Of late we have heard the cry for "Sola Scriptura" from the Protestant Christian Quarter of Blogstream. It has been an unheeded battle cry for the past 460 years. Sola Scriptura is the belief that Man (always presumed here to include woman) is able to ascertain the will of God by reading and interpreting the Bible for himself, without the official pronouncement of Catholic leaders who they previously relied upon. In doing so Sola Scriptura firmly rejects tradition and a singular office as a factor in determining doctrine.

The reformers believed that the Bible interprets itself and that no outside source is authorized by God to interpret it or to introduce other doctrines as coming from God (2 Pet 1:20). All teaching under this belief concerning faith and morals has been based on the truth and inerrancy of the Bible.

Miserably, however this objective has never been realized by any Protestant group, not any that claim to be "orthodox."

We have seen in our Protestant churches and in the depiction of orthodoxy here the formulation of doctrines that go far beyond the teachings of the Bible - especially, of late, in definitions of the nature and attributes of God. Where it pretends not to do so, tradition has become its very cornerstone. It is the tradition of theology established during the 2nd century A.D., long after the close of the New Testament canon.

While the Fathers of Christ's Church were combating gross heresy, The apologists of the third century slipped gently into apostasy. Ignoring the warning of Paul, ensuing generations opened themselves up to error all to the "classical theists" of today.

Chapter Three will begin the detailed encroachment of the overwhelming influence of Greek philosophy on Christ's Church.

"Indeed philosophy has been given to the Greeks as their own kind of Covenant, their foundation for the philosophy of Christ." Clement of Alexandria (a Church Father) in Miscellanies, 6:8.

THE LOSSES HAVE HAD SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES

What effect would a damaged and watered down Bible have on future readers? That also was explained by the angel:

"And after it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles, yea, even across the many waters which thou hast seen with the Gentiles which have gone forth out of captivity, thou seest—because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, which were plain unto the understanding of the children of men, according to the plainness which is in the Lamb of God—because of these things which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb, an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them. . . .

"Neither will the Lord God suffer that the Gentiles shall forever remain in that awful state of blindness, which thou beholdest they are in, because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, whose formation thou hast seen. . . .

"And after the Gentiles do stumble exceedingly, because of the most plain and precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, which is the mother of harlots, saith the Lamb—I will be merciful unto the Gentiles in that day, insomuch that I will bring forth unto them, in mine own power, much of my gospel, which shall be plain and precious, saith the Lamb" (1 Ne. 13:29, 32, 34).

The Angelic interpretation of Nephi’s vision stressed the grave consequences of the incomplete Bible. Explanation was that many would stagger in an awful state of blindness, where even sincere believers would be led off track because of the lack of clarity of the biblical record (1 Ne. 13:29, 32, 34; 2 Ne. 26:20; 28:14). The misery of the condition is is made more powerful because those having only the scriptures are generally not aware of the extent to which the collection has been diluted or its once great strength. In spite of recent archaeological discoveries, they do not realize that the gospel of Jesus Christ is more than is contained in the Bible alone. Without proper authority or standard and an authorized explanation for interpretation, Bible readers do not have the essential information to evaluate the accuracy or inaccuracy of differing texts. When something is taken out of a record, which remains is often rendered less clear. If members of the Church do not use the Book of Mormon to understand the Bible, they will be as uninformed as the rest of the world.

Bad Grammar: Like, what's going on here?

It's showing up everywhere. Convoluted sentences that obscure meaning might be the product of tight deadlines. However, the carelessness creates confusion for me.

I pick a run of the mill column published this morning in the online version of the New York Times, Entitled: "Bettis left a broken neighborhood behind" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/sports/football/02bettis.html?_r=1&oref=slogin). Take a look at that title. The last word "behind" just seems to hang alone out there...I don't know...Right it just doesn't look. The article is about the deteriorating neighborhood that looked a whole lot better when Jerome lived there. But the Title gives the distinct impression we are going to read about a neighborhood of Jerome's childhood.

The first paragraph describes Jerome's childhood home with a gaping hole in the roof and the upstairs windows blown out in this abandoned brick house, complete with a bed frame in the front yard..

