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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

The Ortho-Psychic Hotline

ORTHODOX SAID:

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

i) And, of course, we could say exactly the same thing in reverse, for all he ever attempts to do is to attack our position and then act as if Orthodoxy wins by default.

ii) Moreover, we—unlike him—don’t limit ourselves to critiquing his position, for we present many positive arguments in defense of our own 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?”

i) Now he’s resorting to equivocation. The parallel would only hold if 2nd temple Judaism had the same polity as Orthodox ecclesiology. Since it didn’t, then Jewish tradition doesn’t mean the same thing as Orthodox tradition.

ii) I’d add that the way one person knows something is not necessarily the way another person knows something. Differences in time and place may necessitate a different methodology.

For example, the apostle John knew what he did about Jesus because he was an eyewitness to the public and private ministry of Jesus.

That methodology wouldn’t work for me since, by the same token, I am not an eyewitness to the public and private ministry of Jesus. So I must rely on a difference source of information. I rely on knowledge by description rather than knowledge by acquaintance.

Or, to take a different example, my elderly mother learned the rebel war cry as a young girl from her elderly great aunt Cinderella, who had two brothers who served in the Confederate army.

Does it follow that a modern civil war historian like Shelby Foote either could or should learn about the rebel war cry in the same way?

No, for he may not have access to that kind of direct, oral history. Yet he may be able to learn about the rebel war cry from another source of information.

To say that Protestant historical methodology is false because it doesn’t reproduce the mode of knowledge available to Jews living two or three thousand years ago is nonsensical and unintelligent. Our own methodology will differ to the degree that our historical situation is different. We have a different epistemic access point.

iii) And this is hardly distinctive to Protestant methodology. When a patrologist like Jaroslav Pelikan writes a history of the early church, he can’t write about the life of Chrysostom from the same vantage point as Chrysostom would write about his own life. Rather, he uses the same techniques as F. F. Bruce would use.

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

This is a regressive fallacy.

“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.”

i) There are different modes of knowledge for different objects of knowledge. Sometimes a Bible writer will appeal to sense knowledge (e.g. 1 Jn 1:1.ff.).

ii) At other times a Bible writer will appeal to extrabiblical sources of information to supplement the record, such as The Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kg 11:41), The Annals of the Kings of Judah (1 Kgs 14:29, &c), The Annals of the Kings of Israel (1 Kgs 14:19, &c.), or The Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia (Esther 10:2).

So there’s nothing inherently unscriptural about consulting extrascriptural records as a potential source of historical knowledge. But that has to be sifted.

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

Jason conceded no such thing.

“It didn't work for the Jews, and it doesn't work for the Church either.”

I’ve already discussed his pragmatic criterion.

“If it doesn't work, it can hardly have been God's plan for his people could it?”

i) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that something doesn’t work, how does it follow that something unworkable lies outside the plan of God?

According to Orthodox’s own definition, the world is full of things that don’t work. Are these pointless, unpremeditated events that catch God off-guard?

Is Orthodox an open theist who believes that God is surprised by the future? That God must engage in damage control?

Or is he a Manichean who believes in a good God and an evil God?

ii) Speaking for myself, I believe that everything happens for a purpose. Everything works in the way that God intended it to work. Everything has a function in the plan of God. Everything is in perfect working order, as a means to an end.

But that’s just me. A Manichean-cum-open-theist like Orthodox would beg to differ.

“I can see the Church mentioned in scripture as the pillar of the truth,”

He sees Orthodoxy in scripture because he has Orthodoxy etched on his glasses. I’ve already discussed this acontextual interpretation and misrendering of 1 Tim 3:15 in reference to Blosser. But Orthodox is habitually too dishonest to engage the counterargument. He simply repeats his original, one and a half arguments, as if nothing was ever said to the contrary.

“This whole prophesy had ceased theory is more of a later Jewish theory as an apologetic against Christianity.”

Once again, I already discussed this with reference to Blosser. Consult the references to Aune and Ridderbos.

“Had prophesy ceased? Wasn't John the Baptist a prophet?”

An especially bone-headed statement since the status of John the Baptist and, indeed, the resumption of prophecy in the Lucan nativity accounts, signals the dawn of the Messianic age.

“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.”

i) No, it’s a historical question with theological implications.

iii) Observe, once more, his Neonazi antipathy to the Jews. Is my opponent a skinhead or an Orthodox believer?

