DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION
ON DIVINE REVELATION
DEI VERBUM
SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED
BY HIS HOLINESS
POPE PAUL VI
ON NOVEMBER 18, 1965

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, (8) has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, (9) whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

Council of Trent
Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, It decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall,—in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, —wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church,—whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures,—hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published. Contraveners shall be made known by their Ordinaries, and be punished with the penalties by law established.

Seeing as the RCC doesn't buy Sola Scriptura, your question is moot.

However, that whole "What ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" thing certainly fills the bill.

Please elaborate...I'm not following you..
Are you saying you can't tell me what this verse says?

You are completely failing to explain how and who determined what books could be so described. You seem to accept with no scriptural evidence that those 66 books equate to scripture, while rejecting even the existence of the teaching authority that allowed those 66 books to be declared scripture. To interpret Timothy as you do would, in fact, reject any new scriptures, and even the very letter he was writing, lest he back it up with scriptural references.

There is nothing in the New testament to suggest a final culmination and conclusion of Church teaching authority after assembling a book of scriptures, after which no teachings that are not spelled out verbatim in the scriptures are valid. In fact, there is in scripture plenty of reference to teachings that were not painstakingly written down, and evidence that scriptures were never intended to serve as the sole basis for Christian teaching.

And the whole argument in moot anyway, as I have yet to meet a Sola Scriptura advocate who did not take immense liberties with interpretation of a few passing phrases in order to justify a theology.

Is the gospel in the Bible? Yes or no.

For purposes of adult discussion, please articulate which definition of "gospel" you are using.

Generally, though, yes. As articulated in the aptly named Gospels (at least two of which were believed to have been written after Paul's letter to Timothy, FWIW).

1 Cor. 15, 1-4

There it is.  No need to add to it.

Well here is something to ponder just my two cents or good common sense
Well here is what God had Moses record about His creation so they would know how things came about.)
Point (1)
Genesis 1:1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Point (2) Genesis 1:3
3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Point 3 God made light
Genesis 1:4-5
4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
Very important point a day is still one revolution of the earth it also establishes time.

Point 4 God made the Heavens
Genesis 1:7-8
7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. ( Remember one revolution of the earth = one day

Point 5 God makes dry land and plants that already reproduce seeds to what?
Genesis 1:9-13
9 Then God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.
Remember one revolution of the earth = one day, not bad for three days work just speaking things into being.

Point 6
Genesis 1:14-19
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;
15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so.
16 Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.
17 God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth,
18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Remember one day = one revolution of the earth. When the earth goes once around the sun it = one year and the tilt of the earth gives us our season as we go around the sun in one year.

Point 7 All God does is speak and wham in the 4th day of creation all the heavens are made complete even the light that travels from the farthest star reaching earth in one day.
Genesis 1:20-23
20 Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens."
21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
23 So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Remember one day = one revolution of the earth. When the earth goes once around the sun it = one year and the tilt of the earth gives us our season as we go around the sun in one year.

Point 8 God creates man on the 6th day.
Genesis 1:26-31
26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
29 And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so.
31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Remember one day = one revolution of the earth. When the earth goes once around the sun it = one year and the tilt of the earth gives us our season as we go around the sun in one year. Keep in mind, since the first 6 days of creation the position and orbit around the sun been able to in such a way to support life as God created it to be.

Hebrews 11:3
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

So i will end here. The bible, Gods Holy Word does tell us about His creation and how it came about and how long it took Him, 6 days.

2 Peter chapter 3 makes it clear that in the last days, people will be willfully ignorant of the flood and creation.

Now can you be a Christian and believe in evolution? That's up to Christ alone. There is only one unforgivable sin and evolution is not it. We all have sinned in various ways and been wrong about things, does being wrong and believing in evolution mean you cannot have a relationship with Christ? I strongly doubt it, but it is a slippery slope to start "interpreting" parts of the scripture to match the worldly view, and somewhere I would not want to be for long.

This does not say what you imply it says, that only the RCC can interpret scripture.  What it DOES say is that, in those cases where the RCC has authoritatively provided an interpretation in matters of faith and morals, that interpretation is binding on the faithful.  That is the whole point of the Magisterium of the Church.  There is a lot of scripture where the RCC has not provided authoritative faith and morals (i.e. binding) interpretation.  

Ironically, most fundamentalists do not believe that an individual can correctly interpret scripture either.  Well, fundamentalists believe that an individual may be able to interpret scripture as long as that interpretation does not disagree with the interpretations that those same fundamentalists hold.  Other interpretations would be wrong.

Without the authority to proclaim a doctrine, how do believers know what to believe?  What happens when believers disagree.

Ain't it the truth...

The big key is when people were able to read the Bible for themselves.

Hey, denomination doesn't equal Christian.  Just because someone has a church doesn't mean they are Christians.  There are nuts all over the place.  And if you think the RCC is immune,  you are fooling yourself.

It says if you disagree with the RCC interpretation you are wrong.  Who said fundamentalist think people can't correctly interpret scripture?  Hey, I say the RCC doesn't agree with the Bible so they are wrong.  And the Vatican probably cares what I think about as much as I care what they think of me.

