01-18-2008, 05:38 PM
I don't think it's a cultural barrier at all, Akh. It's a very basic difference in our respective Christian traditions.
In our tradition, the scriptures are a written record of the Faith already received from the Apostles in the 1st century. In other words, before the books arrived and became settled into a canon in its present form, the Faith already existed. The Church was already established, the Holy Spirit already was dwelling within the believers and this continues to this day. There is a continuity to our Faith which isn't reliant on a written account.
In your tradition, the scriptures seem to be the source of the Faith.
To someone like me, the following statement is startling:
Perhaps I would better relate to that statement if I were an aboriginal in the Outback a few centuries ago, and truly my first meeting with Yeshua was through a written account I've never heard of before.
Incidentally, neither of my parents were literate in Aramaic or in English. Nevertheless, before I could read either Aramaic or English, they taught me all about Him, as did their parents before them and so forth and so on, going back to the 1st century.
To say that we wouldn't know anything about Yeshua, Salvation, etc. were it not for the written accounts left behind by the apostles and their disciples highlights a fundamental difference we have about the meaning of the word "Church" and what happened at Pentecost.
And we do have the utmost love and respect for the written account, which we kiss when lifted from the altar to be read before the assembly.
If writing had never been invented, the Holy Spirit would not have been limited in His ability to dwell within believers and teach them the Gospel message in their heart. Time and time again we read in historical records of communities of believers existing in parts of the world that never had a translation of the scriptures into their language, or that didn't have a written language at all, yet they are still counted among the believers.
That's really all I can say on the matter.
In our tradition, the scriptures are a written record of the Faith already received from the Apostles in the 1st century. In other words, before the books arrived and became settled into a canon in its present form, the Faith already existed. The Church was already established, the Holy Spirit already was dwelling within the believers and this continues to this day. There is a continuity to our Faith which isn't reliant on a written account.
In your tradition, the scriptures seem to be the source of the Faith.
To someone like me, the following statement is startling:
Quote:We would know nothing about Yeshua without the scriptures.
Perhaps I would better relate to that statement if I were an aboriginal in the Outback a few centuries ago, and truly my first meeting with Yeshua was through a written account I've never heard of before.
Incidentally, neither of my parents were literate in Aramaic or in English. Nevertheless, before I could read either Aramaic or English, they taught me all about Him, as did their parents before them and so forth and so on, going back to the 1st century.
To say that we wouldn't know anything about Yeshua, Salvation, etc. were it not for the written accounts left behind by the apostles and their disciples highlights a fundamental difference we have about the meaning of the word "Church" and what happened at Pentecost.
And we do have the utmost love and respect for the written account, which we kiss when lifted from the altar to be read before the assembly.
If writing had never been invented, the Holy Spirit would not have been limited in His ability to dwell within believers and teach them the Gospel message in their heart. Time and time again we read in historical records of communities of believers existing in parts of the world that never had a translation of the scriptures into their language, or that didn't have a written language at all, yet they are still counted among the believers.
That's really all I can say on the matter.