Some time ago an acquaintance from my Protestant fundamentalist days was in touch by email. Kevin is now a Baptist pastor working on his PhD. He wished to engage me in conversation to help me see my way out of the murky waters of Catholicism into the pure clear light of his religion.<\/p>\n
I had not come across any disputant for some time who was really a sola Scriptura<\/em> person. Most Evangelicals, when pressed, will offer some modified and qualified version of sola Scriptura<\/em> because they will admit that they rely on a Presbyterian, or a Baptist or a Methodist (or whatever) tradition to help them interpret the Scriptures. Even if they don\u2019t sign up to a particular denominational name brand, and claim to be \u2018just an ordinary Evangelical\u2019, it isn\u2019t too hard to get them to admit that even as \u2018an ordinary Evangelical\u2019 they are still interpreting the Scriptures within a particular historical and theological context, and therefore they are reliant, at least a little, on a form of tradition.<\/p>\n Not Kevin. The weird thing about discussing the matter with Kevin is that there was an absurdity to it all. Kevin would say, \u201cDwight if you just open the Scriptures and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance he will enlighten your heart.\u201d This was code for: \u201cThe Holy Spirit will lead you to believe like I do.\u201d My reply was, \u201cBut Kevin, this is exactly what I have been doing for the last twenty years and the Holy Spirit has led me to become a Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, but Dwight, if you will just open the Scriptures and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your heart\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut Kevin, that is just what I have been doing for the last twenty years and the Holy Spirit has led me to become a Catholic. What I don\u2019t understand Kevin, is that if the Scriptures are the only source of truth, why should your interpretation necessarily be the right one? If we don\u2019t rely on tradition, and it is just you and the Bible and the Holy Spirit and me and the Bible and the Holy Spirit, why should you be right and me be wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut Dwight if you will but open the Scriptures and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your heart\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n There was a weird kind of absurd tail chasing going on. Logic could not permeate such an absurd position, and I realized that within Kevin\u2019s world view was also a kind of dis-trust of reasoning and logic. I\u2019d forgotten about the fundamentalist\u2019s absolutism. Since then I\u2019ve enountered it amongst several other fundamentalist with whom I\u2019ve been involved in discussion.<\/p>\n Perhaps the word \u2018discussion\u2019 is an overstatement. There wasn\u2019t really much discussion going on I\u2019m afraid.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some time ago an acquaintance from my Protestant fundamentalist days was in touch by email. Kevin is now a Baptist pastor working on his PhD. He wished to engage me in conversation to help me see my way out of the murky waters of Catholicism into the pure clear light of his religion. I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n