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-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Kadlec
To: jontrebor@aol.com
Sent: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:00 am
Subject: Re: Bible Discussion
This is going to be quite good.
Please excuse the way that your challenges are re-numbered...again, Yahoo e-mail is only marginally better than hotmail. I'm thinking about switching to gmail.
God Bless You,
Jeff
from different sources. I'm sure that you have someone who is helping you with these answers (not necessarily feeding you answers to my queries, but know one learns what you know without reading it somewhere). Ask them (or, if it's an author, write him), "How do I know which books are supposed to be in the Bible?" After all, there are at least three modern canons of the Bible (no deuterocanon, Catholic w/ Deuterocanon, and Orthodox w/ Deuterocanon) and any number of ancient ones yet you have shown nothing to say that one is right and the other wrong, save your own opinion that the deuterocanon (which you mistakingly call an apocrypha) is wrong. Yet, you have no proof!
No proof! No proof! Do you hear the call? It echoes like Poe's raven. You have not spoken to this, you have only avoided. Look at the situation. Look at yourself! You yourself are repeating another's facts. You have not come up with many of these points. You couldn't have. They are all said by better writers and deeper thinkers! And yet they still have not answered the one question that matters. What is in the Bible, what is in the Bible?
The fact that I have not personally developed these points does not mean that I can't agree with them.
Indeed, at an early age I had MANY problems with the Catholic church. Prior to truly becoming a Christian, I made the statement that "if I'm going to belong to a Church, I at least want to belong to one that uses their own manual." Prior to truly knowing Christ, or having the Spirit work in my life, I knew that the Catholic church did not conform to scripture, and that bothered me relentlessly.
Nevermind, "What does it say?" Does it really matter what a part of a document says if you don't have the entire thing? If you might be adding to it or subtracting from it unless you know what it says? For all you know, God might have intended something else to be included and man removed it. You have no evidence of the contrary.
That is a possibility.
For goodness sakes! You can't even give definite answer about whether to include the woman caught in adultery! It isn't in the earliest manuscripts! And even then, sometimes it's in Luke, sometimes it's in John!
You cannot give a definitive answer on this, either! The statement I would use, and that most Presbyterian theologians, would use would be something along these lines: "It is highly unlikely that these passages were part of the original text".
You need tradition just to make sense of it. I know that the Bible is right because the Church, guided by the Spirit, has acclaimed it. This is a mistake that you make. You assume that because it is a tradition it cannot come from God. Yet, where in the Bible does it say that all tradition is bad? Where in the Bible does it say that? Certainly not in 2 Tim. 3:6 where Paul says that there is a tradition received from him. So, then, where?
Can you refine your statement, please? 2 Timothy 3:6 has nothing to do with tradition. Please let me know which verse you meant.
I NEVER SAID ALL TRADITION IS BAD!!!! (I might have said that...but if I did, I was quite incorrect) I said that tradition CAN be bad. AND I said that tradition, as far as it is true to the Bible, is a very good thing.
Protestantism is without history. It starts in the 15th century out of nothingness! And if you don't believe me I will put a challenge to you: find me one writer prior to the 15th century who believes that Christ died for all men and was resurrected and yet, at the same time, believed in a sola scriptura mentality. Just one! And I'll bet that you won't be able to.
The Reformation (specifically) looks back to Augustine, Paul, the Gospels, and even the Old Testament (even as far back as Genesis & the fall).
The Bible is redemptive history. You can't say that the Bible is redemptive history w/out including ALL of the Bible!
Christ did not die for all men. Christ died for: he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
At this point you might argue that the Catholic Church destroyed all of those documents, but I will put that theory to the test.
I did not say that.
Now you are a man who went to NJIT, correct? I believe that is what Aaron said. Then you must know something about logical discorse. You must know about Ockham's razor then, "All things being equal, the simplest solution which accounts for all facts in a given case is probably correct." Well then, I have a puzzler for you.
Yes, NJIT is how I met Aaron & the others.
I like Ockham's principle quite well. Is it better to assume that God with-held the truth until the Council of Trent, or that the truth was plainly evident prior to that?
