Wondering about life and where I am going right now. Thinking about converting to orthodoxy; still need to think it through. Here follows some of my reasons.

Historical claims:

As my friend Dr. Brook says, "It's like the church got a divorce. You have mom and the dad" to which I replied, "and all the bastard children." [1] Orthodoxy claims that they have changed very little over the past 2,000 years and arguments of apostolic succession are very compelling to me. If the claim is, "look, we says such and such and we have always said such and such," it lends credence to arguments from a historical standpoint. Some new ways of approaching the biblical text may be flawed because they do not take into account things that are outside scripture but are not contrary to it.

Sola Scriptura:

Seeing scripture as the sole normative authority over our lives for faith and practice seems wrong. It is good intentioned but incorrect. What those that say that "scripture is the sole normative authority" seem to be getting at is that scripture is the word of God and is authoritative over our lives. I do not disagree with that, but just because scripture is authoritative does this mean that it becomes the sole authority? I think not.

1) When God speaks, it is authoritative. God spoke to the prophets and they spoke to the nations claiming "thus says the Lord..." The prophets claimed these things before it was scripture. Romans 1:18 claims that God speaks to us through creation, thus creation reveals God to us. If God is speaking to us through creation, it is authoritative.

2) By whose authority is scripture to be recognized as the sole authority? If scripture claims it, would that not be circular or at least pointing back to God and therefore self contradictory? If is self-evident I certainly do not find it to be so and I do not think there is much historical basis for believing such.

3) Our metaphysic with such things as logic, reason, ideas of being, ect. may preclude the notion of scripture being the sole authority. Scripture cannot contradict logic such that circle-squares become possible or 2+2=5. These things are impossible by definition.

I foresee an objection, "these things are true, but they must be judged according to the scriptures." This is true to an extent, but not in the way that it is implied. If logic, reason, creation, and scripture all come from the same source, they cannot contradict one another. However, just because things that I claim cannot contradict scripture and I can judge things by scripture, it does not mean that I am committing myself to the claim the scripture is the sole authority by which all things are judged.

To end, if it is the case that scripture is not the sole normative authority then there is room left open for things such as tradition and the authority of the church being normative authorities for faith and practice. These things must work in conjunction and not be contrary to one another. We need to know what scripture tells, we need people to tell us what scripture says and means. I see no contradiction between these two claims.

[1] ADDENDUM: This originally said, 'As my friend Dr. Brook says, "It's like the church got a divorce. You have mom, dad and all the bastard children." I would like to be clear that I am misrepresenting what Dr. Brook stated. I think that Dr. Brook's point here was to say that we cannot choose not to go to church. I was making the point that there are way too many protestant denominations, over 20,000 in the United States alone.