Oddbean new post about login | logout The real issue is that Protestantism relies on a set of books as infallible but doesn't know where it came from. Christianity predates the Bible. The Bible was compiled for the faithul by the Church. Jesus didn't leave a list and didn't say what to put into the Canon, and so He delegated that task to His Church. Protestants unknowingly put trust in the council fathers who decided and promulgated the Canon, except then rejecting seven entries, more than a full millennium later. After that confusion, the Church then ratified the original Canon. The scriptures themselves say the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth, not vice versa. KJV onlyism is a subset of Sola Scriptura, which is itself untenable. Additionally, the original KJV includes the deuterocanon (the books rejected by most protestants today), and was illegal to print without it until much later. As an added bonus, there is a conspicuous omission of references to tyrants in it, almost assuredly at the request of that English king.
Epistemic arguments are a cheap way to avoid having actual knowledge.
But how do you *know* that? 🤣 Attacking a means of argumentation is a cheap way of avoiding actually considering the argument. My point stands that KJVOnlyism is a subset of Sola Scriptura, which is itself untenable, as I have shown. Modern scriptural scholarship, regardless of specific faith affiliation, is infiltrated by unfaithful scholars. This is why it is important to be familiar with older scholarship when studying. The Latin never changes, and if I'm not mistaken that full translation predates the Canon. That is the translation of texts that were decided, promulgated, and ratified. Original manuscripts of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew are not always available, so when they aren't we always have the Latin. It is also important to point out that "biblical study" is not Christianity. Having better and more faithful translations is good but not the point of the Faith. Study can enhance one's faith, but it ought not be the faith to study (see 1 Cor 13). The point of the Faith is to become Christ-like, or little Christs as "Christian" suggests. We follow His lead, taking up our cross, etc. We follow His commands: love God, love neighbor, baptize all the nations, etc. We receive His offering of His Body and Blood. This is Christianity. This is The Way.
>Christianity predates the Bible In the sense that Adam and Eve were Christians, sure. But if you're suggesting the Bible was created by the Church, your own councils disagree with you. Vatican I explicitly condemns what you're trying to say. The Church is a witness to something that already existed, nothing more. >Additionally, the original KJV includes the deuterocanon I know, mine does too. It has books that the Council of Trent removed, like 3 Esdras. Why would the Pope remove books from the Bible? >My point stands that KJVOnlyism is a subset of Sola Scriptura They literally aren't the same thing. They're two completely unrelated claims. I'm also not a strict KJVO in the way someone like Steven Anderson, but it's undoubtedly the most important English version, for more reasons than you can count on one hand. I make it a point not to argue sola scriptura. Not because it's wrong, understood properly, but because people on both sides refuse to understand it properly, so it's a useless hill to die on. >The Latin never changes Buy a critical edition. It does. You have old Latin, and tons of variation within the Latin tradition, often referred to as the Western text type. It's actually famous for being the most inaccurate text family that gets any serious consideration. In current day, Latin editions have the exact same problems as modern Greek critical texts. Though an Old Vulgate only position will get you better results than following modern text critics, due to the nature of what a translation is, it's inherently inferior to my position. Eastern Orthodox have it better, they have their own version of a Greek Received Text that's different from ours, although on internal analysis, it doesn't hold up as well. Romans has a false ending after chapter 14, for example. It's also missing the Comma. >that full translation predates the Canon Roman Catholics really need to read the studies of Roger Beckwith. This idea is disproven. The Old Testament canon was decided 200 years before Christ was born. The fact that later Christians (and some jews) were misinformed and got it wrong does nothing to disprove this. Although most of the early Fathers actually do agree that the canon is only 22 books (by the Hebrew numbering) so no matter how you look at it, the Roman Catholic theory of canon doesn't hold up. Nevermind the blatant historical errors in the books. >Original manuscripts of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew are not always available, so when they aren't we always have the Latin. The Latin is better than nothing, but once printed editions become a relatively affordable thing, there's no reason to use it as a primary source anymore. It has a lot of problems. >"biblical study" is not Christianity It's literally the word of God. It doesn't encompass the entirety of the Christian life, but you can't have orthodoxy without it.