"Johnnie and Gladys Bettis nimbly kept their three children from the encroaching trouble, before moving to a house on a golf course that Jerome, their youngest son, bought for them when he became a professional football player in 1993." So, I ask you, did Jerome buy the golf course for his mom and dad or was it the house they were already living in? And why does he seriously complicate the sentence just to tell us Jerome was the youngest. As in: This writer, with the spike in his forehead, has the touch of a genius.

Then we see a paragraph with a single sentence. And it has the same obnoxious structure as the Title, reading - "They left Aurora Street behind." Oh give a break to freakin' me!! Yes, me give the freakin' break to.

The author moves on to tell us, "Detroit's population has shrunk to 900,000, more than 50 percent less than 50 years ago, when there were two million residents." Well, thank you very much "more than 50% less"! If Detroit has shrunk to a population of 900,000 which is about half it's previous size, does the author, John Branch, really need to be telling us that it had 2 million? where does he think we got our education? Detroit? Look, if you were walking down the sidewalk in your home town and saw the author of this article with half of his face ripped off, would it be helpful for his little brother to tell you that his whole face was there before Stealth ripped half of it off?

He continues, "While a star at Notre Dame, Bettis talked about the problems in his neighborhood: the crack dealers, the violence, the young people standing aimlessly on street corners. Number one, what is this business of putting a comma after violence without an "and". So darned awkward, so darned uneducated, so freakin' illiterate. And what the heck, Jerome did see crack dealer standing aimlessly. They were selling the crack if they were dealers....not gonna sell crack if you is aimless. But then I might be mistaken, it was the young who stood aimlessly. So it musta been the old folks selling crack. Certainly someone else other than young people. Oh, my heart!!

Aimlessly moving on now, the author quotes a local police officer. "The difference between then and now is that the neighborhood was a neighborhood," Richards said. "Neighbors stuck together, families stuck together, everyone knew everyone else. Now it's every man for himself." Hey Mr. Branch, do you think you could edit that statement, like blow away the first half of it??

That's the end of page one of two. I gotta get an aspirin.

It is a common LDS belief that Christianity fell into apostasy because of the corruption of Greek philosophy. By the fourth century, Christian theologians had rearticulated the beliefs and understandings of Christian orthodoxy using the substance and techniques of philosophy, with most of the resource being that of a popular version of Platonism. The statements of belief and the defenders of those statements make that unmistakable. However, it has become clear that the assimilation of Hellenistic philosophical tradition into Christianity was the consequence—not the cause—of the apostasy as we understand it.

Prior to the arrival of Clement of Alexandria and during the first 150 years of Christianity, references to contemporary philosophies by Christians were clearly limited to dealings with outsiders. But guess who was coming to dinner and staying? Following a tradition going back to Paul (Acts 17:18-31), missionaries would allude to beliefs of philosophers contemporary to their time as a means of introducing their own message. This was an attractive strategy where the philosophically literate community shared with the Christians sincerity about living a excellent life defined by a rejection of the vulgar excesses of pagan worship and the folly of pagan mythology. Christian apologists, such as Justin Martyr, found the philosophical beliefs of the Roman elites most useful on which to articulate their own Christianity.

But Clement took a much bigger step near the end of the second century when he consciously adopted the rational methods of philosophy as the tools of Christians in pursuit of the truth. While this philosophical strategy was never uncontroversial, it spread rapidly throughout the Christian community and was both officially and firmly established by the fourth-century councils that produced the Christian creeds.

The interesting discovery for Latter-day Saints comes when they realize that traditional Christians—Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern—regard this adoption of Hellenist philosophy as the salvation of the incomplete and struggling Christian community.

Clement was consciously following the example of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who had written volumes in the decades just before Christ's ministry in which he systematically allegorized the Old Testament bringing it into accord with a contemporary form of Platonism.

We must remember the world was a much larger place at this time where most Christians depended upon oral tradition to exchange newer truths. By the last two decades of the second century, not only had all the authorized apostles and prophets “disappeared”, but the first generation of Christians who had the benefit of knowing and hearing them were also gone. Lacking faithful witnesses, those authoritative voices who clarified scriptural uncertaintiesleft a void. Christians became ever more lost to the philosophies of men for divine direction for their new life challenges.

If the philosophical pontifications found at blogstream seem distant from simple common sense biblical truths, know by what tradition they come.