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To ArchBishop Arch, no Bunk

The truth, Oh Arch, is found in God's Word. If you want to know about a topic, get out a highlighter & read through marking the subject. One thing is most clear: the papal system is quite foreign to the Bible, particularly to the scripture of the Church Age.

Acts & the Following Epistles has
1) no prayers to the dead or for the dead;
2) no worship of Mary or saints,
3) justification by faith,
4) no popes,
5) no cardinals,
6) a plurality of elders/bishops wherever mentioned as present historically,
7) no fancy robes,
8) no HQ in Rome,
9) no apocrypha quoted as scripture,
10) no future endorsement of Church Fathers to come with "Sacred Traditions."
11) no purgatory,
12) no idolatry endorsed,
14) no indulgences,
15) no salvation by works,
16) no re-sacrificing of Christ in any masses.

I challenge you to trust the Lord Jesus as your Savior;
to believe the scripture when it says:
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ & you shall be saved.
I challenge you to call on the Lord & trust Him for salvation:
For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

You already believe in the Trinity, that the Lord Jesus is God's Son, both God & man. You believe that He died for our sins. You believe that He rose from the dead.

All that remains for you to do is to secure a new birth by actually trusting the Lord Jesus to save you, abandoning the false idolatrous trust in your good works.

Do that & then you will see many things differently.

As to sola scriptura, as I have told you my POV is that the 66 books are God's word. You agree with that. It is common ground. Also my POV is that I have never perceived God speaking to me in any other source, written or oral, neither does the NT endorse the apocrypha, nor does it endorse anything that came after it was written. I know of no one who has successfully added to the Bible since the end of the NT. That is my POV. Those are my assertions; don't change them or add to them please & then tell me I asserted something else. Do not ask me to prove something else.

I do not claim that the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true. That would be circular logic. Are you saying that the only thing that would convince you is circular logic? I say that the Bible is God's Word because that is self-evident. Anyone who doubts is invited to read & make up his own mind. Between us the 66 books are common ground.

As to verses on the subject though, you are invited to do as I have done, read through the entire Bible & highlight all the verses on the topic of God's Word, bibiology, revelation. I used yellow. The verses on the subject are a vast number. And the Bible of 66 books itself does claim to be God's Word. Instead of one verse, I refer you to all of Psalm 119 for starters. Then you can read what the Lord Jesus says about the OT. "It is written" is the statement He used (e.g. in Mat 4).

Thus if you want to disprove my POV, you show me that something else is God's Word. You have not done that.




I

Sola Veritas

To begin with, I assure you that I am not an archbishop, I certainly would not have the time to be carrying an online discussion if I had that much responsibility!
The post-nominal letters "Arch." indicate my membership in the Archangelati, a Catholic apologetic group I started.

I challenge you to leave your Pseudo-Christian religion and ACTUALLY read the Bible.

I composed a list below refuting your points. I wil try to use books that we both accept in common but the convenient Protestant removal of seven OT books limits this a little.
Note: you must read each verse before responding.

1)Prayers FOR (not to) the dead: 2 Maccabees 12:46

2)VENERATION (not worship) of Mary: Luke 1:28, 1:42, 1:48

3)Justification by WORKS AND FAITH: James 2:26

4)Papacy: READ ALL OF THIS PAGE: http://archangelati.webs.com/apologetics.htm

5)Cardinals: the word is not used directly in the Bible, but neither is the word Bible!

6)Elders/bishops: Titus 1:5

7)"Fancy" robes: standard garb of the time!!

8)HQ in Rome: historical though non-biblical fact

9)Apocrypha quoted as Scripture: you are correct, however, many other OT books are not mentioned in the NT either including Joshua, Judges, and Esther. You cannot simply discount the Deuterocanonical books because they are not mentioned. Also, we know to accept them because the Septuagint (LXX) is quoted 300 out of 350 times in the NT. The LXX contained the deuterocanonical books! Historical fact: the early church used the LXX thus they used the deuterocanonical books!

10)Sacred Tradition: 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15

11)Purgatory: Matthew 5:26, Matthew 12:32, 1 Corinthians 3:15, 1 Peter 3:19, Revelation 21:27

12)The Catholic Church agrees with this point, why would you bring it up?

13)You skipped this number!

