Claim or similar XII It is suggested the non-mention (a quality with false alerts due to changes in terminology) in the Bible equals a Biblical condemnation.

List of claims

Now, if we had a clear indication from anywhere except from clearly disputed and therefore in some sense disputable pastors that everything which is spiritually important needs a mention in the Bible, like it is a handbook of the Christian life, intended for beginners to learn all they need, even in absence of human teachers, even in absence of tradition other than the linguistic one between the Bible translation and one's mother tongue, then, yes, a non-mention of sth would either mean it is not important, or that it is false and pernicious.

Guess what is not mentioned in the Bible, Old or New Testament?

This very principle. So, either it is unimportant, or it is false and pernicious.

If it is unimportant, you cannot use it to condemn any Christian body, and if it is false and pernicious, you cannot use it to condemn even a fly (unless you mean swatting it to death with your copy of Schmalkaldic articles or Got Questions Answer Book - if there is a printed version, I mean electronic copies are not very good for swatting flies to death).

But is the principle at least Biblically compatible, or is it directly counter indicated by the Bible? The latter in fact.

II Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them: bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

What lying teachers? If St Peter wanted us to know everything important from the Bible alone, we would perhaps have been told their names.

Luther is not mentioned by name there (unless he is in Bible code, equal distant letter sequences and so on, I haven't checked). On the other hand, Pope St Gregory I is also not mentioned there. If either of them was a good teacher, the other was arguably a lying one, why so, since they contradicted each other on Purgatory, Pope St Gregory I saying there is such a thing,there are souls needing our prayers, Luther saying there is no such thing, after death the final destination is not just already settled as final, but also reached. No one going to heaven therefore having any purgation after death. Both agree those in Hell cannot be saved by prayers. So, one of them is a lying teacher, and St Peter did not tell us by name which one.

But did he at least tell us in words which no man of good will can doubt the meaning of where it applies? Next verse says this:

And many shall follow their riotousnesses, through whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

Now, St Gregory was hardly riotous, he was a Benedictine monk. Luther can be said to have followed his riotousness in more ways than one, like claiming magisterial authority beyond what he had been given (St Gregory was elected Pope of Rome by a procedure dating back long in the Church, Luther made himself "pope" of Wittenberg by attacking the ecclesiastic authority already in place), like breaking monastic vows and telling others to do so (though the Bible nowhere says they are illicit and elsewhere says to keep vows, there may be modalities for individually getting out of one, like OT allowed fathers to annul vows of children under 20, but there is no way a generally speaking licit vow can be lifted for all and sundry), and by a few other things. Even Baptists who would perhaps extend to Munzer to not be riotous, well, they would perhaps consider German Catholics less riotous than Luther, since Luther said a reform was needed and then considered their reform riotous, which I agree on, but so was Luther's own).

So, we have a choice here. On this item, Luther goes into the sink and St Gregory stays, and if so, things not directly mentioned in full explanation in the Bible, like Purgatory, can be both right and important; or, on this item neither goes into the sink, and then the text of St Peter gives us very little help in avoiding the thing we must avoid.

Or, you might even say, "yes, one of them is in fact following his riotousness, but as long as you don't discover this, you can still follow him as a Christian pastor without incurring damnation". Two problems with this one, though. The first verse had spoken of "sects of perdition". No verse says in so many words there is an "Emeth case".*

So you are back to, it is important to avoid the teachers who follow their own riotousness. Which is right. And you can see for yourself that both Lutherans following Luther and Catholics following St Gregory the Great believe they are following the words of St Peter and avoiding a sect of perdition. So, perhaps the Bible text is not totally explicit, or perhaps one party is loth to hear. For the latter one, how about the words through whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of? After all, we know of no followers of a Lutheran theology spoken evil of by St Gregory, but we do know the followers of St Gregory's theology were spoken evil of by Luther. Even if you think that was deservedly, how come there is even that much coincidence?

But, the fact remains, some are still not convinced that St Peter was foreseeing in very clear detail the evils of the Reformation. They still think they are following every part of the text, while they would have to admit that the choice of confession does not follow immediately from the very wording of St Peter. And this leaves us with, you need someone other than just the Bible to tell you what is a sect of perdition. Someone other than the authors who are already in heaven and not speaking up on earth on behalf of what they wrote.

So, this destroys the idea that the non-mentions of sth in the Bible equals a Biblical condemnation, since it destroys they idea that everything important is clearly in proper and everywhere and all times recognisable terms laid out in the Bible. And given that the idea is not even in the Bible, it destroys itself too. Sola Scriptura non in Scriptura.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Agatha, Virgin and Martyr
5.II.2019

PS, while drinking my very necessary dose of caffeine, I was recalling the title of this article had mentioned that "non-mention" is "a quality with false alerts due to changes in terminology". I had not yet explained this, so here goes. I suppose most of my goal group here, Evangelicals, would be ok with saying (as Cardinal Newman and a lot of Catholics have said) that Antichrist is a real person coming to prominence and power (at least commercial, political, military or paramilitary) in the last few years before the Second Coming. However, a "cursory reading" of the New Testament might reveal there is no such person. St John once says "Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last hour." [1 John 2:18] - wherefrom some have concluded Antichrist is never one person, just a category of persons. And everywhere where exactly one person is mentioned, he is called sth other than "the Antichrist". Apocalypse 13 and 19 call him "the beast", II Thessalonians calls him (or according to some his partner the False Prophet) the man of sin or the man of lawlessness. Does this mean there is no such person? Or does it mean yes there is, though "the Antichrist" is a term for him indebted more to tradition than to the Bible? I'd say the latter./HGL

* The term "Emeth case" is from consideration of the novel The Last Battle, in which one idolater is saved because of his goodwill, despite following a very evil idolatry. It is a novel and C. S. Lewis may have indulged in wishful thinking on that one. Whether he did or not, the principle given for consideration here would suggest he did that. So would some, but not all, Catholic theologians.