DeepNess

@followmegee The vast majority can't tell you what "Hosanna" means, yet they have absolutely no problem with it at every single Mass. Vatican II *commanded* that the use of the Latin language be preserved in the Latin liturgical Rites (SC 36. §1)—and that includes the Roman Rite most go to.

So many would leave the Church if it went back to a Mass that no one can understand. Thank God for Vatican II where Mass was in local speech, just like Jesus spoke.

@Scrip7urScholr We don’t know the supernatural fact that Hebrews is inspired Scripture apart from the delivery of it as such in the Church, the divine legate. Were its dogmatic judgments fallible, it could bind the conscience to error, falsifying Christ’s promise of indefectibility (Mt 16:18).

Papal Infallibility Papal infallibility was defined in the first Vatican council in 1870, under Pope Pius IX. John died around ad95, therefore it has only been around for 155 years and 1775 years after John. It can’t be proven biblically. Something as important as infallibility of the church. You think they would have written that down in the Bible. John 21:25 says Jesus did many things not written down, but the things that were written were so we could believe and have life John 20:31. If the church already taught infallible authority before the New Testament existed, then why didn’t they write the concept in the New Testament? The Trinity is taught conceptually. Why isn’t church in infallibility taught conceptually within the scriptures? Claiming we need an infallible Church to know the canon first, then using the canon to prove the Church is infallible, is far more circular.

@Latterdaytruth Formal articulations of Trinitarianism: derived from Scripture read within the Tradition of the Church that Christ promised would be guided into all truth. The assertion that the 3 Persons are subsistent relations numerically identical with the one divine essence: not incoherent.

The dogma of the trinity is (1) post-biblical, (2) incoherent, and (3) uninspired.

@Faith_is_Works Evil is the privation of good, which is convertible with be-ing. To be is good—even for those who justly suffer definitive self-exclusion by freely choosing without end this privation, instead of union w/ the three Persons: each the one God, subsistent Be-ing and Goodness itself.

Help me out here, how is the Trinity NOT evil? I'm having a hard time comprehending how an all knowing God creates someone knowing they are bound for Hell, is not evil .. Please enlighten me.

@Mormonger Not a single verse says that central doctrines are solely those which verses formally articulate. The formal articulation is derived from verses read in the Tradition of the Church that Christ promised would be led into all truth: Mt 28:19, Jn 1:1, 10:30, 14:11, 2 Cor 13:13, etc.

If the Trinity is the central doctrine of Christianity… Why is there not a single verse that says: "God is three persons in one essence" ?

@HwsEleutheroi Florence, sess. 11 (1442) included in the Roman Church’s profession of “true and necessary doctrine” the 7 books intermixed without distinction among the books accepted & venerated as belonging to the OT and NT authored by God & whose saints spoke under the Spirit’s inspiration.

The willingness of modern Roman apologists on line to twist, ignore, decontextualize, etc., is getting truly disgusting. A single quote to demonstrate the silliness of what passes for RC apologetics today: Cardinal Cajetan in his commentary on the Old Testament wrote: "Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed among the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned canonical. For the words as well as of councils and of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorized in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clear through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage." (Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament; cited in William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture (Cambridge: University Press, 1849, 48.)

@RestoredTruth8 Doctrines necessary for Trinitarian dogma like God's unicity and the real distinction of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from one another are derivable from the NT *when read within the Tradition of the Church,* which Christ promised would be guided into all truth.

Another scholar showing you can’t derive the trinity from the NT

@BibleInContext1 They're unanimous in their rejection of the post-Christian rabbinic limitation of the Old Testament.

If Church history and Church councils were so clear on the Official Canon of scripture, then why do the different orthodox groups still have a different Old Testament Canon than even Roman Catholics?

@ProtPhilosopher Scripture would remain a "dead letter" if it isn't read in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it, and that can't be done outside of the Tradition of the Church, which exercises the ministry of interpreting God's Word (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 111, 113, 119).

