Doc Holliday said:

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Matthew 23:2-3 - Jesus tells people to obey the scribes and Pharisees because they "sit in the Moses seat, and office/tradition never described anywhere in any text prior. So tell me, how is their an authoritative office in the lineage of Moses since it wasn't written down?

Galatians 1:14, Colossians 2:8/2:22 - Paul references "traditions of the fathers" without blanket condemnation.

1 Corinthians 11:2 - Paul explicitly praises the Corinthians for keeping "the traditions I delivered to you".

1 Peter 1:23-25 explicitly quotes Isaiah 40:8 "the word of the Lord endures forever" and then Peter adds "And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you". ORAL. So if you say we can't identify that, then you have to claim the word of the Lord doesn't endure forever. Period. Also John 21:25...it wasn't all written down, by Christ's own testimony.

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Did you forget that Jesus held the authority of the written Law OVER the authority of the "seat of Moses"? He absolutely berated those on the seat of Moses for holding their traditions above the written word of God (Mark 7:11) The traditions of the RCC and Orthodoxy that aren't competing with or contradicting written Scripture are not the problem. The problem is with their traditions that do. And many of them distort or corrupt the gospel.

Do you actually read the references you give? In Galatians, Paul references his adherence to the "traditions of the fathers" in a negative sense. In Colossians 2:8/2:22, he specifically refers to human tradition as an impediment, calling them "empty deceit" and having "no value". WOW. This shows you really don't know what you're taking about. Word of advice - don't just regurgitate what your apologist sources tell you, you need to actually read the Scripture references for yourself.

"Paul explicitly praises the Corinthians for keeping 'the traditions I delivered to you'" - umm, yes... the traditions that came from PAUL HIMSELF. Again, this is NOT HARD. Paul's statement is not an endorsement for oral tradition per se, but rather only that which came from the original apostles. And today, everything that we know that came from the original apostles' teachings is written in Scripture, and is nowhere else. Hence, sola scriptura.

Yes, the gospel preached by Peter orally was the "word of the Lord".... and today, now that Peter is long gone, the only thing we know that came from him orally is written in Scripture, and nowhere else. Hence, sola scriptura. THIS IS NOT HARD.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Is the word of God limited to just written text?

No.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 that the Thessalonians received what they heard preached as "the word of God", not what they read, that's not a throwaway line. He tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13 and 2:1-2 to guard the "pattern of sound words" he heard orally over three years in Ephesus, and to hand that same deposit down through ordained successors. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is explicit: hold to the tradition, "whether by word or by epistle." Peter says the same in 1 Peter 1:23-25, the enduring "word of the Lord" is the gospel preached to you.

John 21:25 makes the point directly: not everything Christ did and taught could fit in books. So if you insist God's word = only the written text, you've quietly shrunk the actual apostolic deposit down to whatever survived as ink, and cut off everything Paul explicitly told Timothy to also guard and pass on.

Make sure you haven't taken the written text and functionally hypostasized it: made it stand in the place the Logos himself should occupy. That's not reverence for scripture. That's Bible-olatry.

---

The word of God for us today IS limited to just the written text, because all we have today that we know came from Jesus and the original apostles is written in Scripture and exists nowhere else. This is literally proven every time this issue comes up, when the Institutionalists/Traditionalists here are asked to produce a teaching that we know came from the apostles that is NOT in Scripture. They come up empty each and every time.

Not only is your comment a clear admission that your church teaches things NOT in Scripture, your implied proposition is completely preposterous - that because the original apostles preached orally to the people in their time, and since not everything Jesus said and did was written down, we Christians today must accept without question any oral tradition claimed by a church to be just as infallible and authoritative as Scripture - even though it has NO basis in Scripture and whose origins have no traceable link to the original apostles themselves.

This is how cults operate and how the Devil corrupts churches and ensnares the unregenerate. True Christians with the Holy Spirit KNOW this is false and are lead away from this thinking. Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice and follow him. They know instinctively that the corrupted gospel and idolatrous beliefs and practices coming from these churches are NOT the voice of Jesus, and so not only do they not follow, they are viscerally repelled by them. I strongly believe that if a person does not react this way to their teachings, then it either means you do NOT have the Spirit, and thus you aren't a Christian; or, you really are a Christian, but something is very, very wrong.

---

Come up empty lol... the ultimate example of an essential apostolic truth that's not found anywhere in the text of Scripture is the canon of Scripture itself. The Canon is an epistemically prior issue: you have to establish what books are legit FIRST before you can actually point to those books as an authority and it took well into the 6th century and THE CHURCH to determine which NT books were legit. Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome had to argue fiercely over the status of books like Hebrews, James, Revelation, and the Deuterocanon. Even Martin Luther famously doubted the inspiration of James (calling it an "epistle of straw"), Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.


When Paul told Timothy to "guard the deposit" of what he heard orally (2 Timothy 1:13), was Timothy operating like a cult leader? When Paul told the Thessalonians to hold fast to traditions "whether by word or by epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15), was he teaching a "corrupted gospel"? According to your logic, the moment Timothy died, the oral part of that command became a tool of the devil.

My post didn't say we should blindly accept any random modern claim of oral tradition. My post pointed out that, by the text of Scripture itself, the phrase "Word of God" is never restricted strictly to ink on a page. By insisting that it is, you are forced to argue that the Word of God magically changed its fundamental nature the moment the last Apostle died.

Your own church operates on a strictly prescribed manner of worship every single Sunday. The order of your service, the way you structure your prayers, how often you take communion, and even the style of your music aren't explicitly dictated in the New Testament. They are traditions. The difference between us isn't that I have traditions and you don't. The difference is that I am honest about where my traditions came from, the early, apostolic Church...while you're operating under a 20th century tradition that you've mistaken for pure Scripture.

---

You keep repeating the argument that the canon is an example of an apostolic teaching that is not in Scripture, when the list of canon books is NOT apostolic teaching. Why do you keep making this logical error, even after you've been corrected several times? Are you not capable of understanding this? Yes, you still have come up empty.

And it's really strange how you continuously fail to understand that during the time of the apostles, oral teachings from the apostles themselves had apostolic authority, obviously. But now that they're all gone, all we have today that we know came from them is written in Scripture, and nowhere else. This is NOT HARD.

Timothy is NOT a "cult leader" because unlike with cults, we know his teachings came directly from an original apostle, who personally validated him on record. We know Timothy received written letters directly from Paul. This is NOT HARD.

HOW do you comprehend my argument as saying that Paul was teaching a "corrupted gospel" because he told his audience to hold fast to what he personally taught orally? This is an inexplicably brain-dead assessment that makes absolutely no sense at all.

No, the "word of God" is not only limited to what's written - but the issue is, all we KNOW TODAY that is the word of God is written only in Scripture. Anyone who comes claiming they have a word from God that is NOT in Scripture, the burden of proof is on them to validate their claim of divine revelation, and their word is always subject to testing and questioning. And it is tested by measuring it up against what we KNOW is the word of God - Scripture. Anyone who alters the gospel from what we know is taught in Scripture, which is what RC and Orthodox have done, is to be considered false.

---

You don't even understand the argument being made.

