Originally Posted by Pilgrim
via_dolorosa,

It appears you haven't really grasped what "Sola Scriptura" is. scratch1

Harold Camping, for example, can't really be accused of violating the principle of "Sola Scriptura" because he isn't using any 'outside source' to formulate his atrocious predictions. He claims to be using the Bible alone as his source. His problem is a hermeneutical issue. The Dispensationalists also have a hermeneutical problem, one being among many, that they use a 'psycho-statistical-mean' method of interpreting texts. They then use current news to corroborate their doctrine.

Both are woefully in error and in the case of Camping, it boggles the mind that he has gone so far afield and that he has such a large following. (Matt 7:14; 24:11-13; 1Cor 11:19; 2Pet 2:1) It is one thing to read of these things in Church History books but an entirely different matter to witness them in one's own time.

The kook church in Kansas that is protesting the funerals of fallen U.S. military members also derives its warped theology from the Bible only. You have to give me more credit as I'm intimately familiar with Sola Scriptura, especially as espoused by John Calvin who taught a method of exegesis that would have precluded the error of Harold Camping and the entire pretribulation rapture movement. In particular, Calvin warned against ignoring those scriptures that categorically contradicted a cherished belief. To ignore lay-of-the-land eschatology and to try to wring out of the Bible that which it doesn't support is to me a departure from the principles of Sola Scriptura. Pretrib is guilty of this. To emphasize some parts of scripture at the expense of other parts is also a departure from Sola Scriptura. The Kansas church is guilty of this. And John Calvin expressed stout opposition to both of these.

What's more disturbing than anything, Pilgrim, and something I addressed in my last post is the "escapism" at the heart of the pretribulation rapture teaching and what that says about the character of Christians today compared to those who experienced real persecution and did not seek reprieve from it.


Liberalism -- Ideas so good, they have to be mandated.