re: Christians who somehow thought it wasn’t Christianlike to vote for Trump

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but they aren't "Catholic" or "Orthodox", either.

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Well, you have given to us yet another "Foo Fact" that's inaccurate or a distortion. On the two core issues of The Eucharist and Baptism, the Early Church Fathers are all in accord with the current EOC and RCC doctrines on those topics. It's a distortion to categorically pronounce that the ECFs were not "Catholic" or "Orthodox".

So are going to round up and deport all muslims ?

Thanks. That is a great idea.

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Who determined / collated the 27 books of New Testament to be Canon?

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My understanding is that it was not one person or one group but happened organically over centuries.

The apostles collected and circulated their own letters and affirmed their authority; local churches who received the letters collected them and shared them with other churches; and early church fathers and scholars wrote about authority and authenticity of the gospels and letters.

My understanding is that this worked pretty well until Marcion came along and formal list was compiled as a response to him throwing away some books that were already accepted.

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The lists were fluid and subject to later Church synods and Councils to standardize them.

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Ok, but where do the synods and councils get their authority?

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Ok, but where do the synods and councils get their authority?

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Great question:

Answer: The Church of Jesus Christ that has remained unbroken since 33 A.D. through apostolic succession.

The Nicene Creed lays it out as “We believe in One, Holy, Catholic (Universal), Apostolic Church”

That is the key…Apostolic and not divided.

One has to ask Protestants why they created their own confessions and creeds in conflict with the Nicene Creed that was agreed upon by the Church Fathers in 325 A.D. in refuting heresies.

I say all this as a former Southern Baptist…I got tired of doing mental gymnastics when reading Holy Scriptures and talking with pastors who were illiterate and unlearned about the Early Church.

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That is the key…Apostolic and not divided.

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Aren’t the RCC and the EOC divided?

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One has to ask Protestants why they created their own confessions and creeds in conflict with the Nicene Creed agreed upon by the Church Fathers in 325 A.D. in refuting heresies.

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Can you provide a confession in conflict with the Nicene creed? Or are you referring the churches like the PCUSA which seems to be a false church? To steel-man protestant arguments, I’d like to stay away from using doctrines/ confessions that don’t bear resemblance to reformed views

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This just begs the question by what authority did the reformers have to define error and implement correction? You obviously answered what you believe the answer to be when you said: Church history is messy, which is why one of the cries of the Reformation was ad fontes (to the source: Scripture).

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Yes, the Scriptures are the answer to this question. God's word is final, it doesn't change, and there is no greater authority than God, Himself. All other authorities--including Church authorities--are under the rule of Christ. The same goes for the standard of truth in His word.

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This is an admission that Scripture was not defined in the times of the early Church fathers. They had different canons and different definitions of Scripture. The irony here is that despite an undefined Canon and definition of Scripture (by your own admission), the Church persisted, flourished in fact, in unity during this time. This completely refutes your earlier post where you said St John Chrysostom taught Sola Scriptura. In fact, there is no possible way Sola Scriptura could have been taught during the early Church because the Canon didn't even exist. So if that's the case, there was obviously some other form of authority at work that was binding. This is a self-own

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What I was saying was not that the cannon lacked clarity as much as the usage of various books was different. For example, Jerome didn't consider the Deuterocanon as authoritative and canonical and essentially said as much in his preface to those books. He didn't want to include them in his translation into Latin but then was pressured to do so by the Church.

The long and short of it is that the canon was widely known and accepted early on with only a few of the books being disputed, and yet that which is Scripture was still authoritative. The Old Testament was still authoritative even before any of the NT Scriptures were written, and as a book or letter was written and given to the Church as Scripture, it was accepted as such and added to the authoritative canon.

What you're also missing is what sola scriptura actually means. You're claiming a self-own when there is no need. Scripture doesn't have to be fully known and distributed throughout the whole of the Church in order for it to be the highest and only infallible authority for the Church. The heart of the doctrine is authority, not full availability. If someone starts a small church in Africa and they don't have their own Bible to consult, that doesn't mean that the sola scriptura doesn't apply. It just means that whatever is taught and any corrections that are needed must be accountable ultimately to the word of God.

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You appeal to ancient church authority and tradition when it fits your needs (when you reference the creeds, which were written and affirmed by the Church), then immediately throw it away and claim that the solas of the reformation are the basics of Christian faith. This is disingenuous double-speak.

