in difference to your wishes. Fear and anger have their ways of bringing this result.



Depends on the definition of "church" at play here. If I assume you mean the formal organization that owns the buildings and administers the ceremonies, then no. Were I to consider this in my own way using that word, I would call the "holy spirit" the real church, which for the priests and the rest I am sure would be viewed as heresy worthy of the stake even today, given how egregiously such a suggestion pisses in the ecclesiastic cornflakes of their vested personal interests.





These lines may or may not be problematic in terms of properly understanding the writer's actual and true meaning. But if allow myself the risky indulgence of assumption in accord with my own take on things, I would say that it confirms my personal view (how surprising!) that the "church" is me. And the "church" is us, in voluntary congregation, leaving us as the ultimate arbiters of faith and action when made in accord with that which the "holy spirit" has imparted unto each of us. This speaks to me of open and proper human freedom, the gift of "God" which no man may put assunder. Proper freedom, guided and sustained by the "holy spirit" leads to proper human relations, which in turn lead to optimum prosperity and worthiness in the lives of each man in accord with his ideas and desires for such. There is no force with which to be reckoned, save where one man breaches faith with his fellows by violating the boundaries of others where no authority to do so exists.

The principles of proper human relations were born into us. Call it the gift of "God", "holy spirit", or "the kitchen sink", it matters not; for this is all mystery beyond our human ken. We were given the tools for navigating the lives of men, but not to sitting down to dinner with "God" as his equal. The principles of proper human relations are simple and well summarized by the Golden Rule. It is the ambition of the corrupt; those who wish to take by stealthy fraud or by overt force that which is not theirs to possess, that brings woe to men. Such men violate the "holy spirit" in not only their fellows, but most pointedly in themselves through their thoughts, words, and deeds. Perhaps their greatest transgressions are the ones committed against themselves by polluting and contaminating the greatest gift, the receipt of which came at no cost to them. It is that of their lies and rationalizations they make to themselves, justifying the evils which they commit against their fellows. Such lies, etc., are necessary precisely because at the bottom of all things the "holy spirit" lives on and therefore they know that what they do is wrong. But so strong is their avarice that they tell themselves what they must in order to support the greed that drives them to nefarious states of being, ignoring the true voice within.

My personal term for what I take to be the "holy spirit" is "radiating spirit" - something I coined long ago when in some sort of flash the true nature of what we are was revealed to me, albeit faintly from the farthest corners of my mind's eye. The radiating spirit lives in all of us, no matter how misguided or evil we may devolve into filth. It cannot be killed, but rather only masked with layers of that which morbidly contravenes the most fundamental of all human nature as described by the notion of that gift of which we speak. You can cover it in feces, but you cannot destroy it, for it is beyond you. Imagine that - you are beyond yourself. I believe that is something with which Jesus would have agreed, laughing with delight in the process of experiencing its truth.

 

[erowe1]

What is characteristic though not unique since the Reformation is the habitual ignoring of the traditional understanding of the Gospel and instead equating one's own unique interpretation and experience to have the same or even greater authority as the truth, even if this 'truth' go squarely against the intepretations, practices and teachings of the saints going all the way back to the first centuires!

I don't pretend to be as knowledgable about the Reformation as you, and how that has anything at all to do with this.

But what you call "the traditional understanding of the Gospel" and "the intepretations, practices and teachings of the saints going all the way back to the first centuires," are still nothing more than the ideas of millions of unique individuals, no two of whom had identical understandings of the Gospel. There has never been a point in Church history where there wasn't one Church made up of all true believers in Jesus united with one another by the Holy Spirit, and where this church could be divided countless ways into subgroups of believers who were in some kind of outward organizational communion with each other, and then subgroups within those, and so on, right down to the smallest division, which is the individual believer.

 

[erowe1]

I am not saying that the laying hands makes one a Bishop, I am saying that according to the Scriptures and the writings and experience of the Christian Church since the beginning, to become a Bishop required the laying of the hands.

You're still saying this after your own search of the scriptures turned up nothing at all suggesting that becoming a bishop required a laying on of hands?

 

[TER]

I don't pretend to be as knowledgable about the Reformation as you, and how that has anything at all to do with this.

But what you call "the traditional understanding of the Gospel" and "the intepretations, practices and teachings of the saints going all the way back to the first centuires," are still nothing more than the ideas of millions of unique individuals, no two of whom had identical understandings of the Gospel. There has never been a point in Church history where there wasn't one Church made up of all true believers in Jesus united with one another by the Holy Spirit, and where this church could be divided countless ways into subgroups of believers who were in some kind of outward organizational communion with each other, and then subgroups within those, and so on, right down to the smallest division, which is the individual believer.

Wrong erowe. The work of the Apsotles and those they layed hands on to continue their ministry was to keep unified the Church as one Body centered around the faith delivered once by the saints. This is a great and recurrent theme in the epistles of St. Paul and those who followed the Apostles such St. Ignatius. Those numerous indivual branching off from the Body was at the early time those who fell into the gnostic heresies which proclaimed similar ides which you have, espousing salvation to come from one's own mind and personal understanding apart from the communion of the saints.

