A Failure of the Reformation
Mar 22, 2019 00:15:33 #
Scriptural Interpretation in the Early Church
Even a casual examination of the New Testament demonstrates that its biblical characters and writers interpreted Old Testament prophecy in a literal sense (Matthew 1:18–25; 21:12–13; John 12:12–15; Romans 11:25–27, etc.). Christianity’s second generation after the apostolic age also followed a literal approach when interpreting Bible prophecy.
In early church history the school at Syrian Antioch, rose to prominence for interpreting prophetic subjects in a literal manner. Accordingly, they taught that the kingdom of God would not materialize upon the earth until the King, Jesus Christ, first returns physically.
While this perspective is called Premillennialism today, it was known as Chiliasm then. This word, Chiliasm, comes from the Greek word, chilia, meaning “thousand” and is taken from the thousand year duration of Christ’s kingdom (usually referred to as the Millennium) which is referred to six times in Revelation 20:1–10.
The school at Antioch exercised such great influence over early Christianity, that virtually all of its most influential leaders were noted Chiliasts. In fact, in that day, one’s embracement of Chiliasm was viewed as a test to determine one’s orthodoxy.
Note the words of respected Church Father Justin Martyr (A.D. 100–160) in his Dialogue with Trypho: “But I and every other completely orthodox Christian feel certain that there will be a resurrection of the flesh, followed by a thousand years in the rebuilt, embellished and enlarged city of Jerusalem as was announced by the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the others.”
With such a well–entrenched belief within earliest Christianity concerning a literal interpretation of prophecy and a yet future earthly kingdom of Christ, when did the Christian world begin to shift on this vital issue of interpretation?
The Triumph of Spiritualization
The Antioch school was soon eclipsed by the influence of a competing school located in North Africa in the city of Alexandria, Egypt.
The Alexandrian school introduced allegorization for interpreting Scripture, especially Bible prophecy. Allegorization (or spiritualization) uses the literal meaning of the biblical text for introducing a "higher spiritual meaning," which is completely subjective, i.e., only clear to the one doing the allegorizing.
For example, Philo (25 B.C.–A.D. 50), an influential allegorizer, who lived during the time of Christ, saw the four rivers depicted in Genesis 2:10–14 (the Pishon, Gihon, Euphrates and Tigris) as not just four literal rivers in the Garden of Eden but also representing four parts of the human soul!
What caused the Christian Church to progressively reject the traditional, literal approach of Antioch and instead embrace the allegorical method as outlined by Alexandria? There were a multiplicity of factors involved.
First, the allegorical approach met the need for immediate relevance and application in Christian preaching and teaching. When the text is allegorized, although sacrificing literal truth, it can be used subjectively to meet virtually any emotional, spiritual or psychological need in the listener or reader.
Second, the allegorical method became increasingly more tenable as Bible interpreters became susceptible to merging Greek philosophy into the process of biblical interpretation.
Third, Alexandria, Egypt was a hotbed for Gnostic dualism, which taught that while the spiritual world was inherently good, the physical world was evil. Since they believed that the physical world is inherently evil, Gnostic philosophers reasoned that the various biblical prophecies relating to a physical kingdom on earth were not meant to be taken literally and must be spiritualized.
A fourth factor leading the Church to embrace the allegorical method of interpretation was the decline in Jewish believers within the Church’s ranks. By the time Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans, the Gentile Christians were in such numerical superiority over their Jewish counterparts that Paul had to instruct these Gentile believers not to be arrogant on account of Israel’s apparent spiritual hardening (Romans 11:13,17–21).
Given the Jewish familiarity with not only the content but also with a proper understanding of Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, it is doubtful that the Church would have embraced the allegorical method of interpretation of the Alexandrian school had the Jews retained their majority status within the Church. The Gentile Christians, coming out of pagan backgrounds, were not so similarly educated, and were vulnerable to the Old Testament being spiritualized, allegorized and consequently marginalized.
Fifth, Constantine’s Edict of Milan (A.D. 313), which granted religious toleration to Christianity within the Roman Empire, played a significant role in the Church’s embracement of the allegorical method of interpretation. With the stroke of a pen, Christianity went from persecuted within Rome to protected and even elevated.
Such an abrupt transition from persecution to tolerance and even privilege convinced many within the Church that the kingdom of God had now come. This newfound belief caused them to allegorize many of the literal terrestrial earthly kingdom promises related to national Israel into present spiritual kingdom realities.