Apostolic succession doesn't mean bishops keep generating new apostolic content after the apostles died. Its that the apostles established an office, with the authority to teach, govern, and discern true doctrine, that continues in an unbroken line (2 Tim 2:2). The succession isn't a second source of revelation alongside scripture. Its the living, authorized interpretative and custodial body that Scripture itself came out of and was recognized by.

Let me spell out the facts for you:

1.) During the apostles lifetime, their oral teaching and their writings had equal authority.

2.) When they died, that authority didn't evaporate. It was invested in men they personally laid hands on, for the explicit purpose of guarding and transmitting what had been received (1 Tim 6:20).

3.) Those successors are the exact body that, centuries later, sat in council and said "these 27 books, not those others, are what came from the apostles".

Bishops who had claim/evidence of apostolic succession lineage (laying on of hands) and who were in communion with each other eventually settled on the 27 book NT canon, that you affirm, several hundreds of years after the apostles. On top of that, liturgical use was the primary test the early Church used to discern canonicity, not private reading. Even the best protestant scholars agree that the canon came from liturgy, its not contested.

The Book of Matthew, like the other canonical gospels, is anonymously written, and the author never identifies themselves in the body of the text. You trust who they identified as the author and you didn't derive that from Scripture...

You have a major problem:
1.) If the canon isn't authoritative, then your entire Bible rests on an uninspired guess about which book are inspired.
2.) If the canon IS authoritative, then you have to admit a non-scriptural, extra textual judgment carries binding authority over what counts as scripture itself.

Pick one.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

Is the word of God limited to just written text?

No.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 that the Thessalonians received what they heard preached as "the word of God", not what they read, that's not a throwaway line. He tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13 and 2:1-2 to guard the "pattern of sound words" he heard orally over three years in Ephesus, and to hand that same deposit down through ordained successors. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is explicit: hold to the tradition, "whether by word or by epistle." Peter says the same in 1 Peter 1:23-25, the enduring "word of the Lord" is the gospel preached to you.

John 21:25 makes the point directly: not everything Christ did and taught could fit in books. So if you insist God's word = only the written text, you've quietly shrunk the actual apostolic deposit down to whatever survived as ink, and cut off everything Paul explicitly told Timothy to also guard and pass on.

Make sure you haven't taken the written text and functionally hypostasized it: made it stand in the place the Logos himself should occupy. That's not reverence for scripture. That's Bible-olatry.

---

The word of God for us today IS limited to just the written text, because all we have today that we know came from Jesus and the original apostles is written in Scripture and exists nowhere else. This is literally proven every time this issue comes up, when the Institutionalists/Traditionalists here are asked to produce a teaching that we know came from the apostles that is NOT in Scripture. They come up empty each and every time.

Not only is your comment a clear admission that your church teaches things NOT in Scripture, your implied proposition is completely preposterous - that because the original apostles preached orally to the people in their time, and since not everything Jesus said and did was written down, we Christians today must accept without question any oral tradition claimed by a church to be just as infallible and authoritative as Scripture - even though it has NO basis in Scripture and whose origins have no traceable link to the original apostles themselves.

This is how cults operate and how the Devil corrupts churches and ensnares the unregenerate. True Christians with the Holy Spirit KNOW this is false and are lead away from this thinking. Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice and follow him. They know instinctively that the corrupted gospel and idolatrous beliefs and practices coming from these churches are NOT the voice of Jesus, and so not only do they not follow, they are viscerally repelled by them. I strongly believe that if a person does not react this way to their teachings, then it either means you do NOT have the Spirit, and thus you aren't a Christian; or, you really are a Christian, but something is very, very wrong.

---

Come up empty lol... the ultimate example of an essential apostolic truth that's not found anywhere in the text of Scripture is the canon of Scripture itself. The Canon is an epistemically prior issue: you have to establish what books are legit FIRST before you can actually point to those books as an authority and it took well into the 6th century and THE CHURCH to determine which NT books were legit. Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome had to argue fiercely over the status of books like Hebrews, James, Revelation, and the Deuterocanon. Even Martin Luther famously doubted the inspiration of James (calling it an "epistle of straw"), Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.


When Paul told Timothy to "guard the deposit" of what he heard orally (2 Timothy 1:13), was Timothy operating like a cult leader? When Paul told the Thessalonians to hold fast to traditions "whether by word or by epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15), was he teaching a "corrupted gospel"? According to your logic, the moment Timothy died, the oral part of that command became a tool of the devil.

My post didn't say we should blindly accept any random modern claim of oral tradition. My post pointed out that, by the text of Scripture itself, the phrase "Word of God" is never restricted strictly to ink on a page. By insisting that it is, you are forced to argue that the Word of God magically changed its fundamental nature the moment the last Apostle died.

Your own church operates on a strictly prescribed manner of worship every single Sunday. The order of your service, the way you structure your prayers, how often you take communion, and even the style of your music aren't explicitly dictated in the New Testament. They are traditions. The difference between us isn't that I have traditions and you don't. The difference is that I am honest about where my traditions came from, the early, apostolic Church...while you're operating under a 20th century tradition that you've mistaken for pure Scripture.

---

You keep repeating the argument that the canon is an example of an apostolic teaching that is not in Scripture, when the list of canon books is NOT apostolic teaching. Why do you keep making this logical error, even after you've been corrected several times? Are you not capable of understanding this? Yes, you still have come up empty.

And it's really strange how you continuously fail to understand that during the time of the apostles, oral teachings from the apostles themselves had apostolic authority, obviously. But now that they're all gone, all we have today that we know came from them is written in Scripture, and nowhere else. This is NOT HARD.

Timothy is NOT a "cult leader" because unlike with cults, we know his teachings came directly from an original apostle, who personally validated him on record. We know Timothy received written letters directly from Paul. This is NOT HARD.

HOW do you comprehend my argument as saying that Paul was teaching a "corrupted gospel" because he told his audience to hold fast to what he personally taught orally? This is an inexplicably brain-dead assessment that makes absolutely no sense at all.

No, the "word of God" is not only limited to what's written - but the issue is, all we KNOW TODAY that is the word of God is written only in Scripture. Anyone who comes claiming they have a word from God that is NOT in Scripture, the burden of proof is on them to validate their claim of divine revelation, and their word is always subject to testing and questioning. And it is tested by measuring it up against what we KNOW is the word of God - Scripture. Anyone who alters the gospel from what we know is taught in Scripture, which is what RC and Orthodox have done, is to be considered false.

---

You don't even understand the argument being made.

Apostolic succession doesn't mean bishops keep generating new apostolic content after the apostles died. Its that the apostles established an office, with the authority to teach, govern, and discern true doctrine, that continues in an unbroken line (2 Tim 2:2). The succession isn't a second source of revelation alongside scripture. Its the living, authorized interpretative and custodial body that Scripture itself came out of and was recognized by.

Let me spell out the facts for you:

1.) During the apostles lifetime, their oral teaching and their writings had equal authority.

2.) When they died, that authority didn't evaporate. It was invested in men they personally laid hands on, for the explicit purpose of guarding and transmitting what had been received (1 Tim 6:20).

3.) Those successors are the exact body that, centuries later, sat in council and said "these 27 books, not those others, are what came from the apostles".

