Catholics have Traditions, Protestants have Scripture, and Satan has accredited college professors of religious studies.
Satan, Social Justice Warriors and Derek Ramsey all forget that the Bible is not the Bible’s Author.
Patriarchal Forgery?
h ttps://derekramsey.com/2023/04/16/patriarchal-forgery/
By Ram-Man, 13 April 2023
A while back, while was I was debating “Headship: Authority or Preeminence?” at the Sigma Frame blog, a couple readers were discussing it over a Deep Strength’s blog. One commenter asked an excellent question:
“The text of I Corinthians 14:34-35 is included in every single existing manuscript. The only point of question is that some manuscripts have those two verses placed a few verses later at the very end of chapter 14. Anyway, what sin could possibly arise from women keeping silent in the churches? The sin of men leading? LOL I’m not sure why Derek would question that passage.
— comment by Sharkly @ Deep Strength, “Torturous logic on divorce and complementarian trashology“”
Why would I question that passage? What’s the point?
Recall in “Headship: An Evidence Summary” the list of patriarchal passages in the New Testament:
1 Corinthians 11:1-15
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
Ephesians 5:22-33
1 Peter 3:1
Colossians 3:18-19
1 Tim 2:11-15
Titus 2:3-5
The argument for Headship from the New Testament is not particularly strong. It needs every bit of evidence it can, so each of the patriarchal proof-texts is important. Therein lies the problem.
One notices that Derek left out all the examples of Biblical headship. Esther 1, Abigail, Michal, and all the way to early Genesis.
Headship, male leadership over women, directly parallels our spiritual reality of Christ’s leadership. It was the explicitly Created Order of Eden, until it got reversed as Humanity’s Original Sin. This is one of the most critical parts of Christianity, therefore this will be a good fight.
And an easy one. Christianity is not hard to understand. It is only hard to accept. God wants us to know Him, in fact, He will not tolerate being ignored or misinterpreted. He didn’t kill His own Son just to watch us forget.
Forgeries
According to most scholars who study the origins of the books of the Bible, both 1 Timothy and Titus are considered forgeries. Few scholars—as distinct from theologians—believe those books were written by their stated authors, that is, the authors lied.
We begin with Social Justice lies? “The Bible supports my claim that men are NOT to rule over women. The proof is that the passages which prove me wrong, are contained in books of the Bible that were forgeries for 2,000 years and nobody noticed. Not until the properly credentialed scholars of Current Year came along, who don’t regard themselves as theologians. We cannot trust any part of the Bible that says I’m wrong, therefore the Bible says I’m right.”
Not even apocryphal. Straight-up forgeries. Because Almighty God couldn’t protect His own Word from human effort? Because only GAE-funded experts trained in evolution instead of Christ, could recognize such convincing lies?
Just give up, Derek. You got no case… but meanwhile, you pique my curiosity who those “scholars” are. You didn’t say but I still found him. One single, atheist college professor at one of the most notoriously Marxist universities this side of the Canadian border, claimed the Bible is a total lie and you believed him because… hmm… you idiot. I couldn’t think of a nice way to say it.
Segue
h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman
Bart Denton Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Derek, you let a Marxist college professor of Historical Jesus tell you that the Bible is fake? Why did you even listen to his claims? “I hate Christ but on a totally separate topic, I discovered that Christianity is a total lie.”
Ehrman was raised as an Anglican in the Episcopal Church; as a teenager, he became a born-again evangelical. In Misquoting Jesus, he recounts being certain in his youthful enthusiasm that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error. His desire to understand the original words of the Bible led him to study ancient languages, particularly Koine Greek, and textual criticism. During such studies at Princeton, however, he became convinced that there are contradictions and discrepancies in the biblical manuscripts that could not be harmonized or reconciled:
“I did my very best to hold on to my faith that the Bible was the inspired word of God with no mistakes and that lasted for about two years […] I realized that at the time we had over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, and no two of them are exactly alike. The scribes were changing them, sometimes in big ways, but lots of times in little ways. And it finally occurred to me that if I really thought that God had inspired this text […] If he went to the trouble of inspiring the text, why didn’t he go to the trouble of preserving the text? Why did he allow scribes to change it?”
