[Apologetics] Stealth apologetics backfires

[Art Kelly]

Stuart,

This guy you have been corresponding with is just
plain loco. There is no point wasting your time
talking to someone who is that far gone.

If you had quoted about six to eight salient passages
of Scripture, I really think this guy might have
repudiated the Bible.

There are millions of people out there who you can
reach in both incremental and dramatic ways. But this
guy was not one of them. 

Art

--- "Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart at gathman.org> wrote:

> I've turned someone into a heretic.  I separated
> claims *about*
> purgatory (prayers for the dead - which Protestants
> would reject)
> from the definition of purgatory itself, which I
> reduced to two
> propositions:
> 
> 1) sin will have been cleansed (100% sanctification)
> in heaven
> 2) sin has temporal consequences (punishment)
> 
> Both of which protestants agree with.
> 
> Wouldn't you know it, once associated with
> "purgatory", DavidJ immediately
> begain attacking those propositions as
> "unscriptural" and has now announced
> that
> 
> 1) all true Christians will be 100% sanctified
> *before* death
> 2) that God never punishes true Christians for their
> sin
> 
> and anything to the contrary is unscriptural, based
> on what is apparently his
> highest priority presupposition - that all Roman
> Catholic doctrines are
> unscriptural.  To top it off, I then got all
> sarcastic and said:
> 
>    RE:   Papal Infallibility or Papal Inerrancy?
> 
>    CustomDesigned Wrote:
>    ......scriptural authority is irrelevant because
> your problem is with basic
>    logic .....
> 
>    DavidJ Wrote:
>    Clearly you have identified the huge chasm
> between yourself; a
>    Roman Catholic, and Bible Believing born again
> Christians like myself, to whom
>    scriptural authority is absolute and final. Jesus
> confirmed this when He said,
>    "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is
> truth." (John. 17:17)
> 
>    CustomDesigned Wrote:
>    You are right.  I repent of using logic and
> reason, and will use only
>    Scripture - throwing logic and reason to the
> wind.
> 
> So I've turned a previously basically orthdox (if
> unreasonable) guy into a
> raving heretic by playing bait and switch with
> purgatory.  I guess I should
> have been forewarned by his claim that "*all* Roman
> Catholic doctrines are
> unscriptural", which would include even those he
> agrees with.  A highly 
> unstable logical state.
> 
> And while I was being sarcastic with the "only
> Scripture and no reason",
> I now see that that is exactly what is required in a
> case like DavidJ.
> It was clear that he could not use logic, and
> attempting to force him to do 
> so was wrong.  I should have just quoted some
> appropriate scripture and 
> left it at that.
> 
> Just a warning for other would be apologists.  It is
> easy to do more
> harm that good.
> 
> -- 
>  	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
> Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703
> 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
> "Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" -
> background song for
> a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from
> here?" commercial.
> _______________________________________________
> Apologetics mailing list
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> 


ART KELLY, ATM-S
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