Friday, November 06, 2009

Perspicuity of Scripture Contra Bellisario - Part 10

I'm responding to a post from Mr. Matthew Bellisario (see my first post for the introduction). In this post, I address Mr. Bellisario's response to another of my quotations from Athanasius. Mr. Bellisario has put my words in italics, and I have attempted to reproduce them as he provided them, within the quotation box below. His own words are (for the most part) in the plain font:
Turretin then again cuts and pastes a quote by Athanasius,

"But," says the Arian, "is it not written?" Yes, it is written! And it is necessary that it should be said. But what is well written is ill understood by heretics. If they had understood and grasped the terms in which Christianity is expressed, they would not have called the Lord of glory [1 Corinthians 2:8; cf. James 2:1] a creature nor stumbled over what is well written.

- Athanasius, Epistle to Serapion


If Turretin had done any real research he would know that the proper understanding that Athanasius was referring to is that of Tradition within the Church. The heresy he was addressing was Arianism and he was using Sacred Scripture within the Church Tradition to combat it. I already proved that from the quotes I gave above. Another flimsy flam.
I answer:

Bellisario's comment here is simply the equivalent of shouting. Read what the quotation says. It refers explicitly to what is written and says that it is well written, referring to the sense of Scripture being conveyed well in writing. There's nothing here about it needing to be understood "within the Church Tradition" despite what Mr. Bellisario might like to see. Since Bellisario hangs his hat mainly on his previous comments on Athanasius, we too shall refer the reader to our previous response to him on that subject.

-TurretinFan

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