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You have been corrected before on that. You know this. Perhaps you forgot. But Scripture certainly DID include the NT letters by this point.
Peter referred to Paul's writings as Scripture in 2 Peter 3:16.
Paul also referred to his own writings as Scripture when he differentiated between his opinion and God's Word in 1 Cor 7. He knew that God was speaking through him, and he made a point to say it was HIS opinion in that particular passage, and was not necessarily God speaking.
Meh. Not worth responding to. The gospels, Revelation, and several others hadn't been written yet.
This is a foolish answer. The only "honest person" who would say that is a honest simpleton, because anyone else knows that air is a physical substance that can be felt, and weighed, and measured. Furthermore, the existence of air has nothing whatsoever do do with the statement that was made: namely, that the concept that there is a "Bible" containing a specific number of identified books is something that cannot be found in the Bible itself, and that instead, the idea that there are a certain and identifiable number of divinely-inspired books that together form the "Bible" is necessary extra-biblical.
Frankly, I consider your blather about "illusions", and your refusal to address the point at hand, to be an indication of a lack of honesty on your part, because the lack of any mention of a two-part "Bible" in the Bible itself is no "illusion", but is instead a cold, hard, and readily discernable fact.
But let's indulge your fondness for subterfuge and smoke and mirrors for a moment, and let's pretend that if we only use all our senses, we will see the Bible identifying itself. So tell us then -- Where in the Bible is the Bible (and I mean the whole Bible, containing both a New Testament and an Old Testament) mentioned at all? And where in the Bible are we given explicit information regarding which books are included in the Bible? Finally, if this information is not in the Bible, where is it -- and how is relying on that standard of faith outside the Bible not fatal to a belief in "sola scriptura"?
Go ahead, dazzle us with your wisdom...
You are a distraction. You seek to impose this narrative upon an existing conversation. You remind me of my big sister when I was small asking me why the sky was blue, then not taking my answer as any kind of answer, but going on with another similar question based upon some word that needed to be defined from the answer I had giver her. That's expected, though. Everybody has the right to their own place to start from.
I was asking you why you didn't see what I was talking about. I asked that way because, in the case of the Neeker illusion, there is a choice, but with the other there isn't. I wasn't referring to a canon by introducing the subject of self-reference. You seem to be taking an example and saying that it means something about a requirement for a canon.
If you not seeing what I was saying was a choice that is down to you deliberately not seeing, probably because you have something else on your mind. The other way, though, is my fault. If I am trying to get you to see something that you just can't see, I need to change something about what I am doing to get you to see it. Maybe you saw a trigger word, and assumed something. Me, saying the same thing the same way, over and over, won't help.
Because the Elijah story I talked about is not in some obscure work. It isn't in the Apocrypha. In fact, it was the common story that, at the time of Jesus, the people were looking to see fulfilled in some way. So, I am not talking about something strange that has an argument for inclusion. It is already included, in anybody's canon. Beyond that, is the issue that the author of the book of both Luke and Acts colluded to write the story in the way it is. I looked at that, and then decided that the way that Herod, in this case a later Herod, died could not have been a fabrication. It was a fact that it made no sense to have been ginned up for some point that was being made to occur the way it did, when it did. It happened, actually in context, and in prophetic fulfillment of the narrative the Elijah/Elisha story was meant to relate.
As for your question, what makes something the word of God is that it says what God has to say, right? Your question is like that of children, if they question their parents. Can you go back and forth from one parent to the other, asking for that one thing? It actually works for a lot of kids. Not so much when the parents are working together, though. (I got mad at you a little bit and said this paragraph. I can't take it back, having said it. Others have read it, so I would be lying to remove it. But, I think it was too much. Sorry if it offended you.)
Because I didn't introduce anything new. There was nothing that sought a new canon in my argument. I don't understand why you seem to believe that what I said required anything like new material. Like I said, the Elijah narrative was the main story that, at the time of Jesus, the people were looking for some sort of fulfillment of.
If anything, we would need to be protected from undue modifications that changed the narrative in some subtle way. That would be a good reason for all of the events to have been written down well beforehand, even if God wasn't trying to advertise what He was doing with His Spirit as much as He was advertising what He was doing with Jesus.
