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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Peeling an onion dome

MG SAID:

***QUOTE***

Steve--__Quinisext ratifies the following disciplinary canons: __1. Canons of the Council of Laodicea_2. Canons of the Council of Carthage_3. The 85th Apostolic Canon_4. The Canons of Athanasius_5. The Canons of St. Gregory the Theologian_6. The Canons of Saint Amphilochius of Ikonion__Each of these contain different but non-conflicting lists of books to be included in the biblical canon.

***END-QUOTE***

1.So what is your method? To simply add up the individual lists by combining the overlapping books with the non-overlapping books in order to create a sum total?

2.What makes you think these individual churchmen and local councils were all pointing in the direction of the same canon, rather than decreeing alternative canons?

“The last one states the list of divinely inspired books, which is the equivalent of the Protestant Old and New Testaments.”

It’s fine with me if the Orthodox canon of inspired books corresponds to the Protestant canon.

“Thus the Quinisext publicly promulgates and establishes the biblical canon.”

How? On the assumption that you simply collate and tally the preexisting lists? Is that what you mean?

“(i) This may be a problem for an individual national church itself in the sense that it isn’t keeping up after the exact manner of canon law. However, I don’t think its actually a problem for (1) the ability of the Church to have consensus on the biblical canon, or (2) our ability to recognize the contents of the canon.”

i) How do you identify the Church? What are the boundaries? Do only Orthodox believers count as members of the Church? What about other Christians? Do only Orthodox believers have the spiritual discernment to recognize the contents of the canon? Which Orthodox believers? All Orthodox believers? Individually or collectively? At all times, or only some of the time? Everywhere or onlyy somewhere?

ii) Are you suggesting that consensus is a gradual affair, in time and place? What’s your criterion for when consensus achieves critical mass? Where and when does it begin and end?

iii) What’s the relation between an individual national church and the Church? Who speaks for the Church? The Church can’t speak all at once. If the national Orthodox churches don’t’ speak with one voice, then how do you hear the voice of the Church, over and above the conflicting voices of the various national churches that collectively comprise the Church? How does the Church have the ability to recognize the canon, but not the subset of national churches which compose the Church?

“The reasons are as follows:__First of all, I believe that Quinisext lays out a specific biblical canon.”

Why don’t you spell out your process. Is your process the same as Quinisext? Does Quinisext actually splice together the various canons of these local councils and individual churchmen? Or are you simply assuming that you should cut-and-paste together a specific biblical canon on the basis of the preexisting material it ratifies?

“However, the actual nature of that biblical canon is different from what Protestants normally mean when they say “canon”. Not all of the canon is divinely inspired; some of it is just “respectable” or “holy”.”

i) So you’re saying the Orthodox believe in a two-tier canon or canon within a canon, consisting of:

a) An inner canon of inspired books, and

b) An outer canon of uninspired, even apocryphal, but edifying literature.

Is that what you mean?

ii) Other issues aside, this introduces an equivocation into your comparison. You were apparently dissatisfied with Evangelical methods of identifying the canon. But you also indicate that Orthodox canonics differ both in process and product. The Orthodox define the canon differently. Since they’re disanalogous, you’re no longer comparing two different examples in kind, but two different kinds. So how does Orthodoxy fix the perceived deficiency in Evangelical canonics if it’s not even talking about the same thing? It’s shifted the terms of debate.

It isn’t solving the same problem. It’s a solution to a different problem because it redefines the problem. So if there really was a problem, then it leaves the original problem unresolved.

“Second of all, if the council didn’t actually state the canon or there were other problems, I could still say the following: the fact that the canons of two parts of the church don’t agree on one or two books just means that there isn’t implicit ecumenical consensus about one or two books. Thus they aren’t part of the canon that is mandatory for all parts of the church to possess.”

How does that differ from Jason’s position that it would be possible to have a functional canon without a complete canon?

“The rest of the books, however, have been received by the entirety of the Church understood as canon, and have implicit ecumenical consensus.”

How do you define and identify the “entirely” of the Church? Are you polling all of the Orthodox believers who ever lived?

This is not a facetious question. Are you including the laity? How do you survey their opinion, past and present?

“Hence, those books that all the parts of the Church agree on constitute the canon of the Church.”

So you have a core canon. How does that differ from Jason’s principle of a core canon?

“Individual parts of the church may still be anticipating a time when they can add those books to the canon (by getting everyone to be in consensus); but for now they can just be included with the Bibles of those who choose to include them, without other parts of the church being required to do so (cuz they aren’t part of the official canon of the whole Church).”

We’re talking 2000 years down the pike and counting. How does such a glacially evolving, incomplete, and open-ended rule of faith mark an improvement over a low-church Protestant ecclesiology?


“(ii) I think what was stated above can help resolve this issue. There would never be a need to do this because there’s no problem with some parts of the Church including different books in addition to the canon that is established by ecumenical consensus.”

What if they’re including books that are simply false, viz. pious fraud?

“That’s interesting that you’ve interacted with Perry before. Could you point me to some specific posts? (I’d like to see the arguments on both sides).”

If you mouse over to the sidebar, click on my topical index, and scroll down to “smells & bells,” you’ll find some material, although the index hasn’t been updating in a while.

“I’m not sure that what you’re saying about me using an aprioristic method invalidates my argument. Your criticism sounds like an expression of dislike; but what about the argument I’ve made is bad? After all, sometimes we come across an argument for our position by assuming our position is true and looking around us to see what validates or invalidates it. That seems to be at the root of a lot of apologetics; the apologist assumes Christianity is true, then tries to look for what might support that. The actual way that I came to believe in the validity of the canon argument is by being convinced by an Orthodox person. It was one of the things that urged me to move from Protestantism to Orthodoxy; so at the very least it isn’t something that I did to validate a position I already believed in at the time. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood your criticism (in which case I apologize); would you care to explain it a little bit more?”

History is not something you can know by deduction. History is not an axiomatic system. History can only be known by observation, after the fact.

You need to study the way in which God has actually governed his people in the past (in OT times and NT times), rather than claiming that something (e.g. the Protestant rule of faith) can’t be true because it would have unacceptable consequences, and instead stipulate your preferred historical result, then reverse engineer a process which will generate your resultant postulate. That’s an artificial and fictitious way of determining historical questions.



“What sweeping historical overgeneralizations are you referring to exactly?”

You said “The canon of Scripture was recognized and made binding and authoritative by the Church.”

This glosses over quite a bit of chronological and geographical diversity. How do you identify and verify the Church (as you define it)? How do you abstract the one true church from the many regional and rival churches back then?

“I’m saying that the Church makes the canon authoritative through an infallible ecumenical consensus of the hierarchy to recognize the books of the Old and New Testaments as being the literature that expresses the content of the Christian revelation.”

i) Earlier you appealed to the “entirety” of the Church in the recognition of the canon. Now, however, you’re radically downshifting to the “hierarchy.” So you arbitrarily oscillate between populist appeals and elitist appeals. Which is it?

ii) Are you alluding to the ecumenical councils? If so, then what’s your criterion for ecumenical conciliarity? For example, why doesn’t Ferrara-Florence qualify?

“The Bible was inspired (true and carrying divine authority) prior to the approval of the canon by the Church; however, the Church was the mechanism by which God revealed the inspiration and authority of the Bible.”

Where are you coming up with these abstractions? For example, the gospel of Luke was addressed to an individual—Theophilus (Luke’s patron). Most of the NT letters, along with Revelation, were addressed to local churches. After that they circulated more widely as private copies were made and distributed.

What universal entity which you deem the Church was mechanism by which God revealed the inspiration and authority of these NT documents? What timeframe are you talking about?

“This would be similar to how Israel was the means by which God revealed his will (enshrined in the Mosaic law) to the nations. The disanalogy is that the Mosaic law was directly revealed by God and so it was part of public revelation even prior to Israel’s acceptance of it and proclamation of it. (and I’m also not sure Israel can meaningfully be spoken of as “infallible”) However, the New Testament isn’t part of public divine revelation until the Church accepts it. It seems like it would only be private until then.”

i) In what sense is the Mosaic law (what about the rest of the OT?) “directly revealed,” but the NT is not “directly revealed”?

ii) How do you define “public revelation”? Although various NT documents were addressed *to* local churches, they were written *for* the benefit of the church at large.

iii) To take one example, if John writes a Gospel, does its status as public revelation depend on the authorization of the Church, or on his own, apostolic authority?

This is one of the perennial problems I have with high-church ecclesiology. Instead of looking at the concrete situation in terms of who wrote what where and when, to whom, and for whom, we are instead treated to these ahistorical abstractions about “The Church’s” relation to “The Bible.”

“I would say that the Church’s authority seems to be grounded in the fact that the Jesus publicly entrusted the Church with the truth.”

i) When and where did he do this? Or is this one of those fuzzy, elusive, postbox generalities that has no physical address in the NT text?

ii) And what do you mean by “the Church.” Is this a bait-and-switch where, whenever you say “the Church,” that’s really code language for the Orthodox hierarchy?

“And declared that the Church would be led into all truth.”

When and where did he do this? You seem to be alluding to Jn 14-16. But this is a promise to the apostolate, not to the Church.

“At least this seems to be what grounds the Church’s authority (maybe another suggestion could be offered).”

Yes, what about exegeting a text in context.

27 comments:

  1. It should also be noted that Eastern Orthodox sometimes reject widespread agreements that existed among Old Testament Jews and among New Testament Christians. See, for instance, the following thread in which I discuss some examples with Orthodox:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

    The historical evidence suggests that the Old Testament Jews and the New Testament Christians often reached a consensus that Eastern Orthodox would consider erroneous. So, why should we think that a belief should be accepted if it’s widespread? And if we’re going to add further qualifiers, such as saying that a belief must be widespread and meet some other criterion, then the issue is no longer just consensus. If other criteria are going to be added, then those other criteria will need to be justified.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Attempting to throw stones over the fence onto us does not result in you having a defensible position.

    Show us how the Jews knew the canon of scripture. Did they have an historical methodology that Jason advocates? Were they able to prove that every book from Genesis to Esther to Malachi was both (a) written by a bona-fide prophet and (b) written by who it was purported to be written by?

    Or did they rely on Tradition?

    The answer is obvious.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Orthodox said:
    "Or did they rely on Tradition?

    The answer is obvious."


    Too bad for you that the Jews' canon matches the Protestant one and not that of the Eastern "Orthodox" Church.

    Secondly, no one is opposed to "tradition" per se. This is a typical RC and EO straw-man of the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura. We deny that traditions are *infallible* unless they are confirmed by Divine Revelation.

    The tradition of the Jews was historically reliable and verified by Christ himself, and that is why we follow the Jews' canon.

    Lastly, would you suggest that we should follow all of the Jews' traditions and consider them to be on par with Scripture? That would be the logical conclusion of the argument you have been making, would it not?

    This, of course, would have disasterous consequences: Matthew 15:3-9.

    ReplyDelete
  4. x>Too bad for you that the Jews' canon matches the
    >Protestant one and not that of the Eastern
    >"Orthodox" Church.

    You mean the later anti-Christian Jews? Yah, good one.

    >We deny that traditions are *infallible* unless they
    >are confirmed by Divine Revelation.

    So you have no infallible revelation because there is no divine revelation about what is divine revelation.

    >The tradition of the Jews was historically reliable
    >and verified by Christ himself, and that is why we
    >follow the Jews' canon.

    Show us where Jesus enumerates the canon.

    >Lastly, would you suggest that we should follow
    >all of the Jews' traditions and consider them to
    >be on par with Scripture? That would be the
    >logical conclusion of the argument you have
    >been making, would it not?

    Of course not. Only the divine traditions.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Since Orthodox keeps repeating errors that have been corrected elsewhere, I'll repeat what I recently said in response to him on this subject in another thread. Steve Hays and I (with others in some cases) have repeatedly explained to Orthodox why his appeal to "Tradition" to arrive at a canon of scripture is unreliable. We've also repeatedly explained to him that using a historical argument for a Protestant canon isn't equivalent to denying that people can arrive at a canon by other means. No Protestant in this forum has argued that ancient Jews utilized the sort of archeological data, lexicons, and such that we utilize in the modern world in order to carry out our historical research. We've also explained to Orthodox, on many occasions, that his appeal to "Tradition" is itself a historical argument. How does he know that Jesus is the Messiah? That He founded a church? That the church in question is Eastern Orthodoxy? That particular councils are ecumenical? Etc. Calling your historical data "Tradition" doesn't change the fact that you're relying on historical probability judgments. And are we to believe that the sort of linguistic evidence, manuscript evidence, archeological evidence, etc. that would be needed to support a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy is equivalent to what Eastern Orthodoxy commonly defines as "Tradition"? It seems that Orthodox is being deliberately vague and duplicitous in his choice of language. Anybody interested in seeing our discussions with Orthodox on subjects like these (discussions that he frequently leaves) can consult the archives. For example:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/sola-ecclesia.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/04/in-search-of-true-church.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. Amongst all the obfuscation, what we are never told by protestants is what the God-approved method of finding the truth is, whether concerning the canon, or anything else, both for Israel and for the Church.

    Jason seems to be conceeding that the historical argument was a loser. It didn't work for the Jews, and it doesn't work for the Church either. If it doesn't work, it can hardly have been God's plan for his people could it?

    So what's the alternative? I don't think Jason is willing to lay it out, because it involves mentioning the dreaded "T" word. Did God have a plan for his church to have the truth, or not? Where do we find evidence of this plan in scripture? I can see the Church mentioned in scripture as the pillar of the truth, but I can't see Jason's grand plan in there.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Orthodox said:
    "You mean the later anti-Christian Jews? Yah, good one."

    Both Philo and Josephus give historical testimony that 22 was the number of books in the Old Testament since they were "layed up in the temple" after the death of the last prophet (loose quote). After Malachi, the Jews believed that the "Spirit of Prophecy [had] ceased from the land" (again, loose quote).

