There are like a million and one different Christian denominations, some more committed as Christian than the others (look at the United Church of Canada if you want to see uncommitted). Point being trouble with your one specific denomination shouldn't be seen as an indictment on Christianity as a whole.
"the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says". -1st Corinthians 14:34.
All I'll say is that you should go into a denomination that has apostolic succession. Also the only people who like and want women leading church services are ones who want to subvert Christ's teachings and the Church.
Genuinely flattered even if its a jape.
That's an unrealistic standard for a few reasons.
I'm actually really surprised to hear you say that. The Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the new testament cannon, though thats a common myth (thanks Davinci Code). Bible cannon more or less formed over several centuries through an organic process of Christians recognizing certain texts as more authoritarian. We know that the Council Of Nicea had nothing to do with New Testament cannon since our surviving records of the cannon say nothing about it discussing Biblical cannon, the council passed 20 cannon laws none of which had to do with Biblical cannon, you can find them here. We know from the surviving records that the primary reason for the council was actually to settle the dispute of Jesus's divinity. The Religious studies youtuber Religion for Breakfast has a neat video about this you can see here.
Scriptures were discussed at Nicaea, but I admit its an oversimplified answer. The canon for the new testament was set in 393 at the Council of Hippo and the Old Testament canon was set at the 3rd Council of Carthage in 397. There is some reason to believe these were more finalizations of former discussions than entirely centered in those councils.
I did not mean to come at you in my reply, or act like "um akshully" in my post, so I apologize if the post came across that way and wouldn't have said anything normally. However I did feel to say something because there is this line you'll hear from Catholics and Orthodox a lot I don't like which is, "which came first, the Church or the Bible?" Catholics and Orthodox try to use this as some sort of 'chicken and egg' style gotcha implying that the early Christians were running around like headless chickens unsure of what was scripture and what wasn't until early Church wise men showed them the truth. In fact the truth is the Church had virtually no role in determine in solidifying Biblical Cannon.
Don't worry, if you check the in line spoilered part of my reply I poked some fun at my own laziness with how I phrased things.
While I am not a fan of blatant gotcha stuff, I believe where we disagree here is less about which came first and more about when the Catholic Church was formed. I, like any good Catholic, would say the Catholic Church was formed in 33AD when Christ gave Peter the keys and the powers to bind and loose as we see in Matthew 16:18-19, making him the steward of Christ's Kingdom just like Eliakim was made the steward of the Kingdom of David in Isaiah 22. Judging by your distinction between early Christians and early Church you seem believe that prior to a later date there was no formal Church structure.
I disagree on this point. Regardless of the prior consensus on scripture, the formal recognition of the Canon is very significant. For example it makes it clear that when an uppity monarch comes along 1300 years later and removes 7 books from the Bible the result is not to be taken seriously.
This position makes sense when you believe in the distinction between early Christians and early Church, but for us who believe that there is no such distinction it does not add up.
No, I actually agree with you. There was definitely Church structure and authority in the 1st Century. For example, even though the title 'Pope' didn't exist for a few centuries you can clearly see if you read the epistle of Clement (90s AD) you can see he acts as somebody who is clearly an authority figure over the leadership of the Church at Corinth. 1st Timothy also makes reference to the title of 'Bishop'. We can discuss what all this means theologically though it's another argument that's entirely beside the point. My main point was that a ~400 AD council doesn't entitle you to say you determined New Testament canon when it was understood for centuries beforehand.
I think my point is getting a little distorted, I am after all focusing on New Testament Canon solely here. Basically when Catholics and Orthodox (who will disagree amongst themselves about who gets the title of 'true Church' but that's another story) get into a debate with people who are "sola scriptura" they will say something like, "You might only use the Bible but don't you know without us there would be no Bible? We determined the New Testament canon at [insert 4th century council here], without our Church there would be no Bible so you need to listen to what the Church authorities say and the words of the early Church fathers", to try and convince people to listen to their Church teachings. But that's just not true just not true. We understand that early Christian writers recognized what was true scripture based on what they quoted. Ireaneus and Origen for examle, as I mentioned earlier, were quoting almost all the New Testament over a lifetime before any council rubber stamped it as so. You shouldn't get credit for coming in 2-3 centuries too late any confirming what everbody already knew.
