Continuing from last post:
Exactly my point -- so please stop begging the question.
??
are you willing to change your view every time that modern scholarship comes across new evidence that a certain verse or a certain book isn't really Apostolic?
It's hardly modern.
I'm not sure how sticking your fingers in your ears is supposed to make anyone think you're a serious seeker of truth. If it's an interpolation, it's an interpolation.
And it's not as if you know for sure that John is Apostolic either. Are you willing to change your view every time that the modern EOC comes across new Tradition that a certain verse or a certain book isn't really Apostolic?
2 Peter was probably written between AD 130-150
1) No it wasn't.
2) How strange that you'd prefer liberal scholarship over believing. Almost as if you were back in your errantist phase, as if you were like most other EOx, a liberal.
3) If you really believed that, it speaks even less highly of your desire to know the truth, since if it were written then it wouldn't be Apostolic, but your church thinks it is. So it's just another example of authority pulling the rug over your eyes and you letting them do so.
Incidentally, it's been Protestant scholarship that has detected these things, not EO scholarship. Wonder why that is.
Because of our drastically different viewpoints? While the Orthodox uphold the Bible, the Protestants undermine it...
Who knows what this even means, or how it answers my challenge. Apparently you don't have an answer.
How about you just stay in your own position, I'll stay in mine, and we'll talk, OK?
How about giving better evidence for your position than "it's true because I believe it" which is all that your comments here have amounted to thus far?
Again, no answer to my challenge that you're acting like an atheist when it suits you.
How will YOU answer the question?
By demonstrating:
1. That Christ is risen, therefore God
2. That Christ founded a Church, which is therefore perfect and eternal3. That this Church decided the canon of Scripture
Um, atheists don't accept that Christ is risen, or that there is a God. Why wouldn't the atheist just dismiss the arguments for the resurrection as anomalous: "Weird stuff happens sometimes, but we know there's no God, so..."?
And premise 2 is, um, highly questionable.
As for premise 3, it shows me where you put your trust. Whereas my position is that God decides canon and the church recognises it, you prefer it the other way around. You start with man. Man-centered religion.
How? OK, get this - God uses sinful men to carry out His perfect plan.
Are you trying to convince me or just justify yourself? This is about the most circular argumentation I've ever seen...
You ask me how God could have used Specific Sinful Man X to carry out His plan and I remind you that all men are sinful and that God uses sinful men to carry out His plan, and that's circular? Um, OK.
And you show no recognition of that pattern throughout the entire Bible. Wow.
2) Oh, so the OT Canon wasn't known to the Jews until after Christ?
Are you not familiar with the Council of Jamnia
Familiar enough to know it wasn't a "Council" at all.
How does this answer my question?
How did He quote from it all the time then?
Did he quote from every book of your Old Testament?
Um, if there's no canon, then quoting from ANY book leaves Him open to the question of whether it's canonical. Gotta follow the thought here, man.
There are quotes in the New Testament from the deuterocanonicals and even the apocrypha
Hahahaha.
1) Prove it.
2) Have you so quickly forgotten our debate?
Does Romans 3:2 refer to the Jews before Christ's time who accepted the Septuagint with deuterocanonicals as Scriptural (as St. Paul did)? Or to the Jews after Christ's time who edited the Scriptures, excised verses and entire books, and turned to the Masoretic instead?
1) So now you're changing your argument. First it was that the Jews didn't have a Canon. Now it's that they did but it was the one with DC books. Make up your mind.
2) And their canon didn't include those books. Nice try, though.
All of history is but an illusion... Your "god" is a rather deceptive fellow
Again, no answer to the challenge.
It is important to distinguish between pre-Incarnation and post-Incarnation Jews.
Quite. Which is why I did so.
1) And how do you know who wrote the parts of Tradition that name the authors?
Is all Tradition written?
This is nothing less than an admission that you can't answer the challenge.
Remember: I, unlike you, actually believe that Christ's promise is fulfilled and the Holy Spirit guides the Church.
