Religion Discussion

Mr. Diga and I have agreed to start with the question:

"what's to proof the bible is indeed trustworthy?"

Good question. My answer is that the Bible is a product of the Christian Church, not the other way around, and therefore, the question misses the reality of Christianity. The Bible is only trustworthy if the Church that created it is trustworthy, and the Church can only be trustworthy if it has some aspect of the Divine, which I would argue it does.

A lot of people nowadays make the mistake of believing that the Bible is the root source of all Christianity, but historically and practically, this is simply not the case. The Bible as we know it today came into existence some 350 years after Christ's death, and 50 some years after the Council of Nicaea wherein the basics of Christian dogma were codified in the Nicene Creed. Christians comprised a thriving and authoritative Church which was teaching on these issues well before they canonized the Bible, not to mention translated and promulgated it. For hundreds of years, Christians lived, taught and believed without a set Biblical canon, and without even all the books of Scripture. For the first 10-50 years after Christ, they didn't even possess written Gospels, and most communities likely lacked even Paul's letters. While the Old Testament would at least have been prevalent in those communities with Jewish members or backgrounds, the New Testament, those scriptures which are avowedly Christian, would not have been present.

Even in logical terms it doesn't make sense to treat the Bible alone as authority for Christianity. It can't be denied that Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus the Christ, and that Christianity first and foremost derives from Him, most particularly in the fact that all of Christianity's most basic (and controversial) dogmas stem from this Person's Divine and Human natures. The Trinity, hypostatic union, the efficacy of Salvation, all of these core issues go back to Christ. And Christ didn't write down any of His teachings that we know of, they were all delivered in oral speeches and parables to His followers and the crowds. If we go to the beginning, we don't find a book, we find oral teachings.

Same thing with the Apostles, who didn't go into a flurry of writing and recording after Christ's death (or even before it), but instead went into a flurry of missionary work, preaching the Gospel to any who would listen. It would be years before it was written down. So again, we must conclude that to treat the legitimacy of the Bible, we must treat with the legitimacy of the Church itself, and the person of Christ.

So shall we move on to that next?

(NB: English appears to be a second or third language for Mr. Diga, I will be posting his responses/questions/comments in the manner in which he posted them, As I do not wish to mistakenly misrepresent him by altering any of his text. I believe they'll be fairly intelligible, so it shouldn't present a problem. For future reference, I will also be posting his statements whatever they may be, in bold, and my own in normal font.)

State of the Blog address:

Apologies to anyone who's actually been reading this regularly or semi-regularly. I keep having these several week long hiatuses when I either have writer's block, no motivation, or am too busy/tired. Or some combination thereof. Hopefully this most recent spat of nothing will be coming to end as I embark on a discussion of religion with a gentleman named Ahmad Diga, who put out an open invitation to any and all who wanted to discuss religion with him in a forum I frequent fairly often. I'll be posting our discussions, and labeling them as to whether they're mine or his, on the blog after this post.

Thanks for reading!