    Next, Athanasius, Jerome, and others (no friends of the Jews) placed the number at 22. They may have added Baruch and other small books as appendices, but they clearly excluded books like the Maccabees (which you include in your canon).

    "So you have no infallible revelation because there is no divine revelation about what is divine revelation."

    Turtles all the way down (i.e. infinite regression). By that logic, you have no infallible revelation because there is no divine revelation about what is divine revelation about what is divine revelation.

    What is the infallible authority that verifies your infallible authority?

    "Show us where Jesus enumerates the canon."

    Christ may not have enumerated every book, but he named the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets as the canon of Scripture. Referring to those would have implicitly referred to what the Jews considered Scripture at that time.

    "Of course not. Only the divine traditions."

    And how do you determine which are divine traditions and which aren't? The Jews considered those traditions mentioned in Matthew 15:3-9 to have been handed down from God to Moses to the Levitical priesthood orally (not inscripturated). This would be just like you justifying your traditions by appeal to "apostolic succession".

    Jesus did away with those traditions by appeal to Scripture. Can you guess how I'm going to deal away with your "Traditions"?

    ReplyDelete
  8. >Both Philo and Josephus give historical testimony
    >that 22 was the number of books in the Old
    >Testament since they were "layed up in the temple"

    I don't believe they ever actually stated that 22 books were layed up in the temple. That is merely an inference some have drawn.

    But assuming it is true, where is your list that maps 22 to your 39?

    And also, is what was in the temple an authority for you? Please explain your ecclesiology whereby the temple is an authority.

    >After Malachi, the Jews believed that the "Spirit of
    >Prophecy [had] ceased from the land" (again,
    >loose quote).

    Do you think so? And yet Josephus' history passes without comment from the events contained in the protestant canon, onto the events contained in 1 Maccabees without comment. And he also speaks of a continuation of prophesy (And 13.311-13, JW 6.286, 6.300-309)


    This whole prophesy had ceased theory is more of a later Jewish theory as an apologetic against Christianity. Had prophesy ceased? Wasn't John the Baptist a prophet? Are post-Christian Jewish traditions now an authority for you? Because if so, you need to recognize the prophesy did not cease, or you have no new covenant.

    >Next, Athanasius, Jerome, and others (no friends
    >of the Jews) placed the number at 22. They may
    >have added Baruch and other small books as
    >appendices, but they clearly excluded books like
    >the Maccabees (which you include in your
    >canon).

    No, not as appendices. Various lists of what was in the 22 book canon omit Esther and/or include Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Wisdom of Solomon. Please prove to us that these books weren't part of the Jewish canon and/or laid up in the temple.

    >Christ may not have enumerated every book, but
    >he named the Law, the Writings, and the
    >Prophets as the canon of Scripture. Referring to
    >those would have implicitly referred to what the >Jews considered Scripture at that time.

    Which included what books? Whichever ones you're protestant traditions tell you I suppose?

    >And how do you determine which are divine
    >traditions and which aren't? The Jews considered
    >those traditions mentioned in Matthew 15:3-9 to
    >have been handed down from God to Moses to
    >the Levitical priesthood orally (not
    >inscripturated).

    I hope you can back up your rhetoric with facts, and aren't just spouting myths. Please document for us from the period contemporary with Jesus that the Jews considered the practices of Mt 15:3 to be handed down from Moses.

    >Jesus did away with those traditions by appeal to >Scripture. Can you guess how I'm going to deal
    >away with your "Traditions"?

    And as I've documented in this blog before, the apostles appealed to various traditions.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Orthodox said:

    "Amongst all the obfuscation, what we are never told by protestants is what the God-approved method of finding the truth is, whether concerning the canon, or anything else, both for Israel and for the Church."

    If we haven't told you what methods should be used ("should" assumes "God-approved"), then why do you keep criticizing the method of making a historical case for the canon? If we haven't given you a method, then how can you criticize a method we've given you?

    We've also told you about other methods that could be used, and you've failed to refute those other methods. I gave you some examples of Paul's expectation that individual Christians would be able to discern what the word of God is without anything like a ruling from an ecumenical council or your Eastern Orthodox concept of tradition (1 Corinthians 14:37, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, etc.). And David King explained to you that the church fathers often referred to the same sort of concept. We've given you examples of how a person could discern what is and isn't the word of God, or could arrive at a canon of scripture in particular, without Eastern Orthodoxy or any comparable system.

    What you seem to be referring to in your comments above is that we haven't given you a method that you approve of. But why should we be concerned with whether you think that our methods are the methods God should provide people with? If you think that God should have given us something like Eastern Orthodoxy, yet the evidence suggests that God didn't do so, then so much the worse for your personal preferences concerning what God should do.

    You write:

    "Jason seems to be conceeding that the historical argument was a loser."

    I linked to two threads in which Steve Hays and I defend the method of making a historical case for our canon. How do you conclude that I'm "conceeding that the historical argument was a loser"? Are you suggesting that acknowledging that other methods of arriving at a canon exist is equivalent to saying that the method of making a historical case is "a loser"? That doesn't make sense. I can believe that there are multiple acceptable methods of arriving at a conclusion. On what basis would you claim to know that there can be only one method?

    You write:

    "It didn't work for the Jews, and it doesn't work for the Church either. If it doesn't work, it can hardly have been God's plan for his people could it?"

    What does "it doesn't work" mean? You need to define what it means for a method to "work", why we should agree with your definition, and how our historical case for a canon supposedly fails to meet that standard.

    You also need to interact with the remainder of my earlier comments, which you keep ignoring. If making a historical case is unacceptable, then how do you justify Eastern Orthodoxy? If you appeal to Biblical passages such as Matthew 16 and patristic passages such as Irenaeus' comments on apostolic succession, as you did in the past, then you're making a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. But you've just told us that such a method is unacceptable. If you're going to argue that people should believe whatever the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy tells them, without examining historical evidence, then why couldn't a Roman Catholic, Mormon, Protestant, etc. do the same for his system?

    You write:

    "I can see the Church mentioned in scripture as the pillar of the truth, but I can't see Jason's grand plan in there."

    As we've told you many times, the conclusion that 1 Timothy is scripture is something that, itself, depends on other concepts that you're assuming without offering any justification. How do you know that Jesus existed? How do you know that He is who you think He is? Why should we agree with your conclusion that Jesus founded a church, that 1 Timothy was written by Paul, that the document therefore has the authority you think it has, that 1 Timothy 3:15 has the meaning you think it has, etc.? If you don't make a historical case for such things, then how do you go about making an objective case for them?

    Why do these things have to be explained to you so often? I can understand why you want to remain anonymous. You have a lot to be ashamed of.

    ReplyDelete
  10. For those who don't know, we've already addressed Orthodox's questions about the Old Testament canon. See the threads I linked to above. Steve Hays gave Orthodox some examples of books he could consult on the subject. Elsewhere, Orthodox objected that he doesn't have access to the books we cite. But if he doesn't want to get them from a library or purchase them, then that's his problem, not ours.

    We've also explained to him that we aren't responsible for the status of the evidence for Divine revelation. If there's a lot of evidence for the inspiration of Isaiah, but less evidence for the inspiration of Esther, then we adjust our conclusions accordingly. We make judgments based on what we have, not on what we wish we had. We don't begin with the assumption that there must be some method of having certainty or a high degree of probability on every portion of the canon, then go looking for a method that will meet our assumption, then claim to have such a method even if we have no justification for that claim.

    Orthodox seems to want some easy way of arriving at his conclusions. A vague appeal to "Tradition" is easy. But other methods, such as accepting Roman Catholic Tradition or accepting whatever the Mormon hierarchy teaches, would also be easy. Why should we prefer Eastern Orthodoxy?

    If he makes a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy, in contrast to other systems competing with it, then he's being inconsistent with his claim that making a historical case is unacceptable. He can't claim that making a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy is easy. He keeps appealing to 1 Timothy 3:15, but, in an earlier thread, he used the pastoral epistles as examples of documents whose authorship is often disputed and thus supposedly is difficult for people to discern on a historical basis. But if his case for Eastern Orthodoxy depends on issues such as who wrote the gospel of Matthew, who wrote 1 Timothy, how Irenaeus defined apostolic succession, etc., then Orthodox can't claim to be presenting us with something easy, something that an illiterate farmer or poorly educated construction worker would be able to follow without difficulty. In other words, Orthodox keeps telling us that we need an easy method of arriving at our beliefs, yet he offers a method of arriving at Eastern Orthodoxy that fails to meet his own standard for easiness.

    When I and David King suggested, in another thread, that people can be led to discern the word of God without a historical argument or something like an Eastern Orthodox belief system, and I cited passages like 1 Corinthians 14:37 and 1 Thessalonians 2:13, Orthodox rejected such a method as too subjective and unsure. But when we offer a more objective approach, such as the historical case made by Steve Hays and me, he responds by saying that it's too difficult. How are people supposed to arrive at a belief in Eastern Orthodoxy, and how does Orthodox make an objective case for Eastern Orthodoxy, without encountering the same things he objects to in Protestantism?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Orthodox said:
    "And also, is what was in the temple an authority for you? Please explain your ecclesiology whereby the temple is an authority."

    As to the historical issues of who said what was in the canon, I'll leave that up to Jason and Steve. I'm not well read in that area.

    But to answer your above question, until Christ came, the Jews were God's covenant people in whom were entrusted the Sacred Writings. The temple authority may not have been infallible, but they faithfully recognized the historicity of those books having been written by the prophets.

    "Are post-Christian Jewish traditions now an authority for you?"

    They are an historical guide. Second, the tradition being put in writing may be post-Christian (though I'm not sure of that), but it dates back to the inter-Testamental era.

    "Because if so, you need to recognize the prophesy did not cease, or you have no new covenant."

    The Jews of the inter-Testamental era (which would include the time when the Maccabean books were written) spoke of no one claiming to be a prophet. I don't believe that they meant that prophecy had ceased in an absolute sense.

    "No, not as appendices. Various lists of what was in the 22 book canon omit Esther and/or include Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Wisdom of Solomon."

    Let's make an historical test for your canon. Did Jerome, a saint, a source that you appeal to, no friend of the Jews, and the only church father to really do any historical investigation into the books of the canon...did he believe that any of the books of the Maccabees were to be included into the canon?

    NO. Jerome believed (as the historically reliable Jewish tradition stated) that prophecy had ceased during the inter-Testamental era.

    "Please prove to us that these books weren't part of the Jewish canon and/or laid up in the temple."

    There are a number of scholars (whose works Steve and Jason have probably already pointed you to) that show that those works were written by inter-Testamental authors, far removed from the time they were allegedly written. Pseudo-authorship was a big no-no to the Jews just as it was to the early Christians.

    "I hope you can back up your rhetoric with facts, and aren't just spouting myths."

    They were called "the Traditions of the Elders" and that specific tradition was called "the Corban Rule". As to references, I know it is in the Babylonian Talmud.

    If the Pharisees forced the people to do all those extra-Sabbath rules on pain of death (Matthew 12:10), then they obviously believed that those rules were more than just man-made conventions.

    "And as I've documented in this blog before, the apostles appealed to various traditions."

    And as Steve and Jason have probably already pointed out, those "traditions" almost always refer to the kerygma (1 Corinthians 15, etc.) that was later enscripturated (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.1.1).

    ReplyDelete
  12. >But to answer your above question, until Christ
    >came, the Jews were God's covenant people in
    >whom were entrusted the Sacred Writings.

    Ok great. Please tell us who was custodian of the Deuterocanonicals. Was it:

    a) The Spanish
    b) The English
    c) The Jews

    >The temple authority may not have been
    >infallible, but they faithfully recognized the
    >historicity of those books having been written by
    >the prophets.

    Firstly, how do you know the temple was faithful? Secondly, you can't show us that the deuterocanonicals weren't in the temple.

    >>"Are post-Christian Jewish traditions now an >>authority for you?"
    >
    >They are an historical guide.

    How are traditions, and not just any traditions, but traditions of anti-Christian Jews a THEOLOGICAL guide? Whether prophesy ceased is not an historical question it is a theological question.

    >Second, the tradition being put in writing may be
    >post-Christian (though I'm not sure of that), but
    >it dates back to the inter-Testamental era.

    No it doesn't.

    >The Jews of the inter-Testamental era (which
    >would include the time when the Maccabean
    >books were written) spoke of no one claiming to
    >be a prophet. I don't believe that they meant that
    >prophecy had ceased in an absolute sense.

    So there was or there was't prophesy? In point of fact, the Jews of the inter-Testamental era knew no such thing. They did speak of short periods of a lack of prophesy, but so what? And why do you believe it anyway, being as it is contained in what you consider non-scriptural books?? Total inconsistency.

    >Let's make an historical test for your canon. Did
    >Jerome, a saint, a source that you appeal to, no
    >friend of the Jews, and the only church father to
    >really do any historical investigation into the
    >books of the canon...did he believe that any of
    >the books of the Maccabees were to be included
    >into the canon?

    Jerome the student of the anti-Christian Jews? No he didn't. But all the other fathers included some or all of the so-called deuterocanonicals, even saying they are part of the Jewish 22 book canon, including that other student of the Jews who lived much closer to the time of Christ: Origen.

    >There are a number of scholars (whose works
    >Steve and Jason have probably already pointed
    >you to) that show that those works were written
    >by inter-Testamental authors, far removed from
    >the time they were allegedly written.

    That's strange because a lot of protestants advise reading the deutero canonicals as a historical perspective on the so-called inter testamental period. And Josephus who you appeal to, uses it as a record just as authentic in his history as the proto-canonical books. But I guess your favourite scholars know all, right?

    >If the Pharisees forced the people to do all those
    >extra-Sabbath rules on pain of death (Matthew
    >12:10), then they obviously believed that those
    >rules were more than just man-made >conventions.

    There's no extra-scriptural rule in Mt 12:10, it's simply a legalistic application of the biblical rule not to work on the sabbath that ignores other biblical rules. Merely poor application.

