230611 AdultSundaySchool TheRomanCatholicControversy Part8

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The Roman Catholic Controversy Part 8 Date: June 11,, 2023 Teacher: Pastor Brian Garcia

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Protestantism, you have many sets of different Protestant groups. So it just means basically like a subdivision.
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So you have the kind of a tree, you have the branches, you have the smaller branches. It would be like a subdivision, then a set.
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And then you have a cult, which is a diversion from one of these things. And this is something almost new entirely that usually has, that makes pretty absurd claims, exclusive claims, and has a one major figurehead as its leader.
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Now, I would say that Roman Catholicism fits the criteria of a cult, not just a world religion as a whole.
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But it's a world religion, and it happens to be a cult. And the reason why is because it itself is a divergence from historic
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Orthodox Christianity. It is a divergence. It is a branching off of the original teachings of the apostles.
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It is also a cult because it has a centralized head in the pope.
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And the claims that they make are also outrageous in that the pope is God on Earth. The pope is the speaker of Christ.
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He speaks for Christ. All these things that they claim about Christ, they're about the pope.
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They're centralized in this one office. So I think they meet all the criteria of a cult also, while being a world religion.
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Does that make sense? And so cults are usually a derogatory term. You don't want to be called a cult.
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If someone says you're a cult, it's usually a bad thing. It's a derogatory thing.
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But that doesn't change the fact that an apple is an apple, an orange is an orange. You've got to call things what they are.
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Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult. Mormonism is a cult. Catholicism is a cult.
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Anything that has centralized power and divergence from Orthodox Christian teaching, in my opinion, would be a cult.
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So what would make us not a cult here in our church? Good question. You don't have a single person who makes all the decisions?
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Correct. Correct. That's part of it. What about the elders and the pastors and stuff?
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How would you explain that? How would you explain the difference to someone who's an unbeliever, for example? Someone who, on the surface level, all three of these branches would seem synonymous.
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So the Bible doesn't reject the notions of leaders. So Hebrews 13, 17 says obey your leaders.
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Scripture, obviously, puts it in certain offices. But I would say whatever goes beyond the scriptures, the discussion today is relevant and important because we talk about soul scripture versus sacred tradition.
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Anything that diverges from the Christian teaching and the scriptures would be dangerous.
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So for instance, is there any scripture that we can look to that clearly defines the office of the pope?
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No. How about the office of a cardinal? No. How about the office of an archbishop? No. These are not things that you're going to find clearly defined scripture.
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You know what offices are defined in scripture? Deacon and elder. There's only two. So we follow the biblical model.
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And that would be the difference, is that we follow the biblical model. Another difference as to why we wouldn't be a cult and why we would, the difference between leadership in the
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Protestant reformed church versus something in a hierarchical system like the Roman Catholicism would be that we have a congregational form of government in the church.
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Roman Catholicism does not have a congregational form of government, which means that power is vested in the individual members as well.
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So collectively, we have authority when we come in the name of Jesus. That's so important.
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And that's actually an important Baptist distinction. And what makes,
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I think, Baptists one of the more closer denominations and movements to the first -century
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Christians is because of our view of church government and how we view the priesthood of the believer.
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Does that make sense? And also, can't the pope, as it being different from a pastor, can the pope make decisions for the whole church?
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But the pastor is still under the government, I mean, under the church.
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Yeah, that's right. He can't just try to make rules as a woman. Yes. The distinction reminded me of the difference between a president and a dictator.
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There's this right -wing power figure, but in one, there's more checks and balances. So there's, within the complex 1600 -1700 -year history of Catholicism, you have a lot of popes who just were tyrants, who were evil.
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And we Roman Catholics wouldn't even agree. There was a Roman Jesuit priest who said that there are probably many, like in Dante's Inferno, actually, that depicts popes in hell, that there are popes in hell.
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And a Jesuit priest, I forget his name, Mitchell, Mitchell, I forget what
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I think his name is. He even says that, yeah, during the debate with James White, that there are probably popes that are in hell right now, because they're clearly bad.
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And so, I mean, how you can have that as your figurehead and not be, how you can have an apostate figurehead and not be an apostate church is beyond me.
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So. So how do they think, would they justify the scripture?
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Say that again? Would they justify it in the scripture? I mean, I don't know. See, well, this is where sacred tradition comes in.
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They'll say, OK, there's no explicit. You know, they'll make references to, you know,
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Matthew 16 to say that Peter was the first pope, right? But beyond that, it may be a verse in Acts where Peter is one of the figureheads, he's one of the heads of the church.
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And they come together as a council. But beyond that, there's no scripture that they can point to to say,
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OK, here's the pope. Neither can they do so from the Bible, because this is not in the scriptures. But this is where sacred tradition comes in.
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The sacred tradition says, well, even though it's not included in the final scripture, what we see is that early in church history, these offices begin to arise.
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And early on, actually, in Christian history, what we see is that there are a, in the
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Bible, there are what could be interpreted as three offices. I mentioned two. Deacon and what?
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Elder. Now, there are those who would argue that there's a third office, and it's bishop.
