No Gospel without Law, no Mercy without Wrath

You seem to be saying that nothing in the Bible has external evidence to support it.Suppose someone approaches the Bible like any other ancient book. In trying to decide what is literal and what is allegory, one looks for external corroborating evidence for the passages, whether other ancient literature or documents, archeolgical ,scientific, etc.It sounds as though you are saying there is nothing to support a literal interpretation anywhere in terms of external evidence.This reduces the notion of a literal interpretation to mere ideology, and negates any Biblically based arguments you make. For you must first defend the ideology with evidence.IMO, if this is what you are saying, allegorical interpretation must be regarded as the more rationally defensible approach (Setting aside, for sake of argument, outright rejection as worthless).

I think it would be helpful for you to understand that it's not a question of "like", it's a question of "credible".

IMO my post is on topic because the premise of your OP presupposes not only sola scriptura, but a literalist interpretation. If either of these points are in dispute, your argument is undermined.It's up to the mods to determine if a post is on topic or not, but AFAIK a non-mod originator of a topic has no special status in policing the thread. It's a discussion board, not a pulpit.There exist Christians who believe the scripture, but not in a literal sense, nor as the sole rule of faith and practice. Such people think that in order to understand what the Bible is actually saying requires external corroborating evidences.You would, perhaps like to dismiss this viewpoint. Thus your tactic is to insist that the literalist and the non-literalist are on equally weak rational grounds. But this point is up for debate. So does the Koran. So do other religious texts. This line of argument is not a strong one.It isn't how any one piece of evidence "presents itself". It's what is most plausible given the totality of evidence.

IMO the takeaway message of Christ is to define "who is a Christian" as widely as possible, not as narrowly as possible. Yes, you could rejoind by bringing up "the narrow gate" passage, but IMO this only illustrates the mistake of trying to construct a systematic theology passage by passage, much less via sola scriptura. But this could be explored in another thread or 50.OTOH, while I think Biblical literalists are mistaken in their interpretations, I could not exclude them from the definition of who is Christian, although the courtesy is returned rarely enough.As to Faith, she reminds us the thread is about WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS (her caps).Quite. Some of us do not think that the most rational answer to this question is to be found in literalism.If she does not want to engage this argument, fine, but then she is just preaching, not engaging in discussion.She can always ignore posts that she feels aren't on topic, but it's up to the mods to determine this. I am prepared to abide by any mod stating that I'm off topic.

I don't deny the existence of wrath. However, I think wrath is something humans inflict on each other, and on themselves.IMO God is not in the business of inflicting wrath on us because we've pissed him off.God is in the business of offering grace to us out of love and concern, because without it, we'd eventually self-destruct as a species. Law, as you put it, is a human response to try and control the situation, but it doesn't work and doesn't solve the fundamental problem.Wrath exists and is part of the human condition. God is trying to extricate us from this state, not inflict it. It's up to us to respond.This concept isn't unique to Christianity. All the great religions have some variation on it. Buddhism calls it dukkha. That's not what we're doing. We think the bad stuff as you put it exists, but isn't inflicted by God. To be sure, he permits it to exist, for reasons inscrutable. Many atheists don't find this compelling, and to a degree, I can't blame them,and I think they'll be cut some slack for reasonable doubt. JMO. No doubt you disagree. I think you are attacking a strawman here. I think it is far more subjective to be a fundamentalist, because all it requires is accepting a premade ideology. To be a liberal Christian requires effort, to understand what concepts are really true and what are really artifacts of a an earlier development concept of what God is about.Even fundamentalists do this. They can make reasonable arguments that the dietary laws no longer apply. But this demands some compromise on strict literalism, or else a sytematic theology like Dispensationalism that is so convoluted as to be easily as subjective as anything you might accuse liberal Christianity of.