    Remember, Jesus actually said to obey what the Pharasees taught. Mt 23:3

    >And as Steve and Jason have probably already
    >pointed out, those "traditions" almost always
    >refer to the kerygma (1 Corinthians 15, etc.) that
    >was later enscripturated

    So what? Clearly the apostles got the information from tradition, and thought is authoritative enough to teach to the Church.

    ReplyDelete
  13. >If we haven't given you a method, then how can you
    >criticize a method we've given you?

    You've given a method, but then conceeded it doesn't really work very well, especially for Israel. Doesn't sound like the God-inspired method to me.

    >I gave you some examples of Paul's expectation
    >that individual Christians would be able to
    >discern what the word of God is without anything
    >like a ruling from an ecumenical council or your
    >Eastern Orthodox concept of tradition (1
    >Corinthians 14:37, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, etc.).

    I don't claim to be a prophet per 1 Cor 14:37, do you? So now you've got individual Christians as arbiters of the canon based on... what? Their feelings? So why do Protestants criticise Augustine and other church fathers who felt that various deutero canonicals were scripture?

    >And David King explained to you that the church
    >fathers often referred to the same sort of
    >concept.

    I don't deny the concept, what I deny is that it is authoritatively exercised by individuals, as opposed to the body of Christ collectively. If it is by individuals, then we have chaos, and you've got no basis to criticise anybody's canon.

    >But why should we be concerned with whether
    >you think that our methods are the methods God
    >should provide people with?

    Don't worry what I think, you tell us what method God approves of. You've already conceeded the historical method is a non-starter.

    >If you think that God should have given us
    >something like Eastern Orthodoxy, yet the
    >evidence suggests that God didn't do so, then so
    >much the worse for your personal preferences
    >concerning what God should do.

    The evidence is in the bible that the apostles asked the Church to hold to the traditions. Funny that exactly what they asked the Church to do is a method that can work and which the Church actually did. But you know better as usual.

    >I linked to two threads in which Steve Hays and I
    >defend the method of making a historical case
    >for our canon. How do you conclude that I'm
    >"conceeding that the historical argument was a
    >loser"?

    So you're backtracking now? You claim that Israel knew the canon because they could historically prove that every book of the canon was both written by a bona-fide prophet and written by whom it was purported to be? Please prove this claim.

    >If you appeal to Biblical passages such as
    >Matthew 16 and patristic passages such as
    >Irenaeus' comments on apostolic succession, as
    >you did in the past, then you're making a
    >historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. But you've
    >just told us that such a method is unacceptable.

    It's an apologetic, but it's not an authority in the church. You keep appealing to Josephus (mistakenly I believe) and yet you would not consider him an authority in the church would you? Why does a sola-scriptura-ist keep referring to historical sources as if they are some kind of authority?

    >Why do these things have to be explained to you
    >so often? I can understand why you want to
    >remain anonymous. You have a lot to be
    >ashamed of.

    Back to the ad-hominem when your actual arguments are getting nowhere.

    >Steve Hays gave Orthodox some examples of
    >books he could consult on the subject.

    So now some specialist books are the authority in the Church? So much for sola scriptura.

    >If there's a lot of evidence for the inspiration of
    >Isaiah, but less evidence for the inspiration of
    >Esther, then we adjust our conclusions
    >accordingly. We make judgments based on what
    >we have, not on what we wish we had. We don't
    >begin with the assumption that there must be
    >some method of having certainty or a high
    >degree of probability on every portion of the
    >canon

    So it's all individualistic. Everybody does what is right in their own eyes. If I don't think Hebrews is scripture, but you do - cest la vie. You do what you want, I do what I want. Doesn't sound like the Church of the New Testament to me.

    >If he makes a historical case for Eastern
    >Orthodoxy, in contrast to other systems
    >competing with it, then he's being inconsistent
    >with his claim that making a historical case is
    >unacceptable

    You keep failing to see the distinction between an apologetic and an authority. I can appeal to anything I like as an apologetic, but it doesn't make it an authority in the Church. Don't try and argue otherwise, or you'll show yourself to be a hypocrite and we'll have to assume you consider the Church Fathers, Josephus and Jerome as authorities in your church since you keep appealing to them. Do you understand the difference?

    >He can't claim that making a historical case for
    >Eastern Orthodoxy is easy. He keeps appealing
    >to 1 Timothy 3:15, but, in an earlier thread, he
    >used the pastoral epistles as examples of
    >documents whose authorship is often disputed
    >and thus supposedly is difficult for people to
    >discern on a historical basis.

    You fail to distinguish between a circular argument and spiral reasoning. If there is a Church the apostles founded that has the truth, I can in spiral like fashion hone in on where that church is. But if there is no authority, if authority ceased with the apostles, then everything is always up fro grabs, every point, every book everything can be disputed. And in fact, by doubting one thing, the entire fabric can become unglued because there is no certain platform in your entire theology.

    >When I and David King suggested, in another
    >thread, that people can be led to discern the
    >word of God without a historical argument or
    >something like an Eastern Orthodox belief
    >system, and I cited passages like 1 Corinthians
    >14:37 and 1 Thessalonians 2:13, Orthodox
    >rejected such a method as too subjective and
    >unsure.

    It's too subjective for individuals, because the heart is deceitful. But the church, the entire company of the saints, is a far surer barometer of what the Spirit is doing in the world than a prideful individual. Besides which, someone new in the faith, on milk and not solid food, can hardly be expected to discern what the greatest saints in the church had difficulty grappling with. That you would expect them to shows the great foolishness of your position.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Orthodox said:
    "Ok great. Please tell us who was custodian of the Deuterocanonicals."

    No one. They aren't inspired.

    "Firstly, how do you know the temple was faithful?"

    I can't, but Jesus assumed they were when he called the temple authorities to account by appealing to Scripture (Matthew 22:29). If He called them to account using Scripture, He obviously assumed that they knew what was and wasn't Scripture.

    "How are traditions, and not just any traditions, but traditions of anti-Christian Jews a THEOLOGICAL guide?"

    The appeal is to traditions that were pre-Christian eventhough the recording of them might have been post-Christian. Secondly, some of what you call "traditions" are simply the Jews' historical records.

    "Whether prophesy ceased is not an historical question it is a theological question."

    Actually, it's both.

    "No it doesn't."

    Begging the question.

    "So there was or there was't prophesy?"

    Jews record that there was no prophecy during that time period. It was not an absolute statement that there could be no more prophecy, but rather, as a matter of historical record, there was none.

    "And why do you believe it anyway, being as it is contained in what you consider non-scriptural books??"

    Again, for millionth time, sola Scriptura does not require Scripture as the only authority, but rather, it is the only infallible authority. The Protestant canon is a fallible list of infallible books just as your belief in your canon is a fallible belief of an allegedly infallible list of infallible books. There's still fallibility no matter where you turn.

    "Jerome the student of the anti-Christian Jews?"

    So? For what anti-Christian polemic would the Jews exclude the deuteros? The Jews stopped using the Septuagint because the Christians were using it, and they wanted to stop any dialogue. However, they would have no reason to exclude the Aramaic versions of those books. To my knowledge, there's nothing inherently pro-Christian in those books any more than the prophecies of the Law and the Prophets.

    "That's strange because a lot of protestants advise reading the deutero canonicals as a historical perspective on the so-called inter testamental period."

    I was referring to the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, etc. (i.e. ***the books you had referred to previously***).

    "Origen"

    Pagan Greek philosophy-loving Origen? [Genetic fallacy right back at 'ya.]

    Second, Origen included these works because he believed that the Septuagint was infallible. It clearly was not since it had translational errors in it. This is why Jerome had to make his new translation: to fix the errors of the Septuagint. Origen included those books due to a faulty assumption.

    "There's no extra-scriptural rule in Mt 12:10, it's simply a legalistic application of the biblical rule not to work on the sabbath that ignores other biblical rules. Merely poor application."

    These 700 or so extra rules were indeed part of the "Tradition of the Elders".

    "Remember, Jesus actually said to obey what the Pharasees taught. Mt 23:3"

    Completely taken out of its grammatico-historical context. The chair of Moses was the seat at the front of the synagogue where the scrolls of the Law and the Prophets were read from. Jesus is telling them to listen to the Pharisees as they teach from the Law and the Prophets but not to do what they do since they are hypocrites. In fact, Jesus said to beware of the teachings of the Pharisees (Matthew 16:6-12). This only reinforces sola Scriptura.

    "So what? Clearly the apostles got the information from tradition, and thought is authoritative enough to teach to the Church."

    I fail to see your point. The matter is not over "tradition" per se. Rather, it is over *extra-Scriptural* traditions *today*. The issue is over how can I determine what was and was not an apostolic tradition.

    The Protestant assertion is that when the apostles saw that Christ was not going to return in their lifetime, they decided to record "the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints" (Jude 3) in Scripture so that it would not be mingled with the traditions and philosophies of men down through the centuries. Even you would have to admit that this happened on several occasions since you reject the RC dogma of Purgatory, the Bodily Assumption of Mary, etc. as being apostolic.

    ...No offense, but this is taking up way too much of my time.

    ReplyDelete
  15. >>"Ok great. Please tell us who was custodian of the
    >>Deuterocanonicals."
    >
    >No one. They aren't inspired.

    Obfuscation. Don't be trotting out any Romans verses in favour of your canon then.

    >I can't, but Jesus assumed they were when he
    >called the temple authorities to account by
    >appealing to Scripture (Matthew 22:29). If He
    >called them to account using Scripture, He
    >obviously assumed that they knew what was and
    >wasn't Scripture.

    He called the Saducees to account using scripture too. Did they accept the full canon?

    >The appeal is to traditions that were pre-
    >Christian eventhough the recording of them
    >might have been post-Christian.

    Assuming what you have yet to prove.

    >Secondly, some of what you call "traditions" are
    >simply the Jews' historical records.

    Except that what you claim is not in their records, unless you count those hundreds of years after Christ who have an anti-Christian agenda.

    >Begging the question.

    When you make an unproven claim, "no it doesn't" is all the response it deserves.

    >Jews record that there was no prophecy during
    >that time period.

    No they don't, unless you're talking about the anti-Christian Jews who reject the NT on the same basis.

    >>"And why do you believe it anyway, being as it is
    >>contained in what you consider non-scriptural
    >>books??"
    >
    >Again, for millionth time, sola Scriptura does not >require Scripture as the only authority, but >rather, it is the only infallible authority.

    But apparently to believe in YOUR version of authority we must first believe in this fallible authority called the deutero-canonicals. Who can see the irony that your rule of faith is reliant on the apocryphal books?

    >>"Jerome the student of the anti-Christian Jews?"
    >
    >So? For what anti-Christian polemic would the
    >Jews exclude the deuteros?

    Who cares? I wouldn't rely on the spiritual judgment of people who rejected the New Testament no matter what their reason was. Havn't I just been lectured that we know the canon because of being led by the Spirit?

    >The Jews stopped using the Septuagint because
    >the Christians were using it, and they wanted to
    >stop any dialogue.

    Exactly. And you want to rely on people who would do that just to stop dialogue?

    >However, they would have no reason to exclude
    >the Aramaic versions of those books.

    Yes they would, because in the upheaval of the Roman wars the Aramaic versions were lost to them.

    >To my knowledge, there's nothing inherently
    >pro-Christian in those books any more than the
    >prophecies of the Law and the Prophets.

    People who want to be separated don't need a reason to generate differences. All differences are useful for their polemic.

    However there were plenty of reasons to reject them as an anti-Christian polemic. For one thing it supported the later fraudulent theory that prophesy had ceased.

    For another thing there are such clear parallels to the New Testament that it would be another problem for them. Wisdom 2:12-20 is a good example:

    12: "Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. 13: He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. 14: He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; 15: the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. 16: We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. 17: Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; 18: for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. 19: Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. 20: Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected."

    >>"That's strange because a lot of protestants
    >>advise reading the deutero canonicals as a
    >>historical perspective on the so-called inter
    >>testamental period."
    >
    >I was referring to the Wisdom of Solomon,
    >Baruch, etc.

    Not good enough. You can't just lump all these books a-priori into the same category. You are going to prove one by one that ALL of them aren't scripture.

    >>"Origen"
    >
    >Pagan Greek philosophy-loving Origen? [Genetic
    >fallacy right back at 'ya.]

    It's not a genetic fallacy to note that Jerome got his canon from those NOT led by the Spirit. Havn't I just been lectured that the Spirit leads people to the canon?

    >Second, Origen included these works because he
    >believed that the Septuagint was infallible.

    REALLY? Then why did he spend half his life "correcting" the Septuagint against the Hebrew in his Hexapla?

    >This is why Jerome had to make his new
    >translation: to fix the errors of the Septuagint.

    No, he had to make a new translation because of the errors in the old latin.

    >Origen included those books due to a faulty
    >assumption.

    Assuming what you cannot prove.

    >These 700 or so extra rules were indeed part of
    >the "Tradition of the Elders".

    Are you listening to those anti-Christian Jews from hundreds of years later again?

    >>"Remember, Jesus actually said to obey what
    >>the Pharasees taught. Mt 23:3"
    >
    >Completely taken out of its grammatico-
    >historical context. The chair of Moses was the
    >seat at the front of the synagogue where the
    >scrolls of the Law and the Prophets were read
    >from.

    Proof? I hope you're not promulgating protestant myths again. Can you back up ANYTHING you say?

    >In fact, Jesus said to beware of the teachings of
    >the Pharisees (Matthew 16:6-12). This only
    >reinforces sola Scriptura.

    Wow. So they may have been teaching them the wrong canon huh? I guess we CAN'T trust what was laid up in the temple.

    But he didn't say to ignore their teaching, he said to beware. Why? Because not all they taught was the authentic Tradition. As you ought to know the Jews had many traditions and customs that they followed then and still follow in how to celebrate various festivals and the passover. Jesus never criticised those things. Orthodoxy never claims that you shouldn't be careful to test or beware conceerning what leaders are telling you about the Tradition.

