I feel I need to say something here, mostly because someone is convinced he's right when in fact he's wrong. Not that I have a problem with him being wrong -- he often is. And I suspect, being so well acquainted with the concept, he has no problem being wrong either.

All the same, he's wrong, and this bears commenting on, because beneath the error lies a very subtle hypocrisy which is worth bringing to light.

He writes:

I was reading a blog the other day and I saw this comment that was posted by a poster that frequently, no let me rephrase that for more accuracy, always criticizes our union in posts on his blog and occasionally on the union he belongs to and is an officer of.

This refers, of course, to the historical dust-ups that took place between the Gamespot Christian Union (the CU, as it is often known) and the second-generation offshoot union that emerged through the machinations of a collective of folks who evidently either thought themselves too Christian for the CU, or felt that the CU wasn't sufficiently Christian for their purposes. I'm speaking of the Christian Witness Union, the CWU...which I have in the past labeled, polemically, the "False Witness Union" for the sheer number and magnitude of false and derogatory things that are said within its boundaries.

Full disclosure: I am an officer in the CU. I am also an officer in the Christian Political Party Union (CPPU), the Catholic Union, and the Battlestar Galactica Union. My affiliation with the CPPU will presently be relevant here, so bear it in mind.

Let us return to the point. I might point out that (to my recollection) since the formal cessation of said dust-ups, any mention of the CWU that has happened in the CU has either been a simple matter of a link to a relevant article, or a tongue-in-cheek response to a mention of the CU, or one of the articles posted therein (usually referenced in ambiguous terms, I might note), made first on the CWU.

Let me state that more plainly: since the "detente" was reached, the CU has kept its word, only bothering to even acknowledge the existence of the CWU when the CWU said something about us. Or, no, let me correct that: when the CWU said something about a nameless union that just happened to have the same members as the CU, and in which the same topics were being discussed as were being discussed in the CU, and then at the exact same time.

This point is especially relevant to consider in light of the continuation to the above citation:

By the way, didn't the leader of that union, not too long ago, state that they didn't, don't, and wouldn't demean our union in the future?

Just so, and that promise has been kept, apart from the above-noted caveats. Conversely, the CWU has proven unable to honour its reciprocal commitment, instead opting to cloak their references to the CU in thin ambiguity, and then proceeding "business as usual"-styIe in their denunciations of the CU's conversation topics and members.

Against this, the CU has said very little, and hardly anything at all within its forum boards. But our opting to, in general, turn the other cheek (as a Union) in turn only prompts the CWU to strike the other cheek as we offer it. For when the leader of the CU leaves a comment on my blog, he is thusly lambasted for having done so:

It seems that that very leader likes to take part in these sessions of criticism of our union on the blogs of his officers. It's funny how things like that get forgotten when one is overcome with a critical spirit. I guess they feel it is justified when their target is Biblical Christians and they limit their criticism to primarily their blogs. I also might be a way to maintain plausible deny-ability of the fact that they are violating their commitment to refrain from criticizing and demeaning our union.

The implication of this statement is rather staggering to contemplate; essentially, the allegation is being made that my own blog, because I am an officer of the CU, is a de-facto extension of the CU, and that anything said herein reflects the policies and attitudes of the CU proper. I could produce several private messages shared between me and the CU leader that would demonstrate this to be the exact opposite of the truth, but instead will come out and say it directly: I express my opinions of the CWU on my own blog solely in the capacity as a blogger and GS user, not in my capacity as an officer of any union, including (and especially) the CU.

An easy litmus test: another CWU members is also, to my recollection, the founding member of the CPPU, of which I am also an officer. Using the logic of the above-cited passage, it must also be the case that in criticizing the CWU on my blog, my actions indicate that the CPPU is likewise criticising the CWU (especially since some of the participants in my comment threads are CPPU members, if I am not mistaken).

Clearly this is not the case...so how can it be the case for the CU?

Well, one answer is suggested:

Plausible deny-ability! BINGO, The nail hit right on the head! So predictible! It seems that some think if they keep the letter of the law that violating ths spirit of the law is ok. Isn't that what the Pharisees did?

It is...but is this really an issue of letter of the law vs. spirit of the law? The agreement exists between the CU as a collective whole and the CWU as a collective whole. That agreement begins and ends within the respective boundaries of the CU and the CWU. What individual members -- even the officers or leaders thereof -- do outside their respective unions is not covered by that agreement.

And well that it is not, or the person to whom I am responding would have substantially less to blog about!

And this is not an issue of deniability at all -- on the blogs, we do not typically speak as members of our respective unions, but as ourselves. It's the same as how when we're on the job, we may wear a suit and tie, but opt for jeans and a t-shirt on weekends and days off. We're not company folk at that point; we're private individuals.

