Christian

Cozmo,

Thank you for your thoughts. Your argument from silence is duely considered. I find what scripture does say more compelling that what it does not.

BTW - without the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no Bible, and no Christians. The coming of the Holy Spirit resulted in every Christian in history. The significance of Paul is trivial compared to that.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Faith is something that exceeds the evidence, but is not contrary to it.

When you get right down to it, you can't even "proove" your own existence. Let alone anything external to "you."

Everyone has faith. If you required absolute verification before taking any action you wouldn't even get out of bed in the morning.

(not a bad idea perhaps, now that I think about it. Sure could have used an extra couple of hours sleep this morning )

Respectfully,

Christian

NOGO

Faith is delusion.
It is not based on evidence at all.
It is based on wishful thinking.

True, we do assume that certain things are true without verifying them. However these are fair assumptions which do not contradict evidence and common sense.

The contrast with religious faith is easy to demonstrate.

When it comes to practical aspects of life as with science the same truths are thought around the world.
When it comes to truths based on the Christian faith one cannot fail to notice that from the very begining Christians were divided. Unity was achieved through force around 325 CE and more that 1000 years later this fake unity fell apart and divergence has continued ever since.

Faith is something that exceeds the evidence, but is not contrary to it.

If it were so there would be only one Christian faith and all Christians would believer the same thing.

Over time religious faith diverges.
Over time science converges.

Vorkosigan

He argued that if the critics of the day were so far off about his writings as to miss the mark every single time (having the advantage of a common historical and cultural context, not to mention a living author who personally answered all of his mail his entire life) ... then what reason is there to imagine that the same process applied to a 2000 year old document written in an ancient language in a very different time and culture would produce better results.

This is a dumb argument, and Lewis misses the boat on bible scholarship. The case that II Peter is apocryphal does not rest on inferences about the author's intentions, but on statements the author makes that show that it could not possiblity have been written in the time when Peter was supposed to have been alive. For example, as Kirby's site notes, the letter argues that

• Since not every Christian has the Spirit, the explanation of Scripture is reserved for the ecclesiastical teaching office.

In other words, the writer is aware of a time when there is a full-blown church structure, which was not the case in Peter's time. Note how this has nothing to do with the writer's intentions.

Further, the external evidence is highly suggestive. None of the second century writers mentions 2 Peter. Origen does in the Third Century but says that its authenticity is controversial. As Kirby notes,

• However, the external evidence reveals that several early writers have knowledge only of I Peter, and this tells against the authenticity of II Peter

. If this epistle really was handed down from Peter's time, it went unnoticed by authorities who knew of 1 Peter. How could this be? Finally, 1 Peter is inauthentic, so that makes 2 Peter doubly so...

Lewis is clueless about Biblical scholarship and methodologies. You probably should find another authority.

Vorkosigan

Christian

NoGo,

I'm not sure what it is you are describing ... wild speculation perhaps. But you are describing something different than the faith I have as a Christian.

Exactly. This is why I believe in God.

Science speaks with one voice???

Do you really believe that?

How exactly do you make this leap in logic?

Basically you just asserted that "every idea which does not contradict the evidence is identical."

There is a huge core of shared belief among Christians (and plenty of details they disagree about. Very similar to the situation in science.)

The boundries of Christian faith are no more diverse than they were in the early church. There only thing that has changed as far as diversity goes is that there are now more Christians to come up with a broader range of ideas on nonessentials.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Vorkosigan,

Paul's letters, which were written before Peter died in Nero's persecution 67-68 AD, describe church offices.

What basis do you have for suggesting that an "ecclesiastical teaching office" was not know in Peter's time?

Why are athiests so willing to base their beliefs on arguments from silence???

"Nobody in this time period (of the very few surviving documents we have, anyway) mentioned 2 Peter, therefore 2 Peter "could not possibly have" existed at that time." Yeah, right.

You and I seem to have differing definitions of "could not possibly have been." Finding an argument from silence to be conclusive is an exercise in the same type of "faith" that NoGo described.

I'm no scholar ... don't claim to be. But the arguments you highlight for me don't pass the common sense test. Does having faith in the arguments of higher critics require suspending common sense???

BTW - I like your screen name. I've read a couple of the "Vorkosigan" novels. Good reads.

Respectfully,

Christian

Gooch's dad

Christian, in case you missed it, it wasn't an argument entirely from silence. Origen in the 3rd century admitted that the authorship was controversial.