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The Greek word overseer. So we see that distinction made in 2 Timothy 3, where Paul talks about the office of whoever seeks the office of an overseer is seeking the noble office or noble task.
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And so it's different, they would say, there are people who would say that bishop is different from an elder. I would say that these two are the same offices, just different words for the same office.
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But what's interesting, and what may contradict my view, is that very early on in church history, within the first century, so not even the second century, within the first 100 years of the church, there was a clear distinction between deacon, elder, and bishop.
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And that might be almost detrimental to my view. I don't think it is, and I'll explain a little bit later why.
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But on the surface, they may look like, well, the testimony of the early church would say otherwise.
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This is the beginning of the seeds of sacred tradition, where sacred tradition says, we don't just look at the
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Bible. We have to look at history, the traditions of the early church, and how they developed.
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But you have to understand that the early church was still fallible. It was still in its infancy.
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And we see that early on, even in the times of the apostles. The apostles warned us that ravenous wolves would come in to mislead the flock, and to lead a straight route to people.
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And this is a thing that was already at work while the apostles were there. And so even more crammed in worship, yet after the apostles would leave the scene.
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But I would say, again, there's possibly three offices, and bishop being the third one.
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So one could argue that. Now, in the early church, there were about seven bishops that were seen as essentially making the decisions for the church.
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So you had the bishop of Rome, who was seen as one of the more important ones. They say Peter was the first bishop of Rome.
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And then you have the bishop of Antioch, the bishop of Jerusalem, the bishops of all these major cities, where you had these
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Christian churches. And they were seen as more powerful. And then as the church began to grow, you had more and more. And then ultimately, you have a whole council of bishops that meet in Nicaea in 325 under Constantine.
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It had a lot of crazy rumors. And the Conscription Theory surrounding that is actually a very simple, clear -cut discussion to happen in Nicaea, which is from the person of the work of Jesus, and which books should go in the
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Bible, things like that. It's all nonsense. But you have, again, in the early church, this witness.
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And that's what really Catholics are saying when they're taking into account that Protestants aren't. They say Catholics would say, hey, we're taking into account not just the
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Bible, but the early traditions of the early church. And so that's pretty compelling.
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Now, other groups that would make the same claim would be the Orphanage Church. The Eastern Orphanage Church or any kind of Orphanage Church would say that they, too, are part of the historic church because they're taking into account the early witness of the church.
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So is there a problem with that? Are we missing out on something as Protestants when we don't take into account the early witness of the church?
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Is that a criticism or are we missing something? Just put it more in the scripture.
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That's right. I can answer that better myself. We do take into account. So a lot of Catholics would claim that we don't take into account the traditions or the witness of the early church.
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I would say that's odd. That's not true. As a matter of fact, we probably do a better job at that than the
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Catholics do. When you look at all what's called the pre -Nazi fathers, pre -Nazi fathers are the church fathers that were before Constantine, before 325.
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So the pre -Nazi fathers all preached justification by faith, all of them, universally.
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This was Christian Orthodox universally. The first 300 years. You have Rome in there, and Rome that says that anyone who teaches that you're justified by worship alone should be anathema, should be cut off.
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Well, who's taking into account the witness of the early church, Catholics or Protestants? Protestants.
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We are taking into account the early witness of the church. No, it was subordinate. It has to be subordinate to scripture.
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So we don't put, we don't elevate church history to the same place of scripture.
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We look at it, and we also know that these men were imperfect. Some of my favorite theologians,
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Jonathan Edwards, for instance, one of my favorite preachers of theologians, I don't agree with what he said.
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There are things that he said that I would say are completely wrong. Post -Millennialism would be one of them.
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Some eschatological things that I think he was way off on. Does that mean Jonathan Edwards should be thrown out completely?
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We can take what we find from the church history, and we bring it, we yield it to the authority of scripture.
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So not everyone is going to have a perfect teaching. Tertullian, anyone ever heard of a church father called
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Tertullian? Tertullian is one of the most important church fathers. He's the one who originally coined an important word.
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Do you know what word that was? What word did Tertullian coin, or make famous, or make known?
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The Trinity, or Trinitas in Latin. And he coined that term. He was the first theologian to use that term,
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Trinity, in reference to the nature of the One True God. Tertullian also taught some crazy stuff.
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Tertullian was way off on a lot of theological things. This doesn't mean we throw him off into the dustbin of history.
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It just means that we have to, again, we look at these church fathers, and we don't let them into scripture. So there's some, these things have to be supported into scripture.
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Make sense? All right. So in early this chapter, in chapter seven,
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Social Scripture versus Sacred Tradition, what is some of the, what is the apology that James White makes in the first opening pages?
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What's the apology that he makes? What does he mean by apology?
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He said it was more in context of like an explanation, or I forgot what word he used, defense, defense, yeah.
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That's right. So the word apology, the Greek word apologia, not just the name of the church in Arizona, but the
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Greek word, which means to make a defense. It's a legal term.
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And so lawyers in the old days would make an apology. And an apology would be a defense of their client, a defense of their argument.
