My church defined your church's bible

..........CONTINUED

Well, you believe there are, which is great, but over time many people have believed otherwise.

Daniel Wallace, who is a bible scholar and also a fundamentalist evangelical Christian has said:

http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1496

"The list of passages which seem explicitly to identify Christ with God varies from scholar to scholar, but the number is almost never more than a half dozen or so. As is well known, almost all of the texts are disputed as to their affirmation—due to textual or grammatical glitches—John 1:1 and 20:28 being the only two which are usually conceded without discussion."

And of those two, John 20:28 is sometimes said to be referring to Jesus and the Father, which wipes that one out. And John 1:1's interpretation depends on whether you believe there to be one God or not, or in other words, it doesn't prove anything alone, and given John 10's discussion of "gods" has been disputed also.

In other words, you've got other verses, but they've all been disputed. That's great that you've come to the right conclusion, but there's a lot of other people out there who aren't as smart as you, and need help. But who to trust? Not just anybody, I'm sure you'll agree. We would say the same as what we said 1900 years ago when the gnostics were active - you trust the church the apostles built.

Well no, not "just about all" churches actually. Presbyterians and many baptists claim there should not be someone overrseeing others, but rather there should be a group of elders, none of which has the others under him. And then there are the quakers who don't have any leaders at all. I think we're up to about 2000 churches now.

As to the "biblical words", I don't know about you, but I don't speak Greek, so I use a translation, one of which is "bishop". The Greek Orthodox I assume, continue to use the biblical words, because they speak... well Greek.

Of course if you were 100 years old in the year 180, you may be old enough to remember the apostles, so how it all supposedly got forgotten remains a mystery.

But let's say they were "reading it through the lens of tradition, and assumed they needed no more proof than "we all believe this".... Why did they do THAT??

Let me suggest to you why: Nothing in scripture says not to do that. Scripture says to hold to the traditions. Scripture doesn't say to hold only to scripture. Common sense would have dictated to them that anything which all the churches hold to is highly likely to be apostolic in origin.

Thus, they acted rationally, correct?

Well, according to you it doesn't matter if you've got a bunch of stuff wrong, as long as you have Jesus right? But Jesus' last prayer is that "they may be one, just as we are one". So Jesus cares if we are one, right?

You already have the jellyfish concept! You havn't yet torn down your denominational signs, but you are most of the way there in spirit.

But you already really agree that the church is defined by her traditions! JWs claim their doctrine only comes from scripture, but you don't accept them. Why? Because their traditions are too far different from your own traditions for you to accept. And Mormons have a different tradition of what is scripture. They believe in Jesus, but again their traditions are too different for you to come with.

In both cases, different tradition has led to different beliefs which leads you to exclude them from your understanding of the church. You're no different to us at all, it's just that we're a little more particular than you in how much variation we will tolerate. But hey, give it another 30 years and you may be calling the JWs and Mormons your brethren.

 

Whatever OT scriptures you refer to must have had a fairly tenuous relationship to Paul's teachings on communion and baptism. A sola-scriptura position on the OT, would not have you arriving at the NT church. However yes, OT plus Paul's oral instruction on interpretation may get you some way there.

That's a lot of what I'm saying. The OT scriptures for example make use of icons. You may not get to the Orthodox position with purely sola-scripture, but scripture plus the assistence of the apostolic tradition of interpretation does get you there.

Since you understand this, why do you still rail against the apostolic church?

Even that verse, it says to withdraw from a brother who walks disorderly AND not according to the tradition he received from us. It doesn't tell us what "walking disorderly" means. You don't know that without referring to the tradition. If walking disorderly was self-explanatory, he wouldn't have mentioned the tradition.

No, the reason they are without sin is not because they are sinning, yet unaccountable. The reason they are without sin is because they havn't sinned!

How can it be moot? You're either worthy, or not worthy. There's no option for "inapplicable".

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/guidech3.pdf

The Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. That doesn't mean something is true "because we say so", unless we are the Church. Your mission is to find out if we are the Church, because the Church is that which has ever upheld and supported the truth. There is no option of saying that the church stopped upholding the truth at some point.

Some baptists have a pastor and some deacons. That's not the 1st century model Ignatius presents, where there is a bishop, some elders and some deacons. Some baptists have a number of elders and a number of deacons. That is not the 1st century model either.

