The Upper Room

12:03 AM

In what circumstances is it appropriate for someone to edit a question? Specifically, christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/52302/…

is a poorly worded question but could possibly be edited to make it fit much better (e.g. What if any are the theological reasons for historically Christian nations supporting the modern state of Israel? might be a possible alternative wording). Is it appropriate for the question to be edited in such a manner, or only cleaning up wording/grammar?

Birdie

12:17 AM

@LeeWoofenden I'm late to the conversation, but with regards to what you said about Paul and Jesus, can I ask who you consider to have inspired Paul to write what he wrote? Specifically, do you believe that God (and thus Jesus) is the ultimate author of the entirety of Scripture or not?

curiousdannii

@LeeWoofenden Inerrancy has nothing to do with reconciling Jesus and Paul's words!

TRiG

@El'endiaStarman /r/conlangs & /r/Artifexian.

El'endia Starman

@TRiG Well, that was kinda random. :P

TRiG

@El'endiaStarman TRiG King of the Archives.

TRiG

12:42 AM

(I was searching for something else and found that.)

El'endia Starman

3:09 AM

@TRiG This is what I've got in it so far. I probably won't do any more work on it, at least not until I write a program to do the vocabulary-assigning for me.

TRiG

3:29 AM

@El'endiaStarman Final r is a necessary component of your grammar? That means I have difficulty pronouncing your language.

fredsbend

3:52 AM

2

Q: What are the guidelines spelling out when a 3rd party can edit a question?

Someone edited one of my questions with no explanation. They were fairly simple edits, but the person who edited is not listed as a moderator and I would have preferred to leave my question as is. Where are the guidelines for what 3rd parties are and are not allowed to edit on a question and wh...

Birdie

@fredsbend Cheers!

Dick Harfield

5:09 AM

@Dialogist Welcome to the Upper Room, to discuss Peter in/not in Rome

@Dialogist We should use chat for comments and threads that are off topic for the normal purpose of comments attached to questions or answers/

I particularly note that you also have answered this question, which IMO makes it inappropriate to censure other answers for what you believe to be inadequate research.

14

Q: Was the apostle Peter martyred in Rome?

There are some legends that say that Peter traveled to Rome where he was martyred. Is this legend true? Are there any historical accounts that support the legend? Are there any other theories about the later life of apostle Peter? Is there any historical evidence that he was bishop of Rome?

history peter

I cite a number of Patristic sources your authors seem to have overlooked. Would you agree that they are valid? If not, what evidence exists that they are fabrications, other than modern suppositions that some sort of hidden motives were at work to establish papal primacy? Demacopoulos has been openly criticized by the Russian Orthodox Church for having s bias against the Church Fathers. (pravoslavie.ru/english/77179.htm). – Dialogist

@dialogist If you want a citiation from someone who has never been criticised for holding liberal or conservative views, there are plenty more I could cite instead. But why - the truth of wht they say (at least in this instance) is self-evident.

I have no idea about O'Malley's gig. I'm sure every tradition has its own contrarians. No one today is much interested in what the Church Fathers actually taught. Books that claim they were political schemers and manipulators tend to sell much better. – Dialogist

@dialogist - Father O'Malley is a priest in good standing with the Catholic Church and Professor, Department of Theology at Georgetown University.

TRiG

10:24 AM

@Birdie An attempt to bring a closed question to within site guidelines probably applies here.

Joshua

12:41 PM

@LeeWoofenden Protestants do not say that. I will continue to make this objection when you make similar statements until you start providing sources for these claims. Protestants do not say the guilty will escape judgement on this life for what they are specifically guilty for. Protestants do not say anyone is innocent, but rather that all are guilty. By your reasoning there would be no salvation.

@LeeWoofenden And please refrain from saying what Protestants apologists here say since you continue to say we are saying things that we have already told you we are not saying. This is not a personal attack, this is a complaint of misrepresentation of your opponent's already stated position.

Lee Woofenden

@PaulVargas The Bible tells us that we must repent from our sins, believe in God/Jesus (and "belief" is not a mere intellectual thing, but a willingness to do what God/Jesus says), and keep God/Jesus' commandments--summed up in the commandments to love God above all and love our neighbor as ourselves. These are the basics, upon which the entire Bible agrees. This results in our getting a new heart and a new spirit, and becoming a new person. All of this is powered by God/Jesus' presence in us.

@Birdie I do not believe that the Acts and the Epistles have the same level of divine inspiration that the Gospels and the book of Revelation (in the NT) do. I believe that they do have some divine inspiration, in that they were written by the earliest followers of Jesus based on his teachings. But I do not believe they are the divinely inspired Word of God in the same way that the Gospels and the book of Revelation are. See:

7

Q: What writings are held as "biblical canon" by Swedenborgians?

