ECFs and the Trinity

Steven Avery said:
Conveniently omitting the Athanasius Disputation with an Arian.
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DCA is a false-positive!

Why are eisegetical commentaries about the ambivalent (either-either) Clause-D presented as if they constituted a full verse quotation, instead of an actual full verse quotation?

You're trying to pull the proverbial wool over peoples eyes.

We're not buying it! :)
 
TwoNoteableCorruptions said:
DCA is a false-positive!
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Grantley and TNC agree on one basic point ... references everywhere are false positives, as many as 20 references are said to be based on the earthly witnesses, even without the slightest mention of spirit, water and blood .. i.e. invisible allegory.

Richard Porson tried that trick as well.

Scrivener, again, was more sensible.

Plain Introduction (1894)
Scrivener and Edward Miller
https://archive.org/details/cu31924092355118/page/n415/mode/2up
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/scrivener/ntcrit2/Page_404.html

... a passage occurs in the Greek Synopsis of Holy Scripture of uncertain date (fourth or fifth century), which appears to refer to it, and another from the Disputation with Arius (Ps.-Athanasius)]
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Steven Avery said:
It shows no such thing. What a wacky claim.

Raymond Brown
"In summary, Greeven 35 phrases it well: “The Johannine Comma must be evaluated as a dogmatic expansion of the scriptural text stemming from the third century at the earliest in North Africa or Spain.”
35 “Comma Johanneum” RGG 1,1854.

We even discussed how Brown has Centesima, which was discovered after.
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De Cent. doesn't affect the inauthenticity of the Comma, but provides information on where it came from: gnostics/encratites/mystics etc (the wierd and wacky pseudo-Christian world of Priscillian etc).

Steven Avery said:
There are MANY important evidences that come after 1854, There is a paper about some of the 1800s discoveries. The Freisinger Fragment is an early Old Latin ms The Priscillian heavenly witnesses verse. Potamius. More from Caspari. The realization that the Vulgate Prologue is in the earliest extant Vulgate manuscripts. And I would include Georgios Babiniotis on the syntactic parallelism, which is just the last few years. There is more, but you tend to say totally false stuff that is totally outside reality.
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I didn't say knowledge hadn't been advanced. I said nothing has changed as to the conclusive evidence of the inauthenticity of the Comma.
 
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Steven Avery said:
After speculating that a Pope was an atheist, .....
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Source
  • "It has served us well, this myth of Christ."
    • Widely attributed to Leo X, the earliest known source of this statement is actually a polemical work by the Protestant John Bale, the anti-Catholic Acta Romanorum Pontificum, which was first translated from Latin into English as The Pageant of the Popes in 1574: "For on a time when a cardinall Bembus did move a question out of the Gospell, the Pope gave him a very contemptuous answer saying: All ages can testifie enough how profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie." The Pope in this case being Leo X. Later accounts of it exist, as recorded by Vatican Librarian, Cardinal Baronius in the Annales Ecclesiastici (1597) a 12-volume history of the Church.
    • In a more modern polemic, "The Criminal History of the Papacy" by Tony Bushby, in Nexus Magazine Volume 14, Number 3 (April - May 2007), it is stated that "The pope's pronouncement is recorded in the diaries and records of both Pietro Cardinal Bembo (Letters and Comments on Pope Leo X, 1842 reprint) and Paolo Cardinal Giovio (De Vita Leonis Decimi..., op. cit.), two associates who were witnesses to it.
 
Steven Avery said:
There are none extant.
However, there are abundant evidences that the Latin text came from the original Greek.
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There is no evidence of this whatsoever. The evidence is that the heavenly witnesses verse was manufactured out of Deut 19:15 and Matt 28:19.
 
cjab said:
I didn't say knowledge hadn't been advanced. I said nothing has changed as to the conclusive evidence of the inauthenticity of the Comma.
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For hardened contras who love circular reasoning and absurd theories .. this may be true.
 
cjab said:
There is no evidence of this whatsoever. The evidence is that the heavenly witnesses verse was manufactured out of Deut 19:15 and Matt 28:19.
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I’ve gone over the many evidences. Your ears are clogged, so I will not go over them again right now.
 
