Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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" You're the one who still thinks a single human mind can sovereignly dictate what God meant."

You were doing fine until you lied about what I believe. That last sentence was a cheap shot.

You are better than that, sir.

---

I think you misunderstood me.

When you and another sincere, Spirit-seeking Christian read the same text and land on different conclusions, your system has no next step.

If you read "this is my body" as plainly figurative and I read it as literal, and all we can point to is the text as the final authority under sola scriptura…how do you know you're 100% infallible and correct about that specifically? You'd have to sovereignly dictate what God meant by those words in order to claim your understanding about that is infallible.

Is "this is my body" figurative: flatly, definitely, no room for doubt…or is it more like an educated guess you hold the way you'd hold any other historical judgment call, open to revision? Pick one. If it's the first, you've made yourself the one who gets to settle what God meant, whether you'd phrase it that way or not. If it's the second, you have a hypothesis you admit could be wrong, and that's a fundamentally different thing than your claim of sola scriptura as a reliable path to doctrinal certainty.

---

You directly and specifically claimed I "dictate what God meant"

That was and is a damnable lie.

Take it back.

---

Why is that a problem for you? I guarantee you do this.

Ex. You agree scripture is the word of God. You affirm that scripture shows us that Christ is Lord. Therefore you dictate what God meant by those words.

---

Ah. I was wrong then: you are not, in fact, above insults and lies.

If nothing else, you affirm why people of conscience abandon places where men in power play God while pretending to speak for Him.

Whether the title is 'Patriarch', 'Pope', or even 'Pastor', this sort of pride is poison to building a community of faith. And imposing your convoluted explanations to the point that you imagine you are fit to lie about a believer's behavior so you can "win" a debate in your mind ... is so petty and wrong I am stunned you have no shame about your words.

Well, you have chosen your course, sir.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc HollidayStop lying. said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period.

You can't practice "muh plain language". Sola scriptura is theoretical and paradoxical. You can't escape this. Not gonna happen.

To say "it's essential because that's what it says in the plain language" is a massive piece of circular reasoning. The "plain language" to a Calvinist says one thing; the "plain language" to an Arminian, a Lutheran, or a Baptist says another.

There is a massive difference between using your reason to locate the Ark, and claiming you can swim the Atlantic on your own. One is an act of epistemic humility (submitting your intellect to Christ's Church), and the other is an act of epistemic hubris (trusting your own private judgment to never err).

---

The irony is that you're using your own private judgment to tell me private judgment is impossible.

You say I can't trust my reading of Scripture, but somehow you can trust your reading of history, councils, bishops, and church claims enough to declare them infallible. Ironic.

And stop pretending "plain meaning" is circular. If language can't communicate meaning apart from an institutional interpreter, then councils are just as doomed as Scripture. Their words require interpretation too.

In the end, you didn't escape private judgment. You used private judgment to choose an authority and then called your choice "submission."

In short, you're the liar.

---

...

You think you've caught me in a massive "gotcha" by pointing out that I had to use my own brain to choose Orthodoxy, but you're completely missing the distinction between locating an authority and being the authority. If I get sick, use my private judgment to look up medical credentials, and choose a doctor, that doesn't mean I'm acting as my own physician. I used my brain once to find an expert, and then I stepped aside, sat on the table, and took the prescription. That's what I did with the Church. I looked at history, located the unbroken, 2,000-year-old living community, and climbed aboard.

You, on the other hand, are standing there with a medical textbook, performing DIY surgery on yourself, and claiming you don't need a doctor because the textbook has "plain language."

---

Suppose the doctor you choose mistakenly prescribes a drug that is contraindicated in someone with your particular health history. Someone else can point this out to you by showing you the clear language in a medical textbook that expressly warns doctors to avoid the drug in your situation. Would you not request a review or correction by your doctor? Or would you disregard your understanding of what the textbook says, and instead "submit your intellect" entirely to your doctor at all costs?

---

When a patient catches a contraindication and flags it, they don't then rewrite their own prescription and self-medicate based on their reading of the textbook. They bring it back to the doctor, or get a second medical opinion, and let a qualified authority adjudicate the concern. The correction still runs through the system of medical authority, not around it.

That's exactly how it works in the Church. Scripture itself, the Fathers, a monk's private reading, a layman's objection… all of these can and do raise concerns. History is full of it. But the resolution of those concerns happens through the Church's councils, bishops in communion with one another, the historic conciliar process, not through an individual's private judgment becoming the final court of appeal.

---

.... and if your chosen doctor says "I'm infallible, you can't question me. Do what I say and take that drug"?

Let me remind you of your own analogy - the doctor is the Church (and it's councils), NOT an individual church father, monk, or layperson.

---

That's a great question, but you're describing a doctor who declares himself infallible by his own say so and forecloses all future review. That's not the Orthodox model, that's the very thing Orthodoxy rejects about Rome. We don't have a single mouth (a pope, a patriarch, any one bishop or council) that gets to stand up and say "I'm infallible, don't question me," and have that self declaration be the end of the conversation.

A council doesn't become authoritative by claiming authority for itself. It becomes authoritative through reception: the whole Body, across centuries and geography, recognizing that what the council said matches what the Church has always believed. That's why Nicaea and Chalcedon stand and Rimini-Seleucia and the "Robber Council" of 449 don't, even though all of them were councils that, in the moment, claimed to speak for the Church. The check on tyranny isn't "trust the doctor no matter what he says." The check is that the doctor's diagnosis has to actually hold up against the whole body of the Church's memory, over time, or it gets rejected.

So to answer directly: no, a "doctor" (a council, a bishop, anyone) doesn't get to claim unquestionable status and end the discussion right there. What ends the discussion is time and reception, not self-assertion. That's actually the built-in immune system against exactly the abuse you're describing…which is also my objection to Roman papal infallibility.

---

A doctor who "declares himself infallible by his own say so and forecloses all future review" is exactly like your church declaring that its accepted councils (as well as liturgy) are infallible (according to its own interpretation from Scripture that they are given this infallibility), which by definition can not be changed by future review. Do you seriously think it's different?

And if church authority comes by reception of the whole body of believers that the church has said only "what the church has always believed", then now you're competing with Roman Catholicism who makes that very same claim. And because both are making the same claim, it comes down to who has the correct intepretation of what the church body "has always believed" - which then circles right back to each church's own claim to infallible authority over interpretation. See the problem? Your "time and reception" argument is only making the situation worse for your argument. Both churches will claim that the other church is the "doctor" whose treatment decisions does NOT "hold up against the whole body of the medical establishment's memory, over time".

In your "doctor" analogy, I'm like the person who is showing you the clear language of the medical textbook or research paper that your doctor's diagnosis and treatment plan is dangerous, and not in line with the medical establishment. I'm showing you the glaringly obvious idolatry, gospel distortion, and non-apostolic origins of your church's beliefs and practices, straight out of Scripture, church history, facts, and basic logic. And to my dismay, I'm witnessing your stubborn, blind devotion to your doctor borne out of your flawed assessment of him, in spite of all the clear evidence against him, as you proceed to loyally swallow his prescription that leads to your demise.

Oldbear83 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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" You're the one who still thinks a single human mind can sovereignly dictate what God meant."

You were doing fine until you lied about what I believe. That last sentence was a cheap shot.

You are better than that, sir.

---

I think you misunderstood me.

When you and another sincere, Spirit-seeking Christian read the same text and land on different conclusions, your system has no next step.

If you read "this is my body" as plainly figurative and I read it as literal, and all we can point to is the text as the final authority under sola scriptura…how do you know you're 100% infallible and correct about that specifically? You'd have to sovereignly dictate what God meant by those words in order to claim your understanding about that is infallible.

Is "this is my body" figurative: flatly, definitely, no room for doubt…or is it more like an educated guess you hold the way you'd hold any other historical judgment call, open to revision? Pick one. If it's the first, you've made yourself the one who gets to settle what God meant, whether you'd phrase it that way or not. If it's the second, you have a hypothesis you admit could be wrong, and that's a fundamentally different thing than your claim of sola scriptura as a reliable path to doctrinal certainty.

---

You directly and specifically claimed I "dictate what God meant"

That was and is a damnable lie.

Take it back.

---

Why is that a problem for you? I guarantee you do this.

Ex. You agree scripture is the word of God. You affirm that scripture shows us that Christ is Lord. Therefore you dictate what God meant by those words.

---

Ah. I was wrong then: you are not, in fact, above insults and lies.

If nothing else, you affirm why people of conscience abandon places where men in power play God while pretending to speak for Him.

Whether the title is 'Patriarch', 'Pope', or even 'Pastor', this sort of pride is poison to building a community of faith. And imposing your convoluted explanations to the point that you imagine you are fit to lie about a believer's behavior so you can "win" a debate in your mind ... is so petty and wrong I am stunned you have no shame about your words.

Well, you have chosen your course, sir.

---

Its an insult for me to point out that you exegete from scripture alone?

Can you explain to me what you're actually offended by and the reasoning why it's offensive?

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc HollidayStop lying. said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period.

You can't practice "muh plain language". Sola scriptura is theoretical and paradoxical. You can't escape this. Not gonna happen.

