Responding to Eastern Orthodoxy being Misrepresented & a Personal Attack against Carthage 397

I was considering posting on the consequences of ignoring Revelation 22:19 when I ran into something that REALLY OFFENDED me in another blog. I am SO OFFENDED that if that person ever posts here, I won't accept any of his posts unless or until he posts an appology and corrects his errors. This guy's bucking for an Anathema! His EXCREMENT is so bad that it shook my Cuss-O-Meter! [Fortunately, my Cuss-O-Meter still remains frozen at Absolute Zero.] I won't disgrace him any further than he has disgraced himself already by calling him out directly (though his initials are CMP), but I will quote him exactly:

3. Paleo-Orthodoxy. This is the belief that the Christian faith can be found in the early church—namely in the consensual beliefs of the early church. This is a form of “consensual orthodoxy” (consensus fidelium).
. . .

Primary Adherents:
Eastern Orthodoxy, some Evangelicals, and many Emerging Christians (not Emergent as I have defined it in my writings)

Strengths:

• Looks to the historic body of Christ for orthodoxy.
• Understands that God’s providential concern for the Church would have established the most important truths early.

I'll accept this provisionally.

Weaknesses:

• Can elevate the authority of the early church above that of Scripture.

Before the Council of Carthage 0f 397 AD, there was no Bible, only scattered fragments of Scripture. These fragments had to be cobbled together into a Cannon. This short-sighted comment ignores the very legitimacy of the Church Council that selected which books went into the New Testament. Denying this Authority only LEGITIMIZES the Gnostic Gospels!

• Hard to find justifiable reasons to believe that theology cannot develop or mature beyond the first five centuries.

This is the part that makes me sizzle!!! He's obviously never heard of St. Photius or St. Herman of Alaska, or in recent times, Francis Schaeffer, Jack Sparks, or Robert Royster. Timothy Ware's whole 330 page book - The Orthodox Church - is about how Orthodox Theology developed and matured to the current day. Only 30 pages of this 330 page book were devoted to the Church before the Fifth Century. Our "illustrious" scholar might also want to read These Truths We Hold from St. Tikhon's Seminary Press.

He compounds the INSULT with:

Eastern Church: Here, I primarily mean the Eastern Orthodox church. Notice that they are also orthodox. The further developments represented by the “TH” show the progress and maturing of certain doctrines (e.g. person of Christ and the Trinity). The lower case show an undeveloped doctrine (e.g. salvation) and the italics show a distorted understanding (e.g. atonement).

He's obviously never heard of the Nicene Creed. One look at Anthony Coniaris'es Orthodoxy: A Creed for Today, should put that Obvious Falsehood to rest. There is no better place to learn about the Trinity than through the Nicene Creed.

He doesn't stop there. In a section entitled Words That Don't Prove Your Point, he states:

• If this isn't true, then there is no basis to believe the Bible. If there's no basis to believe the Bible then we might as well be atheists.

This argument also shows up a different way. For example: God can't do that--if He did it would make him the author of Evil and I can't believe in that sort of God. Okay, that's a fine opinion but it doesn't disprove or prove any argument. The latter is a matter of wishing something was true and the former is a matter of setting up a very steep slope with your doctrine at the very tippity top. In both cases it doesn't make your position right or wrong: it's just a non-decider.

Just what was the Council of Carthage of 397 actually doing? Were they wishing that certain Books that they accepted into the Cannon were True, or were they Holier than the Gnostics? In either case, our Esteemed Scholar has just managed to Invalidate the Bible!

My problem with his "Theology" is that with this attack on the Council of Carthage, the Bible actually does go out the Window! Perhaps he's upset that his favorite gospel, The Gospel according to Judas Iscariot, was excluded? It's clear that I'm not going to blog with his group, as his so-called Cannons of Conduct, which excludes honest discussion of the issues I pose, are hypocritically biased towards Calvinism under color of Objectivity.