Oh, I forgot—that’s a false dichotomy.

“And why do you believe it anyway, being as it is contained in what you consider non-scriptural books?? Total inconsistency.”

Is Orthodox playing dumb, or is he really that dumb? He’s been repeatedly corrected on his caricature of sola Scripture by Gene and others.

“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?”

Is he trying to be obtuse, or does this just come naturally? The intertestamental literature is not all of a piece. Some of it is pseudepigraphal, some of it is not. Some of it is historical, while some of it is fictitious.

The fact that scholars regard 1 Maccabees as a fairly reliable historical source doesn’t commit them to the same assessment of Bel and the Dragon.

“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.”

As far as that goes, we don’t need inspiration where providence will do.

“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.”

More chest-thumping bravado, as if all arguments are on a par.

“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.”

Yes, we do know better since Orthodox is willing to prevaricate about what the Bible actually says. He’s alluding to a verse by one of the apostles to one local church.

But in order to pad his case, due to insufficient evidence, he changes a singular referent to a plural, as well as morphing a local church into the universal church.

“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 does a dumb-bunny like Orthodox continually misrepresent sola Scriptura no matter how often he’s been corrected?

“So now some specialist books are the authority in the Church?”

i) I prefer scholarship to non-scholarship.

ii) Notice, too, the habitual duplicity of Orthodox. On the one hand, he will challenge his opponents to document their claims. On the other hand, as soon as his opponents call his bluff, he will dismiss their documentation out of hand.

“So much for sola scriptura.”

So much for dumb-bunnies who would rather burn strawmen.

And, you know, it’s fine with me if he’s going to attack a decoy rather than the actual argument. For he thereby leaves the real position of the opposing side without a scratch. So, by all means, keep training your guns on the wrong target.

“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.”

He doesn’t exegete NT ecclesiology.

“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.”

i) The conclusion is only as good as the premise. He would need to identify the Orthodox communion with the church founded by Christ. This is something he always asserts and never demonstrates.

ii) He would also need to show that the church founded by Christ has the properties he imputed to it. Again, though, he’s all assertion and no argument.

“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.”

i) Notice the purely armchair character of the argument. State what you believe to be an unacceptable consequence. Load it up with hyperbole. Don’t offer any supporting argument that said-consequence is, in fact, unacceptable. Then postulate an imaginary polity which will avoid said-consequence.

The whole exercise is nothing more than a thought-experiment from start to finish. A hypothetical faith in a hypothetical church.

“And in fact, by doubting one thing, the entire fabric can become unglued because there is no certain platform in your entire theology.”

i) Other issues aside, notice how a metaphor is doing the work of an argument. The metaphor of a platform. And if the platform is unstable, then the superstructure is unstable.

That maybe so, but it’s a logical inference, not from a truth of fact or reason, but from a metaphor.

ii) And even at the figurative level, other metaphors are available. There are philosophers like Quine, Swinburne, and Helm who prefer a different metaphor—the web of belief. If a platform collapses, the superstructure collapses. By contrast, if a strand of a spider web snaps, the spider web remains intact. Why should we prefer an architectural metaphor to an insectile metaphor?

“It's too subjective for individuals, because the heart is deceitful.”

Orthodox is extremely sceptical about human reason. But there are two problems with this:

i) Where does reason come from? Isn’t this a gift of God? Hasn’t our Creator endowed us with a faculty for abstract reason? So why should we be so utterly distrustful of our critical faculties? Why should we refuse to rely on something that God has given us to use?

Can reason deceive us? Yes. Can our senses deceive us? Yes. Does Orthodox therefore refuse to use his five senses?

ii) His distrust of reason undercuts his own faith in the Orthodox tradition. Maybe his deceitful heart has misled him into Orthodoxy. Hyperskepticism is a form of mental illness—like men and women who really believe they’re trapped in the Matrix. Orthodox might as well be Renfield’s cellmate.

“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.”

Other issues aside, he has a very selective and one-sided definition of “the church.”

“Wrong, the divine Jesus Christ set up a Church. And that is the end of the Turtles. Jesus Christ, the apostles and the church they set up.”

How does he individually know this? How does he individually identify the true church?

“We don't question each individual point all the time as if 2000 years of the chronicles of the people of God never happened.”

His default appeal to 2000 years of Orthodox church history merely begs the question in favor of Orthodoxy. He assumes what he needs to prove.