    >I fail to see your point. The matter is not over
    >"tradition" per se. Rather, it is over *extra-
    >Scriptural* traditions *today*. The issue is over
    >how can I determine what was and was not an
    >apostolic tradition.

    And how would that be? Using the historical method, is that what you are advocating? In which case apostolic succession could be a good candidate, being earlier than any NT canonical list. Or maybe the Spirit led approach to truth? If it seems like a divine tradition to me I follow it? Which protestant method are you advocating, and how does it lead to protestantism?

    >The Protestant assertion is that when the
    >apostles saw that Christ was not going to return
    >in their lifetime, they decided to record "the faith
    >which was once for all handed down to the
    >saints" (Jude 3) in Scripture so that it would not
    >be mingled with the traditions and philosophies
    >of men down through the centuries.

    An assertion: but not one found in scripture. So there goes sola scriptura out the window straight away.

    >Even you would have to admit that this happened
    >on several occasions since you reject the RC
    >dogma of Purgatory, the Bodily Assumption of
    >Mary, etc. as being apostolic.

    No I don't reject the bodily assumption.

    If traditions of men have on occasion been mingled, then one can say the same of scripture since many in the early centuries included books that both you and I would reject as being in the canon, and containing teachings I would reject. Apparently this is not a problem for your system, neither is it a problem for me.

    >...No offense, but this is taking up way too much
    >of my time.

    Maybe that's because you like to claim a lot of things you can't back up, thus is goes back and forth...

    ReplyDelete
  16. Orthodox said:

    "Or did they rely on Tradition?

    The answer is obvious."

    Saint and Sinner Responded:

    Too bad for you that the Jews' canon matches the Protestant one and not that of the Eastern "Orthodox" Church.

    Secondly, no one is opposed to "tradition" per se. This is a typical RC and EO straw-man of the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura. We deny that traditions are *infallible* unless they are confirmed by Divine Revelation.

    I might add that I myself corrected Orthodox on this just last week, and Orthodox continues to trade in this straw man. Orthodox, you are in no position to try to correct us, when you have consistently proven yourself to be impervious to correction on your statements about Sola Scriptura, particularly when you have been corrected on this twice in this thread. This is the third time. Add to this my last correction, and you have been corrected on this no less than FOUR times, and I know Jason has corrected you on it more times. Why should we trust anything you say, when you can't get this basic definition correct and refuse correction?

    Orthodox then said:

    So you have no infallible revelation because there is no divine revelation about what is divine revelation.

    Saint and Sinner then responded:

    Turtles all the way down (i.e. infinite regression). By that logic, you have no infallible revelation because there is no divine revelation about what is divine revelation about what is divine revelation.

    What is the infallible authority that verifies your infallible authority?

    And Orthodox has YET to respond to this. So, Orthodox, how about it? Where is the infallible authority for YOUR rule of faith? As you say:

    Maybe that's because you like to claim a lot of things you can't back up, thus is goes back and forth...

    Moving on:

    Orthodox writes:

    Show us where Jesus enumerates the canon.

    Here, Orthodox has displayed his own ignorance of the Scriptures. Perhaps the incense has deadened his brain cells or he's too preoccupied with what his chosen list of Church Fathers has said to bother to look this up. Jesus referred directly to the Law, the Prophets, and Psalms.

    Matthew:

    Chapter 5
    17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."

    Chapter 7
    12 "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

    Chapter 22
    36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 37 He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

    Luke
    Chapter 16
    16 "The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone tries to enter it by force.

    17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.

    Chapter 24
    44 Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you--that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled."

    This is a basic fact and a direct reference to the relevant sections of the OT canon. We can also find references to the Writings in the dialogue attributed to Him, the Psalms are mentioned in Lk. 24, and this is known to be shorthand not just for the Psalter, but the entire section known as the Writings. If you'd bother to check a commentary, you'd know this. In so doing, he affirms the OT canon. We know from history what this canon contained at that time, and what the Jewish view was on the divisions of the canon: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Does he enumerate the books, book by book? No, but we know from which ones he quoted, and we have this reference, and He does not challenge the canon, nor does He receive a challenge from the Jewish authorities on his views. Which of the Apocryphal books did Jesus quote with the authority of, let's say, the Law or the Prophets?

    He called the Saducees to account using scripture too. Did they accept the full canon?

    It is probable, indeed, that by the beginning of the Christian era the Essenes (including the Qumran community) were in substantial agreement with the Pharisees and the Sadducees about the limits of the Hebrew scripture. There may have been some differences of opinion and practice with regard to one or two of the 'Writings', but the inter-party disagreements remembered in Jewish tradition have very little to do with the limits of the canon. The idea that the Sadducees (like the Samaritans) acknowledged the Pentateuch only as holy scripture is based on a misunderstanding: when Josephus, for example, says that the Sadducees 'admit no observance at all apart from the laws', he means not the Pentateuch to the exclusion of the Prophets and the Writings but the written law (of the Pentateuch) to the exclusion of the oral law (the Pharisaic interpretation and application of the written law, which, like the written law itself, was held in theory to have been received and handed down by Moses).

    F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988), pp. 40-41.

    ReplyDelete
  17. >Secondly, no one is opposed to "tradition" per se.
    >This is a typical RC and EO straw-man of the
    >Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura. We deny that
    >traditions are *infallible* unless they are confirmed
    >by Divine Revelation.
    >
    >I might add that I myself corrected Orthodox on
    >this just last week

    Sorry, but when you treat tradition as part of your infallible rule of faith, yet claim the opposite, you deserve criticism, and I will continue to criticise.

    >By that logic, you have no infallible revelation
    >because there is no divine revelation about what
    >is divine revelation about what is divine >revelation.

    Wrong, the divine Jesus Christ set up a Church. And that is the end of the Turtles.

    >What is the infallible authority that verifies your >infallible authority?
    >
    >And Orthodox has YET to respond to this. So,
    >Orthodox, how about it? Where is the infallible
    >authority for YOUR rule of faith?

    Jesus Christ, the apostles and the church they set up.

    >Here, Orthodox has displayed his own ignorance
    >of the Scriptures. Perhaps the incense has
    >deadened his brain cells or he's too preoccupied
    >with what his chosen list of Church Fathers has
    >said to bother to look this up. Jesus referred
    >directly to the Law, the Prophets, and Psalms.

    Ad hominem again. I must be really hitting a raw nerve. I know what the Psalms are, the Law is fairly clear. But the prophets? That's very open ended.

    >In so doing, he affirms the OT canon.

    Looks to me like all he affirmed was three categories of writings, without saying what they include.

    >We know from history what this canon contained
    >at that time

    No you don't. There is no contemporary source which enumerates what it contained. Don't lie.

    >No, but we know from which ones he quoted

    ... and which ones he didn't quote: many books in your canon.

    >and He does not challenge the canon

    great... except we don't know what canon he isn't challenging.

    >Which of the Apocryphal books did Jesus quote
    >with the authority of, let's say, the Law or the
    >Prophets?

    Irrelevant, unless you wish to take a pair of scissors to your bible.

    >The idea that the Sadducees (like the Samaritans)
    >acknowledged the Pentateuch only as holy
    >scripture is based on a misunderstanding: when
    >Josephus, for example, says that the Sadducees
    >'admit no observance at all apart from the laws',

    I find that incredibly unlikely given the clarity with which the resurrection is taught in Isaiah - a doctrine which they denied.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Orthodox writes:

    "You've given a method, but then conceeded it doesn't really work very well, especially for Israel. Doesn't sound like the God-inspired method to me."

    No, I didn't "concede it doesn't really work very well". What I said was that the ancient Jews didn't have access to some of what we have access to today, such as archeological data and lexicons. Similarly, you appealed to lexicons (without documentation) in a previous discussion we had about ecumenical councils. Since earlier generations of Eastern Orthodox didn't have access to those lexicons, should we conclude that you've "conceded that the Eastern Orthodox method doesn't really work very well"? What about your citation of archeological data in our discussion concerning the veneration of images? Since not all Eastern Orthodox of previous generations had access to that data, should we conclude that you've "conceded that the Eastern Orthodox method doesn't really work very well"? Why do you keep applying objections to Protestantism that would defeat your own system if you applied those criticisms consistently?

    And why do you refer to "the God-inspired method", as if there can be only one method and as if it must be "inspired"? Is there also only one "God-inspired method" of arguing for Eastern Orthodoxy? If so, then have all Eastern Orthodox throughout church history interpreted Ezekiel 11 the way you have, appealed to the same lexicons you've claimed to be appealing to, etc.? Would an illiterate Eastern Orthodox layman of the twelfth century have argued for Eastern Orthodoxy in the manner you have in this forum, with appeals to Ezekiel 11, Matthew 16, 1 Timothy 3, Irenaeus, lexicons, archeology, etc.?

    You write:

    "I don't claim to be a prophet per 1 Cor 14:37, do you?"

    You're ignoring the other passages I cited, and you're distorting 1 Corinthians 14:37. The passage doesn't limit itself to prophets and, even if it did, you've suggested that there can be only one method of discerning what is and isn't the word of God, so how can there be a second method that prophets can use?

    You write:

    "So why do Protestants criticise Augustine and other church fathers who felt that various deutero canonicals were scripture?"

    An individual can believe that he's correctly discerned the word of God without believing that every other individual has done so. When people living during Jesus' earthly ministry believed that He was teaching the word of God, or when the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 2:13), for example, discerned that what Paul was teaching was the word of God, should they have abandoned their belief once they knew that other people disagreed with them?

    You write:

    "I don't deny the concept, what I deny is that it is authoritatively exercised by individuals, as opposed to the body of Christ collectively. If it is by individuals, then we have chaos, and you've got no basis to criticise anybody's canon."

    The "body of Christ collectively" is made up of individuals. When an individual met Jesus during His earthly ministry, for example, that individual could come to the belief that Jesus was speaking the word of God without waiting for an ecumenical council or some other such authority to tell him to do so. He wouldn't believe in such authorities to begin with unless he first accepted the authority of Jesus. If people can discern what is and isn't the word of God only by means of what "the body of Christ collectively" tells them, then how do they come to believe in the authority of the church in the first place, and why did individuals such as those who met Jesus in the gospels not wait for a church ruling or church consensus before making their judgments?

    And you'll need to prove your assertion about "chaos". You as an individual made the choice to be Eastern Orthodox rather than Coptic, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Mormon, etc. Is that "chaos"? If the alleged objective truthfulness of Eastern Orthodoxy prevents the individual judgments of individual Eastern Orthodox from representing "chaos", then why wouldn't the same be true with regard to the objective truthfulness of scripture?

    You write:

    "Funny that exactly what they asked the Church to do is a method that can work and which the Church actually did."

    Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other about the canon of scripture. Are you saying that a method that allows different people to reach different conclusions is acceptable, then? If so, then why have you argued that a Protestant method is unacceptable if different people claiming to use it arrive at different conclusions? You're applying a double standard.

    You write:

    "It's an apologetic, but it's not an authority in the church."

    That's irrelevant to what we were discussing. How does an individual come to believe in "the church" to begin with? If you claim to do so on the basis of something like the leading of the Spirit, then why would you object to a Protestant appeal to such a concept? If you claim to do so as a result of historical evidence such as 1 Timothy 3 and the writings of Irenaeus, then you're making the same sort of historical case you've criticized Protestants for making. Again, how do you come to faith in Eastern Orthodoxy and justify that faith in a forum like this one without encountering the same things you've criticized in Protestantism?

    You write:

    "So it's all individualistic. Everybody does what is right in their own eyes. If I don't think Hebrews is scripture, but you do - cest la vie. You do what you want, I do what I want. Doesn't sound like the Church of the New Testament to me."

    Reread your own words. You begin by condemning reliance on individual judgment. Then you refer to what the New Testament evidence suggests to you. There's no way to avoid reliance on personal judgment. Your (errant) choice to follow Eastern Orthodoxy is just that: your choice. And other individuals make other choices. Similarly, different Eastern Orthodox define Tradition in different ways. They follow different canons. Etc. If such a scenario is "chaos" in Protestantism, then it's "chaos" in Eastern Orthodoxy as well.

    You write:

    "But if there is no authority, if authority ceased with the apostles, then everything is always up fro grabs, every point, every book everything can be disputed. And in fact, by doubting one thing, the entire fabric can become unglued because there is no certain platform in your entire theology."

    How does the uniqueness of apostolic authority lead to the conclusion that "there is no authority" and that "everything is always up for grabs"? If the apostles are an authority, then we have authority.

    Just as Protestants can doubt something, such as whether a book is canonical, so can Eastern Orthodox. You can doubt that Eastern Orthodoxy is the church founded by Christ. You can doubt whether a particular tradition is Tradition. When Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other about the Old Testament canon, you can doubt whether you're following the correct canon. You can doubt whether you're interpreting Tradition correctly. Etc. It's not as if Eastern Orthodox don't have doubts. And it's not as though the presence of doubts disproves a belief system.

    You write:

    "It's too subjective for individuals, because the heart is deceitful. But the church, the entire company of the saints, is a far surer barometer of what the Spirit is doing in the world than a prideful individual."

    How do you know that "the church, the entire company of the saints, is a far surer barometer of what the Spirit is doing in the world"? That's a judgment that you're making as an individual.

    You write:

    "Besides which, someone new in the faith, on milk and not solid food, can hardly be expected to discern what the greatest saints in the church had difficulty grappling with. That you would expect them to shows the great foolishness of your position."

    And many people have disagreed over whether Jesus is the Messiah. Should individuals therefore refrain from relying on their own judgment on the matter? Should they follow the majority of the world's population in rejecting Christ?