Bishops who had claim/evidence of apostolic succession lineage (laying on of hands) and who were in communion with each other eventually settled on the 27 book NT canon, that you affirm, several hundreds of years after the apostles. On top of that, liturgical use was the primary test the early Church used to discern canonicity, not private reading. Even the best protestant scholars agree that the canon came from liturgy, its not contested.

The Book of Matthew, like the other canonical gospels, is anonymously written, and the author never identifies themselves in the body of the text. You trust who they identified as the author and you didn't derive that from Scripture...

You have a major problem:
1.) If the canon isn't authoritative, then your entire Bible rests on an uninspired guess about which book are inspired.
2.) If the canon IS authoritative, then you have to admit a non-scriptural, extra textual judgment carries binding authority over what counts as scripture itself.

Pick one.

---

It IS a new revelation being claimed, if the teaching is NOT traceable to the apostles themselves, or even their successors, such as with many of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy (icon veneration, praying to saints, marian doctrines, etc).

The argument you're trying to make in order to support your non-biblical doctrines is the "line of succession" argument, where you don't really have to show a particular teaching came from the apostles themselves, we are just to assume that since the teaching was a collective product of this line of succession, then it indeed came from the apostles, without any real evidence other than a blind faith in this succession. This is very, very dangerous thinking and its how the Devil has successfully introduced corruption into RC and Orthodoxy. The dogmatic view of RC and Orthodoxy that the "Church" is infallible in this way, is one of the primary sources of its error. It isn't supported scripturally at all, and it's demonstrably untrue from church history.

NO one who ever convened at a council ever claimed "this is the list of canon books, and it comes from an apostle". Sorry, you are still without an example of an apostolic teaching that is NOT written in Scripture. You have still come up empty.

You have presented a false dilemma in your "major problem" argument. Firstly, the canon isn't a "guess", but rather a good faith assessment of the books' authenticity and reliability, along with the continuous line of testimony from the body of believers since the beginning. This didn't come from a binding authority, it came from the dependable, continuous, unbroken chain of testimony from believers since the beginning. Secondly, protestants don't even consider the canons of RC and Orthodoxy to be the correct canons in the first place. So your whole argument is moot. Your "authorities" that "judged" or "determined" the canon are not binding to us at all.

Here's my question to you, which will probably go unanswered (again): We know Jesus validated the Hebrew canon as being correct, So:

• what was the Jewish "authority" that decided the canon?
• was this "authority" infallible?
• was this "authority" binding for the Jews in the interpretation of the Jewish scriptures? Meaning, did Jesus expect the Jews to listen to them, and reject him as their Messiah?

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

Is the word of God limited to just written text?

No.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 that the Thessalonians received what they heard preached as "the word of God", not what they read, that's not a throwaway line. He tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13 and 2:1-2 to guard the "pattern of sound words" he heard orally over three years in Ephesus, and to hand that same deposit down through ordained successors. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is explicit: hold to the tradition, "whether by word or by epistle." Peter says the same in 1 Peter 1:23-25, the enduring "word of the Lord" is the gospel preached to you.

John 21:25 makes the point directly: not everything Christ did and taught could fit in books. So if you insist God's word = only the written text, you've quietly shrunk the actual apostolic deposit down to whatever survived as ink, and cut off everything Paul explicitly told Timothy to also guard and pass on.

Make sure you haven't taken the written text and functionally hypostasized it: made it stand in the place the Logos himself should occupy. That's not reverence for scripture. That's Bible-olatry.

---

The word of God for us today IS limited to just the written text, because all we have today that we know came from Jesus and the original apostles is written in Scripture and exists nowhere else. This is literally proven every time this issue comes up, when the Institutionalists/Traditionalists here are asked to produce a teaching that we know came from the apostles that is NOT in Scripture. They come up empty each and every time.

Not only is your comment a clear admission that your church teaches things NOT in Scripture, your implied proposition is completely preposterous - that because the original apostles preached orally to the people in their time, and since not everything Jesus said and did was written down, we Christians today must accept without question any oral tradition claimed by a church to be just as infallible and authoritative as Scripture - even though it has NO basis in Scripture and whose origins have no traceable link to the original apostles themselves.

This is how cults operate and how the Devil corrupts churches and ensnares the unregenerate. True Christians with the Holy Spirit KNOW this is false and are lead away from this thinking. Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice and follow him. They know instinctively that the corrupted gospel and idolatrous beliefs and practices coming from these churches are NOT the voice of Jesus, and so not only do they not follow, they are viscerally repelled by them. I strongly believe that if a person does not react this way to their teachings, then it either means you do NOT have the Spirit, and thus you aren't a Christian; or, you really are a Christian, but something is very, very wrong.

---

Come up empty lol... the ultimate example of an essential apostolic truth that's not found anywhere in the text of Scripture is the canon of Scripture itself. The Canon is an epistemically prior issue: you have to establish what books are legit FIRST before you can actually point to those books as an authority and it took well into the 6th century and THE CHURCH to determine which NT books were legit. Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome had to argue fiercely over the status of books like Hebrews, James, Revelation, and the Deuterocanon. Even Martin Luther famously doubted the inspiration of James (calling it an "epistle of straw"), Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.


When Paul told Timothy to "guard the deposit" of what he heard orally (2 Timothy 1:13), was Timothy operating like a cult leader? When Paul told the Thessalonians to hold fast to traditions "whether by word or by epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15), was he teaching a "corrupted gospel"? According to your logic, the moment Timothy died, the oral part of that command became a tool of the devil.

My post didn't say we should blindly accept any random modern claim of oral tradition. My post pointed out that, by the text of Scripture itself, the phrase "Word of God" is never restricted strictly to ink on a page. By insisting that it is, you are forced to argue that the Word of God magically changed its fundamental nature the moment the last Apostle died.

Your own church operates on a strictly prescribed manner of worship every single Sunday. The order of your service, the way you structure your prayers, how often you take communion, and even the style of your music aren't explicitly dictated in the New Testament. They are traditions. The difference between us isn't that I have traditions and you don't. The difference is that I am honest about where my traditions came from, the early, apostolic Church...while you're operating under a 20th century tradition that you've mistaken for pure Scripture.

---

You keep repeating the argument that the canon is an example of an apostolic teaching that is not in Scripture, when the list of canon books is NOT apostolic teaching. Why do you keep making this logical error, even after you've been corrected several times? Are you not capable of understanding this? Yes, you still have come up empty.

And it's really strange how you continuously fail to understand that during the time of the apostles, oral teachings from the apostles themselves had apostolic authority, obviously. But now that they're all gone, all we have today that we know came from them is written in Scripture, and nowhere else. This is NOT HARD.

Timothy is NOT a "cult leader" because unlike with cults, we know his teachings came directly from an original apostle, who personally validated him on record. We know Timothy received written letters directly from Paul. This is NOT HARD.

HOW do you comprehend my argument as saying that Paul was teaching a "corrupted gospel" because he told his audience to hold fast to what he personally taught orally? This is an inexplicably brain-dead assessment that makes absolutely no sense at all.

No, the "word of God" is not only limited to what's written - but the issue is, all we KNOW TODAY that is the word of God is written only in Scripture. Anyone who comes claiming they have a word from God that is NOT in Scripture, the burden of proof is on them to validate their claim of divine revelation, and their word is always subject to testing and questioning. And it is tested by measuring it up against what we KNOW is the word of God - Scripture. Anyone who alters the gospel from what we know is taught in Scripture, which is what RC and Orthodox have done, is to be considered false.