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I implore you to stop accusing me of lies and double speak. What you're doing is asking for a complete systematic theology, and when I'm not going into full detail on every aspect, you're accusing me of being disingenuous. Let me explain.

I'm not appealing to the creeds and confessions as authorities but as summaries of biblical truths. I adhere to the Westminster Confession of Faith. I reference it all the time and appeal to it often within the context of my church life. However, I don't do so because I believe it is my ultimate authority, but I view it as a subordinate standard to the Bible that faithfully summarizes what the Scriptures teach. The same is true for those creeds. My appeals are not to an ultimate authority, but to clarifying summaries of the only ultimate authority in the Bible.

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The fact of the matter is that you are unable to define what these "core truths" are. Calvinism and Arminiasm are diametrically opposed theologies. Lutherans, Calvinists, and Baptists can't even agree on things like baptism, the Lord's supper, or salvation. Each has the Scripture, each interprets it differently. Each believes in the solas, each interprets them differently. What core truths could possibly bind all these vastly different denominations together?

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I already defined it. Who God is (the Trinity, 3 persons with one nature/essence; and Jesus is the God-man, one person with 2 natures), who we are (sinners made in the image of God), and how we relate to one another through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are sinners saved by God's grace through the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross. That is a summary of the gospel, and that's at the heart of those "core truths" that I mentioned.

The Lutheran believes they are saved by faith in Christ alone, and so does the Arminian Baptist. All of us agree that Baptism and the Lord's Supper are sacraments and means of grace, even if we disagree on how they are applied. What we also agree on is that you don't have to be Lutheran, Reformed, or Baptist to be saved, but must put your trust in Christ alone.

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While these sound nice, it is obvious that your belief in Scripture is tied to the protestant doctrine of the right to private judgement. Your binding authority isn't Scripture itself, but your own interpretation of scripture, your freedom of conscience.

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No, Scripture is still my binding authority. Private judgement or liberty of conscience just means that external, human authorities cannot bind the conscience where the Scriptures do not. Human traditions cannot compel the Christian to belief where the Bible does not.

Also, having the right to interpret the Bible does not mean that one has the freedom to interpret it wrongly. It is a misuse of the Bible to cherry-pick verses or to twist a plain meaning to get a result you want, rather than to draw from the text what is says. We all will be accountable to God for how we handled the blessing of His word, and that's a scary thought, and should cause us to approach God's word with reverence and carefulness.

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And if everyone in protestantism is able to interpret the scripture for themselves and appeal to their own conscience, then you cannot in any way claim the reformation resulted in more biblical literacy and a love for God's word that had not existed prior or that It brought clarity out of darkness Without ignoring the real, tangible evidence of the effects of the reformation in history. You are declaring every man his own pope, his own bishop, his own interpreter of Church councils and doctrine.

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Each man has the responsibility to faithfully study God's word to seek what God is telling us. The Church is given as a guide to help us understand that right interpretation, but the Church ultimately is not the final judge, but God is, in His word.

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The fact is that without Church and Holy Tradition, you wouldn't have your Bible. You take this for granted and affirm that God worked through these men to give us the Bible, but then in the same breath claim these same men got everything else regarding salvation, the Church, the sacraments, Mary, the Trinity, etc. wrong. And going even further, you will then say that the church got "most" of the Bible right, but Luther and Calvin got the Old Testament right. How can you claim Sola Scriptura when your own reformers tried to change what's in the Bible? It's absurd.

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God gave the Bible. The Church received it. The Bible doesn't require an infallible authority to testify that the Bible is what it is. The Church can err, but God's word cannot.

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From reading your past screeds, you’re often lightly challenged and thus you must feel that alone is self-confirmatory for your HERETICAL delusions.

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Nope, I recognize that people disagree with me. I don't judge the truth of any matter based on the loudness of the opposition.

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You post this crap above yet provide NO basis whatsoever to back up your claims the Eastern Orthodox Church is a “false church”.

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Does the EOC claim that good works are necessary in order for a person to be justified before God? If yes, then that alone is a condemning belief.

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Well, you have given to us yet another "Foo Fact" that's inaccurate or a distortion. On the two core issues of The Eucharist and Baptism, the Early Church Fathers are all in accord with the current EOC and RCC doctrines on those topics. It's a distortion to categorically pronounce that the ECFs were not "Catholic" or "Orthodox".

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Given that the RCC equivocates on what words mean, importing modern understanding into older texts, I can certainly make the claim I make. I see it all the time.