shadmans Musings  

  The book of first Timothy is one of the pastoral epistles and is a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. It is a letter whose express purpose is to build up a young leader who is the pastor of a huge church in the city of Ephesus. Timothy is dealing with false teachers within the church itself and seems to be overwhelmed with the responsibilities of how to address and root them out of the church. It is a problem that is not so uncommon in churches today. This letter is meant to encourage Timothy by reminding him of God’s faithfulness.  Who was Timothy?  Timothy grew up without a father. Acts 16:1 tells us that his mother and grandmother were believing Jews who understood the Old Testament Scriptures but his father was an unbelieving Greek. It would also appear that his father did not have much of an influence on his son. We also know that it was Timothy’s mother and grandmother who raised him in his faith (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:15). So, when Paul came through on one of his miss...

  To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, Ignatius of Loyola, Thirteenth Rule As we start this blog, number 41 in the Sola Scriptura series, I am struck by the quote above from Ignatius of Loyola, the creator of the Jesuit order within the Catholic Church. This is slightly different from the one given in Webster’s book, but it is no less stunning and relevant for the topic at hand.  In the last two blogs, I showed that the appeal to the ‘unanimous consent of the fathers’ by both Trent and Vatican I, is beginning to be ignored altogether. In this blog, we will see why. In the past, Catholicism used this phrase in an attempt to appeal to the past, specifically the Church fathers, as a basis to justify some of the beliefs demanded by the Church for her parishioners to faithfully and obediently believe in, even though there is no biblical or historical basis for these beliefs. I also examin...

  In this blog, #40 in my Sola Scriptura series, I will continue the review of the authority claims of Rome, which refuses to accept the formal sufficiency of Scripture. If you will remember, I discussed Formal Sufficiency in parts 17 and 18 ( Part 17: Formal Sufficiency and Clarity of Scripture, Pt 1 and Part 18: Formal Sufficiency and Clarity of Scripture, Pt 2 ) of this Sola Scriptura series but a strict definition was never given, so let me give one now. I ran across a blog discussing this topic and had a particularly nice definition,  Formal sufficiency says that Scripture also contains all that is necessary to use the pieces to build the structure which is the complete testimony and harmony of Christian doctrine. In other words, the Scripture is clear enough that there is no need for an external authority to interpret it . Going back to the analogy, this would be the blueprints for what’s being built.  Scripture is Formally Sufficient – by Lee Keitel [ emphas...