Let me set this up for you so that you can understand what I believe.

I have a degree in Environmental Science. I am a devout believer in Christ. My degree required everything from Molecular Biology, Biology, to Botany.
I grew up with the scriptures from the King James Bible.

Psalm 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

2 Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The first 5 books of the Old Testament were attributed to Moses and written down for the benefit of the people from oral tradition that he heard and knew from his growing up. In Genesis, I believe that the 7 days listed are 'time periods' that are unknown to us. There must be light and dark periods in order to tell time. and until heaven and earth were made, and the sun and stars created, there could only have been God's time. So God's time periods. Evolution has been given as an alternate to the Creation but I don't think it is an alternate. I will state that Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden of no known time except that he was told to be a steward over the garden and tend to it. He named all the beasts in this garden. No telling how long this took.

Evolution, as Charles Darwin saw it, is that change occurs as a result of outside forces or the species dies. An example: Hawaii has birds specifically adapted to the specific plants that they adapted to eat. Finches are a great example. An ancestral finch group arrived in Hawaii quite some time ago, could not fly back, and through adaptive radiation (adaptation that spread out into various areas) has numerous differing relatives that specialize in certain food sources. These birds are found no where else. This is what Darwin wrote on in Evolution of a Species. We currently use evolution to product strains of stock in plants and livestock (called selective breeding}. GMO's are created strictly in a lab splicing genetic material. As for the death and resurrection of Christ, There were witnesses to that. They gave testimony of 3 day time period on earth. I believe the witnesses.

Do I believe in the strict 24 hour period for Genesis? No. I cannot based on the writings there and elsewhere. There could not be a 24 hour period until the sun and moons had been created. The time MUST then be God's Time, of which we know not.

Is it possible for two fundamentalists to disagree about a scriptural interpretation?

Yes and no.  There are fundamental truths that must be consistent to be within Christian orthodoxy.  That's not to say people can't interpret them.  The Bible tells us that people will have differing opinions on certain verses also.  Paul says this in Romans 14:5 .  These are not the critical verses to our salvation that he is speaking of here, but the ones that start denominations...like what day to worship etc.  does God care if I worship him on Saturday or Sunday? No.  These are the small things that usually start denominations.  When they start marrying Gays, promoting abortion and believing Jesus was not Devine, they are no longer within orthodoxy.

But that's the problem, who draws that line?





What's to say that "orthodoxy" hasn't been wrong for centuries due to fallible human understanding?





Also, historically the clergy used to say "only we can properly understand scripture", then you had a big movement where it was "read it and decide for yourself", and now it seems we're back to "only people who have studied it enough can understand it, any random lay person can't just read the text and make up their own mind without guidance".





It seems to me that christianity has come full circle.





 

I wouldn't call it a circle, the "read it and decide for yourself" crowd has always declared their decision a new orthodoxy and been quick to chastise those who decided otherwise.

So, I take it you don't believe people are able to read the Bible and understand what it says? They must be instructed by the church as to what to believe?

Who decides what comprises Christian orthodoxy?  What if people reading the bible for themselves disagree on what constitutes the "necessary core" or fundamental truths of orthodoxy?

What do you mean when you say "big key"?  What date do you affix to most people being able to read the Bible for themselves?

God.

So, no one can really know if they have correctly interpreted the Bible.  Only God knows.

I did not say that.  You asked who decided Christian Orthadoxy.

So, if two people reading the bible for themselves disagree on what constitutes the "necessary core" or fundamental truths of orthodoxy, how are people supposed to know which is correct?

Go find God's prophet on this Earth and ask him to pray about your questions. God has his prophets to instruct and intercede for us. I ask you....who is God's living prophet on earth today? He has always had a prophet on earth for us. Where is He?

Well...there is certainly one answer....

Yeah...a prophet that doesn't prophecy....

 

Look at history. Rome didn't want Bibles in native languages nor Bibles in the hands of the peasants. When that changed is when Rome lost it's monopoly in the west...they never had it in the east though.

 

I think God had enough and removed their lampstand by raising people like Tyndale. See Rev. 2:18-29 for more insight. One thing that causes people to leave the RCC for evangelical Christianity is actually reading the Bible for themselves without Rome's commentary.

More accurately, the Holy Spirit.

 

In a word, BULLHOCKEY.

The reason so many leave the CC for Fundamentalist Evangelicalism is because they have been so poorly taught of how everything the Church teaches is right there in the Book.

I know because I was one of those, and then a funny thing happened: Catholics who KNOW their faith began showing me how insanely WRONG the "Sola Scriptura, interpret it yourself" crowd actually is, historically and theologically.

Sola ecclesia ain't the answer. Please show me in scripture where it says I can't interpret scripture and only the RCC can.

You have no idea what sola scriptura actually is, apparently. It's not the first time you've gotten evangelical terminology wrong.

And everything the RCC teaches is not in the Bible, or you wouldn't have to defer to tradition, the catechism, or the Vatican.

