Apologetics: witnessing to atheists
- Thread starter GWH
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In response to your questions,
1) The Christians, from immediately after the resurrection until at least 58 CE were active in the temple. It weas an important part of their lives as Paul not only making his own sacrifice but paying for the sacrifices of others who were completing a vow was encouraged to prove that he was not rejecting his Jewishness and faithfulness to the law. They were thus not rejecting their Jewish roots. It is easy to miss in Revelation unless you know about Carrhae and negotiations with Vespasian, but there are statements in this work that strongly imply that the 1st Jewish war was expected to be the event that brought about God's reign on earth and the overthrow of Rome. With this expectation do you really want to say that the fall of the temple was meaningless, or that Christians did not fully support the Jewish side in the war?
2) Acts focuses heavily on Paul's missionary work and seems to intentionally link Paul's work with other recognized meritorious work done in the same time frame, even as it directly contradicts what Paul claims he did. Whose history do you believe, Paul's claims of I did this at this specific time or Acts of, no you didn't, you did something else entirely at that specific time.
3) Paul makes comments about facing wild beasts and being rescued from the lion's mouth, both linked to Anatolia. Avoiding these could be a simple as having to prove his Roman citizenship but even facing these dangers for some crime is telling. Fighting animals in the arena was not a punishment for most crimes, rather it was the punishment for only non-citizens and only for the crime of treason. But Roman citizens could, and at least one Jewish Roman citizen was, exiled. Clement of Rome states that Paul made it to the uttermost west, which at the time was considered to be Spain, and such would be consistent with a charge of treason and exile. And Paul does state things in multiple epistles, especially in Ephesians, that would be consistent with his having been so charged.
4) There is an ignored history that makes claims that Herod violated Roman law in a way that would have resulted in his exile if he was caught outside of Judea, but with him staying in his kingdom, all that could be done would be to remove his status as a "friend of Rome". But that action would have been consistent with actions taken by both Antipas, who did get exiled when he ventured out of his kingdom (once and returned after a likely pardon, and again after pardons were revoked) and Agrippa I who never ventured out of his kingdom according to the records. Pilate and Caiaphas are named in an ignored history along with Antipas shortly before what appears to be Antipas's first arrest.
5) There is no absolutely clear definition of sin in scripture that merits the punishments accorded to it by tradition. Adam and Eve ran afoul of God's law and were exiled. The first direct mention of sin comes after Cain kills Abel, and even then, the result is that Cain has a mark placed on him so that no one who would encounter him would kill him. These actions do not fit with tradition's understanding of sin. The claim that sin is such a blot on God's honor that it needs an act of compensation that only God can provide is not biblical but is instead not even 800 years old.
Thank you for pointing out that not all Christian scripture is inspired. Might I ask what brings you to that conclusion?
I have no idea where you got that notion.
All scripture is inspired by God. Not everything written was inspired. We have the complete, fully inspired Word of God in what we know as the 66 books of the Bible. There are not 67, 68, or more
Well, GWH cited passages in 1 Corinthians and Colossians you respond by asking him how he knew those letters were inspired.
As to how many books are in the Bible, what do you base that on? Into the 15th century it was debated what works were scripture and what were not in Western Europe. Other parts of the Christian world stayed out of the debates and quietly accepted all the works that they consider scripture. Sinaiticus, widely considered the first complete bible included many books that are not in the 66 you seem to be claiming. Were the ancients wrong, after all, they were only about 1200 years closer to the apostles than the HUMANS who decided that the Bible has only 66 books (oops, they did not say they had to complete bible at that time, they just declared that some works were not scripture and left the canon open to adding more). So when, and by whom, was it finally determined just how many books are in the Bible?
You didn't read what I wrote. GWH was claiming that there are writings we didn't have that we're inspired. That's gnosticism.
The canon is settled. Every protestant church agreed. It's because the Holy Spirit protected and defined it. We just recognized it.
Apparently you believe something different. If so, you're wrong.
When did every Protestant church agree on the canon. The last time I checked, several Protestant churches had not closed the canon yet. By the way, Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist churches, all considered Protestant, include works outside the official 66 books in their lectionaries or Sunday scripture texts. In fact all Protestant bibles printed between 1621 and 1821 included more than 66 books. Bibles printed in England reduced the number to 66 in 1821, the bibles printed in the USA followed suit later in the 19th century, and provoked outrage among many Protestant ministers at the time for not printing the entire Bible. Please make your response as to when "every Protestant church agreed" to fit these easily knowable facts.
