My goodness, no comment from Paul VanderKlay yet. It always makes be chuckle how fast and excited his responses are. It's been a joy to watch the good faith back and forth responses between you and John. The way you both have conducted yourselves shows how great you both will be in dia logos. I look forward to the conversation over at Paul's channel
Hello dr. Cooper, thank you for defending the Lutheran doctrines so passionately. Just wanted to say that to you. Wish we could have a discussion on salvation some day. God’s blessings to you this Christmas sir.
I feel like his point was that even in misinterpreting a figure/idea -- from inside or outside of a movement, if new ideas are created as a result we have to in some sense regard them as "caused" by the prior figure/ideas. It's a strange way of looking at it. Surely we can't regard the former ideas as "at blame"?
@Phlebas But that is my point. Vervaeke is making the distinction between "blaming Luther" for the rise of Nazism, and recognizing how his writings influenced them such that if he never wrote that tract, they wouldn't have had an advantage in wooing Germans toward vicious antisemitism -- despite the fact that Luther would be appalled if he would've seen what his work was used for. I understand what he's saying. Influence (direct or indirect) vs a canonical lineage of learning. Another example: If Protestantism never happened (hypothetically), you could argue that Liberalism would have never happened (its necessary seedbed) -- it's arguable, but not absolutely so. "You misunderstood me!" "It doesn't matter, you gave me the idea."
@@Catholic-Perennialist well they claim Jesus as one of their prophets and Muhammad did seem to pick up a lot from his christian uncle (confused thought it be). After all they're considered Christian heretics and named by the same convention as Mohammadians. I could also pick the Albigensian Crusade or the Nazi party and their '3rd' Reich paralleling early Christian (Montanist) thought of the three ages. The point remains despite your question.
Vervaeke needs to get ahold of your 'Union with Christ' volume, it's so perfect that he's interacting with you on Luther interpretation -- especially since his major concern is about synergy/participation. Like John, you're reading Tillich, but echoing Mannermaa in your frustrations! Lol
Dr. Cooper, this is somewhat unrelated to this video, but the traditionalist catholic media apostolate Church Militant just put out a video titled The Two Martins, comparing or connecting Martin Luther to James Martin.
Would you do a video giving your thoughts/recommendation/critique on the ministry 1517? Or if you prefer to answer it here, do they have your "thumbs up"?
@@DrJordanBCooper Thanks for the prompt response. I’m not surprised, but I am curious your reasons. Hopefully you will answer that question in the future for us who’d be interested in your commentary on that ministry.
@DTJ There's a lot I could say, but I haven't shared most of it publicly. I think the theological disagreements are quite obvious, but I have even more concern about their platforming multiple disgraced and abusive former pastors while using "grace" as excuse to do so. They're an embodiment of the stereotype people have about Lutherans as antinomian.
When considering the history of ideas, I imagine the lines and connections are almost infinitely varied. I suspect in this conversation between Cooper and Vervaeke, each will make points that are valid. It doesn't matter what Luther intended. It doesn't matter what those who immediately came after Luther intended. Once certain doors are open, one cannot control what passes through the doors. Are there any meaningful thinkers in history whose ideas have thereafter influenced only one strand in the future? I highly doubt it. If so, I doubt we would consider them influential. One thing both Cooper and Vervaeke will agree on: Luther was influential.
It was absolutely necessary for Vervaeke to reply to you. A BIG part of his thematic content is combating 🐂💩, which he uses as a technical term, as part of the Meaning Crisis. If he's potentially being called out for helping to propagate BS, that's a big stain.
These intellectual debates nearly never go well for the faithful. William Craig fairs better than most as he's adept at exploiting the gaps, but it's called faith for a reason. All living organisms are programmed for survival. Mutations that lack the drive to survive aren't efficient at carrying out the reproduction function. Once humans became aware of our mortality, of course, we would instinctually apply this evolutionary drive to an existence beyond death. It's the irony of all ironies that evolution itself is responsible for our predilection toward religion. The billions of years that preceded your life will be identical to the billions of years that will succeed it from your perspective. The key to enlightenment and true happiness is accepting the finality of your mortality. This allows you to value your time on Earth with much higher accuracy as it's the only time your unique consciousness is ever going to get.
