Your spiritual Basis

[Raban]

Several days ago, a friend and I, who share many similar religious viewpoints, had an interesting conversation, regarding our spiritual basis. As we were talking about the fact that there is so much that could be argued about denominations, and the corruption of religion in Christianity alone. For example, we were discussing how people like to put God in 'box' and 'humanize' him. Now when we discussing this, we weren't taking sides, but just thinking about problems each mindset would bring. For example, we are Protestants, but our Youth Pastor was telling us how we have to look to scripture to know God. However that causes the problem of the fact that Protestants decided that seven books of the Catholic Bible were wrong and excluded them, along with many other traditions and doctrines. If look further back you can see that the creation of the Catholic Bible may have been political, sense there were hundreds of books that could have been included. So this gives rise to a huge set of problems, because the Bible was constructed by human beings, who are obviously fallible. Now we decided that it does not matter as long as you do not try to force others to your way of thought, and that no one may ever be totally correct; but, there is still the issue of where you draw the line. How do YOU rationalize whatever manner of belief that you follow? To me I am almost existentialist in some respects as I believe that the Bible has flaws, (but deciding what is good and what isn't is a whole other issue) but where does it end? How do you find the line? For me, I believe all men have to pursue their own Truth, and that it is futile to monopolize it. So how do you find your framework of faith?

 

[Shiranui117]

For me, I look at Holy Tradition, starting with Jesus, continuing with the Apostles, then with the students of the Apostles (the earliest Church Fathers), and then their students, on and on, throughout the ages. The Bible is a product of that Tradition, and is tied together inextricably with it. The Tradition is the living, breathing faith of all of Apostolic Christianity, made up of the experience, wisdom and teaching of millions and millions of Christians over the last 2000 years. The reason we have the books of the Bible that we do is because they are the books that everyone used in the Liturgy/Mass/Qurbano.

 

[Union jack]

Given that God works in mysterious ways
it's a mystery to me.

 

[Pegg]

Several days ago, a friend and I, who share many similar religious viewpoints, had an interesting conversation, regarding our spiritual basis. As we were talking about the fact that there is so much that could be argued about denominations, and the corruption of religion in Christianity alone. For example, we were discussing how people like to put God in 'box' and 'humanize' him. Now when we discussing this, we weren't taking sides, but just thinking about problems each mindset would bring. For example, we are Protestants, but our Youth Pastor was telling us how we have to look to scripture to know God. However that causes the problem of the fact that Protestants decided that seven books of the Catholic Bible were wrong and excluded them, along with many other traditions and doctrines. If look further back you can see that the creation of the Catholic Bible may have been political, sense there were hundreds of books that could have been included. So this gives rise to a huge set of problems, because the Bible was constructed by human beings, who are obviously fallible. Now we decided that it does not matter as long as you do not try to force others to your way of thought, and that no one may ever be totally correct; but, there is still the issue of where you draw the line. How do YOU rationalize whatever manner of belief that you follow? To me I am almost existentialist in some respects as I believe that the Bible has flaws, (but deciding what is good and what isn't is a whole other issue) but where does it end? How do you find the line? For me, I believe all men have to pursue their own Truth, and that it is futile to monopolize it. So how do you find your framework of faith?

i think its important to get the right veiw of holy scripture for a start. With regard to books being included or not included, the reason why this occured was because there were some christians who were putting things in writing and claiming them to be part of holy scripture. Today we call those writings 'apochrypha' and these are the books that the catholics kept in their bibles because the apochyrpha were accepted by the so called 'church fathers' of the catholic church.

Protestantism rightly rejected such books from the holy bible because they were not written by the authority of the apostles. The only books a christian needs in their bible are the letters written or approved by the Apostles of Christ. It was the 12 apostels who were given authority by Christ to lay down his teachings, and we should reject any other writings from anyone who is not from among the 12.


And this brings me to the next point. Knowing which books were authorized by the Apostles gives us a firm foundation for our christian faith. And so long as we base our teachings on those writings, we are putting our faith in Christ through the authority he granted to his apostles to teach us.



So for me, the bible is the number one thing we need to know what christianity is about and what it requires of us indivdiually. We must put faith in Scripture because it is the closest thing we have to Christ himself.... and there is no way he would have allowed the scriptures to become corrupted.