Steven Avery said:
I’ve gone over the many evidences. Your ears are clogged, so I will not go over them again right now.
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Ultimately there is discerned a large element of Romish supremacy in your teachings. It's a fault you need to shake off. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, not Latin, and so Greek will forever be the language of the authentic New Testament, not Latin. As to Greek: no heavenly witness verse prior to 1400. It's a serious problem for you. You can speculate over this and that, but people will increasingly see you as part of a cult. That's why the Vatican has forsaken the heavenly witness verse. In a scientific world, it has no place. It belongs to history.
 
Steven Avery said:
Here, it is easy to see that the three references are conjoined, in that they received their basic truth from the same Bible verse.

1 John 5:7 (AV)
For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one.

==========================

Tertullian

● Against Praxeas 25
Thus the connexion of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, makes three coherent ones from one another, which three are one (unum, not unus, i.e. one substance, not one person) as it is said, “I and my Father are one,” denoting the unity of substance, not the singularity of number. -
(Samuel Davidson, Lectures on Biblical Criticism, p. 135, 1835)

Cyprian of Carthage

● On the Unity of the Church:
He who breaks the peace and concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says, "I and the Father are one;" and again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, "And these three are one."
(Cyprian. Treatise. On the Unity of the Church. Book 1.6, ANF, 1995, vol. 5, p. 423)

• Epistle 73 to Jubianum:
If any one could be baptized by a heretic, and could obtain remission of sins, - if he has obtained remission of sins, and is sanctified, and become the temple of God? I ask, of what God? If of the Creator, he cannot be His temple, who has not believed in Him ; if of Christ, neither can he who denies Him to be God, be His temple ; if of the Holy Spirit, since the three are one, how can the Holy Spirit be reconciled to him, who is an enemy, either of the Father or of the Son?"
(Cyprian, Epistle 73 [to Jubaianus]

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I disagree.

Reasons stated many times.

"Et iterum."

We see you using an English translation of Cyprian (of which there are, by ECW standards, very many to chose from) that deliberately rearranges the English word order to make it appear more like the Comma (Parenthetical Text) in the King James Version.

The clause "it is written" has been deliberately (IMO) transposed (from the original Latin word order, which is perfectly comprehensible in English and does not need to be changed) and put before the clause "the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" in order to make it appear as if "the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" was written in Cyprian's Bible.

It is a false and deceptive impression.

The words "the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" are written, yes that's true, they ARE WRITTEN BY CYPRIAN!

They are Cyprian's words - not John's.

Why haven't you put your own translation Steven?

The one you made earlier:

Post #967
Page 49
"Thomas Golder Extensive Research on 1 John 5:7" (CARM thread)

It is written (Scripture) "and the three are one", referring to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.​
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Your one is very different to the one you quote above.

  • It is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, "And these three are one". (Robert Ernest Wallis 1868)
  • It is written "and the three are one", referring to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Steven Spenser Avery translation)

Am I to presume that you think your word order is an improvement? Providing a better sense in English?

Perhaps you would like to explain why you have transposed the word order in your translation?

Also, why you missed the Latin "et" "and" between "the Father" and "the Son"? Is this you trying to deceptively make it look more like the KJV Comma and it's missing "and"?

The Latin "and" is definitely in all the manuscripts of Cyprian's De Unitate 6.5 that I've personally examined.

NOTE: I have added emphasis (bolding and red color) to the quoted translations above, and deleted (Scripture) from the second citation of Steven's translation. The italics for "referring to" are in fact Steven's.
 
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Steven Avery said:
First, I would not mind if this were true.
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The key to the truth of it is whether the statement is true or false is in these two sources:

Pietro Cardinal Bembo (Letters and Comments on Pope Leo X, 1842)
Paolo Cardinal Giovio (De Vita Leonis Decimi, Pontificus Maximus, Paolo Giovio, 1897 English ed., lib. iv, pp. 96-99).

Unfortunately neither appear to be online in the English (they may be online in the Latin).
____________________________

As for santitized Catholic histories, of Leo X, or anyone else, I care nothing. It is what I dislike about Catholicism the most: the incessant refusal to tell the facts straight, and the endless duplicity and concealment and propaganda designed to elevate the Catholic Church and / or the Papacy and minimize its sins.

Yet, in the first Catholic Enclyopedia of 1907, Vol. 9, p.162ff, concerning Leo X, here, the pagan traits of Leo X are scarcely hidden, frankly hinted at, although not fully disclosed. (In addition to the below it is also recorded how Leo X drained the papal treasury, and more, by his profligate spending.)