Additionally, since most people were illiterate prior to very recent times, they were UNABLE to challenge the Catholic church. If that's what the Catholic church said was in the Bible, what were they to do? Read it to prove otherwise!? HARDLY!
There is this group of people who believe that a wonderful God-man came to earth and taught a bunch of stuff. (We're good here, I assume). One group believes that the only people who had any notion of what this God-man said were a couple of his followers and some men fourteen centuries later. There had been one or two writers, but we have no evidence of them. But this can be expected, because their works were destroyed to hide the truth. They believe that Hell shall not prevail against the God-man's followers even though He was clearly misunderstood for that long (or his true followers were all destroyed). There is another group who believes that this God-man's followers had followers who were also guided by a person in the trinity and their beliefs were guarded by this God-man.
This paragraph was not needed...I never said that the documents were shredded. That whole PCUSA thing again, huh?
Which case fits all of the evidence? Well, the former really is making a stretch. I mean, disappearing even though the Gates of Hell were not to overpower the community? Thayer even renders Mat. 16:18 like this, "not even the Gates of Hades - that which nothing was supposed to be stronger - shall surpass the Church in strength." So, then, if the Church is that strong, why is it that all of the evidense says that the Church said something other than what you're saying? As to a, "simple explanation," well, do you really think that the Church disappearing for over a millennium is simpler than your interpretation of the events being wrong? I don't.
So, then, Sola Scriptura fails the test of practicality as I have no way to prove what is in the Bible; logic, as it does not even measure up to Ockam's Razor; history, because no one believed it before Luther; and spirituality - even the Devil knows scripture, do we claim that we can know it so well as to match wits with him?
AHEM! People DID believe the scriptures to be historically accurate prior to the Reformation, thank you very much. Augustine spoke out against those that believed & taught this.
Yes, it IS possible that the above could have hurt my argument, but it does NOT! When was science more advanced...now or at the time of Agustine? Now, or at the time of Darwin? Well, prior to the 20th Century, humans looked at life mechanically...this is how Darwinism took hold. Darwinism makes sense mechanically.
BUT, now that we have better science, that shows atoms (etc) we can show that Darwin was wrong & that early scientists were wrong. The reason that science refuses to acknowledge this evidence is b/c of the implications...that there IS a creator!
Modern scientific theory states that the goal of science is to find the naturalistic explanation of things. NOT to find the BEST explanation of things...but the naturalistic. Science has already ruled out one hypothesis prior to interpreting the data. How is that scientific?
You know what's really wonderful about these arguments? Unless you give me some sort of dogmatic proof from scripture, I could simply quote poetry at you. I could even quote the Dhammapadha (Buddhaist holy book) and you couldn't really do anything. I could really be a bastard about this and refuse to make cogent argument without this proof but, as I don't believe that that is possible, I think that would pretty much end our conversation.
This is the problem I have with the Catholic church! If you do not believe that the scripture is the base-line (the end-all and be-all of understanding God), then you are right, you can quote any "holy" book.
In fact, if scripture is NOT the base-line of evidence, what is?! EVERY FORM OF BELIEF MUST have a set of rules that all other things must measure against. My beliefs are that the Bible is what all knowledge of God must measure against. To say that tradition, scripture, and church teachings are all equal is simply impossible!
The Seventh Day Adventists have tradition & church teachings. How do you know they are wrong!? WITHOUT USING THE BIBLE how can you prove them wrong? What, it doesn't "feel" right? What, you have "more knowledge" than they do? If so, then I call you a gnostic! PROVE ME WRONG!!! I've asked this question several times, and you've never answered it.
Worse yet. What if the Catholic church made a statement you did not agree with...what would you, what COULD you measure it against? You have nothing because the Church is considered equal with scripture, and scripture equal with tradition.
For instance, the Catholic church teaches circumcision. But, Paul clearly demonstrates & states that we have a NEW covenant with God. If you want to do circumcision, go the whole way & emasculate yourself!!!
In the love of God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
- Christopher Ignatius
John Paul, pray for us!