Ehrman lied. That entire last paragraph is a textbook SJW lie. “I was just like you and believed just like you, UNTIL I GOT SMARTER AND MORE EDUCATED. Today, I am SMART enough to NOT believe in Jesus. Are you SMART like me? ME SO INTELLIGENT I’M BETTER THAN JESUS!!!”
Be suspicious of any journey of discovery, that ends with the apostate becoming smart and educated enough to reject Christ.
He subsequently turned into a liberal Christian, remaining in the Episcopal Church for 15 years, but later became an agnostic atheist after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.
Now that, I believe. Hard times came and he quit with the easy lies. Then, he lashed out at God for how other, unnamed people hurt him.
Liberals think intelligence is everything, meanwhile they live in a misery they don’t have the WISDOM to process.
In Forged, Ehrman posits that some New Testament books are literary forgeries and shows how widely forgery was practiced by early Christian writers—and how it was condemned in the ancient world as fraudulent and illicit. His scholarly book, Forgery and Counterforgery, is an advanced look at the practice of forgery in the New Testament and early Christian literature.
If I was SMART and EDUCATED, then I would be able to understand the arguments that Ehrman makes that the Bible is a forgery. (Not just Timothy & Titus that Derek claims.) I cannot. It would take a decade of intensive college work to gain that ability. Not happening.
It’s enough for me to recognize “the early Christians were notorious liars and deceivers, to the horror of pagans everywhere” is a blood libel. There were witnesses to Christ’s and the apostles’ miracles, remember? “They faked it” is a total nonstarter.
If I wrote a book claiming 2+2=5, and I wrote it in Latin, would you stop your life in order to become fluent in Latin in order to figure out that I’m wrong? Or would you just wrinkle your nose at my elitist stench?
SJWs love SMART and EDUCATED because they are materialists. True power is the ability to manipulate reality, they think, and obviously, smart people are going to do that better than stupid people.
They’re sad stories. “I’m a globally acknowledged expert with 200IQ, three PhDs and EIGHT Covid boosters! Haha, losers, I just… lost my job for misgendering a blue-haired slug… this is Jesus’ fault!”
You don’t need worldly smarts. You need to love the Truth. To demonstrate this, I will prove God’s mandate for male headship with the ENTIRE BIBLE tied behind my back!
If 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 itself is a forgery (and there is strong reason to think it, like the Pericope Adulterae, is not original), then 43% or 3 of the 7 patriarchal passages not only don’t count as evidence of Headship, but are evidence of doctrinal development.
Derek’s claim that exactly two sentences of 1 Corinthians are forgeries but we can totally trust the rest of it, is Jesus Seminar-level stupid. As in, “it just so happens that the wrong parts of the Bible are the ones that I don’t like”.
That is WHY I’ll fight with the entire Bible tied behind my back. Derek thinks he can invalidate Scriptural truth by fomenting doubt over whether it’s original material. He doesn’t realize the power of truth: it CANNOT be falsified. It cannot be destroyed, overwritten or twisted. It does not change depending on the source it’s drawn from.
It doesn’t really matter if people think women should be silent in churches. There is some evidence to think that there was a tradition of women and children sitting quietly and separately from the men in certain early church. But tradition isn’t doctrine. We need to know that our doctrines are rooted in truth.
Which is it? “It doesn’t matter if people think women should be silent in churches” or “there was a successful conspiracy to falsify God’s Word in order to make people think women should be silent in churches”?
“You can believe it if you want, but you cannot believe that that’s what God meant” is a WRONG answer because there is no truth in it.
The purpose of this post is not to argue that any of these patriarchal passages are in fact forgeries. Rather, it is to answer the question, “What’s the point of questioning it?” The answer is plain. If, and I mean *if*, one or more passages of significance are forgeries, then it greatly matters to anyone who is willing to ask whether or not Headship is a valid doctrine. One should be very careful before pushing an uncertain doctrine based in large part on forgeries.