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And so he's making an apology, a defense. And he begins by kind of giving you an example of this guy who goes from Presbyterian to a
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Catholic. And what was missing in that discussion, in that guy's conversion, was that he felt like he went to, after speaking to a
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Catholic, he could defend Sola Scriptura from Scripture. So then he goes and he, you know, he researches, and he gets convinced by Roman Catholicism that deters the material
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Catholic, because he felt like there was no good apology, no good apology or good defense for Sola Scriptura.
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What is your apology? What is your defense? There's two scriptures on this thing, and it's usually the two main scriptures that most
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Protestants go to in order to defend Sola Scriptura. You know what the scriptures are? What were the verses, right?
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What the Roman Catholic would say? Well, Christians would. What two verses would
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Protestants normally go to in order to defend Sola Scriptura? Yes. Yeah.
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Which has all scriptures inspired by God, and there's a key to your approving. It's in the Manuscripts. It's political righteousness.
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It's a man of God, man of political competence. Well, I'll just go through these. I think
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I'll move it to the second page of the chapter. No, that would be a defense for the
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Roman Catholic. But the other five, 17, or Matthew 15, where Jesus condemns the
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Pharisees, then making no avoid the word of God by the traditions of men, right? And so he would say, a
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Protestant would normally take those two verses. Okay, well, Jesus here condemns tradition. By condemning the
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Pharisees and their traditions. And he handed them to Scripture. Well, Scripture has the final authority.
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Therefore, we have a pretty sound argument for Sola Scriptura. How would the
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Roman Catholics break down that argument, though? But it didn't say, it didn't isolate
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Sola Scriptura. It didn't say only Scripture. Right. It says all
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Scripture, not only Scripture, right? And so, okay, that's a kind of a good argument. I'm going to move on to the onset.
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How do they rebuke our understanding of Matthew 15? Rebukes the
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Pharisees. There might be a difference between the traditions of men and what they call holy traditions.
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Do you think this is a rebuke of tradition? Now, I would actually say that the
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Roman Catholics discouraged Paul. Actually, correct me if I'm not mistaken. When you look at those individual verses directly, the
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Roman Catholics are going to get better than most Protestants when it comes to circumstance. Because in Matthew 15,
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Jesus isn't condemning all tradition, obviously. He is clearly, in the context, condemning the traditions of these
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Pharisees, how they took God's law, specifically concerning the Sabbath. And then they blew it up, and they put all these regulations on top of it, making it impossible for any person to actually be able to observe it.
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Right? So they made God's Word the one void by their tradition. By adding so much regulations that no one could even keep it anymore.
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And so that's the context of Matthew 15. So that would be the proper exegesis of the text. In terms of the relationship between 2
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Timothy chapter 3, that's a difficult text as well, because Paul is clearly writing to Timothy.
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And the canon of Scripture doesn't get complete. So when he's speaking about all Scripture, he's actually like when we're pointing to the
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Old Testament, than he is to the completion of the New Testament, because the New Testament was not yet completed. And so when he talks about all
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Scripture, actually when you look at the verse prior to that, saying that Scriptures were given to us for our destruction, maybe we can talk about the
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Old Testament. And so does that then negate the authority of the New Testament witness in relation to it being authoritative for all the things that Paul mentioned?
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I would say not. I wouldn't think that that would be the conclusion that you should draw from that. But the context clearly shows that it's likely a reference to the
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Old Testament text of Scripture. So the Roman Catholics actually have a pretty good argument to review, because there are a couple of us, in relation to those verses.
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Why is it, though, then, that we hold to a view of Sola Scriptura and not a comprehensive view of Scripture and Sacred Tradition?
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Why do we still hold to Sola Scriptura, though those two verses on the onset seem to be convincing, all
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Sola Scriptura are actually not? What shoulder defense can we make? That man is fallible.
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That what? That man is fallible. That man is fallible? Correct. So that's a good argument against tradition.
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How do you even define tradition? When they say Sacred Tradition, how do you even define that?
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Have you ever seen it? That's an important distinction, because the Roman Catholic Church does have a pretty well -defined view of what
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Sacred Tradition is. And it's not just, oh, some Church fathers said this a long time ago. They usually try to say, okay, well, here's the overwhelming data, here's your overall consensus, and here's how we interpret that consensus.
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And that's how they usually try to form certain traditions, not only through a consensus of history, but also mostly through councils and creeds and units from the parables or from the book.
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You have something you want to contribute, Ruth? I guess what I heard from my dad in Portland is that there's, like scripture doesn't refer to itself as inspired, but it doesn't refer to any other source of authority that's on that same level of inspiration.
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Correct. Now, here's a more text. This is a text that is often never, never mentioned.
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And I don't know why. So in 1
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Corinthians Chapter 4, Paul giving instructions to the church, he makes a really stunning statement here that Protestants never use.
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They really should be using it in reference to this conversation. So in reference to the apostles' ministries, he says in Verse 6,
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I have implied all these things to myself and to Paul, so that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.
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And the whole context here is Paul talking about apostolic ministry, talking about the ministry of the church.
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He's warning us specifically, don't go beyond the things that are written. Okay? Why? Because it's so easy to do so.