And what we say on our blogs reflects us, and us alone, and not the unions to which we belong. I talk at length about many Catholic topics on this blog -- what has that to do with Battlestar Galactica? I posts LOLs of the Week -- what has that to do with Catholicism? I hold mock dialogues, for the comic benefit of my readers, with my mug of coffee -- what has that to do with Christian political perspectives?

Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Of course, if one wants to talk about violating the spirit of the law whilst obeying its letter, one would do well to use as evidence the many posts in the CWU that, as previously noted, refer to a nameless union whose nameless topics and nameless members seem to exactly mirror the actual members and actual topics in the CU. Obeying the spirit of the law -- or, in this case, the agreement between the CWU and the CU -- requires more than simply veiling the references one makes to the opposite partner in the agreement.

Perhaps if Protestant -- and especially Evangelical -- churches didn't force kids and young adults to choose between faith and science, between belief in God and belief in evidence they can see with their own eyes, they wouldn't be shedding members at hemorrhagic rates.

Okay, I promise that this one will be a bit more meaty.  Last week's question garnered some interesting responses, including what amounted to an admission that sola scriptura is not actually a doctrine which can be explicitly justified from any single Biblical verse.

Now, that's not normally a problem -- many doctrines are inferred from a synthesis of several Biblical teachings into one cohesive line of reasoning.  But for something like sola scriptura, the lack of explicit Biblical justification is more problematic, given that the doctrine itself requires that every valid Christian doctrine must be justified explicitly from Scripture.

Which, again, sola scriptura itself is not.

But let's begin to move away from simply noting the lack of concrete Biblical support for the doctrine.  Let's begin to move into examples of how the doctrine itself is actually contradicted by the Bible's own words.

Some Protestants claim that Jesus condemned all oral tradition -- if not all tradition, entirely (e.g. Matt 15:3, 6; Mark 7:8-13).  If so, why does He bind His listeners to oral tradition by telling them to obey the scribes and Pharisees when they "sit on Moses' seat" (Matt 23:2)?

Have fun, kids!

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Lansdowne5 gave a correct answer to last week's challenge, which I admit was not much of a challenge to begin with.

This week's challenge might be a tad trickier.  Have at it!

So in the past week, we've discovered that apart from the command to John to pen the Revelation, no specific command from Christ was ever given, to any of the other apostles, to sit down and write various letters and accounts that should then be compiled into a book nearly 400 years later.

This week's question follows a similar line of thought:

Where in the New Testament do the apostles tell future generations that the Christian faith will be based solely on a book?

I cannot over-emphasize the "New Testament" part, because there have been issues in the past two weeks with people reading the questions properly.  Both of the previous questions have asked for recorded sayings from Jesus specifically, which should have limited citations to the four Gospels.

That didn't happen, of course.  So let's see this week if we can improve on the performance...or will we see quotations from the Old Testament given as answers?

Weekly Challenge #3 ended with a whopping 0 guesses made about the supplied verse, so here's the answer: it's from the Book of Wisdom, chapter 2.

This is one of the apocryphal books that Protestants tend not to include in their Biblical canons, whereas Catholics (using the older canon) tend to include it.  And it's a shame for those that don't include it, because (as Wisdom 2) demonstrates, it really hammers home Solomon's pithy remark that there isn't anything new under the Sun...at least in the realm of opposition to belief.

Wisdom 2 reads, I find, as a kind of "quick reference" to the standard arguments of atheists who follow the works of Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris.  And it just as summarily dismisses them (rightly) as folly.  This in a text, mind, that was written...what?  On the order of 2,500 years ago, if not more?

Anyhow, Weekly Challenge #4 is up (see the blog's header).  Answers can be submitted by PM, or in the comments form of this or any subsequent blog post.

So, let's see.  Given a week, nobody could provide even one example of Jesus explicitly giving instruction that faith in Him was to be based solely on a book.  Which is not to say that a lot of good discussion didn't take place...but nobody was able to come up with a direct, valid answer to the question as it was posed.  Which, I think, is instructive.

Continuing, then, the analysis of sola scriptura, let's ask another question for the week, shall we?

Other than the specific command to John to pen the Revelation, where did Jesus tell His apostles to write anything down and compile it into an authoritative book?

And...go!

If you don't know what Wordle is, you're missing out, dear Reader.  It's a fun little toy for creating "word clouds," which sizes the words in the cloud based on the frequency with which they occur in the source text.

Which makes it a bit of a useful tool, if one wants to get a sense of the real focus of a particular piece of text.

For instance, here's the text of the Catholic Mass (Paul VI Rite, in English):

And here's the Nicene Creed:

Ain't it cool?

This was already observed elsewhere, but all the same: hunh? What? That's just...so dumb.

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(Close runner up)