Claim XI It is claimed that the cursory reading of the New Testament of a Protestant with his biasses will represent what any cursory reading of it will not just suggest but even prove.

List of claims

So, Got Questions is run by Protestants.

When one of them makes a cursory reading of the New Testament, he makes it with his biasses as a Protestant. This is humanly inevitable.

Now, there are cursory readings of the New Testament which are not made by these Protestants, without these biasses. The claim is, each of these will not just suggest, but even actually prove the point which the man with a Protestant bias is finding in his cursory reading.

In other words, the claim is, the points in question but also any other points, the cursory reading of the non-believer, of the Catholic, of the Orthodox, of the undecided will coincide with and this in a foolproof way with what the Protestant finds.

On some other points, yes. Christ was born of Virgin Mary. Christ was crucified, Christ rose from the grave. Obviously. And in between, Christ made miracles, got angry at people, especially Pharisees, got impatient with His disciples. Cried and presumably (though it is not stated) laughed.

A Gnostic cannot accept the NT as it is, a Jew or Atheist will complain its Resurrection accounts are made up or reflect hallucinations, and its birth accounts are wrong about Virginity. Even they will at a cursory reading of the New Testament find what the Protestant finds on these matters. So will the Catholic.

But the claim is, any non-Protestant reading will confirm the Protestant reading by the team of Got Questions on any matter.

Because, if that is not claimed, how can the Protestant team be sure cursory readings will confirm their reading on these points?

In fact, they do not, and part of what the Protestant finds in the New Testament, the Protestant finds because of his tradition. Part of that in its turn, he finds because of specifically Protestant traditions, but other parts from Traditions of the Church. "Christ was gentle". Yes, He was, but this is not born out by every cursory reading, for instance he was angry at demons, at elements (or at demons moving these lower elements?), at Pharisees and at least exasperated by His diciples. Gentle? I think there is a knowledge of Him by acquaintance and there is also a tradition of Him which says yes, but that is gained from either personal experience or from the Church, not from a cursory reading of the New Testament.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton actually did read the New Testament, and for Jesus being gentle, he had to admit, He was needing confirmation elsewhere. Here I'll cite the passage on "meek":

The statement that the meek shall inherit the earth is very far from being a meek statement. I mean it is not meek in the ordinary sense of mild and moderate and inoffensive. To justify it, it would be necessary to go very deep into history and anticipate things undreamed of then and by many unrealised even now; such as the way in which the mystical monks reclaimed the lands which the practical kings had lost. If it was a truth at all, it was because it was a prophecy. But certainly it was not a truth in the sense of a truism. The blessing upon the meek would seem to be a very violent statement; in the sense of doing violence to reason and probability. And with this we come to another important stage in the speculation. As a prophecy it really was fulfilled; but it was only fulfilled long afterwards. The monasteries were the most practical and prosperous estates and experiments in reconstruction after the barbaric deluge; the meek did really inherit the earth. But nobody could have known anything of the sort at the time-- unless indeed there was one who knew. Something of the same thing may be said about the incident of Martha and Mary; which has been interpreted in retrospect and from the inside by the mystics of the Christian contemplative life. But it was not at all an obvious view of it; and most moralists, ancient and modern, could be trusted to make a rush for the obvious. What torrents of effortless eloquence would have flowed from them to swell any slight superiority on the part of Martha; what splendid sermons about the Joy of Service and the Gospel of Work and the World Left Better Than We Found It, and generally all the ten thousand platitudes that can be uttered in favour of taking trouble--by people who need take no trouble to utter them. If in Mary the mystic and child of love Christ was guarding the seed of something more subtle, who was likely to understand it at the time? Nobody else could have seen Clare and Catherine and Teresa shining above the little roof at Bethany. It is so in another way with that magnificent menace about bringing into the world a sword to sunder and divide. Nobody could have guessed then either how it could be fulfilled or how it could be justified. Indeed some freethinkers are still so simple as to fall into the trap and be shocked at a phrase so deliberately defiant. They actually complain of the paradox for not being a platitude.

But the point here is that if we could read the Gospel reports as things as new as newspaper reports, they would puzzle us and perhaps terrify us much more than the same things as developed by historical Christianity. For instance, Christ after a clear allusion to the eunuchs of eastern courts, said there would be eunuchs of the kingdom of heaven. If this does not mean the voluntary enthusiasm of virginity, it could only be made to mean something much more unnatural or uncouth. It is the historical religion that humanises it for us by experience of Franciscans or of Sisters of Mercy. The mere statement standing by itself might very well suggest a rather dehumanised atmosphere; the sinister and inhuman silence of the Asiatic harem and divan. This is but one instance out of scores; but the moral is that the Christ of the Gospel might actually seem more strange and terrible than the Christ of the Church.

The Everlasting Man, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Part II: On the Man Called Christ, II. The Riddles of the Gospel
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/everlasting_man.html#chap-II-ii

So, no, cursory readings of the New Testament give different results, and when Got Questions wager on one and the same, they are really smuggling in their own tradition into it. This is also true of the points in question, where my own cursory readings will jolly well reveal both Papacy and Real Presence in the Eucharist. And more and more also of the Importance of the Blessed Virgin and of Her mediation. How God chose to honour Her above other women and indeed above other created persons.

If they miss this, I suspect they miss this bc of their tradition. Not bc they are normal cursory readers coming to the text with full objectivity.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Andrew Corsini
4.II.2019