These factors led to the ascendancy of the Alexandrian method of interpretation within Christendom.
Prominent Allegorizers
Several prominent allegorical interpreters arose out of the Alexandrian school. One such interpreter was Origen (A.D. 185– 254). But the most influential allegorizer was Augustine (A.D. 354–430). His book, The City of God, was the first major written systematization of "Amillennialism" in church history, and one of the most detrimental books in church history. This work cast an allegorical spell over the Church which took Christendom over a millennium to crawl out from beneath.
The City of God wildly allegorized the biblical passages dealing with the future earthly reign of Christ. For example, the “first resurrection” (Revelation 20:4–6) was reinterpreted to refer to spiritual regeneration rather than a future, physical, bodily resurrection. He also taught that the binding of Satan merely “means his being more unable to seduce the Church.”
Concerning the future thousand year reign of Christ along with His saints (Revelation 20:4), Augustine asserted that “the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, even now His saints reign with Him.”
By 450 A.D. the Alexandrian method of interpretation had become so entrenched that the Church viewed the earlier Chiliasm (doctrine that Jesus will reign on earth for 1,000 years) as the product of the less enlightened and less intelligent. Chiliasm became viewed as a mere fable rather than the product of a careful study of the biblical text which it was.
The Dark Ages
The ascendency of the Alexandrian school plummeted the Church into a time often referred to as the “The Dark Ages.” During this era, the study of end time prophecy was rendered obsolete. This era dominated church history for over a millennium, from the 4th to the 16th Century.
During this era, only the Roman Catholic Church officially existed within Christendom. Because of the allegorical method of interpretation, only the clergy were deemed as qualified to read and "allegorically" interpret Scripture. Such a sharp clergy–laity distinction removed the Bible from the common man.
This problem was further compounded by widespread illiteracy among the population, making the Bible all the more inaccessible to the masses.
Up to the time of Luther, the Roman Catholic Mass continued to be read and conducted in Latin, although unknown to most people in Luther’s time. Many went to Mass, but were unable to understand, thus, nothing was communicated.
Such biblical illiteracy made the people vulnerable to spiritual deception and manipulation. The sale of indulgences was common throughout the era. The people did not have access to the Scripture to ascertain if Purgatory was even a biblical concept. Thus, the Church authorities routinely told them that they could purchase deceased relatives out of Purgatory by paying the right monetary sum to the Church. In fact, Johann Tetzel, a friar during the time of Martin Luther, infamously quipped, “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.”
The practice of the sale of indulgences was condoned by both the Church, and the existing political authorities, since they served as a convenient source of fund raising to subsidize the Church’s building projects, such as the refurbishment of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
In addition, due to the public's inaccessibility to the Scripture, God’s future promises to the Jewish people were unknown, and unable to serve as a natural defense or bulwark against the anti–Semitism of the day. Thus, rampant hatred of the Jews continued unabated and unchallenged. Due to these pitiful conditions, the Church was in dire need of theological rescue.
The Return to Literal Interpretation
The Protestant Reformation became the tool that God used to redirect the Church back to the solid foundation of His eternal Word. The Protestant Reformers rescued the Church from the Alexandrian allegorical method of interpretation through a literal interpretation to selective areas of Scripture.
For example, William Tyndale (A.D. 1494–1536) asserted, “The Scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense.” Luther also wrote that the Scriptures “are to be retained in their simplest meaning ever possible, and to be understood in their grammatical and literal sense unless the context plainly forbids.” Calvin wrote in the preface of his commentary on Romans, “It is the first business of an interpreter to let the author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say.”
Because of their adherence to literal interpretation, both Calvin and Luther condemned the allegorical method of interpretation. Luther denounced the allegorical approach to Scripture in strong words. He said: “Allegories are empty speculations and as it were the scum of Holy Scripture.” “Origen’s allegories are not worth so much dirt.” “To allegorize is to juggle the Scripture.”
Calvin similarly rejected allegorical interpretations. He called them “frivolous games” and accused Origen and other allegorists of “torturing Scripture, in every possible sense, from the (literal) true sense.”
The Reformers also did not want to see the biblical ignorance of the common man exploited for financial purposes, as had been the case with the sale of indulgences. Consequently, the Reformers stressed that the people no longer had to go through an intermediary priest in order to receive and understand God’s Word since they were priests themselves (Revelation 1:6).