To say "it's essential because that's what it says in the plain language" is a massive piece of circular reasoning. The "plain language" to a Calvinist says one thing; the "plain language" to an Arminian, a Lutheran, or a Baptist says another.

There is a massive difference between using your reason to locate the Ark, and claiming you can swim the Atlantic on your own. One is an act of epistemic humility (submitting your intellect to Christ's Church), and the other is an act of epistemic hubris (trusting your own private judgment to never err).

---

The irony is that you're using your own private judgment to tell me private judgment is impossible.

You say I can't trust my reading of Scripture, but somehow you can trust your reading of history, councils, bishops, and church claims enough to declare them infallible. Ironic.

And stop pretending "plain meaning" is circular. If language can't communicate meaning apart from an institutional interpreter, then councils are just as doomed as Scripture. Their words require interpretation too.

In the end, you didn't escape private judgment. You used private judgment to choose an authority and then called your choice "submission."

In short, you're the liar.

---

...

You think you've caught me in a massive "gotcha" by pointing out that I had to use my own brain to choose Orthodoxy, but you're completely missing the distinction between locating an authority and being the authority. If I get sick, use my private judgment to look up medical credentials, and choose a doctor, that doesn't mean I'm acting as my own physician. I used my brain once to find an expert, and then I stepped aside, sat on the table, and took the prescription. That's what I did with the Church. I looked at history, located the unbroken, 2,000-year-old living community, and climbed aboard.

You, on the other hand, are standing there with a medical textbook, performing DIY surgery on yourself, and claiming you don't need a doctor because the textbook has "plain language."

---

Suppose the doctor you choose mistakenly prescribes a drug that is contraindicated in someone with your particular health history. Someone else can point this out to you by showing you the clear language in a medical textbook that expressly warns doctors to avoid the drug in your situation. Would you not request a review or correction by your doctor? Or would you disregard your understanding of what the textbook says, and instead "submit your intellect" entirely to your doctor at all costs?

---

When a patient catches a contraindication and flags it, they don't then rewrite their own prescription and self-medicate based on their reading of the textbook. They bring it back to the doctor, or get a second medical opinion, and let a qualified authority adjudicate the concern. The correction still runs through the system of medical authority, not around it.

That's exactly how it works in the Church. Scripture itself, the Fathers, a monk's private reading, a layman's objection… all of these can and do raise concerns. History is full of it. But the resolution of those concerns happens through the Church's councils, bishops in communion with one another, the historic conciliar process, not through an individual's private judgment becoming the final court of appeal.

---

.... and if your chosen doctor says "I'm infallible, you can't question me. Do what I say and take that drug"?

Let me remind you of your own analogy - the doctor is the Church (and it's councils), NOT an individual church father, monk, or layperson.

---

That's a great question, but you're describing a doctor who declares himself infallible by his own say so and forecloses all future review. That's not the Orthodox model, that's the very thing Orthodoxy rejects about Rome. We don't have a single mouth (a pope, a patriarch, any one bishop or council) that gets to stand up and say "I'm infallible, don't question me," and have that self declaration be the end of the conversation.

A council doesn't become authoritative by claiming authority for itself. It becomes authoritative through reception: the whole Body, across centuries and geography, recognizing that what the council said matches what the Church has always believed. That's why Nicaea and Chalcedon stand and Rimini-Seleucia and the "Robber Council" of 449 don't, even though all of them were councils that, in the moment, claimed to speak for the Church. The check on tyranny isn't "trust the doctor no matter what he says." The check is that the doctor's diagnosis has to actually hold up against the whole body of the Church's memory, over time, or it gets rejected.

So to answer directly: no, a "doctor" (a council, a bishop, anyone) doesn't get to claim unquestionable status and end the discussion right there. What ends the discussion is time and reception, not self-assertion. That's actually the built-in immune system against exactly the abuse you're describing…which is also my objection to Roman papal infallibility.

---

A doctor who "declares himself infallible by his own say so and forecloses all future review" is exactly like your church declaring that its accepted councils (as well as liturgy) are infallible (according to its own interpretation from Scripture that they are given this infallibility), which by definition can not be changed by future review. Do you seriously think it's different?

And if church authority comes by reception of the whole body of believers that the church has said only "what the church has always believed", then now you're competing with Roman Catholicism who makes that very same claim. And because both are making the same claim, it comes down to who has the correct intepretation of what the church body "has always believed" - which then circles right back to each church's own claim to infallible authority over interpretation. See the problem? Your "time and reception" argument is only making the situation worse for your argument. Both churches will claim that the other church is the "doctor" whose treatment decisions does NOT "hold up against the whole body of the medical establishment's memory, over time".

In your "doctor" analogy, I'm like the person who is showing you the clear language of the medical textbook or research paper that your doctor's diagnosis and treatment plan is dangerous, and not in line with the medical establishment. I'm showing you the glaringly obvious idolatry, gospel distortion, and non-apostolic origins of your church's beliefs and practices, straight out of Scripture, church history, facts, and basic logic. And to my dismay, I'm witnessing your stubborn, blind devotion to your doctor borne out of your flawed assessment of him, in spite of all the clear evidence against him, as you proceed to loyally swallow his prescription that leads to your demise.

---

Reception isn't the Church "declaring" anything, it's a passive, centuries-long, decentralized process with no single authority pulling the lever. Rimini-Seleucia (359) was bigger, more official, and more universally attended than Nicaea, and it still got rejected once the wider Church chewed on it. That's not compatible with "the Church just declares what it wants and calls it infallible".

You're right that Rome makes a parallel claim and that's why it's testable. Name one clear instance, before the schism, of a bishop of Rome exercising the kind of universal, immediate jurisdiction Vatican I defines: actual binding authority over the whole Church by unilateral right. You won't find one that isn't contested by historians on all sides. Meanwhile Chalcedon's Christology and Nicaea's homoousios are traceable in the patristic record independent of any later claim that they're infallible.

You're having a hard time understanding Orthodoxy authority.
There's no single locus of authority in Orthodoxy, that's the point, not a bug. You keep trying to force my answer into a shape it isn't. You're looking for the "one thing" that decides: a pope, a book, a single council session, because that's how your own framework works: one authority (or one interpreter) issuing a ruling.
Authority in Orthodoxy is conciliar and synergistic, it lives in the whole Body (bishops, clergy, monastics, laity) discerning together over time. No pope can force a result top-down. No individual believer can settle it bottom-up either. A council proposes: the Body either recognizes it as continuous with what it has always believed, or it doesn't, and no one figure or session gets to override that by fiat. That's exactly why councils have been overturned even after claiming full authority.

Christ promised the Spirit would guide the Church into all truth (John 16:13), and that promise is to the whole Body, not to one office. So when you ask "who's the one authority that decides", there isn't one man or book holding that role. There's the Spirit, working through the whole Body over time. the Body that discerned this way has stayed in doctrinal and sacramental communion with itself, across the largest span of time and geography of any Christian body in history. Not because everyone always agreed on everything, but because the Spirit guided reception process produced the agreement that held.
Rome broke from that communion in 1054. The Reformation fractured further, over and over, precisely because it swapped the Spirit guided Body for either one man or one private interpreter. Orthodoxy's continuity isn't an accident.

Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

Oldbear83 said:

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Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

---

Now you're insulting me and claiming I have ill intention. I genuinely don't understand why you're offended. Explain it to me like I'm five.

Dictating/affirming what God means by referring solely to scripture is a type of exegesis. It's something Protestants are generally proud of doing. That's exactly the context of my entire argument: you adhere to sola scriptura and I adhere to scripture and the Church.

Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

---

Now you're insulting me and claiming I have ill intention. I genuinely don't understand why you're offended. Explain it to me like I'm five.

Dictating/affirming what God means by referring solely to scripture is a type of exegesis. It's something Protestants are generally proud of doing. That's exactly the context of my entire argument: you adhere to sola scriptura and I adhere to scripture and the Church.

---

If you want to understand, go back and read my posts with a better attitude than making excuses.

I am not insulting you. Very much avoiding personal attacks, but I am noting your demonstrated behavior and choice of words.

You falsely claimed, and I quote:

"You're the one who still thinks a single human mind can sovereignly dictate what God meant."

This after I very clearly stated that I go by what Scripture says, not any one man (which would include me).

Your choice of words demonstrated that you not only lied about what I stated, you threw in the word 'sovereignly' to maliciously imply I was playing God.

You are the one here making false claims and not just attacking me.

Earlier in the thread you falsely accused Mothra of lying, saying

"Stop lying. The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period. "

Much of Scripture IS plain and easy to understand. And if you do not understand a verse, you can read the rest of the chapter for context or see where else the same words and concepts are used to use Scripture to test your understanding.


You very obviously get offended by the idea that God spoke plainly to us. You have suggested many times that God needs help from certain humans to be understood.

That is a very dangerous path.


Some here seek to understand. Some here seek only to bully.


I had hoped you were of the first sort. Your last several posts say you are the second.


[This is where a Christian would consider your rash posts, apologize and take back your attacks ]

Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

---

Now you're insulting me and claiming I have ill intention. I genuinely don't understand why you're offended. Explain it to me like I'm five.

