From: johnson@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu (Arthur Johnson)
Subject: Re: Sola Scriptura (was Re: Perfect Prophets?)
Organization: Physical Sciences Lab, UW-Madison
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 92 00:17:41 GMT

In article <Aug.15.17.18.48.1992.17942@athos.rutgers.edu>  
hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:
> johnson@offroad.chem.wisc.edu (Arthur Johnson) writes:
> 
> 
> >     This is one of the big problems I have with Protestant  
Christianity.  
> >Its foundation is built on the principle of "Sola Scriptura". For this  
to  
> >be meaningful, Scripture must be reliable.
> 
> Van Kelly recently posted an interesting article on
> soc.religion.christian.  He pointed out that it's quite possible to
> communicate reliably over a noisy channel.  All you need is
> redundancy.  Christian ideas are not based on single passages.  Real
> theological work involves studying concepts as they appear across all
> of Scripture.  The amount of error in transmission of the text is
> insignificant on this scale.  Indeed most Christians who deny
> inerrancy believe that the non-textual errors (i.e. errors that were
> present in the originals, and not added in the copying process) are
> also not sufficient to affect the results.  Note that the real
> disagreements among Christians are seldom due to claimed errors in the
> original, but rather are based on differences in interpretation.

     Basically, I agree with what you've wrote. I guess I fit into the  
category of those Christians who deny inerrancy, but believe that these  
errors are not of critical importance. "Sola Scriptura" can be a workable  
principle, _provided_ that Scripture is either inerrant or the errors  
(noise) are incidental to the message (signal). I do think that Protestant  
Christians sometimes need to keep in mind, however, that the complete text  
of Scripture did not fall from Heaven like manna in the wilderness.  
Rather, Scripture needs to be viewed for what it is: a part of the  
Tradition of the Church, created and nurtured through the cooperation of  
both the Trinity and humanity. Having been raised in a deeply Protestant  
family, I have witnessed first-hand some of the problems that come about  
from taking "Sola Scriptura" to its extreme limits.

     Most importantly, I think that all of us Christians need to remember  
who it was that called us to deify/sanctify creation, i.e. to heal  
creation and make it transparent to grace. Scripture and Tradition should   
not be our ultimate focus; rather, let's remember that it is the Three  
revealed _by_ Scripture and Tradition that should be our focus. In all of  
the heated disagreements and varied interpretations of what Scripture does  
or does not say (or even what books should or should not be part of  
Scripture) that we have, let's try to keep things in perspective, so that  
we can distinguish what is truly important from what is open to  
speculation. Honest disagreements are fine, but let's not seek by clever  
words and arguments to set snares to catch each other. Rather, let us keep  
in mind Christ's words to the Apostles: by this the world shall know that  
you are My disciples, that you love one another.

Yours in Christ,

Arthur Johnson
johnson@offroad.chem.wisc.edu

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." -- the Jesus Prayer

"Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on me" -- the Trisagon     
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