The fact that we're finite creatures operating on something akin to an equation, law, design and principle (and equations are eternal and are the result of a mind) strongly alludes to the God of the Bible.
@@kennorthunder2428 I concur that we are finite creatures. The idea we have a soul that floats off into the ether to exist among the heavens (or hells) in perpetuity is frankly silly. Our finite quality makes no indication of direct authorship in general, let alone the deity of the Bible. You're also correct that equations and laws are products of the mind. Our human finite minds to be specific. Think of mathematics as a comprehensive ruler that scales in all directions. Mathematics is an excellent tool that's easy to become enamored by, but that doesn't make it divine. The evidence our universe was written in our language is nonexistent. Newton's mathematical theories passed muster in most applications, but Einstein came along and showed us why Principia was merely an estimation. And now it's widely understood The Theory of Relativity has similar issues. Laws and equations are rules and tools we use to measure the cosmos and make predictions, nothing more. The quantum scale demonstrates this explicitly. There could be an unmoved mover. That's certainly a possibility, but this entity would likely be of a quality our Earthly perspective could make little sense of. The enlightenment exposed the Bible as metaphor, but that doesn't mean it lacks value. I believe the Bible is worthy of its popularity for the incredible wisdom contained in its pages alone. As our secular world yearns for meaning, people fill that void with destructive ideologies and faux virtue. The Nietzschean death of god is conclusive unfortunately and I have no idea how we're going to fix this existential problem.
@@kenhiett5266 I don't know why the idea of a soul that is not materials based is a silly idea to you. Numbers are real and yet not material at the same time. They're representational, and real in a relational sense having reference to that material universe but they're still an idea in our minds that reflects reality. Yet when experts are questioned as to whether they INVENTED equations or simply DISCOVERED them, most are in a quandary because they know intuitively that equations are discovered, and the implications of that is that there is a superior mind at play. All we're capable of is discovering and using them just as we use the material universe. 2 + 2 = 4 is one equation that we readily understand. But if the equation was something that began with dependance that demanded trust, which in turn fed off goodness and truth, which in turn was the foundation and basis for love, which in turn could be proved valid and good when the opposite occurred (Love would die if trust was fed lies and evil) then you'd realize that this equation/design/principle/law was eternal. If you carefully examined the creation narrative as well as all of human behavior, you'd be forced conclude that we're operating on exactly this equation/design. No other religion has such a narrative. (that doesn't mean they haven't discovered other similar truths that run in tandem to Judeao-Christianity. We're the only mammal that creates music. Written notes are representational. Yet music moves our emotions and when our minds resonate with the music they are affected Rather a remarkable thing to have meaning associated with vibrations that has harmony and structure that is ethereal. - rather a spiritual quality. Words are verbal identifiers of meaning. Yet it's meaning itself that is real. Which can't be tasted touched smelled or looked upon. So maybe there's more to our makeup that you haven't thought about?
@@kennorthunder2428 Lots of words to indicate you'd like a particular narrative to be true, but not a shred of empirical evidence to demonstrate any of it. Everything we understand about consciousness emerges from its physical component. Everything. Death is scary until you learn to accept the finality of mortality, I know. I used to believe all those convenient and fanciful notions, too, but I couldn't keep setting logic and reason aside. The all-knowing god didn't even know the dinosaurs roamed the Earth for 165+ million years before our evolutionary line. Herein lies another serious problem for your currently preferred narrative. The fossil record for human evolution is overwhelming. Human evolution is observable in real-time. Study the evolution of wisdom teeth and why some people are born without them, while others need to have them removed. The human jaw has been evolutionarily shrinking while our diets have been changing, and it left our last row of teeth without enough room. Study lactose intolerance in European history and the adaptation that made the consumption of animal milk without gastrointestinal distress possible. These smaller adaptations over long periods result in the changes you reject, but the fossil record overwhelmingly says otherwise. I could go on for days debunking the Bible, but I have better things to do. You seem like a nice enough guy, and there's no need to embarrass you. You know the Bible falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. It's up to you to accept the reality around you. Maybe empirical reality isn't for you. Some people simply can't handle it, and I, for one, would never hold that against you.