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And we've seen that even in the infancy of the early church after the time of the apostles. You know, all these weird things started to pop up, all these new offices, all these new things.
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And it's because the desire, the impulse to go beyond what is written.
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And kind of extrapolate things from Scripture, which Peter says were concerning Paul. Paul wrote a lot of things that were difficult to understand and discern.
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And so it's really easy to take those very difficult things and then kind of expound on it in a way that's unbiblical.
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So Paul is clearly saying, don't go beyond the things that are written. And what's he referring to here?
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He's actually referring to the apostolic letters. Okay? He's clearly referencing the letters that are coming from him and the other apostles.
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Because he's talking about instructions for the church. He's saying, listen, we follow the same instruction that we are giving you guys. We're following too.
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And so we're telling you not to go beyond the things that are written. This is 1
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Corinthians 4, verse 6. So that's a pretty important text,
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I think. Because again, Paul is giving clear instructions to the church. He's saying, we're following this pattern too.
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This is the apostolic pattern, which is to not go beyond the things that are written. I've never heard an apostle willingly use a scripture, but I don't know why.
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But this should be one of the go -to verses in popular
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Catholicism in regard to scripture and sacred tradition. So clearly,
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Paul is making an argument for... So the last week we talked a little bit about this.
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In order to have a robust view of the infallibility of scripture, we also have to have a robust view of the sufficiency of scripture.
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That only is scripture true, that only is scripture infallible, meaning that it's perfect and inherent.
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But also that it is sufficient. Because you can't have something be perfect and not sufficient.
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Right? It doesn't make sense. It's a contradiction. So if we're going to say a scripture is infallible, I don't know which Roman Catholic would cross over and agree with that statement.
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Scripture is infallible. Scripture is inherent. But if that's the case, then it also, by virtue of its name, is sufficient.
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Because if it isn't, then it isn't infallible. Okay? Does that make sense? So even just on the issue of infallibility, the issue of inherency, you have to bring in the conversation of sufficiency.
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So if the scripture is sufficient, or it isn't, if it isn't sufficient, then it involves other condoms to get involved as well.
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Right? And it becomes a self -refuting argument, essentially. A circular argument. So, any thoughts or questions on this so far?
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Yes. What's that? When I was reading the chapter, there was none of the, going back to the original, what are the verses the authors use in defining
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Zola's scripture? I actually just looked at the one about this confession of faith, the whole section on chapter one of the
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Holy Scriptures, and unfortunately they don't include the scriptures either. But they must be there.
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And of course then I looked at the notes for chapter seven, and it says that he, that Ham, could have done that too.
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That he wouldn't have looked at all the scriptures that were quoted by the original authors.
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Right. In the Roman Catholics, we have one good verse, really, to maybe show that tradition can be, that there can possibly be something called sacred tradition.
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Which is when Paul says, and so, look,
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Paul handed down traditions to young Timothy. And so those are the things that we would build on as sacred traditions.
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So it's not incompatible with scripture. There's scripture and there's sacred tradition. And what it comes down to is really that the
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Roman Catholic Church use themselves as the safe guard of scripture.
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There are the ones who have protected scripture and nurtured scripture, and then there are the ones who can interpret scripture.
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Because they were the church to be given the scriptures. And they believe that they are the church of Jesus Christ.
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And so therefore, it is not just the scriptures, but it's their traditions surrounding them that also are working.
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But the problem with that is, anyone who is essentially a perfect interpreter of scripture, is that immediately you're departing from, not only
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Sola Scriptura, obviously, but you're departing from the sufficiency of scripture itself. And I brought this up a little bit last week.
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One of the arguments that's used in this chapter against Sola Scriptura is doctrinal chaos.
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What do we mean by that? We mean that there's so many of the Protestants, there's so many people that have gone off and made their own set because they disagree about the interpretation.
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So they say, look at how long you've been on a mission. This is what happens when all you use is script. Right. So since the
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Reformation started, the whole, you know, Rome's prophecy was, listen, if you put the
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Bible in the hands of every person, every person will have their own interpretation. Right? And we're going to lose the consistency of the faith.
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To some regard, they were correct. Right? Because you do have a myriad of interpretations, you have a myriad of denominations.
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But the problem here isn't because we put the Bible in everyone's hands. There's two problems that we're going to play here.
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One is clearly spiritual, and one is academic. The spiritual one being that, of course, the scripture teaches that Satan is a god in this world who's blind to the minds of all believers, and they meditate the glories of the gospel of Christ.
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Satan is a deceiver, and he still uses scripture as we see the temptation of Christ.
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He uses scripture, he twists the scripture to try to get his way. And so clearly, people are still following what the
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Bible prophesies will happen. False teachers, false teachings. And so it's no surprise that there's a myriad of teachings, false teachings.
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The Bible prophesies such things. The second, though, is academic. There is a science of interpretation.
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What are the two terms used in the science of interpretation for scripture? Hermeneutics and exegesis, right?
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So hermeneutics being kind of the study of scripture, or the really more well -defined, hermeneutics is kind of like the rules for interpreting, rules for interpretation.
