Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sola Scriptura Message-ID: Date: 2 Jul 90 04:51:14 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 49 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Joe Buehler writes, in part: >Arguing against the available historical evidence is self-defeating. It's >shooting oneself in the foot, because it means arguing that Christianity is >doctrinally Modernist. Something is revealed by God for 1500 years, then >suddenly it's an error: that's Modernism. That's the road to the AntiChrist. Obviously, Joe, one could just as well hold that it is a 1500-year old error. >Either we know what we're talking about, or we don't. But we can't know >what we're talking about for centuries, then suddenly figure out that we >didn't know what we were talking about. This model of thinking is wrong, wrong, wrong. We can *believe* we know what we're talking about for years-- centuries-- and then discover that we've been wrong all along. This happens all the time in other fields of inquiry. >You know, this talk of the AntiChrist brings up an interesting question. >How is the AntiChrist going to budge the Roman Catholic Church, given its >system of unchangeable Traditional dogma? Oh, I can see how this can happen quite easily enough. In the first place, the doctrine of the church can become so petrified and heartless that it can drive charity away. In the second, the continuing evolution of RC doctrine may very well take it further and further away from the Important Truth. In the third, the authority of the churc may be used at lower levels to promulgate local doctrines at variance with the Important Truth. >Since the AntiChrist can't argue with my beliefs (I would reject any >argument out of hand; these above listed things are not opinion, but >dogmas revealed by God -- excepting possibly one or two that are only >proximate to dogma), I must already be a follower of the AntiChrist. >After all, if he can't change my beliefs or my behavior, I must already >be his. You are assuming that following the AntiChrist is merely a matter of subscribing to the wrong doctrine. How can you be so sure? Perhaps it is your very rigidity that is the fatal error. -- C. Wingate + "I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity + by invocation of the same mangoe@cs.umd.edu + the Three in One, and One in Three." mimsy!mangoe +