Quote 1155
The Holy Spirit provides the canon for the church; the church does not establish the canon by her own authority. Does the Spirit do this by new divine revelation? No, by His work among the people of God, in whom He dwells.
James White
Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 109). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.2.8K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.Dividing Line
Christianity exists only when the preaching of the cross is its message.
That is why the unregenerate person cannot understand the urgency of the gospel message: until they see the depth of their sin and the holiness of God, they find no reason to seek remedy for their condition.
Consider for a moment how precious it is that the Christian can say, "I have been crucified with Christ." This is a personal atonement, personal substitution. We revel in the awesome love of our Savior who loved us as individuals and gave Himself up for us. For me! Me, the hate-filled sinner who spurned Him and His love! How much less glorious is the idea, "Christ loved a generic group and died so as to give them the opportunity to possibly join the group and hence receive certain benefits.The Potter's Freedom (248)
Jesus is able to save not merely make savable.The Potter's Freedom (240)
Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group's view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God's truth.Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 43). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Rome demands men and women to believe things the Apostles never taught as part of the gospel today, and she does so because she rejects sola scriptura.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cl9n5tqFcc&t=230s
Tradition is normally used negatively by the Apostles, and when it is used positively it is referring to the singular message of the Gospel, not to a secret, hidden, or unwritten and undefined body of "non-public" revelation.(10:03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cl9n5tqFcc
One of the most insidious and dangerous aspects of grief can be summed up in one quotation: "I just want to get back to the way I was".Grieving, 59
The truth that God saves by Himself, by His own power, on the basis of His own will, defines the message of the Reformers.The Potter's Freedom (36)
Truth shines the most brightly against the backdrop of error. The Potter's Freedom(14)
The doctrine of the Trinity is simply that there is one eternal being of God - indivisible, infinite. This one being of God is shared by three co-equal, co-eternal persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/1998/04/29/a-brief-definition-of-the-trinity
The hand that holds onto its own alleged goodness, or attempts to sneak in a merit here, a good work there, will not find the open hand of God's grace. Only the empty hand fits into the powerful hand of grace. Only the person who finds in Christ his all-in-all will, in so finding, be made right with God. This is why the Scriptures say it is by faith so that it might be in accordance with grace: in God's wisdom, he excludes man's boasting by making salvation all of grace.http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/1993/04/29/the-empty-hand-of-faith/
Christian scholarship that lacks passion about the truth is not worthy of the name Christian to begin with. If dispassion and detachment are necessary attributes of scholarship, then I do not seek the appellation. Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 10). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Thus, the Muratorian Fragment does not appear to be establishing or "creating" a canon but is expressly affirming what has already been the case within the early church.The Heresy of Orthodoxy
Thus, any suggestion that the church creates the canon, or that the canon is simply and solely the outcome of a long period of "choosing" by the established church, would not only unduly reverse the biblical and historical order but would have been an idea foreign to the earliest Christians.50 This is why the early church fathers speak consistently of "recognizing"51 or "receiving"52 the books of the New Testament, not creating or picking them.53 In their minds, scriptural authority was not something they could give to these documents but was something that was (they believed) already present in these documents—they were simply receiving what had been "handed down" to them.The Heresy of Orthodoxy
In the end, the New Testament canon is not so much a collection of writings by apostles, but rather a collection of apostolic writings—writings that bear the authoritative message of the apostles and derive from the foundational apostolic era (even if not directly from their hand). The authority of the New Testament books, therefore, is not so much about the "who" as it is about the "when." It is about the place of a particular book within the scope of redemptive history.The Heresy of Orthodoxy
The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.
Anger must be dealt with. It cannot be ignored. Anger is a very strong emotion and, if left to itself, will trap us in destructive attitudes and viewpoints. The Christian has a means of dealing with anger, for the opposite of anger is love, and the resources of love available to the person redeemed in Christ is inexhaustible. The salve for anger is forgiveness, and since the believer has been forgiven in Christ, he or she can likewise forgive.Grieving, 38
One does not seek to escape grief, but to embrace it, work through it, allow it to heal the hurt, so that we can move on with our lives in full light and recognition of what has happened and how God has changed our lives as a result.Grieving, 23
one of the earliest definitions of "ancient tradition" was limited to truths that are clearly taught in Scripture. This "tradition" of Irenaeus, which he claimed was found throughout the true churches, is not some extra-biblical concept but is a summary of Scripture's basic teachings.Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 203). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
It is astonishingly ironic that Christianity's tremendous teaching regarding the value of women - their equality with men in standing before God and the honor given their role as mothers and wives - is ignored by so many who oppose the faith, yet those same people will embrace sources such as this [Gospel of Thomas] that are so patently anti-woman in their viewpoint.Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (pp. 130-131). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The foundation of the certainty of our knowledge of the canon is based upon God's purposes in giving Scripture, not upon the alleged authority of any ecclesiastical body.Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 107). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
This is why we should call the canon an artifact of revelation: It is not itself an object of revelation, but comes into existence as a by-product of the action itself.Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 103). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Jesus taught that even those traditions the Jews believed came from Moses were to be subjected to correction by Scripture (Matthew 15: 1- 9; Mark 7: 5- 13).Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 21). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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