What's your AUTHORITY?

[Esaias]

How do YOU determine what is true, proper, and correct for faith and practice, as a Christian?

Let's get specific, and lay it out. What is doctrine? How do we find it? How is a doctrine, belief, or practice judged as to whether it is truly apostolic, proper, approved by God, or not?

What guidelines do you follow in determining what to believe and how to practice your faith?

[Esaias]

I guess AFFers need some time to think on this one????

[thephnxman]

Originally Posted by Esaias

How do YOU determine what is true, proper, and correct for faith and practice, as a Christian?
Let's get specific, and lay it out. What is doctrine? How do we find it? How is a doctrine, belief, or practice judged as to whether it is truly apostolic, proper, approved by God, or not?
What guidelines do you follow in determining what to believe and how to practice your faith?

Remember that we live in two realms: the spiritual realm, and the natural realm.

1) The spiritual realm manifests itself in the natural realm; the natural realm attests
to the spiritual realm;
2) They are not contradictory, but run parallel one to another: the Truth in its course,
and the evil in its course;
3) Compare the spiritual realm with the spiritual; and the natural realm with the natural.

example:
Satan manifests his work in the natural realm through abortions of children; in the spiritual
realm, he tempts the saints to abort God's word.

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by Esaias

How do YOU determine what is true, proper, and correct for faith and practice, as a Christian?

I seek the Holy Spirit's guidance and illumination upon the texts of the Holy Scripture, i.e. the 66 books of the Bible.

When I am reading the Scriptures, I expect my natural intelligence to understand the English words I am reading. This is a basic level comprehension. As I understand the text, I absorb it into my way of thinking and way of life.

But, if I don't understand a text, or if in general I want to make certain I do, I pray and ask God for insight through the Holy Spirit. I wait for inspiration from the parakletos.

If it doesn't seem to be forthcoming, I use an assortment of various resources (e.g. Bible lexicons, commentaries, and other books) to see what others have come to understand. I then try to filter that with what I know to be truth, to see if any of it makes sense/is worthy to be accepted as accurate.

Sometimes I seek the counsel of my peers, who might have greater insight. I listen to them and make a choice to determine if what they are saying is accurate. I often ask my wife her opinion, as well.

But most of all, I seek the counsel of the true author and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, God Himself.

Let's get specific, and lay it out. What is doctrine?

Teaching.

How do we find it?

I find doctrine in the Holy Scriptures, Old and New Covenant. But I also look to the Spirit for understanding. I might read a verse in the Bible, but the verse in question doesn't make any sense to me a part from additional information. I might need a Bible dictionary or atlas, for example. Then, with the new information in hand, I reread the verse and come to understand what God is, through the verse, attempting to teach (i.e. what doctrine He is looking to formulate in the minds of those who read and believe His Word).

How is a doctrine, belief, or practice judged as to whether it is truly apostolic, proper, approved by God, or not?

The Holy Spirit has to bear witness to the Truth. Jesus is the Truth. He said the Holy Spirit would bare witness of Him. Therefore, we must rely upon the Holy Spirit to lead us into all Truth, as an extension and expression of the Messiah. Anything that doesn't jive with Jesus must be rejected out of hand.

This leads us back to the Gospels. Jesus is the foundation for all that we are and believe. Everything must go through Him. If it doesn't fit with what He said and did in the Gospel narratives, it can be tossed out.

What guidelines do you follow in determining what to believe and how to practice your faith?

I practice something along of the lines of Occam's Razor, or parsimony, when it comes to Bible interpretation. I believe cutting an interpretation down to it's most basic meaning is the right approach.

If I have to bend and twist and try to make things fit, or if I have to spiritualize a text in order to make sense of it, that is, the more complicated I make a verse in order to understand it, the less likely my understanding is accurate. I therefore parse it down to it's basic meaning.

An example:

Give us this day our daily bread.

