A curious problem, and a curious solution

[polonius]

Fundamentalists use interesting reasoning when arguing that the the New Testament is "God breathed" and thus proof for any point and cannot be in error.

When a strongly suspected error is identified, they can claim that only the original autographs (original editions) are completely true. If an error is found it must have been introduced by a later copyist.

However, to so argue, one has to concede that one cannot prove any scripture is an autograph and not a copy and therefore subject to error.

Thus fundamentalists cannot credibly establish that a scriptural passage which they quote is infallible proof of their point.

[marco]

So there is no word “and� in the prophecy. Matthew wanted another “prophecy� fulfilled but Matthew made (or God breathed) a mistake.

I think this detail doesn't reduce Matthew's reliability as much as his excitement about holy men throwing away the soil from their graves and rising up.

The use of the conjunction "and" to place a noun in apposition to another is not unknown in English. He rode went out with his brother who was the head of the firm and a thief. So he went either with two people or with his brother, a thief.

But I think we can safely laugh at Matthew.

[polonius]

So there is no word “and� in the prophecy. Matthew wanted another “prophecy� fulfilled but Matthew made (or God breathed) a mistake.

I think this detail doesn't reduce Matthew's reliability as much as his excitement about holy men throwing away the soil from their graves and rising up.

The use of the conjunction "and" to place a noun in apposition to another is not unknown in English. He rode went out with his brother who was the head of the firm and a thief. So he went either with two people or with his brother, a thief.

But I think we can safely laugh at Matthew.

RESPONSE: Yes indeed" And let us recall another "God breathed scripture." "A man can die but once." So all the dead that were raised at Christ's death are still around!

Do you know any?

[bjs]

Fundamentalists use interesting reasoning when arguing that the the New Testament is "God breathed" and thus proof for any point and cannot be in error.

When a strongly suspected error is identified, they can claim that only the original autographs (original editions) are completely true. If an error is found it must have been introduced by a later copyist.

Who makes this argument? I have never heard it come from any self-described fundamentalist

QUESTION:

What about an undercover fundamentalist?

Do you think some of those posting on this website may be?

No, in years I have been posting here I have never seen anyone who I thought was an “undercover fundamentalist,� at least not by the denotation of the word. Nor I have I seen any fundamentalist, undercover or otherwise, make the argument you suggested in the opening post.

[polonius]

BJS posted:

Nor I have I seen any fundamentalist, undercover or otherwise, make the argument you suggested in the opening post.

_________________

You should get around more and read more widely!

https://news.gallup.com/poll/27682/onet ... -true.aspx

BY FRANK NEWPORT
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ -- About one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word[/b]. This percentage is slightly lower than several decades ago. The majority of those Americans who don't believe that the Bible is literally true believe that it is the inspired word of God but that not everything it in should be taken literally. About one in five Americans believe the Bible is an ancient book of "fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man."

Belief in a literal Bible is strongly correlated with indicators of religion, including church attendance and identification with a Protestant or other non-Catholic Christian faith. There is also a strong relationship between education and belief in a literal Bible, with such belief becoming much less prevalent among those who have college educations.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mc ... 99800.html

“First, by insisting the Bible is literally true, they have established a level of expectation for its authority that people simply cannot accept. As I have written about already, for example, whenever fundamentalist Christians insist, and they almost always do, that Genesis is a scientific account of creation, taking place some six to 10,000 years ago, and over a literal 24/7 period of time — they are expecting people to accept this while denying everything science, Astronomy and biology have taught us.]

“In other words, to expect people to believe things about the Bible that simply are not so is not to “defend the Bible,� as fundamentalists almost universally, but mistakenly, think. It is to discredit the Bible instead. Rather than preserving its authority, it undermines it.�

And from a practical point of view, posters who think they prevail by answering an argument simply by quoting a line of scripture seem to be in the fundamentalist camp.

[bjs]

[Replying to post 14 by polonius]

While I take issue with the definition of “fundamentalist� provided here, it still doesn’t support your case.

I suppose that if you say that anyone who quotes a passages of scripture in response to an argument is a fundamentalist then I would agree that there are “undercover fundamentalists.� However, that is just changing the definition to “fundamentalist� to fit your argument.

Even then, you have yet to show that fundamentalists employ the argument suggested in your first post. It seems like nothing but a straw man. That is, assigning a poor argument to someone else and then attack that argument instead of address what other people are actually saying.