@@kenhiett5266 Think about whether there is any empirical evidence when you test my above equation; when you come to a stop sign. Are all the metrics at play?
John Vervaeke is an advocate for the NeoPlatonic tradition. Martin Luther attacked that tradition. It totally makes sense that Dr. V would find fault with Luther for doing that. Luther didn't want any Aristotle in the church. He thought Aristotle would help you understand the world but he could teach you nothing about God. Maybe it's a category error for a philosopher to speak with a theologian about Luther's work. I think Luther intended most of his work to be read only by Christians in the church. In Vervaeke's context, it only becomes a story of attempted deconstruction of the neo-Platonic worldview. I don't mind the argument blaming Luther for what his followers said 100 years after he died. Protestant Scholasticism of the 17th was a return in some ways to the way of doing theology before the Reformation. It's normal that it takes generations for ideas to work their way into the mainstream.
I’m sorry but the current disintegration of the Protestant movement is to be entirely attributed to Luther. The moment Luther theorized the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, he kicked off the disintegration of the Church. It is too easy to blame it on modern distorted interpretations of Luther. By imposing the doctrine of Sola Scriptura as a presupposition for his theology, Luther opened the can of worms of the individualistic interpretation of Scripture, which is the root cause (unintended or not) of the current disintegration of the Protestant movement. Hard to believe that this is the church that Jesus envisioned and established. This is the proof the schisms not only are never necessary but have nefarious consequences, much worse than the problem that the schisms are supposedly trying to solve for. It’s like trying to fix a marriage by divorcing and by promoting divorce. It never works and you end up with multiple destroyed families instead of just one.
You're just pontificating without actually explaining why sola scripture caused whatever it is you feel is wrong with modern Protestantism. Actually make an argument.
There's also an identification issue here because most of these modern developments within Protestantism are outside the bounds of classical Protestantism.
Luther didn’t argue that each individual ought to interpret scripture authoritatively for themselves-that’s not what the classical Protestants like Luther, Calvin, and Hooker meant by sola scriptura. Though Luther, Calvin, and Hooker encouraged the laity to read scripture themselves, they would have found the idea that each baptized believer is equally able to interpret scripture for themselves quite radical. Luther also didn’t come up with sola scriptura; what classical Protestants mean by sola scriptura, as opposed to American Evangelicals, is summed up in the following excerpts of Augustine of Hippo’s work, both from c. 400 AD: “But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride, without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity?” (On Baptism 2.3.4) “As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises. For we are of those of whom the apostle says: “And if you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you” (Philippians 3:15). Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. In order to leave room for such profitable discussions of difficult questions, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments.” (Reply to Faustus 11.5)
@@Jimmy-iy9pl As I explained, Sola Scriptura opened the can of worms of individualistic interpretation of Scripture. The moment you reject an infallible authority outside Scripture, as a natural consequence you end up having hundreds of different interpretations of Scripture all claiming to be the right interpretation. And since we are all fallible men, nobody individually can claim to possess THE TRUTH with no margin of error. Luther himself realized this when he saw his fellow Protestants starting arguing against his own interpretation of Scripture. But it was too late. Once you open the can, worms are out and there’s no way you can put them back.
It's neat that we no longer have to wait for academics to be dead before we get to read the letters they write to one another.
My goodness, no comment from Paul VanderKlay yet. It always makes be chuckle how fast and excited his responses are. It's been a joy to watch the good faith back and forth responses between you and John. The way you both have conducted yourselves shows how great you both will be in dia logos. I look forward to the conversation over at Paul's channel
Such a spoiler you gave me man. 😂. 👍🏼 I'll be waiting for that dialogo too.
My inquiry into Luther helped make me Catholic. Funny how things work out. God bless you all and these wonderful RUclips discussions!
Hello dr. Cooper, thank you for defending the Lutheran doctrines so passionately. Just wanted to say that to you. Wish we could have a discussion on salvation some day. God’s blessings to you this Christmas sir.
in summary: the court of public opinion is often wrong, but that doesn't prevent it from becoming a factor in its own right.