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And then you have exegesis, which means taking out the scripture.
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And that might sound like that, but that's actually what you want to do. You want to take out, versus exegesis, which is to put in.
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Right? You want to draw the meaning out. You want to draw the context out. You want to draw these things out, so you can get to a proper understanding of them.
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And so any time it comes to differences in interpretation of the prophecies, and we're talking about two things, spiritual blindness, and then also academic insufficiency.
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People don't know the rules of engagement. So if anyone has a, you know,
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I'm a proud gun owner, and even here in Compton City, California, and there are times when
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I like to show off my guns, because I love my guns. But any time I'm going to show off my gun to someone, especially who's never handled a gun before,
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I always have to get into the rules. Right? Here's the rules of engagement. Here's how you handle this weapon.
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You always shoot it like it's loaded. You always look at it to make sure there's no blood inside. Even if there is no blood inside, you still shoot it as if it's loaded.
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You don't point at anyone. You don't play with this. There's rules surrounding this, because it's powerful.
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It's dangerous. It can kill someone. But we're talking about the sword of God, which is also dangerous.
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And it cuts between the binding between the soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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So we're talking about the sword of God here. There are rules for properly engaging it. There's rules for properly understanding it.
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And that's the science of interpretation. And we find in hermeneutics and exegesis. So to me, to say that, well, we don't need to do proper exegesis, hermeneutics, because we have tradition that we rely upon, is not a sufficient enough answer for me.
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And it's not enough answer for me to go to Rome as the answer for the dilemma that we have as Protestants.
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Because as Protestants, we do have a dilemma. And it's that we have way too many denominations, and it's that we have way too many interpretations.
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That is a dilemma. But the answer should not be Rome. It should be the text. Rome is not the answer.
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The text is the answer. And so how do we get to the right understanding of the text? It is through exegesis and hermeneutics.
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It's not by following the blind traditions of Rome. That would be a big throw coming through the door.
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I can see it through the door. It's awesome. Hey, Kyrie. Hey, what's up, brother?
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Yeah. 19 minutes left. Hey, let's get started.
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Slowly, slowly improving. 19 minutes left. So, Pastor Brian, would you argue that sola scriptura is an infallible exegesis of Scripture?
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So there is no infallible exegesis. Well, there is, actually.
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The Scripture talks about infallible exegesis. It is Christ. Christ is the one who exegesis the
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Father perfectly. Right? He is the one who is in the bosom of the Father and is exalting him. Right? So Jesus is the perfect revelation of God.
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He is the perfect exegesis of the Father. But outside of Christ, there is no perfect exegesis.
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Right? And the Scripture tells us that that's going to be the case in terms of how
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Christians are going to understand things. Which is why there is the call for unity. There would be no such need for a call to unity unless there was going to be the understanding that there's going to be things that are going to be confusing, things that are going to be difficult to handle, difficult to understand.
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Peter acknowledges the difficulty of understanding all sometimes in 2 Peter 3. And so there's always going to be dilemmas and there's always going to be misunderstandings.
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No one at the Sanctuary is going to have a perfect theology. Okay? No one. And anyone who claims to have such a thing is likely a false teacher.
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And I like to say they're a false teacher. No one has a perfect theology. That's not a bad one. That's why the
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Scripture calls us to test all things and all facets of which is good. That's why the Scripture tells us to test the spirits of many false prophets who have gone to the world.
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We have to prove these things. It is through the exegetic permutations of Scripture that we can test these things.
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But it isn't sufficient just to get to say that, well, we're not going to do the exegesis.
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We're not going to do the permutations because we already have a perfect interpretation whether it be found in Rome, whether it be found in L .G.
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White, whether it be found in Watchtower, whether it be in the prophet of Mormonism. Every part, like every one of these holding groups, even the central authority, that perfectly interprets
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God's Word. And any time they do that, they're all magnified. But don't we fall into that category as well?
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I mean, how is exegesis and hermeneutics different from the other traditions that other religions use?
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That's a good question. The difference is the process. The process of how we get to the answers of what the meaning of Scripture is versus the process that we find in Rome, which is the
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Pope says so. You have all these ecumenical councils that fill up. And it's not like the Pope's asserted the same things or that Catholics have come up with certain theological things in the back.
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That wouldn't be a fair description of the process of Rome. But the process normally isn't, here is what the
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Scripture says and let's follow that. It's usually taken into account, well, the Church Father in 685 said this.
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The Pope of 11 to 74 thought this about that. And then you take all these things and then you come up with what you think.
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I'll give you a perfect example. Purgatory. Purgatory is nowhere in the Bible, friends.
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Nowhere. It's not there. More than it developed. It began to develop in the 6th century.
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We can see the evolution of a council like Purgatory.
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In the 6th century, there was a major plague. Babies were dying about to die. The question about salvation began to arise.
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The Church began to debate this issue. And from there arose this concept based upon interpretation of the
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Intermediate State, particularly Luke 16, and also a text of Scripture that's in the
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Apocrypha. And then they said, well, here's this shadowy place. And we don't really have a lot of data about it.