"The unwieldy body is supported by thin legs. His movements were sluggish and during ecclesiastical functions his corpulence made him constantly wipe the perspiration from his face and hands, to the distress of the bystanders. But when he laughed or spoke the unpleasant impression vanished. He had an agreeable voice, knew how to express himself with elegance and vivacity, and his manner was easy and gracious. " Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us", he is said to have remarked after his election. The Venetian ambassador who related this of him was not un biased, nor was he in Rome at the time, nevertheless the phrase illustrates fairly the pope's pleasure-loving nature and the lack of seriousness that characterized him. He paid no attention to the dangers threatening the papacy, and gave himself up unrestrainedly to amusements, that were provided in lavish abundance. He was possessed by an insatiable love of pleasure, that distinctive trait of his family. Music, the theatre, art, and poetry appealed to him as to any pampered worldling. Though temperate himself, he loved to give banquets and expensive entertainments, accompanied by revelry and carousing; and notwithstanding his indolence he had a strong passion for the chase, which he conducted every year on the largest scale. From his youth he was an enthusiastic lover of music and attracted to his court the most distinguished musicians. At table he enjoyed hearing improvisations, and though it is hard to believe, in view of his dignity and his artistic tastes, the fact remains that he enjoyed also the flat and absurd jokes of buffoons. Their loose speech and incredible appetites delighted him. In ridicule and caricature he was him- self a master. Pageantry, dear to the pleasure-seeking Romans, bull-fights, and the like, were not neglected. Every year he amused himself during the carnival with masques, music, theatrical perform- ances, dances, and races. Even during the troubled years of 1520 and 1521 he kept up this frivolous life. In 1520 he took part in unusually brilliant festivities. Theatrical representations, with agreeable music and graceful dancing, were his favourite diversions. The papal palace became a theatre and the pope did not hesitate to attend such improper plays as the immoral ' ' Calendra " by Bibbiena and Ariosto's indecent " Suppositi."

Steven Avery said:
However, historical accuracy is important.

Your Wikipedia source said this is:

Disputed.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_X
And that is a bit of an understatement.
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Yes, the references of these anti-Catholics are sometimes absurd. What on earth is this (assumed precursor to)" Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci Ed."? No date, no real title, no publisher, no nothing. Perverse.

Assuming Pecci is Leo XIII(?) I have no idea what the actual title of this reference is.

(However carelessness is no reason to impute them with deliberate lying.)

Check out "Non caruit etiam infamia, quod parum honeste nonnullos e cubiculariis (erant enim e tota Italia nobilissimi) adamare, et cum his tenerius atque libere iocari videretur."

He was not without infamy, too, because he seemed to fall in love with some of his chamberlains (for they were the most noble of all Italy) and to joke more tenderly and freely with them.

from Paulus Jovius Vita De Leonis X

Steven Avery said:
Little of this really pans out.

We are looking at a paragraph on Wiki followed by:

The Criminal History of the Papacy - Part 3 of 3 (2007)
Tony Bushby
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vatican/esp_vatican30c.htm

==========================

You can work with:

John Bale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bale

Acta romanorum Pontificum (1558)
By John Bale
https://books.google.com/books?id=OtE5AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA381
Leo Decimus

=======================

Nothing Tony Bushby writes can be taken at face. He picks up information from automatic writing and basically just makes things up. He put this “quote” on the cover of his Bible Fraud book. My letter on his nonsense about the Forged Origins of the New Testament was published in 2007.

This will help you understand his methodology.

BCHF
Fakes Source Citations
http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=422

==========================

Did Pope Leo X say that Christianity is a fable?
Skeptics Stack Exchange
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30416/did-pope-leo-x-say-that-christianity-is-a-fable

Note that the Baronius

Annales ecclesiastici
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_Ecclesiastici

was continued by Bzovius, a point missed when it is said Baronius only did 12 volumes through 1198.

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When you search, if you include "Roger Pearse" in the search, generally you will find quality info. He had very nicely debunked a similar quote used against Eusebius, so I figgered he was on this one.