I feel like his point was that even in misinterpreting a figure/idea -- from inside or outside of a movement, if new ideas are created as a result we have to in some sense regard them as "caused" by the prior figure/ideas.
It's a strange way of looking at it. Surely we can't regard the former ideas as "at blame"?
Hmmm...perhaps that's what he meant. Hopefully the conversation will bring some clarity there.
@Phlebas But that is my point. Vervaeke is making the distinction between "blaming Luther" for the rise of Nazism, and recognizing how his writings influenced them such that if he never wrote that tract, they wouldn't have had an advantage in wooing Germans toward vicious antisemitism -- despite the fact that Luther would be appalled if he would've seen what his work was used for.
I understand what he's saying. Influence (direct or indirect) vs a canonical lineage of learning. Another example: If Protestantism never happened (hypothetically), you could argue that Liberalism would have never happened (its necessary seedbed) -- it's arguable, but not absolutely so.
"You misunderstood me!"
"It doesn't matter, you gave me the idea."
@@Catholic-Perennialist So Jesus is responsible for the Muslim conquests? seems a bit steep
@@Catholic-Perennialist well they claim Jesus as one of their prophets and Muhammad did seem to pick up a lot from his christian uncle (confused thought it be). After all they're considered Christian heretics and named by the same convention as Mohammadians.
I could also pick the Albigensian Crusade or the Nazi party and their '3rd' Reich paralleling early Christian (Montanist) thought of the three ages. The point remains despite your question.
@@Catholic-Perennialist Persecution of pagans?
Vervaeke needs to get ahold of your 'Union with Christ' volume, it's so perfect that he's interacting with you on Luther interpretation -- especially since his major concern is about synergy/participation.
Like John, you're reading Tillich, but echoing Mannermaa in your frustrations! Lol
Dr. Cooper, this is somewhat unrelated to this video, but the traditionalist catholic media apostolate Church Militant just put out a video titled The Two Martins, comparing or connecting Martin Luther to James Martin.
Would you do a video giving your thoughts/recommendation/critique on the ministry 1517? Or if you prefer to answer it here, do they have your "thumbs up"?
They do not have my "thumbs up."
@@DrJordanBCooper Thanks for the prompt response. I’m not surprised, but I am curious your reasons. Hopefully you will answer that question in the future for us who’d be interested in your commentary on that ministry.
@DTJ There's a lot I could say, but I haven't shared most of it publicly. I think the theological disagreements are quite obvious, but I have even more concern about their platforming multiple disgraced and abusive former pastors while using "grace" as excuse to do so. They're an embodiment of the stereotype people have about Lutherans as antinomian.
@@DrJordanBCooper Insightful response. Thank you. And thank you for your remarkable podcast/yt channel. So helpful in my walk. Blessings
Thanks Jordan!
When considering the history of ideas, I imagine the lines and connections are almost infinitely varied. I suspect in this conversation between Cooper and Vervaeke, each will make points that are valid. It doesn't matter what Luther intended. It doesn't matter what those who immediately came after Luther intended. Once certain doors are open, one cannot control what passes through the doors.
Are there any meaningful thinkers in history whose ideas have thereafter influenced only one strand in the future? I highly doubt it. If so, I doubt we would consider them influential. One thing both Cooper and Vervaeke will agree on: Luther was influential.
It was absolutely necessary for Vervaeke to reply to you. A BIG part of his thematic content is combating 🐂💩, which he uses as a technical term, as part of the Meaning Crisis. If he's potentially being called out for helping to propagate BS, that's a big stain.
Did Matt Walsh ever have you on his show like he said?
Nope.
Matt is a coward and afraid to name the jew so don't feel bad
As a counterpoint Dr. Cooper, what are your views and insights on the Meaning Crisis?.........
Hoping we can talk about that!
Pride, like Luther’s, was a key domino. A better metaphor might be a man-engineered evil seed of pride. Pride never goes out without consequences.