And my reading of GWH's comment was not that the missing letters were clearly inspired, merely that Paul wrote them, which Paul admits to in preserved letters.
My comments:
1. The early Jewish Christians were not required to renounce their roots, but they were expected to reject the belief that
salvation was attainable via obedience to the OT Levitical/Mosaic laws (Acts 15:1-11). IOW, they could be Messianic Jews.
2. Yes, some early disciples (Judas?) had been taught to expect Messiah would reign over an earthly kingdom,
but when Jesus departed and Jerusalem was defeated by the Romans, they finally realized that when Jesus said
his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36, cf. Matt. 20:20-28), he meant it.
3. Yes, the account by Luke in Acts does not jibe exactly with the account by Paul in Gal. 1-2, and I am intrigued by Paul's mention of going to Spain in Rom. 15:24&28, but I doubt he was able to do so, because I would expect there to be a church planted and an epistle written. What did Clement say about that?
4. Regarding Herod I see no importance where he went after condemning Jesus, which I assume was hell when he died. Ditto re the rest of the officials.
5. I don't care what tradition says about the punishment of sin, but only that whatever is meted out on earth, the ultimate punishment will be experienced in hell.
Over...
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Blue155
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Suppose investigators present a case with the following facts: the suspect has confessed, multiple eyewitnesses have independently corroborated that confession, and physical evidence aligns with both the confession and the testimony. The case is cohesive, consistent, and well-supported with verified evidence.
Now imagine someone objects: “But what about some letters that were lost that were written by the suspect?”
Does that objection change anything? Do lost letters overturn a confession, eyewitness testimony, and corroborating evidence? Does a case collapse simply because not every document ever written wasn’t found? When the truth has been verified, corroborated, established, and tested, missing paperwork doesn’t change the truth
Unless someone can show that those missing letters contradict the confession, the witnesses, and the evidence already on record…the verdict stands. Speculation about what might be in lost letters is not evidence. It is guesswork.
In the same way, appeals to Paul’s lost letters do nothing to weaken the authority or sufficiency of Scripture. The gospel of Jesus Christ has been confessed, witnessed, written, circulated, and confirmed. The “lost letters” won’t overdo that.
They also would not have contradicted the testimony already on record, because Paul preached one gospel and condemned any deviation from it (Galatians 1:8–9). And if a letter did contradict the already established, corroborated and verified testimony, it would be rejected as false.
Truth doesn’t contradict truth.
Now imagine someone objects: “But what about some letters that were lost that were written by the suspect?”
Does that objection change anything? Do lost letters overturn a confession, eyewitness testimony, and corroborating evidence? Does a case collapse simply because not every document ever written wasn’t found? When the truth has been verified, corroborated, established, and tested, missing paperwork doesn’t change the truth
Unless someone can show that those missing letters contradict the confession, the witnesses, and the evidence already on record…the verdict stands. Speculation about what might be in lost letters is not evidence. It is guesswork.
In the same way, appeals to Paul’s lost letters do nothing to weaken the authority or sufficiency of Scripture. The gospel of Jesus Christ has been confessed, witnessed, written, circulated, and confirmed. The “lost letters” won’t overdo that.
They also would not have contradicted the testimony already on record, because Paul preached one gospel and condemned any deviation from it (Galatians 1:8–9). And if a letter did contradict the already established, corroborated and verified testimony, it would be rejected as false.
Truth doesn’t contradict truth.
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Blue155
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One witness gives a timeline summary. Another gives personal details. Neither is false simply because they emphasize different facts. If Paul and Luke’s writings each were carbon copies of the other, critics would complain that they were "too" similar and that someone "cooked the books" at a later date to get them to agree. The fact that they are said to “differ” shows that the accounts were not tampered with.
I agree, but at the same time which of the 66 Scripture has authority is a matter of opinion.
We cannot escape having to walk by faith rather than by proof regarding the sausage making.
IMO there is sufficient evidence to believe the extant Bibles are GW regarding GRFS,
with only a few minor grains of sand mixed in just to make discussions more interesting.
On point 1), the second temple Jews did not believe that salvation was via obedience to the Mosaic laws either, they also accepted that salvation was by grace. Please do not accept a myth developed by later Christendom as fact
.