---

You don't even understand the argument being made.

Apostolic succession doesn't mean bishops keep generating new apostolic content after the apostles died. Its that the apostles established an office, with the authority to teach, govern, and discern true doctrine, that continues in an unbroken line (2 Tim 2:2). The succession isn't a second source of revelation alongside scripture. Its the living, authorized interpretative and custodial body that Scripture itself came out of and was recognized by.

Let me spell out the facts for you:

1.) During the apostles lifetime, their oral teaching and their writings had equal authority.

2.) When they died, that authority didn't evaporate. It was invested in men they personally laid hands on, for the explicit purpose of guarding and transmitting what had been received (1 Tim 6:20).

3.) Those successors are the exact body that, centuries later, sat in council and said "these 27 books, not those others, are what came from the apostles".

Bishops who had claim/evidence of apostolic succession lineage (laying on of hands) and who were in communion with each other eventually settled on the 27 book NT canon, that you affirm, several hundreds of years after the apostles. On top of that, liturgical use was the primary test the early Church used to discern canonicity, not private reading. Even the best protestant scholars agree that the canon came from liturgy, its not contested.

The Book of Matthew, like the other canonical gospels, is anonymously written, and the author never identifies themselves in the body of the text. You trust who they identified as the author and you didn't derive that from Scripture...

You have a major problem:
1.) If the canon isn't authoritative, then your entire Bible rests on an uninspired guess about which book are inspired.
2.) If the canon IS authoritative, then you have to admit a non-scriptural, extra textual judgment carries binding authority over what counts as scripture itself.

Pick one.

---

It IS a new revelation being claimed, if the teaching is NOT traceable to the apostles themselves, or even their successors, such as with many of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy (icon veneration, praying to saints, marian doctrines, etc).

The argument you're trying to make in order to support your non-biblical doctrines is the "line of succession" argument, where you don't really have to show a particular teaching came from the apostles themselves, we are just to assume that since the teaching was a collective product of this line of succession, then it indeed came from the apostles, without any real evidence other than a blind faith in this succession. This is very, very dangerous thinking and its how the Devil has successfully introduced corruption into RC and Orthodoxy. The dogmatic view of RC and Orthodoxy that the "Church" is infallible in this way, is one of the primary sources of its error. It isn't supported scripturally at all, and it's demonstrably untrue from church history.

NO one who ever convened at a council ever claimed "this is the list of canon books, and it comes from an apostle". Sorry, you are still without an example of an apostolic teaching that is NOT written in Scripture. You have still come up empty.

You have presented a false dilemma in your "major problem" argument. Firstly, the canon isn't a "guess", but rather a good faith assessment of the books' authenticity and reliability, along with the continuous line of testimony from the body of believers since the beginning. This didn't come from a binding authority, it came from the dependable, continuous, unbroken chain of testimony from believers since the beginning. Secondly, protestants don't even consider the canons of RC and Orthodoxy to be the correct canons in the first place. So your whole argument is moot. Your "authorities" that "judged" or "determined" the canon are not binding to us at all.

Here's my question to you, which will probably go unanswered (again): We know Jesus validated the Hebrew canon as being correct, So:

• what was the Jewish "authority" that decided the canon?
• was this "authority" infallible?
• was this "authority" binding for the Jews in the interpretation of the Jewish scriptures? Meaning, did Jesus expect the Jews to listen to them, and reject him as their Messiah?

---

No Jesus did not validate a Hebrew canon. There wasn't a Hebrew canon. WTH are you talking about?
There was no single, centralized authority that had settled the Old Testament canon during the time of Jesus. That is a historical fact. First-century Judaism was fractured into competing sects with different canons:

The Sadducees only accepted the Torah (first 5 books).

The Pharisees accepted the Law, Prophets, and some Writings.

The Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) Jews used the Septuagint (which included the Deuterocanonical books/Apocrypha.

The Protestant Old Testament is based on the Masoretic Text, which wasn't even compiled, vowel-pointed, and finalized until the 7th to 10th centuries by rabbinic Jews who rejected Jesus Christ. You reject the 4th century Christian councils who gave us the New Testament canon because you claim the Church is fallible and corrupted. Yet, you explicitly trust medieval, non-Christian rabbis to define your Old Testament canon. Even worse, because you use the Masoretic text instead of the Septuagint that the Apostles used, your Old Testament literally contradicts your New Testament. When Stephen says in Acts 7 that 75 people went to Egypt, your Masoretic Genesis says 70. When Hebrews 1 says 'Let all God's angels worship him,' your Masoretic Deuteronomy deletes the verse entirely. The Apostles didn't use the Masoretic canon. The early Church didn't use the Masoretic canon. You are relying on a medieval Jewish tradition to tell you what the Old Testament is, while claiming you only follow 'Scripture alone.'

You claim the NT canon wasn't determined by an authority, but by a "dependable, continuous, unbroken chain of testimony from believers since the beginning". Which believers? In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, different pockets of "believers" accepted different books. The Church in Egypt loved The Shepherd of Hermas. The Church in Syria used the Diatessaron (a single blended Gospel) instead of the four Gospels for centuries. Who decided the Shepherd of Hermas was out, but the Book of Revelation (which was heavily disputed in the East) was in? It wasn't a vague "chain of testimony"; it was specific bishops meeting in specific synods (Hippo, Carthage, Rome) who drew a hard line.

Where does Scripture state that Matthew wrote the first Gospel? It doesn't. The "testimony" they rely on to know who wrote Matthew is the exact same oral, extra-biblical Tradition preserved by the historic Church. If that Tradition is fallible, the authorship of the Gospels is just a "good faith guess."

You haven't done the research.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Is the word of God limited to just written text?

No.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 that the Thessalonians received what they heard preached as "the word of God", not what they read, that's not a throwaway line. He tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13 and 2:1-2 to guard the "pattern of sound words" he heard orally over three years in Ephesus, and to hand that same deposit down through ordained successors. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is explicit: hold to the tradition, "whether by word or by epistle." Peter says the same in 1 Peter 1:23-25, the enduring "word of the Lord" is the gospel preached to you.

John 21:25 makes the point directly: not everything Christ did and taught could fit in books. So if you insist God's word = only the written text, you've quietly shrunk the actual apostolic deposit down to whatever survived as ink, and cut off everything Paul explicitly told Timothy to also guard and pass on.

Make sure you haven't taken the written text and functionally hypostasized it: made it stand in the place the Logos himself should occupy. That's not reverence for scripture. That's Bible-olatry.

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The word of God for us today IS limited to just the written text, because all we have today that we know came from Jesus and the original apostles is written in Scripture and exists nowhere else. This is literally proven every time this issue comes up, when the Institutionalists/Traditionalists here are asked to produce a teaching that we know came from the apostles that is NOT in Scripture. They come up empty each and every time.

Not only is your comment a clear admission that your church teaches things NOT in Scripture, your implied proposition is completely preposterous - that because the original apostles preached orally to the people in their time, and since not everything Jesus said and did was written down, we Christians today must accept without question any oral tradition claimed by a church to be just as infallible and authoritative as Scripture - even though it has NO basis in Scripture and whose origins have no traceable link to the original apostles themselves.