Edited-Not Translated - Part 2

The verse in question for today for which I shall compare Scripture withScriputre is I Timothy 2:3&4. From Part One of Edited, Not Translated, we have established a formulaic format. First, the jpg of the 1599 Geneva Study Bible, showing the footnote that replaces the verse deletion:

Now for the other versions. First, the Protestant Versions:

New International Version (NIV)

3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

21st Century King James Version

3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

Darby Translation

3 for this is good and acceptable before our Saviour God, 4 who desires that all men should be saved and come to [the] knowledge of [the] truth.

Wycliffe New Testament (WYC)

3 For this thing is good and accepted before God, our Saviour,
4 that will that all men be made safe, and that they come to the knowing of truth. [that will all men to be made safe, and to come to the knowing of truth.]

Next, the Roman Catholics:

The New Jerusalem Bible

3 To do this is right, and acceptable to God our Saviour: 4 he wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth.

And finally, the Orthodox EOB, page 444 :

There was no good way to clip just verse 3 & 4 out, so verses 1 & 2 are included for good measure.

In another blog, the issue was raised that God's Foreknowlege would predetermine the outcome of a Man's Eternal Destiny, and that there was nothing a Man gould do once God had foreseen it. The argument goes that Man cannot go against God's Wishes, as expressed by God's Foreknowlege. Yet, 1 Timothy 2:4 expresses what God's Wishes actually are, which must be dealt with as an accomplished fact. While God's Sovriegnty entails the ability to enforce his Wishes, it also entails the ability to not enforce them, letting the chips fall where they will. Paradoxically, Man's Free Will must be maintained, not in spite of God's Sovriegnty but because of it!

AN example of Foreknowledge not being Sovriegnty can be seen in the example of George Wahington. George Washington, probably the one of the best Weather Forecasters of his age because of what his Military Training entailed, knew what the Weather would be like when he crossed the Delaware on Christmas of 1776 en route to the surprise attack that became the Battle of Trenton. He did not control the Weather, but he had Foreknowlege of it and took advantage of it. He won the battle because of it. However, George Washington did not PREDESTINE anything! Foreknowlege did not make George Washinton God or embue him with any Sovriegnty or anything else, but it only contributed to his victory which could have been spoiled had the Hessians somehow knew to be on their toes for Washington's attack.

1 Timothy 2:4 is an important verse that express God's Will, settling once and for all the supposed Predestination-Foreknowlege Paradox. Like Revelation 22:19, this deletion is too significant an omission in the 1599 Geneva Study Bible because of Doctrinnal Consequences. This is tantamont to overturning established evidence, EDITING, NOT TRANSLATING the Bible.

I wish to convey my special thanks to Billy Birch whose critical inspiration for this post made this post possible.

St. Luke the Iconographer vs. the JWs

Everyone, at one time or another has had a visit form Jehovah's Witnesses. They are infamous for their hardheaded argumentative tactics. If I am in a hurry, I shoo them off. If I have the time and am in the mood, I take the initiative and make a pre-emptive strike. I call it the St. Luke argument. I have ran off JWs with this one. They leave skid marks!


According to Jehovah Witness Theology, from their own website: ". . . warnings regarding the use of idols are common in the Christian Greek Scriptures, also called the New Testament." . . . "pagan worship of pictures was replaced by the veneration of pictures of Jesus, Mary, angels, and “saints.” These pictures that started to be used in the churches gradually found their way into the homes of millions of people, being venerated there as well." Clearly, Jehovah's Witnesses equate icons to idolatry. Enter St. Luke, the Iconographer. As you an see from his icon, St. Luke has been caught red-handed in the act of making icons! There is no denying it! St. Luke must be roasting in Hades for his terrible sin! According to Jehovah's Witness Theology, St. Luke has been caught in the act of Gross Idolarty! St. Luke is even worse than Judas Iscariot! Oh, the Shame of it all! How can a Jehovah's Witness, in good conscience, allow the Gospel of that Wicked Idoater become part of the New Testament! . . . and yet, the Gospel of St. Luke is still part of the Jehovah Witness Bible.