“They found the true people of God and the followed them.”

This glosses over disputes about who was a true Jew. The Pharisees? The Sadducees? The Essenes? The Zealots? And so on and so forth.

“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.”

And who was more spiritual—Jerome or Augustine?

“You have no apostolic teaching on what teachings are certainly apostolic.”

Back to the infinite regress.

“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.”

i) Notice, once more, his constant repair to a consequentialist argument. If you believe in X, then that commits you to a certain consequence. Given the consequence, X is false; therefore, Y is true.

This is illogical from beginning to end. Even if the Protestant rule of faith had the dire consequences that Orthodox hyperbolically imputes to it, that fails to establish either:

a) The falsity of sola Scriptura, or

b) The veracity of the Orthodox alternative.

ii) According to Orthodox, sola Scriptura results in “chaos.” And, for him, this isn’t merely a possible consequence, but an actual consequence.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, he’s right? What then?

This is God’s world, is it not? Is “chaos” an unacceptable consequence to God? If so, why does he allow it?

Why is “chaos” intolerable to Orthodox, but tolerable to God?

At worst, “chaos” would be a divinely appointed means to a divinely appointed end.

“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.”

That’s true. We can’t channel the Apostle John. Apparently, though, the Orthodox communion has been holding a series of séances with the departed apostles and prophets for the past 2000 years. The Ortho-Psychic Network. Does Orthodox have Dionne Warrick on speed dial?

“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.”

Does the Orthodox tradition have an official canon? Or is that up for grabs?

“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 year.”

This is nothing more than make-believe and wishful thinking.

“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.”

Other issues aside, he would only know that “there is an unbroken chain of authority within his theological system between Jesus Christ, and his current source of authority” if and only if he could initially overcome “all the problems he may have in figuring out who is the real Church.”

“Which is fine, because I have a living church which is authoritative on any issues to do with the canon.”

Something he always *says* and never *shows*.

“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.”

He’s been repeatedly correct on this point, but he’s too much of a dim bulb to absorb the point.

One doesn’t need an explicit list, given at one time and place. Rather, one can reconstruct a list on the basis of both external evidence and internal evidence.

“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.”

Several issues:

i) Orthodox is a 99% purebred liberal. You might as well be debating Bishop Spong. Same pathological scepticism. Same farfetched, far-left assumptions and assertions.

ii) But then there’s the 1% of fideism which rushes in at the tail end. His strategy is to destroy historical knowledge to make room for faith—boundless faith in the true tradition of the true church.

Orthodox is an infidel to the bone, with a skin-deep piety—as if a last ditch, last minute appeal to Orthodoxy will compensate for terminal, stage-four scepticism. But Orthodoxy is an anodyne, not an antidote. The Orthodox church is a hospice, not a hospital.

iii) For we could turn all the same hyperskeptical arguments against the Greek Fathers and ecumenical councils. Hyperskepticism is a universal acid which will dissolve appeals to church history just as rapidly as appeals to Bible history.

“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.”

He keeps appealing to ecclesiastical authority, but as I documented from Orthodox sources, appeal to ecclesiastical authority is rife with its own uncertainties:

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

“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.”

Really? All the books of the Orthodox canon (whatever that is) were always in use by all churches at all times?

5 comments:

  1. Steve mentioned 1 Timothy 3:15. That passage is an example of Orthodox's appeal to unreasonable skepticism combined with unreasonable faith. On the one hand, Orthodox raises the ridiculous possibility that Paul wasn't an apostle. He tells us that an unnamed "conservative Christian" once told him that Paul might not have had the authority he claimed to have, and that Paul might have distorted what Jesus taught. Orthodox seems to think that mentioning what this "conservative Christian" said to him is going to create significant doubt in our minds about Paul's status as an apostle. Supposedly, we can't reach a reliable conclusion about Paul's apostleship unless we trust an organization like Eastern Orthodoxy to tell us what to believe on the subject. Yet, at the same time, Orthodox keeps appealing to 1 Timothy 3:15 to argue for the authority he attributes to Eastern Orthodoxy. But if we don't have good historical reason to believe in Paul's apostleship, and if we're to be as distrusting of the historical evidence for Biblical authorship attributions as Orthodox suggests, then why should we believe what 1 Timothy 3:15 tells us? If we can't be confident that Paul wrote the document on historical grounds, and if we can't be confident that Paul was an apostle even if he did write the document, then what's the significance of a passage like 1 Timothy 3:15? Maybe if Orthodox would make more of an effort to be honest and careful, he'd notice such inconsistencies in his arguments.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another childish blog title. I must be doing well.