14)Indulgences: you probably have the wrong idea about what they are, please tell me your definition

15)Salvation by works: you are correct, the RCC teaches JUSTIFICATION but not salvation by works.
Christians hold salvation from sin by faith but justification unto heaven by works done for the golry of God.

16)We don't resacrifice Christ, but if you mean that the Eucharist is non-scriptural: Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, John 6:52-56, Acts 2:42

Remember, you must read EVERY verse that I have given you with an UNBIASED mind.

God bless and I hope that you will read Scripture with a clear mind.

Re: Sola Phebitis

Arch, I hope you have a sense of humor.

Archangelati; I could see that in one of those sinister RCC movies where they have some sinister group flagellating themselves in alternation with skullduggery.

Arch, I have been reading the Bible through & through since 1960, times beyond my count now. I generally take a topic or two and mark it, as for example SALVATION (done in pink round about 1965).

I put away religion in 1962 when I knelt by my bed and actually trusted Christ to save me, abandoning the ungodly idea that the sheep and goat judgment was a picture of how to be saved or the like (works).

I challenge you to read your Bible through. Are you afraid to tell me honestly how many times (if at all) you have actually read thru the 66 books?

You have a pseudo-Christian papacy religion, which is NOT in the Bible at all.

I know of no evidence that God's people ever accepted the apocrypha. The NT does not quote it as scripture.

2 Macc is not in the Bible, Arch.

There is NO veneration of Mary in Luke 1 at all.

3)Justification by WORKS AND FAITH: James 2:26

The Bible is most clear that salvation is by grace through faith NOT BY WORKS lest anyone should boast Eph 2 & many times. In man's sight, however, works declare a man righteous (justified) YOU SEE; not at God's bar of justice.

4)Papacy:
YOu have not one Bible verse about any pope.

5)Cardinals: the word is not used directly in the Bible, but neither is the word Bible! 2 Macc 8:23 Biblos! LOL. You claim that is part of the Bible.

Scripture is used many times. The office of Cardinal is not in the Bible by any term.

6)Elders/bishops: Titus 1:5

Their are indeed elders=bishops in the Bible. So what? Your priests are not. All Chrs are priests in the Bible.

7)"Fancy" robes: standard garb of the time!! The ecclesiastical garb is not standard and distinguishing Chrs by special garb is not in the Bible.

8)HQ in Rome: historical though non-biblical fact.
In the NT Rome is not any HQ. Thus it is not any kind of fact. You have no reliable contemporary source of the NT period outside the Bible that proves Rome was a HQ during the NT period.

9) Apocrypha never quoted as Scripture:

We don't dispute the 66 books; they are self-evidently God's Word & you admit it.
You need special evidence to add the apocrypha. There are formula used which appear to cover the entire Tanach indicating it is part of scripture. Historical fact, the NT Church never is cited as using the apocrypha as an authority. Using something proves nothing, however. I may use something you wrote sometime.

10)Sacred Tradition: 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15

Those verses do not endorse your concept of sacred tradition, & they say nothing about endorsing future sayings of Church Fathers.

11)Purgatory: Matthew 5:26, Matthew 12:32, 1 Corinthians 3:15, 1 Peter 3:19, Revelation 21:27

None of those verses refer to purgatory. The Judgment Seat of Christ in 1 Corinthians is an event at which time Christians' works are examined with a view to getting a reward or losing a reward. Residence is not at issue. Some are saved as through fire at this event; but it is their works that are burned, not themselves.

14)Indulgences: you probably have the wrong idea about what they are, please tell me your definition

I won't argue about words. There are no indulgences bought in the Bible, no matter how you define it.

15)Salvation by works: you are correct, the RCC teaches JUSTIFICATION but not salvation by works.

Christians hold salvation from sin by faith but justification unto heaven by works done for the golry of God.

you have to explain that one. If you don't get eternal life & residence in Heaven merely by trusting Christ as Savior, but have to have works lest you go to the Lake of Fire, in fact you deny the concept of Salvation & seek validation.

16)We don't resacrifice Christ.

You are saying that you don't believe you are sacrificing the body of Christ anew during your mass?

Come on now, Arch, how many times have you read the Bible through?
Are you willing to mark all the passages on salvation (justification etc.)?

Justified by faith, not works -- scripture is clear. Are you not aware of the passages?

Best wishes,
Thunkful

Deuterocanonical v. Apocrypha

Okay, let's tackle this one point at a time otherwise our messages to each other will be novel length!