Dictating/affirming what God means by referring solely to scripture is a type of exegesis. It's something Protestants are generally proud of doing. That's exactly the context of my entire argument: you adhere to sola scriptura and I adhere to scripture and the Church.

---

If you haven't realized, this is a a schtick he does to run out the clock (to what end who knows) to avoid good faith debate and blusters about personal offenses and needing to confess to a priest and being a liar etc etc. and how angry and emotional you are yadda oh and bitter and hateful

Oldbear83 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

---

Now you're insulting me and claiming I have ill intention. I genuinely don't understand why you're offended. Explain it to me like I'm five.

Dictating/affirming what God means by referring solely to scripture is a type of exegesis. It's something Protestants are generally proud of doing. That's exactly the context of my entire argument: you adhere to sola scriptura and I adhere to scripture and the Church.

---

If you want to understand, go back and read my posts with a better attitude than making excuses.

I am not insulting you. Very much avoiding personal attacks, but I am noting your demonstrated behavior and choice of words.

You falsely claimed, and I quote:

"You're the one who still thinks a single human mind can sovereignly dictate what God meant."

This after I very clearly stated that I go by what Scripture says, not any one man (which would include me).

Your choice of words demonstrated that you not only lied about what I stated, you threw in the word 'sovereignly' to maliciously imply I was playing God.

You are the one here making false claims and not just attacking me.

Earlier in the thread you falsely accused Mothra of lying, saying

"Stop lying. The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period. "

Much of Scripture IS plain and easy to understand. And if you do not understand a verse, you can read the rest of the chapter for context or see where else the same words and concepts are used to use Scripture to test your understanding.


You very obviously get offended by the idea that God spoke plainly to us. You have suggested many times that God needs help from certain humans to be understood.

That is a very dangerous path.


Some here seek to understand. Some here seek only to bully.


I had hoped you were of the first sort. Your last several posts say you are the second.


[This is where a Christian would consider your rash posts, apologize and take back your attacks ]

---

When you say you go by Scripture and not any man, including yourself, think about what that actually requires. You still have to read the words and decide what they mean. That decision is you, a man, doing the understanding. There's no way to get 'what Scripture says' except through your own reading of it.

This is where our disconnect is.

Sola scriptura is theoretical. I understand the premise that it says the Bible is the ultimate infallible standard against which all other authorities must be tested…but to actually get the meaning into your own words, clarifying it, applying it: that step is never infallible. The moment you paraphrase or explain it, you've handed it off to a fallible human process. There's no way to transfer infallibility from the text to your explanation of the text.

Ion sorry you feel offended by this.

IOW you refuse to retract your insults.

Welcome to ignore.

Fre3dombear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

---

Now you're insulting me and claiming I have ill intention. I genuinely don't understand why you're offended. Explain it to me like I'm five.

Dictating/affirming what God means by referring solely to scripture is a type of exegesis. It's something Protestants are generally proud of doing. That's exactly the context of my entire argument: you adhere to sola scriptura and I adhere to scripture and the Church.

---

If you haven't realized, this is a a schtick he does to run out the clock (to what end who knows) to avoid good faith debate and blusters about personal offenses and needing to confess to a priest and being a liar etc etc. and how angry and emotional you are yadda oh and bitter and hateful

---

Its so out of left field. I still don't even know what I said that was insulting.

My whole point was "yeah you exegete scripture to determine what God means, so how can you be certain your understanding is infallible?".

Somehow that's an insult. I feel like I'm being gaslit

Oldbear83 said:

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IOW you refuse to retract your insults.

Welcome to ignore.

---

No insult intended. I've been making a logical point about how interpretation works, not a claim about your character. If you'd rather not continue, that's your call.

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 HollidayStop lying. said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period.

You can't practice "muh plain language". Sola scriptura is theoretical and paradoxical. You can't escape this. Not gonna happen.

To say "it's essential because that's what it says in the plain language" is a massive piece of circular reasoning. The "plain language" to a Calvinist says one thing; the "plain language" to an Arminian, a Lutheran, or a Baptist says another.

There is a massive difference between using your reason to locate the Ark, and claiming you can swim the Atlantic on your own. One is an act of epistemic humility (submitting your intellect to Christ's Church), and the other is an act of epistemic hubris (trusting your own private judgment to never err).

---

The irony is that you're using your own private judgment to tell me private judgment is impossible.

You say I can't trust my reading of Scripture, but somehow you can trust your reading of history, councils, bishops, and church claims enough to declare them infallible. Ironic.

And stop pretending "plain meaning" is circular. If language can't communicate meaning apart from an institutional interpreter, then councils are just as doomed as Scripture. Their words require interpretation too.

In the end, you didn't escape private judgment. You used private judgment to choose an authority and then called your choice "submission."

In short, you're the liar.

---

...

You think you've caught me in a massive "gotcha" by pointing out that I had to use my own brain to choose Orthodoxy, but you're completely missing the distinction between locating an authority and being the authority. If I get sick, use my private judgment to look up medical credentials, and choose a doctor, that doesn't mean I'm acting as my own physician. I used my brain once to find an expert, and then I stepped aside, sat on the table, and took the prescription. That's what I did with the Church. I looked at history, located the unbroken, 2,000-year-old living community, and climbed aboard.

You, on the other hand, are standing there with a medical textbook, performing DIY surgery on yourself, and claiming you don't need a doctor because the textbook has "plain language."

---

Suppose the doctor you choose mistakenly prescribes a drug that is contraindicated in someone with your particular health history. Someone else can point this out to you by showing you the clear language in a medical textbook that expressly warns doctors to avoid the drug in your situation. Would you not request a review or correction by your doctor? Or would you disregard your understanding of what the textbook says, and instead "submit your intellect" entirely to your doctor at all costs?

---

When a patient catches a contraindication and flags it, they don't then rewrite their own prescription and self-medicate based on their reading of the textbook. They bring it back to the doctor, or get a second medical opinion, and let a qualified authority adjudicate the concern. The correction still runs through the system of medical authority, not around it.

That's exactly how it works in the Church. Scripture itself, the Fathers, a monk's private reading, a layman's objection… all of these can and do raise concerns. History is full of it. But the resolution of those concerns happens through the Church's councils, bishops in communion with one another, the historic conciliar process, not through an individual's private judgment becoming the final court of appeal.

---

.... and if your chosen doctor says "I'm infallible, you can't question me. Do what I say and take that drug"?

Let me remind you of your own analogy - the doctor is the Church (and it's councils), NOT an individual church father, monk, or layperson.

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That's a great question, but you're describing a doctor who declares himself infallible by his own say so and forecloses all future review. That's not the Orthodox model, that's the very thing Orthodoxy rejects about Rome. We don't have a single mouth (a pope, a patriarch, any one bishop or council) that gets to stand up and say "I'm infallible, don't question me," and have that self declaration be the end of the conversation.

A council doesn't become authoritative by claiming authority for itself. It becomes authoritative through reception: the whole Body, across centuries and geography, recognizing that what the council said matches what the Church has always believed. That's why Nicaea and Chalcedon stand and Rimini-Seleucia and the "Robber Council" of 449 don't, even though all of them were councils that, in the moment, claimed to speak for the Church. The check on tyranny isn't "trust the doctor no matter what he says." The check is that the doctor's diagnosis has to actually hold up against the whole body of the Church's memory, over time, or it gets rejected.

So to answer directly: no, a "doctor" (a council, a bishop, anyone) doesn't get to claim unquestionable status and end the discussion right there. What ends the discussion is time and reception, not self-assertion. That's actually the built-in immune system against exactly the abuse you're describing…which is also my objection to Roman papal infallibility.

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A doctor who "declares himself infallible by his own say so and forecloses all future review" is exactly like your church declaring that its accepted councils (as well as liturgy) are infallible (according to its own interpretation from Scripture that they are given this infallibility), which by definition can not be changed by future review. Do you seriously think it's different?

And if church authority comes by reception of the whole body of believers that the church has said only "what the church has always believed", then now you're competing with Roman Catholicism who makes that very same claim. And because both are making the same claim, it comes down to who has the correct intepretation of what the church body "has always believed" - which then circles right back to each church's own claim to infallible authority over interpretation. See the problem? Your "time and reception" argument is only making the situation worse for your argument. Both churches will claim that the other church is the "doctor" whose treatment decisions does NOT "hold up against the whole body of the medical establishment's memory, over time".

In your "doctor" analogy, I'm like the person who is showing you the clear language of the medical textbook or research paper that your doctor's diagnosis and treatment plan is dangerous, and not in line with the medical establishment. I'm showing you the glaringly obvious idolatry, gospel distortion, and non-apostolic origins of your church's beliefs and practices, straight out of Scripture, church history, facts, and basic logic. And to my dismay, I'm witnessing your stubborn, blind devotion to your doctor borne out of your flawed assessment of him, in spite of all the clear evidence against him, as you proceed to loyally swallow his prescription that leads to your demise.