Reading an article on Emanuel Swedenborg, I came across the following fact: It should be noted, however, that Corinthians is not included in the list of books that, according to Swedenborg, constitute the divinely inspired Biblical canon. (Source: Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg), on Wikipedia) ...

bible canon swedenborg

@PaulVargas However, for the purposes of conversations and doctrinal debates with Protestants, I am perfectly willing to use the Protestant biblical canon. There is nothing in the Acts and the Epistles that contradicts my doctrines if those books are properly understood. In fact, those books fully support my doctrines. But they have been badly misunderstood in Protestantism.

Joshua

@LeeWoofenden Also I'm curious, if God is so perfectly capable of communicating truth to us that he didn't need Paul or Luther or Calvin...why did he need Swedenborg?

3

Lee Woofenden

12:56 PM

@curiousdannii In practice, as used by Protestants, it does. But really, it has to do with reconciling Jesus, James, and the entire rest of the Bible with their misreading of Paul's words.

@Joshua Because Luther and Calvin, not to mention a whole chain of Catholic theologians stretching backwards at least to the third century, had loused up our understanding of the Bible and the truth so badly that God needed someone to cut through all that corruption of the Bible and of Christian doctrine and point people back to what the Bible actually does say.

@Joshua Penal substitution, which is a Protestant doctrine, says that Jesus was punished for the sins of humanity, thus paying the price for their sins. This is precisely saying that the innocent (Jesus) is held guilty and punished, while the guilty (human sinners who accept Jesus) are declared innocent and not punished. That is the fundamental meaning of penal substitution. That is precisely what penal substitution says.

@LeeWoofenden Oops, that was supposed to be @Birdie.

@Joshua I've been told by Protestants here that we can't understand the Bible without interpretation. Over the course of conversations and debates, I've pointed out that the Bible doesn't actually state their fundamental soteriological doctrines: justification by faith alone and penal substitution. They've told me that these things are based on interpretation of the text.

I therefore stand by my assessment: that they are telling me God is not capable of speaking plainly so that we can understand how to be saved without the need for human theologians to interpret God's words.

I believe and see plainly that when it comes to our eternal salvation, the plain words of the Bible itself are sufficient. Simply be reading the Bible, we can know and understand what God requires of us for our salvation. There is no need of Luther, Calvin, Swedenborg, or anyone else to tell us what it means. The words of the Bible itself are as plain as day.

Joshua

@LeeWoofenden all understanding requires interpretation. No one is saying you must have anyone person or groups interpretation in order to be saved. They may claim that their interpretation is the correct one and necessary for salvation. But that does not mean that interpretation cannot be arrived at apart from them. Once again you are confusing correlation and causation. As well as the word interpret. To say we can understand without interpreting is nonsensical.

Lee Woofenden

And the fact is that the Bible never says that we are justified by faith alone, nor does it ever say that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. In fact, the Bible specifically denies that we are justified by faith alone, and it completely rejects the foundational idea of penal substitution: that the innocent can suffer the penalty for the guilty, and thus make the guilty innocent.

@Joshua I'm speaking much more basically. I'm saying that the Bible plainly says what we need to do to be saved: we need to repent for the forgiveness of sins. We need to believe in God as we understand God. We need to put God above all, and love our neighbor as ourselves. And that means doing good deeds for our neighbor. Jesus lays it all out as plain as day in the Gospels. And the rest of the Bible says the same thing.

The Bible simply doesn't say that we are justified by faith alone. That was an invention of Luther. And the Bible simply doesn't say anywhere that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. That is also a Protestant invention.

Joshua

1:12 PM

@LeeWoofenden it does not matter how clear you think it is. It is still your interpretation. You are telling me the same thing you are saying the Protestants are saying. That I have to have your simple interpretation instead of their complex interpretation. It's still interpretation.

Lee Woofenden

I'm well aware that some things in the Bible require interpretation. But not the basics of salvation. That is right there in the plain words of the Bible. No interpretation is necessary. To say otherwise is to say that God is incapable of speaking to his people without the intervention of human theologians. I utterly reject such a preposterous claim.

It is a slur on God's name.

@Joshua No. I'm saying that the Bible actually says these things. In its own words. If you can show me a single passage that says we are justified by faith alone, or a single passage that says Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, then you will have accomplished what no Protestant has been able to accomplish in the two or three decades that I have been asking them to show me such passages. They don't exist.

This is not a matter of interpretation. It's a matter of reading comprehension.

