Regarding the below...yes, their relationship with Jesus
(which, Izzy, involves his "indwelling presence"), shared as members of
a community.
The original point, if I recall the distant beginning of this
thread correctly, is not that we have less than Scripture,
but that we have more than Scripture: we have Scripture and
we have a vital relationship with Christ, who lives in us by his
Spirit. Do we arrive at the relationship with Christ by the act of
reading the Bible, or is it the relationship/indwelling that empowers
and illuminates the Bible to us? The Word is before the word.
We've talked about oral tradition elsewhere in this thread;
the Good News was no doubt being repeated over and over in those
earliest days of the church, and part of the ministry and inspiration
of the Holy Spirit was some believers correcting other believers,
whether orally or in writing. God did not need people to "decide" which
writings (or utterances) were inspired in order for those
writings/utterances to have power and be used by the Spirit through the
relationship people had with Christ. (In fact, that will have been part
of the set of criteria used to identify the canon.) In any case, the
decisions that established the canon (whether OT or NT), in the
absence of one, must have been themselves inspired as the result
of a relationship; that's part of what we are saying when we say we
believe the Bible, is it not? Now that we have the canon, the Spirit
still enlivens the Scripture to our hearts in the same way he did
before the decision--and graciously makes use of all our faculties in
doing so.
Am I making any
sense to anybody?
Debbie
Makes sense to me,Deb.
