The Canonical Gospels Have No Authority

[Davka]

Writings attributed to the apostles circulated amongst the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the "memoirs of the Apostles," which Christians (Greek: Χριστιανός) called "gospels," and which were considered to be authoritatively equal to the Old Testament.[16]
This from Wiki

GC

My understanding, based on years of (admittedly layman's) reading and picking the brains of various scholars, is that these "memoirs of the apostles" were not the synoptic Gospels + John, but rather included various writings which today are called the "gnostic gospels."

In the Early Church, there was a huge variety of opinion among believers. These opinions can be roughly divided between Christian Gnosticism on the one hand (Early Christian Writings, Gnosticism), and what was to become the Catholic church on the other.

Gnosticism is far closer to today's Charismatic movement than to Roman Catholicism. Its focus is the individual's relationship with Christ, with a strong emphasis on "knowing" which can be likened to the "Born Again" experience. Christian Gnosticism was a strongly spiritual movement, and was decentralized by its very nature. This decentralization posed a problem for those who wished to impose a political structure on the church, and was bitterly opposed as heresy by the early founders of what became the Roman Catholic Church.

Prior to the founding of the Roman Catholic Church, there was no accepted new Testament canon of scripture. The Biblical Canon was established in part to strengthen the centralized, top-down structure of the RCC. Writings which encouraged individual spiritual experience were discarded and often destroyed, and those which were useful to a top-down, priest-based system were edited to fit the RCC doctrine and declared to be the Word of God.

Current-day Evangelical Protestantism is far closer to the spirit of Gnostic Christianity than most Christians know.

[tjakey]

I'm pretty sure atheists figured out a long time ago that the Bible has no authority. So why would we be debating the issue now?

[Tonus]

Does it bother anyone else that Drich's argument here, boiled down, is nothing more than: "Your argument would only make sense if we knew, but since we don't know, you must be wrong."

I mean, I get that the argument from silence is a thing, but the two things that come to my mind there is that if we had a lack of evidence for a thing we'd expect silence, and that once again a christian's position hinges solely on ignorance.

You also have to ask: can't this be applied to other religions that are dependent on documents that were hundreds or thousands of years old and poorly-preserved?

And you have to wonder: if the smoking-gun documents were lost before they could be used to confirm the veracity of what you believe, then maybe god needed a modern filing system. Here were the keys to eternity for all of humanity, and Yahweh couldn't find a flash drive in time to preserve it for posterity.

[Davka]

I'm pretty sure atheists figured out a long time ago that the Bible has no authority. So why would we be debating the issue now?

Who's debating? This is a circle-jerk.

*hands tjakey the vaseline*

[Godscreated]

I'm pretty sure atheists figured out a long time ago that the Bible has no authority. So why would we be debating the issue now?

The Constitution of the United States has no authority aside from the government that supports it as in "we the people." The Bible's authority comes from the support of God and his people.

GC

[abaris]

The Bible's authority comes from the support of God and his people.

GC

No, for at least five billion people it doesn't.

[Godscreated]

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Writings attributed to the apostles circulated amongst the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the "memoirs of the Apostles," which Christians (Greek: Χριστιανός) called "gospels," and which were considered to be authoritatively equal to the Old Testament.[16]
This from Wiki

GC

---

My understanding, based on years of (admittedly layman's) reading and picking the brains of various scholars, is that these "memoirs of the apostles" were not the synoptic Gospels + John, but rather included various writings which today are called the "gnostic gospels."

In the Early Church, there was a huge variety of opinion among believers. These opinions can be roughly divided between Christian Gnosticism on the one hand (Early Christian Writings, Gnosticism), and what was to become the Catholic church on the other.

Gnosticism is far closer to today's Charismatic movement than to Roman Catholicism. Its focus is the individual's relationship with Christ, with a strong emphasis on "knowing" which can be likened to the "Born Again" experience. Christian Gnosticism was a strongly spiritual movement, and was decentralized by its very nature. This decentralization posed a problem for those who wished to impose a political structure on the church, and was bitterly opposed as heresy by the early founders of what became the Roman Catholic Church.

Prior to the founding of the Roman Catholic Church, there was no accepted new Testament canon of scripture. The Biblical Canon was established in part to strengthen the centralized, top-down structure of the RCC. Writings which encouraged individual spiritual experience were discarded and often destroyed, and those which were useful to a top-down, priest-based system were edited to fit the RCC doctrine and declared to be the Word of God.

Current-day Evangelical Protestantism is far closer to the spirit of Gnostic Christianity than most Christians know.

The protestants had no problem with developing from the Bible as it stands today, we did not have nor need those documents to develop a personal relationship with Christ. Those documents that did not make it into the Bible seem to be important only to those who want to destroy Christianity, that speaks to the truth of the Bible.

GC

[Davka]

My understanding, based on years of (admittedly layman's) reading and picking the brains of various scholars, is that these "memoirs of the apostles" were not the synoptic Gospels + John, but rather included various writings which today are called the "gnostic gospels."

In the Early Church, there was a huge variety of opinion among believers. These opinions can be roughly divided between Christian Gnosticism on the one hand (Early Christian Writings, Gnosticism), and what was to become the Catholic church on the other.

Gnosticism is far closer to today's Charismatic movement than to Roman Catholicism. Its focus is the individual's relationship with Christ, with a strong emphasis on "knowing" which can be likened to the "Born Again" experience. Christian Gnosticism was a strongly spiritual movement, and was decentralized by its very nature. This decentralization posed a problem for those who wished to impose a political structure on the church, and was bitterly opposed as heresy by the early founders of what became the Roman Catholic Church.

Prior to the founding of the Roman Catholic Church, there was no accepted new Testament canon of scripture. The Biblical Canon was established in part to strengthen the centralized, top-down structure of the RCC. Writings which encouraged individual spiritual experience were discarded and often destroyed, and those which were useful to a top-down, priest-based system were edited to fit the RCC doctrine and declared to be the Word of God.

Current-day Evangelical Protestantism is far closer to the spirit of Gnostic Christianity than most Christians know.

The protestants had no problem with developing from the Bible as it stands today, we did not have nor need those documents to develop a personal relationship with Christ. Those documents that did not make it into the Bible seem to be important only to those who want to destroy Christianity, that speaks to the truth of the Bible.

GC

Nonsense. There are scholars working to debunk the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the sayings of Buddha. Does that somehow speak to the truth of those religions?

Reality is a bit different from your version, I'm afraid. Modern-day Evangelical protestants have applied their gnosis (aka cultural bias) to the Bible just as heavily as any previous group of Christians. In fact, if you jump back through history in 300-year increments and take a look at accepted Christian doctrine in each time, you will find that today's American Christianity is very different from Luther's Christianity, or the Christianity of any other period - or, in fact, accepted Christianity today in different parts of the world. The claim that there is an unbroken thread of belief stretching back `2,000 years is simply untrue.

But I'm sure you pastor repeats only what he learned in Seminary, assuming he even attended any school of higher education. Very few Christians bother to actually study their own religion, and those that do invariably end up being "liberal" Christians, if they remain Christian at all.

[Mudhammam]

The Constitution of the United States has no authority aside from the government that supports it as in "we the people."

You're figuring out how reality works. A step forward.

The Bible's authority comes from the support of God and his people.

GC

Two steps backward for lack of originality and laziness.

[robvalue]

The bibles authority comes only from the perpetual myth that it is somehow magically true. Take that away, and it's nothing, and xianity would be done.