Hi again Henry,

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Henry said:
Sorry, but no. This looks like this is going to be our biggest bone of contention. Sola Scriptura means Scripture alone. Period.

Sola Scriptura means Scripture alone is the ultimate source of divine revelation available to us today. It doesn't mean other things can't help us to understand it.

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If you are wanting to get pedantic, the historical-grammatical hermeneutic does of course take into consideration information not strictly contained in the words of Scripture, in the form of historical background and other things which the author/original readers would have understood, in order to make a proper interpretation of the text. Such as, understanding Palestinian geography when we read the Gospels.

Right, we take into account information not contained in scripture in order to help us with a proper understanding of the text. That's what I said. These are extra-biblical sources we absolutely have to make use of. Trying to minimize this by calling it pedantic doesn't help things. It is extra-biblical information that we use. Point blank.

I highly recommend reading Keith Mathison's work called The Shape of Sola Scriptura. He shows the difference between sola Scriptura and the modern 'solo Scriptura' and how the sola Scriptura debate was about which relationship between Scriptura and tradition was the correct relationship, not that tradition was completely without authority.

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But this is simply seeking to understand Scripture as purely as we can, keeping in mind the author's intent, etc. On the other hand, we are flatly denying the authority and sufficiency of Scripture when we allow wordly Science to tell us that everything we've believed about the Bible all along is wrong. (Before the 19th century, we had no reason to doubt the literalness of the Genesis account.) If I am wrong in this, please prove it to me, don't just dismiss me as close minded.

When we run into a conflict between our interpretation of the natural world (science) and our interpretation of the biblical texts (theology) it's possible that either one could be wrong, since both are interpretations by fallible human beings. Revisiting issues because we see a conflict and changing our understanding of biblical texts because of that isn't a denial of anything other than a claim that we are infallible interpreters of either.

I will, of course, try to offer good evidence to prefer the FI. It just seemed as though you had already decided that you knew the FI was in error and couldn't be otherwise because it was motivated by 'worldly' science. Hopefully that's not the case, because that is what I was identifying as closedminded.

Have you read my papers yet? Those will be a good starting point for discussions on the texts themselves.

Regards,
Brian