I’ve never argued that 1 Timothy or Titus are actually forgeries, only 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.
You deceiving piece of witch shit, Derek. YOU didn’t argue it, but the first thing you did was import a proxy to argue it for you. “Most REAL scholars think Timothy and Titus are forgeries,” remember? What you are doing here, is blowing a big cloud of squid ink to create doubt, then posturing yourself to humbly request a reasonable compromise. How generous that you’ll let us have our wrong beliefs, so long as we admit that patriarchy was never God the FATHER’s plan.
SJWs believe there is no God and no Truth. They believe that Christians are “people who obey the contents of a book they don’t really understand, called the Bible”. Implication? If SJWs can rewrite the offensive sections of the Bible then they can shift… aka, converge… the Bible into ordering us to support the Narrative. The only difference between Jesus the Son of God and Jesus the Bitch of Beelzebub is a few words of text! A text that few believers can read in the original Aramaic! Christianity is founded on ignorance and rote obedience, just like Social Justice! We’ll do whatever Bible tells us to, regardless of the past or the future or inconsistencies or sky-God or ANYTHING EXCEPT THE NARRATIVE OF THE MOMENT!
Dumbfuck Social Justice Wankers think we’re just like them. Materialists obsessed with momentary gains. “I support the Current Bible Thing!”
See how Derek’s lies metastasize through Scripture like cancer:
But it does concern me how heavily the doctrine relies on (1) what may possibly have been an attempt by dishonest forgers to create a false doctrine where none previously existed and (2) based on traditionally difficult to understand passages that few theologians can agree on. Without the support of the potentially contested patriarchal passages, you are left with the uncontested passages Ephesians 5:22-33, 1 Peter 3:1, and Colossians 3:18-19, which together describe mutual submission.
Sharkly is only right—when he asks “what sin could possibly arise from women keeping silent in the churches”—if that is a tradition. If, rather, women are kept silent as a matter of false doctrine, then that is a grave sin we should all be concerned about.
Women being submissive nonparticipants IS a tradition, for legit and entirely non-Biblical reasons, and in non-religious contexts.
Ask a sailor. It’s bad luck taking women to sea, why? Because women aren’t men. She’ll sleep around, men will fight over her, then she’ll get pregnant and make a mess while they’re months out of port.
Ask a miner, soldier or other heavy laborer if he should accept women as peers. He’ll say no, why? Because women aren’t men. Women are weaker than men… physically, mentally and emotionally.
Ask an engineer or surgeon if he should accept women as peers. He’ll say no, why? Because after he invests all the training into a female apprentice, she’ll want to stay home with her sick kid instead of working. Assuming she ever develops the ability to manage complex systems with foresight and improvisation.
Ask a priest if he should accept women as peers. He’ll say yes, why? Because women technically aren’t men but they were supposed to be men and God, if God exists, is wrong about women being weak, doesn’t care enough to be clearly understood, and His clear instructions to the contrary are probably forgeries.
Which brings me to my primary argument, why women MUST remain silent. Why women MUST NOT be allowed peerage with men. Why women must be OBEDIENT AS SLAVES TO A MASTER.
Because women are not space aliens. We can see them. Watch how they behave.
We have seen for ourselves, in our lifetimes, this very day, what happens when women are liberated.
It is Hell Upon the Earth.
Women DO lust for “male privilege” and when they gain it, they do the bidding of devils. Welfare Queens and Ratchets demand male resources while refusing to respect men enough to even keep her vows.
How it started:
h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony
In 1872, [Susan B.] Anthony was arrested in her hometown of Rochester, New York for voting in violation of laws that allowed only men to vote. She was convicted in a widely publicized trial. Although she refused to pay the fine, the authorities declined to take further action.
What’s the worst that could happen, huh? She just wanted her voice to count.