There's a secret assumption hidden in many Catholic objections to sola scriptura. It's what I call the "dead letter" assumption. It starts with something true and derives something false. The truth it starts with is that, physically speaking, Scripture is a text. It's not a biological entity. It's not alive in that sense. It's just going to sit there until you do something with it. Fair enough. From this truth, though, the Catholic objector moves toward a falsehood. It starts with the phrase "Scripture doesn't interpret itself." That's also sort of true. Interpretation requires cognition. It requires a living interpreter. Fair enough. Then we get the slide into falsehood. Given the above, Scripture is inert. It's a passive, historical text. It's a dead letter without a voice that speaks into today. A bunch of rational agents interpret this dead letter in a bunch of ways, some of which are incompatible. So you need a final boss to swoop in and settle the disagreement definitively, authoritatively, with certainty. After all, an inert letter can't do that. Hence, you need a final boss interpreter like the magisterium. Otherwise, we get subjectivity generating interpretive chaos. What's wrong with this dead letter assumption? First, it makes the Bible read as third-personal to the neglect of the second-personal. The Bible becomes a letter speaking to "those people over there," whoever they are. In reality, we read the Bible before the living God, and he addresses us, in the second-personal, through it. As Scott Swain argues: "In dealing with the Bible interpretively, we are not rational subjects dealing with an inert object; we are instead rational subjects addressed by the divine Subject and called to loving attention and fellowship." God addresses each of us as we read it. It isn't merely a third-personal catalogue of the "others" he addressed long ago. Second, the dead letter assumption neglects the present power of Scripture. As Vanhoozer clarifies, using Hebrews: "The doctrine of inspiration preserves this emphasis on the Bible as divine address, as expressed by the Nicene Creed's description of the Holy Spirit as one 'who spoke [Lat. est locutus] by the prophets.' To locate the Spirit's speaking exclusively in the past, however, is to subscribe to a deistic picture of God's relation to his word, according to which God orated, and then let his word get on with it, without further action or assistance. According to the author of Hebrews, however, the Holy Spirit speaks the words of Psalm 95:7–11, even though they originally proceeded from the mouth of David centuries earlier: 'Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear his voice …"' (Heb 3:7)… The 'today' of the author of Hebrews and his original audience is, of course, long past. Yet God continues to address the church through this passage, such that the original reader's today (our yesterday) becomes today anew, for contemporary readers too: 'The writer believes that through his discourse (a sermon comprised of a series of scriptural expositions), he himself communicates that divine word and effects an encounter between his hearers and the God who speaks.' If the author of Hebrews could view the Spirit who spoke through David as speaking today (i.e., to his audience), then we should too." Third, the dead letter assumption does violence to the active voice of the Holy Spirit and the risen Christ speaking through Scripture. Again, Vanhoozer is helpful here: "The voice Israel heard out of the midst of the fire was 'the voice of the living God' (Deut 5:26). Moses repeats what God said on Mount Sinai to the first generation to a second generation in the book of Deuteronomy, and there is a clear expectation that God will speak his covenant word to future generations as well (Deut 4:9–24; 30:1–10). Centuries later, King Darius wrote, 'He is the living God, enduring forever' (Dan 6:26). Centuries after that, Peter identified Jesus as 'the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Matt 16:16). The risen Christ is 'Lord both of the dead and of the living' (Rom 14:9), including biblical interpreters today, which is why John Webster said both the Bible and its readers belong to 'the domain of the revelatory presence of Christ.' The Bible is part of the pattern of divine communication and communion over which the risen Lord presides and in which he presents himself. The Bible is not only 'the manger in which Christ lies' but a bed the Lord has made for himself. Unlike the human authors of Scripture, who are dead and buried, the risen Christ is alive, communicatively present and active." Thus, the secret assumption underlying many Catholic objections to sola scriptura ends up doing violence to the true nature of Scripture in an effort to justify the falsity of sola scriptura and the need for a teaching office to definitively do what Scripture alone supposedly can't do. References Scott R. Swain, Trinity, Revelation, and Reading: A Theological Introduction to the Bible and Its Interpretation (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 7. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2024), 8–9.

@fatherz Best thing I've read about this controversy. "I could tell story after story like the one above." Please do!

Thoughts about the collision of the Holy See and the SSPX. Wherein Fr. Z rants. wdtprs.com/2026/05/though…

@Truth_matters20 The *pagan* historian Eunapius on what the Christians were doing:

Yes, an insanely ungodly aura. Collecting dead men's bones and worshiping them as relics is what pagans do, not Christians.

@Truth_matters20 The kind of thing the *pagan* historian Eunapius found absolutely reprehensible.

Worshiping and kissing dead men's bones is straight up paganism. It doesn't matter whose bones you think they are. In no world is this Christianity.