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We don't have a lot of understanding about it. But maybe this is a place that is reserved for people who are not completely righteous but not completely damned.
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And this council began to grow and grow and grow until it was firmly established in around the 13th to 15th century.
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And we have this Council of Purgatory. So it took several hundred years for this doctrine to evolve. And it wasn't because let's look at what the
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Bible says and let's do what it says. It kind of arose out of necessity and hundreds of years of theological debate and back and forth.
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So it wasn't a clear cut, oh, here's a text of Scripture. Here's what it teaches. Let's do that. Rather, it was more so through many other processes.
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And these people came to these conclusions. This was in the Purgatory. Now the difference, again, with the prosody or what should be different about the prosody, is that hermeneutics and exegesis is the intense study of Scripture itself.
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So what we do is we look at the text and we say, okay, here are the rules. Scripture interprets Scripture. Scripture does not contradict
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Scripture. We also recognize that within Scripture we have to take into account the historical narrative or different narrative types.
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We have to take into account the audience, who was it written by, who was it written to. There are certain things that we have to do in order to properly understand our job.
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So it would be like us reading any book today. Anyone have a favorite fictional book here?
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What's your favorite fictional book? Please, as long as it's not
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Twilight, you should be all right. I haven't read many fictional books.
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Narnia. Go with Narnia. Narnia? Perfect example. Let's go with Narnia. So it would be pretty crazy if I said to you, you know what
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Narnia is actually about? Narnia is actually about the year 2023 and President Joe Biden.
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Did you see that? What am I doing? Am I executing Scripture? Am I over the text in this instance being
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Narnia? No, I'm just making conjecture. I'm just coming up with things and just making things up.
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Unfortunately, so many people do that with the Scriptures as well. People look at the Bible and they say, oh, well,
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I'll give you an example of Jehovah's Witnesses, right? The Jehovah's Witnesses believe that in 2
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Corinthians chapter 12 where Paul talks about three heavens. He talks about – Paul says that there's a third heaven, which is paradise, which he was caught up to and he saw things that were unspeakable.
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The Jehovah's Witnesses say, oh, we know what Paul was actually talking about. Paul was talking about not heaven itself, but he was looking forward to the spiritual paradise that is a
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Jehovah's Witness organization. Now, if you were a recipient of this letter from Paul in the first century, you would not have come to that conclusion, would you?
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No. Why? Why wouldn't you have come to the conclusion that it was a lifestyle organization and you were in Berkeley, New York?
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It doesn't say anything about that. Berkeley, New York didn't exist. For one, Berkeley, New York didn't exist.
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Two, it's clearly not what Paul is referencing historically. There's a narrative.
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There's a historical background. These are things that all have to do with exegesis imperatives. You have to take into account all those things.
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Then you can probably understand the text. But there are so many groups who just look at a text of scripture and they will interpret it in crazy ways.
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There's another group who will just say that there is a Mother God. And they say, well, look at Galatians 4, verse 26 talks about the
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Jerusalem above is our mother and she is free. Well, that Jerusalem above is Mother God. And there's very little scripture that they have to back it up, but they come to these conclusions.
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Why? Because they're doing exegesis. They're reading into scripture. They're not drawing out of scripture.
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So, again, I would say Rome is one of the most guilty movements of doing exegesis and exegesis.
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They're constantly putting into scripture, but they're not drawing out of scripture, which, again, would make the biggest distinction between our view as Protestants and how we probably approach scripture versus how we as Catholics approach scripture.
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Let's see. So you mentioned one of the roles of hermeneutics is that scripture interprets scripture. Correct. Could you explain that a bit more?
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So, essentially, if we're coming to the text of scripture and we're saying that the Bible is sufficient, it's inherent, and it's infallible, then it has the answer according to, for instance,
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Paul in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, has the answer for sitting at or straight. That's what it says.
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All scripture is sufficient. All scripture is a part of God. For righteousness or trinity, righteousness, trinity, or strength.
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And so that means that scripture itself will be self -verifying. Scripture itself will interpret scripture, meaning that if there's a difficult text,
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I'm going to try to give you a good example of this. A perfect example.
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The divinity of Christ. There are texts of scripture that says Jesus Christ did not know that day or the hour was eternal.
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Okay? Clearly, he's a man. There's another text of scripture, John chapter 16, verse 20, where it says
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Jesus knew all things. Which one is it? Did he know all things or did he not know all things?
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Well, how do we harmonize this? We harmonize this by exegeting the scriptures, all the scriptures, not just one or two verses, and coming to a conclusion, a theological conclusion, this is where theology comes in, and we have to say, okay, well, if Jesus has a human nature, he also has a divine nature, it means that there's one person with two natures.
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And we harmonize the scripture by saying he was a man, therefore, or the
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Philippians chapter 2, verse 5, even though he was existing in the form of God, he did not come in the glory of God, nor did he be held on to, but he humbled himself by emptying himself and by taking on the form of a servant.
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Okay? So we see how scripture can interpret scripture. You have a text that says
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Jesus didn't know that the early hour was returned, how can that be if he's God? Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11 gives us the answer.