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Reception isn't the Church "declaring" anything, it's a passive, centuries-long, decentralized process with no single authority pulling the lever. Rimini-Seleucia (359) was bigger, more official, and more universally attended than Nicaea, and it still got rejected once the wider Church chewed on it. That's not compatible with "the Church just declares what it wants and calls it infallible".

You're right that Rome makes a parallel claim and that's why it's testable. Name one clear instance, before the schism, of a bishop of Rome exercising the kind of universal, immediate jurisdiction Vatican I defines: actual binding authority over the whole Church by unilateral right. You won't find one that isn't contested by historians on all sides. Meanwhile Chalcedon's Christology and Nicaea's homoousios are traceable in the patristic record independent of any later claim that they're infallible.

You're having a hard time understanding Orthodoxy authority.
There's no single locus of authority in Orthodoxy, that's the point, not a bug. You keep trying to force my answer into a shape it isn't. You're looking for the "one thing" that decides: a pope, a book, a single council session, because that's how your own framework works: one authority (or one interpreter) issuing a ruling.
Authority in Orthodoxy is conciliar and synergistic, it lives in the whole Body (bishops, clergy, monastics, laity) discerning together over time. No pope can force a result top-down. No individual believer can settle it bottom-up either. A council proposes: the Body either recognizes it as continuous with what it has always believed, or it doesn't, and no one figure or session gets to override that by fiat. That's exactly why councils have been overturned even after claiming full authority.

Christ promised the Spirit would guide the Church into all truth (John 16:13), and that promise is to the whole Body, not to one office. So when you ask "who's the one authority that decides", there isn't one man or book holding that role. There's the Spirit, working through the whole Body over time. the Body that discerned this way has stayed in doctrinal and sacramental communion with itself, across the largest span of time and geography of any Christian body in history. Not because everyone always agreed on everything, but because the Spirit guided reception process produced the agreement that held.
Rome broke from that communion in 1054. The Reformation fractured further, over and over, precisely because it swapped the Spirit guided Body for either one man or one private interpreter. Orthodoxy's continuity isn't an accident.

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What I'm saying does not depend on Orthodoxy having a single locus of authority (though, there is a locus of authority, and ultimately its the councils, practically speaking). That's irrelevant to the argument. Orthodoxy still "declares" its doctrine nonetheless through their accepted councils and through their liturgy, and they are held as an infallible product. And because they are infallible, they are settled and can not be reviewed or challenged without undermining Orthodoxy's entire claims. So, for example, a challenge to icon veneration can never be entertained, even though it is every bit as testable as you say Roman Catholic's claims to the papacy are, and every bit as unsubstantiated in both Scripture and church history. In fact, the universal, overwhelming witness of the early church was in direct opposition to it, which undermines the whole basis of Orthodoxy's acceptance of it, that it was the "reception by the whole body of the church through all time".

So you still haven't escaped the problem of your church being the doctor who is wrong, but claims "just do what I say, I'm infallible", all while the clear evidence, discernible by private judgement, is to the contrary. The analogy holds. Your interpretation of John 16:13 illustrates the whole problem - you're "submitting" to the interpretation of your church, which your church claims is infallible.... based on their interpretation of that verse. You're stuck in an authority structure that is based in circularity, and you've submitted to it wholesale. It becomes impossible, then, outside a miracle from God, to redpill you with independently discernible facts and truth to break you out of that matrix. It makes it near impossible to get you to see from that verse you cited that Orthodoxy (and RC) is the error, NOT the correction of Jesus' church body as you so firmly believe. It really is like a cult miindset, and its the hardest thing to deconstruct in Roman Catholics and Orthodox in trying to get them to see the truth. When you have people here who can not or simply refuse to acknowledge the blatantly obvious and egregious Marian idolatry and heresy in their church, even praising it, it just shows how deep that matrix is.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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OldBear, please don't ruin yet another thread with your histrionics.

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Welp... I was hoping.

Doc Holliday said:

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Fre3dombear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Amazing. I have explained it twice, yet you still do not see.

The phrase 'willfully blind' would apply, then.

Dusting off the sandals, then ...

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Now you're insulting me and claiming I have ill intention. I genuinely don't understand why you're offended. Explain it to me like I'm five.

Dictating/affirming what God means by referring solely to scripture is a type of exegesis. It's something Protestants are generally proud of doing. That's exactly the context of my entire argument: you adhere to sola scriptura and I adhere to scripture and the Church.

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If you haven't realized, this is a a schtick he does to run out the clock (to what end who knows) to avoid good faith debate and blusters about personal offenses and needing to confess to a priest and being a liar etc etc. and how angry and emotional you are yadda oh and bitter and hateful

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Its so out of left field. I still don't even know what I said that was insulting.

My whole point was "yeah you exegete scripture to determine what God means, so how can you be certain your understanding is infallible?".

Somehow that's an insult. I feel like I'm being gaslit

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That's exactly what it is

I pleaded with him to not waste time on those posts and I would engage his defense of his doctrine but to no avail.

He just kept telling me to go to confession and that I personally attacked and insulted him and that I was a sinner bound for you know where.

I simply moved on. It was bizarre.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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OldBear, please don't ruin yet another thread with your histrionics.

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Welp... I was hoping.

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You're the guy who shows up to fires with a gas can.

I just called out a hypocrite.

Well, this os going as well as every other attempt since the Reformation to discuss religious differences.

IMO, there is no right answer, as I said many paths lead to the narrow gate. The only one who knows if what you have believed and done is enough is the gatekeeper. All you can do is move forward in good faith.

Thank you, FLBear.

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

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in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

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I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

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How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

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Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

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A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

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We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

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Paul was neither Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, as such didn't exist back during Paul's times. The real question is whether Protestant doctrines can be derived from apostolic teaching. They most certainly can. Quoting 1 Timothy 3:15 doesn't establish that every later Catholic or Orthodox doctrine is correct; it merely affirms the importance of the Church in preserving and proclaiming the truth.

Indeed, if 1 Timothy 3:15 disproves Protestantism because the Church is the 'pillar of truth,' then it would also prove every local church Paul wrote to was infallible, which is obviously false, because several of them fell into serious doctrinal and moral error. 'Pillar of truth' does not mean 'incapable of error.'

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The "local churches erred" point actually proves too much for you: those errors got corrected by apostolic authority stepping in from outside the local congregation, not by each church privately reinterpreting Scripture for itself. That's the whole point: truth wasn't self-correcting within an autonomous local body, it was safeguarded by a structured, hierarchical Church exercising authority over it. And that's the context of 1 Tim 3:15.

If 'pillar and ground of truth' just means 'preserving truth' in some vague sense with no actual governing authority attached…cool, then which Protestant body is doing that preserving?

And let's not pretend like Protestants are united. Y'all are deeply divided on the gospel, the Trinity, baptism etc. "Scripture alone plus the Spirit's guidance" guides Oneness Pentecostals to ditch the Trinity and re-baptize people "in Jesus' name only." Same Bible, same Spirit, somehow arriving at Christianity's one non-negotiable doctrine being wrong. And the Word of Faith guys ran the same method into a gospel where Jesus wants you rich, which Paul, the guy who got beaten and shipwrecked for the gospel, would find news to him. Mainlines are gay and woke.

Does Christ approve of this circus? If you say no, cool, you just admitted there's an authority above "whatever I read this morning." If you say "my criteria is just Scripture," buddy, that's not a criteria, that's the thing that broke in the first place. Scripture doesn't read itself out loud and settle disputes. So who's the tiebreaker: you, Luther, the Oneness guy, or the guy with the private jet and the prosperity gospel? Everyone's "led by the Spirit" and somehow landing in different galaxies.

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As I have repeatedly pointed out (to no avail, apparently), you're still committing a category error by acting like all Protestants are one church or body. Protestants don't claim to be a sect or denomination. Protestant is not synonymous with Catholic or Orthodox. Stop treating it that way.

Pointing to Oneness Pentecostals or prosperity preachers isn't an argument against Protestantism. Instead, it's an argument against those specific groups. I reject them for the same reason you do: because their teachings contradict the apostolic faith. So let's dispense with the intellectual dishonesty.

And appealing to the apostles correcting churches doesn't prove a perpetual infallible hierarchy. The apostles had unique authority. The question is whether that authority was passed down to an infallible institution, and that's exactly what's being debated.

As for 1 Timothy 3:15, again, calling the church the "pillar and foundation of the truth" doesn't make the church the source of truth. We've been over this. A pillar supports and holds up something else. The church bears witness to the truth; it doesn't create it.

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If there's no unified body, then "the church bearing witness to truth" is just whoever happens to be right at any given moment, discovered after the fact by you personally deciding Oneness Pentecostals are crazy and you're not. Cool standard. They reject you for contradicting the apostolic faith using the exact same authority you're using to reject them: none. "I reject the bad ones too" isn't a fix.

On succession: it's not undecided in the text. Paul tells Timothy to appoint elders in every city and hand off what he received to "faithful men who will teach others also," that's a stated multi-generation chain, in the New Testament itself. And Ignatius, a guy who sat under John, is already writing to churches assuming settled bishops as completely normal within one generation of the apostles dying. That's not "centuries later," that's the apostles' own students.

