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I didn't call Jesus a liar. Reference to allegories and parables is not lying. Please re-read my post with more care.

@Jack, if you will permit me to add my $0.02: Just because Jesus -- the master of the parable -- referenced the Flood in making a point to his audience is not proof that the Flood occurred precisely as Genesis recounts. All we can safely conclude is that Jesus understood the audience's...

Karen Armstrong’s book, The Case for God distinguishes, as the ancients did, between logos (“reason”) and mythos (“myth”), the former being concerned with accurate knowledge of external realities, the latter with inner meaning and value as a guide for practical human action: "Logos (“reason”)...

Another thing to consider is the titles that were given to the gospels early on, for example kata Markon euangelion, "the Gospel according to Mark." The phrase kata Markon here does not necessarily connote "written by Mark." We might better translate kata Markon as "the way Mark told it." If...

I think it matters. If instead of all eleven apostle drawing lots at Matthias's selection, only five of the eleven did and he won 3-2, would you consider him validly elected? If Linus was elected to succeed Peter as Pope by vote of a couple of bishops in Italy, and every still-living...

True. How did his successor get the job?

Whether all God made, all man made, or a combination, doctrine was certainly transmitted by fallible human beings, and human beings who interpreted things that weren't perfectly clear to them, so error is possible -- but by and large, I think we have a pretty good handle on proper Christian...

Yup. We just don't have an early account of how it went. Say an original apostle appoints a bishop in a city. That bishop appoints a successor, or maybe several bishops in surrounding regions join him to do so, or maybe there is a vote of some clerics in the region?

I'll try to tackle that one, because it seems simple enough: Any teaching that Christ taught. (Which may or may not have been recorded in the NT.)

Thanks. I wasn't referring to the the tactile mechanics. I was referring to the appointment/election itself, i.e., how someone merited the hands being laid on him. The former is not obscure at all. The latter is.

Thank you.

If it can only be answered correctly one way, kindly answer it for me that one way. Will you do me that kindness?

How about just giving a straight answer instead of a question.

By whom, then?

I think some of the disagreements on this post may be a product of failure to define "apostolic succession" robustly. I expect that most everyone here would agree that the apostles (let's include Paul) appointed elders, presbyters and even episkopoi (I know it's a loaded word), and in a few...

I suspect you are correct. Still, the legitimacy of Peter's immediate successor and of subsequent successors may turn on the legitimacy of the selection process itself, and as long as that process remains obscure, there will be questions about papal authority. The assignability of the Keys is...

I would say the first sin that man committed was disobeying a direct command from God.

Scripture is of course of great importance. But let us not put Scriptural context on the shelf. Matthew's account of the rock on which Jesus said his Church was to be built is found in a colloquy in which Simon GETS A NAME CHANGE! That was hugely significant in Jewish circles, and signifies a...

This πέτρος (petros) and πέτρα (petra) controversy has me scratching my head if, as I think is overwhelmingly likely, Jesus spoke in Aramaic to Peter. I am told that in Aramaic (disclaimer: I do not read or speak Aramaic) the play on words we see in the Greek is impossible: Jesus would have...

This is the same bishop who says Pope Francis should be arrested. Pope Francis should be arrested over "perverted" book, Archbishop says