These intellectual debates nearly never go well for the faithful. William Craig fairs better than most as he's adept at exploiting the gaps, but it's called faith for a reason. All living organisms are programmed for survival. Mutations that lack the drive to survive aren't efficient at carrying out the reproduction function. Once humans became aware of our mortality, of course, we would instinctually apply this evolutionary drive to an existence beyond death. It's the irony of all ironies that evolution itself is responsible for our predilection toward religion.
The billions of years that preceded your life will be identical to the billions of years that will succeed it from your perspective. The key to enlightenment and true happiness is accepting the finality of your mortality. This allows you to value your time on Earth with much higher accuracy as it's the only time your unique consciousness is ever going to get.
The fact that we're finite creatures operating on something akin to an equation, law, design and principle (and equations are eternal and are the result of a mind) strongly alludes to the God of the Bible.
@@kennorthunder2428 I concur that we are finite creatures. The idea we have a soul that floats off into the ether to exist among the heavens (or hells) in perpetuity is frankly silly. Our finite quality makes no indication of direct authorship in general, let alone the deity of the Bible.
You're also correct that equations and laws are products of the mind. Our human finite minds to be specific. Think of mathematics as a comprehensive ruler that scales in all directions. Mathematics is an excellent tool that's easy to become enamored by, but that doesn't make it divine. The evidence our universe was written in our language is nonexistent. Newton's mathematical theories passed muster in most applications, but Einstein came along and showed us why Principia was merely an estimation. And now it's widely understood The Theory of Relativity has similar issues. Laws and equations are rules and tools we use to measure the cosmos and make predictions, nothing more. The quantum scale demonstrates this explicitly.
There could be an unmoved mover. That's certainly a possibility, but this entity would likely be of a quality our Earthly perspective could make little sense of.
The enlightenment exposed the Bible as metaphor, but that doesn't mean it lacks value. I believe the Bible is worthy of its popularity for the incredible wisdom contained in its pages alone. As our secular world yearns for meaning, people fill that void with destructive ideologies and faux virtue. The Nietzschean death of god is conclusive unfortunately and I have no idea how we're going to fix this existential problem.
@@kenhiett5266 I don't know why the idea of a soul that is not materials based is a silly idea to you. Numbers are real and yet not material at the same time. They're representational, and real in a relational sense having reference to that material universe but they're still an idea in our minds that reflects reality. Yet when experts are questioned as to whether they INVENTED equations or simply DISCOVERED them, most are in a quandary because they know intuitively that equations are discovered, and the implications of that is that there is a superior mind at play. All we're capable of is discovering and using them just as we use the material universe.
2 + 2 = 4 is one equation that we readily understand. But if the equation was something that began with dependance that demanded trust, which in turn fed off goodness and truth, which in turn was the foundation and basis for love, which in turn could be proved valid and good when the opposite occurred (Love would die if trust was fed lies and evil) then you'd realize that this equation/design/principle/law was eternal. If you carefully examined the creation narrative as well as all of human behavior, you'd be forced conclude that we're operating on exactly this equation/design. No other religion has such a narrative. (that doesn't mean they haven't discovered other similar truths that run in tandem to Judeao-Christianity.
We're the only mammal that creates music. Written notes are representational. Yet music moves our emotions and when our minds resonate with the music they are affected Rather a remarkable thing to have meaning associated with vibrations that has harmony and structure that is ethereal. - rather a spiritual quality.
Words are verbal identifiers of meaning. Yet it's meaning itself that is real. Which can't be tasted touched smelled or looked upon. So maybe there's more to our makeup that you haven't thought about?
@@kennorthunder2428 Lots of words to indicate you'd like a particular narrative to be true, but not a shred of empirical evidence to demonstrate any of it.
Everything we understand about consciousness emerges from its physical component. Everything. Death is scary until you learn to accept the finality of mortality, I know. I used to believe all those convenient and fanciful notions, too, but I couldn't keep setting logic and reason aside.