It is clear you need a lack of intellectual honesty to presume the Holy Bible is the source of Jesus' teachings, instead of the revealed aspect of the tradition that came through Him.
Name a single provable teaching of Jesus that isn't from the Bible.
The Trinity. Next question.
If you think the Trinity isn't in the Bible, you haven't read the Bible.
It was not originally from the Holy Bible. See how your reasoning is superficial?
Apparently you haven't read the Fathers either. When they're arguing these issues, around both Nicaea and Constantinople I, their citations are almost entirely from Scripture. At least read a single book before defending a position that relies so heavily on historical literacy.
It has support but is not explicitly in Holy Scripture. Oneness Pentecostals reject the Trinity because they can't find it in their bibles. Jesus didn't write the New Testament. His followers did, and *all of* His teachings were believed before they were written.
And that is just one more of the reasons why no one should meddle with the Holy Scriptures. Even less so heretics who consciously opted for changing sentences and ripping books out on a whim. Once you read "History of the heresies and their refutations", from Saint Alphonse-Marie de Ligório, you will see how well documented is the whole process of the protestant stupidity and arrogance.
Why do all Roman Catholics lie about the Bible? Yes, the Trinity is explicitly in Scripture. To attempt to deny this is so ridiculous that you should have your Internet privileges revoked. The state should literally, physically rip the cables out of the ground that connect to your house. All you're doing is revealing that you've never actually read or comprehended the Bible, which you also pretend to believe is from God. Moreover, as I mentioned before, it's just patently false. The Fathers who formulated the doctrine explicitly did so on the basis of Scripture. Your take is historically illiterate, in addition to being Biblically illiterate. No one cares what Oneness Pentecostals believe. You may as well be appealing to Muslims or Buddhists. Personal opinions have no relevance to what's actually there.
You are not even creative. All of your errors have been made by protestants and answered by real scholars. Here https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-curious-case-of-the-protestant-bible And here: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/protestantisms-old-testament-problem
Why do you have to cite articles that are definitely wrong? Why can't you speak for yourself?
You're a troll is what I have to conclude, since you evidently don't desire to engage with our arguments.
You haven't made any arguments, you're a literal retard. Both of you deserve less attention from me than you got, you have both obviously put near zero effort into considering your positions. I'm not an academic, and I am leagues ahead of both of you in terms of familiarity with the history, the academia, and your own dogma. You both conveniently glossed over the fact that Rome's officially endorsed Biblical commentary endorses gay sex btw.
You're winning all the Jesus points today 🫡
I always win the Jesus points.
@James Lewis the fun thing is: you didn't even address the counterpoints to your lose sentences. What you said does not hold together. You have been offered resources and written arguments for you to make considerations you clearly missed on your statements and others needed to fundament critical thinking regarding your claims.
@James Lewis I would have tagged you earlier, but you were really involved in a Bitcoin conversation.
@James Lewis @Aspartame As concerning who the Israelites tempted in the wilderness, 1 Corinthians 10:9 identifies Christ, Hebrews 3:7-9 identifies the Holy Ghost, Psalm 95 identifies Jehovah. Christ prays to the Father, while also saying He is one with the Father. Whichever way you harmonise these facts will lead you to upholding the Godhead.
> It's literally the word of God. What does Holy Scripture says is the Word? John 1 says In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh. It doesn't say the Word, which became flesh, has then become written. The written word is not God, which would be a Bibliolotry of which I find much of Protestantism guilty. It is holy, and it is God's word—yes, He is the ultimate Author—but I would be careful to say it is not The Word, especially as it says The Word is something other than itself. I worship God—the Father, the Son Who is the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit—not the written word of God. I believe in the written word of God, but I know it is not God. To study the scriptures is good and holy, but it is not what the whole of the Christian faith is about. That would veer into Bibliolotry. > Vatican I explicitly condemns what you're trying to say. The Church is a witness to something that already existed, nothing more. The Church is the "pillar and foundation of truth" as the Scriptures say. It is witness and custodian of Holy Tradition. That Holy Tradition is originally oral and over the lives of the Apostles became also written. That written Tradition is Holy Scripture. The Church needed God's inspiration and authority to do this. The Church predates the written and compiled Bible, but not Holy Tradition. The Church is founded by Christ upon the Apostles in His Holy Tradition.
