Deacon Ananias Vs. Matt Slick: Sola Scriptura

[Iacobus]

And there has been no evidence provided for that whatsoever. Where is this "eventual organization" in church history? Did any church father or ecumenical council in the first 1,000 years have the same 76 book canon that your church believes in today? The answer looks pretty clear.

Stop lying. You are the one who has continuously dodged and deflected explaining where canon came from. You demanded dates, times, and places, criticizing them all, while providing none of your own. Multiple posters have you given information of the organization of canon in Church history and you are saying that no evidence has been provided.

No one rejects the authority of men. The Lordship of Christ is the authority on which the Word is preached (Matthew 28:18-19). The question is what is the ultimate authority for Christians? Your church or the Scriptures?

You and many others in this topic already answered that Christ is the authority for Christians. Not Scripture. Not the Church. Christ is in the Scriptures. Christ is in the Church. The Church and the Scriptures do not contradict or conflict. You keep talking as if the Church and Scripture are in conflict. This is a false premise and you have done nothing to even argue the point.

Ultimately, it comes down to the individual. Every Orthodox church makes itself the ultimate authority. If you disagree with your church's claims of authority then you can just go to the next one.

And finally this is simply laughable. You are either severely ignorant of the Orthodox Church or arguing in bad faith. I would be happy to share more information on why this is not the case with the Orthodox Church but I don't feel that you have been responsive to the research and information I have attempted to share with you thus far.

 

[Get2choppaaa]

Amen. He left a standard for His church in the Scriptures written by the Apostles.


Does God stutter? How many interpretations of the Biblical Canon are there in Orthodoxy? Do we go with the canon of 81 books? 77 books? 76? 72? Which is authoritative and by what authority does one settle this?


Ultimately, it comes down to the individual. Every Orthodox church makes itself the ultimate authority. If you disagree with your church's claims of authority then you can just goq to the next one.

Wrong. Churches exercise autonomy to a degree, but there is a congruence/agreement of both the rules, services, the traditions, and theology.

In Apostolic Christianity, Christ is the authority and aHis rule of authority are the Scriptures that were given to the Church, which is His Bride and of whom He is the head.

Ok... But how is that interpreted? Who makes the decision on what is meant by which language/scriptural passage?

The issue with only reading the book and interpretation without Church Tradition is that you can twist the teachings and the intent to be suitable to whatever you're particular proclivities are.

How many faggots have you seen saying promoting blasphemies about God and homosexuality then quoting a Bible verse as justification to promote sin.

You can literally be you own Pope and interpret a scripture to mean something devoid of it's original meaning if you so choose and each sect of

There is a lot of blatant misstatements here about Orthodoxy, which I can only assume are made out of ignorance and not bad faith. I'm not sure that it's going to be productive in continuing to engage.

 

[Samseau]

Look, the deal with tradition is easy to understand through analogy.

Imagine seeing a sheet of music for the first time, and it's thousands of years old. You sing the notes, but do you really know what it sounds like? Without hearing someone sing that music from the ancient past, then you have no idea how the song truly sounds. You may have an idea, an interpretation in your head, but without hearing the music from someone who knows exactly how to read it, all you can do is guess to what it actually sounds like.

Likewise, reading scripture without tradition is like reading music from thousands of years ago without having any idea of what it actually sounds like. Scripture was written by men, who were holy witnesses to Christ, and wrote down some of what they saw. They even admit at the end of their gospels that they only begun to capture a fraction of the wonder and beauty that was Christ in their text. They wrote from a time, and a place, that had tradition underbracing everything. 85% of what Jesus said was in reference to Jewish tradition, to be understood in that context so that other Jews would understand.

Without keeping that tradition, all you can do when reading scripture is guess at what some of the passages of the Bible mean. Pearls before swine? How would anyone know that swine was the foulest animal unless they had tradition to tell them? Turning water into wine? How would anyone know the significance of wine without tradition? Reading scripture without tradition is like reading musical notation without any music to understand it.

At best, you can read scripture, get lucky, and understand it perfectly. This happens. There are great Protestants who would easily pass for an Orthodox. But these guys are just lucky. For every holy Protestant, there are 8 or 9 lost Protestants who completely misinterpret the Bible because they lack tradition to translate the lessons of Christ properly. That is why there are 20K denominations of Protestantism.

My main criticism of Protestantism is that it is unreliable, and produces wildly varying results. Some Protestants are better than Catholic and Orthodox, while most Prots are hopelessly confused and lost. They stumble into heresy without realizing it and Satan leads them to hell. Look at how many Protestants practically worship Jews, for God's sake, just because "JeSuS wAs AlSo A jEW!"