The all-knowing god didn't even know the dinosaurs roamed the Earth for 165+ million years before our evolutionary line. Herein lies another serious problem for your currently preferred narrative. The fossil record for human evolution is overwhelming. Human evolution is observable in real-time. Study the evolution of wisdom teeth and why some people are born without them, while others need to have them removed. The human jaw has been evolutionarily shrinking while our diets have been changing, and it left our last row of teeth without enough room. Study lactose intolerance in European history and the adaptation that made the consumption of animal milk without gastrointestinal distress possible. These smaller adaptations over long periods result in the changes you reject, but the fossil record overwhelmingly says otherwise.
I could go on for days debunking the Bible, but I have better things to do. You seem like a nice enough guy, and there's no need to embarrass you. You know the Bible falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. It's up to you to accept the reality around you. Maybe empirical reality isn't for you. Some people simply can't handle it, and I, for one, would never hold that against you.
@@kenhiett5266 Think about whether there is any empirical evidence when you test my above equation; when you come to a stop sign. Are all the metrics at play?
Have you actually done the whole series? I'm asking because I do not want to make the assumption that you havent
I wonder: what effects do you think the misinterpretations of Luther have had on our culture?
John Vervaeke is an advocate for the NeoPlatonic tradition. Martin Luther attacked that tradition. It totally makes sense that Dr. V would find fault with Luther for doing that.
Luther didn't want any Aristotle in the church. He thought Aristotle would help you understand the world but he could teach you nothing about God.
Maybe it's a category error for a philosopher to speak with a theologian about Luther's work. I think Luther intended most of his work to be read only by Christians in the church. In Vervaeke's context, it only becomes a story of attempted deconstruction of the neo-Platonic worldview.
I don't mind the argument blaming Luther for what his followers said 100 years after he died. Protestant Scholasticism of the 17th was a return in some ways to the way of doing theology before the Reformation. It's normal that it takes generations for ideas to work their way into the mainstream.
I’m sorry but the current disintegration of the Protestant movement is to be entirely attributed to Luther. The moment Luther theorized the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, he kicked off the disintegration of the Church.
It is too easy to blame it on modern distorted interpretations of Luther.
By imposing the doctrine of Sola Scriptura as a presupposition for his theology, Luther opened the can of worms of the individualistic interpretation of Scripture, which is the root cause (unintended or not) of the current disintegration of the Protestant movement.
Hard to believe that this is the church that Jesus envisioned and established.
This is the proof the schisms not only are never necessary but have nefarious consequences, much worse than the problem that the schisms are supposedly trying to solve for.
It’s like trying to fix a marriage by divorcing and by promoting divorce. It never works and you end up with multiple destroyed families instead of just one.
You're just pontificating without actually explaining why sola scripture caused whatever it is you feel is wrong with modern Protestantism. Actually make an argument.
There's also an identification issue here because most of these modern developments within Protestantism are outside the bounds of classical Protestantism.
Sola Scriptura doesn't mean Solo Scriptura. The interpretation of the church is authoritative, but not infallible. Guardrails, not prison bars.
Luther didn’t argue that each individual ought to interpret scripture authoritatively for themselves-that’s not what the classical Protestants like Luther, Calvin, and Hooker meant by sola scriptura. Though Luther, Calvin, and Hooker encouraged the laity to read scripture themselves, they would have found the idea that each baptized believer is equally able to interpret scripture for themselves quite radical. Luther also didn’t come up with sola scriptura; what classical Protestants mean by sola scriptura, as opposed to American Evangelicals, is summed up in the following excerpts of Augustine of Hippo’s work, both from c. 400 AD:
“But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride, without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity?” (On Baptism 2.3.4)
“As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises. For we are of those of whom the apostle says: “And if you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you” (Philippians 3:15). Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. In order to leave room for such profitable discussions of difficult questions, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments.” (Reply to Faustus 11.5)
@@Jimmy-iy9pl As I explained, Sola Scriptura opened the can of worms of individualistic interpretation of Scripture. The moment you reject an infallible authority outside Scripture, as a natural consequence you end up having hundreds of different interpretations of Scripture all claiming to be the right interpretation. And since we are all fallible men, nobody individually can claim to possess THE TRUTH with no margin of error.
Luther himself realized this when he saw his fellow Protestants starting arguing against his own interpretation of Scripture. But it was too late. Once you open the can, worms are out and there’s no way you can put them back.