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To: Buggman

"would be like me compiling a list of great classical musicians and claiming that I was greater than them."


Or better, it would be like you compiling this list, but then deciding to eliminate the works (and thus the memory, over time) of Mozart, because you - not God - deemed it apocryphal. 2000 years later, we'd still have Beethoven and Bach, but thanks to your decision, no Mozart.


394 posted on 08/13/2004 6:30:46 AM PDT by Blzbba (John Kerry - Dawn of a New Error.)
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To: Blzbba
Or better, it would be like you compiling this list, but then deciding to eliminate the works (and thus the memory, over time) of Mozart, because you - not God - deemed it apocryphal. 2000 years later, we'd still have Beethoven and Bach, but thanks to your decision, no Mozart.

Oh, for crying out loud. Even the Catholic Church calls the apocryphal books the "dueterocanonical books," which really means, "the second canon." Clearly, your side too considers them to be secondary in importance.

In any case, the only reason you cling to those books (which were not considered canon until Trent) is that in a couple of cases, a single verse seems to support a Catholic tradition, such as the reference to prayers for the dead in 2 Maccabees. But if such were true teachings of the Scripture, we would be able to find them throughout the Scriptures rather than in a single reference in a single book; God establishes all of His teachings by many witnesses, not just one.

Let's take the book of Revelation, for example. The Syriac church rejects it's canonicity. Okay, fine. I don't need Revelation to discuss Biblical eschatology. I do lose some resolution, but not the essential teachings.

If you remove the epistles of Paul, I can still demonstrate that salvation is by grace (a gift) received by faith alone. It takes some more serious digging to do it, but I can do it because faith-based salvation is taught throughout the whole of the Bible.

In short, get over it, and if the books that we don't agree on contain the true teachings of the Scripture (despite the fact that unlike the canonical OT, they are never quoted by Christ or His Apostles in the New), you should be able to prove the RCC's teachings by many references in the agreed sources of authority.

If you can't, if prayer for the dead (for just one example) is indeed based on a single line in a single disputed book, then perhaps we Protestants are right to reject 2 Maccabees as Scripture.

403 posted on 08/13/2004 7:13:29 AM PDT by Buggman ("Those who are foolish in serious things, will be serious in foolish things.")
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