@AnsweringRCs @EcciusMaximus Wrong link. Philip Schaff on the nature of Melito’s work: “[T]heir character leads us to classify them with the general class of anti-Jewish works whose distinguishing mark is the use of Old Testament prophecy in defense of Christianity,” i.e. apologetics.

@EcciusMaximus More lying nonsense from @EcciusMaximus. The “fragment” is Eusebius quoting Melito in Ecclesiastical History IV.26. It says nothing whatsoever about Onesimus evangelizing Jews and we know nothing about this Onesimus apart from this passage. Here it is: ccel.org/ccel/schaff/np…

"....Melito is addressing confusion among Christians about the OT books so he goes back to where Christianity began..." No he is not, there was no confusion. Nothing in the surviving fragments frames the list as a Christian Old Testament, that is a humongous leap. Melito made the list at the request of Onesimus who needed help in evangelizing jews. He wanted proof texts when engaging Jews. (Image attached of the quote in question). This is the same pattern from 100ad to 405ad. The evangelization of the jews was a top priority for the early Church. Melito went to the east bc that’s where the remnants of the Pharisees Jews who rejected Jesus lived. So it’s no surprise that they didn’t accept the deutercanonical books, they contained Christology. Going east is the big clue here. @gavinortlund

@jacksonfrandsen The divine persons are *subsistent relations*. Each is numerically identical with the one divine essence, but they’re really distinct from one another *solely by relative opposition in the order of origin,* which blocks collapse into identity.

If the divine persons are really distinct, then there must be real distinctions in God. But if those distinctions are real, divine simplicity is compromised; if they are not real, the persons collapse into identity.

@KhalilAndani Trinitarian dogma doesn’t entail that God has any parts whatsoever. The divine persons are *subsistent relations*—they’re really distinct from one another solely by relative opposition in the order of origin, yet each is numerically identical with the one and only divine essence.

If God is a Trinity then God has parts. If you deny this, then each divine person still has parts. If each divine person is simple without parts then the persons are identical.

@TexasPaladin2 @WWUTTcom The Nevi'im aren’t the Writings but the *Prophets*. And you’re Moving the Goalposts. The “No NT Quotation” rule is yours: own it. Esther, etc: not quoted at all, still disputed by the rabbis: proves the *Ketuvim* were still open even until 5th cent. AD. Read Lee Martin McDonald:

@bp26_p @WWUTTcom More begging the question and coping. Those books not quoted ARE part of the Nev'im - ie - the writings. Jesus affirmed the body of the OT in Luke and in Matthew. There was no open canon at the time. You also have not provided a shred of evidence the apoc is inspired.

Roman Catholics: “The apocrypha is Scripture!” The Apocrypha: “In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh…” Nope. Not Scripture.

@TexasPaladin2 @WWUTTcom IOW, because you’ve irrevocably accepted the Gospels as inspired you don’t reject them if a critic points out problems; but when it comes to the 7 books, any problem must be an error bec. you’ve already rejected the books as being inspired in the first place: Begging the Question

@bp26_p @WWUTTcom In fact this attempt works against you. Jesus' words ARE Scripture. And you didn't realize the mustard seed is the smallest seed from that day - that's what the audience would have understood. And Luke wasn't wrong about Quirinius either. Try again.

@TexasPaladin2 @WWUTTcom "Evidence"? Inspiration is a *supernatural* fact, inaccessible apart from God revealing it; you can't use the criteria of natural reason. God reveals the supernatural fact that a book is inspired Scripture through its transmission and reception as such—in the Church: *Tradition*.

@ThoughtfulSaint Goodness: being considered under the aspect of desirability: a thing is good insofar as it exists. The existence of any thing whose essence isn’t its own existence is derived from the subsistent act of to-be itself ∴ (∵ being & goodness: convertible) subsistent goodness itself.

Saying God is goodness itself is meaningless. It’s just saying God is God. When people say x is Good they don’t mean x is God. So you have to define what you mean by Goodness and then show God meets that definition. Otherwise you are not saying anything at all about God.

@TexasPaladin2 @WWUTTcom Is Jesus not God because He called the mustard seed the “smallest” of all seeds? Was Luke not inspired because of his account of Quirinius’s census? Will you throw out Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs for not being quoted or even alluded to whatsoever in the New Testament?

@bp26_p @WWUTTcom Unlike you I have studied this. The apoc contains numerous blatant historical/geographical errors, never claims to be inspired, never referred to as Scripture nor quoted in the NT etc. The burden of proof is on you to show me why they should be considered Scripture.