FooManChoo

Very true. Islam is evil and should not be allowed to be promoted in our society.

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The Exodus quote is where you really sound like Foo

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Why are you guys using me as an insult? I go out of my way to show that my beliefs are thoroughly grounded in Scripture, utilizing the context of the texts. You can disagree with the conclusions but I’m not arbitrarily abusing the text, or interpreting it in light of non-biblical texts like Squirrelmeister does.

:dunno:

Each preventable death is tragic, but it seems the issue here is who is responsible for preventing those deaths.

The tweet seems to imply the U.S. government (and Elon Musk in particular) is responsible. I’m curious what deaths they are counting and how they are assigning the blame.

If only they would actually use it on those that deserve it

Women are routinely neglecting one of the purposes they were created by God for: the provision of God's image-bearers. In addition to this neglect, many are actively murdering their own children through abortion. It's disgusting.

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As Christians valuing animals with no souls over humans is a problem.

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No it's not. Billions of people on this planet don't give a flying frick about your religion or your soul. And they surely won't give a second thought about Jesus while raping your daughter then bashing her head in with a rock.

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I see you are not familiar with the Bible…

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People overvaluing pets and treating them as people is a big problem

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Agreed, and I say that as someone who has had several pets that I loved and cared for deeply.

Human beings are made in the image of God. Animals are not, and therefore we should be careful when saying that other image-bearers are worth less than animals.

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Speaking on Thursday, Leo said that countries have a right to control their borders, but urged richer nations to help develop the countries that migrants are leaving, so they do not feel the need to leave.

What are richer countries doing to change the situation for poorer countries?” he asked. “And why can’t we seek … to change the situations in [those] countries?”

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While I'm not opposed to a richer country helping a poorer country, there is no obligation to do so. Each country is beholden to its own people, for the promotion of the general good and promotion of the true religion of Christianity (which few nations do).

The Pope is essentially victim-blaming.

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This is a distortion of the Truth. It is a complete mischaracterization of the history of Christian Theology and the history of the Church.

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It's not a distortion at all. The Reformers spoke about it a lot. They put their intentions in writing. Martin Luther initially sought to reform the RCC from errors that he thought existed, especially in regard to the abuses of indulgences.

The Reformers quoted the church fathers extensively to support their positions because they believed that the RCC lost its way, especially during the Medieval period when the Pope's power grew immensely and more and more doctrines developed that were not taught or practiced early on.

You can dislike the truth all you like, but your view of the Reformation is very much out of accord with the historical reality.

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The notion that YOUR Presbyterian Church, founded in the 1600s is the one true Church that reflects the Theology of the Early Christian Church, before the Early Church was corrupted by the Catholic Church, is a completely false notion that is clearly refuted by research into the matter.

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Woah there. Who said that my denomination claimed to be the one, true Church? We believe we are part of the one, true Church, but we don't claim to be the only true branch, like Rome does. We believe there are more pure and less pure expressions of the one, true Church, which is why we differentiate ourselves from Methodists, Baptists, and Anglicans, etc., but we still believe that there are many true branches of the tree. We aren't exclusivists like Rome is.

Regarding our theology: we believe we more closely reflect the theology of the early church in many ways, and certainly the theology of the Bible, which is really what we're seeking to be conformed to. Our goal isn't to look exactly like the Church in the 3rd century, but to look like the Church that Christ founded and the apostles left instructions to in the Bible. While we're at it, though, even the RCC looks hardly anything like the Church from the 3rd century. Teaching the Pope was the singular head of the Church with jurisdiction over all of Christendom would have been laughable, for instance.

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This caricature that Protestants just started their own, a-historical movement is false" - no, it is true. Much of the "new" theology embraced by the Presbyterians and Covenanters can be shown to be new and novel interpretations of Scripture. In some cases it is a "re-hash" of ancient non-orthodox interpretations of Theology. In other cases, the theology is new and novel.

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Again, you're wrong. First, the doctrines are developed directly from Scripture. There isn't a single doctrine that the Reformers taught that they didn't support from the Bible. You may disagree with their interpretations, but you can't disagree that they at least believed that their views were supported by God's word.

