Rejection slip

IN RESPONSE to Messrs Campbell and Morrison (Letters, 18 February) who claim, respectively, the Pope’s “office and organisation has no legitimacy… in scripture” and that the Bible is “God’s own infallible and inerrant Word of truth”, Christ told us that the wise man builds his house upon a rock (Matt 7:24), so that though the rains may come, and the floods, wind, and heat, his house will remain standing.

Surely this is why Christ himself, the embodiment of God’s wisdom, built his Church upon the man he had named “Rock”. And indeed, despite 2,000 years of braving the elements, and through the rise and fall of nations and civilisations, the house of God that Jesus built upon Peter still stands.

Peter was the rock upon whom the Church was built, was handed the keys to the kingdom, was made captain of the barque of the Church, the Church’s source of strength and chief shepherd, that he was first among the apostles, leader of all Christians, and the first to preach the Gospel, and how his early successors wrote letters of guidance to other bishops, as it was acknowledged from the start that he was the foundation of the Church.

The Bible does not claim to be the sole rule of faith.

Paul wrote, “What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2). And he instructed, “Hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess 2:15).

These oral teachings and traditions have been handed down and entrusted to the Church, and they remain as much a part of the full Christian faith as the Bible. To ignore them is no less a tragedy than to ignore the Bible.

Messrs Campbell and Morrison would do well to remember Luke 10:16 “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

Martin Conroy

Oldhamstocks, East Lothian 

GIVEN the Rev David Campbell’s views (Letters, 18 February), its tone and inferences, might I remind him of a date: 8 January, 1697?

That was the day Thomas Aikenhead was executed for ­blasphemy. The day before, the General Assembly met to confirm the execution of this 20-year-old theology student.

The Rev Campbell’s tone suggest that, within his Church’s beliefs, there should not be any changes within its sphere of ­action. This, if I may extend his thought, would also condemn Judaism as well as all other forms of Catholicism.

Tom Reilly

Esslemont Road

Edinburgh

THE news that the Kirk Moderator has invited the Pope to visit Scotland and that this would be welcomed by “all people of faith” (strongly objected to by some Protestants) makes one wonder if this is the end of traditional Christian beliefs and the onset of a vague “be nice to everyone” creed, untroubled by salvation or punishment for sin.

The half of the population that, like me, has no religious belief must think “a plague on both your sects” and that the sooner we all abandon superstition the better. We live in a post-Christian Britain, where we can get on better without religion.

Steuart Campbell

Dovecot Loan, Edinburgh