This belief, “the priesthood of all believers” required that the Scripture had to be both accessible and understandable to the clergy and laity alike. This explains why prominent Reformers, like Tyndale and Luther, translated the Scriptures into languages beside the Latin Vulgate completed by Jerome in the 4th Century, and into the common languages of their own day.
The privilege inherent in “the priesthood of all believers” Biblical theological truth also meant that literacy was necessary so that the common man could both read and understand the Bible. Thus, the Reformation introduced great advances in public education for the purpose of erasing illiteracy.
The Reformers’ Selective Literalness
Although the Reformers were literal in their approach to Protology (the doctrine of Beginnings), Christology (the doctrine of Christ), Soteriology (the doctrine of Salvation), and Bibliology (the doctrine of the Scripture), other doctrines, such as Ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church) and Eschatology (the doctrine of the End) were treated entirely differently. Despite their emphasis upon literally interpreting some aspects of Scripture, Luther and Calvin did not apply a literal interpretation to all areas of divine truth.
Calvin ignored much of God’s prophetic Word. Having written commentaries on almost every book of the New Testament, Calvin failed to write a commentary on the Book of Revelation. When Calvin did pay attention to prophetic texts, he was preoccupied with employing the Alexandrian and Augustinian method of interpretation, and he held in contempt those who rejected his allegorical approach.
The Reformers’ retention of the allegorical method of interpretation in Biblical Eschatology resulted in the prophecies aimed at a literal Antichrist being redirected to allegorical. Such an interpretation was advanced at the expense of the literal sense of these passages.
Because the Reformers spiritualized prophecy, they rejected Premillennialism as being “Jewish opinions.” They maintained the Amillennial (no millennial) view which the Roman Catholic Church had adopted from Augustine.
The Reformers Selective Reforms
Despite the Reformers’ doctrinal progress in select areas, it is historical naïveté to assume that they made a clean break with Roman Catholicism in the 16th Century. In addition to the retention of Augustinian Amillennialism in prophecy, Roman Catholic holdovers included the practice of infant baptism. Luther considered infant baptism a sacrament (a means of receiving grace). Also held over was the doctrine of Consubstantiation, a slight modification of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, i.e., resacrificing Jesus live in every mass.
The Roman Catholic Church’s view that it was the sole representative of the kingdom of God upon the earth, their failure to distinguish between the Church and God’s earthly kingdom program for Israel, was carried over into Calvin’s Geneva. There, Calvin sought to reconstruct a society through the imposition of the Mosaic Law, resulting in tyrannical societal consequences for the Genevan people.
Some of the vitriolic anti–Semitism of the Middle Ages also found its way into the Reformation movement. Respected and revered church reformer Martin Luther, late in his life and frustrated at the Jews’ unwillingness to receive Christ, wrote a scathing tract against the Jewish people entitled, On the Jews and Their Lies, and Calvin’s correction of distinguished Jewish scholar Rabbi Barbinel in Calvin’s commentary on Daniel 2:44 laid bare the Reformer’s heart toward the Jewish people: “But here the rabbi not only betrays his ignorance, but his utter stupidity"...
Why did the Protestant Reformers not reform the Church in these areas?
Their primary battle with the Roman Catholic hierarchy was over the issue of salvation. Other theological subject matter was outside their given vision, but future generations used restored "literal interpretation" to restore wholeness to God's prophecy.
Lamb & Lion Ministries
Even a casual examination of the New Testament demonstrates that its biblical characters and writers interpreted Old Testament prophecy in a literal sense (Matthew 1:18–25; 21:12–13; John 12:12–15; Romans 11:25–27, etc.). Christianity’s second generation after the apostolic age also followed a literal approach when interpreting Bible prophecy.
In early church history the school at Syrian Antioch, rose to prominence for interpreting prophetic subjects in a literal manner. Accordingly, they taught that the kingdom of God would not materialize upon the earth until the King, Jesus Christ, first returns physically.
While this perspective is called Premillennialism today, it was known as Chiliasm then. This word, Chiliasm, comes from the Greek word, chilia, meaning “thousand” and is taken from the thousand year duration of Christ’s kingdom (usually referred to as the Millennium) which is referred to six times in Revelation 20:1–10.
The school at Antioch exercised such great influence over early Christianity, that virtually all of its most influential leaders were noted Chiliasts. In fact, in that day, one’s embracement of Chiliasm was viewed as a test to determine one’s orthodoxy.
Note the words of respected Church Father Justin Martyr (A.D. 100–160) in his Dialogue with Trypho: “But I and every other completely orthodox Christian feel certain that there will be a resurrection of the flesh, followed by a thousand years in the rebuilt, embellished and enlarged city of Jerusalem as was announced by the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the others.”