    >i) And, of course, we could say exactly the same
    >thing in reverse, for all he ever attempts to do is to
    >attack our position and then act as if Orthodoxy
    >wins by default.

    This is not the place for a thorough going examination of Orthodoxy. All I do here is respond to the agenda set by this blog. I encourage readers to do their own investigations.

    >i) Now he’s resorting to equivocation. The
    >parallel would only hold if 2nd temple Judaism
    >had the same polity as Orthodox ecclesiology.
    >Since it didn’t, then Jewish tradition doesn’t
    >mean the same thing as Orthodox tradition.

    Polity is an orthogonal issue to Tradition.

    >ii) I’d add that the way one person knows
    >something is not necessarily the way another
    >person knows something. Differences in time
    >and place may necessitate a different
    >methodology.

    Which is all well and good, but a typical protestant apologetic for Christianity in general is to argue firstly that there is a God, and secondly that if there is a God, it is reasonable to assume he would privide us some writings so that people of all ages can know his will. I'm only taking the principle one step further. It's reasonable that if there is a God he would provide a way for people of all ages to know which writings they are. The fact that some people might bypass the normal method is no more significant than finding someone who believes in salvation by faith from a source other than scripture. It doesn't remove the necessity for a normative and authoritative source for that teaching. According to Steve's reasoning, a pagan with no scripture is on level pegging to a Christian with scripture, because both religions could conceivably come up with some teachings which are the same based on different sources. I reject that.

    >To say that Protestant historical methodology is
    >false because it doesn’t reproduce the mode of
    >knowledge available to Jews living two or three
    >thousand years ago is nonsensical and
    >unintelligent.

    This contains an interesting concession that I find instructive. It is a typical argument from people like James White against Roman Catholic apologists that we don't need no stinking church council because the Jews didn't. Here we have Steve arguing that it's unintelligent to argue that our needs for obtaining the canon ought to be the same as the Jews. Interesting how these protestant arguments are bended whichever way suits themselves and their own authority.

    >i) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that
    >something doesn’t work, how does it follow that
    >something unworkable lies outside the plan of
    >God?

    In some kind of overall sovereign sense of the plan of God? That hardly helps YOU and your position.

    ""Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!" - Mt 18:7

    >But that’s just me. A Manichean-cum-open-
    >theist like Orthodox would beg to differ.

    Lies, ad-hominem and childish sniping. I must be really making progress.

    >He sees Orthodoxy in scripture because he has
    >Orthodoxy etched on his glasses. I’ve already
    >discussed this acontextual interpretation and
    >misrendering of 1 Tim 3:15 in reference to
    >Blosser. But Orthodox is habitually too dishonest
    >to engage the counterargument.

    LOL, you posted something worthy of responding to? I didn't notice anything along those lines.

    >Once again, I already discussed this with
    >reference to Blosser. Consult the references to
    >Aune and Ridderbos.

    Zzzz, nothing to see here.

    >>Had prophesy ceased? Wasn't John the Baptist a
    >>prophet?"
    >
    >An especially bone-headed statement since the
    >status of John the Baptist and, indeed, the
    >resumption of prophecy in the Lucan nativity
    >accounts, signals the dawn of the Messianic age.

    LOL, so Steve is his own authority on when prophesy ceases and when it begins again. If the anti-Christian Jews say it ceases, Steve believes it. But when they say it never started again, he denies it. And neither position is found anywhere in scripture, neither his nor mine. Talk about being a reed in the wind.

    >iii) Observe, once more, his Neonazi antipathy to
    >the Jews. Is my opponent a skinhead or an
    >Orthodox believer?

    More ad-hominem and childish nonsense. And again he gives us an excuse to inact Godwin's law.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_Law

    I must be REALLY winning.

    However these is nothing "neo-nazi" in observing that Jews are anti-Christian. They reject the Messiah, this is an unemotional fact, not a place for political correct accusations.

    >Is he trying to be obtuse, or does this just come
    >naturally? The intertestamental literature is not
    >all of a piece.

