Trenham explicitly outlines the Monarchian Trinity in that video, "the Father is the Monarch of the Trinity."
So do you. This is why you reject Jerome saying that the priests are a "custom, not Divine appointment."
Protestantism: Critique and Debate Thread
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Protestantism is nothing if not a testament to the scriptures not always being plainly understood. The epistle of James is an example of this concerning faith and works, to some it would read plainly, but to Luther it requires a more nuanced exegesis to fit in with the doctrine he was preaching and he even considered discarding it altogether. Where is the authority to decide where scripture reads plainly and where it doesn’t? Of course the debate on this between Orthodox and Protestants is perhaps not as at odds as many make it seem, but it still demonstrates how bringing a worldview to the scriptures is unavoidable.
Why is there inconsistent doctrinal unity among the different Protestant churches who all proclaim this, if scripture is plain and self-interpreting? Among the invisible church of true believers the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ, and it also isn’t. The Theotokos is ever virgin and she also isn’t, there is a requirement for priests and bishops and also there isn’t, baptism is regenerative and also just a public testimony. Can there be contradictions in the Body of Christ?
It’s a matter of worldview ultimately, and to me the church is the necessary prerequisite for the intelligibility of the true interpretation of scripture
Because Protestants recognize that James is not contradicting Paul in Romans 4. This is how Sola Fide is a universal Protestant doctrine.
Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria. All universally held by Protestants to be Biblical truth.
No Protestant denies that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They all deny in the medieval interpretation of transubstantiation.
The Bible has clear outlines for what the qualifications for an Elder are. Nothing is said about the qualifications for a priest because there was no priesthood in the Apostolic Church.
Refuted by Scripture itself.
This isn't just a medieval interpretation.
Romans used to persecute Christians because they believed them to be cannibals due to their believe that they were literally eating the body and blood of Christ.
What do you mean their was no priesthood in the Apostolic Church? They set that up as as they spread Christianity accross the world. That's the concept of laying hands on each other and anointing new priests, deacons ECT.
Where are you getting your understsnding of the Early Church?
I assume you're talking about this video
I listened to it 3x. Fr. Trenham says nothing out of line. It's you that does not understand, and completely butcher theology with this post, which I'm reposting because it's so bad.
And this again proves the silliness of Sola Scriptura. You can't even understand someone in the same century, speaking the same language, correctly. What hope do you have of understanding someone from 2000 years ago speaking a foreign language to a foreign culture?
I'm not going to correct you, lest you keep perversely repeating that Orthodox believe the bunk theology you preach, just as you falsely keep repeating that the Orthodox have no canon of Scripture until 1672.
If any inquirers who've been here for awhile don't understand why he's completely off base, or need clarification from Fr Trenham's video feel free to PM me. I'll even fill in Roman Catholics who don't understand how he's butchering your theology.
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07:30: "the Father is the origin or the Monarch of the Trinity."
Perhaps if you were less controlled by your passions, you would be able to hear what was being said.
Already shared the receipts from Jerome. The priesthood is not Apostolic. The Bible does not give qualifications for priests because there were no priests in the Church. The only two offices in the Church were that of the Elders/Bishops and the Deacons. There is no need for a priesthood because, as Hebrews teaches, Jesus Christ completed His priestly service. So when the Apostles laid hands and appointed Bishops, they were not transferring the Apostolic office to those Bishops, who do not meet the qualifications for the Apostolic office that were laid out in Acts.
From the Church Fathers themselves.
Wait wait...The same Hebrews Martin Luther wanted to remove from the Bible?
Do you need Bishops for sacramental validity?
Do you know that Bishops established Priest to facilitate their communion distribution?
Do you need to take Communion as a Christian?
What is your weird obsession with Martin Luther? You bring him up more than any Protestant I've ever met (although obviously in a critical context rather than a laudatory one). It's like you think you're scoring some sort of points by taking digs at him, but you're kicking into an undefended goal, so to speak. You aren't remotely discrediting Protestant theology by attacking Luther, because Protestant theology is derived entirely from the Bible, not from whatever Martin Luther said.