With such a well–entrenched belief within earliest Christianity concerning a literal interpretation of prophecy and a yet future earthly kingdom of Christ, when did the Christian world begin to shift on this vital issue of interpretation?
The Triumph of Spiritualization
The Antioch school was soon eclipsed by the influence of a competing school located in North Africa in the city of Alexandria, Egypt.
The Alexandrian school introduced allegorization for interpreting Scripture, especially Bible prophecy. Allegorization (or spiritualization) uses the literal meaning of the biblical text for introducing a "higher spiritual meaning," which is completely subjective, i.e., only clear to the one doing the allegorizing.
For example, Philo (25 B.C.–A.D. 50), an influential allegorizer, who lived during the time of Christ, saw the four rivers depicted in Genesis 2:10–14 (the Pishon, Gihon, Euphrates and Tigris) as not just four literal rivers in the Garden of Eden but also representing four parts of the human soul!
What caused the Christian Church to progressively reject the traditional, literal approach of Antioch and instead embrace the allegorical method as outlined by Alexandria? There were a multiplicity of factors involved.
First, the allegorical approach met the need for immediate relevance and application in Christian preaching and teaching. When the text is allegorized, although sacrificing literal truth, it can be used subjectively to meet virtually any emotional, spiritual or psychological need in the listener or reader.
Second, the allegorical method became increasingly more tenable as Bible interpreters became susceptible to merging Greek philosophy into the process of biblical interpretation.
Third, Alexandria, Egypt was a hotbed for Gnostic dualism, which taught that while the spiritual world was inherently good, the physical world was evil. Since they believed that the physical world is inherently evil, Gnostic philosophers reasoned that the various biblical prophecies relating to a physical kingdom on earth were not meant to be taken literally and must be spiritualized.
A fourth factor leading the Church to embrace the allegorical method of interpretation was the decline in Jewish believers within the Church’s ranks. By the time Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans, the Gentile Christians were in such numerical superiority over their Jewish counterparts that Paul had to instruct these Gentile believers not to be arrogant on account of Israel’s apparent spiritual hardening (Romans 11:13,17–21).
Given the Jewish familiarity with not only the content but also with a proper understanding of Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, it is doubtful that the Church would have embraced the allegorical method of interpretation of the Alexandrian school had the Jews retained their majority status within the Church. The Gentile Christians, coming out of pagan backgrounds, were not so similarly educated, and were vulnerable to the Old Testament being spiritualized, allegorized and consequently marginalized.
Fifth, Constantine’s Edict of Milan (A.D. 313), which granted religious toleration to Christianity within the Roman Empire, played a significant role in the Church’s embracement of the allegorical method of interpretation. With the stroke of a pen, Christianity went from persecuted within Rome to protected and even elevated.
Such an abrupt transition from persecution to tolerance and even privilege convinced many within the Church that the kingdom of God had now come. This newfound belief caused them to allegorize many of the literal terrestrial earthly kingdom promises related to national Israel into present spiritual kingdom realities.
These factors led to the ascendancy of the Alexandrian method of interpretation within Christendom.
Prominent Allegorizers
Several prominent allegorical interpreters arose out of the Alexandrian school. One such interpreter was Origen (A.D. 185– 254). But the most influential allegorizer was Augustine (A.D. 354–430). His book, The City of God, was the first major written systematization of "Amillennialism" in church history, and one of the most detrimental books in church history. This work cast an allegorical spell over the Church which took Christendom over a millennium to crawl out from beneath.
The City of God wildly allegorized the biblical passages dealing with the future earthly reign of Christ. For example, the “first resurrection” (Revelation 20:4–6) was reinterpreted to refer to spiritual regeneration rather than a future, physical, bodily resurrection. He also taught that the binding of Satan merely “means his being more unable to seduce the Church.”
Concerning the future thousand year reign of Christ along with His saints (Revelation 20:4), Augustine asserted that “the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, even now His saints reign with Him.”
By 450 A.D. the Alexandrian method of interpretation had become so entrenched that the Church viewed the earlier Chiliasm (doctrine that Jesus will reign on earth for 1,000 years) as the product of the less enlightened and less intelligent. Chiliasm became viewed as a mere fable rather than the product of a careful study of the biblical text which it was.