Aaand how it’s going:
h ttps://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2020/05/24/men-should-not-be-allowed-to-vote/
[I am a Los Angeles-area journalist who was waiting to interview some high-powered female] candidates, just shooting the breeze with the guys — men, as editorial board members are wont to be — I suddenly, capriciously, with no malice aforethought — with no thought at all, in fact — tossed out a verbal notion.
“I don’t think men should be allowed to vote,” I said.
“What!” one colleague sputtered. “What do you mean?”
“Just that. I suppose that means they — we — wouldn’t be allowed to run for office, either. Oh, well. You’d miss your Barack Obamas, but not so much your George Wallaces.”
“But — why?”
“‘Cause we messed up,” I said. “We had our chances, and we blew it, man. Give the women, I don’t know, say a thousand years, and then take stock. After all, we didn’t let them vote until a century ago.”
My colleague wasn’t having it. “You just want the women to rule ‘cause most of their politics are more aligned with yours.”
“And your point is?”
Meanwhile, our churches have changed loyalty from God the Father, to the Whore of Babylon. “We got the child care, we got the boy band, we got Sunday morning forgiveness for what happened Saturday night… what are we missing?”
“Complementarian marriage counseling!”
None of that would have happened, if women had been kept silent in the church.
And where are the men? Who even cares? We’re listless on the couch, unwanted in society, our wealth extracted by every means imaginable. Many of us were divorced because our wives went to the local priest for marital advice instead of submitting to us. We’re hated for keeping to ourselves, we’re hated for trying to participate, we’re hated for mansplaining how things work and blamed when things don’t work, and most of all, we’re hated because we’re not sexy enough. Barbie prefers prison thugs.
PRISON THUGS! Look at who the women are choosing, now that they aren’t “the chattel of men”! We let our women have a say, and found ourselves pushed out of the very society we built.
We should never have let them speak.
Women want to be disciplined, subjugated, controlled and humiliated. They are natural-born slaves. If you won’t believe the Bible then you can believe Fifty Shades Of Grey instead. Y’know, the other best-selling book of all time.
The women who are happiest, are the ones who willingly serve her husband and keep busy at home. The unhappiest women are the FREE women. Those C-Suite executives with lavish perks, the obedience of a thousand men and an empty nest. They’re so strong and independent, they drink themselves to sleep at night! No bartender!
All of this we learned for ourselves, with our own eyeballs, no education needed. We are firsthand witnesses to the NECESSITY of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. Even if God had not required women to be silent and subservient, the fact remains that society and church thrive only when she is.
Boom. I proved Scripture without referring to Scripture. As much as I hate living in Current Year Clown World, it has confirmed Christ and His teachings as the Immutable and Eternal Truth like I never would have imagined possible.
I have seen evolution telling us that we’re perfected beings always getting better, and then I see us not do what we know we should… like tearing families apart, a severe failure of reproduction. Evolution can’t explain that.
I have watched Godless scientists explain that life on Earth is random, and I see them change their explanation every year so it doesn’t get disproven. Then I watch them Cancel dissidents.
And I just now while writing this, read a college professor claim the Bible is wrong because it says women should be obedient to men… but I know and have followed the collapse of my country and people in parallel with, and proudly credited to, female liberation from men.
Somebody is lying and it ain’t me eyeballs.
Which means it ain’t Scripture, either.
This is what Derek and the SJWs don’t understand: God is a Person. He is not a rulebook. God is not a synonym for Bible. God didn’t give us the Bible because we needed to practice arbitrary obedience to easily confused rituals. God is the Truth, and the Truth exists outside of ANY human tool or perception. The Bible is just a shortcut, a textbook so we don’t have to constantly rediscover how humans should behave. A history book so that Christ doesn’t have to reenact the Crucifixion twice a century, like the Judges had to save Israel every generation because the children never retained the wisdom of their parents.
When we DO have to rediscover how humans should behave, we reach the same conclusion Every. Single. Time. Every single time, we learn that men must rule over women. Society must be reserved for men while women are kept at home, barefoot, pregnant and usually happy despite themselves. But every time we achieve that stable society, something, some fatal flaw in our souls, makes women want to rebel and men want to appease.
