For what reads like a pretty fair summary of the broader issue of sola scriptura click on this AI link.

This post is about my personal experience with the doctrine.

I was baptized at the behest of my parents when I was a young teen in a United Methodist Church in Maryland.  I did it mostly for my parents, which is probably typical for all Christians who are baptized while a child of any age.  That is to say that baptism at that age is more about the adults who surround the child than the child.  They are too young to have any rigorous theological or philosophical understanding of the liturgy.  The Church community contextualizes the event in the months that follow.  As months turn into years the child becomes a man and grows in his responsibility to fully understand the indelible spiritual quality of what happened when the Church baptized him.

I was presented with an inscribed Bible by the Church at the baptismal liturgy.  I have it today, some fifty-five or so years later.  I think the sola scriptura idea/doctrine was probably mentioned to me as part of the preparation for the baptismal liturgy, but I’m not certain.  I remember having a special feeling about the inscribed Bible.  I read from it periodically as a child.  I never developed a habit of daily Bible reading.

I found written and visual material of an erotic nature to be much more meaningful than Bible verses as a teenager.  While I wanted to act out what I read, and viewed, in the “literature” I never developed the habit of fornication beyond self-stimulation inspired by the jewish-promoted “literature” known as porn.  I always knew that the Bible I owned was critical of the habit, and of all forms of lust.  Talmudically, I chose to rationalize the dichotomy.

I fell in love at eighteen years old with the woman I would marry.  Raised in the Pentecostal Church she had a deeper, more emotional, connection to sola scriptura than did I.  We both attended Protestant Bible College where she studied music, and I obtained a degree in Religion & Philosophy.  I accepted the doctrine uncritically all through this process until 2020 when I entered the Roman Catholic Church. That’s when I started to think deeply about it.

As I write this blog post I’m celebrating the end of my sixth year as a Catholic.  I find deep peace in having a Priest, and the Bible, in my life.  My Priest spent years sorting through the theological and philosophical issues/controversies that followed Luther’s articulation of sola scriptura’s modern form in the 1500s.  I trust my Priest on this point mostly because the alternative in America is Protestantism, which has disintegrated into tens of thousands of small groupings that each rally around some novel interpretation and/or charismatic personality.

The oldest of the Protestant groupings are all woke now.  Their biggest concern is transgendering. They’ve developed all sorts of theological and philosophical “reasoning” to support the insanity.  They get away with it because almost nobody attends their “worship” services anymore.  They are all closing, along with the Catholic Churches that maintain a relaxed attitude toward jews and their Talmudic ideas.

During my lifetime the only christian churches that enjoyed growth were evangelical zionist enterprises.  They were captured politically by the Republican Party at the time of Ronald Reagan.  The zionism was buried in eschatology that probed from the margins of daily and weekly worship until Trump was elected for a second time.  It appears that zionism is now a major dogma of the evangelicalism that I defended for twenty years as leader of the Christian Civic League.

I never defended zionism.  I stayed away from eschatology.  I’ve always reasoned that the future belongs to God and I was never comfortable with current event, headline driven “prophets”, teachers and preachers.

I’m not surprised to see what is happening right now in Washington D.C.  After spending four years leading a Christian community that ministered to troubled souls I entered Maine’s political world at the highest layer of engagement.  I spent twenty years as the spokesman for the century old Protestant institution who’s job it was (and is) to influence public policy, The Christian Civic League of Maine.

What Trump is doing makes perfect sense to me.  He has surrounded himself with evangelical “judeo-christian” Americans who sincerely believe that Old Testament verses are as timely, relevant and authoritative today as they were when they were written.  Sola Scriptura requires that the social order honor the absolute right of every individual Christian to interpret and apply the Bible for themselves alone. Protestant pastors teach this duty, and each denomination develops unique and independent rules to tamp down the inevitable chaos.

Most teach that the Old Testament must be interpreted through the lens of the New Testament, which introduces Jesus into the interpretation and application of Old Testament ideas.  But … never forget … that the doctrine empowers every individual to interpret and apply any, and all, Bible verses themselves.

This highly individualized and sovereign characteristic, encouraged by the doctrine, creates men like current Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.  The Pope recently reminded the world that the gospel cannot be used to justify war, “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

The American Evangelical Christians who are the most enthusiastic supporters of Trump’s war of choice against Iran are quoting the Old Testament out of context.  Hegseth quotes from it regularly.

I’m not a theologian.  Never have been.  I’m barely a philosopher having merely earned a Bachelor of Arts degree.  I do, however, have practical experience at 65 years of age.  And it is from those decades of experience that I respectfully offer my perspective.

Christians in the West desperately need the help of educated Priests with their spiritual lives as they work to sort out the world that is emerging from the ashes of the American empire.

Protestantism isn’t helping.  It will end up in the dust bin of history because it has always been nothing more than a heresy.

Selah

Back when I was doing my deep dive on Nick Fuentes I came across this once young (now forty year old) Livestreamer.  He’s interviewed Dr. Jones a few times.  We need a lot more conversations that jump the artificial generational divides fueled by psychological warfare.  Great work gentlemen!

The above quote is from a Note published recently on NOSTR, a relatively new publishing protocol on the internet.  NOSTR is an acronym that is short for “Notes and Other Stuff Thru Relays.”  The NOSTR account that posted the note is called Flash.  He continues:

I discovered NOSTR through the work of another user who recently authored a book making the philosophical case for Bitcoin as global currency.  His name is Neal Flesher.