OOh, is it OK if I quote you from just above? "How about giving better evidence for your position than "it's true because I believe it" which is all that your comments here have amounted to thus far?"
2) And how do you know that those parts of tradition are big-T Tradition?
We've covered this already; I'm not going over it again.
Yep, I refer everyone to our debate. I laugh every time I read your "answer" to my first cross-examination question.
What if the Gospel of John really was written in the late 2nd century as some scholars have posited? Should we throw the whole thing out?
More atheist-type questions, right after whining about "atheist-dominated scholarship" too. You can't decide when you're coming and when you're going!
John 7:53-8:11 and 2 Peter were written around the same time.
1) How could you possibly know that?
2) What does time of writing have to do with it?
Peace,
Rhology
"As for premise 3, it shows me where you put your trust. Whereas my position is that God decides canon and the church recognises it, you prefer it the other way around. You start with man. Man-centered religion."
ReplyDeleteAn argument about nothing. The distinction between the Church being the authoritative body to "recognise" scripture, or whether it is the authoritative body to "decide" scripture is about as relevant as arguing about angels on the pin of a head. Did Paul "decide" what to write to the Romans, or did he merely "recognise" what God wanted him to write? Did Rhology decide to get out of bed this morning or did he merely recognise God's sovereign plan that he get out of bed, and followed through? All semantics.
"Um, if there's no canon, then quoting from ANY book leaves Him open to the question of whether it's canonical. "
1. Its generally understood that such a question was open when he discoursed with the Saducees, only quoting the Pentatuch. Whether you accept that premise or not it does highlight folly and lack of proof of your claim.
2. Agreement about some books does not show widespread knowledge of a final canon. I can go to a Protestant Church and quote Isaiah. That doesn't mean all professing Christians agree on the Canon. Obvious!
"More atheist-type questions, right after whining about "atheist-dominated scholarship" too. "
Oh so you can toss out Jn 7:53-8:11 if scholarship tells you to, but if somebody else suggests something similar then it is atheist? What's good for the goose I say.
John,
ReplyDeleteThe distinction between the Church being the authoritative body to "recognise" scripture, or whether it is the authoritative body to "decide" scripture is about as relevant as arguing about angels on the pin of a head.
Then you won't have a problem accepting that God is the originator and author of Canon. And the church isn't. Right?
At best, you could say that God is the originator and author, and Paul/Peter/Luke/whoever else is the human author, the secondary author. It didn't originate in their mind.
Did Paul "decide" what to write to the Romans, or did he merely "recognise" what God wanted him to write?
God is the originator of canonical revelation. Yet God carried men along by the Holy Spirit such that they not merely autodictating. Here's how the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy puts it:
We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.
We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.
We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.
We affirm that inspiration, through not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
We deny that the finitude or falseness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God's Word.
Did Rhology decide to get out of bed this morning or did he merely recognise God's sovereign plan that he get out of bed, and followed through?
My getting out of bed is hardly analogous to the inspiration of Scripture.
1. Its generally understood that such a question was open when he discoursed with the Saducees, only quoting the Pentatuch.
I dispute it. How could you possibly know that?
Why would I care about seriously unbelieving Jews like the Sadducees?
2. Agreement about some books does not show widespread knowledge of a final canon
1) He and His apostles quoted pretty widely.
2) How does this address the fact that God knew what was Canon and what wasn't?
Oh so you can toss out Jn 7:53-8:11 if scholarship tells you to, but if somebody else suggests something similar then it is atheist?
Oh, I get it. Assume you're right, then appeal back to assumption when challenged. Good call.
There's a huge difference between recognising that sthg is a scribal interpolation (Jn 7:53-8:11) and playing the date-redaction game b/c one has a naturalistic presupposition.