    If individuals shouldn't rely on their own judgments about controversial issues, then how does the individual come to believe in Eastern Orthodoxy to begin with? The claims of Eastern Orthodoxy are widely disputed. Many church fathers disagreed with Eastern Orthodoxy on many issues, as I've documented, and there are many Roman Catholics, Copts, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc. who would disagree with the claims Eastern Orthodoxy makes about its own authority. Should individuals therefore refrain from making a judgment about whether Eastern Orthodoxy is what it claims to be? How would an individual even discern who the "greatest saints" are, who is a Christian and who isn't, etc. without making individual judgments on such matters?

    You write:

    "Orthodoxy never claims that you shouldn't be careful to test or beware conceerning what leaders are telling you about the Tradition."

    But when Protestants do the same, you object that what they're doing is too individualistic, too difficult, leads to "chaos", etc.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I haven't bothered to say anything as of yet since the original individual I was responding to hasn't offered a reply, and Orthdox is simply repeating the same, stale, one and a half arguments he always recyles,

    ReplyDelete
  20. >No, I didn't "concede it doesn't really work very
    >well". What I said was that the ancient Jews didn't
    >have access to some of what we have access to
    >today, such as archeological data and lexicons.

    Aka, it didn't work.

    >Since earlier generations of Eastern Orthodox didn't
    >have access to those lexicons, should we conclude
    >that you've "conceded that the Eastern Orthodox
    >method doesn't really work very well"?

    Why would native Greek speakers need lexicons to refute non-existent protestants?

    >Since not all Eastern Orthodox of previous
    >generations had access to that data, should we
    >conclude that you've "conceded that the Eastern
    >Orthodox method doesn't really work very well"?
    > Why do you keep applying objections to
    >Protestantism that would defeat your own
    >system if you applied those criticisms
    >consistently?

    Unlike protestantism, Orthodoxy is not about every single person proving every individual point of doctrine from first principles, as if the church came into existence yesterday. Your motto is "always reforming". Ours is "never reforming". We find the true church that was founded by the apostles and we follow it. We don't question each individual point all the time as if 2000 years of the chronicles of the people of God never happened. You don't find people in Jesus' time asking for proof that every individual book and doctrine was true. They found the true people of God and the followed them. Sure, they had to figure out it was the Jews and not the Egyptians or someone else who was the people of God, but having discerned that, they didn't question the historical veracity of everything.

    >An individual can believe that he's correctly
    >discerned the word of God without believing that
    >every other individual has done so.

    But why believe you are better at Spiritually discerning the canon than someone else? You must feel certain that you are more spiritual than say Augustine then? Quite a claim. Quite a lot of pride.

    >When people living during Jesus' earthly ministry
    >believed that He was teaching the word of God,
    >or when the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians
    >2:13), for example, discerned that what Paul was
    >teaching was the word of God, should they have
    >abandoned their belief once they knew that other
    >people disagreed with them?

    If pretty much everyone disagreed with you, then yes they should have, because God would hardly allow the truth to rest in only you.

    >The "body of Christ collectively" is made up of
    >individuals. When an individual met Jesus during
    >His earthly ministry, for example, that individual
    >could come to the belief that Jesus was speaking
    >the word of God without waiting for an
    >ecumenical council or some other such authority
    >to tell him to do so

    Certainly.

    >If people can discern what is and isn't the word
    >of God only by means of what "the body of Christ
    >collectively" tells them, then how do they come
    >to believe in the authority of the church in the
    >first place, and why did individuals such as those
    >who met Jesus in the gospels not wait for a
    >church ruling or church consensus before
    >making their judgments?

    The issue is not what happens before a consensus, the issue is what happens after a consensus. Judging by the various differing canon lists circulating in the first centuries, it is reasonable to assume that had you been alive then, you yourself would have had a different canon. Does that mean you can legitimately hold a different canon all this time later? I say not, and the reality of how protestantism works says not too.

    >Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other about
    >the canon of scripture. Are you saying that a
    >method that allows different people to reach
    >different conclusions is acceptable, then? If so,
    >then why have you argued that a Protestant
    >method is unacceptable if different people
    >claiming to use it arrive at different conclusions?
    >You're applying a double standard.

    I still say that to have a credible position you have to have some more certain link to an authority than what you have. You have no apostolic teaching on what teachings are certainly apostolic. You can doubt if you want that Orthodoxy is that authority, but to doubt that the apostles left an authoritative organization to guard what is certainly apostolic, you have nothing at all but thousands of various truth claims from which you can pick and choose a cocktail of your own choosing. You teach that the Jews were entrusted with the word of God, a visibly identifiable group who you think you can identify their canon, but you refuse to see a visibly identifiable Church which has the same role for the new covenant. In short, God must have left an authority as a guardian of the truth, just as he did for the old covenant. If he didn't, then the truth is lost as an objective reality. You have no way of even beginning to know any more what teachings are apostolic or authoritative.

    >How does an individual come to believe in "the
    >church" to begin with? If you claim to do so on
    >the basis of something like the leading of the
    >Spirit, then why would you object to a Protestant
    >appeal to such a concept?

    Everything in Orthodoxy is relational and collective. Your concept of being led by the Spirit: the possibility of being led off in a different direction to the body of Christ, is incomprehesible to the eastern mind.

    The whole of the old testament is the story of a people - the people of God. In Orthodoxy that story continues on unbroken with all the stories of the saints, right through to the present time.

    The idea that this story ended at Malachi after which there is no longer an identifiable people, just competing claims from various schismatic groups that die out, start up again, repudiate the previous generations, and generally adhere to an individualist believe whatever you want as an individual, is totally foreign to the history of God's people.

    >How does the uniqueness of apostolic authority
    >lead to the conclusion that "there is no authority"
    >and that "everything is always up for grabs"? If
    >the apostles are an authority, then we have
    >authority.

    Because you only have a dead authority, who can't speak to you in the current age. You can't speak to an apostle to tell you what he really wrote or what he really meant. You have no apostolic statement that Mark or Luke or Hebrews is scripture. You only have extra scriptural traditions to say that these are apostolic approved. In short, your sola scriptura is a farce.

    >It's not as if Eastern Orthodox don't have doubts.
    >And it's not as though the presence of doubts
    >disproves a belief system.

    But you can't logically have a belief system, all you can have is a collection of beliefs, that are always up for grabs with a new historical insight. You have your canon and your doctrines, and its only by lucky happenstance if what you believe happens to coincide with someone elses. You have no concept that there is an identifyable group somewhere that actually agree because they have the truth.

    >How do you know that "the church, the entire
    >company of the saints, is a far surer barometer
    >of what the Spirit is doing in the world"? That's a
    >judgment that you're making as an individual.

    reductio ad absurdum again. So now I'm individualistic becasuse I choose not to be individualistic? WIth logic like this, the most absurd things can be proven. Philosophy to the point of stupidity.

    >And many people have disagreed over whether
    >Jesus is the Messiah. Should individuals therefore
    >refrain from relying on their own judgment on
    >the matter?

    The truth is not a matter of opinion, but whether you believe in Jesus is a choice God has given us. He hasn't given us a choice on what the truth is. Completely different thing.

    >>"Orthodoxy never claims that you shouldn't be
    >>careful to test or beware conceerning what
    >>leaders are telling you about the Tradition."
    >
    >But when Protestants do the same, you object
    >that what they're doing is too individualistic, too
    >difficult, leads to "chaos", etc.

    It's a completely different thing. Orthodox exercise their discernment to retain their belief in the reality of a continuing unity of Tradition through time and space. That's why Orthodoxy is one church after 2000 years. Protestants exercise their discernment to believe in their own personal interpretation, to hell with what everyone else thinks either now or historically if I think I know better. Thus the protestant movement is more divided as time goes on.

    You want to believe you are somehow the same as us, but the reality is not. We have 2000 years of runs on the board.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Orthodox said:

    "Why would native Greek speakers need lexicons to refute non-existent protestants?"

    Not all Eastern Orthodox or all Christians have been Greek speakers. You aren't a Greek speaker, and you appealed to lexicons (without documentation) to argue for your view of an ecumenical council. You were appealing to a source that many other Christians haven't had access to. Yet, you've claimed that Protestants shouldn't appeal to such sources. You've argued that my historical case for a canon of scripture is unacceptable if I appeal to information or something else that previous Christians didn't have access to. But you're doing the same thing when you attempt to make a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy.

    You write:

    "We find the true church that was founded by the apostles and we follow it. We don't question each individual point all the time as if 2000 years of the chronicles of the people of God never happened."

    The process of "finding the true church that was founded by the apostles and following it" is itself a matter of making probability judgments about history. And in the process of making a (false) historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy, you've appealed to arguments that previous generations didn't have access to. Yet, you've repeatedly criticized Protestants for relying on probability judgments and for appealing to arguments not available to previous generations. You're not being consistent.

    And your characterization of Protestants as acting "as if 2000 years of the chronicles of the people of God never happened" is false. Your inability and unwillingness to make a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy tells us a lot about how much concern you actually have for church history. If the historical record doesn't support your preference that a system like Eastern Orthodoxy be true, then you dismiss the historical record in favor of your "childlike faith" in Eastern Orthodoxy. People who are as concerned with history as you claim to be don't regularly go about condemning historical scholarship, condemning historical probability judgments, and consulting Catholic Answers to get basic information on the church fathers, for example.

    You write:

    "You don't find people in Jesus' time asking for proof that every individual book and doctrine was true. They found the true people of God and the followed them. Sure, they had to figure out it was the Jews and not the Egyptians or someone else who was the people of God, but having discerned that, they didn't question the historical veracity of everything."

    Notice the characteristic lack of supporting argumentation. We get one unargued assertion piled on top of another.

    You write:

    "But why believe you are better at Spiritually discerning the canon than someone else? You must feel certain that you are more spiritual than say Augustine then? Quite a claim. Quite a lot of pride."

    Notice how Orthodox doesn't even address the issue I was addressing. 1 Corinthians 14:37 doesn't describe Orthodox's approach toward discerning the word of God. But he ignores that fact and, instead, comments on how somebody must have "pride" to think that he can discern the canon better than Augustine.

    In addition to being a diversion from the issue at hand, Orthodox's argument is irrational. There's no reason to believe that somebody is "proud" if he thinks that he's discerned the canon better than Augustine. Orthodox thinks that he's discerned the identity of the true church better than Thomas Aquinas, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, and many other people who are highly regarded. Should we conclude that Orthodox is therefore "proud"?

    You write:

    "If pretty much everyone disagreed with you, then yes they should have, because God would hardly allow the truth to rest in only you."

    Notice that, yet again, Orthodox has changed the subject without addressing the issue I was discussing. I explained that people who met Jesus during His earthly ministry and the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 2:13), for example, discerned the word of God without anything like an ecumenical council or a church consensus. Instead of addressing that point, Orthodox changes the subject to whether these people should have maintained their views if "pretty much everyone" disagreed with them.

    Protestants don't claim that they're the only ones who have ever had the truth. Rather, they claim to agree with the Biblical authors and later historical figures while, at the same time, denying that systems like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have the authority they claim to have. Rejecting Eastern Orthodoxy isn't equivalent to claiming that you're the only one who has ever known the truth.

    If, on the other hand, Orthodox is criticizing Protestants for thinking that no or relatively few people knew the truth for some period of time (not all time), then he's not just criticizing Protestants. He's also criticizing Noah. And Josiah (2 Kings 22:8-13). And Ezra (Nehemiah 8:13-17). And Athanasius.

    He's also criticizing Jesus and the first person who ever believed in Jesus. There would have been a first person to believe in Him, and if we're never to make such judgments alone, then nobody should have believed in Him. And Jesus must have been mistaken when He repeatedly criticized the people of His day for not understanding the Messianic prophecies. Surely God wouldn't let so many people, including the religious leaders of Israel, misjudge some of the prophecies, right?

    You write:

    "The issue is not what happens before a consensus, the issue is what happens after a consensus."

    That's a qualifier you didn't mention earlier, and you've done nothing to justify your addition of that qualifier. Earlier, you asked how people would have behaved during the time of the apostles. According to you, there wasn't a canonical consensus during that time. If you were only addressing how people should behave after a consensus comes into existence, then why have you mentioned timeframes in which you don't think there was a consensus?

    And your appeal to a consensus has been refuted many times. See Steve Hays' comments on the subject at the beginning of this thread. And see my comments in a previous discussion with you, one of the many discussions you left:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

    As we've shown you repeatedly, people like Josiah and Ezra are portrayed positively in scripture for rejecting a consensus of disobedience to the word of God (2 Kings 22:8-13, Nehemiah 8:13-17). And there was widespread opposition in early church history to much of what you believe as an Eastern Orthodox. I've given you examples:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-another-thread-orthodox-wrote.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/08/perry-robinsons-claims-about-what.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/perpetual-virginity-of-mary.html

    You've given us no reason to believe that a consensus has the significance you claim it has. And we know of multiple examples of a consensus being wrong. Besides, Protestants don't deny that their beliefs had a consensus in apostolic times. What they disagree with is some consensus in non-apostolic times.

    You write:

    "You teach that the Jews were entrusted with the word of God, a visibly identifiable group who you think you can identify their canon, but you refuse to see a visibly identifiable Church which has the same role for the new covenant. In short, God must have left an authority as a guardian of the truth, just as he did for the old covenant."

    In another of our previous discussions that you left, you were arguing for discontinuity between Israel and the church after I demonstrated that God didn't fulfill His promises to Israel in the manner in which you've claimed that He would fulfill similar promises to the church:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

    I don't believe that ancient Israel had the attributes Eastern Orthodoxy claims to have, so I wouldn't have to look for a New Testament equivalent to Eastern Orthodoxy if I wanted to find a New Testament parallel to ancient Israel. And I do follow the New Testament canonical consensus of the church. But that church isn't Eastern Orthodoxy.

    You write:

    "The whole of the old testament is the story of a people - the people of God. In Orthodoxy that story continues on unbroken with all the stories of the saints, right through to the present time. The idea that this story ended at Malachi after which there is no longer an identifiable people, just competing claims from various schismatic groups that die out, start up again, repudiate the previous generations, and generally adhere to an individualist believe whatever you want as an individual, is totally foreign to the history of God's people."