That is why even on this forum, before I could agree to establish a Protestant section, there had to be a separate list of rules to keep out the ridiculous interpretations many Protestants have. The reason they have these interpretations is because without tradition, reading scripture is like singing music off a sheet you've never heard before. Singing directly from the sheet is basically winging it, and you might get lucky and sing it perfectly but chances are you'll sound terrible and misinterpret the song.

I would encourage you to not open your mouth about the Orthodox Church until you rectify whichever issue you suffer from the two.

Tone it down brother. There is no need to get defensive here, GodFather poses no threat to anyone. People will make mistakes and there is no need to bash them for it.

 

[Iacobus]

Forgive me, that comment was overly aggressive & juvenile.

 

[BrotherAugustine]

You've answered the first 2 questions; how many, what basis. But I also want to know when this canon list arrived.
Your basis for accepting the canon assumes a church tradition. When do we see that tradition in church history? Are you saying that this 76 book canon has been accepted from the beginning, is it a development, or does it not appear in church history at all?


What do you mean by "archaeology?" Do you mean textual criticism? I did not bring him up over his translation methodology; we'll come back to him on the issue of the canon.


By accepted, you mean that they believed them to be Holy Books of God or that they simply possessed these books?


I've talked to him. He blocked me. I would like to suggest Michael Kruger as a resource on the Biblical Canon.


Obviously, that is the heart of our disagreement. If there is no tradition that gives a basis for the canon then the argument is moot. Especially given the fact that the Scriptures were given as the authority over the churches they were sent to.


You consider the Didache to be Apostolic? Why does no one consider it Canonical Scripture?


Are you sure he contained no wrong teaching? Even when he says "We are not justified by works but by faith?" I love Clement of Rome and found his writings highly edifying. However, I do think treating the canonicity of his writings as optional is very problematic. Also, phoenix's don't exist.


Thank you! I find this to be a lot of fun.

The earliest extant list of the Biblical canon is Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39.

 

[BrotherAugustine]

“Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-Breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Which New Testament books and letters had been written by the time this verse was?

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

“Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-Breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Which New Testament books and letters had been written by the time this verse was?

We do not have an Apostolic timeline of when the New Testament was written, it doesn't change the fact that Paul is making a comment on the nature of "All Scripture" not "Only the Old Testament Scriptures."

Edit: As for Athanasius' Festal Letter, that has already been responded to but I will go into more detail so people do not read into it anything that isn't there. I do not understand why Eastern Orthodox keep citing his letter as the basis for their canon when they don't even agree with his canon. He omits Esther as canonical. He includes some apocrypha as canonical then condemns other apocryphal books. He defined his Old Testament canon on the basis that the Hebrews accepted those books, his basis for determining the Old Testament canon was correct, he was wrong on the data, as other church fathers would demonstrate. Even in this letter, he differentiates between canonical scripture and books that are edifying but not canonical.

From the Eastern Orthodox perspective, it is not just Protestants who are "taking books out of the Bible" but Catholics, and most of the Church Fathers as well.

 

[Lawrence87]

The earliest extant list of the Biblical canon is Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39.

This is an important point.

This was in 367AD. And at this time there was not just the New Testament canon and that was it, there were numerous other texts circulating claiming Apostolic origin, and presenting themselves as authentic Gospels and Epistles.

A man without divine inspiration could easily have been misled into thinking that any number of these forgeries were genuine, and doubtlessly countless people did fall for them (and still do). The one thing that preserved the canon of Scripture was a tradition as to the authenticity of the books we now call the New Testament.

The question is not "did God inspire this process?" Because the Orthodox do not doubt that tradition is divinely inspired. The issues come when you reject church tradition.

You end up with a situation wherein the traditions that preserved the canon are authentically inspired because otherwise you cannot claim that they were preserved accurately. But you reject any notion that the church could have been inspired in any other regard.

It becomes absurd because the picture portrayed is one of a church that basically fell into error extremely rapidly and failed to preserve authentic Christianity, but somehow the only ball they didn't manage to drop was the preservation of the authentic canon. Which presumably God guided them towards so that over a millenia later people could finally get it.

 

[BrotherAugustine]

We do not have an Apostolic timeline of when the New Testament was written, it doesn't change the fact that Paul is making a comment on the nature of "All Scripture" not "Only the Old Testament Scriptures."

We do have a pretty good idea, actually. None of the Gospels had been written before St. Paul's death. So how would it have been understood by the people who received and read the letter?

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

We do have a pretty good idea, actually. None of the Gospels had been written before St. Paul's death. So how would it have been understood by the people who received and read the letter?

Timothy would have understood 2 Timothy in light of 1 Timothy, where Paul quotes from the Gospel of Luke and cites it as Scripture.

 

[BrotherAugustine]

Timothy would have understood 2 Timothy in light of 1 Timothy, where Paul quotes from the Gospel of Luke and cites it as Scripture.

