Faith and Works

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Who cares if you're Iranaeus' writings or not? I don't need your CV - I'm not doing a job interview here.

Unless you plan to actually make an argument where Iranaeus' writings come into play, this is just a red herring.

1. ...[text shortened]... non-asinine gnostic way of reading this, your Knowfulness?

That was in response to this garbage you posted
"not to mention the usual dose of Church-bashing and name-calling".
Telling the truth about church history might seem like church-bashing and name-calling to you, however it's still the truth.
It wasn't enough for Ireneaus to tirade against the theology of Valentinaeus .. no no no ,, this SAINT to attack his character.

also here some of the SAINT's writing about Gnostics heresies

"There being thus three kinds of substances, they declare of all that is material (which they also describe as being "on the left hand" ) that it must of necessity perish, inasmuch as it is incapable of receiving any afflatus of incorruption. As to every animal existence (which they also denominate "on the right hand" ), they hold that, inasmuch as it is a mean between the spiritual and the material, it passes to the side to which inclination draws it..........."
Which ought to show you that Irenaeus didn't understand the Salvation or even what the message of Christ was.

he rants on : "For they affirm that He received the first-fruits of those whom He was to save [as follows], from Achamoth that which was spiritual, while He was invested by the Demiurge with the animal Christ,..."
Although neither Demiurge or Achamoth appear in either the Gospel of Truth or the Gospel of Thomas.
I will respond to the rest of your post later.

Faith and Works ......

Repent thread, page 8:

Coletti: The normal protestant view is that we are saved by believing in Christ, and that at the time we believe, it is by the recieving of the Holy Spirit. (I think we recieve the HS and consequatly believe, others will say we recieve the HS after we believe). At that moment we have been "saved." And we ask for and receive the forgivness of our sins. (The order is not so important for this as the understanding that these things all happen together.) We have been at this time justified by the Christ. This is what it means to be saved. We know that we are still sinners, but we also know that we have been forgiven our sins. All this is by faith alone, and not because of our good works.

Last sentence in particular.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Who cares if you're Iranaeus' writings or not? I don't need your CV - I'm not doing a job interview here.

Unless you plan to actually make an argument where Iranaeus' writings come into play, this is just a red herring.

1. ...[text shortened]... non-asinine gnostic way of reading this, your Knowfulness?

1) You are flat out wrong if you think Gnostics were not in the church
2) thats strange they took the Greek versions of everything else and there certainly was at least one Greek ( not Coptic ) Gospel of Thomas.
3) which part of that two part don't you understand? Or have you having trouble have 2 choices offered to you?
4) Nah ,,, I'll pass on enlightening your Forgetfulness self.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Let me ask you something in all seriousness: RBHILL, BF101 and other fundies have been quoting Paul for many months in support of THEIR (not my) claim that faith is all that is required for salvation. How come you never quoted this site to refute their views?

Honestly - I didn't even see this particular site until a few days back. But, more pertinently, people like yourself, Nemesio, bbarr (and even kirksey and ivanhoe) have provided sufficient refutation on most occasions that I'd never actually seen the need to step in. 🙂

2 Peter is relevant to 1 Peter because in both there is a claim of authorship by the Apostle Peter. If 2 Peter is bogus, then that increases the likelihood that 1 Peter is bogus as well; if 2 Peter is authored by Peter than that increases the likelihood that 1 Peter was as well. Your analogy is pretty stupid; there are only two Peter documents and unlike your $10 bills where we know 50% are authentic, we don't know if ANY of these are authentic i.e. written by Peter. It basically comes down to the weight of evidence and while reasonable minds may disagree, I still think that the weight of evidence cited by wikipedia makes Peter's authorship of 1 Peter unlikely.

I understand your reasoning and, had no other information been available than 1P was one of two epistles allegedly written by Peter and 2P was not written by Peter, then I would've agreed with you.

However, 1P is a full text that can be critically analysed on its own merits - the near certainty that 2P is not authentically Petrine should not override those merits.

If the evidence cited by Wikipedia were all the evidence available to us on 1P and the manner in which documents were written in NT times, I might've agreed with you. However, the objectivity of the article itself is in question due to some of the editing activity it has undergone (you can see this reasonably clearly if you examine previous versions of the article) and the final piece makes no attempt to present both sides of the argument (a detailed set of citations indicating the debate can be seen at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/1peter.html).