The usual reason there are churches so small they (supposedly) "don't need that" is because of the hundreds of denominations in protestantism. If there was one church in a city, even if it had multiple meeting places or congregations, then there could be one bishop, as there was in the 1st century. And otherwise, you could have a bishop in another city, which also was a common thing in the early church if your church was too small.

Of course, the other point is that some small 20 person group with a single leader lacks accountability. In the Orthodox church, everybody is accountable. Even the Patriarch has a spiritual consultant, and of course each Orthodox church is accountable to all the others at pain of loss of fellowship.

Ok, not sure if there is some criticism coming at Orthodoxy here or not.

Actually, you seem to be the one who is saying it doesn't matter what you believe, thus your advocacy of the jellyfish church. What I said was, as long as you don't seem too particular what you believe, why do you continue in the disunity of protestantism which has split the church, which previously had a tragic 2 way split, into a 10,000-way split?

Not necessarily, depends when John died. Anyway, the point is, why was there never controversy in the 2nd century, when there would have been people old enough to contradict anybody who would change things?

Strangely, I don't see baptists getting mixed up and baptizing babies, or Presbyterians getting mixed up and refusing to baptize babies.

Some would say we have a theological agenda to uphold the tradition of a Nicean creed, which supposedly, some would argue, was unduly influenced by secular concerns.

You say it isn't fair, but from an Orthodox perspective, protestantism is losing its trinitarian doctrine. Go to an Orthodox liturgy sometime, everything is in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You could stay in protestand land for decades and never even hear about the trinity. There's a shift going on, that unless you are standing in a position that is not changing (Orthodoxy), you won't even be aware of it.

As far as the RCC is concerned, we don't believe they hold to tradition. I think I've pointed out they've changed many things - age of receiving communion, leavened vs unleavened bread, the papacy, the filoque, laity not receiving the cup, indulgences and so on and so forth. We don't claim that tradition is good, unless it is the tradition of the Church, which is the church that doesn't change tradition. We claim to be the Church, thus we claim to be the ones who hold to the traditions. And again, we don't ask people to just trust us, we ask they should investigate the claims by reading about the early church.

If you ever decide to investigate Orthodoxy further, may I suggest "The Orthodox Church" by Timothy Ware and "Becoming Orthodox" by Peter Gillquist. The latter book is the story of a protestant pastor of over a thousand people who converted the whole church en-masse over to Orthodoxy.

 

There wasn't enough controversy, because there wasn't controversy! The Jews were used to the use of icons, and the Christians merely carried on the tradition. Furthermore, you've got the same problem on your hands, because icons from the 2nd century Christians have been found. So why is there no controversy in the 2nd and 3rd century fathers? You are forced to admit there is no controversy. You can't complain about lack of controversy in the NT scriptures but then have no reason for the lack of controversy later on when even you have to admit icons were in use.

See also this link:

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/cherub_arks.aspx

It doesn't raise "many" questions, it raises one question which would have been quickly dispensed by pointing to a Jewish synagogue and distinguinging the two.

The exact date to celebrate festivals is not a matter of doctrine, and there may well have been no agreement between the apostles or churches from the beginning. It arose out of a fundamental conflict between the Jewish method of calculation and the new consideration of the day Christ was risen. It can't be compared.

So you think the "walking disorderly" or in other translations "an unruly life" is purely about not working and wasting time being a busybody? I can only say I disagree, that is only one part of it, and Paul says that those unruly are those who don't "follow my example", and I hardly think the only visible sign of Paul's lifestyle was that he wasn't lazy.

We would disagree. We would say the doctrine and the faith was formed by the apostles in the 1st century. There may have been some clarification and development in a sense, but not any wholesale resetting of doctrine because nobody knew anything until they sat down and tryed to figure out the scriptures. The apostles didn't drop the scriptures out of the sky onto the church, and left them to figure it out. Rather the apostles taught the church the faith, and wrote the epistles to supplement their oral instruction.

That hasn't been my experience. Even otherwise "serious" churches don't really talk about the trinity. Of course, with your advocated jellyfish church, your "serious" church will be dragged down to the lowest denominator.

You're reading it with the Western mindset, and not the Orthodox mindset, which is understandable. But if you read it more carefully, especially in conjunction with other Orthodox instruction, you will understand.

