A:

It seems that while I was away you pretty much got this matter sorted out, but I’ll go ahead and answer because a.) just in case, and b.) I don’t necessarily want the first thing people read on my page to be something I don’t actually believe.

The specific matter I was addressing was approaching theological debate.  With something as emotionally and intellectually charged as this, we must always be aware of the basic statements on which we build our arguments and whether or not others in the conversation hold those same beliefs.  For instance, in the situation I commented on, your argument was not necessarily wrong, but built entirely on the premise that everything God intended to be read is in the Bible and everything in the Bible is God-breathed.

And while I agree with you on that point, it is important to at least understand that it is entirely possible that other people in the discussion do not believe that and will not understand how your arguments work because they see no foundation for them.  And while it may, at times, not be necessary to clarify such foundations, I encourage you to take just a quick moment to make sure that you have them spelled out in your head before starting so that, should it come up, you’ll understand where the confusion is and how to address it.

The reason this point comes up is found in the Apocrypha and the gnostic texts, mostly.  Basically, the books either claimed to be scripture or held a position of quasicanon for a time (the latter is almost exclusively relating to books of the Apocrypha, prior to canonization by Rome).  In most denominations, these books aren’t considered canon or God-breathed; yet Jude, for instance, cites an event from one of them right there in his epistle that got in (see Jude 1:6).  Faced with this, and a great deal of misunderstanding about how the Bible was organized and assembled, we end up having arguments raised like the one I started out with.

I hope you understand that this is not, and never has been, meant as an attack on your or even your statements on the matter.  It just started to appear that the focus was entirely on one point of the matter, and I wanted to encourage you to think a bit broader and brace yourself for alternative arguments that could be raised against your central point.