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I am pretty sure Israelis look at the killing and starvation of Gazan women and children as an unfortunate and unavoidable byproduct of their effort to destroy Hamas, rather than using Hamas as an "excuse" to kill and starve Gazan women and children -- as though that were the primary goal...

To my thinking, much depends on whether homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, or a fact of one's nature. Because if it is the latter, I would say "I am as God made me. I happen to be heterosexual. If God had made me homosexual, am I to be judged harshly on that account?"

When Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, Nero was Emperor - still a teenager, but already beginning to show his true colors (although Paul may not have been aware of it yet). It's hard to believe that Paul was counseling the Romans to do whatever Nero might say to do. (If Nero insisted that...

I'd like to explore those passages with you. Which ones did you have in mind?

My preference in choosing a Bible translation is for faithfulness to the original Greek or Hebrew, with no resolution of ambiguities in favor of particular agendas. An example might be Rom. 1:4 in the 1978 edition of the NIV: and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared (ὁρισθέντος) with...

Fair question. It seems Arius's original writings were largely destroyed. But his contemporary opponents quoted him numerous times in diatribes that have survived. Through this method we have his letter, subscribed by a number of his allies as well, to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria -- as...

The best answer I can give is consensus development. A practice or a ritual or a tenet that is in currency in the first and early second centuries can more easily be seen as traceable to the original apostles' teachings. As time went by, if something "new" was introduced its faithfulness to...

What is it exactly that makes him "Catholic," in your view?

Yet Cyprian told Pope Stephen to go pound sand when rejecting Stephen’s view regarding the efficacy of baptism by heretics -- and rejecting Papal authority in the process: “For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to...

I'm sure you had a point to make about Catholics screwing up the notion of original sin thanks to Augustine, but I can't figure it out. And I have no clue what Irenaeus "working for the Catholics and not for the apostle Paul" means. Long before Augustine, St. Cyprian, in discussing infant...

So let's step back and see where we are. @Peterlag compares the teachings of the Catholic Church to the Bible; sees discrepancies (real or imagined); and concludes that Catholicism is not faithful to Scripture. I am not faulting him for that conclusion (at least not here). But then he makes...

Let me quote from Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (MacMillan & Co. 1930) at p. 31: "The relation of our printed Greek Testaments and of the English versions to the types of text found in the MSS. may be summarily stated in a very few words. Erasmus was the first to produce an...

I don't think that "The Scriptures are simple and even a child could understand them." I doubt you really think so either. According to what you said in Post #354, Why would you "search[] the Scriptures day and night to be able to piece it together so that I could make sense out of it" if...

That's your answer? Next I suppose you'll tell us that you slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946

I didn't ignore it. I found it nonresponsive to my four questions of @Peterlag.

I agree with you. But let's not wander on the road to Mecca. You still have a remarkable proposition to support.

Well, I don't know how to make it any clearer. Your thesis that "the Catholics" took over and corrupted "the Church" presumes that "the Church" wasn't always in line with Catholicism. That's a proposition you need to back up. You say it happened. You don't know when, you don't know how, you...

Don't obfuscate the issue, my friend. A Catholic takeover of "the Church" can only be shown by proof that "the Church" wasn't always "Catholic" -- in substance, not merely in name (apologies to Ignatius). That has to be your starting point (just as the disheveled condition of my house not...

We are dancing around the issue. If "the Catholics" corrupted and took over "the Church," which is @Peterlag's thesis, he should be able to explain how and why this Italian cabal (well, I guess I don't really know if @Peterlag thinks it was put together in Italy) came to be. Before they...