Vance,
I will review the entire exchange between us to clarify the real issue here. Your original CFR was in another thread that I had started. Here is the entirety of your CFR in
that post:
Quote
"That isn't the case with your LDS apostles."
CFR
That was rather cryptic. In
my reply to you, I gave a full quotation of my statement in context (emphasis added here):
"Furthermore, your current apostles and prophets do not seem to have been called "as they were called in the NT." That is, in the NT Jesus Christ handpicked his apostles and prophets, and
each apostle had to be an eyewitness of the risen Jesus. That isn't the case with your LDS apostles. In fact,
I've never heard of any apostle during the past hundred years or so even claiming to have had a visible encounter with the risen Jesus."
The whole paragraph is explicitly clear that what I was saying "isn't the case with your LDS apostles" was that they "had to be an eyewitness of the risen Jesus." I responded to your CFR on the understanding that you were calling for a reference supporting that point.
You then replied by claiming, without explanation:
Quote
Sorry, but that doesn't address the CFR. I understand why you have to avoid this CFR. You have absolutely NOTHING to back up your statement.
Showing more patience with you than you deserve,
I then replied (emphasis added):
"I answered your CFR.
The issue is, Does the LDS claim that its apostles have all seen the risen Jesus? If the answer is yes, then we should be able to find places in LDS publications where they make this claim. I can't find any such places. Therefore, the answer, based on the LDS publications I have examined is not yes. (I gave you two very good examples of such publications.) If the answer is not yes, then the answer is no (by the law of excluded middle).
Now it's your turn to refute my argument by citing references where the LDS Church does make this claim."
In
your next reply, you seem to understand the claim you wanted me to defend was the claim that the LDS apostles need not have seen the risen Christ. Thus, you wrote:
Quote
You claimed, ". . . each apostle had to be an eyewitness of the risen Jesus. That isn't the case with your LDS apostles." Now, either back it up (address the CFR) or retract it.
Notice that the way you present your quotation from me, the only possible way of construing your CFR was as a CFR that LDS apostles do not need to be eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus.
When I commented that I saw no need to continue the debate,
you replied:
Quote
NOWHERE, is the requirement that those called to the Apostleship reveal the intimate details of their calling to the world and open themselves and others to the ridicule of the wicked. Now, you need to either support your claim, or retract it.
Here again, you still seem to have been taking exception to my statement that LDS apostles need not be eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus. Your objection amounts to saying that they might all be expected to have had such encounters but refrain from making them public to avoid ridicule from the wicked. You reiterated the same criticism in
yet another post.
Then, without warning, Skylla closed the thread, claiming as one reason "CFR not answered" (which is not true).
In
the first post of this thread, I carefully and thoroughly documented in a more direct and positive way that LDS apostles need not have seen the risen Christ. As far as I could tell in the four rounds of posts between us in the other thread on your CFR, that was the claim for which you had issued the CFR. I stated each time that such was what I understood you to be challenging, and not once did you claim that the CFR was for a different claim.
In your first attempt to respond in this thread, you offered
the following reply:
Quote
The CFR was for this statement.
"That is, in the NT Jesus Christ handpicked his apostles and prophets, and each apostle had to be an eyewitness of the risen Jesus. That isn't the case with your LDS apostles."
To address this CFR and support this statement Rob has to prove that not a single LDS apostle has seen Christ. Which he cannot do.
In the above comment, you apparently misconstrued me as asserting that no LDS apostle has ever seen Christ, which of course I did not assert.
I explained my point, which has never changed, in
the following statement (emphasis original):
"My argument was not that we lack explicit records of
every LDS apostle having an encounter with the risen Jesus and therefore they didn't all have such experiences (much less than none of them did). My argument was that we lack records of
any living LDS apostle having such an encounter and we have multiple statements indicating that such is
not a requirement to be an apostle in the LDS Church."
Later, in response to nackhadlow, you admitted that he might be right in saying that "the original CFR was dumb," and
you commented:
Quote
Perhaps the CFR that should have been issued is for this statement.
"That is, in the NT Jesus Christ handpicked his apostles and prophets, and each apostle had to be an eyewitness of the risen Jesus."
I find NO SUCH requirment in my studies of the NT.
Here you acknowledge that this would have been a
different CFR, for a
different statement that I made than the one you challenged with your original CFR. In
my response, I offered to discuss this issue with you if we could first settle the original controversy between us represented by your original CFR. Thus, I asked (emphasis added):
"Can you possibly admit, as others in this thread have acknowledged, that I am right in saying that
LDS apostles are not required to have seen the risen Jesus?"
Your response to the above question was as follows (last emphasis added):
Quote
There is NO New Testament (or other scripture) requirement for an apostle to have seen the risen Christ, and so LDS Apostles are not required to have seen the risen Christ.
As anyone can plainly see, you said exactly the same thing that I did. I then
replied:
"This is hilarious! After getting one thread shut down for my supposed failure to answer your CFR on this point, you now agree that "LDS Apostles are not required to have seen the risen Christ." That was precisely my point! The only difference between us now is that you claim this was also not a requirement for NT apostles. Fine, I understand why that would be your view, but my original statement, which you challenged with a CFR, you have now affirmed explicitly! Furthermore, you defend this statement in precisely the same way as I did: by arguing that if there is no such requirement stated, then there is no such requirement."
You now claim, against the mountain of evidence just reviewed:
Quote
No, that wasn't your point. Your claim was that LDS Apostles didn't meet the NT requirements, which at the time you falsely claimed (and I unfortunately believed you, shame on me) was to be an "eyewitness".
I did make that point as well, but your CFR was not for me to support that point (which you even concede at the time you accepted) but rather the point that this is not something required to be an apostle in the LDS Church. That was the point you challenged in your CFR in the other thread. That is the point I defended several times in that thread and that you challenged repeatedly. That is the point I defended with conclusive documentation in the opening post of this thread. Yet you claim:
Quote
Techinically speaking the original CFR was against your claim that LDS Apostles "That isn't the case with your LDS apostles" meaning they didn't meet NT requirements.
No, Vance, that wasn't the original CFR. By your own admission, you accepted that claim (that the NT apostles had to be eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus) at first. You would not have issued a CFR against a claim you accepted! No, as i have documented in this post, you confirmed several times that your CFR was directed to my claim that LDS apostles need not have seen the risen Christ.
Vance, you are so anxious to avoid admitting you were mistaken that you are spiraling into deeper and deeper confusion and self-contradiction. The fact is that you have now conceded the point against which your original CFR was issued. Man up and admit it!
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This topic is locked
Rob Bowman, on 23 October 2010 - 05:51 PM, said:
