brilliant

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I often chose best answers not because they are the best, but because I have to choose a best answer. Please, don't take offense to it.

	2,028 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 8 months
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Jul 5	comment	How can common believers in the Eastern Orthodox Church be sure that the Church's decisions are correct and not erroneous? "My answer still stands: the Holy Spirit has promised to guide the Church into all truth" - How could the Holy Spirit guide the Church to some events like Raskol, when two parties were considering each other to be of Antichrist and would burn themselves alive (the Old Believers) lest they be defiled by the other party (the followers of Nikon)
Jul 5	comment	How can common believers in the Eastern Orthodox Church be sure that the Church's decisions are correct and not erroneous? "but the Raskol are generally still considered Orthodox, not a separate denomination/organization" - What are you talking about? They were killing each other! The Old believers still consider the official Orthodox Church to be in apostasy.
Jul 5	comment	How can common believers in the Eastern Orthodox Church be sure that the Church's decisions are correct and not erroneous? 4) "Despite many challenges to the faith and Church unity, She maintained remarkable unity throughout history, especially in the East" – Really? And what about Raskol en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raskol – both the Old believers and the followers of Patriarch Nikon, by the way, possessed the same tradition and both pertain to the same apostolic tradition.
Jul 5	comment	How can common believers in the Eastern Orthodox Church be sure that the Church's decisions are correct and not erroneous? 3) salvation. For example, the story of the immaculate conception of Mary, or the story of her assumption, or the story of Peter confronting Simon Magus. Protestants state that one does not need to believe in them in order to be saved. If you look at it from this perspective, then sola scriptura principle is absolutely logical. Therefore, when Protestants say that they don’t have any tradition, they don’t mean that they don’t have any way of interpreting the Scriptures, but rather they say that they don’t have any other must-believe-in stories added to those that are contained in the Bible.
Jul 5	comment	How can common believers in the Eastern Orthodox Church be sure that the Church's decisions are correct and not erroneous? 2) a person to be saved. For example, the story of God’ creating man, the story of the fall of man, the story of Jesus being crucified and resurrected, are all the key stories that one needs to be aware of and believe in in order to be saved. (Salvation of an individual believer will be rather doubtful if he believes that Jesus was crucified, but does not believe that all men were created by God, or vice versa, or if he doesn’t believe that all men are sinful.) However, some stories that might be true, but are not included in the Scriptures, are not the critical ones in terms of
Jul 5	comment	How can common believers in the Eastern Orthodox Church be sure that the Church's decisions are correct and not erroneous? 1) “sola scriptura is a myth-a logical fallacy. Everyone appeals to tradition when interpreting scripture - we just don't agree on which tradition …and many deny that they have any such tradition (and this ignorance is even more dangerous) Hence the 23,000+ denominations” – You seem to have a problem understanding the very essence of how the sola scriptura principle is understood in Protestantism. In the very essence, it is not about the way of interpreting the Scriptures, but about defining the set of Scriptures containing the stories, the knowledge of which is necessary for
Jun 29	comment	Is Christianity prone to never inflict a physical pain on a person when there is no threat of experiencing a bigger physical pain or physical death? "no central belief of Christianity prevented these, which demonstrably occurred" - Do you want to say that there has not been one Christian group in Christianity where such things would never take place?
Jun 29	comment	Is Christianity prone to never inflict a physical pain on a person when there is no threat of experiencing a bigger physical pain or physical death? @Mike - "The only reason why I propose and answer is that possibly some people honestly suffer with doubts like this about Christianity, through lack of faith and knowledge, and are looking for help?" - Exactly! I am one of such people right now. While I have no doubts about the truthfulness of Christian faith, I do need some help on this very point that I have described in this question.
Jun 29	comment	Is Christianity prone to never inflict a physical pain on a person when there is no threat of experiencing a bigger physical pain or physical death? @DavidStratton - "Is this just a round-about way of asking if we agree that we are sadistic because we believe in things like punishment, hell,etc?" - David, please, understand me correctly. I am not trying to say that we all are sadistic. I am just really puzzled by these arguments presented by Buddhists and Confucians, and to my great awe I have discovered that they are quite right in this - Buddhism and Confucianism are indeed non-aggressive in this regard when compared to Christian faith.
Jun 24	comment	Did all disciples of Christ's apostles consider priesthood a sacrament? @RiverC - "Would we say the 'Godhead' implies that the members are individually Gods? No. ... Disappointing perhaps, but logically solid" - I am afraid "-head" and "-hood" are two quite different things, and using an example with "-head" to illustrate something of the "-hood" looks to me like a substitution of notions. Plus, using the Trinity as an example could also be quite misleading as the Trinity in and of itself is quite a unique phenomenon having no analogues world wide. Could you come up with some more down-to-earth examples using "-hood" words (like "brotherhood" or "parenthood")?
Jun 19	comment	Did all disciples of Christ's apostles consider priesthood a sacrament? @musicwithoutpaper - "It might be a good idea to tell us the source anyway" - All right. It's here: files.tvspas.ru/popup.php?flv=/Video/… (it is at 1:02:27)
Jun 15	comment	Did the Emperor Constantine ever present explanations for putting off his baptism? @Mike - "I did not like the article I referred to" - Why? To me it was a very interesting resource and quite an informative one. Can you, please, resend that link to me (perhaps, through chat)?
Jun 15	comment	How many writings of those who were disciples of the first 12 apostles (including Paul) are available today? WOW!!! Thank you very much!!!!
Jun 15	comment	How many writings of those who were disciples of the first 12 apostles (including Paul) are available today? @MasonWheeler - "when Paul was not one of the first 12 apostles?" - This is not directly related to my question, but as I gather from these verses, Paul did not include himself in the 12 apostles - "Christ died ... was buried ... rose again ... and ... was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve ... And last of all he was seen of me also" (1st Cor. 15:3-8)
Jun 15	comment	Did all disciples of Christ's apostles consider priesthood a sacrament? @Caleb - One orthodox theologian said this in one of his lectures. The source is on the internet, but the problem is that it's not in English.
Jun 14	comment	Have there been such an attempt made to make the comprehensive list of all New Testament scrolls ever found? @TRiG - I have just limited to the NT scrolls and pieces.
Jun 13	comment	How did God's morality not change between OT and NT times? let us continue this discussion in chat
Jun 13	comment	Have there been such an attempt made to make the comprehensive list of all New Testament scrolls ever found? @TRIG - I mean the original languages that the Bible was written in, not translations (Masoretic text i put into the category of "translations"). "How old?" - all that have been found.
Jun 13	comment	How did God's morality not change between OT and NT times? @Ben - "Also what do you make of Acts 5:1-12?" - I don't quite understand your question here. What do you want me to make of that passage? Where do you see there God instructing Christians - Peter and others - to kill? And where do you see in that passage an act of killing performed by Christians?
Jun 13	comment	How did God's morality not change between OT and NT times? @Ben - "My sense is that capital punishment for heresy was a relatively unquestioned part of life for much of Christian history" - I am not talking about Christian history, I am talking about what is written in the Bible. The fact that many of those who called themselves Christians used to end other humans' life solely on religious grounds does not at all mean that there is such a command in the NT given by God to Christians to act in this way. In the NT we can only see the forbiddance of such actions.