Cool, thanks for stating the corporate position that literally everyone has already heard. I could have done something infinitely more useful with my time, like watch the grass grow, or shoot myself in both eyes with a bb gun, but I read this instead. We're done, you're not a serious person.
Evergreen post from Twitter. https://m.primal.net/HNzn.png
Excellently put. I shall shake the dust off my feet. Good day.
funny you take that first passage as wholly relating to the bible, i take it as the birth of conciousness, maybe a conciousness
there is a religion of the book, where the printed word is everything. It is called Islam. And even it has hadith. no normative text may function without an authority, not just to decide what is cannon, but also how to interpret it. that is not a limitation of God, it is a limitation of human language. no law works without judges - no law can be universal, cover all cases beyond reasonable doubt, without an authority to read it under some tradition, considering some sources and precedents, etc.. we can not make a self-referential universal law for a golf club, without leaving space for "disputes and doubtfull cases will be settled by <some internal authority>, or the civil courts of <some place>..." I even doubt God could do it in a reasonable size using human language. The Bible is not just a historical text... from it comes normative stuff. A text, even written by God, can not tell by itself what we ought to do without an authority to interpret and confirm it. Who decided we should move the sabath to sunday? Or forget the Jewish Temple? These are on the Bible, and we do not follow them.
I never really cared about translation troubles. Even in Eusebius of Cesarea's book it was clear some hardwork was involved, priests travelling around getting old manuscripts, interviewing old guys, trying to do their best... And submiting their work to the supervision and final decision of the bishops. The Church not only wrote the books and decided the canon, it also kept working on keeping the versions. And that before the Vulgate (no need to call it Old, the new one is the Neo- ) what is important: - it is good enough, close enough to the original text nobody will ever touch again... - because nothing really relevant is based on a single passage of the bible which might be wrong. Protestants can take important stuff from a few passages (see the pentecostals... sometimes it looks they banged their heads on the bible, read the first versicle they found, and forked a new church over it - that is the logical consequence of sola scriptura), or try to win arguments with a machine gun of biblical passages. Catholics have the tradition and magistery to suport the interpretation to make sure it does not come from a misinterpreted isolated idea from the text. if our faith depended on perfect texts, then nobody ever had any faith. Even before the vulgate, versioning stuff was hard. Even in apostolic times, each book or epistle took time to spread. Local bishops had to decide to read it on masses - that was the first litmus test. copy them, send them to other places. Versioning troubles started soon, as eusebius show. For a long time, not every place had the same books.
@Aspartame @James Lewis As concerning Sola Scriptura some also make it legalism so that things like drinking strong drink (undiluted alcohol), abortion, tattoos and playing rock music in church are permissible because despite violating Biblical principles throughout Scripture, they aren't specifically condemned in any New Testament verse (and this practising OT-NT distinction I don't buy into either aside from things specifically identified as prophetic pictures of a more glorious Body). Misunderstood it also makes KJVonly circular, because you have to go into the historical record rather than letters of Scripture to defend the belief.
Well stated
Adding you to my list 🇻🇦🫡
I remember my nearly shocked state when I really absorbed that the Church predated the Bible. It didn’t drop from the sky all ready to go, then birth the Church. The Church wrote the New Testament. The Church selected the canon. The Church, who clearly from the early fathers, was sacramental (real presence, maybe stated differently), bishops, deference to Rome. All there, first.
