Dialogue with a Mormon - Matthew 28

DanielPetersonMod> Azimi

Who is "you people," Azimi? I was DEFENDING your religion against cwhicker12.

ChrisMcC1> DanielPeterson

He wasn't responding to you, Daniel. He was responding to cwhicker12's ridiculous comment, just as you were. Check the quoted phrase and the threading indentation.

DanielPetersonMod> ChrisMcC1

I was puzzled because, above, Azimi correctly identifies me as a Mormon apologist, but then wants to know why I'm being hypocritical and attacking his religion -- which I most certainly wasn't doing. (I'm also, professionally, an Islamicist.)

Hans-Georg Lundahl> DanielPeterson

A professional Islamicist and a Mormon apologist? Well, unlike some Muslims at least you believe the text is correctly transmitted between Jesus' words and our reading of Matthew 28:18-20, so how does a disappearance of the entire visible Church between either the Apostles' deaths (or in St John's case perhaps assumption) and Mohammed or the previous event and Joseph Smith (discounting for the time Church was supposedly prolonged in Americas through Indians) square with the "omnibus diebus" part of that text?

DanielPetersonMod> Hans-Georg Lundahl

Who says that the VISIBLE church disappeared? That was precisely what DIDN'T disappear.

Incidentally, I prefer to go back to the original rather than reading the text in translation. (And why privilege the LATIN translation.) I agree that Jesus was with his disciples, and that he was with his church until the end of the "aion" -- the end of the age. I'm not sure why you imagine that that promise would rule out an apostasy.

Hans-Georg Lundahl> DanielPeterson

It does not rule out all and every kind of apostasy.

It rules out that the visible Church apostasises without a visible remnant visibly continuing the visible Church as before the apostasy.

Criterium of visibility is due to a few considerations:

• directly affirmed in "a city built on a mountain cannot be hidden", and mountain is synonym of rock, polis of ekklesia
• implied by authority of Church:
• • pillar and foundation of truth
  • given authority to loose and bind concerning absolution and excommunication (given to same eleven men who heard the promise in Matth 28:18-20)
• implied by the fact the true Church cannot be a secret Church, since secrecy is a work of the devil.

DanielPetersonMod> Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sorry. I don't really see anything like a persuasive argument here, Hans-Georg Lundahl. You seem, from my perspective, to be concatenating a group of unrelated scriptural passages and concepts, but in a rather arbitrary way.

Hans-Georg Lundahl> DanielPeterson

Since all these passages describe Apostolic Church, their lining up is giving a complete description of its characteristics. Neither arbitrary nor untraditional.

Extracted from comments under article:

Sic et Non / Daniel C. Peterson : “Muslims protecting Christians in Egypt during mass”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2013/08/muslims-protecting-christians-in-egypt-during-mass.html