Almost as if we need a Savior to fix us. We know the good we should do, but we don’t do it.
A decade or two ago, a loose-knit group of men coordinated over the newfangled Internetwork. They called themselves pickup artists because they wanted to pick up girls and get laid, and dedicated themselves to figuring out women for themselves. Trial and error only. !Science! They went on to independently rediscover the truth of Biblical sex roles, after which they chose (once again) to follow female misconduct for the poozy instead of holding to male righteousness and demanding better. They were soon destroyed by the MeToo movement.
It was like watching a reenactment of Eden.
I don’t care how exactly Genesis 3:16 phrased Eve’s curse, when I can see that curse for myself in modern America. While cloistered academics debate the semantics of dead languages, wondering what God meant with His “women, shut up and obey your men”, I live in the real world where God and women also live. Pretty lies dies quickly outside the Hive.
God is real. Truth is objective. The Bible is trustworthy. The man wears the pants.
Signed, an eyewitness to the necessity of male headship.
Well that is a shout into the void, but a pretty good one.
Looking closely at that account in Eden, I have a few questions for you:
Did God create Eve materialistic and gullible?
Was Eve wrong that the fruit was attractive?
What was the fruit?
Was the tree there to establish free will?
If so, why did God allow Uncle Scar direct access to His created imagebearers? A being evidently bent on pushing them over the edge. Wasn’t it enough to have the tree there alone – why let the bad character near them? Because clearly with their innocence, the argument could be made that they were at a huge disadvantage.
And if that was the case, was Eve set up?
If so, for what purpose?
I think you are spot on with your article – if men and women both function in their God designed roles of leader and nurturer respectively, then you get functional families and stable societies. But it does take both. It takes the authority of God the Father and the nurturing of The Holy Spirit to transform a human being (with the doorway of redemption being Christ taken for granted in the argument).
And so, the last question is: Is The Holy Spirit Female? For if you will recall, going back to Genesis, it says that “So God created MAN in His own image; in the image of God he created HIM: male and female he created THEM” Gen 1:27
The moon is referred to female (I think in Isaiah), and is not the sun, moon and earth the representation of the Trinitarian Godhead – The stronger, authoritarian, life generating Sun as The Father, the ephemeral moon, as the female Holy Spirit (potentially), and the earth as the Son incarnate in Adam’s seed who was formed of the dust of the earth.
This is not new age gobly gook – it’s just an obvious observation.
Sex requires a sender (male) and a receiver (female) God is all sender (Creator) and we his church are the receiver (female)..
What do you think it means – the only “begotten” Son of God?
If we go back and looks at the lineages in the Bible – whom begets whom – we are clearly dealing with SEED – which we call Sperm.
And then what do we make of Genesis 6:4 with the Sons of God and daughters of men thing(?).
If Jesus was in the beginning with God, yet while on Earth a voice FROM HEAVEN calls down and says “This is MY beloved Son…”. With what I just pointed out from begetting, and seed, and angels impregnating humans …it stands to reason, and you have to wonder, if Jesus was a divine Child conception. I think we can begin to see, that there is so much we just don’t know.
This does not answer the question, and introduces a false parallel.
God is without sex. Sex is unique to mankind, serving to replenish what is lost due to death, which God does not need.
Further, the church is men. It is formed of men, by men, for men.
Women and children have the family for their identity.
God does not need the church to be God.
I never said God had a sex.
Perhaps. If Tom understood, that’s good enough.
Strawman. I never said you ever said God has a sex.
The assertion was made as part of setting up the conclusion, which directly addresses the folly of God being defined by the church.
Whether or not someone understood is irrelevant to the clarity and accuracy of one’s statements. This, a bait-and-switch.
Where does it say God is without sex?
If, as Gunner posits, God is a Patriarchy, that sounds …male gendered. And what makes a male a male?
And who was it – Ezekiel (?) – that saw the likeness of a man on the throne.