1) Are the deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books biblical?

Out of the ~350 references to the OT in the NT, 300 are from the Septuagint translation!
Why?
The answer is simple, that is the version that the early church knew and used.

The Protestant churches only spoke out against the deuterocanonical books in the 1500s. Consequently, they removed the books that supported Catholicism too much, e.g., the Maccabees.

The deuterocanonical books were moved to the status of Apocrypha by Martin Luther in 1522 and altogether removed from the Bible only a few years later.

The removal of books from the Bible is historical fact, you CANNOT debate this point.

The Protestant churches relied on the JEWISH (not Christian) Council of Jamnia to establish what their OT would be.

Catholics however, retained the OT that had been used since 400BC!

History is undebatable and uncontestable!
Admit that the Protestant churches removed these books or else you will look like a fool denying history!

In your reply, please choose one of the below:
A) I admit that the Protestant churches removed these deuterocanonical books from the Bible
B) I am a fool and I deny history so I believe that the Catholic Church added these apocryphal books

These are the only two answers you may give.

Deuterocanonical is a Misnomer

To start with, the concept of canonized is false.
Since "my sheep hear my voice," the acceptance of prophetic utterance & writing never waited hundreds of years for ecclesiastical councils to decide. At once the sheep recognized God's voice & were responsible for the message. The Apostle Paul wrote letters to churches; so did John. In neither case were the recipients to wait hundreds of years until they were dead for councils. They were to obey at once.

As the the LXX (Septuagint),
the existence of that Greek translation of the Tanach is irrelevant; also it is irrelevant that other books not in the Tanach were also translated to Greek. We are satisfied that eventually, at least by the 300's AD some of those other books were bound with the Bible, including books that are not in the apocrypha or deuterocanonicals of the RCC. And my modern Bible has things bound with it that are not part of scripture also. This proves nothing. (The Tanach is the Hebrew OT without the apocrypha.)

We don't know at what point in time the LXX books were bound together in a codex, instead of being separate scrolls. But I know of no evidence that codexes were much used before NT times. All of our manuscripts of the LXX are hundreds of years after the birth of Christ. I know of no evidence that there existed any codex called the LXX at the time of Christ, though we accept that the translation of the Tanach was made hundreds of years before Christ was born and existed in separate scrolls.

Since all of our mss of the LXX are long after the 1st Century AD, we have no idea how many of the refs to the OT in the NT are from the actual LXX. Since the OT was available in Greek, and many early Christians did not read Hebrew, it is obvious that many early Christians used the Greek translation, the LXX. Also, it is obvious that they knew the Greek was just a translation & that the Hebrew was the actual Word of God. They also knew that the references to the OT made in Greek in the NT were the Word of God. Thus it is probable that they changed the LXX to agree with the NT quotes / refs. Therefore, we don't know what the early LXX readings were, and we don't know that they followed the LXX. It is probable that our 4th-5th century copies of the LXX show the results of corrections made to the LXX from the NT, not that the NT followed the LXX.

To know how close the NT writers went to copying the LXX, you would have to have a pre-NT copy of the LXX, which you do not have.

What the early church used for the OT has not been proven by you, Arch. I think it is safe to assume that they used the LXX some places, but to the East where Greek was not the lingua franca, who knows.

Your saying something proves nothing. If you want to prove that the apocrypha was accepted as scripture before the Reformation, you need to prove it. Since My sheep hear my voice, & since the apocrypha is not used as authority in the NT, I don't believe true Christians by and large ever accepted it as the Word of God. I don't regard the medieval papists as Christians. Your saying that Prots removed something is just your saying it. No proof. You cannot debate your need to prove your point on that one. Let's see your proof that all the major cities of Europe had Bibles bound in one volume & that they all had the apocrypha.

I chose C:

Arch, you have not proven your case.
Prove that the apocrypha is God's Word.

Tell me, O Arch, & don't duck the question:

How do you know that the apocrypha is God's word?

Apocrypha is a Misnomer

I am well aware of what the Tanakh is.
The greek LXX is not in any way irrelevant, it is what was used by the early Church.

I don't have much time right now so I'll send you here:

http://www.fisheaters.com/septuagint.html

Please read ALL of what they have there and more importantly, be open to FACTS and don't let your bias get in the way.

Once again, this discussion was ACTUALLY to see if sola scriptura was in the Bible (a point you still have not proven) though I will be happy to oblige your tangent point. You can have your questions answered on the site above.