Peter was supposed to be THE disciple. An argument from silence about actual letters of Peter would be utterly important to every church father in the 2nd century. So the lack of mention of II Peter by any church father in the 2nd century is a powerful argument. It would be like someone writing in the 20th century about the spread of Mormonism in the 19th century, and forgetting to mention Brigham Young.

But there is much more to the argument. II Peter speaks in 3:4 of 'the day that the fathers fell asleep' as being long past. Things are continuing as they always have, and Jesus has yet to return. The fathers are quite obviously the 1st generation of Christians--Jesus' disciples.

II Peter also contains the epistle of Jude almost verbatim. Why would Peter rewrite the epistle of Jude as part of one of his own letters?

Christian, there were many writings by the end of the 2nd century that purported to be written by Peter:

• Gospel of Peter
• Acts of Peter
• The Teaching of Peter
• The Preaching of Peter
• The Letters of Peter
• The Revelation of Peter

I hope you're not just basing the authenticity of II Peter on the fact that it claims within II Peter to be authored by Peter. Most of those listed above make the same claim. Do you believe that any of those documents were written by the disciple Peter? If not, why not?

You seem to think that II Peter is authentic. D. The burden of proof is on YOU to support this.

Vorkosigan

Paul's letters, which were written before Peter died in Nero's persecution 67-68 AD, describe church offices.

Christian, none of Paul's authentic letters describe a period when the first generation has fallen asleep and a full-blown church structure exists.

What basis do you have for suggesting that an "ecclesiastical teaching office" was not know in Peter's time?

The consensus of scholarship.

"Nobody in this time period (of the very few surviving documents we have, anyway) mentioned 2 Peter, therefore 2 Peter "could not possibly have" existed at that time." Yeah, right.

You and I seem to have differing definitions of "could not possibly have been." Finding an argument from silence to be conclusive is an exercise in the same type of "faith" that NoGo described.

Is this misreading deliberate? I wrote "could not possibly" in reference to internal evidence of the letter, not the external argument from silence. Of the external argument from silence, I simply asked a rhetorical question -- how could it be that 1 Peter is extensively referenced, but 2 Peter is never mentioned?

In any case, the consensus is clear that 1 and 2 Peter are letters forged later in the name of Peter, just as several Pauline epistles are later letters forged in his name. If you wish to challenge this consensus, you'll have to lay out the arguments. But frankly, 2 Peter's dependence on Jude really destroys any rational argument that 2 Peter is from the hand of Peter.

Bible scholarship does not work in the simpleminded way that Lewis depicts. Hardly anybody makes inferences from the presumed intentions of the author, because usually they are unknown, and even when the author states them, they have to taken with a large crystal of NaCl.

I'm no scholar ... don't claim to be. But the arguments you highlight for me don't pass the common sense test. Does having faith in the arguments of higher critics require suspending common sense???

Well, if a third century writer refers to a letter as controversial in his own time, it's a good bet that its authenticity is questionable.

BTW - I like your screen name. I've read a couple of the "Vorkosigan" novels. Good reads.

Bujold is one of today's top SF-fantasy writers. I have the whole Vorkosigan series, and a couple of her fantasy novels. The Curse of Chalion is fascinating; her take on miracles and gods is wonderful.

Vorkosigan

NOGO

I never said that all scientist say exactly the same thing.

Science is by definition discovery from nothing and over time and with great effort converges towards understanding and truth.

The contrast with religion is striking.

In the begining Jesus delivered the truth, ready made, and as a present gained without effiort.

After a mere 300 years Christians could not agree on fundamental issues concerning what that truth was. A lot of blood was spilled to enforce one view of Christianity.

500 years ago divergence resurfaced.
As time passes the divergence grows.
There are more and more variations on belief.

As I said the contrast with science is striking.

II made no such assertion.

Believers disagree and have disagreed on very fundamental issues. For example not all early Christians believed that Jesus was God. This is true even today. Christians today disagree on what is necessary for salvation etc. These are not details.

I make no leap in logic.
Christianity as a revealed truth should not diverge. It should be clear and unchanging. The opposite is true. Right from the begining we are told (by Paul for example) that others in the Christian community teach a different Christianity than he does.

There is absolutely NO similarity between Christianity and science. Science converges toward truth which means that differences do exist on the way. 1000+ years of enforcing Christianity has produced a core of shared beliefs (are we supposed to be amazed at this) but even that is slowly coming apart.

Dark Jedi

Things are heating up. Let's all re-read our posts before we hit "submit". If it seems a bit too peronal or confrontational. let's clean it up a bit.

Thank you.