The Dark Ages
The ascendency of the Alexandrian school plummeted the Church into a time often referred to as the “The Dark Ages.” During this era, the study of end time prophecy was rendered obsolete. This era dominated church history for over a millennium, from the 4th to the 16th Century.
During this era, only the Roman Catholic Church officially existed within Christendom. Because of the allegorical method of interpretation, only the clergy were deemed as qualified to read and "allegorically" interpret Scripture. Such a sharp clergy–laity distinction removed the Bible from the common man.
This problem was further compounded by widespread illiteracy among the population, making the Bible all the more inaccessible to the masses.
Up to the time of Luther, the Roman Catholic Mass continued to be read and conducted in Latin, although unknown to most people in Luther’s time. Many went to Mass, but were unable to understand, thus, nothing was communicated.
Such biblical illiteracy made the people vulnerable to spiritual deception and manipulation. The sale of indulgences was common throughout the era. The people did not have access to the Scripture to ascertain if Purgatory was even a biblical concept. Thus, the Church authorities routinely told them that they could purchase deceased relatives out of Purgatory by paying the right monetary sum to the Church. In fact, Johann Tetzel, a friar during the time of Martin Luther, infamously quipped, “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.”
The practice of the sale of indulgences was condoned by both the Church, and the existing political authorities, since they served as a convenient source of fund raising to subsidize the Church’s building projects, such as the refurbishment of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
In addition, due to the public's inaccessibility to the Scripture, God’s future promises to the Jewish people were unknown, and unable to serve as a natural defense or bulwark against the anti–Semitism of the day. Thus, rampant hatred of the Jews continued unabated and unchallenged. Due to these pitiful conditions, the Church was in dire need of theological rescue.
The Return to Literal Interpretation
The Protestant Reformation became the tool that God used to redirect the Church back to the solid foundation of His eternal Word. The Protestant Reformers rescued the Church from the Alexandrian allegorical method of interpretation through a literal interpretation to selective areas of Scripture.
For example, William Tyndale (A.D. 1494–1536) asserted, “The Scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense.” Luther also wrote that the Scriptures “are to be retained in their simplest meaning ever possible, and to be understood in their grammatical and literal sense unless the context plainly forbids.” Calvin wrote in the preface of his commentary on Romans, “It is the first business of an interpreter to let the author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say.”
Because of their adherence to literal interpretation, both Calvin and Luther condemned the allegorical method of interpretation. Luther denounced the allegorical approach to Scripture in strong words. He said: “Allegories are empty speculations and as it were the scum of Holy Scripture.” “Origen’s allegories are not worth so much dirt.” “To allegorize is to juggle the Scripture.”
Calvin similarly rejected allegorical interpretations. He called them “frivolous games” and accused Origen and other allegorists of “torturing Scripture, in every possible sense, from the (literal) true sense.”
The Reformers also did not want to see the biblical ignorance of the common man exploited for financial purposes, as had been the case with the sale of indulgences. Consequently, the Reformers stressed that the people no longer had to go through an intermediary priest in order to receive and understand God’s Word since they were priests themselves (Revelation 1:6).
This belief, “the priesthood of all believers” required that the Scripture had to be both accessible and understandable to the clergy and laity alike. This explains why prominent Reformers, like Tyndale and Luther, translated the Scriptures into languages beside the Latin Vulgate completed by Jerome in the 4th Century, and into the common languages of their own day.
The privilege inherent in “the priesthood of all believers” Biblical theological truth also meant that literacy was necessary so that the common man could both read and understand the Bible. Thus, the Reformation introduced great advances in public education for the purpose of erasing illiteracy.
The Reformers’ Selective Literalness
Although the Reformers were literal in their approach to Protology (the doctrine of Beginnings), Christology (the doctrine of Christ), Soteriology (the doctrine of Salvation), and Bibliology (the doctrine of the Scripture), other doctrines, such as Ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church) and Eschatology (the doctrine of the End) were treated entirely differently. Despite their emphasis upon literally interpreting some aspects of Scripture, Luther and Calvin did not apply a literal interpretation to all areas of divine truth.
Calvin ignored much of God’s prophetic Word. Having written commentaries on almost every book of the New Testament, Calvin failed to write a commentary on the Book of Revelation. When Calvin did pay attention to prophetic texts, he was preoccupied with employing the Alexandrian and Augustinian method of interpretation, and he held in contempt those who rejected his allegorical approach.
The Reformers’ retention of the allegorical method of interpretation in Biblical Eschatology resulted in the prophecies aimed at a literal Antichrist being redirected to allegorical. Such an interpretation was advanced at the expense of the literal sense of these passages.
