CMI is Bad on Church History

Ghosts · Bible and Fantasy (quora) · CMI is Bad on Church History · Responding to Keith Nester's Mars / Venus Video, First Half with Time to Give Charles S a Separate Post

Commenting on first half / third of this video:

Why should we trust the Bible? (Creation Magazine LIVE! 7-22)
CMIcreationstation | 1.I.2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYueUl6ENYU

I stopped before the pause announced at 11:33.

I

2:15 Are the words Christ told the 72 in Luke 10:16 still valid for a special clergy within the believers?

I mean, you do admit the 72 constituted a clergy, I hope? Christ had chosen them from among other believers.

If they are, then you can also say "when the Church speaks, God speaks". (Unless you are Arians denying the divinity of Christ, but so far I have no indication of that).

II

6:27 Unfortunately the John McArthur whom you cite is classifying some Biblical truths as myths.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : John MacArthur Confusing Sunworship with Sun as a Person
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/01/john-macarthur-confusing-sunworship.html

Also unfortunately, he is attacking the Church to which Christ spoke Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:16-20.

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering John MacArthur, I
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/12/answering-john-macarthur-i.html

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering John MacArthur, II
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/12/answering-john-macarthur-ii.html

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering John MacArthur, III
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/01/pope-papacy-part-3-john-macarthur.html

So, I must presume he holds human traditions from Reformers and "Awakenings" above some Scriptural Truth.

III

Up to 8:42

Postmodernism is:

• "based on the faulty idea that truth cannot be known" - in fact, some post-modernist discoveries about history only lead to this via the prejudice that truth is supposed to be modernist.
  
  They are very right that Modernism, including the modernism of Reformation and of Awakenings, cannot be known. So, if that's where you place truth, it means "truth cannot be known". But if you read the exact same discoveries about history with the plan truth can be known, they lead to, truth is not modernist. Which is perfectly correct.
  
  
• "it's arrogant to say truth can be known" - have I heard this one from Protestants!
  
  Some people make "Bible the final umpire" very pro forma, and if Bible leads to Catholic truth, Protestants say one cannot know the truth, since the Bible passage is not interpreted the same by everyone.
  
  Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24. Most Protestants, though not Lutherans and not all Anglicans.
  Hebrews 13:10, Malachias (Malachi) 1:11 - denied by all Protestants.
  
  But the idea anyone and everyone who reads the Bible has a right to his opinion whatever it may be on what it means is also per se a very early bird of the post-modernist bird swarm that picks grains from the ground.
  
  
• "Opposed to truth claims of the Bible" - Protestantism is that, especially that in Matthew 28:16-20.
• "Features pluralism and tolerance" - Protestantism does that, since it claims there is no single Church with more authority than any other Church.
• Intolerant of intolerance - Protestantism is that.

Christ alone verse being John 14:6 - note that Christ does not exclude the clergy He has chosen or the Sacraments He is instituting any more than the Gospels containing His words. He is excluding alternative ways.

"People affected by post-modernism have a significant hurdle to overcome, if they are to understand reality."

And people affected by Modernism may have an even more significant one.

IV

8:47
"Truth
"= reality
"= the way things really are."

Well, that is one level of truth. Truth in the things. Next level of truth is truth in the "observing" (and classifying and concluding etc) mind:

Truth
= adequation of thought to reality.

And the third level of truth is truth in truthful speech:

Truth or truthfulness
= speaking as one thinks and not opposed to what one thinks.

V

9:30 "By AD 250 near consensus on 66 books."

Sorry - this is a blatant lie. The Bible canon which gives only the OT that Protestantism accepts was first given at Council of Laodicaea - and it has an NT canon without the Apocalypse.

You have then an NT canon as per today in Rome and Carthage, also 4th C. But these also agree at least nominally on the canon of the Catholics as to OT. When I say "at least nominally" I am aware some have claimed "1st and 2nd Maccabees" = 1+2 and 3+4 Maccabees (i e include two sequels to 2nd Maccabess), as per Orthodox Bibles. And that "1st and 2nd Ezra" (usually taken as Ezra and Nehemia or Orthodox "2nd and 3rd Ezra") really are 1st (Orthodox) and 2+3 Ezra (i e, include a prequel to Ezra and Nehemia).

But you cannot claim that the OT canon in Rome and Carthage was Protestant. And you can hardly claim there was a stated OT canon at 250.