Are you claming that the Catholic Church should get credit for every single thing a Christian said or did, even before any official Church council made a ruling on it? If so while you'll get credit for "writing" the 4 Gospels then you'll also have to inherit credit for a whole bunch of fradulent apocraphyl writings from that period as well. Clearly, I imagine, you agree, the Church shouldn't get credit for deciding or determining anything before an official ruling was made at a Church council or some superior Church authority like the Pope declares it so. (he was a really acting as a shot caller back then).
Understood and formally declared are two different things. Would you deny the Founding Fathers of America credit for the Declaration of Independence simply because the principles withing were understood for centuries beforehand? Self evident truths, as they put it it. Regardless of the prior understanding, which we can at best speculate over, there is great significance to the formal declaration of something by the proper authority.
I think the reason you see this line of rhetoric a lot is because sola scriptura proponents tend to argue by citing chapter and verse (often without regard for context) and act as though the Bible as we know it today is all they ever needed. This notion is disrespectful to the hundreds of years of dedication and development that it took to go from the original scriptures all the way to a formally recognized printed book that has been divided into chapter and verse.
I think its an oversimplification to reduce an argument over the facts of historical efforts down to an act of pure evangelization.
The majority of people back then were illiterate. That isn't to say being illiterate makes you unintelligent, but if they can't read the scriptures they have to rely on someone who can. Furthermore the simple fact that there were numerous incidents of widespread heresies in those days is proof enough that people could be mislead by those who either do not fully understand the scriptures or wish to misuse them for their own gain.
No I am not claiming that the Church should get credit for literally everything, just that credit should not be denied for the things the Church actually did, especially when the early Christians you're ascribing that credit too were also part of the Church.
When I say that this was broadly understood, I don't mean that these early Christian writers I mentioned had published lists of Church canon or that they were collaborating on what was and wasn't scripture. I mean literally that they just understood these works to be authoritative, we can infer which ones they did not from any list they published but just from seeing which works they quoted. Ireaneus for example quoting outed 21 out of 27 New Testament books during his lifetime, Origen likewise references 25 of them in a single work, not in an attempted to show what was canon, but simply to list how they built on each other.
In my experience it's less from Protestants misusing Bible verses (though this definently happens) and more from Catholics and Orthodox justifying why they engage in practices not in the Bible. For example, if a sola scriptura guy is talking to a Catholic and the Catholic starts takling about praying to saints or purgatory and the Protestant says, "Chapter and Verse please, show me where the term 'Pope' or 'Mass' are in the Bible!" the Catholic will usually say, "You see the Church was first, we gave you the Bible, before our councils solidified things people were running around unsure of what was real and what wasn't. And since we created the canon we reserve the right to retroactively modify it to add certain works of Church fathers and Papal decrees to it. Not everything divine is in the Bible".
That's right, there were many (several dozen in fact) aprochrapyl books you'd probably view as heretical that we know existed from back in the day, and many more we can infer existed but we have no records of, and while some were hoodwinked by them, these were defeated in the court of public opinion, lambasted by Christian writers, and fell into obscurity. Remeber, in an era when every single copy has to be handwritten people aren't going to waste days of work rewritting something most people regarded as BS, it's like you alluded to, everything has to be handwritten, everything has to be carried by hand, people knew Jesus's story either because they knew him persaonlly or through some second or third hand source after the fact. They could quickly suss out what was BS and what wasn't, that's why the three synotpic Gospels which tell roughly the same story survived while random Gospels that have Jesus not being crucified or saying or doing random things were quickly disregarded. Additionally works by respected writters were preserved because early Christians recognized the importance of these men. For example if you're living in 100 AD and you get a copy of 1st Corinthians you might be like, "Woah this was written by Paul! I read about him in the Book of Acts, I should take his words seriously.