    Remember, this is the same Orthodox who argued in another thread for a significant change between ancient Israel and the church, in an attempt to explain why God didn't fulfill His promises to Israel in the manner in which Orthodox claims that He should fulfill similar promises to the church:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

    You write:

    "Because you only have a dead authority, who can't speak to you in the current age."

    Earlier, you said that I have no authority. Now you say that I have an authority, but that it's "dead". The fact that the apostles are dead doesn't prevent their writings from being an authority. Your objection is ridiculous. You may prefer to have an ongoing infallible church, but your desire for such a church doesn't make it exist, nor does it prove that Protestants have no authority.

    You write:

    "You can't speak to an apostle to tell you what he really wrote or what he really meant."

    When's the last time the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy told you what a passage of scripture "really meant"? Where can we find an infallible Eastern Orthodox interpretation of the entirety of scripture? There isn't one. The fact that you consider it preferable in theory to have a church that can tell us what the apostles "really meant" doesn't prove that God gave us such a church. It would also be advantageous in theory to have an infallible authority to tell us what clothes to wear each day, what food to eat, what friends to have, where to work, etc. But God hasn't given us such an authority. You've failed to demonstrate that God did give us a church with the attributes you claim that Eastern Orthodoxy has. The fact that you consider such a church to be preferable to the Bible in theory doesn't tell us that God has given us such a church.

    You write:

    "But you can't logically have a belief system, all you can have is a collection of beliefs, that are always up for grabs with a new historical insight."

    As we've told you many times, the fallibility of historical judgments applies to your historical judgments about Eastern Orthodoxy, not just to our historical judgments about scripture. If relying on historical probability judgments is unacceptable, then relying on historical probability judgments about Eastern Orthodoxy is unacceptable. So much for your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy.

    You write:

    "The truth is not a matter of opinion, but whether you believe in Jesus is a choice God has given us. He hasn't given us a choice on what the truth is."

    You're changing the subject. I didn't say that we choose what the truth is in the sense that truth is created by our personal preferences. But we do rely on our own judgment in attempting to discern the truth. Your choice to be Eastern Orthodox (not an atheist, a Buddhist, a Roman Catholic, a Baptist, a Copt, etc.) is just that: your choice. Just as my choice to believe in my Protestant rule of faith is a fallible personal judgment, so is your choice to believe in your Eastern Orthodox rule of faith.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Sorry, but when you treat tradition as part of your infallible rule of faith, yet claim the opposite, you deserve criticism, and I will continue to criticise.

    Except of course, for now the FIFTH time, WE DO NOT CLAIM THAT SOLA SCRIPTURA EXCLUDES THE USE OF TRADITION. This is basic information, a basic definition around which you can't seem to wrap your tiny brain. The definition of Sola Scriptura is that only Scripture is infallible for the rule of faith and practice in the normative era of the church, but other authorities (traditions) may be used as references but they are not infallible. You keep criticizing a straw man, not the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. What is unclear about this?


    Wrong, the divine Jesus Christ set up a Church. And that is the end of the Turtles.

    No, you're wrong, where is the infallible authority for that? How do you know that the Eastern Orthodox church is that church? Where does Scripture define the Church as a physical entity alone? I see a doctrine of the local church, and I see a doctrine of the invisible church. The onus is on you to show that Christ set up a church and that church is your communion. You have yet to make good on this.

    Jesus Christ, the apostles and the church they set up.

    Where does Scripture call this the Eastern Orthodox Church? This is a claim, nothing more. Where is your infallible authority for this claim? The Eastern Orthodox Church? How can your communion serve the very thing it claims to define and interpret? Where is the infallible authority for the authority of your claim?

    Ad hominem again. I must be really hitting a raw nerve. I know what the Psalms are, the Law is fairly clear. But the prophets? That's very open ended.

    A. How so? If the content of "the Law" and "Psalms," the latter of which refers to the whole of the Wisdom literature in their canon, is "clear" then why is "the Prophets" unclear?

    B. This is patently false. The divisions of the Jewish canon of the time, which we know, were "The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings." Once again, this is basic information a Sunday School student should know. The onus is on you to disprove that, since you're the one claiming the canon differed. Where is your competing exegesis; where is your competing argument?

    Notice also that Orthodox says this is "ad homineum," but he doesn't tell us what is ad homineum. It isn't ad homineum when the statement is true. He asked a question and received Scripture in response. If he wasn't ignorant of Scripture, he would not have asked this. I'd add that he's the one calling William Webster a clown who uses joke scholarship. Orthodox uses a differernt yardstick for himself while holding us to another. I'm merely answering him on his own level. The fact of the matter is, he asked a question and I answered it with Scripture, and now he simply waves his hand to dismiss it.


    Looks to me like all he affirmed was three categories of writings, without saying what they include.

    A. What was the content of those three categories?
    B. Looks to you? You sound mighty Protestant here. Where is the infallible exegesis of these texts to tell you what they mean? You condemn individual judgment only to use it yourself.

    No you don't. There is no contemporary source which enumerates what it contained. Don't lie.

    If true, it cuts both ways, so you have no basis for your claim that the canon contained the Apocryphal books. Josephus, tells us that the Hebrew canon consisted of twenty-two books and did not include the Apocrypha. The onus is therefore on you to show otherwise. The fact that Jospheus is not "contemporary" to Jesus and therefore illegitmate is an irrelevant claim, since it would, if you consistently applied it, be problematic for a great deal of historical claims, both sacred and secular. Do you throw out the histories of Rome on that same basis? You argue like an atheist. You are claiming the canon was different, so where is your contemporary source?

    ... and which ones he didn't quote: many books in your canon.

    A. Which therefore proves the canonicity of the books he did quote. Notice, how, to blunt the force of what I am writing Orthodox has to divide the sentence. He attacks half or a third of the thought, not the whole.

    B. He did not quote Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. According to you, "Psalms" is clear, and since "Psalms" in the text offered refers to more than the Psalter, and you accepted that above, we have only three books, not "many."

    C. What would be the compelling reason to therefore conclude he denied their canonicity? Given what he says about the Law, Prophets, and Writings and what we know about the content of that appellation, as well as the acceptance of the Jews of those books in their canon, the onus is on you to show that Jesus would not have viewed those as canonical or at least provide a compelling reason. All you have provided is a vague reference to the Church set up by Jesus and the Apostles, a church that did not exist until the first century.

    D. If your objection is true, then the Apocryphal books are not canonical, using your own yardstick.

    E. The Protestant rule of faith is not wholly dependent on Jesus' affirmation, so your objection is only true if your straw man definition of Sola Scriptura is true. You're shadowboxing now.

    great... except we don't know what canon he isn't challenging.

    Do we? You just said we don't have a contemporary source which enumerates what it contained. If that's true, then your statement is self-refuting. We don't know. Which is it to be?

    Irrelevant, unless you wish to take a pair of scissors to your bible.

    This makes no sense. You asked a question about Jesus' teaching. I asked you another, and you have simply declared it irrelevant. I will ask you again, which of the Apocryphal books did Jesus quote with the authority of the Law or the Prophets?

    I find that incredibly unlikely given the clarity with which the resurrection is taught in Isaiah - a doctrine which they denied

    Notice that I gave a source for this statement. If Orthodox thinks Bruce is wrong, then he needs to actually deal with what Bruce says. The doctrine of the resurrection is taught in Isaiah, but one does not need to accept a doctrine in order to recognize the canonicity of the text itself. Those are two different issues.

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  23. You keep trying to say that my decision to find the church that keeps the apostolic faith is equivilent to your decision on a canon, but I do not believe it is so.

    All the information for choosing among the candidate apostolic churches is readily available, and the question of why they have departed from one another are quite clear to all.

    Furthermore, the history prior to the split between East and West is itself an authority in my ecclesiology. Yes, I have to interpret it and evaluate it, but the facts concerning the decision are readily apparent, and apparent in a form that I consider authoritative.

    When it comes to your source of authority, sola scriptura, not only are many of the facts not on the table, but even if they were, they would not be an authority for you.

    Take the gospel of Mark. There is no information from antiquity saying that Mark was approved by Peter as being infallible God breathed scripture. Whatever you may believe about Mark having contact with Peter, it hardly proves that what he wrote was inspired and inerrant.

    So there's a critical and yawning gap between a source of authority, and your decision to treat Mark as scripture. And it only gets worse for OT books like Esther and others.

    Secondly, even if such information was contained in the Tradition, you do not consider the Tradition any kind of authority, resulting in a second yawning gap between a real authority, and your decision to treat it as an authority.

    Now for all the problems I may have in figuring out who is the real Church, at least there is an unbroken chain of authority within my theological system between Jesus Christ, and my current source of authority. Whether you agree with that theological system, at least it is a system which internally makes sense. Under your system, there isn't even a pretense that you can trace your authority through an unbroken infallible link back to the real authority who is God. All you can do is analyse it via a fallible history. Yes I have to analyse history too, but the history itself is part of the record of an infallible church under my system, and if I correctly discern the path of that infallible history, I have an actual link with the authority of God.

    ReplyDelete
  24. >Except of course, for now the FIFTH time, WE DO
    >NOT CLAIM THAT SOLA SCRIPTURA EXCLUDES THE
    >USE OF TRADITION. This is basic information, a
    >basic definition around which you can't seem to
    >wrap your tiny brain.

    Ad hominem again. You must be losing very badly.

    When the source of authority for your rule of faith is Tradition, then you have a non-scriptura rule of faith. This is basic basic stuff.

    >Where does Scripture define the Church as a
    >physical entity alone?

    Where does scripture say I have to prove anything to you from scripture?

    >A. How so? If the content of "the Law" and
    >"Psalms," the latter of which refers to the whole
    >of the Wisdom literature in their canon, is "clear"
    >then why is "the Prophets" unclear?

    It's unclear because we are not told what is contained in that category.

    >B. This is patently false. The divisions of the
    >Jewish canon of the time, which we know, were
    >"The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings." Once
    >again, this is basic information a Sunday School
    >student should know.

    Which is completely irrelevant because it doesn't tell you what books are in those categories, especially "the writings".

    >Notice also that Orthodox says this is "ad
    >homineum," but he doesn't tell us what is ad
    >homineum.

    If you can't figure out for yourself that saying your opponent has deadened brain cells is ad-hominem, then I can't help you.

    >>No you don't. There is no contemporary source
    >>which enumerates what it contained. Don't lie.
    >
    >If true, it cuts both ways, so you have no basis
    >for your claim that the canon contained the
    >Apocryphal books

    Which is fine, because I have a living church which is authoritative on any issues to do with the canon. I'm not the one making some specious historical claim.

    >Josephus, tells us that the Hebrew canon
    >consisted of twenty-two books and did not
    >include the Apocrypha.

    Josephus never says whether the 22 books includes the apocrypha. Lying and/or ignorance does not advance your cause.

    >The fact that Jospheus is not "contemporary" to
    >Jesus and therefore illegitmate is an irrelevant
    >claim, since it would, if you consistently applied
    >it, be problematic for a great deal of historical
    >claims, both sacred and secular.

    What do I care how problematic it would be? Josephus had an apologetic and polemic agenda. If that makes life "problematic" for you, tough bickies.

    >Do you throw out the histories of Rome on that
    >same basis?

    You mean like Romulus and Remus? Yes, I recognise the problems of history, I don't gloss over them to solve a protestant theological hole.

    >You argue like an atheist. You are claiming the
    >canon was different, so where is your
    >contemporary source?

    I don't have a contemporary source, I have a living Church.

    >A. Which therefore proves the canonicity of the
    >books he did quote. Notice, how, to blunt the
    >force of what I am writing Orthodox has to divide
    >the sentence. He attacks half or a third of the
    >thought, not the whole.

    What you said has no force since nobody is disputing the books he did quote.

    >B. He did not quote Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther,
    >Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. According to you,
    >"Psalms" is clear, and since "Psalms" in the text
    >offered refers to more than the Psalter, and you
    >accepted that above, we have only three books,
    >not "many."

    That would depend on your standard wouldn't it? Jude quotes Enoch, but you don't therefore include Enoch do you? So if you want to reduce it to books of which it is said "it is written" I think it will cut you back to a dozen.

    >C. What would be the compelling reason to
    >therefore conclude he denied their canonicity?
    >Given what he says about the Law, Prophets, and
    >Writings and what we know about the content of
    >that appellation, as well as the acceptance of the
    >Jews of those books in their canon, the onus is
    >on you to show that Jesus would not have viewed
    >those as canonical or at least provide a
    >compelling reason.

    Because I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There is no source contemporary or even nearly contemporary with Jesus which enumerates the canon or enumerates what is contained in the 22 books. You can use Josephus if you want to, even though he isn't truely contemporary, because he cannot help you either. He has no list. THERE IS NO LIST.

    Let me repeat it again. For all the obfuscation that goes back and forward here THERE IS NO LIST.

    The Protestant canon is purely derived from a particular later remnant of Jews whose claim to fame is they rejected the New Testament. There's no compelling reason to think their canon has anything to do with that of the Jews of Jesus' time, and a number of reasons to think it didn't, such as Josephus' equal treatment of 1 Maccabees within his Antiquities.

    Purely based on the historical record, you have no way whatsoever of knowing for sure what books Jesus considered canonical outside of what he directly commented on. All the writings that attempt to enumerate the 22 books differ. Some lists have less than the protestant canon, some have more. If history is your rule of faith, you are hosed on this one.

    >>I find that incredibly unlikely given the clarity
    >>with which the resurrection is taught in Isaiah -
    >>a doctrine which they denied
    >
    >Notice that I gave a source for this statement. If
    >Orthodox thinks Bruce is wrong, then he needs
    >to actually deal with what Bruce says. The
    >doctrine of the resurrection is taught in Isaiah,
    >but one does not need to accept a doctrine in
    >order to recognize the canonicity of the text
    >itself. Those are two different issues.