When all of the spirit world is described as male per the Bible (possibly excepting Wisdom, which I regard as anthropomorphic), a reasonable contention is that they’re male by default, not male by gonad. It wouldn’t feel right to call God an “it”.
Although the ‘male by gonad’ is actually plausible when you look at the Nephilim account in Genesis.
The one Biblical exception to “the spirit world is all male” will be the Church as the Bride of Christ. That is why I claim the role of spiritual female is reserved for humanity.
“And so, the last question is: Is The Holy Spirit Female?”
Tom,
The angel Gabriel was sent from God to… a virgin… He said… Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son… Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a MAN? (emphasis mine) And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”
From the Gospel according to Saint Luke, Chapter 1
God intended the Fall exactly as it happened. Why is a good and complicated question, but God obviously could have prevented it had He wanted to.
Why Satan targeted humanity is an even better question. Having noticed the way humanity is being divided into spiritual factions, I naturally became curious about who those factions are, but nothing to present yet and am still going down rabbit holes. It’s safe to say that the human experience is not the entire conflict.
Currently, there is no female spiritual entity. I believe that is the space reserved for redeemed humanity to occupy.
“But it does take both.”
Yes and no. As I noted in my recent post on male loneliness, we don’t need women but life becomes miserable without (or against) them. That’s what hurts about all the female empowerment. Women are less capable but they don’t need to be capable. If she would just appreciate her husband and be loyal to him, he’d gladly give her the world. Achievements are just window dressing.
God has the same attitude. He doesn’t need us. He is complete without us. But if we give Him our loyalty and gratitude, He’ll gladly give us everything and His own life, too.
Rejecting His offer, manboobed vile cretins like Gates and Schwab posture themselves to be gods, thinking humanity will be sooo impressed by their accomplishments, while they burn civilization to make sure nobody gets to be happy. It’s easy to see a parallel to feral wives in such behavior.
Human sexuality is the great metaphor. The devil and his minions are twisting Scripture today but their real damage was first destroying marriage and fatherhood. Only in the total absence of normal human sexual experience, can anybody believe that Biblical morality is arbitrary.
“Wisdom calls aloud outside, SHE raises HER voice in the open squares…” Privetbs 1:20
Then cut to Proverbs 8 – the entire chapter and into chapter 9. But I will clip one verse to for consideration before you read them all:
“The Lord possessed me at the BEGINNING, before his works of old. I have been established from EVERLASTING, from the beginning, BEFORE there was ever an earth…”. Proverbs 8:22-23. – speaking of the feminine Wisdom
I don’t know exactly what this entity is, but it’s feminine, pre-earth and pre-human. That might qualify as a feminine deity.
Couple of errors in that quick reply, but you get it.
“God intended the Fall exactly as it happened. Why is a good and complicated question…”
So He could demonstrate the meaning of agape love by His holy cross.
Well.
It has been a few years since you last excoriated me in public. Do you remember the last time? I do. It was a little over the top then, but more so here.
I’m noticing a trend (not just you) where I am not allowed to reference something without implicitly agreeing with it. In virtually every article I write, I cite Roman Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics, and/or Atheists. I often criticize the beliefs of one Bart Ehrman. I quote him because i’m familiar with his work and it is relevant to the topic at hand, not because I agree with him. He did not convince me.
Nor do I always make my positions explicit. If I don’t make my position explicit or explicitly refuse to take a position, it is because you can think for yourself. If you’re going to criticize me for that, I’m guilty as charged.
Even when I state something “as fact”, it is nonetheless just my opinion. No one is obligated to accept my claims at face value, and you will never see me tell anyone that they must do what I tell them, even though I will say they are wrong. If you want to tell people what they must believe, do it yourself and leave me out of it.
The reality is that few people are interested in challenging my claims, they’d much rather insult me, which is not productive at all. You did make a solid challenge one of my claims above, and I’ve taken note of it, and will alter my writing in the future. If only you did that with my entire work, we’d have made some real progress and you might have made a much more meaningful difference.
