Quote Originally Posted by Columcille View Post
The erosion of Tradition has lead to the denial of certain canonical books found in the O.T. and as such also eroded some doctrinal support that is wholesome.
I've got no beef with you over the Apocrypha.

I consider mainstream Protestants to be my seperate brother and sister in Christ only when the core moral and doctrinal positions are the same. Hence, if a Protestant is against abortion, euthenasia, ****sexuality and affirms the Trinity, the incarnation of Christ, his Resurrection, and those things that unite the common Christological and theological positions of the Church, I welcome them even when they may deny me the same courtesy.
I'm glad you're able to recognize that the family of God is bigger than your own tribe.

I would, however, question your list of "core moral and doctrinal positions". Where does your list come from? The focus on "abortion, euthenasia, ****sexuality" reads more like a list of hot-****on issues of the Religious Right than something that has been the traditional standards of Christian morality through the centuries. It would have been more credulous for you to cite sexual fidelity/chas***y, nonviolence (or committment to Just War theory, or something of the sort)...

As for your "Christological and theological positions" which you view as necessary, they are indeed the majority report of Christian doctrine over the centuries, but it's an interesting study to see the various formulations that were "required" as orthodox Christian faith over time - both within Scripture and in the first few hundred years of Church history, with the Ecumenical Councils. (See: the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the Pauline formulations, the Didache, the Councils...)

It appears to me, for example, that within the Bible itself, there is much more support for saying that the "essentials" of the faith are the Lordship of Jesus and the Resurrection. There is some support for such doctrines as the Trinity, the dual natures of Christ, etc, but their prominence as the bedrock of Christian doctrine was not present until much later.

As Scripture was written over four thousand years and compiled into one binding or collection, so Tradition remains until today and into tomorrow. Scripture does not refute Scripture and Tradition does not refute Tradition; and together they only compliment each other without contradiction.
I disagree. Scripture does refute, or at least supersede, itself in points. More on that soon.

Since you listed Scripture and Tradition as two parts of your quadrilateral, each must be equally inerrent for the foundation to be solid.
I don't hold inerrancy to be a requisite to consider something authoritative. My parents were not inerrant, infallible individuals, but they were my "authority" in my formative years. They provided me a guiding framework that enabled me to grow and learn, and ultimately to make decisions for myself. Nowhere in there was their "foundation" unsolid due to the fact that their guiding framework was fallible.

Reason and experience can be found in both the writings of Scripture, just as we see the teleological argument about a designer in the Psalms and Prophets and the cosmological argument found in Romans 1 and even supported by reasoning in Tradition as many Christian apologists throughout history and Popes have demonstrated. St. Thomas Aquinas has done this using Scripture and quoting doctors of the Church and attempting to use the prominent reasoning of his age... subverting the Muslim philosophers who were themselves Aristotelian. I have a rich Tradition from which to back up my claims against ****sexuality and I am not sure what sort of Tradition you can back up yours.
Yes, but we also have a rich Tradition of resisting change to our presuppositions until our denial is no longer tenable. See: Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin...

I would think it a mistake of you to deny a position of the Church held for two milliniums in regards to the shared morality just to embrace today's media talking points and ****sexual lobbyist's playbook.