    They are two different issues but I personally don't think the Sadducees were that plain obtuse and stupid that they can't see extremely plain references to a resurrection in Isaiah. And when Jesus came to refute them, he would have made much better headway out of Isaiah than what he made out of the Law. What Bruce says is irrelevant, it only deals with what Josephus said, and doesn't deal with the more pertinant facts. If you want to think the Sadducees were that stupid, so much the worse for your position.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Orthodox writes:

    "All the information for choosing among the candidate apostolic churches is readily available, and the question of why they have departed from one another are quite clear to all."

    As we've seen in previous discussions, you've failed to produce any evidence leading us to the conclusion that Eastern Orthodoxy is an infallible church founded by Christ. When I asked you to demonstrate that the earliest bishops were Eastern Orthodox, you cited belief in apostolic succession among some sources who lived in the second century or later. I then explained that apostolic succession doesn't single out Eastern Orthodoxy, that citing some sources from the second century and later doesn't address the earliest bishops, that different sources defined apostolic succession in different ways, and that the earliest sources you cited (Irenaeus and Tertullian) disagreed with your definition. And you didn't offer any further evidence that the earliest bishops were Eastern Orthodox. I repeatedly asked you to do so, but you didn't. If "the information for choosing among the candidate apostolic churches is readily available", then why have you repeatedly failed to produce such distinguishing evidence for Eastern Orthodoxy when asked?

    And if "the question of why they have departed from one another are quite clear to all", then why do Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, for example, disagree with each other as to why one departed from the other? Roman Catholics would claim that their denomination is the one true church, and that Eastern Orthodoxy departed from that church for errant reasons. You, as an Eastern Orthodox, would claim the opposite. If the reasons for the two denominations' departing from one another are "quite clear to all", then why do so many people disagree about those reasons?

    You write:

    "Furthermore, the history prior to the split between East and West is itself an authority in my ecclesiology. Yes, I have to interpret it and evaluate it, but the facts concerning the decision are readily apparent, and apparent in a form that I consider authoritative. When it comes to your source of authority, sola scriptura, not only are many of the facts not on the table, but even if they were, they would not be an authority for you."

    Anybody can claim that the evidence supporting his belief system is "readily apparent". A Protestant could do the same. You can dispute his claim, but he would likewise dispute yours.

    And what do you mean when you say that church history is "authoritative" in your system? You can't mean that sources like lexicons and journal articles about archeology are infallible, since Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't include such sources in its rule of faith. Yet, you've appealed to such sources to make your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. You also don't consider the writings of people like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Jerome infallible. And if you're examining church history in order to identify the church, then you can't use church authority as a basis for considering church history "authoritative" in the process. You wouldn't be able to apply church authority to church history until you first identify the church.

    When you refer to historical data as not being an authority for Protestants, what you seem to be referring to is the fact that we don't believe in an ongoing infallible church with something like your concept of Tradition. But, as we've explained to you before, you can't equate the entirety of the historical record with your concept of Tradition. The writings of men like Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Augustine, which often contradict what Eastern Orthodox believe, aren't equivalent to Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Archeology isn't Eastern Orthodox Tradition. The writings of non-Christian sources like Josephus and Porphyry aren't Eastern Orthodox Tradition. What you seem to be doing is assuming that if some elements of post-apostolic history are accepted by you as part of your Tradition, then all elements of post-apostolic history are equivalent to that Tradition. But equating some with all doesn't make sense.

    You also seem to be assuming that when something is considered Tradition by you, then anybody who cites it must be accepting that entity as your Tradition. But the fact that you define an entity as Eastern Orthodox Tradition doesn't mean that everybody else has to. If you call a canonical consensus or an ecumenical council "Eastern Orthodox Tradition", a Roman Catholic could call the same entity "Roman Catholic Tradition", and a Protestant could call it "historical evidence", for example.

    You refer to how historical data isn't "an authority" for Protestants. What you seem to be referring to is the fact that we don't consider a source like Josephus to be in the same category as an apostle. But he doesn't have to be in the same category as an apostle in order to give us information that identifies what an apostle taught. The apostles remain our primary authority (1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 2:20) if we consult Josephus on the subject of what Old Testament canon the apostles accepted, for example. Similarly, in an earlier discussion, you appealed to lexicons (without documentation) to identify what the Second Council of Nicaea taught. Using your erroneous reasoning, we should conclude that you were violating your rule of faith by appealing to lexicons, which aren't "an authority" for you. In another discussion, you (incorrectly) appealed to Tertullian on the issue of apostolic succession. Was Tertullian Eastern Orthodox? No. Are his writings considered part of the Eastern Orthodox rule of faith? No. Was the document of Tertullian you cited something that you consider infallible? I doubt it. If you can appeal to sources like lexicons and Tertullian in an attempt to discern what the apostles, the Second Council of Nicaea, or some other source taught, then why can't Protestants do the same with a source like Josephus? Just as you're using a lexicon or Tertullian as a means of reaching a conclusion about some other source, we're doing the same when we cite Josephus or a church father, for example. If it's acceptable for you, then why not for us?

    You write:

    "Take the gospel of Mark. There is no information from antiquity saying that Mark was approved by Peter as being infallible God breathed scripture. Whatever you may believe about Mark having contact with Peter, it hardly proves that what he wrote was inspired and inerrant."

    As I've said before, when we answer your claims about one book of scripture, you'll just move on to another. Yet, when we ask you about Eastern Orthodox Tradition, you have much less to say. We've done far more to defend our canon of scripture than you've done to defend the canon of your rule of faith.

    Concerning the gospel of Mark, many early sources accepted it as scripture. If you consult the archives of this blog, I've written articles that address the widespread acceptance of the gospels among second century sources. If the primary canonical criterion of those sources was apostolicity, as the evidence suggests, then the implication is that they considered Mark an apostolic document. That would constitute historical evidence that the document had apostolic approval. And, as I've explained previously, Protestants can have reasons to accept a canonical consensus of the early Christians without believing that the early Christians were Eastern Orthodox. Either of the two reasons I've just given for accepting Mark could be part of a historical case for the canon, and neither depends on anything like your concept of Tradition.

    But, as I've said before, let's assume for the sake of argument that Protestants had no reason for accepting the canonicity of Mark. We would have a smaller canon, but we'd still have a canon. Having a smaller canon doesn't give us a reason to reject Protestantism or to accept Eastern Orthodoxy. You can't just assume the correctness of our canon, then go looking for a source of authority that would support what you've assumed. If you have a good reason for accepting the correctness of that canon to begin with, then you have no reason to go searching for a source of authority (like Eastern Orthodox Tradition) in order to have a good reason for accepting the canon. On the other hand, if you don't have any good reason for accepting the correctness of the canon, then on what basis do you claim that it's a bad thing if we have a smaller canon? You've given us no reason to accept the authority claims of Eastern Orthodoxy. So, if we have no reason to accept Mark's gospel on the basis of Eastern Orthodox authority, and you want us to believe that there are no historical reasons for accepting it, then why are we supposed to think it's of much significance if we no longer accept it?

    You write:

    "Yes I have to analyse history too, but the history itself is part of the record of an infallible church under my system, and if I correctly discern the path of that infallible history, I have an actual link with the authority of God."

    Your "if" depends on your fallible judgment. Yet, you've said in the past that relying on historical probability judgments is unacceptable. You're contradicting yourself.

    As far as having "an actual link with the authority of God" is concerned, Protestants do have one. We're linked to scripture, which we have good reason to believe is linked to God.

    If you're assuming that the link must be of a particular character, namely that it must take the form of an ongoing infallible church with whatever other characteristics you want to include, then you're just making an assertion that you've made before and have repeatedly failed to demonstrate. If we're linked to God through scripture, and we have no good reason to think that Eastern Orthodoxy would link us to God, then why would we want to attempt a second link to God by means of an unreliable source?

    ReplyDelete
  26. >I then explained that apostolic succession doesn't
    >single out Eastern Orthodoxy, that citing some
    >sources from the second century and later doesn't
    >address the earliest bishops, that different sources
    >defined apostolic succession in different ways, and
    >that the earliest sources you cited (Irenaeus and
    >Tertullian) disagreed with your definition. And you
    >didn't offer any further evidence that the earliest
    >bishops were Eastern Orthodox.

    As far as I know you've never told us how these early sources allegedly define apostolic succession in different ways. I tried tracing back your supposed references and it led me nowhere.

    >And if "the question of why they have departed
    >from one another are quite clear to all", then why
    >do Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, for
    >example, disagree with each other as to why one
    >departed from the other?

    I didn't say everyone's evaluation of the evidence was the same, what I said was that the evidence of who said what and when, and what the disagreement is about is a matter of historical record. We know as much now about who split from whom and why as they did back when it happened. The same can't be said about having an eyewitness to who wrote 2 Peter, or what Peter thought of Mark.

    >And what do you mean when you say that church
    >history is "authoritative" in your system?

    What I mean is that Church history for us is the history of an infallible church. Sure, that doesn't mean that the actors involved are themselves infallible, but it does mean they are witnesses to what an infallible organization was up to.

    >But, as we've explained to you before, you can't
    >equate the entirety of the historical record with
    >your concept of Tradition. The writings of men
    >like Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Augustine, which
    >often contradict what Eastern Orthodox believe, >aren't equivalent to Eastern Orthodox Tradition.

    Which we both know. But we do consider them witnesses to the infallible organization.

    >The writings of non-Christian sources like
    >Josephus and Porphyry aren't Eastern Orthodox
    >Tradition.

    You got that right. Jospehus is a witness to an heretical and distinctly fallible group.

    >You refer to how historical data isn't "an
    >authority" for Protestants. What you seem to be
    >referring to is the fact that we don't consider a
    >source like Josephus to be in the same category
    >as an apostle. But he doesn't have to be in the
    >same category as an apostle in order to give us
    >information that identifies what an apostle
    >taught.

    Which is fair enough, except that Josephus is not even a part of the people of God at this point.

    >>"Take the gospel of Mark. There is no
    >>information from antiquity saying that Mark
    >>was approved by Peter as being infallible God
    >>breathed scripture. Whatever you may believe
    >>about Mark having contact with Peter, it hardly
    >>proves that what he wrote was inspired and
    >>inerrant."
    >

    >As I've said before, when we answer your claims
    >about one book of scripture, you'll just move on
    >to another.

    You havn't answered anything about any book. You've got this bad habit of pretending you have answered things and linking back to some previous obfuscation.

    And remember, your ecclesiology is not an all or nothing affair like ours. You've got to make an apologetic for every last book of your rule of faith.

    >Yet, when we ask you about Eastern Orthodox
    >Tradition, you have much less to say. We've done
    >far more to defend our canon of scripture than
    >you've done to defend the canon of your rule of
    >faith.

    LOL, well this is a protestant blog. You set the agenda here, and I merely respond to what you're attacking. You're at a distinct advantage here in being able to throw the stones where you please.

    >Concerning the gospel of Mark, many early
    >sources accepted it as scripture. If you consult
    >the archives of this blog, I've written articles that
    >address the widespread acceptance of the
    >gospels among second century sources. If the
    >primary canonical criterion of those sources was
    >apostolicity, as the evidence suggests, then the
    >implication is that they considered Mark an
    >apostolic document.

    This is where the rubber hits the road right here. Early sources considered it apostolic? Yes, but they considered lots of things you reject as apostolic too.

    What you are doing is making a very narrow appeal to Tradition, a source that you don't consider infallible. This is where you have a massive break in the chain to an infallible source.

    In point of fact, there is no witness at all to how Peter considered this document. He may have thought it was a good sermon, but flawed document. He may have thought it on the same level as a sermon by your favourite preacher - edifying but ultimately not inspired.

    The fact that Tradition considers it apostolic should be of no more significance to you than any other tradition that the church considered apostolic. Merely a widespread opinion that is ultimately just that: an opinion. An opinion for which there is no even secondary sources, let along primary sources as to what Peter actually said about the matter. All the Tradition is really saying is that the document is reputed to have been written by Mark, who was someone in contact with Peter. On that basis there would be a number of apostolic fathers whose writings would be candidates for being scripture.

    And I note that many protestants of otherwise conservative disposition reject many traditions equally as well attested. For example, it is commonly rejected now that Matthew was written in Hebrew as was understood in the early church. It is also now commonly rejected that Matthew was the first Gospel written, now in favour of Mark.

    If the protestants find these very early traditions about the scriptures so unreliable, how can they suddenly find certitude about much vaguer testimony about what Peter thought about Mark's work?

    >But, as I've said before, let's assume for the sake
    >of argument that Protestants had no reason for
    >accepting the canonicity of Mark. We would have
    >a smaller canon, but we'd still have a canon.

    Would you still have a canon? It's hard to think of a book of the NT for which significant objections have not been raised. I once met a Christian of otherwise apparently conservative disposition who seemed to have such a low opinion of Paul as to consider him not really an apostle, and that he had highjacked Jesus' message. You could appeal to 2 Peter's opinion of Paul, but then that is uncertain. You could appeal to Acts, but then Luke is Paul's propagandist. It would be quite easy to write Paul out as a false apostle who corrupted the message. You lack the necessary documentation, and an infallible link between Paul and the Twelve original apostles, because you rely on Paul's own testimony.

    This is what I mean when I say if you doubt one thing, the whole fabric can become unglued. If your criteria is what you can prove historically there's no telling where the madness can end. Everything is up for grabs. Every little thing has to be proved separately before you can get to first base. You complain that I put before you these challenges, but it is your ecclesiology that demands it.

    >On the other hand, if you don't have any good
    >reason for accepting the correctness of the
    >canon, then on what basis do you claim that it's >a bad thing if we have a smaller canon?

    Because I do have a good reason, it's just not a reason that you accept: the infallibility of the Church which is the pillar of the truth.

    >So, if we have no reason to accept Mark's gospel
    >on the basis of Eastern Orthodox authority, and
    >you want us to believe that there are no
    >historical reasons for accepting it, then why are
    >we supposed to think it's of much significance if
    >we no longer accept it?