I don't agree with this, but it seems like you're missing the point here so I will give an example that is beyond any sort of debate. The Book of Revelation was written long after the death of St. Paul. Given that it wasn't written by the time of the Epistle to Timothy, and subsequently could not possibly have been referred to by St. Paul as "Scripture," on what grounds do you consider it Scripture?

The Orthodox Church can answer this question, but Protestants cannot do so without either appealing to their feelings ("I get a special feeling when I read it that lets me know it's Scripture") or simply asserting that "it's part of the Bible" (thereby failing to understand the question).

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

I don't agree with this, but it seems like you're missing the point here so I will give an example that is beyond any sort of debate. The Book of Revelation was written long after the death of St. Paul. Given that it wasn't written by the time of the Epistle to Timothy, and subsequently could not possibly have been referred to by St. Paul as "Scripture," on what grounds do you consider it Scripture?

The Orthodox Church can answer this question, but Protestants cannot do so without either appealing to their feelings ("I get a special feeling when I read it that lets me know it's Scripture") or simply asserting that "it's part of the Bible" (thereby failing to understand the question).

Paul quoting from the Gospels is not a point of agreement or disagreement, it is a demonstrable fact.

As for knowing that Revelation is Scripture, it was written by the Apostle John who was inspired by God; it is self-attesting.

This thread has shown that the Orthodox "answer" to this question is not grounded in history, it is a dogma.

 

[Jeremiah Branch]

From Canon 36 of the Council of Carthage, 397 A.D.: (copied from Wikipedia; also in Denzinger)

It was also determined that besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in the Church under the title of divine Scriptures. The Canonical Scriptures are these: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua the son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two books of Paraleipomena, Job, the Psalter, five books of Solomon,* the books of the twelve prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, Daniel, Tobit, Judith, Esther, two books of Esdras, two Books of the Maccabees.​

​

Of the New Testament: four books of the Gospels, one book of the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, one epistle of the same [writer] to the Hebrews, two Epistles of the Apostle Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude, one book of the Apocalypse of John.​

​

So let the church over the sea be consulted to confirm this canon. Let it also be allowed that the Passions of Martyrs be read when their festivals are kept.​

​

Let this be made known also to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other bishops of those parts, for the purpose of confirming that Canon. Because we have received from our fathers that those books must be read in the Church.​

Not an ecumenical council, but indicative and evidence of what the church considered to be Scripture.

* = Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus.

 

[Iacobus]

I do not understand why Eastern Orthodox keep citing his letter as the basis for their canon when they don't even agree with his canon.

Because the canon, historically, demonstrably, developed over time. You keep acting as if we are trying to prove YOUR point by citing these historical letters and documents. We are not trying to say that there was only ever one canon that was delivered perfectly in one exact piece in one point in time with every letter and book in the exact correct sequence and with no discussion or debate between men of which was correct. That's YOUR argument.

As for knowing that Revelation is Scripture, it was written by the Apostle John who was inspired by God; it is self-attesting.

How do you know that Revelation was written by St. John?

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

How do you know that Revelation was written by St. John?

The first chapter of Revelation.

 

[Iacobus]

The first chapter of Revelation.

So you believe that because it has his name in the text, this proves that he wrote it?

 

[BrotherAugustine]

Paul quoting from the Gospels is not a point of agreement or disagreement, it is a demonstrable fact.

As for knowing that Revelation is Scripture, it was written by the Apostle John who was inspired by God; it is self-attesting.

This thread has shown that the Orthodox "answer" to this question is not grounded in history, it is a dogma.

Did you know that whether Revelation was Scripture was debated by the students of the Apostles, the holy Saints and Bishops, for hundreds of years? It doesn’t appear from the historical record that its presence in the Bible is “self-attesting.” Further, Paul’s letter to Laodicea was also written by an Apostle. Is it Scripture?

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

So you believe that because it has his name in the text, this proves that he wrote it?

The internal evidence of the text is consistent with John as the author.

 

[Iacobus]

The internal evidence of the text is consistent with John as the author.

So the correct method to ascertain authenticity of would-be canonical texts is textual criticism?

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

So the correct method to ascertain authenticity of would-be canonical texts is textual criticism?

I already gave the answer for that above. Most of the evidence, whether internal or external, is in favor of John as author. Ultimately, Revelation is canonical because God inspired it.

Did you know that whether Revelation was Scripture was debated by the students of the Apostles, the holy Saints and Bishops, for hundreds of years? It doesn’t appear from the historical record that its presence in the Bible is “self-attesting.”

I did. Thank you for pointing out that by it being debated, there were always Christians who believed it to be the inspired Word of God, it doesn't get more self-attesting than that. If you want to side with the Christians who argue against it's canonicity, like those who refuse to read it in their liturgies, you are free to do so.