And a pillar that can quietly collapse into heresy any given Sunday isn't a pillar, it's decoration. You're also skipping the part where Paul spends the whole chapter qualifying bishops, elders, and deacons before calling that structure the pillar. He's not talking about a vibe. He's talking about an office.

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The Church is the body of true believers. They don't necessarily belong to any particular sect as long as they adhere to the essentials of the faith: the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His bodily death and resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, and the authority of God's Word.

So, again, you pointing out that Pentecostals are crazy doesn't prove anything. The standard is the inspired Word of God, not a lineage chart.

You keep assuming that a chain of ordinations guarantees truth. It doesn't. Plenty of heretics had bishops, titles, and succession claims. The question has always been whether their doctrine matches what the apostles taught.

Ultimately, I trust Scripture as the God-breathed standard by which every church, bishop, council, and tradition is judged. You prefer to place your confidence in ecclesiastical authority - fat, bearded, unmarried men who like to be called "His Eminence." To each his own. But don't pretend your position eliminates doctrinal judgment. You make those judgments too. The only difference is that you've delegated them to men wearing robes and titles.

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The Church is all true believers who agree with my list of essentials" is a helluva flex when you get to write the list. Who decided the Trinity is essential but eschatology, sacraments, and church government aren't? You did. Congrats, you're your own magisterium.

You act like you practice following just scripture as your ultimate authority…but that's total BS. You follow your interpretation of scripture. "The standard is Scripture, not a lineage chart" doesn't answer who gets to say what Scripture means when Oneness guys read the same verses and get a different Trinity. You keep dodging that question because there's no answer inside your system. There's just you, personally, deciding they're wrong. Which is a doctrinal judgment. Which you just told me you don't need to make.

"Heretics had bishops too"…sure, and every single one got named, tried, and condemned by an actual council with the authority to do it. That's not a flaw in the system, that's the system working perfectly. Arius had a title. Arius also got anathematized at Nicaea by name. Who's doing that for Joel Olsteen?

And love the "fat bearded men in robes" bit, real strong argument there. Meanwhile you outsource your Greek to Reformed seminary guys, your canon to men who died 1600 years before you were born, and your whole interpretive framework to Calvin. You didn't escape human authority, you just picked less accountable versions of it and pretend it's just you and Jesus.

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The list I submitted isn't essential because I declared it essential. It's essential because that's what it says in the plain language of Scripture. The real dispute is whether Scripture or a church institution has the final authority, not whether people have to make judgments.

And the "you're your own magisterium" line cuts both ways. You looked at history, weighed the evidence, and decided which church gets to speak for God. I looked at Scripture and did the same. The difference is that I admit my judgment is involved. You act like yours magically disappears because you delegated it to a bearded fat man. It doesn't.

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Stop lying.
The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period.

You can't practice "muh plain language". Sola scriptura is theoretical and paradoxical. You can't escape this. Not gonna happen.

To say "it's essential because that's what it says in the plain language" is a massive piece of circular reasoning. The "plain language" to a Calvinist says one thing; the "plain language" to an Arminian, a Lutheran, or a Baptist says another.

There is a massive difference between using your reason to locate the Ark, and claiming you can swim the Atlantic on your own. One is an act of epistemic humility (submitting your intellect to Christ's Church), and the other is an act of epistemic hubris (trusting your own private judgment to never err).

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The irony is that you're using your own private judgment to tell me private judgment is impossible.

You say I can't trust my reading of Scripture, but somehow you can trust your reading of history, councils, bishops, and church claims enough to declare them infallible. Ironic.

And stop pretending "plain meaning" is circular. If language can't communicate meaning apart from an institutional interpreter, then councils are just as doomed as Scripture. Their words require interpretation too.

In the end, you didn't escape private judgment. You used private judgment to choose an authority and then called your choice "submission."

In short, you're the liar.

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By your own logic, if language works and doesn't need a magical interpreter, then the historic, visible Church Councils did plainly read the text and derive the correct, objective truth. You want language to be clear only when you read it in the 21st century. But if language actually works, it worked in the 4th century too.

The problem is you don't actually understand at a high level what the Church even is and what authority its claiming. You're treating the Church like it's just a bigger stack of legal documents dropped into a vacuum. It isn't. You're looking at this like an originalist text-nerd trying to interpret the U.S. Constitution in a basement by yourself. But a constitution isn't just words on parchment; it only functions because there is an actual, continuous Supreme Court and a living legal system that carries its operational memory forward. The Ecumenical Councils aren't just dead texts we try to decipher: they are the official rulings of the living court that has been in session continuously since Pentecost.

You think you've caught me in a massive "gotcha" by pointing out that I had to use my own brain to choose Orthodoxy, but you're completely missing the distinction between locating an authority and being the authority. If I get sick, use my private judgment to look up medical credentials, and choose a doctor, that doesn't mean I'm acting as my own physician. I used my brain once to find an expert, and then I stepped aside, sat on the table, and took the prescription. That's what I did with the Church. I looked at history, located the unbroken, 2,000-year-old living community, and climbed aboard.

You, on the other hand, are standing there with a medical textbook, performing DIY surgery on yourself, and claiming you don't need a doctor because the textbook has "plain language."

You claim you are submissively bowing to the absolute, supreme authority of God's Word. But because you refuse any historical, institutional anchor, that "supreme authority" magically and flawlessly happens to agree with your personal theology every single time. If your "Supreme Authority" never tells you you're wrong, never forces you to change a deeply held cultural bias, and can be rewritten the moment you find a new "plain alignment" of verses, you aren't submitting to an authority at all.

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That's a nice analogy, but it assumes the very thing you're trying to prove: that the Orthodox Church is the divinely authorized "Supreme Court" of Christianity.

Everyone uses private judgment to decide which authority to trust. You used yours to choose Orthodoxy. Catholics use theirs to choose Rome.

I have caught you in a massive gotcha; The gotcha is that your entire argument depends on private judgment to prove private judgment is unreliable. Once you admit you had to personally determine that Orthodoxy is the true Church, your objection to Protestants using reason and judgment of course completely loses its force. The difference isn't that you've avoided private judgment. To the contrary, you've declared your private judgment correct.

"The unfolding of Thy words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple." Psalm 119:130.

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If the Old Testament scriptures were so "plain" and easily understood by the "simple" without an institutional framework, then why did God establish a Levitical priesthood to teach the law?

Why did the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8, who was literally reading the "plain words" of Isaiah, need Philip to explain it to him? When Philip asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" the Eunuch didn't say, "Of course, it's plain language!" He said: "How can I, unless someone guides me?" (Acts 8:31).

If you are wrong, and the Orthodox Church is just a corrupt human institution, then God failed. It means the church Christ started is apostatized, Christ lied about the gates of hell, the Holy Spirit abandoned the visible body, and the true faith vanished for 1,500 years until a few Western Europeans "rediscovered" it.

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As others have pointed out, some parts of Scripture are plain enough that ordinary people can understand the main message. We don't necessarily need a bearded guy in a costume to explain to us John 3:16. Moses told Israel that God's command was "not too difficult" and was "very near" to them (Deut. 30:1114). The Psalms repeatedly speak of God's word giving understanding even to the simple. At the same time, some passages are more difficult and require knowledge, context, or explanation. Isaiah would be an example. That's not a contradiction.

The Ethiopian eunuch is actually a good example of this. He was reading Isaiah 53, a prophecy that depends heavily on Jewish concepts, messianic expectations, and the revelation of Christ. It's not surprising that a Gentile convert struggled to identify the suffering servant.

Paul's own life illustrates the point. Before his conversion, he was highly educated in Judaism and trained under Gamaliel, one of the most respected rabbis of his day. Yet Paul came to conclusions about the Old Testament that many other rabbis rejected. The disagreement was not because one side lacked an institutional framework; both sides had the same Scriptures, traditions, language, and educational background. The issue was interpretation. Simply having an authoritative religious structure did not guarantee correct understanding.
In fact, the New Testament repeatedly shows religious authorities disagreeing with one another and even opposing Christ Himself. The Jewish leaders had a priesthood, a temple, teachers, and centuries of tradition, yet many still misunderstood the very Scriptures they claimed to defend.

I am not implying teachers are unnecessary. Of course they are. The question is whether the existence of teachers proves the existence of an infallible institution whose interpretations cannot be wrong. Acts 8 proves the former, not the latter. Some Scripture is straightforward, some requires deeper study, and God uses teachers to help believers understand it. None of that establishes that a particular church hierarchy is incapable of error.

Look, I understand that your worldview requires a man in a robe to tell you what the Bible means. Some of us filled with the Holy Spirit can think for ourselves.

Mothra said:

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Fre3dombear 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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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

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in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

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I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

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How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

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Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

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A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

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We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

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Paul was neither Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, as such didn't exist back during Paul's times. The real question is whether Protestant doctrines can be derived from apostolic teaching. They most certainly can. Quoting 1 Timothy 3:15 doesn't establish that every later Catholic or Orthodox doctrine is correct; it merely affirms the importance of the Church in preserving and proclaiming the truth.