This is how cults operate and how the Devil corrupts churches and ensnares the unregenerate. True Christians with the Holy Spirit KNOW this is false and are lead away from this thinking. Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice and follow him. They know instinctively that the corrupted gospel and idolatrous beliefs and practices coming from these churches are NOT the voice of Jesus, and so not only do they not follow, they are viscerally repelled by them. I strongly believe that if a person does not react this way to their teachings, then it either means you do NOT have the Spirit, and thus you aren't a Christian; or, you really are a Christian, but something is very, very wrong.

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Come up empty lol... the ultimate example of an essential apostolic truth that's not found anywhere in the text of Scripture is the canon of Scripture itself. The Canon is an epistemically prior issue: you have to establish what books are legit FIRST before you can actually point to those books as an authority and it took well into the 6th century and THE CHURCH to determine which NT books were legit. Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome had to argue fiercely over the status of books like Hebrews, James, Revelation, and the Deuterocanon. Even Martin Luther famously doubted the inspiration of James (calling it an "epistle of straw"), Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.


When Paul told Timothy to "guard the deposit" of what he heard orally (2 Timothy 1:13), was Timothy operating like a cult leader? When Paul told the Thessalonians to hold fast to traditions "whether by word or by epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15), was he teaching a "corrupted gospel"? According to your logic, the moment Timothy died, the oral part of that command became a tool of the devil.

My post didn't say we should blindly accept any random modern claim of oral tradition. My post pointed out that, by the text of Scripture itself, the phrase "Word of God" is never restricted strictly to ink on a page. By insisting that it is, you are forced to argue that the Word of God magically changed its fundamental nature the moment the last Apostle died.

Your own church operates on a strictly prescribed manner of worship every single Sunday. The order of your service, the way you structure your prayers, how often you take communion, and even the style of your music aren't explicitly dictated in the New Testament. They are traditions. The difference between us isn't that I have traditions and you don't. The difference is that I am honest about where my traditions came from, the early, apostolic Church...while you're operating under a 20th century tradition that you've mistaken for pure Scripture.

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You keep repeating the argument that the canon is an example of an apostolic teaching that is not in Scripture, when the list of canon books is NOT apostolic teaching. Why do you keep making this logical error, even after you've been corrected several times? Are you not capable of understanding this? Yes, you still have come up empty.

And it's really strange how you continuously fail to understand that during the time of the apostles, oral teachings from the apostles themselves had apostolic authority, obviously. But now that they're all gone, all we have today that we know came from them is written in Scripture, and nowhere else. This is NOT HARD.

Timothy is NOT a "cult leader" because unlike with cults, we know his teachings came directly from an original apostle, who personally validated him on record. We know Timothy received written letters directly from Paul. This is NOT HARD.

HOW do you comprehend my argument as saying that Paul was teaching a "corrupted gospel" because he told his audience to hold fast to what he personally taught orally? This is an inexplicably brain-dead assessment that makes absolutely no sense at all.

No, the "word of God" is not only limited to what's written - but the issue is, all we KNOW TODAY that is the word of God is written only in Scripture. Anyone who comes claiming they have a word from God that is NOT in Scripture, the burden of proof is on them to validate their claim of divine revelation, and their word is always subject to testing and questioning. And it is tested by measuring it up against what we KNOW is the word of God - Scripture. Anyone who alters the gospel from what we know is taught in Scripture, which is what RC and Orthodox have done, is to be considered false.

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You don't even understand the argument being made.

Apostolic succession doesn't mean bishops keep generating new apostolic content after the apostles died. Its that the apostles established an office, with the authority to teach, govern, and discern true doctrine, that continues in an unbroken line (2 Tim 2:2). The succession isn't a second source of revelation alongside scripture. Its the living, authorized interpretative and custodial body that Scripture itself came out of and was recognized by.

Let me spell out the facts for you:

1.) During the apostles lifetime, their oral teaching and their writings had equal authority.

2.) When they died, that authority didn't evaporate. It was invested in men they personally laid hands on, for the explicit purpose of guarding and transmitting what had been received (1 Tim 6:20).

3.) Those successors are the exact body that, centuries later, sat in council and said "these 27 books, not those others, are what came from the apostles".

Bishops who had claim/evidence of apostolic succession lineage (laying on of hands) and who were in communion with each other eventually settled on the 27 book NT canon, that you affirm, several hundreds of years after the apostles. On top of that, liturgical use was the primary test the early Church used to discern canonicity, not private reading. Even the best protestant scholars agree that the canon came from liturgy, its not contested.

The Book of Matthew, like the other canonical gospels, is anonymously written, and the author never identifies themselves in the body of the text. You trust who they identified as the author and you didn't derive that from Scripture...

You have a major problem:
1.) If the canon isn't authoritative, then your entire Bible rests on an uninspired guess about which book are inspired.
2.) If the canon IS authoritative, then you have to admit a non-scriptural, extra textual judgment carries binding authority over what counts as scripture itself.

Pick one.

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It IS a new revelation being claimed, if the teaching is NOT traceable to the apostles themselves, or even their successors, such as with many of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy (icon veneration, praying to saints, marian doctrines, etc).

The argument you're trying to make in order to support your non-biblical doctrines is the "line of succession" argument, where you don't really have to show a particular teaching came from the apostles themselves, we are just to assume that since the teaching was a collective product of this line of succession, then it indeed came from the apostles, without any real evidence other than a blind faith in this succession. This is very, very dangerous thinking and its how the Devil has successfully introduced corruption into RC and Orthodoxy. The dogmatic view of RC and Orthodoxy that the "Church" is infallible in this way, is one of the primary sources of its error. It isn't supported scripturally at all, and it's demonstrably untrue from church history.

NO one who ever convened at a council ever claimed "this is the list of canon books, and it comes from an apostle". Sorry, you are still without an example of an apostolic teaching that is NOT written in Scripture. You have still come up empty.

You have presented a false dilemma in your "major problem" argument. Firstly, the canon isn't a "guess", but rather a good faith assessment of the books' authenticity and reliability, along with the continuous line of testimony from the body of believers since the beginning. This didn't come from a binding authority, it came from the dependable, continuous, unbroken chain of testimony from believers since the beginning. Secondly, protestants don't even consider the canons of RC and Orthodoxy to be the correct canons in the first place. So your whole argument is moot. Your "authorities" that "judged" or "determined" the canon are not binding to us at all.

Here's my question to you, which will probably go unanswered (again): We know Jesus validated the Hebrew canon as being correct, So:

• what was the Jewish "authority" that decided the canon?
• was this "authority" infallible?
• was this "authority" binding for the Jews in the interpretation of the Jewish scriptures? Meaning, did Jesus expect the Jews to listen to them, and reject him as their Messiah?

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No Jesus did not validate a Hebrew canon. There wasn't a Hebrew canon. WTH are you talking about?
There was no single, centralized authority that had settled the Old Testament canon during the time of Jesus. That is a historical fact. First-century Judaism was fractured into competing sects with different canons:

The Sadducees only accepted the Torah (first 5 books).