The great British journalist GK Chesterton is often cited observing, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”  The computer, and then the internet, made me feel alive.  Maybe that’s why my soul is so attached to the idea that this technology must secure human dignity and create what is good, true and beautiful.

Over the years I’ve watched the internet fall under the spell of greedy and prideful forces.  This is nowhere more obvious than on social networking platforms.  And I’ve watched all my real world friends turn into Facebook “friends.”  Their minds and souls are occupied by a culture manipulated to kill their souls … to make them into consumers of the latest thing — be it an object or an idea.

Dead people scroll their stream. 

Living people go against it.

According to this column published this morning the most violent threat to Christians worldwide is Islam.  Yet, this video was published by a Muslim last week.  His points about justice make perfect sense to me, and sound much more Biblical/Christian than Americanism.

Whenever I speak against genocide in Gaza my Christian friends justify our actions by condemning Islam, and making the claim of the column linked above — that Muslims are killing Christians all over the world.  Because this is true, they argue, Israel is justified in using our munitions to obliterate women, children and non-combatants in Gaza.

It is never just or righteous to kill the innocent.  We must move ahead with a more sophisticated and realistic understanding of what it means to live inside of borders next to others who don’t speak our language, or share our religion.  How about we start with respect, curiosity and appreciation of language/religious difference instead of giving in to the simplistic idea that we are somehow better, smarter and more worthy.

God made every single human on earth.  Every single one is made in His image.  Our first instinct MUST be to love them, especially if they are our enemy.

Amen.

Bellows is an incredibly stupid ideologue.

The Human Rights Act is not in the constitution.  It is a creature of statutory law.  It is blatantly unconstitutional.  It carves out “rights,” absent any responsibility, for citizens based on how they decide to manage their sex organs.  Everybody knows that if you mismanage your sex organs you can hurt yourself and others.

The constitutional freedom she mentions should have nothing to do with sexual evil, or biological nonsense.  Mainers should be free to choose to love, or hate, the good.  Individual choices against society’s good will bring trouble … or it should.  Bellows, and her fellow travelers, conflate all sorts of truths and realities in order to avoid thinking about, and applying, the moral law using practical reason.

For one thousand years Christianity shaped the West, referencing the moral law using practical reason.  Theology gave birth to science, and was known as the Queen of the Sciences.  Economics replaced theology as the arbiter of all value in the West, beginning in the Anglosphere.  And now the world’s hegemon (America) is forty trillion dollars in debt.

The Bellows ideology is designed to excuse sexual sin to make us docile.  Sexual evil distracts us from the real work of building strong families and communities.  Bellows cut her political teeth on the bodies of Maine babies.  I met her many years ago when she was being paid handsomely to push legislators to legalize baby murder as a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood.

Maine people have been so distanced from their own State House that they either chose to excuse baby murder, or they participated, without reasoning practically about the consequences.  The chickens are roosting all over the place in Maine now.  Horrors too numerous to name are all connected by our willful choice to neglect the moral law.

Since it’s unrealistic to replace the entire governmental class we’ll have to seek opportunities to bring incremental change using the means God makes available.

I’ll continue to blog.

Amen.

While the genocidal leader of Israel enjoyed nearly fifty bipartisan standing ovations from “our” American Congress “our” President couldn’t muster even one last night.  Order, in fact, was forced on the body by Speaker Mike Johnson.

Near the beginning of the speech Trump highlighted the divide challenging Democrats to practice some of that tolerance and diversity they preach.  His appeal fell on deaf ears.  He’s not gay enough for them.

Zelensky is gay enough for much of Congress, though Trump’s recent moves to force peace on Eastern Europe is nudging the shyster Republicans to move to the darkened corners of the Military industrial Complex to strike their deals.

Putin is outrageously not gay enough for the equity obsessed Christ hating Western Left.  His government is proud of their historic Christian religion.  American’s worship the dollar.  We don’t have time for God, especially His son Jesus Christ.  We, like Israel’s leader, only have time to mimic violent Old Testament stories, careful to neglect two millennia of theological work based on the preaching of God’s Son.

Were we to heed the gospel, news stories about war wouldn’t be published without careful consideration given to the moral law and Augustine’s Just War Doctrine.  The love taught and modeled by Christ and his disciples was smothered under an avalanche of speculation, mostly economic, in recent centuries.

Amen

The host of the “Zero Hour” YouTube channel, James Poulos, wrote a book entitled Human Forever.  It is available for purchase with Bitcoin only.  My pastor is a Bitcoin guy.  He purchased the book and let me borrow it late last year.  I enjoyed reading it.

In the one hour video interview above Poulos interviews another podcaster I appreciate, Jonathan Pageau.  The Icon painter is Eastern Orthodox and lives in Canada.

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic expressions of Christianity enjoy a refined sense of hierarchy compared to Protestantism.  There’s an unnatural and radically egalitarian flatness to everything Protestantism infuses.  This distraction from reality and truth perverts respect for the moral law and practical reason into moralism and religiosity.

The men explore the influence of the internet on our everyday lives.  I’m sure that I’m not alone in allowing the internet to focus my attention on matters that I have no influence over.  I’ve done this to the detriment of matters close to home.

As you ponder the identity crisis all of us are now living through you will find this dialogue helpful.

Amen.

I am nearly half way through this tome as I write this blog post.  I’m loving every minute reading it.  I prefer the price of ebooks over paper books having been a poor guy my whole life.  My son was kind enough to purchase this book, and Libido Dominandi for me as Christmas presents last year.