An Email Exchange With Bob Stanley
(Catholic Defenders of the Faith)

12 May 99

Bob,

How can you expect responses to any challenges you issue to Protestants when you do not acknowledge those rebuttals that have already been given to you? You know that I have had a long standing response to your Sola Scriptura article of Oct 21 1995, but you have no link to my rebuttal on your web site.

My rebuttal is at http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/scriptra.htm

Unless you are willing to link to that rebuttal, your other challenges have a distinctly hollow ring to them.

Michael Scheifler
Bible Light Homepage
http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/

Bob Stanley responded on 12 May 99:

Sorry, I do not link to heretics.

My 12 May 99 reply:

You seem very bold in proclaiming no Protestant has answered you, but that is a very hypocritical/false claim unless you are willing to present any and all rebuttals you already have to your readers. Now I fully understand any unwillingness to post such rebuttals on your web site because of limited allotted disk space, but an unwillingness to even link to specific rebuttals of your challenges only reveals an apparent insecurity on your part. Either you can defend against such rebuttals because you have the truth, or you can not defend them adequately because they have the truth and you do not.

Now you can obviously do whatever you like on your own site, but if you refuse to link to direct rebuttals of your challenges, then I suggest that to be honest you should remove all references to "challenges" to Protestants, particularly those you so boldly claim to be "unanswered".

Michael

Bob Stanley's second response of 12 May 99:

Your note is unread.
I do not wish to communicate with the likes of you who has such blatant lies on your site.

1. Vicar of the Son of GOD...a blatant lie
2. engraved on the miter...a blatant lie
3. Trent added the 7 books.... a blatant lie. I guess you never did read the minutes of the Council of Carthage 397 AD, and I guess you never heard of the Vulgate, 404 AD which had all 73 books and does today.

I will not converse with a liar as all I will get are more lies. Good day, Do not bother to answer as all mail from you is channeled to the garbage can. I have put you in Titus 3:10-11 where you belong. GOD will judge you from Rev 21:8 and 21:27

Since Bob chooses not to read an email response of mine to the above, I am posting it here publicly for my readers.

Bob states that:

Bob is, of course, referring to the phrase Vicarius Filii Dei and whether or not it has ever been applied to the papacy of the Catholic Church. The historical evidence is presented in my article 666, The Number of the Beast. From the information presented there, it is quite clear that Vicarius Filii Dei stands as documented fact, and is not a Protestant fabrication. Now if Bob is not willing to refute what I present, then his charge that Vicarius Filii Dei is a blatant lie stands completely unsupported. I will be happy to add a link to anyone, Bob Stanley included, who attempts to discredit or present a rebuttal to the information presented in my article.

The claim that Vicarius Filii Dei is engraved on a papal mitre was made in the Nov 15, 1914 Edition of Our Sunday Visitor (a Catholic publication). If this is a blatant lie, then it is a Catholic lie, since I make no such claim. If the Catholics want to prove that no tiara has this engraving, then open the Vatican vaults and allow close inspection of every single papal tiara or mitre. But dare I suggest that if such a mitre or tiara was ever inscribed with the phrase, it will never be admitted to or made public.

Nowhere on my web page have I claimed that the Council of Trent was the first council to add the apocryphal books to the canon, as I am well aware of the other previous decrees of Catholic councils and the canon of the Latin Vulgate.

The Council of Trent in the 4th session, April of 1546, issued a list of canonical books, and to quote the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia "The Tridentine decrees ... [were] ... the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon, addressed to the Church Universal." In other words, it was the first universally binding or ecumenical council to issue a definition of the canon. Yes, the synod of Rome in 382, the Synod of Hippo in 393, the Council of Carthage in 393-419, and the Council of Florence in 1442 all issued an identical list of the canon, but these were not binding on the entire Catholic Church as was the Ecumenical Council of Trent.

Clearly then, Trent was not the first council to include the apocrypha in the canon, since the apocrypha already had a long history of canonicity in the Catholic Church, as evidenced by the previous decrees of local councils and synods. That the apocryphal books were added to the canon of scripture by the Catholic Church is really beyond dispute, even from Catholics. But just when, exactly, that this addition was made in an "authoritative" decree, and universally accepted by the entire Catholic Church as truly binding on all Catholics, is a matter of some dispute. I would maintain no matter when Catholics propose this happened, all Catholic Councils erred in including the apocryphal books in the canon, including Trent and Vatican I, and that those books should never have been included in the Vulgate or Septuagint in the first place.

In conclusion, that Bob calls me a liar and will not respond to my emails or link to my rebuttals is nothing more than a convenient and transparent excuse for not publicly engaging in a scholarly debate on the facts for the readers of his web page to see. If I am the liar he claims me to be, then it would be a very easy matter for him to make his case, document the facts, and prove it. That he refuses to do so, shows that his charge is completely groundless and unsupportable.


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