Are you orthodox, IC? Wasn't Martin Luther a heretic? Same with all those Roman Catholics who split from the Orthodox church. The different Christian sects clearly demonstrate that the documents (and other teachings) aren't VERY clear.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2024 11:46 pm
If you point to the law, the secular law, you'd find exactly the same: that there are charlatans who rise up and try to abuse the documents. What else is a court case, but a debate over how the law should apply to a particular case? What do the prosecutor and defense attorney do, but try to interpret the law so as to favour their desired outcome? And yet somebody's still guilty or innocent, and it's the job of the court to be smarter than all that, and figure out the truth. And that's with even a flawed, human law, and no divine revelation involved whatsoever.
That's nothing unusual at all, but it doesn't tell us the documents are unclear. All it tells us is that some people are dishonest, or try to twist things to their own advantage...which the Bible promises is exactly what men would try to do:
"...there are some things [in Paul's teaching] that are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction." (2 Peter 3:16)
Don't be surprised at the presence of some such "unstable" and "distorting" types. They were predicted.
Didn't Jesus command his followers to partake of communion, in memory of Him? Yet many Protestant churches refrain from practicing this ritual. I'm sure they (and you) have explanations, but so does the other side.