Johnny Skeptic

At http://www.tektonics.org/uz/zindler02.html, would be apologist and imposter James Holding says:

"Spectre of diversity" arguments. Zindler cites disagreements among believers concerning which books belong in the canon, with the implicit or direct conclusion that these disagreements are prime fodder for disproving the veracity of the canonical process. The conclusion is unwarranted, and involves overplaying the disagreements and their importance while ignoring the basic unity of canonical and doctrinal decisions. It is the sort of argument generally offered by the uninformed.

"Such objections, when encountered, should be taken seriously ONLY if the arguer can offer some reason why the competing view or book itself ought to be taken seriously. They should also demonstrate some knowledge of the form and content of the book in question. Simply throwing titles in the air and shouting, "Why was/wasn't THIS in the canon, huh???" is not a sufficient form of argument; nor is pointing to this or that church somewhere and asking why they include a particular book in the canon and others do not. Without knowing the history behind such inclusions or exclusions, the argument is little more than parade confetti."

Actually, it is Holding's comments that should be taken seriously ONLY if he can offer some credible reasons why the writings that were chosen ought to be taken seriously, and of course, Holding doesn't offer any at all. Does he know "the history behind such inclusions or exclusions?" Well of course he doesn't. Believe it or not, when I brought up this issue at the Theology Web, all that an embarrassed Holding could do is ask me which books I would have included.

Holding's views on the canon come not from any empirical evidence at all, but from what he believes God must be like. We already know what God is like. Exodus 4:11 says "And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?" You can bet that Holding is chicken to show up at this forum. I would debate him at the Theology Web, or anywhere else for that matter, but I was banned on some trumped up charges because of the effectiveness of my arguments. While feigning boldness in order to seduce the unwary and the uninitiated, Holding hides out at the Theology Web where the moderators protect him and ban anyone who embarrasses him. I will be starting other threads on Holding's ineptness in the near future, including his patently absurd article on the Tyre prophecy. I debated Holding a lot at the Theology Web, and he knows better than to show up here.

EthnAlln

I call Holding's arguing the "Rush Limbaugh" style. Limbaugh spends a lot of time presenting what he believes is the mental state of liberals and their motives, as if he had a scintilla of a clue what those things are. (That's far from all that's wrong with Limbaugh's arguments, but I don't want to go off-topic here.) I looked at Holding's diatribe, and found it very very long on descriptions of the panic he alleges to be in his opponent, and hardly a word addressing the actual argument. In fact, I would say he ignores entirely the very real problem that there are at least 10,000 different interpretations of essential points of theology disputed by people all reading the same text. If that isn't a problem, I don't know what is. But Holding just blithely ignores it.

mens_sana

What on earth is "veracity of the canonical process"?

Oh, maybe that's it — the "on earth" part ...
:Cheeky:

Amaleq13

I suspect it is the same apparently faith-based assertion that our own Gamera likes to assert yet not defend. Namely, that we should trust that the early Church Fathers knew what they were doing when they identified which texts were "genuine" and which were not. I've asked Gamera to support this assertion several times (Example 1, Example 2) but he has, so far, refused to provide specific evidence that their conclusions resulted from a rational consideration of the evidence rather than from what they already believed was “true”. As I indicated to Gamera (which he strangely parroted back later as though it was unknown to me), the rejection of the alleged Acts of Paul was the entirely rational reaction to the discovery of the actual forger but that really doesn’t establish that their decisions were generally the result of a consideration of the evidence.

I continue to be interested in any such evidence that might exist because it is my understanding that their decisions were primarily, if not entirely, guided by their already existing beliefs and whether a given text was compatible with those beliefs or if it could be said to support an already identified "heresy".

EthnAlln

When I was a Catholic, I tried to argue with an evangelical Protestant that it was, after all, the Catholic Church that assembled the books he was quoting to me to condemn the Catholic Church. His response was that any fool looking at the candidates for inclusion could have seen that the excluded texts were worthless. (In retrospect, I think he was just parroting what he had been told. I doubt if he had ever looked at them himself. In any case, if I had been there, I would certainly have cast aside the Apocalypse and thereby deprived Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, John Hagee, Jack Van Impe, and a bunch of other odious morons of their living. What redeeming feature does this book have that makes it worthy to inhabit the same space with the Gospels and the First Letter to the Corinthians?)

John Kesler

I would like for any Christian, not just Turkel, to explain, without begging the question or resorting to ad hoc criteria, why Enoch isn't canonical. Here is what Tertullian said about Enoch's place among scripture:

As Tertullian states, Jude gives "testimony" to Enoch. I elaborate on this point in this post. Yes, I know that Enoch wouldn't be part of the NT canon, but I'd like an explanation anyway.

EthnAlln

I've been told (can't remember the source) that Jude nearly got itself banned for that careless endorsement of Enoch.

mens_sana

"Already existing beliefs" is most certainly one of the canon criteria. But by the time anyone started to work with the idea of "canon," there was already a widely accepted core and books were not so much selected as they were excluded. (This is how we get the largely outdated notion of a "biblical theology.") And parallel to those "already existing beliefs" was the necessity of establishing both the authority of the church and of its hierarchy. Hence, the idea of "apostolic" succession and the wholesale assignment of apostolic authors to otherwise anonymous books. Apostolic authority is an important factor as early as the Pastoral Epistles and Ignatius.

mens_sana

I wonder if that is not the reason right there. The OT canon was largely in place by the time of the Yavneh Academy, ca. 100 CE.

Ben C Smith

Jerome, On Famous Men 4:

Jude, the brother of James, left a short epistle which is reckoned among the seven catholic epistles, and because in it he quotes from the apocryphal book of Enoch it is rejected by many. Nevertheless by age and use it has gained authority and is reckoned among the holy scriptures.

Ben.