I'm trying to tell you that it was fulfilled, maybe even in sort of the way they were looking for, but it was fulfilled by the Holy Spirit. It was a one for one fulfillment, mostly chronologically, but not always. Every pertinent event from the prophet's lives has a fulfillment in either Luke or Acts. It is more the Spirit's story, when told from that perspective.
Last edited by Am I a Prophet; 10-10-2021 at 08:55 AM..
Reason: the writing process
Meh. Not worth responding to. The gospels, Revelation, and several others hadn't been written yet.
ok?
What's your point?
The NT letters had been written at the time that Paul wrote that. He knew God was speaking through him and the apostles. To suggest otherwise is simply a fairy tale.
It's accuracy in prophecy. Take for example Job 26:7 which states that the earth hangs upon nothing, that statement was written before 1500 BCE, yet that was completely unknown for millenniums afterward. Isa 40:22 brings out the earth is a circle, do you remember Jill how we were taught in school how the earth was flat until Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.
Yes, the Bible says that the earth hangs on nothing. Instead, it says that the earth rests on pillars. And a circle is not a sphere. The circle being referred to is the horizon. When you look at the horizon and turn around 360 degrees you see the circle of the horizon. The Bible does present a flat earth with a hard solid dome above it.
The Bible does not present modern day cosmology. It presents the ancient cosmology of an ancient Near Eastern people.
Last edited by Michael Way; 10-10-2021 at 09:21 AM..
You have been corrected before on that. You know this. Perhaps you forgot. But Scripture certainly DID include the NT letters by this point.
Peter referred to Paul's writings as Scripture in 2 Peter 3:16.
Paul also referred to his own writings as Scripture when he differentiated between his opinion and God's Word in 1 Cor 7. He knew that God was speaking through him, and he made a point to say it was HIS opinion in that particular passage, and was not necessarily God speaking.
Scripture just denotes writing, BF. It has the embellished connotation you apply to it because of the religious indoctrination you have had.
You realize that the doctrine of Inspiration, as has classically been held, does not suggest that it was "dictated", right? That's a straw man.
Ha, I've seen that painting of Jesus whispering into the ear of St. Matthew, so some people do believe that.
But yes, I do know that most people don't consider it literally dictated.
The use of the word was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still, the idea exists that divine inspiration means that it was written as God wanted it written and that therefore it cannot be wrong.
I don't agree with that. It is inspired by the faith and beliefs and perspectives of the authors, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that it is infallible. Nothing humans do is.
This does not mean it has no value. There's an oddity in these conversations, which is not surprising considering a lot of the black-and-white/good vs. evil thinking, that if one does not believe it is literally divinely inspired, why they must be discarding Scripture all together.
It's simply untrue and kind of a sleazy accusation to make against non-fundamentalist Christians.
The NT letters had been written at the time that Paul wrote that. He knew God was speaking through him and the apostles. To suggest otherwise is simply a fairy tale.
He BELIEVED God was speaking through him and the apostles. Obviously his beliefs were influenced by his culture; for example, the ridiculous strictures against women cutting their hair or not speaking in a religious setting. God had nothing to do with that, lol.
Paul was not being a jackwagon, though. He truly thought that was the correct thing to say, given his background, and frankly, it probably worked in that time and place. It doesn't work in this time and place.
How am I, a Baptist, different from you, as a Christian?
Actually, I am a duly-baptized Southern Baptist, granted entry to Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary upon the recommendation of multiple pastors.
The issue isn't how I am different from you. The issue is why the Southern Baptist Convention is crumbling like a stale cookie over doctrinal issues. The issue is why the Southern Baptists and thousands of other denominations hold such different doctrines while all purporting to adhere to sola scriptura.
I happen to believe, at the end of a long and winding road, that there is one keeper of the original Christian message: The Eastern Orthodox Church. Had the Great Schism and Protestant Reformation not occurred, the problem identified by the OP would not exist.
Of course I'm arrogant. As is everyone else here. The question is how much arrogance we have. I know the limits of mine, though, and I will not go so far as to pick and choose what Scripture to believe, thinking I know more than Christians 500 or 1000 years ago.
As always, the elephant in the room is "What does it mean to be a Christian?"
Since that discussion is foreclosed by the terms of service, threads such as this always turn into a tap dance to nowhere.
My honest response to a large percentage of the posts on the Christianity forum would be "That's not a Christian position." It's not as though, in the real world, the term "Christian" is completely without boundaries.
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