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From: Jeffrey Kadlec
To: jontrebor@aol.com
Sent: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:00 am
Subject: Re: Bible Discussion
This is going to be quite good.
Please excuse the way that your challenges are re-numbered...again, Yahoo e-mail is only marginally better than hotmail. I'm thinking about switching to gmail.
God Bless You,
Jeff
from different sources. I'm sure that you have someone who is helping you with these answers (not necessarily feeding you answers to my queries, but know one learns what you know without reading it somewhere). Ask them (or, if it's an author, write him), "How do I know which books are supposed to be in the Bible?" After all, there are at least three modern canons of the Bible (no deuterocanon, Catholic w/ Deuterocanon, and Orthodox w/ Deuterocanon) and any number of ancient ones yet you have shown nothing to say that one is right and the other wrong, save your own opinion that the deuterocanon (which you mistakingly call an apocrypha) is wrong. Yet, you have no proof!
No proof! No proof! Do you hear the call? It echoes like Poe's raven. You have not spoken to this, you have only avoided. Look at the situation. Look at yourself! You yourself are repeating another's facts. You have not come up with many of these points. You couldn't have. They are all said by better writers and deeper thinkers! And yet they still have not answered the one question that matters. What is in the Bible, what is in the Bible?
The fact that I have not personally developed these points does not mean that I can't agree with them.
Indeed, at an early age I had MANY problems with the Catholic church. Prior to truly becoming a Christian, I made the statement that "if I'm going to belong to a Church, I at least want to belong to one that uses their own manual." Prior to truly knowing Christ, or having the Spirit work in my life, I knew that the Catholic church did not conform to scripture, and that bothered me relentlessly.
Nevermind, "What does it say?" Does it really matter what a part of a document says if you don't have the entire thing? If you might be adding to it or subtracting from it unless you know what it says? For all you know, God might have intended something else to be included and man removed it. You have no evidence of the contrary.
That is a possibility.
For goodness sakes! You can't even give definite answer about whether to include the woman caught in adultery! It isn't in the earliest manuscripts! And even then, sometimes it's in Luke, sometimes it's in John!
You cannot give a definitive answer on this, either! The statement I would use, and that most Presbyterian theologians, would use would be something along these lines: "It is highly unlikely that these passages were part of the original text".
You need tradition just to make sense of it. I know that the Bible is right because the Church, guided by the Spirit, has acclaimed it. This is a mistake that you make. You assume that because it is a tradition it cannot come from God. Yet, where in the Bible does it say that all tradition is bad? Where in the Bible does it say that? Certainly not in 2 Tim. 3:6 where Paul says that there is a tradition received from him. So, then, where?
Can you refine your statement, please? 2 Timothy 3:6 has nothing to do with tradition. Please let me know which verse you meant.
I NEVER SAID ALL TRADITION IS BAD!!!! (I might have said that...but if I did, I was quite incorrect) I said that tradition CAN be bad. AND I said that tradition, as far as it is true to the Bible, is a very good thing.
Protestantism is without history. It starts in the 15th century out of nothingness! And if you don't believe me I will put a challenge to you: find me one writer prior to the 15th century who believes that Christ died for all men and was resurrected and yet, at the same time, believed in a sola scriptura mentality. Just one! And I'll bet that you won't be able to.
The Reformation (specifically) looks back to Augustine, Paul, the Gospels, and even the Old Testament (even as far back as Genesis & the fall).
The Bible is redemptive history. You can't say that the Bible is redemptive history w/out including ALL of the Bible!
Christ did not die for all men. Christ died for: he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
At this point you might argue that the Catholic Church destroyed all of those documents, but I will put that theory to the test.
I did not say that.
Now you are a man who went to NJIT, correct? I believe that is what Aaron said. Then you must know something about logical discorse. You must know about Ockham's razor then, "All things being equal, the simplest solution which accounts for all facts in a given case is probably correct." Well then, I have a puzzler for you.
Yes, NJIT is how I met Aaron & the others.
I like Ockham's principle quite well. Is it better to assume that God with-held the truth until the Council of Trent, or that the truth was plainly evident prior to that?