That’s right, I DID NOT ARGUE IT. If I must be held to guilt-by-association, then I am, of course, guilty. I freely admit that I cite those I disagree with and attempt to summarize their positions accurately (and often without opining on their merits, at least at that moment). And yes, I execute editorial decision-making to include, rather than exclude, it. I deny none of that.
But it is an utter falsehood that I am arguing by proxy. You have no cause to make that claim and I vehemently deny it. You are putting words in my mouth. In that instance, I stated precisely what my beliefs are, and you have chosen to disbelieve that and call me a liar. That is entirely on you.
When I make a proposition “X if and only if Y”, it does not mean I believe X, Y, or their negations. It’s just a proposition. If you cannot accept this method of argument without imputing motive, then why are you reading what I write?
The beliefs that “Theologians trump secular scholars” and “sola scriptura means none of the Bible can be a forgery” makes the stuff you falsely think I believe disappear as logically invalid: it is actually disproven by the truth of those claims. What I wrote was falsifiable propositions, not statements of my belief. That’s the point of what I do.
It doesn’t matter who I quote. In fact, whenever I fail to cite my enemy’s beliefs, I get accused of strawman arguments. You can’t make everyone happy, and I’m not going to try.
A lot of people in the ‘sphere think the Pericope Adulterae is not original and should not be included in the Bible. The same reasoning that goes into that is the same reasoning for excluding 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. I do not know that either are not original, I just happen to lean in that direction. I’m well aware that many people disagree with me and are dogmatic on that point. I might call them wrong, but I’m not going to call them witches and liars because they disagree with me. They should make up their own minds and act accordingly.
I do think it matters if a doctrine is largely based on contested passages, even though I think I more-or-less come down on the same side as you do on inspiration. That’s something I said I believe in my article. You may think it doesn’t matter, I do. That’s a difference between us.
As an aside: the reason read this blog and comment on it is because I know, for a fact, that you criticize me out of love. It’s pretty insane that classics like…
…and…
…and…
…are stated in love, but I’ve been around long enough to know that this is your intention. It would be nice if it didn’t have to come to that. And you know, it could turn out differently if you used a different method.
“Nor do I always make my positions explicit. If I don’t make my position explicit or explicitly refuse to take a position, it is because you can think for yourself.”
Thinking for myself is what I did, but here we are. Do you not care to be correctly understood? Then why do you communicate?
“Even when I state something “as fact”, it is nonetheless just my opinion.”
That is lying.
“It doesn’t matter who I quote. In fact, whenever I fail to cite my enemy’s beliefs, I get accused of strawman arguments.”
When you cite an enemy of God who claims the Bible is a forgery, while doubting the legitimacy of a different part of Scripture, what is your reader supposed to think? Especially if you don’t care to state your position explicitly? Although “cite” isn’t the right word because you didn’t name him and inaccurately referred to him in the plural. I see Social Justice Warriors do that frequently while arguing from authority. “All the experts agrees with me. Okay, fine, since you found out, it’s just the one guy, but he’s a scientist and New York Times bestseller!”
It is fine to anticipate counter-arguments but again, SJWs are notorious for bringing up subjects for no reason than to undermine their opponent’s confidence. “Lots of scholars reject your entire premise. But that’s okay, I’m only concerned about this one little topic, you can believe the rest if you want” is practically trademarked. FYI, your debate style resembles the devil’s.
Don’t be like them! State your positions clearly. Cite your sources. Never tolerate confusion!
“The beliefs that “Theologians trump secular scholars” and “sola scriptura means none of the Bible can be a forgery” makes the stuff you falsely think I believe disappear as logically invalid…”
Dude… I argued with the Bible tied behind my back…
“I do not know that either are not original, I just happen to lean in that direction.”
You weren’t arguing anything at all, then? Well, at least you can now be confident that I Corinthians 14:34-35 is legit and should be enforced upon other people. Now that you’ve heard from a witness.
I communicate to be understood, but nobody can explain every single one of their views, nor expect everyone to understand.