Apocrypha or Deuteros

Arch, I am going to call them the Apocrypha. I don't share the mistaken idea of canonization that you have.

"The greek LXX is not in any way irrelevant, it is what was used by the early Church."

Arch, the LXX is irrelevant. You cannot prove that the early Church considered the apocrypha God's Word even if it was part of the LXX. Neither can you prove that all the books in the LXX mss of AD IV-V were considered part of one LXX in AD I. You cannot prove that Early Christians believed that the apocrypha was part of God's Word. But the LXX is irrelevant.

To draw logical inferences you have to reason from self-evident truths, axioms. Practically speaking, between 2 persons discussing a subject, you can reason from common ground, even if the common ground is not axiomatic.

It is axiomatic, self-evident that the 66 books are God's Word.
It is also common ground between the two of us.
That the practices of the early church were God's practices is not axiomatic, not self-evident. It is not self-evident that what the early leaders of Christendom wrote was God's Word.

You can reason from 2 axioms:
1) the God of the 66 Books exists and
2) the 66 Books is the word of God.
If u find those truths self-evident & affirm them, you can do a lot of theology.

It is not self-evident to me or axiomatic that the Early Church was infallible or that everything uttered in the Early Church by its leaders is God's Word.

I do not judge God's Word by the Early Church, but the Early Church by God's Word.

As far as I am concerned, I defend my POV, not what you think sola scriptura means. MY POV is that
1) it is self-evident that the 66 books are God's Word.
2) I have never seen and do not know of any other source of God's word readily & commonly available to men or myself.
If you have proof that something else is God's Word, you should present it.

You refer me to a site. I refer you to the Bible. If you have not yet read it through, why not start now. Get your highlighter out & mark Bibliology & Soteriology. I have done that. I marked every passage on God's Word itself (revelation, prophetic process, Thus saith the Lord, etc.) in yellow & salvation in pink.

Let the Word of God dwell in you richly.

Arch, I have been reading it over & over since 1960, marking it, studying it. I know what it says about salvation & bibliology. I know it never refers to the apocypha. It appears to me that the Lord Jesus refers to and endorses the Tanakh as such (using formulae), but not the apocrypha nor the traditions of the elders.

Deuterocanonical

Oh, interesting how that works, here let me put up my own axiomatic truths:

1) The God of 73 books exists and
2) The 73 books of the BIble are the Word of God

Do you concur?
If not then I am not bound to hold to your "axiomatic" truths either.

Re: Deuterocanonical

I have read the apocrypha; it is not self-evident that they are the Word of God. If you claim they are, I deny it. And that is where they argument may end. You have to affirm or deny axioms for yourself.

However, if it be found that clearly statements in the apocrypha contradict the Bible, then you have a problem.

So have you read the Bible & the apocrypha & see no difference? Or are you in fact talking thru your hate; you never read either?

Deuterocanonical

I see no difference between the canonical and the deuterocanonical texts.
They both seem to be the exact Word of God to me and over 1 billion other Catholics in the world.
I am sorry if you lack the ability to see that.

Re: Deuterocanonical Are you ducking the question?

Have you read all the Bible through?
Have you read the apocrypha through?

I doubt that 1 percent of the papists have ever read the Bible through.

Arch, I think I have asked you if you have read the Bible through a number of times now; are you ducking or did I miss the answer?

Re: Deuterocanonical

You honestly cannot distinguish Bel and the Dragon from the Bible?

Re: Deuterocanonical

You honestly don't see that they are one and the same?

As for your question: actually, now that I think about it, I have not read ALL of the Psalms or Proverbs. Other than that, I'm pretty sure I've got everything.
So in short, technically no, I have not read ALL of the Bible.
However, I have read so many NEUTRAL and UNBIASED commentaries on the Bible that I am fairly confident I've come across EVERY verse from the Bible in some manner!

Thanks for Your Honesty

Arch,
have you read the apocrypha?

Let the Word of God dwell in you richly.
I suggest you read the whole thing & mark 2 subjects: 1) Bibliology (yellow high light), 2) soteriology (pink high light). I have done that.
By Bibliology I mean all the statements about God's Word, thus saith the Lord, scripture, and the like.

I hope that you can see a qualitative difference between the Bible & the apocrypha, between the Bible & ecclesiastical fathers.