My reaction too. It was a no-brainer, though. Of course someone had to write the books of the New Testament, and of course someone had to choose which ones went into the Canon. The Holy Spirit didn't dictate the Scriptures, nor the list of the Canon, but they reasoned, prayed, and allowed the Holy Spirit to work through them to do so. The other thing to note is that the Jews didn't have a set Canon, despite what Protestants want to believe. The Sadducees only had the Pentateuch, the Pharisees had the Torah (which I think is smaller than our Canon), and IIRC the Essenes had a much larger Canon (possibly all that was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls). The Church had to determine for Herself what was to go into the Church's Canon.
Interesting I didn’t know the Jewish part. This all, for me, destroyed solo scriptura. If the Church birthed the scriptures, then it can’t be solo scriptura. In fact the word is in some ways secondary. The Word became flesh. The very presence of God, now sacramental, is the fount of the Church. The Eucharist is the “source and summit” as JP the Great stated. So knowing the writers of the New Testament were either priests consecrating at mass or at least attending mass, it makes you look at John 6, and all the other Eucharistic passages, in a much clearer light. The Church is Christs continued presence on earth, the Incarnation continued in a way.
This is another reason I don't like calling Holy Scripture the 'Word of God' in that exact phraseology. Holy Scripture doesn't call itself the Word of God. Rather, it says the Son is the Word, and the Word became Flesh. The Holy Scriptures written by the Church are witness to the Author and Perfecter of the Faith, the Source and Summit of our Faith, the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ Himself. We do worship the Word, which was with God, was God, and became flesh. We however do not worship Scripture, the witness of the Word.
Amen! We worship Christ, God the Son present physically, truly and sacramentally at the Mass. We are not a religion of “the book”. Christ and His Church come first. Scripture AND tradition. 🙏🏽
The Church didn’t birth the Scriptures. Vatican I, one of your own ecumenical councils, explicitly rejects this idea. Roman Catholics are so desperate that they slander their own religion just to lead more people to Satan ☠️
Sometimes it's not obvious why you bother with some of these people. They argue in bad-faith and seem to only be interested in capturing your time. They're either jews trying to lead others astray, get paid to cause confusion, or they're engaging in 'sports-team' Catholicism.
You’re right, it is 100% a psudeo-intellectual version of sports for them. It’s not about what’s true, it’s about how they can plausibly slander everyone else in a way that stupid people won’t notice. Then I, someone who went beyond the entry level polemic, come along and burst their bubble, hence the fun.
Sometimes it can be funny and entertaining. The ending is almost always the same and the patterns that lead up to the ending often follow the same trajectory though. It always seems to end with some version of: 'We're done here, good day, sir'.
It is interesting that bringing our cannon in line with the Jews much later canon was Luther’s excuse for dropping 7 books from the Old Testament which were problematic for him. Of course he also wanted to heavily redact the New Testament too, which is rarely mentioned.
Yep. The protestants don't want to admit that's what happened. Martin Luther was a bad dude with daddy issues and a tendency to despair. Only way to cope was to remove the parts that made him feel bad and convince a third of Europe to apostatize with him.
I have compassion for him, scrupulosity is something I struggle with. But he fell into sin, trying to avoid the very thing he felt guilty of. One of the best homilies I’ve ever heard described the original sin of Adam this way. If Adam and Eve didn’t know good and evil in a literal sense, they couldn’t have sinned. The sin was claiming the knowledge of right and wrong for themselves, instead of it belonging to God.
You people actually mention it at pretty much every opportunity, which is hilarious, because tons of Roman Catholics in Luther’s day agreed with everything he said on the canon issue, INCLUDING CARDINAL CAJETAN 🤣
@catholichodler @pipe @Aspartame @James Lewis @Fabiano Acts 17:10-11 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. The scriptures predated Paul's preaching in Berea
The word is for conversion. Always. And the Verb of God has always existed. Then He was made into flesh to be the word of His changes into the world.