2) That does not mean that the church was not profoundly upset over the loss of the temple, just that they found ways to reconcile the loss with their beliefs, but it does not address how the loss changed their beliefs. John appears to have been edited, and Matthew is of uncertain date, are these comments created or adjusted post-70 or can they be confirmed as pre-70 as we have them.
3) Clement just says that Paul went there. But if he was in exile, his abilities to do certain things would have been curtailed. He would have been actively prevented from contacting those he left behind. As for a church, churches did spring up in Spain fairly early, just when is unknown. And would any churches have survived the persecutions of the 1st Jewish war? If Paul was there, he likely was released by either Galba or Otho, but neither one stayed in power for long and Vitellius and Vespasian would have had reason to question the loyalty of Christians as shown by the persecutions in Rome.
4) Antipas's coinage from his 33-4 CE minting seems to indicate support for Christianity. As for Caiaphas and Pilate, the history that mentions them has them linked with Antipas and in connection with early Christianity. You do know that according to Coptic tradition, Pilate converted don't you. That is also claimed by the unofficial "long" version of Acts. And also remember the Roman tradition of discrediting people who ran afoul of Rome. Once disgraced their disgraceful actions moved back in time eliminating their good deeds. All the records we have on Antipas and Caiaphas are post-disgraced. This includes that there is reason to doubt that Antipas had John the Baptist killed, rather it appears that maybe Romans arrested him and detained him until his death sometime after the death of Jesus. If this is true, and it is debatable, the gospel stories would be a way of absolving Rome and pinning the action of a disgraced individual.
5) Hell is another recent invention. Revelation references the lake of fire where all whose names are not in the book of life will be thrown, but it does not specify whose names are in the book of life. Most scripture references either Sheol (OT) or Hades (NT) both of which appear to have been two-part destinations, one pleasant and one very nasty, but also important it that it was possible, in Hades, to move from the unpleasant realm into the pleasant side. Further, the Bible itself might be read as allowing such movement from unpleasant to pleasant. There are ample anecdotal reports to raise questions about exactly occurs in the afterlife.
Tradition makes many claims, but a closer look at the foundations reveals that tradition might not be on as firm a position as it claims.
Glad to hear that you do not think that God's word is opinion. Now citing scripture, where does it limit scripture to just the 66 books in the Protestant Bible? If you cannot cite scripture to identify what scripture is, then you are using human opinion to identify scripture, and God's word is not subject to human opinion.
This is also known as being on the horns of a dilemma. The Roman Catholic church is one of the very few churches that has officially closed the canon of scripture. Every Protestant denomination where I know the official position has not closed the canon, meaning there might well be more than 66 books.
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Blue155
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Blue155
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Your comment is self-defeating. On one hand, you insist Scripture cannot be determined by human opinion, all while you implicitly allow humans to debate and expand the canon.
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Blue155
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@rewriter, citing Scripture, where does it say Scripture is not limited to the 66 books we have? If you cannot cite Scripture to show it isn’t limited, then you are using human opinion to expand Scripture—and God’s word is not subject to human opinion. If, however, you do cite Scripture to argue it isn’t limited, you are still using human opinion to decide which additional books are included. Either way, your position depends on human opinion, which contradicts your own standard for determining God’s word. In other words, your position on this is having to go outside the Bible, instead of leaving it with the Bible.
And you are also relying on human opinion to define what is scripture. Are you aware that in Protestant bibles what is called the Apocrypha was included until publishers realized that it would cost less to print the bible if they left out the Apocrypa? Or how about the initial decision to not include the Apocrypha. are you aware that Martin Luther originally planned to include it and left it out because of one specific verse? How about the Shepherd of Hermas or 4th Maccabees, both were included in what is widely recognized as the earliest complete bible known. And of the three main known versions of the Old Testament, which do you think meets two standards, the overall shortest and least used by the writers of the New Testament? I will give you a hint, it is also the official version of the Protestant Old Testament.
Scripture as we have defined it today is purely the result of human opinion. Paul and Peter both referenced existent writings that some have recognized as scripture, but that the Protestants do not. Did Peter and Paul know something that Protestants have forgotten or chosen to ignore? Most Protestant denomination, including the conservative Church of God, admit that we cannot be certain as to what God considers scripture, only what man does. This view is discounted mostly by lay people who are not fully educated in the Bible.
Now if you can show me where which books qualify as scripture without resorting to obvious human opinion, I will listen, but no scholar I know of would dare take up that challenge any more than pitting an average high school baseball team against the current world champions in a serious game.