[polonius]

[Replying to post 14 by polonius]

While I take issue with the definition of “fundamentalist� provided here, it still doesn’t support your case.

I suppose that if you say that anyone who quotes a passages of scripture in response to an argument is a fundamentalist then I would agree that there are “undercover fundamentalists.� However, that is just changing the definition to “fundamentalist� to fit your argument.

Even then, you have yet to show that fundamentalists employ the argument suggested in your first post. It seems like nothing but a straw man. That is, assigning a poor argument to someone else and then attack that argument instead of address what other people are actually saying.

RESPONSE: Perhaps you should revue your previous posts.

I suppose that if you say that anyone who quotes a passages of scripture (ONLY!!!) in response to an argument is a fundamentalist then I would agree that there are “undercover fundamentalists.�

RESPONSE:
Lets just take a short one from a recent BJS reply.


In Matthew 20:28 Jesus said, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.�


In Mark 10:45 Jesus said, “for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.�


In John 15:13 Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.�

What is your presentation of evidence for the issue at hand???

[bjs]

[Replying to polonius]

Those quotes were from a thread in which the question was something along the lines of “Do the Gospels record Jesus saying….� Showing where Jesus said that thing seemed appropriate.

Beyond that:

I am a fundamentalist.* I have said so often.

I have not employed the argument used in the opening post.



*A Christian fundamentalist is someone who agrees with the five so-called fundamentals of the faith. That is, the accuracy the Bible, the historical realty of Jesus’ miracles, the Virgin Birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and the doctrine of atonement. Obviously this does not encompasses all of my faith and practice, but I agree with all five. Also, some people have added that one of the fundamentals is the first chapter of Genesis being literal. That is not one of the fundamentals, and it is almost exclusively those who oppose fundamentalists who add that to the list, such as your example in post 14.

[marco]

That is, the accuracy the Bible,

We can debate virgin birth and bodily resurrection. I cannot see how anyone can maintain a belief in Matthew 27: 52 "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose."


I would be intrigued to learn how anyone can accept this actually happened.

[polonius]

[Replying to polonius]

Those quotes were from a thread in which the question was something along the lines of “Do the Gospels record Jesus saying….� Showing where Jesus said that thing seemed appropriate.

Beyond that:

I am a fundamentalist.* I have said so often.

I have not employed the argument used in the opening post.



*A Christian fundamentalist is someone who agrees with the five so-called fundamentals of the faith. That is, the accuracy the Bible, the historical realty of Jesus’ miracles, the Virgin Birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and the doctrine of atonement. Obviously this does not encompasses all of my faith and practice, but I agree with all five. Also, some people have added that one of the fundamentals is the first chapter of Genesis being literal. That is not one of the fundamentals, and it is almost exclusively those who oppose fundamentalists who add that to the list, such as your example in post 14.

RESPONSE: So you are agreeing that not all "fundamentalists" believe that the Bible is fully inspired or "God" breathed?

Do you know where the virgin birth story came from? Or did some non-witnesses writing 80 years after the fact just make that up because some important people were said to have had virgin births?

And getting on to a more delicate topic. Jesus died in 30-33 AD. When and by whom was it first reported by any eyewitness that it had occurred. Of course none of the 500 original witnesses or anyone else they told wrote anything about it, even though would have been Romans or Greeks. And none of the Gospel writers report it.

From the " Catholic Encyclopedia > E > Ebionites

"They are said to have been merely the orthodox Jewish Christians of Palestine who continued to observe the Mosaic Law. …The doctrines of this sect are said by Irenaeus to be like those of Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They denied the Divinity and the virginal birth of Christ; they clung to the observance of the Jewish Law; they regarded St. Paul as an apostate, and used only a Gospel according to St. Matthew (Adv. Haer., I, xxvi, 2; III, xxi, 2; IV, xxxiii, 4; V, i, 3).

[polonius]

jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/back-issues/volume-15-number-2-november-2016/for-the-sake-of-our-salvation-interpreting-dei-verbum-art-


I don’t want all fundamentalists to feel that they are alone trying to maintain absolute scriptural inerrancy. The Catholic Church more of less did that right up to Vatican II. But then a loophole was created.

Before Vatican II

And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author."(57) Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write-He was so present to them-that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture.
“PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE


But After Vatican II
For the Sake of Our Salvation�: Interpreting Dei Verbum, Art. 11,

“Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.

So, if something is clearly an error, it must not have been necessary for our salvation!