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It's the self -humiliation of Christ. And so scripture will interpret scripture. There'll be times in which they'll be hard verses to understand in the
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Bible, but we know that if we pick the Bible, it'll give us the answer. You got something?
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Yeah, I was going to say, what you see other people doing, especially with these verses that were contradictory, where one says whether Jesus is
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God, and the other says that Jesus is not God, people who don't have this right view of hermeneutics will just say, oh, this one must be wrong, like someone lied in the second amendment, right?
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Like just inventing stuff from history to try and harmonize things. It's sometimes hard to actually be in the glory of God.
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And that's where history does become really handy, right? So what do the early church fathers, early church
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Christians think of these issues? And clearly, if you're way outside of that, you're probably doing something wrong.
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Because on the fundamentals, all the early Christians agreed that Jesus was God. Jesus was 100 % man, 100 %
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God. All the early Christians agreed on the trinity. There's a combination of things that early on we all agreed on.
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And so there is a clear line of historicity that we should say, okay, we're well from the mainstream of Christian law and of Christian history.
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But when it's, again, those things have to be subservient to Scripture itself. Does that kind of help? Yeah, I guess, yeah, where my original confusion was with that, like, yeah, it seems like it's more like you have to use the entirety of what
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Scripture says on a particular topic to, like, judge, you know, your interpretation of it versus, like,
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Scripture. It seemed kind of recursive, I guess, to say, like, you know, if you're confused about one thing, well,
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Scripture was clear about that thing. But then you have to know what that, you know, what it's really saying about that other thing.
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So you always have to kind of make a judgment for yourself. Yeah. So I'll give you an example that's like in Revelation, right?
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You've heard of the four worship of the apocalypse, right? Now, so much, when it comes to, like, things in the book of Revelation, there's so many things that are so speculative and people just a lot of data.
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There's so many books written on the end times and the four writers of the apocalypse.
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Those are one of the most easiest things to interpret. Did you know that? You know why? Because everything that's in the book of Revelation has a precedent that's already been set elsewhere in the
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Old Testament. So if you're very familiar with the Old Testament, interpreting Revelation is actually super easy.
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Everybody knows this? Because Zechariah chapter four talks about the four worship of the apocalypse.
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But you've never heard about that, did you? You've never heard about that? But in Zechariah, the four worship are already mentioned.
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And when you look in Revelation where the four worship are mentioned, it's directly quoted from Zechariah. Okay?
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And it's pretty easy. I mean, but no one ever makes that connection. But it's there. And so when you allow
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Scripture to interpret Scripture, then you see the four worship of the apocalypse were actually judgments against Israel for the disobedience, for the covenant breaking, famine, death, economic warfare, and the plague.
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These are all things that were caused by the prophets of Zechariah in relation to the unfaithfulness of God to people. Right? And so when we see it actually made up in Revelation, what
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John is saying is that these are the prophecies that were made in Zechariah that are coming true now in relation to the judgment upon Jerusalem.
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Right? And so the four worship of the apocalypse, that already happened. That was
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God's judgment against Israel. And we know that because, again, if you look at what the Old Testament says about that prophecy and how it's fulfilled in Revelation, it makes perfect sense.
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That would be a good harmonizing of the text. But it would be completely different to say, oh, the four worship is
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Barack Obama and the four worship is this and that. You know, it's Harry Kissinger and all these things.
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It doesn't make any sense. You're extrapolating. You're reading into the text, which is dangerous. And I'm seeing
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Romans guilty of doing that quite often. So, any other thoughts or questions on this?
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I'll give you a yes. The word trinity doesn't – you can read it from the scripture.
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But the spirit of the Father, Jesus Christ, and also is entirely in the scripture.
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Correct. Yeah. So, I mean, there are so many things in scripture that we – theology is another component of this, right?
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Like theology is when we systematically study scripture and we do – theology is more topical.
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When we take topics such as God, the trinity, Jesus, heaven, hell, and systematize it, we say, okay, here is an explanation from the scriptures on this theological topic, on this particular subject.
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And so theology is very important. When we draw theology from a good exegesis, it permeates into the scripture.
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So we draw all those things out, and then we – theology is a result of those things that we draw out.
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Does that make sense? The difference – the problem – we term scripture from the lens of our theology, right?
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So, for example, the Watchtower, they translated their
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Bible, the New World Translation, in 1950. 1951 was when the first edition of the New World Translation came out.
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And what they did is that they had changed a couple of verses in the Bible. You probably know one of the most famous examples of this is John 1.
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In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. The New World Translation says the word was a
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God, lowercase g. So what they did is that they went to the text of scripture and they said, here is what we believe.
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We're going to make the Bible say what we believe. Instead of saying, let's think this is Jesus' scriptures, let's let the
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Bible be the Bible, and then let's believe whatever the Bible says. Most churches – a lot of churches, a lot of groups, a lot of schools still do that.
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They will have a theology -first approach that says, here is what we believe. Let's make sure we make scripture say what we believe.
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Big difference. Does that make sense? And where would you put deaconesses?
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Totally unrelated topic. Are you reading Greg Warren's tweets or something?