Additionally, since most people were illiterate prior to very recent times, they were UNABLE to challenge the Catholic church. If that's what the Catholic church said was in the Bible, what were they to do? Read it to prove otherwise!? HARDLY!
There is this group of people who believe that a wonderful God-man came to earth and taught a bunch of stuff. (We're good here, I assume). One group believes that the only people who had any notion of what this God-man said were a couple of his followers and some men fourteen centuries later. There had been one or two writers, but we have no evidence of them. But this can be expected, because their works were destroyed to hide the truth. They believe that Hell shall not prevail against the God-man's followers even though He was clearly misunderstood for that long (or his true followers were all destroyed). There is another group who believes that this God-man's followers had followers who were also guided by a person in the trinity and their beliefs were guarded by this God-man.
This paragraph was not needed...I never said that the documents were shredded. That whole PCUSA thing again, huh?
Which case fits all of the evidence? Well, the former really is making a stretch. I mean, disappearing even though the Gates of Hell were not to overpower the community? Thayer even renders Mat. 16:18 like this, "not even the Gates of Hades - that which nothing was supposed to be stronger - shall surpass the Church in strength." So, then, if the Church is that strong, why is it that all of the evidense says that the Church said something other than what you're saying? As to a, "simple explanation," well, do you really think that the Church disappearing for over a millennium is simpler than your interpretation of the events being wrong? I don't.
So, then, Sola Scriptura fails the test of practicality as I have no way to prove what is in the Bible; logic, as it does not even measure up to Ockam's Razor; history, because no one believed it before Luther; and spirituality - even the Devil knows scripture, do we claim that we can know it so well as to match wits with him?
AHEM! People DID believe the scriptures to be historically accurate prior to the Reformation, thank you very much. Augustine spoke out against those that believed & taught this.
Yes, it IS possible that the above could have hurt my argument, but it does NOT! When was science more advanced...now or at the time of Agustine? Now, or at the time of Darwin? Well, prior to the 20th Century, humans looked at life mechanically...this is how Darwinism took hold. Darwinism makes sense mechanically.
BUT, now that we have better science, that shows atoms (etc) we can show that Darwin was wrong & that early scientists were wrong. The reason that science refuses to acknowledge this evidence is b/c of the implications...that there IS a creator!
Modern scientific theory states that the goal of science is to find the naturalistic explanation of things. NOT to find the BEST explanation of things...but the naturalistic. Science has already ruled out one hypothesis prior to interpreting the data. How is that scientific?
You know what's really wonderful about these arguments? Unless you give me some sort of dogmatic proof from scripture, I could simply quote poetry at you. I could even quote the Dhammapadha (Buddhaist holy book) and you couldn't really do anything. I could really be a bastard about this and refuse to make cogent argument without this proof but, as I don't believe that that is possible, I think that would pretty much end our conversation.
This is the problem I have with the Catholic church! If you do not believe that the scripture is the base-line (the end-all and be-all of understanding God), then you are right, you can quote any "holy" book.
In fact, if scripture is NOT the base-line of evidence, what is?! EVERY FORM OF BELIEF MUST have a set of rules that all other things must measure against. My beliefs are that the Bible is what all knowledge of God must measure against. To say that tradition, scripture, and church teachings are all equal is simply impossible!
The Seventh Day Adventists have tradition & church teachings. How do you know they are wrong!? WITHOUT USING THE BIBLE how can you prove them wrong? What, it doesn't "feel" right? What, you have "more knowledge" than they do? If so, then I call you a gnostic! PROVE ME WRONG!!! I've asked this question several times, and you've never answered it.
Worse yet. What if the Catholic church made a statement you did not agree with...what would you, what COULD you measure it against? You have nothing because the Church is considered equal with scripture, and scripture equal with tradition.
For instance, the Catholic church teaches circumcision. But, Paul clearly demonstrates & states that we have a NEW covenant with God. If you want to do circumcision, go the whole way & emasculate yourself!!!
In the love of God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
- Christopher Ignatius
John Paul, pray for us!
AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.