The very same Hebrews that teaches Jesus Christ completed His priestly ministry, yes.
You seem to want to pin it all on Luther by casting aspersions in portraying him as a pimp or by continuously bringing up his struggle with certain Canonical books (despite the fact that he didn't "remove" any of them from the Canon, whereas the Orthodox church did add books to the Canon).
The sacraments are to be administered by a valid minister of the Gospel, the minister's validity depending on his faithfulness to the Gospel, not an extra-Biblical notion of "Apostolic Succession" (1 Corinthians 4).
I do know that the priesthood was established after the Apostles and does not have a Biblical basis, yes.
"Do this in remembrance of Me." is a command, yes. However, the legalistic understanding that Christ cannot save someone who has not received communion is both unbiblical and contrary to Scripture.
Playing scriptural ping pong and battling over who has the correct interpretation of scripture is fruitless.
Until Protestantism can account for the intelligibility of the canon of scripture and the intelligibility of the objectively true interpretations of scripture, it is not tenable as a worldview.
Citing scripture doesn’t work, since anybody can do this in order to justify their interpretation or novel doctrine. Scripture says that the Christ left a Church, which is the pillar and ground of all truth, which he identifies himself with when he appeared to St Paul, and which promises to be with until the end of the age. This Church which preserved the scriptures for centuries is a necessary prerequisite for knowing the canon, which all Christians accept even if they reject the authority of this Church elsewhere or subscribe to the preposterous and unscriptural notion that the Church fell into apostasy immediately after the Apostles.
Scripture is of course God-breathed, written by men filled with the Holy Spirit. However the authority of the church with ecclesiological boundaries is still necessary, because many can, did and do make claims of unique inspiration by the Holy Spirit which are obviously not always the case.
This argument doesn’t therefore mean that Orthodoxy is true, that’s a different discussion. But Orthodoxy and Catholicism can account for the canon of scripture and a means to discern the true interpretation of scripture in a way that it can hold Christians accountable.
Until Protestantism can account for the intelligibility of the canon of scripture and the intelligibility of the objectively true interpretations of scripture, it is not tenable as a worldview.
Citing scripture doesn’t work, since anybody can do this in order to justify their interpretation or novel doctrine. Scripture says that the Christ left a Church, which is the pillar and ground of all truth, which he identifies himself with when he appeared to St Paul, and which promises to be with until the end of the age. This Church which preserved the scriptures for centuries is a necessary prerequisite for knowing the canon, which all Christians accept even if they reject the authority of this Church elsewhere or subscribe to the preposterous and unscriptural notion that the Church fell into apostasy immediately after the Apostles.
Scripture is of course God-breathed, written by men filled with the Holy Spirit. However the authority of the church with ecclesiological boundaries is still necessary, because many can, did and do make claims of unique inspiration by the Holy Spirit which are obviously not always the case.
This argument doesn’t therefore mean that Orthodoxy is true, that’s a different discussion. But Orthodoxy and Catholicism can account for the canon of scripture and a means to discern the true interpretation of scripture in a way that it can hold Christians accountable.
The Protestant accounting for the Scriptures lies in God's inspiration of the Scriptures. Which is how the Jews and the early Christians were able to recognize what the Scriptures were long before groups such as the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox came along. These groups, among others, claim to be the original church but all come to different conclusions on what the canon of Scripture should be, revealing that they are a later sect, anachronistically imposing their standards on what God had originally revealed.
Any of these groups have a low view of the Scriptures and do not want the individual to turn to the original Biblical documents, so that they may first prejudice the individual against the Scriptures and each impose their own traditions in it's place. But wherever the Scriptures have been freely shared, Protestantism has flourished, because Protestantism does not seek to reinterpret the original documents according to it's own tradition, but understand the original documents according to their original context. Thus, it is rightly said that Protestantism is nothing more than Biblical or Apostolic Christianity.
We are being told that we should understood the 1st century text, according to one of these sects, each of which cannot trace itself until centuries after the original documents had been written.
And while God defines how the proper Church should obey the boundaries outlined in the Scriptures. Each of these sects will insist that we must understand the original documents according to their understanding.
