Jon,
The "organization" you keep referring to is not founded by man but founded by God.
So you claim. However, without any compelling evidence that this is so, or that Jesus ever started any institutionalized "organization," you can hardly expect those of us who think critically to accept this proposition on your claims (or those of the organization) alone. The Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons make the same claim—and with as much credibility, so far as the evidence goes.
If it were not for this "organization", you would not have the Bible you use today to determine what you believe to be the Truth.
It is true that the RCC preserved the Bible through the centuries so that I could have a copy today (it is also true that Pharaoh "preserved"—in the sense of keeping in custody—the people of Israel for several centuries in Egypt, and Babylon did the same for 70 years). For that historical fact, I can thank God—not the papal church, which often did everything in its power to deprive us all of the scriptures in our own language. If your comment is intended to suggest that the RCC "produced" the Bible, I would have to disagree. The Bible I read was written by prophets and apostles—not popes or bishops.
In searching for the Truth and reading the Bible for yourself, you have no way to discern if your interpretation and understanding of scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit or inspired by the Devil leading you astray. You can't know for sure.
Actually, I generally do not claim that my interpretations of scripture are "inspired by the Holy Spirit." It is my understanding that the writings themselves were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that they were written to be understood by ordinary people. In most cases, their meaning is not difficult to ascertain, if one is not led astray by some counterintuitive interpretation imposed on the text by an organization of corrupt religious leaders.
If you asked different Christian groups, all presumably led by the Holy Spirit to Truth, about requirements for salvation, you would get very different answers. They cannot all have the right idea about salvation.
True, though I am not aware of a great number of beliefs about the requirements for salvation held among those who read the Bible for themselves. A few errant views certainly exist, but not usually among those who devote themselves to disinterested study of the Bible. Almost all Protestant groups would agree that salvation is by faith in Christ. There are some groups, both Catholic and Protestant, who think that some other actions are also required (e.g., water baptism). The differences are often moot, since those who believe we are saved by faith (if they are biblically informed) have no difficulty seeing that obedience to Christ (including baptism) is the evidence of faith in Him.
How do you determine who has it right? How can all be led by the Holy Spirit in the same way if they all have different ideas? Everyone seems to be humbly asking to be led to the Truth, but they all got to a different place. How do you determine "The Narrow Path"?
Are you asking because you are interested, or are you presenting questions that you regard to be rhetorical and unanswerable? How do we determine who is right? Simply this: whoever tells the truth is right. Truth is sovereign. Jesus is the Truth.
There are two approaches to this question. Yours is to say, "My group is right. Therefore, truth is determined by what my group says." The other approach is to say, "Truth can be determined by what God has said and revealed. Any group that seeks credibility must be measured by the standard of Truth."
You say you have not studied the Bible that much, and this seems evident. If you had done so, you would have learned that the RCC has greatly exaggerated the difficulty involved in understanding the rather straightforward teachings of the Bible. The RCC knows that few of its members have actually read—much less studied—the Bible with the confidence that God can speak through its pages to them. This biblical illiteracy of the laity alone allows the clergy to convince their sheep that the Bible is way too mysterious for any but the trained theologians to understand. "Leave that to us! We will do the heavy lifting for you!"
But the lifting, it turns out, is not that "heavy"—as some people discover simply by reading the scriptures as the original readers did. This is why, for centuries, the RCC forbade or strongly discouraged its laity from reading the Bible. They lost too many members (e.g., Waldo, Hus, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin—all former Catholics themselves) when they actually cracked the Book and discovered what was written there.
Do all Protestants understand everything in scripture the same way. Of course not. Neither do all Catholics understand everything the same way. There are many differences of opinion. As long as there are human brains, the tendency to think will be almost irresistible. As long as thinking occurs, there will be learning. As long as there remains something to learn, the learners will be holding some correct and some incorrect opinions. Even the Catholic Church has not been able to stop this trend in its own ranks. Of course, having different opinions is no excuse to break fellowship. It is reason to continue studying and interacting with those who disagree, so that either they or we will learn from the others. Disagreement arises, not from too careful a discipline of study in the scriptures, but from too little or too careless study of the same. Divisions arise, mostly, not from lack of uniformity of thought, but from lack of love.
In a second grade class, the teacher grading the tests may find that the students got many wrong answers to their math questions. This does not mean that math is too difficult for children to learn, and that the teacher should be retained for a lifetime to always provide the right answers. The wrong answers are given by the students who did the math incorrectly. They can learn to do better. The fact that many are currently getting the wrong answers is not an argument for keeping the math books away from them (nor is it an argument for dividing them into separate classrooms so that everyone associates only with others who got
the same wrong answers). The students can and should be encouraged to study harder so that, eventually, they will all get the right answers.
John6809,
I have always understood Paul to be saying that a man who desired to be an overseer should not have more than one wife. No wife was OK, but not more than one.
You could be right, but my point was that Paul recommended married church leaders, while the RCC forbids them. I am of the opinion, though, that Paul did want all the overseers to be married men. He gives his reason: The management of their wives and children are the proving ground for their qualification as managers of the assemblies (1 Tim.3:4-5). How can this qualification be determined in the case of a single man? Perhaps it can be, and Paul might make exceptions where there are special circumstances (Paul was not a legalist). However, Paul states it as desirable that an overseer be married.
In addition, Paul would have himself been disqualified from being an overseer on this point alone. Yet he, as an apostle...
Right. Paul was not giving the qualifications for an apostle, but for an elder in the assembly. There are different types of leaders in the church. Not all have the same task, and not all have the same qualifications. I do not think that Paul ever served, or wished to serve, as an elder in the local assemblies. He had a role much more like that of Jesus Himself, who also was unmarried. I believe that Paul knew what he was writing, and what the words would mean to Timothy. While Paul may have been flexible enough to recognize exceptions, the rule he laid down is not unclear.