Second, as I already said, the Reformers quoted the ECFs constantly. They didn't think their teachings were novel at all, but only a developed understanding of what what taught and believed sporadically early on, which is not dissimilar to what Rome teaches regarding development of doctrine (except Rome has plainly created much of it out of thin air and said it came from undocumented tradition).

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This notion that the Protestant church is the One True Church and the True Early Church and that the Reformation was actually a Restoration of what the Early Church was before the Catholics perverted it is ridiculous on its face. All one needs to do is to look at the current state of "Protestant Truth" today in 2026. Is there ANY Protestant "Truth", with so many different denominations teaching Theological ideas that are diametrically opposed to one another?

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I think you miss the point. For one, we don't believe that every denomination is equally "pure" in its doctrine and praxis, just like not every ECF was uniform in their understanding and teaching. For another, we don't believe that there needs to be perfect agreement in every respect in order to belong to the one Church of Jesus Christ.

We believe that the marks of a true church (congregation/denomination) are the faithful preaching of the word of God (the Gospel), the faithful administration of the sacraments (trinitarian baptism with water and the Lord's Supper), and the faithful execution of church discipline (correction, rebuke, and even suspension and excommunication as needed). That means there is a lot of diversity in Christ's one Church, just as Rome allows a diversity of belief and practice from parish to parish within the boundaries of its own teaching.

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The Early Church was the Catholic/Orthodox Church. We know that from two basic examples - The Eucharist and Baptism. Research how the Early Church regarded the Eucharist and Baptism and there's your indication that the Early Church's view on these two issues is in alignment with Catholic/Orthodox positions on both today.

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I've researched it extensively. There is difference in belief about it, and the language of Christ's "flesh", "body", and "blood" is the same language that Protestant churches like my own use, so to say they unanimously agreed with the current teaching of the RCC is to assume they believed about that language what you believe, not what I believe. Regardless, we teach that it's the Bible that is the final authority, not Rome.

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It's a very clever argument indeed that the Protestant Church is the same as the Early Church, but, it's a completely specious claim that has absolutely no historical or scholarly support, and, in fact is a very recent claim that has arisen in the last 150 years or so.

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So you're OK with just throwing out whatever comments you want here, regardless of whether or not they are true? I'll take the words of the Reformers (that they were seeking to purify the Church and reform it (thus the name...) rather than destroy it and create something new) over yours.

But no, the claim wasn't that the Protestant Church is the same as the Early Church, but that the Reformation was intending to remove the accretions and abuses that crept in over a thousand years and go back to the early church in substance, but improved according to the Scriptures and the 1500 years of study in the meantime.

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Have a good day here on the TD Religion Board.

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Come on... you love to talk about how this place shouldn't be used for religion while engaging in these discussions, yourself. Don't be a hypocrite on this issue.

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This is inaccurate.

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The whole post is littered with inaccuracies.

...continued

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Josephus…

He isn’t laying down a binding “canon” the way you’re treating it. He’s describing what was commonly recognized among certain Jewish groups at the time, especially tied to Temple tradition. Christianity didn’t just inherit one single Jewish stream, it came out of a world where multiple textual traditions were in use, including the Greek Scriptures that the apostles actually quote from. That matters, because the New Testament writers overwhelmingly quote the Greek tradition, not the later standardized Hebrew text. So the question isn’t “did a Jewish source exist that had a shorter list?” Of course it did. The question is which body of texts the apostles and the early Church actually treated as Scripture in practice. That leans heavily Greek.

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I think you are heavily discounting this point about Josephus. He was writing as an authority on the historicity of the Jewish Scriptures as a historian. He made strong statements about it being divine and that while there were other writings since the time of Artaxerxes, that those could not be testified to as authentic because they didn't have a prophetic chain of custody. He wasn't merely ignorant of other writings, but gave an argument as to why the Jewish people (he thought he was speaking for the majority report) accepted the traditional Jewish canon that did not include the Deuterocanon. I should also mention that Josephus wrote in Greek, so he would likely have known the Septuagint just like the apostles and other Jews during that time period, and he still bore witness to the Hebrew canon tradition. In other words, the familiarly and even usage of the Greek Septuagint does not mean that all that it contained was considered Scripture.