True personhood is not found in the individual, but in the relation we have with others, in the image of the Holy Trinity which men were created in. Being truly human involves our communion with others in love, and this love is borne from humility and growing in Christ in one faith and one mind and in one worship. This is why the faithful strived to be in one accord as St. Paul described.

 

[TER]

You're still saying this after your own search of the scriptures turned up nothing at all suggesting that becoming a bishop required a laying on of hands?

Can you show me how the Apostles ordained the deacons, which were one of the ministries of the clergy?

 

[Ronin Truth]

I say 17,246 angels can fit on the head of a pin.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en.....1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..12.4.2688.kJRJpMIsHfU

 

[TER]

Acts 14:23New King James Version (NKJV)

23 So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

23 χειροτονησαντες δε αυτοις πρεσβυτερους κατ εκκλησιαν προσευξαμενοι μετα νηστειων παρεθεντο αυτους τω κυριω εις ον πεπιστευκεισαν

This literally says 'so when they had layed hands upon the presbyters in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed."

 

[TER]

Erowe, you claimed earlier that the laity were ordaining bishops. Can you proved any Scriptural support for this?

 

[erowe1]

Wrong erowe. The work of the Apsotles and those they layed hands on to continue their ministry was to keep unified the Church as one Body centered around the faith delivered once by the saints. This is a great and recurrent theme in the epistles of St. Paul

Paul did write about the unity of the church. But he never connected that idea to any laying on of hands. For Paul, it was that the Church, which is made up of all who have faith in Jesus, IS unified. This unity is not a matter of any outward organizational hierarchy connecting people through a network of bishops or some such thing. Ideas like that didn't develop until later. It was a de facto unity created by the Holy Spirit's indwelling of all true believers.

Those numerous indivual branching off from the Body was at the early time those who fell into the gnostic heresies

It's true that there are boundaries to true Christianity, and perversions of the Gospel such that what results is no Gospel at all, and that groups have split off from the true Church. But that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about all of the subgroups within the one true church that have always existed, social networks and organizations connecting some believers more closely to one another than to certain others.

which proclaimed similar ides which you have

Which ideas that I espouse do you think are similar to those espoused by early Gnostic heretics? Please provide quotes from both me and them.

My intent is always to follow the faith of the apostles, and never any later perversions of it.

 

[erowe1]

Erowe, you claimed earlier that the laity were ordaining bishops. Can you proved any Scriptural support for this?

No. Remember, I showed you how that happened in the Didache. It was a historical claim, not a scriptural one.

However, what we do see in scripture is the extent of the Church spreading more quickly than the apostles could keep up with in their travels. The Bible is silent about the ways those early churches that did not have apostolically appointed bishops were organized. But it is clear that they were genuine churches of God in Christ.

 

[erowe1]

Acts 14:23New King James Version (NKJV)

23 So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

23 χειροτονησαντες δε αυτοις πρεσβυτερους κατ εκκλησιαν προσευξαμενοι μετα νηστειων παρεθεντο αυτους τω κυριω εις ον πεπιστευκεισαν

This literally says 'so when they had layed hands upon the presbyters in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed."

No it does not literally say that. Literally is says, "so when they had appointed presbyters...." There's no mention of laying on of hands.

Granted, it's possible that they did lay hands. But nowhere does the Bible mention that in the case of appointing bishops.

Also, does this mean that you now acknowledge that in the NT the terms presbyter and bishop are synonyms?

 

[erowe1]

Acts 14:23New King James Version (NKJV)

23 So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

23 χειροτονησαντες δε αυτοις πρεσβυτερους κατ εκκλησιαν προσευξαμενοι μετα νηστειων παρεθεντο αυτους τω κυριω εις ον πεπιστευκεισαν

This literally says 'so when they had layed hands upon the presbyters in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed."

No it does not literally say that. Literally is says, "so when they had appointed presbyters...." There's no mention of laying on of hands. In fact, if you mean to bring out the etymological meaning of "stretching out the hand" that the word used there had entailed in earlier Greek, then it would mean, "so when they had elected presbyters by a show of hands...."
See here:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...ic+letter=*x:entry+group=16:entry=xeirotone/w

Granted, it's possible that they did lay hands. But nowhere does the Bible mention that in the case of appointing bishops.

Also, does this mean that you now acknowledge that in the NT the terms presbyter and bishop are synonyms?

 

[Eagles' Wings]

I love how the apostles and the laity came together and decided who would be deacons in Acts, chapter 6. The deacons would follow Christ's example in becoming servants. Back then, their main job was quite practical in helping to house and feed both the Hebrew and the Hellenist's widows.

The laying on of hands was a gift, not a mandate, from the Spirit of God.

 

[TER]

No. Remember, I showed you how that happened in the Didache. It was a historical claim, not a scriptural one.

I see, and what are the Scriptural facts regarding ordinations which are revealed in the Scriptures? Does the Scriptures not describe the Apostles as laying hands in the appointment of deacons and presbyters? Can we at least agree that the limited information provided in the Scriptures reveal this fact?