    One of the criteria the early church used in forming the canon was simply Tradition: if it was used in all the Churches, it was included in the canon.

    You cannot expect to use a different criteria than the early church used and still come up with the same canon. The problem is you don't accept Tradition as an infallible rule of faith, and yet the house of cards which is your rule of faith rests upon Tradition.

    >As far as having "an actual link with the authority
    >of God" is concerned, Protestants do have one.
    >We're linked to scripture, which we have good
    >reason to believe is linked to God.

    But you can't draw the lines for us that link it to God. We could draw a diagram with God on one side, scripture on the other, and you have to draw the lines through a cloud in the middle called Tradition. Being as it is that Tradition is by no means infallible in your understanding, your infallible scripture rests upon following these lines through a fallible cloud to God, you have no infallible rule of faith.

    We on the other hand draw the line through Tradition, which is the history of an infallible church, and we draw another line through a living church which is infallible, thus having an infallible link back to God. The fact that I must use my fallible faculties to trace that link doesn't refute my contention that your rule of faith is fundamentally flawed and fallible by design, whereas mine is not.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Orthodox writes:

    "As far as I know you've never told us how these early sources allegedly define apostolic succession in different ways. I tried tracing back your supposed references and it led me nowhere."

    I told you, and you left the thread:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

    Most of what I discussed you didn't even attempt to interact with. What you did attempt to interact with you often misrepresented.

    You write:

    "We know as much now about who split from whom and why as they did back when it happened."

    Why should we believe that? You've given us no reason to believe it. You just give us an assertion without any supporting argumentation. Do you know what was in the mind of each person involved in the divisions between East and West? No. Do you have all conceivable relevant information about the history of each issue they disagreed about? No. And since choosing to be Eastern Orthodox involves more than making judgments about the division between East and West that occurred several centuries into church history, you also have to make judgments about issues involving the earliest centuries. You've cited 1 Timothy in support of your view of the church, for example. How do you know that Paul wrote 1 Timothy? You've cited Ezekiel 11. How do you know that Ezekiel wrote that book, that it's canonical, that the passage you've cited means what you think it means, etc.? You have to make a long series of probability judgments in order to make a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Yet, you've criticized Protestants for relying on probability judgments. You're contradicting yourself.

    You write:

    "What I mean is that Church history for us is the history of an infallible church. Sure, that doesn't mean that the actors involved are themselves infallible, but it does mean they are witnesses to what an infallible organization was up to."

    If you're using your own fallible judgment about fallible witnesses, then the fact that an infallible church allegedly is involved doesn't remove the fallibility from the process. Similarly, I rely on fallible judgments about fallible witnesses to infallible scripture. You've repeatedly criticized Protestants for doing so, yet you do it yourself.

    You write:

    "But we do consider them witnesses to the infallible organization."

    Again, if you can arrive at a fallible probability judgment about the Eastern Orthodox rule of faith by means of the fallible testimony of fallible witnesses outside of that rule of faith, then why can't Protestants do the same with their rule of faith? You're being inconsistent.

    And you've given us no reason to believe that men like Irenaeus and Epiphanius were witnesses to Eastern Orthodoxy. When I documented Epiphanius' opposition to the veneration of images, you said that he must have been following his personal judgment rather than "the mind of the church". If he chose to follow his personal judgment rather than the mind of the church, then on what basis do you supposedly know that he was Eastern Orthodox?

    You write:

    "Jospehus is a witness to an heretical and distinctly fallible group."

    Here we have another example of the shallowness of your thinking on these issues. Earlier, you cited lexicons in support of your understanding of an ecumenical council. Where do you think the scholars who produce lexicons get their data? Often from non-Christian sources, like Josephus. And how do scholars know when to date particular events in church history, what dates to assign to particular documents, where particular documents were written, etc.? Partially from non-Christian sources, like Josephus. For example, much of what we know about first century Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem in particular comes from Josephus. By citing lexicons, which aren't just produced by Eastern Orthodox scholars, you're appealing to non-Eastern-Orthodox sources (non-Eastern-Orthodox scholars and non-Eastern-Orthodox sources they rely on). Much the same can be said of your appeals to archeology. You've appealed, for example, to the use of images among ancient non-Christian Jews. Yet, if we cite the ancient non-Christian Jew Josephus, you object. You're being inconsistent again.

    You write:

    "Which is fair enough, except that Josephus is not even a part of the people of God at this point."

    He doesn't have to be. You've suggested that sources like Josephus may have changed the Old Testament canon, but the fact that he wasn't a Christian doesn't prove that he did. We've already given you some reasons why we doubt your assertion that the canon was changed. Such a change isn't mentioned in the earliest interactions between Christians and Jews, a desire to oppose Christianity would be more likely to result in the removal of a book like Isaiah than to result in the removal of a book like Tobit, etc. But whatever you think of such arguments, the issue at hand in this context is whether it's reasonable in principle to appeal to a source like Josephus. It is. If you can appeal to non-Christian sources by means of lexicons, archeology, etc., then so can we.

    You write:

    "You havn't answered anything about any book. You've got this bad habit of pretending you have answered things and linking back to some previous obfuscation."

    I haven't answered "anything"? I cited the fact that books like Genesis and Isaiah were referred to as scripture by Jesus and the apostles. Where did you ever refute that fact? You didn't. I and Steve Hays repeatedly cited books and other sources, such as articles in the archives of this blog, concerning individual books of the Bible. For example, here are some of my previous discussions about the authorship of John's gospel:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/who-wrote-gospel-of-john.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/dagoods-multiplies-his-errors.html

    Have you read such articles and the many others that exist in the archives of this blog? Have you refuted any of them? No, you haven't.

    I've discussed some of the issues surrounding 2 Peter with you in a recent thread. I've also addressed other data relevant to making judgments about a canon. Your claim that I "haven't answered anything about any book" is ridiculous.

    You write:

    "And remember, your ecclesiology is not an all or nothing affair like ours. You've got to make an apologetic for every last book of your rule of faith."

    As we've documented, Eastern Orthodox disagree with each other about what is Tradition and what isn't. Thus, using your own reasoning, you must "make an apologetic for every last Tradition". And since you rely on books like 1 Timothy in order to make your argument for Eastern Orthodoxy in the first place, then you must make an argument for such books when making your initial case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Have you done so? No, not in any of our discussions, even when we've asked you to.

    You write:

    "LOL, well this is a protestant blog. You set the agenda here, and I merely respond to what you're attacking."

    No, you don't. When we ask you for a list of all Eastern Orthodox Traditions, you don't produce it. When we ask you to give us an argument for Eastern Orthodox Tradition, such as defending your use of documents like the gospel of Matthew and 1 Timothy, you don't do it.

    You write:

    "Early sources considered it apostolic? Yes, but they considered lots of things you reject as apostolic too."

    You need to be more specific. I've gone into detail as to why I trust the authorship attributions in question. We have a lot of data from a wide variety of sources: internal evidence, manuscript evidence, the testimony of Christian sources, the testimony of non-Christian sources, information about how the relevant sources viewed pseudonymity, etc. While I've gone into detail on such matters, and we've written at length on such subjects in the archives of this blog, you keep giving us vague assertions about how "they considered lots of things you reject as apostolic". You aren't giving us any reason to agree with you. You're just making unsupported assertions.

    You write:

    "In point of fact, there is no witness at all to how Peter considered this document."

    Even if Mark had published his gospel after Peter died, the document could still be approved by one or more of the other apostles. The issue is apostolic approval, not Petrine approval.

    As I said before, all of these arguments you're raising against a historical case for the canon do nothing to refute sola scriptura and nothing to establish Eastern Orthodoxy. If we were persuaded to accept a shorter canon, we'd still have a canon, and we'd still have no reason to be Eastern Orthodox.

    You write:

    "All the Tradition is really saying is that the document is reputed to have been written by Mark, who was someone in contact with Peter."

    No, that's not all that the sources were saying. As I explained earlier, the evidence suggests that apostolicity was the primary canonical criterion of the early Christians. That's why most Christians didn't consider documents like First Clement, the writings of Papias, and Polycarp's Letter To The Philippians to be scripture, even though such men were widely believed to have been disciples of the apostles. The gospel of Mark wouldn't have been accepted as scripture just because it was written by an associate of an apostle. In all likelihood, it was believed to have apostolic approval. Papias, who lived in the late first and early second centuries, had to consult an older church leader ("the Elder", probably the apostle John) in order to get confirmation of his information on the origins of Mark's gospel. Apparently, then, the document was circulating as early as the middle of the first century (when Papias wasn't alive or was too young to know much about it). It circulated for decades before the last apostle died. It's highly unlikely that it would have circulated for so long as an unapproved book, then have been accepted universally as an approved book (canonical) in the second century.

    You write:

    "On that basis there would be a number of apostolic fathers whose writings would be candidates for being scripture."

    Apparently, you're too ignorant of the subject we're discussing to realize that you just made an argument for my position rather than yours. The fact that the writings of men like Clement of Rome and Papias were widely rejected from the canon, whereas a document like Mark's gospel was widely accepted, is evidence of my position. It's evidence that the issue under consideration in early Christianity wasn't just whether an associate of the apostles wrote a document. Rather, the issue was apostolic approval. Mark had it. Men like Papias didn't.

    You write:

    "For example, it is commonly rejected now that Matthew was written in Hebrew as was understood in the early church. It is also now commonly rejected that Matthew was the first Gospel written, now in favour of Mark."

    There are scholars who accept such views or variations of them, such as the existence of a Hebrew Matthew that predated the Greek version from which our gospel is derived. There's nothing inherent in Protestantism that requires one to reject such concepts.

    Furthermore, the people who reject something like the concept of a Hebrew Matthew do so on the basis of even earlier evidence: the text of Matthew itself. Thus, what they're arguing is that we have conflicting data from early sources. They make a decision to go with one early source over the other. It doesn't therefore follow that they're being inconsistent by accepting the testimony of early sources when those early sources don't conflict with other early sources. You haven't explained why doing so allegedly would be unreasonable. People who reject a Hebrew original of Matthew don't have comparable reasons to reject the apostolicity of Mark's gospel.

    And it should be noted that when you give examples of widely attested traditions among the early sources, you can't cite Eastern Orthodox beliefs like the veneration of images and praying to the deceased. Rather, you have to cite concepts like the language of Matthew's gospel. Do all Eastern Orthodox agree about that language? Is that one of the Traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy? Have all Eastern Orthodox scholars accepted every popular belief of the early Christians? No, to the contrary, some of the popular beliefs of the early Christians contradict what Eastern Orthodoxy teaches, as I've repeatedly documented.

    You write:

    "If the protestants find these very early traditions about the scriptures so unreliable, how can they suddenly find certitude about much vaguer testimony about what Peter thought about Mark's work?"

    You keep misrepresenting the issues under discussion. Maybe that's because you know that you would lose a dispute that represents the issues accurately.

    We don't need to have "certitude", nor do I claim to have it. What I claim, in making my historical case for a canon, is probability. And you've done nothing to overturn my conclusion.

    You write:

    "It's hard to think of a book of the NT for which significant objections have not been raised."

    First of all, the Bible consists of more than the New Testament. Do you think there's "significant" doubt that Jesus and the apostles considered books like Genesis and Isaiah scripture?

    Secondly, what "significant" doubt is there about a document like 1 Corinthians? As Bart Ehrman, a liberal agnostic scholar who often writes against Christianity, has commented, "No one doubts, however, that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians." (Misquoting Jesus [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], p. 183) So, what are the allegedly "significant" reasons for doubting the Pauline authorship of 1 Corinthians? You can't claim that you were addressing some other issue, like the inerrancy of each book, since that isn't what we were discussing. We were discussing issues of canonicity, and since I've argued for apostolicity as the primary canonical criterion, then the issue on the table with regard to a document like 1 Corinthians would be who wrote it. So, what is the "significant" reason we have for doubting that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians?

    And since your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy depends on passages like Ezekiel 11 and 1 Timothy 3, would you explain how you know that such documents were written by the people you think they were written by? If there are "significant" doubts about a document like 1 Timothy, and such "significant" doubts are supposed to be a problem for my historical case for a canon, then why aren't they a problem for your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy?

    You write:

    "I once met a Christian of otherwise apparently conservative disposition who seemed to have such a low opinion of Paul as to consider him not really an apostle, and that he had highjacked Jesus' message."

    First of all, that isn't the issue we were discussing. We were discussing authorship issues. You've changed the subject to whether Paul was an apostle.

    Secondly, if you aren't aware of the historical evidence for Paul's apostleship, then we have yet another example of your high level of ignorance. Paul repeatedly tells us in his own writings that he had good relations with the other apostles, some of the Pauline churches followed one or more other apostles at the same time that they followed Paul, early disciples of other apostles spoke highly of Paul (Clement of Rome and Polycarp, for example), Paul's writings were widely accepted by churches across the Christian world, etc. The evidence for Paul's apostleship is early, widespread, and explicit. The fact that you, an anonymous Eastern Orthodox layman, claim to have come across some other unnamed "conservative Christian" who doubted Paul's apostleship doesn't give us much reason to doubt Paul's status as an apostle. The fact that this unnamed person you refer to doubted Paul's apostleship doesn't give us reason to doubt it.

    You write:

    "You lack the necessary documentation, and an infallible link between Paul and the Twelve original apostles, because you rely on Paul's own testimony."

    You've acknowledged that you rely on probabilities in order to make your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Yet, you keep using terms like "certitude" and "infallible" to refer to what Protestants supposedly need to have in making their historical case. If probabilities are enough for you, then why aren't they enough for us?

    You write:

    "If your criteria is what you can prove historically there's no telling where the madness can end."

    You keep giving us a (false) historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. You cite passages like Ezekiel 11 and 1 Timothy 3. You cite patristic sources like Irenaeus and Tertullian. By your own standards, then, "there's no telling where the madness can end" with your historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy.

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