Words have meaning. Sentences have meaning. They can't mean just any old thing we want them to mean. The authors used those words in that order to say something definite. You can't just "interpret" it to mean whatever you want it to mean.

And the plain fact of the matter is that the things I say are required for salvation are stated plainly in the Bible's own words multiple times throughout the Bible. The things Protestant theology says are required for salvation require "interpretation" because they are nowhere in the entire Bible stated in the Bible's own words.

Joshua

@LeeWoofenden these are my words I am saying them but as you read them you are interpreting them for understanding. If you understand certain words or phrases in a different way than I do or are approaching what I am saying from different presuppositions then you are going to interpret it differently. This is evidenced nearly every time we chat. That you think the Bible magically says things for understanding without us having to interpret the words is nonsense.

Lee Woofenden

@Joshua And this is precisely why Protestants consider what the Bible actually says to be irrelevant. I rest my case. And unfortunately, I've gtg now.

Joshua

@LeeWoofenden actually I can point to several instances where you have interpreted the specific and definite words that were said by me and others to mean something else than what they meant. You can interpret things to whatever you want them to mean if you change definitions and presuppositions.

Eliseus autem locutus est

0

Q: What did the Council of Braga (~560) say about singing psalms in church?

The First Council of Braga was a meeting of eight bishops that took place around AD 560. They produced a number of decrees, one of which relates to the type of songs that could be sung in church. Debates over the style and content of worship songs continue in many Christian traditions today, so...

medieval-latin ecclesiastical-latin christianity church-councils

Joshua

1:39 PM

If someone tells me their understanding of scripture is the truth but then tells me it was not arrived at by interpretation but it is simply plain and cannot or will not discuss or disclose any influencing definitions or presuppositions, I am inclined to reject what they say as opinion at best, or, at worst, a dishonest falsehood.

curiousdannii

@LeeWoofenden To say that you can understand without interpreting is like saying you can hear without listening.

No one's talking about needing human theologians to mediate God's word to us. We're talking about using the mental capacities God gave us to read, interpret, and understand the words God gave us.

@LeeWoofenden Reading comprehension is interpretation. If you think you can separate them, then, well, I'm amazed.

Ask Elisha

2:44 PM

0

Q: What's the story behind the making of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible?

The Complutensian Polyglot Bible was the first printed polyglot of the entire Bible and was, from what I can gather, a pretty complex scholarly effort in which many different scholars had to come together in Alcalá de Henares (or Complutum in Latin) and needed to work for 15 years. This all had t...

spain 15th-century bible

fredsbend

3:27 PM

I find these questions interesting, though repugnant at the same time. On this site a question like this needs to be asked "according to whom" where 'who' is a Christian group or teacher/leader. You mentioned in another comment a "YouTube called Judah teaches led by Chazzawan". This may not be enough as YouTube channels are generally run by a single person and we cannot tell from that if anyone actually follows them. But we have you telling us that your friend does, so in a loose sense that counts as a group of self-identifying Christians. — fredsbend 53 secs ago

I think we can get this question reopened if we get the right details.

Paul Vargas

3:47 PM

@LeeWoofenden How do you understand John 3:36?

> He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not (ἀπειθῶν) the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. John 3:36 KJV

Does Elisha speak?

8:15 PM

0

Q: Which "no-tradition-specified" exegesis questions should be closed?

This site has dozens of open exegesis questions that ask for interpretations of biblical texts but that do not specify a tradition. Of these, many have lain dormant for years and have not recently been tested by a vote-to-close process in the review queue. However, some have undergone such a pr...

discussion vote-to-close truth-questions

3

Paul Vargas

@LeeWoofenden And how do you understand 1 John 2:2?

> And he is the propitiation (ἱλασμός) for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:2 KJV

Birdie

10:41 PM

@Eliseusautemlocutusest @Nathaniel I'm not sure of the context of your question but you may find this and the resulting discussion useful if you're studying historical psalm-singing: puritanboard.com/showthread.php/89586-History-of-Psalm-Singing

@LeeWoofenden The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture speaks directly against the straw man you are setting up that Scripture needs certain individuals to understand the truth contained within. Rather, all of Scripture, and in particular the essentials of the Gospel, are clearly understandable by the common, unlearned man.

@LeeWoofenden While everyone should and must study the Bible carefully to attain a more complete understanding, and while some parts of Scripture are harder to understand than others, it is principally important that God did not write the Bible to confuse us.

Nathaniel

11:29 PM

@Birdie Thanks! I did come across that, and found it unsatisfactory – but it pointed me in the right direction at least.

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