You answered neither of the questions I asked

I suggest if you want your question answered you should look into Tyndale's biography, for one. It didn't happen overnight either.

 

"Go read this book" isn't a discussion.  Guess we're done having one.

You presume that everything has to be in the Bible, which is a falsehood born of the "Reformation". They simply didn't want to follow Rome (a political decision), and so ditched what they didn't like, including entire books of the Bible.

They only believe in one book; the one they tore entire books of and creatively edited to match their doctrine, and whose meaning they can't even agree on amongst themselves....

I can't believe I fell for it once...

No one has said don't read the apocrypha.  In fact both Luther and Calvin said you will learn from reading them.   Remember, these are books that the Hebrews did not consider inspired.  Only the RCC did when they Cannonized them at Trent. It was at this point that the RCC decided that it could take it upon itself to add to Gods word.  AND it was a direct result of the Reformation.  They said " we'll show you, we will make these books scripture"  adding things seems to be a reoccurring theme with the RCC.

Then show us "right there in the Book" the parts about changing His everlasting Sabbath to the day of the sun, eating swine is OK, eliminating His set apart Holy Days and replacing them with days more aligned with what sun worshipers observed well over 2,000 years ago, or erecting a graven image at the front of the building, and bowing down to it.

I don't read Scripture only, but never anything that teaches contrary to Scripture.
And please don't waste time by using catholic dogma to back up catholic dogma.

The Sabbath is Saturday (Latin: Sabbatum). The Lord's Day is Sunday (Latin: Dies Dominica). Christians have set aside the Lord's Day for gathering together and breaking bread since the days of Acts. This is documented in that there Bible of yours. I could cite Catholic "dogma" that goes into why, but the fact stands for itself. (Acts 20:7)

As for eating swine, "Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean."

As for holidays - I could see where you'd have a beef if you reject Church Authority - but you have no scriptural basis for rejecting Church authority. Co-opting pagan celebration to honor God is not as sinister as you make it out to be.

As for graven images - by definition, a "graven image" is an image used for worship. Christians use images for reminders or to tell stories - not to worship. Bowing is not a form of worship - that's just a sign of respect (not worship) - and not to the statue itself, but to the person it represents. Just more nonsense. In Biblical times, people bowed to elders, leaders, etc. In the Western world, handshakes have evolved to replace much of that, but with education and perspective you will quickly figure out a bow is not "worship." People "worshiped" by offering sacrifices to gods. Back in the day, they often crafted images of those gods out of gold or stone or what not. You may recall the story of the Golden Calf.  THAT was a graven image.

Wrong.

The Canon was in place before Trent, and at the time of Christ, those books WERE considered inspired by the Hebrews. They ditched them AFTER the life of Christ.

And even if the CC did "take it upon itself" to do something, a) it was given that authority by Christ Himself, and b) Christ Himself said the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, therefore, He does not permit His Church to teach error.


ETA: I see B_A already answered the other canned anti-Catholic garbage that passes for "Bible Christianity"...

Wrong.  Please show me where they were considered inspired by the Hebrews.  He did say the Gates of Hell would not Prevail.  However A. I don't consider the RCC to be His church.  B. Gates don't do anything but stand there.  To say that Gates attack? The church doesn't make sense.  What makes sense by that statement is that God and His church will knock down the gates by the spread of the Gospel.

You should start by evaluating why you choose to reject the Church established directly by Christ Himself. It's right there in red and white, even in the government-approved KJV.

You have actively chosen to go directly against the words of Christ. You're on your own...

I am not on my own.  God is with me.  I have not rejected the church that God established.  I reject the teachings of the RCC which are in direct contradiction to Jesus.( not all of their teachings are). But the Universalism that is creeping out of Rome today sure is.  Just look at the last 200 years.  First you had to be a member of the RCC to be saved...then Protestants were saved..but won't enjoy it fully...now God knows what people's hearts are so even if someone doesnt believe in Jesus they may still be saved...how is that consistent?  That is universalism and is wrong.

Oh, but declaring yourself saved and the God is with you just because you say so is perfectly orthodox.

You have no idea what the CC teaches, and like so many others, you react to what you THINK it teaches.

And as for who may be saved, it truly is up to God, and since you don't seem to care what the Church says anyway, why would it saying the facts of the universe bother you?

Are you one of these people who believes that God will damn a person to hell simply because they never heard of Jesus or the Gospels, and therefore never "accepted Him as their personal Lord and Savior" (to borrow a worn-out and thoroughly unbiblical line)?

I'm not big on that terminology.  And let me be clear, I'm not one of those people who says that if you are Roman Catholic you are not saved.  I don't believe that.  I am not Catholic and never have been. But I have read the CCC and have asked friends who are Catholic, and people on here questions about the RCC.  Maybe what I have learned is incorrect.  If that is true, and I don't understand it, I am man enough to say I'm wrong.  I was also under the impression that the RCC says we are saved by faith and works.  Am I correct in this? Must someone be baptized to be saved? Must I believe in the immaculate conception to be saved? Can someone lose their salvation?