You tell us what Matt 18 means then if you want to be contentious.
How about I post it here and we can figure it out from the context?
15"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
16"But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED.
17"If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
18"Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
19"Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.
20"For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst."
Are you familiar w/ how to perform proper exegesis of the biblical text? How might we go about figuring out how to interpret this psg? This is a question to any reader.
My fellow protestants screw this passage up all the time and think it is talking about binding and loosing principalities and powers, when it is clearly talking about church discipline/accountability.
ReplyDeleteI notice that neither Orthodox nor Lucian have stopped by to give it a try. Must not be their strong suit.
ReplyDelete(a) _I_ challenged _you_. Throwing it back at me is invalid.
ReplyDelete(b) As I elaborated on in the other thread, I'm not the one claiming that all answers are available from exegesis.
(c) We may well find that I agree with much of your exegesis of the context, but it wouldn't invalidate what I said about it. So far, all you're doing is trying to wriggle out again.
a) As if you have no burden to demonstrate a meaning of the psg yourself. And yours should be bulletproof, coming from an infallible Church and all.
ReplyDeleteb) But your church claims that nothing in the Scripture, properly understood, contradicts Church teaching. So it's not JUST my problem.
c) What would (and does) invalidate it is that the psg mentions nothing about the church teaching infallibly and everything about church discipline.
And while I commend you for commenting here too, you get several demerits for not exegeting. That's what the post is for.
I notice that neither Orthodox nor the great Lucian have stopped by to give it a try.
ReplyDeleteYou've noticed well. After my great admonition, I've quit posting on this site, as You can see. There's nothing me and Big O. can say that Gold-Mouth can't say better. ;)
About the closing of the canon: if Prophecy ceized some four-five hundred yrs. before the time Jesus the Christ, how come John the Baptist is/was a "Prophet", and Jesus "the greatest" of them all? -- this is not a "trick-question" ... the Jews have their own agenda while confessing a 'by-the-time-of-Ben-Sira closed' canon. I fail to see what's Yours.
ReplyDelete>What would (and does) invalidate it is that the psg
ReplyDelete>mentions nothing about the church teaching
>infallibly and everything about church discipline.
Your challenge to me was to show the Church being infallible from scripture. If all I showed was Church infallibility in the area of church discipline, I ANSWERED THE CHALLENGE. You didn't ask for a passage showing infallibility in a particular sphere of activity. First conceed the Church infallible in one area, then we can move onto other areas.
>But your church claims that nothing in the
>Scripture, properly understood, contradicts
>Church teaching. So it's not JUST my problem.
You are the one claiming that exegesis always leads to proper understanding. So it's more your problem than mine. The bible was born into a pre-existing church with already formed shared understandings.