Roger Pearse discussion on Google Groups
https://groups.google.com/g/soc.history.ancient/c/NiKwZ9dNcVE?hl=en#07f984fd0ecf6926

His post works with Johann Burchard and the idea that this goes to Alexander VI, not Leo X.
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As to facts, Johann Burchard is to Alexander VI what Bembo is to Leo X. If the source is Bembo, it is Leo X. If Burchard, it is Alexander VI. I have read Burchard and cannot remember such a saying being attributed to Alex VI (but plenty of other incriminating stuff).

Steven Avery said:
Tekton (James Patrick Holding)
https://www.tektonics.org/lp/popeleox.php

JPH works through many of the claimed sources.

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At last, a worthy source of info. Thanks for that link above.
 
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TwoNoteableCorruptions said:
You mean everybody's opinion except your own.
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My opinion is clear, everything from Tony Bushby is unreliable at best, and the quote attributed to Leo X has no real support to date. Similar for Alexander VI.

Bushby, the real scholastic fraud, highlighted it for his “Bible Fraud” book cover, and thus It received internet buzz.
 
Steven Avery said:
Similar for Alexander VI.
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The crimes of Alexander VI were well attested by Burchard, and further attestation of his degenerate character spanning his whole life comes from unimpeachable sources. The problem with the contemporary biographers of Leo X, is that to acknowledge his crimes too frankly is to undermine the gravitas of their work, to which they clearly devote a great deal of effort:. Thus they are apt to take their subjects too seriously, even when they are but religious buffoons.

A better estimation of characters often comes from those who are more detached and who have no interest in preserving reputations. Thus I would allow Bale's estimation as valid, even if prejudiced. Even from Roscoe comes a frank admission that Leo X was a de facto secular pope. Both Leo X and Alexander VI of course fulfilled the external trappings of their offices perfectly: such was essential to maintain the dignity of their offices and to preserve their status before the Cardinals and before the church (they could have been deposed if they did not). That these popes did not neglect their prayers and their other external religious duties is entirely to be expected, but irrelevant as to their characters.

I see the characters of both these popes as completely beyond redemption.

From Roscoe on Leo X, Vol II, p.485

" Leo X. displayed," says Fra Paolo, " a singular proficiency in polite literature, wonderful humanity, benevolence, and mildness ; the greatest liberality, and an extreme inclination to favour excellent and learned men ; insomuch, that for a long course of years, no one had sat on the pontifical throne that could in any degree be compared to him. He would, indeed, have been a perfect pontiff, if to these accomplishments he had united some knowledge in matters of religion, and a greater inclination to piety, to neither of which he appeared to pay any great attention."

These animadversions of Fra Paolo are thus adverted to by his opponent Pallavicini, who has entered very fully into the consideration of this part of the character of Leo X. " It has been asserted by Paolo," says this writer, " that Leo was better acquainted with profane literature than with that called sacred, and which appertains to religion ; in which I by no means contradict him. Having received from God a most capacious mind, and a studious disposition, and finding himself whilst yet almost in his infancy, placed in the supreme senate of the church, Leo was wanting in his duty, by neglecting to cultivate that department of literature which is not only the most noble, but was the most becoming his station. This defect was more apparent when being constituted, at thirty-seven years of age, the president and chief of the Christian religion, he not only continued to devote himself to the curiosity of profane studies, but even called into the sanctuary of religion itself, those who were better acquainted with the fables of Greece, and the delights of poetry, than with the history of the church, and the doctrines of the fathers." * * " Nor will I affirm," says the same author, " that he was as much devoted to piety as his station required, nor undertake to commend or to excuse all the conduct of Leo X., because, to pass over that which exists in suspicion rather than in proof, (as scandal always delights to affix her spots on the brightest characters, that their deformity may be the more apparent,) it is certain, that the attention which he paid to the chase, to amusements, and to pompous exhibitions, although it might in part be attributed to the manners of the age, in part to his high rank, and in part to his own natural disposition, was no slight imperfection in one who had attained that eminence among mankind, which requires the utmost degree of perfection." [Pallav. Con. di Trento, lib. i. cap. ii. p. 51.]
 
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May I politely remind both of you to keep it on topic/theme please. Your both getting way out there (i.e. very much off topic).

This was the first post below.

Unbound68 said:
How would we expect the ECFs to describe or summarize the concept of the Trinity without ever using the words "three are one?" (tres unum sunt)

Is it possible to describe the Trinity without 1 John 5:7?

Could tres unum sunt EVER be said/written by any ECFs without being a reference to the Comma Johanneum?
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