I make editorial decisions, which includes which things to discuss and which things not to. If you are volunteering to be my editor, I accept. Send me your email, and then you can look over all my posts before I post them. Would that satisfy your concerns?
You really must want to be my editor.
Come now. I am not making deliberately untruthful claims, nor attempting to deceive, nor knowingly bearing false witness on another. You should consider applying the Principle of Charity more often. Instead of choosing the sense of ‘opinion’ that let’s you falsely call me a liar, you could instead assume the most rational, favorable explanation, such as:
It is not lying to state an opinion of things I believe are facts, but are subject to uncertainty and debate. Notably lacking from my articles or comments is the assertion that my views are not subject to debate. The landing page of my website makes it perfectly clear that I write essays. At the top of the article you read is a link to the “index”, listed under “essays.” Just one article immediately preceding the one you read is “Why I Do What I Do”, where I explicitly state my purpose for writing. Anyone can see that my works are mostly opinion essays for the express purpose of debate, not dogmatic.
But I shouldn’t have to do any of this. Before accusing me publicly of sinning, you bear the burden to make sure I was actually not deceptive. You could have read my site or sent me a private message to make sure. But you didn’t, because you wanted to make a post. I don’t blame you for it, but you made a mistake and it is your responsibility to fix it.
I was answering Sharkly’s implied question: “I’m not sure why Derek would question that passage.” It was a short post. It wasn’t a research paper. If someone wants more information that what I provided (which was more than you seem to think) or clarification on any particular point, there is a combox on my page where anyone can ask questions. But that isn’t really the point, is it?
This…
…and this…
…are the same thing.
What is your view of the relationship between biblical inspiration, preservation, and accessibility?
Come now. I am not making deliberately untruthful claims, nor attempting to deceive, nor knowingly bearing false witness on another. You should consider applying the Principle of Charity more often. Instead of choosing the sense of ‘opinion’ that let’s you falsely call me a liar, you could instead assume the most rational, favorable explanation, such as:
“Opinion — A conclusion or view thought out, through any combination of facts, reason, and assumptions, yet still open to debate”
It is not lying to state an opinion of things I believe are facts, but are subject to uncertainty and debate.
This is, without a doubt, the slimiest thing that I have ever read on the internet. I feel dirty just from having quoted it.
You sir, are a liar. You are a trickster attempting to confuse and befuddle through word play. Your contortions would make a Japanese concubine envious. Your actions leave confusion in your wake, your words sow doubt, you come to no sure epiphany and thus you leave your unfortunate reader as a drowning man flailing in a sea of mud. You would make Jordan Peterson blush with envy at your attempts to redefine and confuse the concept of truth.
Truth is simple and thus clear. Your word salad is the antithesis of truth, a fact of which I have no doubt that you are very much aware.
The Word of God is truth. Everything else is untrue, but not everything is a lie.
No, you are putting words in my mouth, insisting that you know what I believe even as I tell you what my beliefs are. You choose to disbelieve. You choose to accuse me of falsehood. You choose to bear false witness against me. You say I am engaging in word play even as you manipulate my words to say something that isn’t true. Your actions are your own.
When Merriam-Webster says “OPINION implies a conclusion thought out yet open to dispute” it coheres precisely with what I am doing. I take those opinions—“a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter”—and I put them down in writing for anyone to read., clearly stating my purpose. I deceive no one. Far from attempting confusion, I have attempted over and over to make this abundantly clear.
Far from attempting confusion, I have attempted over and over to make this abundantly clear.
So you can add ‘failure’ to your CV.
By Occam’s Razor, I suggest that the reason there aren’t more Bible verses on the roles of men and women is because they didn’t have confusion on the roles of the sexes. More versus were not needed because they had a well-ordered, patriarchal society.
When your women act like Sarah (who addressed Abram as ‘lord’), and your Vashtis get stripped of their crowns and offices, you don’t need repeated explanations of what is obvious to everyone.
“Ask a priest if he should accept women as peers. He’ll say yes, why?”
Come on over to the Catholic Church! Our priests say ‘no’. (Er, um, most of them anyway.)