The Pharisees accepted the Law, Prophets, and some Writings.

The Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) Jews used the Septuagint (which included the Deuterocanonical books/Apocrypha.

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Man, you really don't know the Bible:

"Then he (Jesus) 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". - Luke 24:44

Your history about the Saduccees accepting only the Torah has no historical basis in facts. The Pharisees accepted the very Tanakh being referenced by Jesus in Luke 24:44 above. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of ALL important Jewish books, which included BOTH the canonical and non-canonical.

You're the one who hasn't done the research.

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Hope you had a great weekend

Coke Bear said:

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Origen of Alexandria (c. 185254) believed that Chapters 1-11 were allegorical. He argued that the creation "days" could not be solar days in any straightforward sense, noting with remarkable acuity that the allegorical interpreters had specific scriptural reasons for rejecting a calendar-day view of Genesis 1; in particular, the creation days could not be solar days if the Sun was not created until the fourth day

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Origen had a lot of ideas, some of which were outright heretical.

The Anathemas Against Origen, 2nd Ecumenical Council

While he was a prolific writer and certain historical lessons can be taken from his writings, he was unduly influenced by plato, universalism, and even gnosticism. There's a reason he is not considered either a church father or a saint.

Realitybites said:

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Coke Bear said:

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Origen of Alexandria (c. 185254) believed that Chapters 1-11 were allegorical. He argued that the creation "days" could not be solar days in any straightforward sense, noting with remarkable acuity that the allegorical interpreters had specific scriptural reasons for rejecting a calendar-day view of Genesis 1; in particular, the creation days could not be solar days if the Sun was not created until the fourth day

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Origen had a lot of ideas, some of which were outright heretical.

The Anathemas Against Origen, 2nd Ecumenical Council

While he was a prolific writer and certain historical lessons can be taken from his writings, he was unduly influenced by plato, universalism, and even gnosticism. There's a reason he is not considered either a church father or a saint.

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He is an example of why NO church father should be used to support doctrine, unless is it if fully supported by Scripture itself.

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Doc Holliday said:

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The Protestant Old Testament is based on the Masoretic Text, which wasn't even compiled, vowel-pointed, and finalized until the 7th to 10th centuries by rabbinic Jews who rejected Jesus Christ. You reject the 4th century Christian councils who gave us the New Testament canon because you claim the Church is fallible and corrupted. Yet, you explicitly trust medieval, non-Christian rabbis to define your Old Testament canon. Even worse, because you use the Masoretic text instead of the Septuagint that the Apostles used, your Old Testament literally contradicts your New Testament. When Stephen says in Acts 7 that 75 people went to Egypt, your Masoretic Genesis says 70. When Hebrews 1 says 'Let all God's angels worship him,' your Masoretic Deuteronomy deletes the verse entirely. The Apostles didn't use the Masoretic canon. The early Church didn't use the Masoretic canon. You are relying on a medieval Jewish tradition to tell you what the Old Testament is, while claiming you only follow 'Scripture alone.'

You haven't done the research.

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As knowledge of the Septuagint and the history of the Old Testament and its translations spreads, this is actually becoming a serious problem for sola scriptura Christians as pretty much every modern English bible translation has resorted to the Masoretic text based on flawed scholarship. In addition to the modifications the rabbis made that you cite, they also tweaked the lengths of the lives of the patriarchs in Genesis 5/11 to make the earth appear 1400 years younger than it actually is, driving the window for the messiah to appear a millenium and a half beyond the time of Jesus' earthly ministry in an effort to discredit Him.

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I'm stoked that the Resurrection of the Christ by Mel Gibson will show the harrowing of hades

There's so much scriptural support for it:

1 Peter 3:19: Christ "went and preached to the spirits in prison." Prison there is Hades. Not a metaphor.

Philippians 2:10: every knee bows "in heaven, on earth, and under the earth." Under the earth is Hades. Paul's cosmology has three tiers and Christ's lordship extends to all three, including the realm of the dead.

Ephesians 4:8-9, quoting Psalm 68: "he led captivity captive" and "descended into the lower parts of the earth." Paul ties the ascension to a prior descent.

Isaiah 61:1 and 9:2: release of prisoners, light to those in darkness. The fathers read this as Christ breaking into Sheol itself, not just a metaphor for national deliverance.

Psalm 107: gates of bronze broken, bars of iron cut, prisoners in darkness brought out.

Also the Patristic opinion and logical reasoning is the thief on the cross didn't skip the grave and float to glory. He went down into Hades with Christ, and he came back out with everyone else at the harrowing. There was no Church yet when the thief and Christ died. The Church begins at Pentecost, after the resurrection and the descent of the Spirit, not before. He was a repentant Hebrew, dying under the Old Covenant, executed for his crimes. So when Christ tells him "today you will be with me in paradise," that's not heaven in the beatific sense. Christ himself says after the resurrection, "I have not yet ascended to my Father." If paradise meant heaven outright, that's a contradiction. It only makes sense if paradise means Abraham's Bosom, the righteous side of Sheol, where the faithful dead were waiting for the Messiah.

Realitybites said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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The Protestant Old Testament is based on the Masoretic Text, which wasn't even compiled, vowel-pointed, and finalized until the 7th to 10th centuries by rabbinic Jews who rejected Jesus Christ. You reject the 4th century Christian councils who gave us the New Testament canon because you claim the Church is fallible and corrupted. Yet, you explicitly trust medieval, non-Christian rabbis to define your Old Testament canon. Even worse, because you use the Masoretic text instead of the Septuagint that the Apostles used, your Old Testament literally contradicts your New Testament. When Stephen says in Acts 7 that 75 people went to Egypt, your Masoretic Genesis says 70. When Hebrews 1 says 'Let all God's angels worship him,' your Masoretic Deuteronomy deletes the verse entirely. The Apostles didn't use the Masoretic canon. The early Church didn't use the Masoretic canon. You are relying on a medieval Jewish tradition to tell you what the Old Testament is, while claiming you only follow 'Scripture alone.'

You haven't done the research.

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As knowledge of the Septuagint and the history of the Old Testament and its translations spreads, this is actually becoming a serious problem for sola scriptura Christians as pretty much every modern English bible translation has resorted to the Masoretic text based on flawed scholarship. In addition to the modifications the rabbis made that you cite, they also tweaked the lengths of the lives of the patriarchs in Genesis 5/11 to make the earth appear 1400 years younger than it actually is, driving the window for the messiah to appear a millenium and a half beyond the time of Jesus' earthly ministry in an effort to discredit Him.

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That's wild.

The reformers ditched the Deuterocanon for being 'too Catholic' but kept a Hebrew text edited by guys who thought Jesus was a problem to be solved. They reject 1500 years of Church councils and Fathers as 'man made tradition', but the Masoretic from rabbinic Antichrist Jews a thousand years after Christ are just… neutral facts.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Realitybites said:

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Coke Bear said:

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Origen of Alexandria (c. 185254) believed that Chapters 1-11 were allegorical. He argued that the creation "days" could not be solar days in any straightforward sense, noting with remarkable acuity that the allegorical interpreters had specific scriptural reasons for rejecting a calendar-day view of Genesis 1; in particular, the creation days could not be solar days if the Sun was not created until the fourth day

---

Origen had a lot of ideas, some of which were outright heretical.

