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Originally Posted by thunaer  I guess I forgot to say why I was asking these questions......
Been reading a Critique of the Evangelical Doctrine of Solo Scriptura by Keith Mathison
and pondering regula fidei, The Rule of Faith.
Mathison makes a great argument that our ecumenical councils and their rulings are essential for the Rule of Faith and such.....
Otherwise the canon of scripture is lost and most orthodox understanding of christianity which leads to mayhem, Autonomy, Individualism, etc.....
But I also know that councils err and have erred and will continue to err... So I guess I am trying to figure out if there is a difference between the ecumenical early councils and more regional definitive Confessions like the Westminister, etc....
What should completely bind the Christian? Ecumenical Council Decrees? |
I'm teaching on this right now at our Church over a 16 week set of lectures. The early ecumencial creeds are part and parcel of the WCF and are received as a unity in the regula fidei with Scripture.
If you would like I can send you my second lecture that goes into some detail on this, and also Dr. McMahon who allowed me to utilize some of his work in this area has a great article on it on his website, A Puritans Mind.
I would highly recommend Dr. Rushdoony's Foundations of Social Order - a Study in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church. This book will revolutionize your life in terms of the Reformed Faith and will clear away the haze and smokiness that clouds the understanding from the plethora of misconceptions that are popular today.
I would add, that this a big part of the reason that the Received Text of Scripture is so important to Protestantism, as the return to ancient catholic orthodoxy in the Reformation was coupled to a return to the ancient Greek text that the Greek speaking Churches and other historic Protestants, such as the Waldensians, were using for centuries. Whereas the Western Church was using the Latin Vulgate and considered it inspired and adopted it's textual base as the foundation of its doctrines. For example, in Luke 1:28 the Vulgate translated the Greek as "full of grace," whereas the Protestants translated it as "favored," then in Matthew 1:25 the common Greek read "firstborn son," whereas the Vulgate doesn't have that. All of these things coupled together to be proof texts for their doctrine of Immaculate Conception of Mary and the common Greek were proof texts against the doctrine for the Protestants. This isn't neutral ground.
Thomas