by hajile | 2025-05-09 21:25:13+00:00
> John was also unmarried.

Can you provide any evidence of this?

> almost everybody believes St Ignatius of Antioch was unmarried.

Speaking of him, read Philadelphians. He makes the assertion that the apostles were married men (including Paul). What he makes of himself, it either implies that he is married or would like to be (to be like those others).

https://www.logoslibrary.org/ignatius/philadelphians1/04.htm...

> You can't use the verse we are debating to prove your point.

I'm asserting that it says what it says. YOU are the one who must prove that Paul didn't mean what he said.

> You are literally saying you know what the Bible means better then almost every Christan who has ever lived.

To the contrary, YOU are making an assertion that everyone believes this, but are then failing to show any proof except clear cases of "nobody knows, but I'll assert that they were unmarried anyway".

> only evidence is your interpretation and some people 1500+ years after it was written.

Even the Catholic Church didn't mandate celibacy until nearly 1200AD. You are making a very fallacious argument both on this count and that an appeal to authority or extra-Bibical tradition isn't an argument to overturn what the book clearly says.

> the Church disagrees with your understanding for the first 3/4 of the existence of the church then you are in the wrong.

This is a very misleading representation of history. Locking the Bible behind a Latin barrier meant that most people couldn't read and question and most who could read Latin had no access to a Bible and it seems that most of those who did had very little inclination to read it. Of those priests or educated laity who did read and question, most were captured and tortured until they died or recanted.

Under such ignorance and extreme pressure to comply, an appeal to tradition is especially weak.

> This is a bad example. They do not deny that Smith taught polygamy. They belive that Woodruff received a revelation telling them it is no longer permissble.

The very core of their beliefs around the requirements for becoming a God are rooted in this claim and having multiple wives is a necessity for this in the afterlife (not to mention that God is believed to have multiple wives). While I disagree that polygamy is good (it seems to always result in misery), I do respect the LDS who stick to their book no matter what.

> Nobody is claiming there is a new revelation when it comes to the bishop topic.

If there's no new revelation, then the old revelation still applies, but is being ignored.

> it just means they don't know what I was saying.

Explain what you mean without then.

> Telling somebody they don't understand something isn't an ad homenem. I am not attacking your character or anything like that.

Telling me that I am prideful or uncharitable or not humble has NOTHING to do with the topic aside from trying to attach a bad label on me so the logic can be ignored. These are textbook examples of ad-hominem attacks.

> Apostles are bishops with a special role due to personally meeting Jesus. Of course since it is only implied in the Bible you are going to reject it.

Of course. It is inductive reasoning. You start with the conclusion that it must be so then try to find reasons it should be true. That's been this entire conversation. Deductive reasoning would lead to the conclusion that I am correct in my assertion, but the Catholic Church says otherwise, so you must fabricate reasons however feeble to justify them.

You haven't even hit on the actual reasoning from that 1139 decision either. Their argument was nothing like what you are trying to push. It was the argument that they otherwise couldn't keep the priesthood from becoming nepotistic with the priest father passing the role to his son.

But this doesn't hold any weight either.

First, passing on the priesthood was a strict requirement in the Old Testament, so it certainly isn't necessarily bad.

Second, if it IS being passed along for purely nepotistic reasons, they would be duty-bound to remove the offending priest and their children from their office. There's an entire hierarchy that should in theory be aimed at exactly this. The ruling speaks in at least some degree to their inability to govern their own priests.

Third, an inability to stop your priests from doing something bad is not a reason to do something else against the Bible in response. The correct response is a reformation of your clergy.

> Apostles are bishops, but not all bidhops are apostles so it would be accurate that not everybody had an apostle.

This does not hold. Paul was an Apostle, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of him overseeing a church. Instead, he would travel to a place to preach for a time then move on to the next place right up until his final voyage to Rome where he was killed.

As I recall, the Catholic view is that Paul was a Bishop because he layed hands on others, but of course, this is an argument that proves too much as the priest/bishop arrangement by their own admission did not exist at that time and as such he could not be a bishop in that manner, but also not an overseer of a church.

> That quote also doesn't deny that somebody could have multiple roles. Surely an evangelist would also be a teacher? Surely prophets are also teachers (teaching the prophecy they received)?

Certainly, but likewise, it does NOT indicate that Apostles and Pastors/bishops are always linked.