First notice the definition of sin given - it isn't just sin as in "I've done the wrong thing". This was how I was using the word "sin", because I'm talking to you, a protestant, with your protestant definitions. But the definition given here: sin is "a condition". It does NOT mean that the baby is guilty. What it means is the baby inherits a propensity to sin, as well as the effects of sin from being in a fallen world. It doesn't mean the baby has inherited some kind of "original sin" which it needs immediate atonement for. But it does benefit from the blessings and graces of baptism because of the effects of sin, both in the environment and its own propensity to sin.

Because pragmatically, that's not how children work, and theologically, that's not how salvation works.

Pragmatically, young children believe what they are told by their parents. It's only when they get older that they gain the ability to reject what their parents tell them.

Theologically, children are not born guilty, they are born innocent (albeit, with a nature that will give them a propensity to sin). Since they are born innocent, the choice they need to make is not "for Christ" as you put it, rather the choice is "against Christ". It was the same with Adam, he started out in harmony with God, and the error was choosing against God. Since they are born as God's children, we baptise them into God's people, and we instruct them on how to stay there.

This is where Orthodoxy would kick up a fuss about the West's error with regards to original sin.

Well, some denominations would have some similarities. Of course, in your independent church scenario, it also differs from the early church in that the early church bishops were all communicating with each other and keeping each other accountable in the unity of the faith, as you see in Ignatius writing to all the other bishops.

 

Remember, not every tradition is Holy Tradition. Holy Tradition is the catholic faith - the faith that the early church held universally. If you could prove that the early church universally held to something about the calendar, then maybe we'd have something to talk about.

The Jews allowed pictures that reflected what was happening in heaven. Since the whole foundation of Christianity was that Christ died to release the souls from Hades into heaven, then there was no controversy that pictures of heaven now included the saints. If you disputed that, you disputed Christianity itself.

All those I attended in my protestant days. Maybe if I'd hung around a little longer in a presbyterian church I would have come across something...maybe

Protestantism is moving towards the jellyfish.

It says to beware of those who don't walk according to the traditions, so yes it includes all the traditions.

Sure, and that is what you must promise to have your child baptized.

Which is obviously bad, but it isn't what we teach.

But isn't the "once saved always saved" attitude of protestantism worse? I walked down at the alter call, so now I'm ok?

Because they have a propensity to sin, and thus are benefited by the graces and blessings that come from baptism.

 

As far as icons, well it would depend what you mean by "use icons". If you'd gone into the Jewish synagogue and shut your eyes during the whole service to avoid seeing the Cherabim, I think we'd have to say yes, you are walking unruly and making controversy in the community of god. As far as baptism, yes it would be a sin not to baptise your child into the Church, just like it would be a sin not to circumcise your child if you were a Jew.

Why would that be a Holy Tradition? I mean, they didn't even understand that there was 365.25 days in a year, so calendars back then were all over the place. As I said, not everything is a Holy Tradition.

The problem is not so much whether minor things can keep you out of the true church. The problem is that there can only be one church, because there is only one truth. And the Church, being the pillar and support of the truth, must be one. That doesn't mean you're not a Christian outside the true church. But it does mean you have no authority to say what the truth is. You and your church didn't copy the scriptures through the ages. You and your church didn't take part in confirming the canon. You and your church didn't pass on the apostolic interpretations and context and traditions. That which you didn't receive, you can't pass on with authority, you can only pass on with your personal opinion.

The church is one, not merely in space, but also in time. The church must be one in doctrine, not only with those alive today, but also with those alive yesterday and throughout the centuries. The church must be one with all the Christians from the 1st century through to the present day. They are all there in heaven looking down as a great crowd of witnesses (Heb 12:1), and we refuse to break fellowship with either the living or the dead.

Depends what part of the world you are in. In my part of the world, the "liberal mainliners" broke of from presbyterianism and a number of other denominations and renamed themselves. The presbyterians who were left are fundamentalist, Westminster confession-quoting, Nicean creed speaking, serious folk.

They receive blessing. It's hard briefly to explain the Orthodox concept of blessings and sacrament. If an Orthodox person sees a priest, they will ask them for a blessing.

This idea has been resurrected in modern day protestantism, where frequently at the end of a service people will go up for prayers, or laying on of hands, and so forth. I guess protestants won't do it if they thought there was no point, right?

Baptism is a special blessing that assists the child in its future walk with God, assisting its learning and discernment in the kingdom.

 

Are you plotting the schism for the 4096th church? :laugh:

Fortunately, what is Holy Tradition, and what is mere tradition, is not decided by mere opinion of what seems good.

I understand what you want to say - why should you care about icons if we don't care about the dates of holy days.