Do not attempt to repel Catholics or even Methodists with this argument, especially if you have a respectable collection of Icons. Their typical response would doubtless be "Iconography is not Idolatry, or even a sin in my Religion. St. Luke's Gospel STAYS in MY BIBLE. If you have any Icons you want rid of, just give them to me." Seriously, I've had fun watching the JWs scatter with this. I found the Icon Test a good one for separating Wheat from Chaff.

By what Authority were the Books of the Bible selected?

Let us look at Chapter One of the Westminster Confession of 1646. The meat is in Article 2, where the books are enumerated, Article 3 which declares the Apocrypha illigitimate, and Article 4 which says:

IV. The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or Church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

The trouble with Article 4 is that it misses the point. By what authority does the Westminster Confession declare what the books of the Bible are? It doesn't say. We have only their word, the word of an uncredentialed authority. There isn't even the mention of a credentialed authority. If there is a credentialed authority, the Westminster Confession has certainly detracted from it in their very first Chapter.

Who would have credentials. The Jews had their own Cannonization Process for their Torah, our Old Testament, which is generally accepted by Christianity. Thus, restricting the question to the New Testament, all New Testament credentials and authority would derive from Christ. Since almost all of the New Testament books were not written until after the death of Christ, his authority must have flowed somewhere to make the New Testament valid. The Apostles are generally considered the recipients of this authority. Yet none of the Apostles, not even John, were alive when the collection of scripture which became the New Testament was finally agreed upon. The Apostles had successors, who inherited their authority and held the Office of Bishop, hence a Doctrine of Apostolic Succession is needed in order to maintain the Bible. Recapitulating, the Authority flowed from Christ to the Apostles, and from the Apostles to the Apostolic Successors to authenticate the Bible.

Historically, the Council of Carthage of 397 AD set the de facto standard for what qualified a book to be in the Bible. The one thing about a de facto standard is that even though it is not necessarily legally in force, it recieves acceptance because of necessity, and because no one else is able to come up with anything better. The Council of Carthage had plenty of necessity justification for what they did, as their purpose was to discard the Gnostic Gospels from the Cannon which were about to polute and overwhelm the Cannon, a situation which Bishop Irenaeus warned against in Against Heresies. One does not pick a Holy Book out of the gutter, from whence the Gnostic Gospels came. At issue was what a what books to keep, what books to discard, and by what authority. The solution, roughly described as the Smell Test of St. Irenaeus, was to requre that each accepted book have a demonstrable connection to an Apostle, a property of the Most Frequently Used Books by the Oldest Churches with the Closest Connection to an Apostle. Additionally, the Scriptures had to be consistent with each other. We note in passing that the Apocrypha contains valuable history which assists with the Cannonization Process, contrary to Chapter 1, Article 3.

The problem with deemphasizing the Council of Carthage of 397 as an unimportant council is that it delegitimizes their purpose of discarding the Gnostic Gospels from the Scriptures, thus opening the door for reinstating the Gospels of Judas, Thomas, and Philip, the Apocalypse of St. Peter, and various and sundry other Gnostic Gospels. There is no contemporary alternate authority from which to draw legitimacy.

Coming full circle, the Westminster Confession mindfully and arbitrarily skips the authentication of the Bible. It does not give any reason to discard any Gnostic Gospel, other than the fact that they were not mentioned. Hence, since the Gnostic Gospels were not explicitly excluded, the Westminster provides implicit grounds to include them in Scripture. This problem is in addition to the Westminster Confession's inability to qualify their own authority. Further, since the Westminster Confession some 1250 years after Carthage, the connection to the Apostles is at least three times as dilute, should the Apostolic Succession argument be attempted. As we continue our examination of the Westminster Confession, we will find that a foundation was laid to delegitimize any and all findings of Church Councils in Chapter XXXI, which in turn legally permits the eventual overruling of the Council of Carthage and the Reselection of the Books of the Bible.