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On the Septuagint point, nobody is saying “everything ever bound in a Greek collection equals Scripture.” That’s a strawman… The argument is that the Deuterocanonical books were part of the Scriptures used liturgically and received by the early Church. There’s a difference between random historical writings floating around and books consistently read as Scripture in worship.

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Go talk to Champagne about this one, because he's made this argument several times (it's not a strawman if it's exactly what many Catholics actually believe and use in their argumentation). In addition, I mentioned that fact (about Rome rejecting some of those books found in the LXX) because you said, "And the New Testament writers are constantly using and referring to the Septuagint, which included those books and the broader Greek tradition." You weren't talking specifically about liturgical use of the LXX, but that the NT writers were using it. That's the exact argument Champagne and other Catholics use: the apostles used the Septuagint, the Catholics use the Septuagint, therefore the Septuagint is right and Protestants are wrong. That's the basic argument, but I demonstrated why that is not a good argument.

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And the Jerome comparison still doesn’t land. Jerome had a personal preference for the Hebrew canon, but the Church didn’t adopt a permanent two tier system. What actually happened historically is that the Church continued to read and treat those books as Scripture, and that’s what got affirmed in councils long before Trent.

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Yes, they used those books in their liturgy, and I'm not contesting that. Many Protestants hold to creeds and confessions that they may use for teaching and preaching, yet they don't claim those are on equal footing with the Scriptures. My contention is that the early church used the Deuterocanon as a helpful supplement to the canon of Scripture, but held it out to be different.

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So appealing to Josephus plus a broad “Septuagint had extra stuff” argument doesn’t overturn the actual historical pattern, which is what the Church used, read, and handed on as Scripture.

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I'm arguing that the Deuterocanon was not handed down as Scripture in terms of authority as the rest of Scripture was, but that they were used together for instructing the Church. I'm even appealing to history to demonstrate this, which is something I know you Catholics love to do :cheers:

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Trent… (shorter now, I promise)

Sure, there were discussions and even some disagreement at times. That happens with a lot of doctrines early on, but the key question isn’t “was there ever debate?” It’s “what did the Church actually receive, use, and eventually bind itself to?”

For over a thousand years before Trent, those books were in the Bible used in the West, read in liturgy, and affirmed in regional councils like Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. That’s not fringe or optional in practice, that’s the Church living with a consistent set of Scriptures.

So when you say it “wasn’t required until Trent,” that’s like saying the Trinity wasn’t required until Nicaea. The belief existed, was taught, and was lived long before it was dogmatically defined. The definition comes when it’s challenged hard enough that the Church has to draw a clear line. Trent didn’t create a new belief. It closed the door on a debate that only really got forced open during the Reformation.

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I'm disputing your assertion that it was a fringe belief in history and I would dispute that it is comparable to the Trinity. The Trinity was believed with nuance early on, but it took a few hundred years to work through that nuance to a definitive understanding. The canon isn't so complicated.

What Rome did at Trent was overturn over a 1,000 years of tradition of allowing disagreement in the Deuterocanon's authority, even if its usage and helpfulness wasn't debated. The issue is ultimately about authority, and its authority was certainly debated from the beginning. That debated ended for Rome in the 1500s, but that doesn't mean that the conclusion was correct, as I'm attempting to argue.

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That “binding vs canon” distinction sounds nice and all, but it doesn’t really hold up historically. If a book is consistently read in liturgy, treated as Scripture, used for doctrine, and affirmed by councils, then in practice it’s functioning as canon. You can call it a “second tier,” but that’s not how the Church actually lived it out.

Early Protestant Bibles actually prove that point. They didn’t just include those books as random history in the back for fun. They were preserved because they had long been received and used by the Church. The later removal is the shift, not the earlier inclusion.

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The inclusion or exclusion in in the binding is not what the Reformers were arguing, but its authority over the Christian. The authority is what is in question, not its usage, so to say "it doesn't really hold up historically" is to miss what is being argued. The fact that the Church treated it as an authority doesn't mean it was treated as an equal authority to the rest of Scripture.

If the argument Rome makes is that Protestants have removed Scripture, we have to be able to define what we mean by that.