What we say is that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. What you want to say is, why can't protestants be the church too, since they are the pillar and ground for 80% of the truth. What we say, is if you are the pillar and ground for 80% truth, 10% falsehood and 10% of the truth absent without trace, then you are not the pillar and ground of the truth, and thus not the Church in its full sense.

It's the same as if someone set up a church that only believed say Matthew, John and Peter from the New Testament is scripture, because only they were only ones written by members of the 12 disciples. Now what happens when someone comes along wanting to know the truth? Will they find such a church to be the pillar and ground of the truth? I don't think so. They may be trying to follow Christ, but they would lack the fullness of truth, and not be a completely legitimate church of God. We believe there is a place where someone can turn to find the whole truth - the church. We don't believe there is nobody out there able to present them with the whole truth.

You can't really claim that anybody in protestant land has the truth available for people to come and get. Sure, you have the bible. But if the bible was the fullness of truth, then Jehovah's witnesses have the fullness of truth too. Do you typically find people getting the fullness of truth from them? The same goes for Anglicans, Presbyterians and who knows who else, because you think they got it wrong on baptism, and lots of other stuff besides. If someone went to them for the fullness of truth, they would be led astray according to you. Should it be this tough to get at the whole truth?

You want to say, maybe not everything we teach is so important. Obviously, not everything is of equal importance. I mean, I could say the same thing to you. Is baptism really as important as living a holy life and loving your brother as yourself? Of course not. Does that mean we are free to abandon baptism? We would say no. The Salvation Army would say 'yes'.

There is an extremely clear command called "hold to the traditions". You want to say you can escape from the command because you don't believe the traditions are of God. The trouble is, that isn't what scripture says. Scripture never says to compare the traditions to scripture to check if you should follow them. It says to hold to them, end of story.

This is not a matter of judging the salvation of individuals. It's making a righteous judgment on where the truth lies. And I never said "you aren't....", I said "your church isn't....". You've already admitted you're not doctrinally in line with your own church, because you may be willing to baptise a small child. So is your church the pillar and ground of 95% of the truth? Does the verse say the church is the pillar and ground of 95% of the truth?

Christianity is a religion grounded in history. Christ lived. The 12 apostles lived. They set up a church. They appointed leaders. They told the leaders to hold to the traditions. The leaders appointed successors. All this is in scripture and in history, as is the finalization of the canon. So would Christians who don't follow the whole truth be the true church contrary to scripture's claim that the church is the pillar of the truth?

 

Initially there were twelve, but very soon after we see more than 12. We see Paul of course, and Barnabas (Acts 14:14), possibly Andronicus and Junias (Ro 16:7).

The fact is, the apostles set up both a church an a means for carrying on the church through successors. Just as the apostles told their succesors to hold to the traditions, so they told their successors. The pattern established was that bishoprics should have successors. (Acts 1:20 let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take. )

As I said, doubt is an option for you. You trust that we maintained 100% of the canon, rather than 80% or 120%, but strangely you can't bring yourself to admit the rest.

I'm not sure what religious practices examples you refer to. In your private life there is a great deal of latitude. But in corporate worship, even apparently minor things were ruled very specifically, with no contention allowed. (1Cor 11:16).

If you won't accept as valid evidence the writings of those who knew the apostles, what evidence would you accept? For some strange reason, the evidence of Mark and Luke who knew apostles is good enough for you, but when I started talking about Ignatius who knew the apostle John, suddenly you doubt and claim that he was innovating.

 

Okay, then you're going to have to explain according to what authority as well as what cause we got the canon right, and yet the same authority and cause did not allow us to get the rest right too. Take a consistent position on how this can be.

Peter was an individual, not the church. If Peter got things wrong, why believe 1 Peter and 2 Peter? I'll tell you my answer: Because it is recognized by the universal church as without error.

The JWs had no annointing to declare the canon either. They had to follow our authority. I agree obviously, that getting one thing right doesn't prove you have everything right. On the other hand, if you trust someone to get something right purely based on their authority, then why don't you trust the rest of their authority? You don't trust the Mormon authority on the canon, thus you don't trust the Mormon teachings. But if one day you decided the Mormon canon was right, wouldn't you be trusting Joseph Smith's teachings too?

When I asked you how it could be that Paul said to hold to the traditions, even though many Christians would have joined the church after Paul left and wouldn't have seen him in person, you were talking about how it was supposedly different back then, because at least people in the church were eyewitnesses to what Paul said, so at least they could pass it on directly.

