Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: johnw@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu (John Warren) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: What's the difference? Message-ID: Date: 26 Jul 90 06:44:17 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 35 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jhpb@granjon.garage.att.com writes: > >The Reformers, during their attempt to correct the problems in the Roman >Catholic Church, ended up adopting a different model of the sources of >revealed truth. The Reformers couldn't say that an infallible Church >fell into error; they stopped believing that the Church is infallible. > >They adopted the Bible as their source of doctrine, but this is not an >objective source, as an infallible Church is. So Protestantism has had >a lot of splintering. > >Joe Buehler An infallible Church is an objective source? It seems to me that something written down once for all is much more objective than a bunch of archbishops and popes whose ideas change over the centuries. "But the Church and Tradition are the living, breathing Word of God, more relevant for us today," you might say. Then again you might say, "The Church and Tradition are just ways to justify abuse and greed and power." Now I'm not saying that, and I for one don't like to question authority just because it is authority. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I am not convinced that a body of fallible humans is more infallible than words written down. Then you might say, "Who wrote these words? Out of what context did they spring? They came out of a Tradition of their own, out of a community of their own. What came first, the chicken or the egg?" And now I see that my own thoughts have opened up a can of worms worth reams of paper and many hours on the net, so I'll stop for now. [I think what Joe meant is that in practice the Bible alone has been interpreted in many different ways. If you want absolute truth, you need some way to find the correct interpretation. The infallible Church is claimed to provide that. Without it the Bible becomes subjective because it becomes subject to everybody's private interpretation. --clh]