VI

9:52 The "what does the Church think the text means" is very firmly rooted in the NT.

Luke 24:45 states Christ gave two disciples some OT exegesis that showed all of OT to be about Himself. How can we access Christ's OT exegesis? By the Church.
John 5:39 states Christ told Pharisees to scrutinise OT, and realise it was about Him.

Obviously, their descendants to this day has an OT exegesis which does not realise this, and they are not necessarily bunglers about the literal meaning of what the author of an OT books said. At least not all the time.

In other words, there is more to OT exegesis than just plain understanding of the text, and the Church knows more (since back then it saw more) of how Christ's life fitted with this, than what is available from Gospels and Epistles alone.

The "Rise of Catholicism" some time after "Early Christianity" (somehow not yet Catholic) is a spurious event, which never happened. And the supposed two different rules are in fact one complimentary rule.

VII

9:57 "that was easy to do, because no one held a Bible; Bibles were locked up and unavailable"

You just placed "rise of Catholicism" in c. 1220's and as an event affecting mainly France, Spain and England.

As a statement of how things were in the time of St. Gregory, it is actually worthless.

I thank post-modernist historians for not faking history as much as Protestant historians.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : History Forger James Aitken Wylie
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/12/history-forger-james-aitken-wylie.html

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : To give you an idea of Wylie's proceedings ...
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/12/to-give-you-idea-of-wylies-proceedings.html

And, as you basically nearly cited the infamous "The Forbidden Book" here are a few refutations against it by me:

Great Bishop of Geneva! : Answers about "The Forbidden Book"
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2013/01/answers-about-forbidden-book.html

VIII

10:12 "William Tyndale is a key figure in Church History who changed that."

Overall? No. For England, where even possessing a Bible or religious text in English had been decided on as a sign of Lollardry, probably yes. But England is NOT the Church universal.

10:32 "One Church official said he would rather have the Church's laws than God's laws."

Which one? In what context? Was he speaking of OT law, like stoning of adulterers? You don't say. So far.

"If God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that drives the plough to know more of Scripture than you do."

According to what biography of Tyndale?

As to the effect of that brag, in Franco's Spain, teaching Evolution was outlawed, or so I have heard, while in an England heir to Tyndale nearly everyone was Evolutionist by the end of World War I.

IX

10:51 "Translating the Bible into English, which was illegal" (in England it was that, actually, unless done by previous agreement by Church authorities, so Douay Rheims version did not actually flout English law on this point).


"And ultimately cost him his life." - Indirectly, yes, since he fled England over the translation, ultimately no, since the Spanish Inquisitor in Flanders was very much less interested in an English Bible translation (who spoke English in Flanders back then?) than in how Tyndale interpreted Romans 3.

I think even Tyndale Society, dedicated to his memory, has admitted this.

And what was the name of the Inquisitor again? James Latomus. He had better things to say about Romans 3 than Tyndale had.

11:04 That Tyndale was strangled before the burning, so the burning was more of a symbol to others than torture to him is credible. That his body was then blown apart by gunpowder is perhaps less so, since already the burning would have made it impossible to give him a decent Christian burial (heretics and suicides were not given such).

Where do you have that detail from?

X

11:28 "There is no doubt that by his monumental work, Tyndale changed the course of English history and Western civilisation"

This is the kind of things where a historian as a historian is no more authoritative than a hack as a hack. OK, the historian might exclude some of the more obviously false things, but this does not narrow down "meaning of history" (as opposed to recorded events, one by one) to one possibility only.

But whether you put it down to Tyndale and Petri brothers and Agricola (for Bible in English, Swedish, Finnish) or to Gustav Wasa wanting to sell Church bells to pay mercenaries or Henry VIII wanting so "marry" Anne Boleyn, there is no doubt this landed us with 30 Years War, French Wars of Religion, English Revolution, with Cromwell also oppressing Ireland, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, French Revolution, Revolution of 1848, Revolutions of 1917 (Mexico and Russia) and therefore schools that endorse the teaching of Evolution.

On my part that is. You try to make a case these things don't belong together. Because, this is not a question of historic fact. It is a question of "meaning of history".

I think it is a fact that Revolution of 1848 was in part at least inspired by that of 1789 with following years. And so on about each Revolution from previous one, and English Revolution from Covenanters and Puritans. And these obviously paying their homage to Tyndale. But if you want to insert one point on which my fact is a factoid, try it.