Revealing post at Green Baggins

Update 2: I have to take back the compliment I gave to the one going by the name 'curate.' He's written this in a later comment: "Richard, grace is indeed mediated through the church." Hmm. Tell Warfield that. Warfield couldn't discern the pure and whole - received - Word of God, yet he could at least discern where grace comes from: "Previously, men had looked to the Church for all the trustworthy knowledge of God obtainable, and as well for all the communications of grace accessible. Calvin taught them that neither function has been committed to the Church, but God the Holy Spirit has retained both in His own hands and confers both knowledge of God and communion with God on whom He will." - B. B. Warfield

The reason these churchians are so easily picked off by the Beast Church of Rome and its glass-eyed apologists is because churchians default to Romanism at a foundational level of their understanding (or lack thereof).

Update: also give the commenter over there going by the name 'curate' some credit. He understands. Even though he thinks all Baptists are heretics. What is clear, and what is always never assumed, is the stark fact that Romanists simply don't read the Bible. They just simply don't read the Bible. They are like liberal, shallow Protestants who watch their plastic-haired television preachers or go to Crystal Cathedrals or whatever. Actually I suspect most church Christians - very much including Reformed/Calvinist - never actually read the Bible in anything close to a dedicated way giving real time and effort to the activity. Very much including Reformed academics. The fact that they can't discern cartoonishly corrupt manuscripts and versions based on them from the real thing (the real received thing) is also a result of never actually reading the Word of God.

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This post at the Green Baggins blog is rather revealing. Basically what you have there, in the post and the 700+ comments (to date) that follow it, is a gaggle of church Christians trying to figure out how one can know what the Scripture teaches.

Skip to comment #40 (fortunately the comments are numbered) and read the very concise note written by Vern Crisler to have the subject put into perspective and explained, biblically (it has to do with Bereans, and illumination by the Holy Spirit).

Actually, I'll just post Mr. Crisler's comment because a follow-up was asked of him which he didn't respond to, so I will:

Mr. Crisler wrote:

I think the above discussion illustrates what happens when Protestants give up the Berean principle of interpretive authority (individualism) and place it in the hands of institutions (collectivism). The papists will mock you all the way down the line. And to start out with a self-stultifying Wittgensteinian principle –as Lane does — doesn’t help much either.

rfwhite asked a follow up to the above:

How is it that individual interpretations become a group interpretation?

It happens by default because the term 'Berean' suggests actually searching the Word of God - engaging it, reading it...complete - (not commentaries, not books of doctrine, not confessions, not sermons, but the actual Word of God). Again, it happens by default. Spirit speaks to spirit and truth is known among those who know the truth by the Holy Spirit. The eternal mocking of Romanists and other unregenerate fools who both can't and refuse to know the truth notwithstanding.

Act 17:11 These [in Berea] were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

When you do this you get understanding which is seeing the parts in relation to the whole.

Why do I agree with the Reformation on the five solas? Because I see it in Scripture. Why do I agree with the doctrines of grace? Because I see it in Scripture. Why do I not agree with infant baptism? Because I don't see it in Scripture. Why do I not agree with the catechism of the catholic church? Because I don't see it in Scripture. It's really very simple. Oh, I have to actually engage Scripture. Actual Scripture. And I need the Spirit of truth which is the Holy Spirit (the trickiest requirement and the hardest to explain - or defend - when trying to explain this subject to the currently and proudly unregenerate; all one can say is: engage the Word of God complete and humbly, because that is the environment where regeneration happens, when it does happen).

One further, important note: you need a standard. A real standard. An unchanging standard. That means you need to humble yourselves to the pure and whole - received - text. The Hebrew Masoretic and the Greek Textus Receptus in sound translation (and the only one that exists in English, which is apparently how God intended it to be, is the Authorized - King James - Version. That is the necessary standard. Attempts to make a new translation based on those received Hebrew and Greek texts always deviate. This is due to the spirit of the times, which is a spirit of disobedience. The spirit of the devil.

Now you know the point at which your pride will be broken. If you can wipe the mocking grin off your face long enough to truly ponder your situation you will see how you must proceed, if you truly value the grace of God and the seeking of the Kingdom of God.