Now when I refer to the teachings of someone who DID receive the traditions first hand, you still don't want to hold to them.

Basically, you cannot seem to make any sense out this verse. What you're telling me is that anybody who joined the church in Thessalonica in between when Paul came, and when they received the epistles much later, had nothing at all to work with, because even somebody who had seen the apostles could not be trusted to pass it on.

This is the Western obsession with the question "is it infallible", which is led in Rome to papal infallibility, and outside Rome to ignoring everything in history and tradition outside the bible, leading to endless innovations that were hitherto unknown in Christianity.

All I can say again, is you want to differentiate what should be Holy Tradition, and what is mere local practice based on your own opinion, and not based on the catholic faith. This is what schism is based on. You seem to think your own opinion has weight in these matters, but they were decided long ago by the church, just like the definition of the trinity, and so forth. If every generation has to decide every item of faith all over again, then Jesus' prayer for unity was really a no-hope proposition.

 

Uh yeah, that was the west, both Catholics and protestants

Well, we agree of course. We also agree that some things the church did were, well pretty much perfect, or close enough - i.e. copying of scripture. Another area I think we agree on where the church is perfect is in its recognition of canon. The issue of dispute is where to draw the line between the perfect and the imperfect.

Now there isn't any scripture that says the church can be infallible indiscerning canon, but the church would fall apart if people started doubting it. Nor is there a verse that says the church will be able to with sufficient accuracy preserve the scriptures, and yet without this belief the church cannot stand. These things are fairly obvious to most fair minded people who apply common sense.

What I'm saying is that if we apply common sense to what has happened in protestantism in 500 years, and we look also at the implications of the apostolic commands to hold to the traditions, we would see that the church falls apart when the bible is interpreted outside of the traditions it was born into, just as Paul's command to "hold to the traditions I taught you by word of mouth" is meaningless to the person outside Thessalonica who has no knowledge of what he had said.

Now as I said, yes, the option is available to doubt these things and assume the church spent 50 or 100 years in the truth and then all with one voice plunged into1900 years in apostasy, just as the option is available to doubt the canon, the aposticity or the transmission of scripture.

But I'm saying the more logical, sensible and let's face it ' Christian approach is to see God as a bit more in control of disseminating his truth than that.

Firstly, because, to quote Paul, not all who are Israel are Israel. Secondly, because not every tradition is holy tradition.

You see, it's not a proposition of having to accept every tradition as infallible. But even so, as I already demonstrated, Christ, Peterw Matthew and Paul all made use of extra-biblical traditions. My suggestion to you is to be open to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there is a sub-category of tradition that is Holy Tradition, and that it ought to be believed, just like Paul shows evidence of believing extra-biblical traditions.

The church is the mystical body of Christ remember. Orthodoxy, unlike protestantism, isn't totally focused on the up down relationship between you and God, it also has a healthy side to side balance in the relationship between you and the body of Christ, both the living and those who had fallen asleep. Because as Christ prayed that we would be one with each other just as he is with us and he is with the Father.

 

Since you believe that, then logically you have to admit at least, that the Orhtodox church was at least a valid church for those 1000 years it was the only church, and by extension has been a valid church for 2000 years. Ok, so you've logically deducted Orthodoxy is a valid church, can you be equally certain about other churches since they lack a proof Orthodoxy has? Are you 100% certain that the fullness of what God wanted the church to be is just a theoretical invisible mathematical set of all those who hold to a certain minimal set of propositions? Is it just possible God wanted more?

Well not really. Orthodoxy has never sat around reading ECFs to find new things to obey. The ECFs are evidence that our beliefs come from the early church, and they are instruction just like a bishop today is instruction. We can take instruction from any age in the church because we acknoledge all ages as being Orthodox and the same. But it's not like one ECF mentioned something and then you find everybbody copying it. There are many things that are non-protestant you can find many ECFs teaching at the same early date.

Yes we accept the so-called apocrypha, which is another inconsistency in your position, because you accept our NT, but have excised some books from the OT. How can you trust our judgement in one and not the other?

If you can be more specific, we can talk about it. But I'm not saying everything done in the name of Orthodoxy has been perfect. I would say though that after the split and the West went its own way, that's when things went really wacky over there. I mean, the Muslims treated infidels with much greater respect than the West treated each other. That is a strong indicator to us that there was serious problems over there.