Intercessory prayer is in the Bible though, most protestants just don't understand that and think the Saints are being worshiped which is not the case.
The bigger issue is treating the Bible like its supposed to contain literally every detail of life spelled out for you is a misuse of scripture as a whole. I think of the movie "A Few Good Men" when the point is made that the location of the mess hall is not in the Marine Handbook.
This sounds like an ex post facto argument focusing on the people who were ultimately proven right by the councils that formalized Biblical Canon while completely disregarding the people who were proven wrong. Partially because for the most part they have simply been forgotten by history. A lot of actual controversies are glossed over or absolutely lost to time, but that doesn't mean there's somehow no value in the formalized consensus handed down by the proper authority.
Case in point, they fell into obscurity and thus it's easy to pretend like they weren't an issue in their own time that had to be formally denounced by the peoper authority.
This logic is ignoring the fact that there were cases where fraudulent writings were attributed to real figures like Paul to try and gain legitimacy. Someone could pretend to have a letter from Paul and it could take literal years before anyone was able to effectively denounce it as a fake. The value of the Biblical Canon being formalized by the councils is not just determining what books are in or not in the Bible, its also a determination of which works are genuine and legitimate and which ones aren't. Again this is the kind of thing that's easy to overlook 1700 years after the fact when the controversies and frauds have fallen to obscurity or been forgotten entirely, but that isn't an excuse to disregard the importance and value of the councils' accomplishments.
I did not mean to spark a discussion on praying to the dead, I simply meant it to say that there are things Catholics and Orthodox do and believe which aren't in the scriptures (I assume you'd agree on this) like believing Mary was a perpetual virgin. They justify believing this by stating that since they invented Biblical canon they can add to this by treating the decisions of councils, church fathers, and Papal announcements as authoritative. I do find it a bit humorous that as a result you have militant Atheists and devout Catholics/Orthodox pushing the same narrative but for vastly different reasons.
We know most viewed the 27 books as canon by the end of the second century from their writings, we see they all largely agree on the same Canon by what they chose to quote as authoritative, we don't see Tertullian and Ireaneus for example quoting from the Gospel of Mary for example. And yes every now and then somebody would come up with a new Gospel or epistle which would be largely lambasted into obscurity, but these were viewed by their authors as another authoritative work along with the 27 and the authors generally weren't trying to shake up the canon, and of course since most viewed the 27 book canon as authoritative these apcohraphyl books fell out of favor.
I never denied early Church fathers often condemned certain books as heretical, only that they never formally created any canon of their own nor debated it amongst themselves. A lot of these we only know existed because fragments were found centuries later or an old copy is found in a monastery somewhere. As I said most were quickly sussed out as BS and so received no respond from anyone. The Gnostics and their Gospel of Marcion did receive some attention in the 2nd century and provoked a lot of ire from early Christian writers though this was only because it's literally a modified version of the Gospel of Luke (which tells the story about Jesus everyone agreed on) only to twist and remove some things to paint a narrative Marcion was pushing at the time.
That's true and you bring up a good point. However while some duds did slip by for a while (you can find scholars debating some today) for many the authorship of most New Testament books were known since their composition. To bring up my earlier example Clement identifies Corinth as having received an earlier revelation from Paul as early as 96 AD. I can't get into the specifics of how the early Church knew the authorship of each of the books rights now, because theres too many and the paper trail is lost in a few cases, though it seems from my understanding they had a good grasp on who wrote what, they would say things like, "Matthew wrote in his Gospel:...." or, "As Timothy recorded....." relatively early on.
The Saints aren't dead, they're in Heaven, which is eternal life, and we're not praying to them, its intercessory prayer. Like asking someone to pray for you.
You keep bringing up guys like Tertullian, Ireaneus, Origen and alike. My point is that these guys are remembered because they got it right. Their line of thinking was affirmed by the councils and their history was preserved. We can't be sure how many alternative lines of thinking that were not affirmed, and thus not preserved, have been forgotten to time.