Indeed, if 1 Timothy 3:15 disproves Protestantism because the Church is the 'pillar of truth,' then it would also prove every local church Paul wrote to was infallible, which is obviously false, because several of them fell into serious doctrinal and moral error. 'Pillar of truth' does not mean 'incapable of error.'

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The "local churches erred" point actually proves too much for you: those errors got corrected by apostolic authority stepping in from outside the local congregation, not by each church privately reinterpreting Scripture for itself. That's the whole point: truth wasn't self-correcting within an autonomous local body, it was safeguarded by a structured, hierarchical Church exercising authority over it. And that's the context of 1 Tim 3:15.

If 'pillar and ground of truth' just means 'preserving truth' in some vague sense with no actual governing authority attached…cool, then which Protestant body is doing that preserving?

And let's not pretend like Protestants are united. Y'all are deeply divided on the gospel, the Trinity, baptism etc. "Scripture alone plus the Spirit's guidance" guides Oneness Pentecostals to ditch the Trinity and re-baptize people "in Jesus' name only." Same Bible, same Spirit, somehow arriving at Christianity's one non-negotiable doctrine being wrong. And the Word of Faith guys ran the same method into a gospel where Jesus wants you rich, which Paul, the guy who got beaten and shipwrecked for the gospel, would find news to him. Mainlines are gay and woke.

Does Christ approve of this circus? If you say no, cool, you just admitted there's an authority above "whatever I read this morning." If you say "my criteria is just Scripture," buddy, that's not a criteria, that's the thing that broke in the first place. Scripture doesn't read itself out loud and settle disputes. So who's the tiebreaker: you, Luther, the Oneness guy, or the guy with the private jet and the prosperity gospel? Everyone's "led by the Spirit" and somehow landing in different galaxies.

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As I have repeatedly pointed out (to no avail, apparently), you're still committing a category error by acting like all Protestants are one church or body. Protestants don't claim to be a sect or denomination. Protestant is not synonymous with Catholic or Orthodox. Stop treating it that way.

Pointing to Oneness Pentecostals or prosperity preachers isn't an argument against Protestantism. Instead, it's an argument against those specific groups. I reject them for the same reason you do: because their teachings contradict the apostolic faith. So let's dispense with the intellectual dishonesty.

And appealing to the apostles correcting churches doesn't prove a perpetual infallible hierarchy. The apostles had unique authority. The question is whether that authority was passed down to an infallible institution, and that's exactly what's being debated.

As for 1 Timothy 3:15, again, calling the church the "pillar and foundation of the truth" doesn't make the church the source of truth. We've been over this. A pillar supports and holds up something else. The church bears witness to the truth; it doesn't create it.

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If there's no unified body, then "the church bearing witness to truth" is just whoever happens to be right at any given moment, discovered after the fact by you personally deciding Oneness Pentecostals are crazy and you're not. Cool standard. They reject you for contradicting the apostolic faith using the exact same authority you're using to reject them: none. "I reject the bad ones too" isn't a fix.

On succession: it's not undecided in the text. Paul tells Timothy to appoint elders in every city and hand off what he received to "faithful men who will teach others also," that's a stated multi-generation chain, in the New Testament itself. And Ignatius, a guy who sat under John, is already writing to churches assuming settled bishops as completely normal within one generation of the apostles dying. That's not "centuries later," that's the apostles' own students.

And a pillar that can quietly collapse into heresy any given Sunday isn't a pillar, it's decoration. You're also skipping the part where Paul spends the whole chapter qualifying bishops, elders, and deacons before calling that structure the pillar. He's not talking about a vibe. He's talking about an office.

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The Church is the body of true believers. They don't necessarily belong to any particular sect as long as they adhere to the essentials of the faith: the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His bodily death and resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, and the authority of God's Word.

So, again, you pointing out that Pentecostals are crazy doesn't prove anything. The standard is the inspired Word of God, not a lineage chart.

You keep assuming that a chain of ordinations guarantees truth. It doesn't. Plenty of heretics had bishops, titles, and succession claims. The question has always been whether their doctrine matches what the apostles taught.

Ultimately, I trust Scripture as the God-breathed standard by which every church, bishop, council, and tradition is judged. You prefer to place your confidence in ecclesiastical authority - fat, bearded, unmarried men who like to be called "His Eminence." To each his own. But don't pretend your position eliminates doctrinal judgment. You make those judgments too. The only difference is that you've delegated them to men wearing robes and titles.

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The Church is all true believers who agree with my list of essentials" is a helluva flex when you get to write the list. Who decided the Trinity is essential but eschatology, sacraments, and church government aren't? You did. Congrats, you're your own magisterium.

You act like you practice following just scripture as your ultimate authority…but that's total BS. You follow your interpretation of scripture. "The standard is Scripture, not a lineage chart" doesn't answer who gets to say what Scripture means when Oneness guys read the same verses and get a different Trinity. You keep dodging that question because there's no answer inside your system. There's just you, personally, deciding they're wrong. Which is a doctrinal judgment. Which you just told me you don't need to make.

"Heretics had bishops too"…sure, and every single one got named, tried, and condemned by an actual council with the authority to do it. That's not a flaw in the system, that's the system working perfectly. Arius had a title. Arius also got anathematized at Nicaea by name. Who's doing that for Joel Olsteen?

And love the "fat bearded men in robes" bit, real strong argument there. Meanwhile you outsource your Greek to Reformed seminary guys, your canon to men who died 1600 years before you were born, and your whole interpretive framework to Calvin. You didn't escape human authority, you just picked less accountable versions of it and pretend it's just you and Jesus.

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The list I submitted isn't essential because I declared it essential. It's essential because that's what it says in the plain language of Scripture. The real dispute is whether Scripture or a church institution has the final authority, not whether people have to make judgments.

And the "you're your own magisterium" line cuts both ways. You looked at history, weighed the evidence, and decided which church gets to speak for God. I looked at Scripture and did the same. The difference is that I admit my judgment is involved. You act like yours magically disappears because you delegated it to a bearded fat man. It doesn't.

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Stop lying.
The moment you open your mouth to explain why a verse is plain…you're no longer just reading Scripture. Period.

You can't practice "muh plain language". Sola scriptura is theoretical and paradoxical. You can't escape this. Not gonna happen.

To say "it's essential because that's what it says in the plain language" is a massive piece of circular reasoning. The "plain language" to a Calvinist says one thing; the "plain language" to an Arminian, a Lutheran, or a Baptist says another.

There is a massive difference between using your reason to locate the Ark, and claiming you can swim the Atlantic on your own. One is an act of epistemic humility (submitting your intellect to Christ's Church), and the other is an act of epistemic hubris (trusting your own private judgment to never err).

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The irony is that you're using your own private judgment to tell me private judgment is impossible.

You say I can't trust my reading of Scripture, but somehow you can trust your reading of history, councils, bishops, and church claims enough to declare them infallible. Ironic.

And stop pretending "plain meaning" is circular. If language can't communicate meaning apart from an institutional interpreter, then councils are just as doomed as Scripture. Their words require interpretation too.

In the end, you didn't escape private judgment. You used private judgment to choose an authority and then called your choice "submission."

In short, you're the liar.

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By your own logic, if language works and doesn't need a magical interpreter, then the historic, visible Church Councils did plainly read the text and derive the correct, objective truth. You want language to be clear only when you read it in the 21st century. But if language actually works, it worked in the 4th century too.

The problem is you don't actually understand at a high level what the Church even is and what authority its claiming. You're treating the Church like it's just a bigger stack of legal documents dropped into a vacuum. It isn't. You're looking at this like an originalist text-nerd trying to interpret the U.S. Constitution in a basement by yourself. But a constitution isn't just words on parchment; it only functions because there is an actual, continuous Supreme Court and a living legal system that carries its operational memory forward. The Ecumenical Councils aren't just dead texts we try to decipher: they are the official rulings of the living court that has been in session continuously since Pentecost.

You think you've caught me in a massive "gotcha" by pointing out that I had to use my own brain to choose Orthodoxy, but you're completely missing the distinction between locating an authority and being the authority. If I get sick, use my private judgment to look up medical credentials, and choose a doctor, that doesn't mean I'm acting as my own physician. I used my brain once to find an expert, and then I stepped aside, sat on the table, and took the prescription. That's what I did with the Church. I looked at history, located the unbroken, 2,000-year-old living community, and climbed aboard.

You, on the other hand, are standing there with a medical textbook, performing DIY surgery on yourself, and claiming you don't need a doctor because the textbook has "plain language."

You claim you are submissively bowing to the absolute, supreme authority of God's Word. But because you refuse any historical, institutional anchor, that "supreme authority" magically and flawlessly happens to agree with your personal theology every single time. If your "Supreme Authority" never tells you you're wrong, never forces you to change a deeply held cultural bias, and can be rewritten the moment you find a new "plain alignment" of verses, you aren't submitting to an authority at all.

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That's a nice analogy, but it assumes the very thing you're trying to prove: that the Orthodox Church is the divinely authorized "Supreme Court" of Christianity.

Everyone uses private judgment to decide which authority to trust. You used yours to choose Orthodoxy. Catholics use theirs to choose Rome.