Because the Reformers spiritualized prophecy, they rejected Premillennialism as being “Jewish opinions.” They maintained the Amillennial (no millennial) view which the Roman Catholic Church had adopted from Augustine.
The Reformers Selective Reforms
Despite the Reformers’ doctrinal progress in select areas, it is historical naïveté to assume that they made a clean break with Roman Catholicism in the 16th Century. In addition to the retention of Augustinian Amillennialism in prophecy, Roman Catholic holdovers included the practice of infant baptism. Luther considered infant baptism a sacrament (a means of receiving grace). Also held over was the doctrine of Consubstantiation, a slight modification of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, i.e., resacrificing Jesus live in every mass.
The Roman Catholic Church’s view that it was the sole representative of the kingdom of God upon the earth, their failure to distinguish between the Church and God’s earthly kingdom program for Israel, was carried over into Calvin’s Geneva. There, Calvin sought to reconstruct a society through the imposition of the Mosaic Law, resulting in tyrannical societal consequences for the Genevan people.
Some of the vitriolic anti–Semitism of the Middle Ages also found its way into the Reformation movement. Respected and revered church reformer Martin Luther, late in his life and frustrated at the Jews’ unwillingness to receive Christ, wrote a scathing tract against the Jewish people entitled, On the Jews and Their Lies, and Calvin’s correction of distinguished Jewish scholar Rabbi Barbinel in Calvin’s commentary on Daniel 2:44 laid bare the Reformer’s heart toward the Jewish people: “But here the rabbi not only betrays his ignorance, but his utter stupidity"...
Why did the Protestant Reformers not reform the Church in these areas?
Their primary battle with the Roman Catholic hierarchy was over the issue of salvation. Other theological subject matter was outside their given vision, but future generations used restored "literal interpretation" to restore wholeness to God's prophecy.
Lamb & Lion Ministries
Mar 23, 2019 10:34:00 #
Thank you for that Zemirah that was very informative and enlightening at the same time. I being raised in the Lutheran church had heard some of this as a teen ager but had never had it laid out in such an orderly fashion. I am sure that you will receive a rebuttal from you know who but for me it was an interesting read and very informative but then again I didn't have those apostolic traditions to go by.
Mar 23, 2019 13:24:02 #
Hi bahmer,
Regarding the much paraded "Apostolic traditions,"
Anything of importance for future generations to act upon is now in the New Testament Scriptures, thus no longer "tradition," as it was at the time the Apostles were still writing it.
The supposed "Apostolic tradition" used now by the self-aggrandizing power hungry priests and padres is Biblically non-existent, and purely a man-made invention to ensnare those who fail to practice "spiritual discernment,"by not comparing every new teaching with written Scripture.
Rebuttal's are my daily source of amusement on OPP, an alternate form of "chit-chat," if you will.
I didn't give it the ending it deserved because of the OPP length restriction, but anyone interested can find more in the Bible, or on the internet. Truth, although still in short supply, is not yet completely censored.
I am convinced that those whom God wishes to enlighten because they have sought Him, will be led to the appropriate resources. I have seen this happen many times, for has He not said in Jeremiah 29:13: "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."
Regarding the much paraded "Apostolic traditions,"
Anything of importance for future generations to act upon is now in the New Testament Scriptures, thus no longer "tradition," as it was at the time the Apostles were still writing it.
The supposed "Apostolic tradition" used now by the self-aggrandizing power hungry priests and padres is Biblically non-existent, and purely a man-made invention to ensnare those who fail to practice "spiritual discernment,"by not comparing every new teaching with written Scripture.
Rebuttal's are my daily source of amusement on OPP, an alternate form of "chit-chat," if you will.
I didn't give it the ending it deserved because of the OPP length restriction, but anyone interested can find more in the Bible, or on the internet. Truth, although still in short supply, is not yet completely censored.
I am convinced that those whom God wishes to enlighten because they have sought Him, will be led to the appropriate resources. I have seen this happen many times, for has He not said in Jeremiah 29:13: "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."
bahmer wrote:
Thank you for that Zemirah that was very informative and enlightening at the same time. I being raised in the Lutheran church had heard some of this as a teen ager but had never had it laid out in such an orderly fashion. I am sure that you will receive a rebuttal from you know who but for me it was an interesting read and very informative but then again I didn't have those apostolic traditions to go by.
Mar 23, 2019 14:21:50 #
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