    I would agree that it's not of a piece!! But all protestant apologetics always treats it that way. They seem to think that if they find some objection to one of the books that it somehow magically applies to all of them. The fact is, none of the protestant arguments against these books apply to all the books. For some of the books, basically none of the protestant arguments apply. So when is a protestant going to prove to us that each and every one of these books is both non-scriptural or even not part of the Jewish canon. They can't, and this is the great flaw in the Protestant argument. THERE IS NO LIST.

    >>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.”
    >
    >As far as that goes, we don’t need inspiration
    >where providence will do.

    Providence? Providence for whom? As far as my tradition is concerned there is equal providence for the deutero canonical books as there are for the books you consider inspired.

    >Yes, we do know better since Orthodox is willing
    >to prevaricate about what the Bible actually says.
    >He’s alluding to a verse by one of the apostles to
    >one local church.

    Oh, and Romans is merely by one of the apostles to one local church. I guess we can reject that too. Steve is truely an authority unto himself.

    >ii) Notice, too, the habitual duplicity of
    >Orthodox. On the one hand, he will challenge his
    >opponents to document their claims. On the
    >other hand, as soon as his opponents call his
    >bluff, he will dismiss their documentation out of
    >hand.

    Citing your favourite scholars is irrelevant to me. I could cite Orthodox scholars to you all day. But would you accept it?

    >So much for dumb-bunnies who would rather
    >burn strawmen.

    More ad-hominem.

    >strand of a spider web snaps, the spider web
    >remains intact. Why should we prefer an
    >architectural metaphor to an insectile metaphor?

    Even a spider web has critical strands what hold the whole web up. Sever one, and it all comes apart. Sola scipture as a non-scriptural teaching is one. Lack of an authority for the canon is another. Lack of an authority for the criteria for canonicity is another.

    >Orthodox is extremely sceptical about human
    >reason. But there are two problems with this:
    >Where does reason come from? Isn’t this a gift of
    >God? His distrust of reason undercuts his own
    >faith in the Orthodox tradition. Maybe his
    >deceitful heart has misled him into Orthodoxy.

    There's a big difference between mistrust of individual reason compared to the corporate reason. The individual is always has less resources and knowledge than the corporate. The individual can always look to those more holy than himself. The individual always has presuppositions that are peculiar to his own lot in life. The individual is always skewed by his own particular and peculiar sins. If my own heart has misled me into orthodoxy it is in agreement with 2000 years of apparently similarly misled individuals. Individuals like John Chrysostom that even Jason's church cites in its statement of faith. If I'm going to be subject to being misled, that's good company to keep.

    >And who was more spiritual—Jerome or
    >Augustine?

    Do I need to know? Do I care? You can't set up the dichotomy of yet another individual to argue against the corporate.

    >That’s true. We can’t channel the Apostle John.
    >Apparently, though, the Orthodox communion
    >has been holding a series of séances with the
    >departed apostles and prophets for the past
    >2000 years.

    Sans the terminology and false characterization, yes we have been doing that. We have been communing with the entirety of the communion of saints, both militant and victorious.

    >i) Orthodox is a 99% purebred liberal. You might
    >as well be debating Bishop Spong. Same
    >pathological scepticism. Same farfetched, far-left
    >assumptions and assertions.

    Throwing your own skepticism back in your own faces doesn't make me the liberal. For an Orthodox debating you it is exactly like debating Bishop Spong. To show you where the end game is of your skepticism ought to be disturbing to you. I am not the one who relies on rational/historicalism as the pillar and foundation of my rule of faith.

    >ii) But then there’s the 1% of fideism which
    >rushes in at the tail end. His strategy is to
    >destroy historical knowledge to make room for
    >faith—boundless faith in the true tradition of the
    >true church.

    You're describing your own position. You doubt everything the church has understood for millenia, but then you rush in "at the tail end" saying "oh, but you can trust scripture" after having obliterated the pillar and foundation of scripture and canon and the Tradition which verifies it.

    >Orthodox is an infidel to the bone, with a skin-
    >deep piety

    Look in the mirror, you are describing yourself.

    >Hyperskepticism is a universal acid which will
    >dissolve appeals to church history just as rapidly
    >as appeals to Bible history.

    Exactly. Which is why protestantism's skepticism of what was understood for 2000 years is the acid within which is destroying it and turning it into the jellyfish of no doctrine at all which is lamented in the other thread.

    >>“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.”
    >
    >Really? All the books of the Orthodox canon
    >(whatever that is) were always in use by all
    >churches at all times?