God is the ultimate originator of everything. Does that mean we can't talk about the immediate causes of things? Of course not. Paul decided what he wanted to write to the churches, and the church decided what was to be in the canon. These are historical facts that any historian wouldn't dispute. That God is the ultimate cause doesn't alter that. If you want a proof text, Acts 16:4 says that they delivered the decrees the Apostles had decided on, but you'd have to agree that the origin of the decrees was God.
ReplyDelete"I dispute it. How could you possibly know that?"
Errr.. the historical grammatical method! The Church fathers inherited this information, and people like Jerome mention it. And the context of the verse that there are tons better proof texts for the afterlife in places like Isaiah than in the Pentatuch, but Jesus chose not to use them here.
It doesn't matter if you accept it or not, the point is lots of people for good reasons accept it, and therefore your presumption about the Jews sharing a knowledge of the full extent of the canon is a presumption without warrant.
"Why would I care about seriously unbelieving Jews like the Sadducees?"
LOL, why are the Sadducees the "seriously unbelieving Jews", but the guys who gave you your canon are not? Maybe practically all the Jews of Palenstine are the bad ones. Jesus doesn't give them a good rap. Maybe the Greek speaking ones of Asia minor using the LXX and its canon are the good ones.
"1) He and His apostles quoted pretty widely. "
As protestants like to point out, mere quoting doesn't make something canonical.
"2) How does this address the fact that God knew what was Canon and what wasn't?"
How is God's knowledge at all pertinent? Every side in the debate acknowledges this, but this was never the issue of dispute.
Sorry for the delay.
ReplyDeletePaul decided what he wanted to write to the churches, and the church decided what was to be in the canon.
But chronologically and logically before that, God decided.
For the purposes of this discussion, it makes much more sense to say that God decided and humans discovered.
the historical grammatical method!
OK, so quote the Scripture to that effect.
Oh, you can't? Why would what Jerome said make a huge diff to me, when you don't accept everything he said either? Why should I hold a higher opinion of him than you do?
nd the context of the verse that there are tons better proof texts for the afterlife in places like Isaiah than in the Pentatuch, but Jesus chose not to use them here.
1) Assumes that you know better than Jesus.
2) Doesn't help your point.
3) Assumes that you know exactly what He was after when He quoted it.
the point is lots of people for good reasons accept it, and therefore your presumption about the Jews sharing a knowledge of the full extent of the canon is a presumption without warrant.
Hahahaha. That's just an argumentum ad populum. How about a real argument?
LOL, why are the Sadducees the "seriously unbelieving Jews",
So... the Eastern Orthodox "Christian" doesn't know why the Sadducees are unbelieving? Wow.
the guys who gave you your canon are not?
Um, b/c there were faithful Jews at the time of Christ?
"For the purposes of this discussion, it makes much more sense to say that God decided and humans discovered."
ReplyDeleteDoes it make sense to say that Paul "discovered" what God wanted him to write? In a way yes, but only someone trying to obfuscate would deny that Paul decided to write to the churches.
"OK, so quote the Scripture to that effect.
Oh, you can't?"
Protestant historical grammatical method does not assume that there is not pertinent historical contextual information outside scripture. Or does it? If you go down that road you have bigger problems.
" Why would what Jerome said make a huge diff to me, when you don't accept everything he said either?"
Irrelevant. What Jerome said is at a bare minimum very plausible, which makes your proof methodology fail.
"1) Assumes that you know better than Jesus."
Err, how so? Stating the obvious about what scripture says about the afterlife does not assume any such thing.
"2) Doesn't help your point."
Nonsense. Tons of commentators have said differently.
"3) Assumes that you know exactly what He was after when He quoted it. "
So, are you claiming non-perspicuousness of scripture now? LOL.
"Hahahaha. That's just an argumentum ad populum. How about a real argument?"
Irrelevant. If its merely possible that he meant what Jerome said, then your "proof" fails. A proof built on false assumptions is no proof at all.
"So... the Eastern Orthodox "Christian" doesn't know why the Sadducees are unbelieving? Wow."
Oh, wow but the Pharasees are not? You remember what Jesus said about them right?