A complex interpretation requires us to make assumptions about Jesus meant. We jump to Ezekiel and Revelation to see God compare His Word to bread. We then assume that all of the Word of God is "bread". We add to that verses that talk about feeding, as in "feed my sheep". We then assume that what Jesus meant was "give us this day our daily Word of God". We then assume Jesus wants us to read the Bible every day.

This is overly complex and too spiritualized, so I reject it, since it takes too much information and calculation to make sense of it. I have to make too many assumptions before I can determine what Jesus meant.

Here is an interpretation that has been parsed down, or put through Occam's Razor:

Give us this day our daily bread means we should pray and trust in God to give to us the food we need to eat on a daily basis. It's about provision, not a Bible reading program.

Much simpler, pretty literal, and it doesn't make any assumptions about what Jesus must have meant in a hidden way.

I try to leave gnostic interpretations that require secret knowledge of God and His Word alone.

[Aquila]

Scripture should be the source of all doctrine (teaching). However, Scripture should be interpreted as it is illuminated by the light of the Spirit.

[n david]

Originally Posted by Esaias

How do YOU determine what is true, proper, and correct for faith and practice, as a Christian?

It's whatever the Pastor of the church I'm attending says it is.

Originally Posted by Esaias

What is doctrine? How do we find it?

Any book written by David Bernard.

Originally Posted by Esaias

How is a doctrine, belief, or practice judged as to whether it is truly apostolic, proper, approved by God, or not?

Don't question a Pastor's authoritay! Also David Bernard's books.

Originally Posted by Esaias

What guidelines do you follow in determining what to believe and how to practice your faith?

UPC Articles of Faith.










[tic]

[kclee4jc]

In this order.

1. The Written Word

2. The Preached Word

3. Inward leading of the Holy Ghost

[Esaias]

So, HOW is faith and practice to be determined? Simply saying "from the Word" doesn't in itself mean much. Catholics, Protestants, baptists, Pentecostals etc all claim essentially that same thing, but differ on just about every single point of faith and practice.

The question is "How do you derive your teachings and practices from the Scripture and from the Spirit?"

What is your "hermeneutic", so to say?

[Esaias]

Does anyone here even have a systematic hermeneutic? Just wondering....

[Esaias]

Honestly, I have been thinking that most "apostolics" do not have any solid framework within which to learn scripture and determine doctrine and practice. The responses so far seem to bear that out.

What I mean is this: OPs have not defined any reasonable, systematic, consistent method for determine faith and practice. Instead, we are, as a movement, highly inconsistent in our approach to scripture and the faith. Inconsistent not only with one another, but with ourselves, even.

Thus we have the following results:

Practically no unity in faith except in literally one or two, maybe three beliefs.

No unity in regards to several important practices (including "standards").

Unity in large measure regarding certain practices, but no rational and scripturally consistent explanation for why it is so. (In other words, traditions we keep without really knowing or understanding where they come from or why we keep them.)

Lots of private conjecture being propagated as doctrine, as binding, as obligatory, as truth, without any solid scriptural basis and usually in opposition to all the other private conjectures floating around.

"Just trust me, I'm the pastor" attitudes.

A lack of united front against heresies. We don't really have a clear and consistent mechanism for even identifying heresies in our own midst, let alone "out there", much less presenting a consistent witness to the truth.

A general across the board inability to maintain a rational examination of doctrine and practice, due to everybody coming at it from a completely different, unharmonized paradigm, point of view, worldview, etc. In other words, we make communication almost impossible because nobody is starting on the same page. We have no common framework within which to discuss or debate, examine, prove, etc. One's refutation is unheeded because the other can't even recognize the argument, for example. People disagree with each other without really understanding how and why they disagree.

And so many different views, doctrines, opinions, everyone screaming to be heard and believed, nobody in agreement... why, isn't that called confusion? And God is not the author of confusion...

So I submit we ought to get crackin' and figure out a reasonable, biblical, and apostolic approach to scripture, that can be taught to others. If the approach or method is correct, then the results ought to be consistent... and consistency is sorely lacking these days.