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Is it bad interpretation? Is it eisegesis? I don't think so because Romans 16 clearly talks about a female who was referred to as a servant.
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Now the word deacon just simply means servant. So there is a general sense in which, of course, there's male female servants.
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And so that's the case in which Paul means it when he's talking about this woman.
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She's a servant, she's serving the church. There are women here who are clearly servants, who serve the church.
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But when he talks about the office, Paul makes it really abundantly clear this is an office for a man because he says the person should be the husband of one wife.
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Clearly this is a male leadership role. So I would say proper exegesis would lead us to understand that there are times in which words are used in a kind of a colloquial sense where it's just, it's a very broad sense of the word.
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And then there are times in which it is used as a very defined sense in relation to an office.
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So that's how I would view that. It's not incorrect that, for instance, if it refers to a woman as deaconess, a woman has to be a servant.
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Yes? I was under the impression now that in regards to an official capacity, that Paul's qualification was only pertaining to the elder and not a deacon in particular.
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Well, deacons are mentioned as being men. This is for deacons as well.
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Before, this week, last week, like…
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Oh, yeah. That's right. And then this week, some guy knocked on my door.
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Oh, look at that. People in the spirit of Jesus and the
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Father, Jesus' praise of the
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Father, things like that. And then I mentioned this perceived worship, and they used
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Jehovah for that. Well, if I could just get these two people, these two groups to talk together, maybe they'd come up with the
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Trinity. But probably not realistically because they're not – they would just take their scriptures and say, this is the same as them.
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And the other group would say, just take those scriptures and not… because they're interested in their theology.
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I remember we had a good conversation at the door. I'm going to start going to you. I'm going to let the door open. You guys can teach me some books.
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I think this time they've come to his house. Yeah, right. I'll go real quick because we're running out of time.
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Yesterday I got a phone call. So I have, like, the phone, the church phone often goes to my phone.
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And so it doesn't really tell me, like, if it's a church number. Like, if it's a church phone call, it just looks like a regular phone call.
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So I usually pick it up, and they're looking for the church. So I had a person call yesterday, and they were looking for the church.
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And I said, oh, I can help you. And he says he was a former from North Carolina. And he said, oh,
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I was just reading your website, and you believe the Trinity. And I had a question about that, and I was wondering if a pastor could help answer that question.
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I said, I'm a pastor. I can help you with that. And he said, well, in John 17, verse 3, it says that Jesus says that he creates the only true
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God. How could there be three persons who are God if Jesus says only the Father is
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God? And I should have known by the use of that text that this person was probably a Jehovah's Witness.
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But I also wrongly assumed, because he said he was on our website, that he saw that the pastor was a former
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Jehovah's Witness. I said, that's interesting, because I'm actually, you know, I used to be a Jehovah's Witness, and I used that text quite a bit.
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And the person stopped me. And then, were you baptized? I said, yes. He said, goodbye. He was a
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Jehovah's Witness, but he was a Jehovah's Witness. Goodbye. Which is interesting, because Jehovah's Witnesses don't usually call the churches.
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So I was thinking, OK, maybe this is just like a unitarian or something. Maybe this is, you know, here's a good lesson. Never assume.
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Never assume. And so I made a mistake that I usually tell Christians not to do, which is to assume.
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But, you know, there are times in which you're going to have people who, this person wasn't really looking for an honest answer.
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This person was looking for a debate. Which I would have gladly have gone, I don't know. But as soon as he filed that as an apology, he just gave up.
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But, yeah, things like that happen all the time. What it all goes down to in relation to this topic, in relation to, is that it really comes down to the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Scripture is sufficient. Scripture is self -authenticating. And if you have a view that that, what you're essentially saying is that there's another authority that's either equal or above Scripture.
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And I would say you can't have something that is equal in a forwarding to Scripture in terms of making life a practice.
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Because then that in itself becomes the thing that is above Scripture. And so Scripture has to be sufficient.
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Scripture has to be sufficient when we approach these things. And so anytime we look at an outside source to be our perfect interpreter, that's when we ultimately fall into what
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I would say is a cult. Whether we were in Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Adventism, all these isms, that ultimately was something other than the
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Bible as its authority. The mark of a true church, the mark of a true Christian, is that the
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Bible is the final authority for all things related to faith and practice. It's not the pastor, it's not the pope, it's not the bishop, it's the
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Scriptures. Anytime that the pastor or the leader goes astray and diverges from the text of Scripture, he must be held accountable to Scripture.
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And what happens in these cults is that they make the Scriptures accountable to them. They become the ones who are the arbiters, the ones who dictate
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Scripture. So we want to avoid that pitfall. So we pray that we can get ready to serve.
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Father, we thank you Lord for this discussion. We, hopefully Lord, approach this topic in a way that we ourselves don't have a perfect view of all things, we don't have a perfect theology.
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But Lord, help us, by means of your Spirit, to continue to learn all these things. To grow in our exegesis and our hermeneutics and our understanding of the
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Lord. So that we may know you more and that we may praise you more effectively, Lord. And Father, that we may be more effective ministers of this incredible gospel of death, birth, and resurrection of Christ.