I have caught you in a massive gotcha; The gotcha is that your entire argument depends on private judgment to prove private judgment is unreliable. Once you admit you had to personally determine that Orthodoxy is the true Church, your objection to Protestants using reason and judgment of course completely loses its force. The difference isn't that you've avoided private judgment. To the contrary, you've declared your private judgment correct.

"The unfolding of Thy words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple." Psalm 119:130.

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If the Old Testament scriptures were so "plain" and easily understood by the "simple" without an institutional framework, then why did God establish a Levitical priesthood to teach the law?

Why did the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8, who was literally reading the "plain words" of Isaiah, need Philip to explain it to him? When Philip asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" the Eunuch didn't say, "Of course, it's plain language!" He said: "How can I, unless someone guides me?" (Acts 8:31).

If you are wrong, and the Orthodox Church is just a corrupt human institution, then God failed. It means the church Christ started is apostatized, Christ lied about the gates of hell, the Holy Spirit abandoned the visible body, and the true faith vanished for 1,500 years until a few Western Europeans "rediscovered" it.

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As others have pointed out, some parts of Scripture are plain enough that ordinary people can understand the main message. We don't necessarily need a bearded guy in a costume to explain to us John 3:16. Moses told Israel that God's command was "not too difficult" and was "very near" to them (Deut. 30:1114). The Psalms repeatedly speak of God's word giving understanding even to the simple. At the same time, some passages are more difficult and require knowledge, context, or explanation. Isaiah would be an example. That's not a contradiction.

The Ethiopian eunuch is actually a good example of this. He was reading Isaiah 53, a prophecy that depends heavily on Jewish concepts, messianic expectations, and the revelation of Christ. It's not surprising that a Gentile convert struggled to identify the suffering servant.

Paul's own life illustrates the point. Before his conversion, he was highly educated in Judaism and trained under Gamaliel, one of the most respected rabbis of his day. Yet Paul came to conclusions about the Old Testament that many other rabbis rejected. The disagreement was not because one side lacked an institutional framework; both sides had the same Scriptures, traditions, language, and educational background. The issue was interpretation. Simply having an authoritative religious structure did not guarantee correct understanding.
In fact, the New Testament repeatedly shows religious authorities disagreeing with one another and even opposing Christ Himself. The Jewish leaders had a priesthood, a temple, teachers, and centuries of tradition, yet many still misunderstood the very Scriptures they claimed to defend.

I am not implying teachers are unnecessary. Of course they are. The question is whether the existence of teachers proves the existence of an infallible institution whose interpretations cannot be wrong. Acts 8 proves the former, not the latter. Some Scripture is straightforward, some requires deeper study, and God uses teachers to help believers understand it. None of that establishes that a particular church hierarchy is incapable of error.

Look, I understand that your worldview requires a man in a robe to tell you what the Bible means. Some of us filled with the Holy Spirit can think for ourselves.

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Paul is actually worse for your case. He didn't drop out of Judaism, restudy the Tanakh solo, and declare himself right by better exegesis. Read Galatians 1-2. He got a revelation, then went to Jerusalem specifically to lay his gospel before Peter, James, and John, "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not "I've got the Spirit, who needs a council." It was apostolic submission and confirmation. He wanted the pillars to sign off. Kind of the opposite point you're using him for.

Yall are making a false accusation about Orthodox authority over and over again. You've made a caricature.
On the "religious leaders had structure and still got it wrong" line, sure, individual leaders err constantly, nobody's arguing bishops are personally impeccable. The claim is that the Body as a whole, gathered conciliarly, guided by the Spirit as Christ actually promised in John 16:13 ("he will guide you into all truth"), doesn't permanently apostatize into false dogma.

All the early church fathers who learned from the apostles believed the same Marian typology and the same Eucharist I do. You call it pagan idol worship.
So pick one: the Church went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 says the opposite), or it apostatized into paganism within a generation and nobody wrote a word about it. Which is it?

If Scripture were clear enough that "faith alone" (mental assent) is the plain reading, James 2 wouldn't exist as a problem for you guys. But it's a huge problem for yall. The whole Protestant tradition has spent 500 years explaining away "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26) and "you see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only" (James 2:24). James using the actual phrase "faith only" and rejecting it. If perspicuity means the main soteriological message is plain, this is about as plain as it gets, and it says the opposite of sola fide as mental assent.

So no, we don't agree on the plain reading, the gospel, salvation and how we should comport and behave as Christians, and that's just on scripture alone that we disagree.

These discussions aren't productive because you guys don't actually take the time to understand our position. Y'all were brought up to despise Catholics/Orthodox and think we're pagan idol worshipers. I used to be a Protestant, so I know your arguments inside out.

That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

Mothra said:

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That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

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Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

Doc Holliday said:

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Mothra said:

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That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

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Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

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Context is your worst enemy, my friend. Always. You yourself are spoken of in the near context of Galatians 2:2.

canoso said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Mothra said:

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That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

---

Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

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Context is your worst enemy, my friend. Always. You yourself are spoken of in the near context of Galatians 2:2.

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No context is wider than even that.

Gal 2:3-5 is about false brethren sneaking in to spy out Christian freedom and impose circumcision, "to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour." That's Paul refusing to submit to imposters, not refusing to submit to Peter, James, and John. Two different groups in the same paragraph. He resists the false brethren and simultaneously lays his gospel before the actual pillars and gets the right hand of fellowship in verse 9.

Paul is distinguishing real apostolic authority from a counterfeit claiming it. So yeah, context matters. Which is why "no not for an hour" describes the false brethren, and "lest I be running in vain" plus "right hand of fellowship" describes his posture toward Jerusalem. Different verses, different subjects, same paragraph.

Zoom out: the whole letter is Paul defending his gospel against people saying he needs Jerusalem's stamp to be legitimate, and his answer is never "Jerusalem has no authority," his answer is "Jerusalem already agrees with me, we shook on it." That's the wider context. Gal 1 establishes he didn't get the content secondhand. Gal 2 shows him confirming unity with the pillars and getting recognized. Gal 2:11-14 shows he can correct Peter to his face without that meaning apostolic structure is meaningless, he's operating inside it, correcting a man, not rejecting the office. Then Acts 15 backs the whole thing up, an actual council settles a doctrinal dispute and Paul carries the ruling around to churches.

So the widest context you can pull doesn't get you to "Paul's authority is independent of the Body," it gets you to "Paul's authority and the Body's authority are the same authority, confirmed, not competing."

Doc Holliday said:

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Mothra said:

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That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

---

Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

---

Your reading of Galatians 2 makes zero sense. Paul's entire point is that his gospel came from Christ, not Jerusalem (Gal. 1:11-12). When he finally met the apostles, they "added nothing" to him; they recognized the gospel he was already preaching. If Gal. 2:2 means Paul needed doctrinal approval, then Galatians 1 and 2 contradict themselves.

Will respond to the other erroneous arguments later.

Can ya'll just zoom out and look at the stage of affairs. I'm worried anoint the future of Protestantism.

Mainlines as a near majority have flipped on marriage and sexuality, their own founding confessions didn't allow that. They're extremely woke.

Radical Reformers kept the Trinity but tossed sacramental theology and ecclesiology and started from zero and now they're largely entertainment driven. Calvinists are driving people away in droves, even from the faith altogether.

Oneness Pentecostal and charismatic movements are exploding worldwide and they're anti-trinitarian, no creeds, no councils, no accountability to anyone. They're gibberish in tongues and flopping around on the ground like they're possessed. At the rate this is going, the anti-trinitarian charismatic wing keeps winning converts while the churches with your theology keep hollowing out.

All this by itself proves people can absolutely convince themselves they have the Spirit and still be wrong, mainlines, radical reformers, and Oneness Pentecostals can't all be right, so "I feel the Spirit confirming this" is clearly not a reliable test on its own.

So what is your test? It can't be your reading of scripture, because that claim is pursuant to the claim of being Spirit led.

Mothra said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

Mothra said:

---

That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

---

Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

---

Your reading of Galatians 2 makes zero sense. Paul's entire point is that his gospel came from Christ, not Jerusalem (Gal. 1:11-12). When he finally met the apostles, they "added nothing" to him; they recognized the gospel he was already preaching. If Gal. 2:2 means Paul needed doctrinal approval, then Galatians 1 and 2 contradict themselves.

Will respond to the other erroneous arguments later.

---

You're wrong. Period.

Gal 1 answers "where did the content come from," and Paul's answer is Christ, not men, fine, granted, never disputed. Gal 2 answers a completely different question, "is my gospel in fellowship and agreement with the Jerusalem church," and the answer there is yes, confirmed, right hand of fellowship. Those aren't competing claims. "I didn't get it from you" and "you and I are preaching the same thing, confirmed" can both be true at once.