@Fabiano @pipe @catholichodler @Aspartame @James Lewis You are of your father the devil https://cawfee.club/media/1551ca9e551bc41c85b572bccbec337baf6184676136613d93ac9c76ad2a0b67.png
The Old Testament yes
@catholichodler @pipe @Aspartame @James Lewis @Fabiano The apostles were able to teach their doctrine out of the Old Testament, therefore it goes as follows Old Testament -> church -> New Testament As opposed to: church -> Old and New Testament You need to presuppose sacramentalism, there's nothing to imply they taught anything beyond OT doctrines with the clarification that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah) and that forgiveness is only found in Him, with baptism replacing circumcision, and the Lord's Supper replacing Passover. At the council at Jerusalem, when debating over the necessity of circumcision and the law of Moses, they concluded that apart from abstaining from fornication, from meat offered to idols and from blood, there is no necessary burden to the Gentiles. If you needed the sacraments to be saved this'd be the time to ratify them.
Besides that, the Codex Vaticanus has a longer provable provenance than any other manuscript of the Scriptures. The authorship of books of the Bible is rarely part of the book of the Bible either. Usually those are the “traditional authors” but not mentioned in the actual text. Several of the criticisms leveled here don’t make sense to me.
This is the other note that is a powerful confirmation, but I imagine not as convincing to Protestants. Just because one translation is super old and has been used and unchanged for millennia doesn't exactly mean that it is the most reliable, most authentic, authoritative, etc. However, as a Catholic, I take great comfort in those facts, because my trust in the Church is yet more confirmed.
There is not a single complete manuscript of the gospels in existence that doesn’t have the name of the author at the beginning or the end, except ones that are missing one or the other Why would you lie about this?
You didn’t say Gospels. I didn’t lie.
This is such a cope. Your criticism doesn’t even make sense if it’s not about them because the other books tell you who wrote them in the body. You obviously just tried to get away with saying something untrue, expecting I wouldn’t know any better.
I’m used to dealing with your kind. The book of Hebrews is not attributed. And it was common practice during the Old Testament period to write under pseudonames, often a famous name, because it increased the survivability of the manuscript. You have now shifted the goal posts twice and displayed ignorance of basic concepts essential to any serious study of the canon and provenance of Scripture. Would you like to try again?
Further, neither Matthew or Mark directly name their author. John only does so indirectly as “the disciple Jesus loved.” What are you on about?
Name a complete manuscript of those gospels that doesn’t have attribution or you’re a liar. You won’t he able to, because it doesn’t exist. You’re literally lying.
You realize the titles of the books, chapter numbers, verse numbers… none of that is original. Right? None of that is inspired by God, and there is no reason to believe it existed in the original autograph.
What does Stephanus’ numbering system have to do with the authorship, which is in every single manuscript? You’re just making things up. The names are original. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be there. God preserves his word as-is.
Well, that’s an opinion, not a fact supported by evidence.
If you don't believe God preserved the Bible, you are not a Christian. It is a *fact* that the attribution of the gospels are in every single complete manuscript. It is a *fact* that you lied about it. It is a *fact* that we have the actual word of God. It is a *fact* that the only reason you would attack any of these things is to serve your father, the Devil
Save your energy. This is a troll. Shake the dust off your feet.
In the Hypothetical-Durkheimian sense, there’s no religion that isn’t a cosmology at the same time speculation on the Divine providence! Religion is inspired by the simultaneity of determination & indeterminacy by the need for contingency! We don't have to respect religions as we have to respect people. Asking that the two be equivalent is a filthy manipulation to go back to the 19th century & crime of blasphemy...
Where did this comment come from? > We don't have to respect religions as we have to respect people. Why must we respect people, and why does that not include their religion?
Exactly, that’s the impression it gives me when non-religious people want to silence those who dare to oppose different religions. By doing so, they think they’re on the side of tolerance, while they’re complicit in oppression from religions… I realize that religion has always been a highly political body, which hasn’t been able to apply the deep truths of the laws of Nature to the moral needs of humanity. Gurus are powerless to understand ancient science & secret of Mysteries. https://image.nostr.build/3ac72cc350ed1ff4eaa92846587e6cd6bd3fa4e39e17c398235d8bba7111380d.jpg