    No, they were in use by all the Churches at some time, which was reason enough to continue. It is not a necessary component of Tradition that it extend universally into the past. But we extend its universality into the future. Protestants do the same with their canon. They do not worry too much about what the canon was before it was settled.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Orthodox writes:

    "This is not the place for a thorough going examination of Orthodoxy. All I do here is respond to the agenda set by this blog. I encourage readers to do their own investigations."

    In other words, Orthodox's earlier arguments for Eastern Orthodoxy failed, and he doesn't have anything better to offer. Now that his arguments for Eastern Orthodoxy have failed, he's trying to convince people that he's not addressing the subject because this blog "is not the place" for it. But he did think it was the place earlier, when he offered his initial arguments that failed.

    He tells us that he "responds to the agenda set by this blog". Yet, when we "set the agenda" by asking him for evidence of his assertions about Eastern Orthodoxy, he tells us that this "is not the place" for such discussions.

    Orthodox continues:

    "Which is all well and good, but a typical protestant apologetic for Christianity in general is to argue firstly that there is a God, and secondly that if there is a God, it is reasonable to assume he would privide us some writings so that people of all ages can know his will. I'm only taking the principle one step further. It's reasonable that if there is a God he would provide a way for people of all ages to know which writings they are."

    Notice that Orthodox leaves out the fact that Protestants only conclude that God has revealed Himself through writings if we have reason to think that some specific writings are such revelation. We don't stop at what we think God would be likely to do. And notice that Orthodox assumes that his system of church authority is the only means by which God could "provide a way for people of all ages to know which writings they are". Orthodox gives us no reason to believe that his denomination has the authority he attributes to it. In contrast, Steve Hays has written thousands of pages of material, with arguments better than Orthodox's and with a large amount of documentation, relevant to the authority of scripture.

    Orthodox writes:

    "Lies, ad-hominem and childish sniping. I must be really making progress."

    When Orthodox is criticized, he often comments that the criticism is an indication that he's right, particularly if it's personal criticism. How does Orthodox know that people would criticize him as a person only if his arguments were correct and he was "really making progress"? Why couldn't people be criticizing him and his behavior because he and his behavior warrant criticism? In another thread, Orthodox referred to me as "lazy", and he often begins his responses to people with "LOL", for example. (After his comment quoted above, his next response to Steve begins with "LOL".) Should we conclude that Orthodox has been engaging in "ad hominem" and "childish sniping" and that our arguments must be correct and that we must be "really making progress"?

    Orthodox writes:

    "You doubt everything the church has understood for millenia, but then you rush in 'at the tail end' saying 'oh, but you can trust scripture' after having obliterated the pillar and foundation of scripture and canon and the Tradition which verifies it."

    We don't "doubt everything the church has understood for millenia". The fact that you would make such a ridiculous accusation tells us something about how careless you are with the assertions you make. We don't deny that there was a Christian church in ancient times. We deny that the church was Eastern Orthodox. And while we sometimes disagree with sources like Papias, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius (as you sometimes disagree with them), we also agree with them on many issues.

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  4. Jason, thank you for fulfilling the prophecy I made to orthodox... when you run out of answers, you turn to sarcasm and ad hominem - as you have quite predictably done so again. I guess that really makes this a "Engwer-Psychic Hotline."

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  5. ORTHODOX SAID:

    >To say that Protestant historical methodology is _>false because it doesn’t reproduce the mode of _>knowledge available to Jews living two or three _>thousand years ago is nonsensical and _>unintelligent.

    “This contains an interesting concession that I find instructive. It is a typical argument from people like James White against Roman Catholic apologists that we don't need no stinking church council because the Jews didn't.”

    What is concessive about reasoning from divine precedent? If God could govern the old covenant community to his own satisfaction without recourse to councils, why does he suddenly need to shift to a different administrative apparatus to govern the new covenant community?

    “Here we have Steve arguing that it's unintelligent to argue that our needs for obtaining the canon ought to be the same as the Jews.”

    Observe that Orthodox’s paraphrase of what I said misrepresents what I actually said. Did I frame the issue in terms of different “needs”? No. Orthodox has substituted an entirely different concept. What I explicitly said, rather, is that we don’t have to—and, indeed, cannot—reproduce the same “methodology” or “mode” of knowledge as the personal, firsthand knowledge of an eyewitness. The Apostle John knew Jesus by acquaintance whereas I know Jesus by description.

