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thousandin1(1931) pic



For the Christians: A bit of roleplaying- the canon.

This debate is targeted at Christian believers; those who do not subscribe to Christianity are welcome to chime in if they so choose.  Please begin your post by identifying whether you consider yourself to be a Christian or not.

The purpose of this debate is to indirectly examine, and possibly criticize, the 'canon-' that is, the construction of the new testament performed by the early christian church, wherein a large number of writings were either approved or rejected for inclusion into the bible.

 

You are a ranking member (such as it is) of the early Christian church.  You and your fellows have adopted the good news of Jesus' birth and sacrifice, and want to spread it as far as possible.

Your dillema: Your stature has placed you on a council that is responsible for determining which of many writings are to be considered 'canon' and included in a Newly Published Testament.  You have been presented with numerous accounts of the good news itself, each recorded by a different individual; some of these have subtle differences between them, others have huge differences- there are dozens of different writings simply covering the Gospel alone.  Beyond just the accounts of the gospel, there are numerous collections of letters and other writings, each one purported to be the divinely inspired word of God.  Your religion has already been plagued by false prophets (both those who are blatantly trying to manipulate others AND those who mistake a mental disorder for God speaking to them directly) as well as those seeking to exploit the faith for either financial or political profit.

Obviously, not all of the texts in question are divinely inspired.  Your task is to determine a set of objective criteria and processes that can be applied to the various writings, vetting them (so to speak)- you will make your recommendations to the rest of the council based on these criteria; each other member of the council will be putting forth their own criteria and recommendations as well.  The contents of this new published testament will be determined by the councils decision.

Basic premises you are working with are
1) That the Torah (Old Testament) is an accurate accounting of Gods interactions with man up to the birth of Jesus
2) That Jesus himself was the messiah promised by the Torah.
3) You do not have access to modern knowledge regarding the history of christianity; you are viewing it from christianity's infancy so to speak.

Please refrain from favoring scriptures that actually passed the historical canon and made it into the new testament, and please do not work backwards from the assumption that any given book in the New Testament is either true or false.  Please also refrain from personal attacks within this debate.

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I am disappointed (though not surprised) by the lack of response to this debate :/

2 points

I wasn't surprised either. There aren't a lot of people who profess knowledge on Biblical works that aren't in the Bible.

thousandin1(1931) Clarified
1 point

It seems strange to me; I'm of the mind that there is as much to learn about christianity from what was left out of the Bible as there is from what was included.

To be fair though, biblical scholars are minority amongst christians (and an even smaller minority amongst non-christians) and even they don't typically look much at the other works.

2 points

To be honest you know what I think the problem is? Not to offend anyone, but a wall of text usually causes tiny minds to flee. In other words, no one wanted to read all of this for a little pay off.

Bumping this, and sent an invite to some of the latest particularly inflammatory christian personas, calling them out as it were. Grugore, Thewayitis, and GayisSin have all been contacted for their thoughts on this.

1 point

Looks like the end was cut off. .

thousandin1(1931) Clarified
1 point

Thank you; I adjusted it a bit and had to trim some out. I didn't know there was a limit for the debates themselves, or that it would simply cut off rather than notify me >.<

1 point

I say everything that made it except for anything Paul wrote and write him out entirely.

1 point

What I'm curious about is why you assume that people saying God spoke to them directly is automatically a mental disorder .

thousandin1(1931) Clarified
1 point

I'm not assuming that automatically, and I don't believe I implied such in this debate.

I'm stating that if a god exists in the form that is described by Christianity, then other gods do not exist. Given that there have been prophets for any number of religions that legitimately believed that their god or gods has/have spoken to them directly, we can draw the conclusion that not all cases of god speaking to someone are legitimate, and some of them are caused by a mental disorder, a hallucination, or something to that effect. Some cases are complete fabrications. As such, it is likely that at least some of those who believe that the Christian god has spoken to them were in fact under the influence of a disorder or hallucination of some kind- the Bible warns against false prophets in may places, does it not? These are just some of the cases of what a false prophet might be.

Sorting between the claims that would be called legitimate or otherwise was a fundamental part of the historical canon, and as such is a necessary inclusion in our roleplaying here.