One would have to conclude that your study lacks due diligence.Sicne you condemn Catholicism as "heretical" (a charge I'd love to refute, but that's another thread) we shall confine ourselves to six Protestant sects.Let's start with baptism. Is the nature of baptism an important doctrine or are the following differences minor ?Group A: Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians: Water baptize infants.Group B: Southern Baptists, Assembly Of God, Evangelical Free Church: Do not water baptize infants.Is Group A or Group B correct, and why ?I have a feeling you'll pick Group B.But Group B has differences among itself. Southern Baptists require water baptism for membership. So do Aseemblies of God, and, in addition the AG's require "baptism in the Holy Spirit" evidenced by speaking in tongues. Now the E-Free's require neither for membership - they think water baptism is an important ordinance, but do not require it for membership.So which of these groups is a true church and which isn't ? Or is the nature of baptism unimportant enough that all three could be? And if all three of Group B are "true churches", are all three of Group A? Or is it none of the above ?

Interesting. So all six denominations mentioned count as "true churches" ? What then is the doctrinal mark of a "true church" ?

If this is the benchmark, since Catholicism teaches this, you need to withdraw your charge that it is heretical. I'll assume someone misinformed you otherwise. Here you are in no better position than a Muslim or Mormon, who advance similar arguments for the veracity of the Koran or Book Of Mormon, respectively.In addition, both criteria are quite subjective. If you really think this, then you should be Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, becuase the result of that process at 500 AD was a church with Catholic/Eastern Orthodox doctrine, not Southern Baptists. At times the above occurred, but over time the Roman emperors tolerated Christianity and saw that it could be useful to co-opt for social control, until Constantine made it the state religion. But there isn't any evidence for Southern Baptists existing through those times either. There were the "heretical" sects, and there was the group whose doctrines won out -and again, in the latter, we see the clear development of Catholicism/Eastern Orthodoxy. Nice try at a red herring. It is possible to find voluminous contemporary material demonstrating a clear development of a Catholic/Eastern Orthodox theology of the sacraments and notion of church teaching authority from the very start. That's the key here , not "pomp".You'd have to prove from contemporary documentation that the early Church were Southern Baptists and somehow veered into Catholicism/Orthodoxy after 500 AD for your charges to stick. It would be an understatement to say this challenge is formidable.We can start a whole thread devoted to that topic sometime, but let me conclude here with a synopsis.All you're doing in this thread is preaching fundamentalist Protestantism.Preaching is fine, and I even understand your motivation for it. But you aren't winning the debate here, and it is a debate board.Maybe you think someone is unfamiliar with the arguments, and that's fine. But many of us are intimately familiar with the arguments - we simply find them exceedingly weak. Your appeal to church history and tradition totally fails as an argument for fundamentalist Protestantism. Your arguments from biblical literalism may be internally consistent, but they depend on a priori acceptance of biblical literalism, which is simply ideology. It has no more external evidence than the Mormon's conviction that the BOM is true via a "burning in the bosom" does, or a Wahhabi Muslim's arguments from the Koran.

Really? I have you on record as stating the Lutherans and Episcopalians (presumably at least the evangelical subset) are acceptable to you. Both (even the evangelical subset) have retained much of the liturgy and sacramentalism of Catholicism or Orthodoxy, and much of the theology behind these.So I can't imaging what you are referring to when you speak of "rituals or superstitions", unless you're simply repeating Loraine Boetnner-like misinformation. LOL. Then start a thread. We'll see who knows what about the other's theology.

Some good points here. The thing I was objecting to was Faith arroagting the authority to declare something heretical just on her say-so, and attempting an argument from church history that, if anything, undermines her position rather than supporting it.I can almost imagine Faith's rejoinder - "I didn't declare anything heretical, the Bible did..." But as I've said before, unless she can provide arguments in favor of her interpretation being correct beyond mere ideology, it's really a non-starter.We are then left with the curious fallback position of "Both our positions are equally subjective"...but IMO at least, that calls for circumspection and tolerance, not an extended discussion of divine wrath.