    >i) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that _>something doesn’t work, how does it follow that _>something unworkable lies outside the plan of _>God?

    “In some kind of overall sovereign sense of the plan of God? That hardly helps YOU and your position.”

    In context, I was responding to Orthodox’s own argument. This is how he chose to frame the issue, viz. what’s “workable” or “unworkable.”

    Now he’s having to retract his original argument and shift gears as if this is a problem for me.

    “LOL, so Steve is his own authority on when prophesy ceases and when it begins again.”

    Yet another bonehead response since I didn’t appeal to my own authority, but specifically referred Orthodox to the primary source documentation and analysis supplied by David Aune in his classic monograph on prophecy. But, of course, Orthodox never reads anything that would be injurious to his own case. Ignorance is bliss.

    “And again he gives us an excuse to inact Godwin's law. __http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_Law”

    Is Godwin’s law a part of Orthodox Tradition? Please cite the canon of the relevant ecumenical council.

    “However these is nothing ‘neo-nazi’ in observing that Jews are anti-Christian. They reject the Messiah, this is an unemotional fact, not a place for political correct accusations.”

    i) Notice his racist dichotomy between Jews and Christians. This despite the fact that the NT was written by Messianic Jews.

    ii) Moreover, even a non-Christian Jew can be a useful historical witness, viz. Philo, Josephus.

    But Orthodox belongs to a denomination that has anti-Semitism in its DNA.

    “So when is a protestant going to prove to us that each and every one of these books is both non-scriptural or even not part of the Jewish canon.”

    A disingenuous demand, for when we refer you to Protestant scholars like Beckwith, Bruce, and Ellis who do that very thing, you dismiss them unread. So you speak with a forked tongue.

    “As far as my tradition is concerned there is equal providence for the deutero canonical books as there are for the books you consider inspired.”

    In that event it should be easy for you to tells us where to find the official edition of the LXX in the Eastern Orthodox communion, as well as the official canon of the OT in the Eastern Orthodox communion.

    “Oh, and Romans is merely by one of the apostles to one local church.”

    You didn’t quote anything from Romans. You simply alluded to your oft-refuted appeal to 2 Thes 2:15.

    “Citing your favourite scholars is irrelevant to me.”

    Naturally, since you’re a fideist. You wrap yourself up in the pillowy down comforter of Orthodox Tradition and suckle at the nipples of Mother Church.

    “I could cite Orthodox scholars to you all day. But would you accept it?”

    I’m always game for a good argument.

    “Lack of an authority for the canon is another.”

    So where’s your canon?

    “Sola scipture as a non-scriptural teaching is one. Lack of an authority for the canon is another. Lack of an authority for the criteria for canonicity is another.”

    Unlike you, we’ve given our arguments for all three.

    “There's a big difference between mistrust of individual reason compared to the corporate reason.”

    A fallacious argument since your only access point to corporate reason is via the exercise of your individual reason.

    “If my own heart has misled me into orthodoxy it is in agreement with 2000 years of apparently similarly misled individuals.”

    In your private, individual judgment. The port of entry remains a single-file column.

    “>And who was more spiritual—Jerome or _>Augustine?

    “Do I need to know? Do I care? You can't set up the dichotomy of yet another individual to argue against the corporate.”

    As usual, you’re having to desert your original outpost a soon as it comes under fire. You were the one who singled out Augustine as a criterion of spiritual discernment with respect to the canon.

    So I’m answering you on your own grounds by comparing one church father with another, since Augustine and Jerome didn’t agree on the OT canon.

    Why should anyone take any of your arguments the least bit seriously when you instantly drop them as soon as they are challenged?

    “Throwing your own skepticism back in your own faces doesn't make me the liberal. For an Orthodox debating you it is exactly like debating Bishop Spong. To show you where the end game is of your skepticism ought to be disturbing to you. I am not the one who relies on rational/historicalism as the pillar and foundation of my rule of faith.”

    You begin with Spong and end with Orthodoxy. You deploy the same assumptions and methods to arrive at the same conclusions. The only difference is that you then take a blind leap into the arms of Orthodoxy as your fallback position. But all your scepticism regarding sola Scriptura can be redirected to undermine historical theology as well.

    “You doubt everything the church has understood for millennia.”

    Your typical, last-ditch resort to evasive hyperbole.

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