Lastly, because the Catholic canon for Scripture does not align with the Orthodox canon of Scripture, we can see the competing anachronism of these sects, not that these are the only two sects who claim to be Apostolic, imposed onto the history of the early Church and especially the Church at it's inception, that is the Apostolic Church.
Ask yourself: did the Apostles ever say anything remotely similar to "the Church is the necessary prerequisite to Scripture?" Clearly not, and so when you are building your worldview on a different foundation than on what they have already laid, do not be surprised when it goes awry.
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Which branch(es) of Protestantism would you define as Biblical and Apostolic?
Biblical and Apostolic may rightly be said of any such branch that takes the Apostolic view of the Scriptures: that they are binding on the Church and not the other way around.
Of the historical branches, I am convinced that the Reformed tradition is the most consistent with the Scriptures. As all books of the Bible play a role and are held in proper balance.
That still leaves room for errors and misinterpretation of doctrines that aren't insignificant, even among those who revere scripture. At what point do these differences make one sect of Protestantism unrecognizable from another?
The Reformed tradition is only a part of Protestantism/Evangelicalism, and probably a small one at that.
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No more difference than two Catholics or two Orthodox going to the same church. Oftentimes, the people playing up the differences in the tertiary issues could not themselves even articulate what those differences are because they are so nuanced.
I am friends with a member of this forum who is not Reformed as I am. I have visited his church and he has visited mine, and I believe that he and his church are in God. They believe in the supremacy of Scripture, they believe that we are justified by faith alone, not seeking to establish their own righteousness, they have a Biblical view of baptism. They do not need to look exactly like me for me to not anathematize them.
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Why must I accept this assertion that Protestant theology exists outside it's founders?
The fact is that a majority of the founders of the Protestant sects were heavily intertwined with war and rebellion.
Zwingley/Henry VIII ECT were political as much as religious figure.
I've already addressed the issue with each of the sectarian splits from the Orthodox Church (including the Catholic Church)
Like Huss, initially Luther didn't want to create his own religion. Just reform the Catholic Church and stop certain practices and advocated for removing certain books and teachings. But if you pretend that his actions didn't pave the way for further revolutionaries across the west then I think you're living in an alternate reality.
All of these sectarian leaders ultimately are creating their own take on Christianity. There isn't consensus among Protestant or Reformation movements... So how do we know which sect and which brand is correct?
Catholics and Orthodox believe that Christ established the Priesthood through his Apostles. He is the Chief Priest
Did the Apostles say:
"Scripture is required for salvation"?
Isn't that inferred?
Perhaps if you actually were listening to what Fr Trenham was saying, you would have made your conception of "Monarchian view of the Trinity" be in accordance with what he said.
You can directly quote him all you like, it doesn't mean what you think it means. And he says things in that video which clarifies that it cannot be what you're conceiving.
Just as you cannot take a single statement out of context, theology doesn't exist in a vacuum, and neither does scripture, which is why you're incapable of accurately understanding both. You may accidentally have a proper interpretation here and there, but that's all you'll ever have if you persist in your errors.
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Correct. Because neither believe that Jesus Christ actually completed His priestly ministry and that He accomplished it at the cross.
Someone can be saved without having ever touched the Scriptures, but he cannot be saved without believing in the word that the Scriptures preach.
You're just recycling all of Trenham's critiques from Rock and Sand, which is more about character assassination than theology. In other words, it's ad hominem. If you can't attack the argument (or the theology in this case), attack the man himself. The idea that "Protestant theology doesn't exist outside of its founders" is a bizarre statement , bordering on the nonsensical. That's like saying that Mount Everest doesn't exist outside of Edmund Hillary, who first climbed it. Protestants do not revere figures like Luther or Calvin the same way that Orthodox revere the Saints and Fathers. We do not regard them as near-sinless moral paragons, we see them as flawed, sinful men like the rest of us, but do admire their faith, courage and devotion to the truth of scripture.
This is a weird one. "You can quote him, but he doesn't actually mean what he's saying!"