The Anathemas Against Origen, 2nd Ecumenical Council

While he was a prolific writer and certain historical lessons can be taken from his writings, he was unduly influenced by plato, universalism, and even gnosticism. There's a reason he is not considered either a church father or a saint.

---

He is an example of why NO church father should be used to support doctrine, unless is it if fully supported by Scripture itself.

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I suppose that should work both ways when you try to prove the canon for Jerome and the unbiblical concept of sola scriptura from Augustine.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Man, you really don't know the Bible:

"Then he (Jesus) 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". - Luke 24:44

Your history about the Saduccees accepting only the Torah has no historical basis in facts. The Pharisees accepted the very Tanakh being referenced by Jesus in Luke 24:44 above. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of ALL important Jewish books, which included BOTH the canonical and non-canonical.

You're the one who hasn't done the research.

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If you do a modicum of (honest) research, you will discover that the Sadducees DID only accept the Pentateuch as canon.

This is affirmed in Acts 23 in the resurrection debate and Hippolytus and Origen both (2nd & 3rd century) affirm this.

No serious historian today believes that they accepted other books as canon.

This is why Jesus rebuked them only using the Torah.

Coke Bear said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Man, you really don't know the Bible:

"Then he (Jesus) 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". - Luke 24:44

Your history about the Saduccees accepting only the Torah has no historical basis in facts. The Pharisees accepted the very Tanakh being referenced by Jesus in Luke 24:44 above. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of ALL important Jewish books, which included BOTH the canonical and non-canonical.

You're the one who hasn't done the research.

---

If you do a modicum of (honest) research, you will discover that the Sadducees DID only accept the Pentateuch as canon.

This is affirmed in Acts 23 in the resurrection debate and Hippolytus and Origen both (2nd & 3rd century) affirm this.

No serious historian today believes that they accepted other books as canon.

This is why Jesus rebuked them only using the Torah.

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With regards to Luke 24:44, the "them" in question were the Disciples who accepted the Law and Prophets as scripture, not the Sadducees. This is the problem with out of context proof texting. You can blow up your own position.

Coke Bear said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Man, you really don't know the Bible:

"Then he (Jesus) 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". - Luke 24:44

Your history about the Saduccees accepting only the Torah has no historical basis in facts. The Pharisees accepted the very Tanakh being referenced by Jesus in Luke 24:44 above. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of ALL important Jewish books, which included BOTH the canonical and non-canonical.

You're the one who hasn't done the research.

---

If you do a modicum of (honest) research, you will discover that the Sadducees DID only accept the Pentateuch as canon.

This is affirmed in Acts 23 in the resurrection debate and Hippolytus and Origen both (2nd & 3rd century) affirm this.

No serious historian today believes that they accepted other books as canon.

This is why Jesus rebuked them only using the Torah.

---

The historians you got your google facts from rely on the hearsay evidence from church fathers like Origen, Hippolytus, and Jerome, none of which cited any Jewish sources for their claims. These historians did not extensively study the topic of the canon of the Jews as much as scholars like Roger Beckwith, who wrote the book on the Old Testament canon. Scholars like him disagree with the traditional claim that the Sadducees held to a restricted canon. There just aren't any primary Jewish sources from which this claim is based on. As N.T. Wright says, the only real credible evidence from which to draw conclusiions come from Jewish sources, such as Josephus, rabbinic literature, and the New Testament itself:

• Josephus - according to scholar F.F. Bruce, most historians misinterpret Josephus as saying that the Sadducees only held to the Torah. He says that actually, Josephus was only saying that they rejected the oral Torah of the Pharisees, not the Prophets and Writings of the Tanakh;
• Rabbinic Literature - in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 90b:810 recounts a debate between a leading Pharisee and the Sadducees in the 1st century about the topic of the resurrection. In it, the Sadducees argue from the Prophets and Writings as well as from the Torah (the entire Tanakh);
• The New Testament - in Matthew 2:3-6, King Herod summons all the chief priests of Israel, who most scholars believe were the Sadducees at that time, in order to find the location where Jesus was prophesied to be born - they quoted the book of Micah from the Prophets. Also, Jesus never "rebuked the Sadducees" for only using the Torah. Acts 23 does NOT say that the Sadducees did not accept the whole Tanakh. These are just a common misinterpretations and non sequiturs from those passages.

So, your "research" is shallow, and your comment that "no serious historian" believes the Sadducees accepted books outside the Torah is a complete joke. You have no real evidence for your claim outside of hearsay from the church fathers. You just don't know what you're talking about, you're just regurgitating what you're told.

Coke Bear said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Realitybites said:

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Coke Bear said:

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Origen of Alexandria (c. 185254) believed that Chapters 1-11 were allegorical. He argued that the creation "days" could not be solar days in any straightforward sense, noting with remarkable acuity that the allegorical interpreters had specific scriptural reasons for rejecting a calendar-day view of Genesis 1; in particular, the creation days could not be solar days if the Sun was not created until the fourth day

---

Origen had a lot of ideas, some of which were outright heretical.

The Anathemas Against Origen, 2nd Ecumenical Council

While he was a prolific writer and certain historical lessons can be taken from his writings, he was unduly influenced by plato, universalism, and even gnosticism. There's a reason he is not considered either a church father or a saint.

---

He is an example of why NO church father should be used to support doctrine, unless is it if fully supported by Scripture itself.

---

I suppose that should work both ways when you try to prove the canon for Jerome and the unbiblical concept of sola scriptura from Augustine.

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I wasn't trying prove the canon from Jerome or sola scriptura from Augustine. I guess you just aren't intelligent enough to have understood that I was showing the inconsistencies in your Church's claims about it's own history.

Realitybites said:

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Coke Bear said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Man, you really don't know the Bible:

"Then he (Jesus) 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". - Luke 24:44

Your history about the Saduccees accepting only the Torah has no historical basis in facts. The Pharisees accepted the very Tanakh being referenced by Jesus in Luke 24:44 above. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of ALL important Jewish books, which included BOTH the canonical and non-canonical.

You're the one who hasn't done the research.

---

If you do a modicum of (honest) research, you will discover that the Sadducees DID only accept the Pentateuch as canon.

This is affirmed in Acts 23 in the resurrection debate and Hippolytus and Origen both (2nd & 3rd century) affirm this.

No serious historian today believes that they accepted other books as canon.

This is why Jesus rebuked them only using the Torah.

---

With regards to Luke 24:44, the "them" in question were the Disciples who accepted the Law and Prophets as scripture, not the Sadducees. This is the problem with out of context proof texting. You can blow up your own position.

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You're reading my comment incorrectly. The two paragraphs are two separate points. The reference to Luke 24:44 is not in regard to the Sadducees.

Deconstructing all the logical, comprehension, and thinking errors here from you guys is getting to be quite a chore, and a major impediment to constructive debate.