And "added nothing to me" actually proves my point, not yours. Read what it's doing in context, Gal 2:6 is Paul dismissing the false brethren's demand that he needs Judaizing add-ons, circumcision, law-keeping, tacked onto his gospel. That's what gets rejected. It's not Paul saying "Jerusalem's opinion is irrelevant to me," it's Paul saying "Jerusalem didn't need to add anything because what I already preach is what they already hold." That's agreement, not independence. If they'd found something to correct or add, sure, that's a different story, but the text says they didn't need to because he was already in step with them. That's confirmation, that's the mechanism, and it's why he immediately gets the right hand of fellowship in verse 9. If his gospel didn't need to line up with theirs at all, there's nothing to confirm and no reason for that scene to exist.

If Paul's gospel didn't need Jerusalem's agreement to be valid, why did he go up 'lest I be running or had run in vain'? What exactly was at risk if they'd disagreed?

Doc Holliday said:

---

Mothra said:

---

That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

---

Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

---

As ive stated many times his only retort was nuh uh (and to go postal ince inexplicably) and now it's nuh uh with mor paragraphs.

Fre3dombear said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

Mothra said:

---

That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

---

Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

---

As ive stated many times his only retort was nuh uh (and to go postal ince inexplicably) and now it's nuh uh with mor paragraphs.

---

Projection is a hell of a thing.

A popular claim made here by some members, is that no one can be saved without doing some good works. While those members protest that this does not equate salvation by merit, the works-necessary claim logically claims that God cannot save someone unless that person chooses to be saved by doing some good work. In essence, allowing man to veto God's will, which I cannot accept.

Scripture has quite a few cases where people were saved from destruction and death without doing works. Adam and Eve, for example, disobeyed God but He did not abandon them after their expulsion from Eden (Genesis Chapter 3). In fact, God's whole plan of redemption for Humanity is built completely from God's mercy and grace, not human actions.

In Genesis Chapter 32, God makes Jacob the patriarch of Israel, despite Jacob having done nothing to deserve such kindness from God. Jacob received undeserved mercy from God before he ever did any service for God.

In Genesis Chapter 50, God uses Joseph to save his entire family, including his brothers the same ones who sold him in to slavery in the first place and are not recorded as doing any good works.

That's just in Genesis. In the New Testament, Jesus refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery (John Chapter 8) despite no works by her to deserve such. The Prodigal Son in Luke Chapter 15 is welcomed back by his father without deserving it. And of course there is the Thief on the cross; zero evidence of works by him.
Paul explained it concisely in Romans 5:68: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

It was always about God's Will, God's Grace, God's Mercy.

If we do works which serve God, we receive the reward of God's pleasure, which is real and significant, but is not about Salvation. We certainly should rejoice at the opportunity to serve the Lord, reflecting the Holy Spirit at work in us, but the works flow from being aligned with the Lord; they do not play any role in God's Salvation of us.

One great irony I've observed here from the protestants is that they don't seem to even understand the name of their religion given what they say they are and what they are "protesting". It's explocitly in their name they proudly wear.

I would invite them to ponder that given the existence of their religion and their very name invalidates most all their responses especially those suggesting that the early church was obviously rhe Catholic Church.

John 10:16 - And I have other sheep that are not of this fold, and I must lead them. They shall hear
my voice, and there shall be one sheepfold and one shepherd.

John 17:22-23

Philippians 2:1-2

Doc Holliday said:

---

Mothra said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

Mothra said:

---

That's not what Galatians says. Paul spends all of Galatians 1 arguing that he didn't get his gospel from men, wasn't taught it by the apostles, and didn't immediately consult Jerusalem. Yet, you claim Galatians proves he submitted his gospel for approval? Oy vey.

Paul didn't go to Jerusalem to find out whether his gospel was correct. The leaders in Jerusalem didn't correct him or add to his message; they recognized it. If anything, Galatians is one of the worst texts to use for the claim that Paul's authority depended on institutional approval.

When you try to contort scripture to fit your narrative, we aren't going to find much common ground here.

As for your claim I was taught to hate Orthodoxy, this is where you're projecting. Disagreeing with Orthodox theology is not the same thing as hating Orthodox Christians. I can reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings without "despising" Orthodox people. Those are theological disagreements, not personal attacks.

The irony is that you're the one throwing around assumptions about Protestants and Calvinists instead of addressing the arguments. You seem very comfortable attributing bad motives to people who disagree with you, while demanding that everyone carefully understand your position.

I reject Marian dogmas, the veneration of icons, and other Orthodox teachings because I don't see them taught in Scripture, and I don't see those doctrines clearly present in the earliest descriptions of the Church. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's a theological and historical disagreementnot hatred.

Disagreement is not prejudice. If I say a doctrine is wrong, that doesn't mean I despise the people who hold it.
So let's skip the mind-reading. Rather than telling me why I supposedly disagree, explain why the doctrine is true. That's a much stronger argument than psychoanalyzing people who remain unconvinced.

---

Gal 2:2 - "lay before" isn't Paul stopping by to say hi. Read the actual line: "lest I be running or had run in vain." That's not a guy who thinks his gospel stands on its own regardless of what Jerusalem says. If it didn't matter whether they agreed, why would his whole mission be at risk over it? He needed one gospel, recognized as one gospel, or the thing falls apart. You can spin "recognition not correction" but the fact he needed the recognition already gives up your point.

Either the church stayed visible and taught this stuff (which means it's not paganism, it's literally what the guys who sat under the apostles believed), or it went invisible (1 Tim 3:15 kills that, "pillar and ground of truth" isn't a description of an underground remnant), or the whole thing apostatized in one generation and somehow Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin all missed it and wrote zero protests. Three doors. Walk through one instead of just restating that you don't like Mary and icons.

James 2 - you're the one with the perspicuity problem now. If "faith alone" meant mental assent and that was the plain reading, James doesn't need a whole chapter saying "you see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." He uses your exact phrase and shoots it down. Every Reformed answer to that is a workaround. Fine, workarounds can be right. But perspicuity was supposed to mean you don't need the workaround.

I didn't say you hate Orthodox people, I said you were raised to think the practices are pagan idol worship and you despise it. You guys have been calling these doctrines "pagan" and it isn't neutral theological vocabulary, it's a loaded framing you inherited, and it's part of why you can't answer the apostasy question honestly: if it's pagan, you have to explain how everyone within a generation of the apostles fell into paganism and nobody wrote a word against it. I've already walked you through the scriptural basis for icon veneration and Marian typology more than once, Ark of the Covenant typology from Luke 1 and 2 Samuel 6, Nicaea II's grounding in the Incarnation itself. You haven't engaged that case, you've just restated "I don't see it in Scripture" like repeating the objection makes the argument disappear.

---

Your reading of Galatians 2 makes zero sense. Paul's entire point is that his gospel came from Christ, not Jerusalem (Gal. 1:11-12). When he finally met the apostles, they "added nothing" to him; they recognized the gospel he was already preaching. If Gal. 2:2 means Paul needed doctrinal approval, then Galatians 1 and 2 contradict themselves.

Will respond to the other erroneous arguments later.

---

You're wrong. Period.

Gal 1 answers "where did the content come from," and Paul's answer is Christ, not men, fine, granted, never disputed. Gal 2 answers a completely different question, "is my gospel in fellowship and agreement with the Jerusalem church," and the answer there is yes, confirmed, right hand of fellowship. Those aren't competing claims. "I didn't get it from you" and "you and I are preaching the same thing, confirmed" can both be true at once.

And "added nothing to me" actually proves my point, not yours. Read what it's doing in context, Gal 2:6 is Paul dismissing the false brethren's demand that he needs Judaizing add-ons, circumcision, law-keeping, tacked onto his gospel. That's what gets rejected. It's not Paul saying "Jerusalem's opinion is irrelevant to me," it's Paul saying "Jerusalem didn't need to add anything because what I already preach is what they already hold." That's agreement, not independence. If they'd found something to correct or add, sure, that's a different story, but the text says they didn't need to because he was already in step with them. That's confirmation, that's the mechanism, and it's why he immediately gets the right hand of fellowship in verse 9. If his gospel didn't need to line up with theirs at all, there's nothing to confirm and no reason for that scene to exist.

---

You're assuming Galatians 2 is about doctrinal approval when Paul says it's about recognition. If "lest I had run in vain" means "Jerusalem might determine whether my gospel is true," then Galatians 1 collapses. Paul just spent an entire chapter arguing that his gospel came from Christ, not from Jerusalem.

Paul didn't go to get a ruling on his gospel. He went because of a revelation, presented the gospel he was already preaching, Titus wasn't forced to be circumcised, and the apostles "added nothing" to him. The whole point is that they recognized his gospel-they didn't authorize it.

The risk wasn't that Paul's gospel was false. The risk was division between the Gentile mission and Jerusalem.
And Galatians 2 ends with Paul publicly rebuking Peter for being out of step with the gospel. That only makes sense if the gospel judges apostles-not the other way around.

I think we've reached a point in this conversation where we are now rehashing the same arguments, and it's no longer productive. Respectfully, you don't make logical or convincing arguments, and it appears at this point you're just projecting your own disdain for Protestantism based on whatever negative experience you once had at the local megachurch. I get that you need the security and comfort that comes from a bearded man in a costume telling you what to think and believe, and are not an independent thinker. I am just not in your position, and hope never to have that kind of insecurity. So perhaps it would be best if this conversation ends.

Grace and peace to you.