This is the future of Protestantism by the way

65% of all Protestants in the world are Pentecostals, who purport things such as gibberish tongues, being ‘slain in the spirit’ (see this video), faith healing, continued prophecy, prosperity gospel and plenty of trinitarian… https://t.co/yrQh79test

— 𝔃𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔰 𝔰 (@OrdinariateUSA) July 17, 2026

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Doc Holliday said:

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This is the future of Protestantism by the way

65% of all Protestants in the world are Pentecostals, who purport things such as gibberish tongues, being ‘slain in the spirit’ (see this video), faith healing, continued prophecy, prosperity gospel and plenty of trinitarian… https://t.co/yrQh79test

— 𝔃𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔰 𝔰 (@OrdinariateUSA) July 17, 2026

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If that's the future, then protestantism is dead.



The emotionalism is the hook, if you're coming from a dying mainline denomination but you can only fool people with staged/fake miracles for so long.

Realitybites said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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This is the future of Protestantism by the way

65% of all Protestants in the world are Pentecostals, who purport things such as gibberish tongues, being ‘slain in the spirit’ (see this video), faith healing, continued prophecy, prosperity gospel and plenty of trinitarian… https://t.co/yrQh79test

— 𝔃𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔰 𝔰 (@OrdinariateUSA) July 17, 2026

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If that's the future, then protestantism is dead.



The emotionalism is the hook, if you're coming from a dying mainline denomination but you can only fool people with staged/fake miracles for so long.

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Emotion doesn't equate fake.

xfrodobagginsx said:

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Realitybites said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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This is the future of Protestantism by the way

65% of all Protestants in the world are Pentecostals, who purport things such as gibberish tongues, being ‘slain in the spirit’ (see this video), faith healing, continued prophecy, prosperity gospel and plenty of trinitarian… https://t.co/yrQh79test

— 𝔃𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔰 𝔰 (@OrdinariateUSA) July 17, 2026

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If that's the future, then protestantism is dead.



The emotionalism is the hook, if you're coming from a dying mainline denomination but you can only fool people with staged/fake miracles for so long.

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Emotion doesn't equate fake.

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True. It is the pig Latin passing itself off as other tongues. the fake healings, "slain in the spirit", "miracles of gold dust and teeth", and all the other nonsense that eventually has people cycling out of the back door of Pentecostalism and Charismaticism into atheism.

Ephesians 3:1-6 KJV
[1] For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, [2] if ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: [3] how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, [4] whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) [5] which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; [6] that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:

The Dispensation of the grace of God was given to PAUL for the Church, not the 12. They had a different program and were ministers of Israel only.

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Greatest Bible Teacher Walks You Through The Bible In 25 Minute Lessons:

Through the Bible with Les Feldick https://share.google/RrQ28rI1iZE8NXkPF

Please take the time to read this first post if you haven't yet

Tomorrow is Sunday. Find a good Bible believing Church and attend.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Coke Bear said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Man, you really don't know the Bible:

"Then he (Jesus) 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". - Luke 24:44

Your history about the Saduccees accepting only the Torah has no historical basis in facts. The Pharisees accepted the very Tanakh being referenced by Jesus in Luke 24:44 above. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of ALL important Jewish books, which included BOTH the canonical and non-canonical.

You're the one who hasn't done the research.

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If you do a modicum of (honest) research, you will discover that the Sadducees DID only accept the Pentateuch as canon.

This is affirmed in Acts 23 in the resurrection debate and Hippolytus and Origen both (2nd & 3rd century) affirm this.

No serious historian today believes that they accepted other books as canon.

This is why Jesus rebuked them only using the Torah.

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The historians you got your google facts from rely on the hearsay evidence from church fathers like Origen, Hippolytus, and Jerome, none of which cited any Jewish sources for their claims. These historians did not extensively study the topic of the canon of the Jews as much as scholars like Roger Beckwith, who wrote the book on the Old Testament canon. Scholars like him disagree with the traditional claim that the Sadducees held to a restricted canon. There just aren't any primary Jewish sources from which this claim is based on. As N.T. Wright says, the only real credible evidence from which to draw conclusiions come from Jewish sources, such as Josephus, rabbinic literature, and the New Testament itself:

• Josephus - according to scholar F.F. Bruce, most historians misinterpret Josephus as saying that the Sadducees only held to the Torah. He says that actually, Josephus was only saying that they rejected the oral Torah of the Pharisees, not the Prophets and Writings of the Tanakh;
• Rabbinic Literature - in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 90b:810 recounts a debate between a leading Pharisee and the Sadducees in the 1st century about the topic of the resurrection. In it, the Sadducees argue from the Prophets and Writings as well as from the Torah (the entire Tanakh);
• The New Testament - in Matthew 2:3-6, King Herod summons all the chief priests of Israel, who most scholars believe were the Sadducees at that time, in order to find the location where Jesus was prophesied to be born - they quoted the book of Micah from the Prophets. Also, Jesus never "rebuked the Sadducees" for only using the Torah. Acts 23 does NOT say that the Sadducees did not accept the whole Tanakh. These are just a common misinterpretations and non sequiturs from those passages.

So, your "research" is shallow, and your comment that "no serious historian" believes the Sadducees accepted books outside the Torah is a complete joke. You have no real evidence for your claim outside of hearsay from the church fathers. You just don't know what you're talking about, you're just regurgitating what you're told.

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This is somewhat comical on multiple points!!!

Jesus himself ONLY used the Torah in discussion with the Sadducees. The fact alone has better legs than you forcing your narrative in Luke 24:44.

You also argue that men, who lived in the time adjacent to the apostles, didn't know better than a modern-day "scholar" like Roger Beckwith who is writing more than 1600 years later. You'll have to do better than that.

Speaking of him, you present HIS view as dogmatized canon. When one does research, you'll find that his view is the MINORITY position. Most scholars hold the traditional view of the Sadducees and their limited canon.

xfrodobagginsx said:

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Realitybites said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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This is the future of Protestantism by the way

65% of all Protestants in the world are Pentecostals, who purport things such as gibberish tongues, being ‘slain in the spirit’ (see this video), faith healing, continued prophecy, prosperity gospel and plenty of trinitarian… https://t.co/yrQh79test

— 𝔃𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔰 𝔰 (@OrdinariateUSA) July 17, 2026

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If that's the future, then protestantism is dead.



The emotionalism is the hook, if you're coming from a dying mainline denomination but you can only fool people with staged/fake miracles for so long.

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Emotion doesn't equate fake.

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They can though and this can be a VERY dangerous thing.

Prelest is spiritual delusion. It's when you accept a false spiritual state as true, when you think you're holier, more advanced, or closer to God than you actually are. Someone begins to have what they think are spiritual experiences, visions, special feelings during prayer, a sense of God's presence, inner lights, whatever. They start to believe they've reached a higher state. But their actual life doesn't match. The passions are still there. Pride is still there. They just can't see it anymore because they're convinced of their own holiness.

The person in prelest has lost the ability to see themselves accurately. They've accepted a flattering lie about their spiritual state, and that lie cuts them off from real repentance. You can't repent of sins you're convinced you don't have.

I would argue millions of self identified Christians are in a state of prelest, especially charismatics.

I'm not saying experiences aren't legit. Yes you can have profound experiences, I've experienced them myself, but the deeper my relationship with Christ grows, the more aware I am of my own shortcomings and darkness. What we don't want to do is start thinking we're superior, exceptionally favored, or uniquely insightful.

Satan rarely comes offering obvious evil. He comes offering spiritual gifts, visions, and the illusion of performative holiness.