Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Called An Authentic Fabrication

Tjalle T Vandergraaf wrote:

> TTV: I don't know the answer to the question that Pim poses. However,
> I'm sure that you cannot equate the guidance of the Holy Spirit with
> sincerity. Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy may also have been sincere
> but that does not mean that they were guided by the Holy Spirit.
>
So how does one equate the guidance of the Holy Spirit? What
characteristics does it have?

> And some pictures and other 'circumstantial evidence'... But that is not
>
> the issue here. The issue is why some of the documents made it into the
>
> gospels and others didn;t and what we could learn from studying any and
>
> all information rather than that which was selected?
>
> TTV: Pictures and other "circumstantial evidence" can be faked. My
> guess is that we believe that Neil Armstrong stood on the Moon because
> it is plausible and because we trust the scientists and engineers and
> because we tend(ed) to believe the government. As to which documents
> were included and which were not, again, I would think that the Holy
> Spirit worked in the hearts and minds of the early church fathers and
> that the canon presents a consistent message. Certainly, we can study
> documents that didn't make it into the NT but that doesn't necessarily
> put them on even footing with the NT texts.
>

Sure, pictures can be faked but the overall likelihood of a fake reduces
when more and more consistent data become available. It has nothing to
do with trusting the government and the scientists but all with hard
evidence which was hard to fake. Saying that it was the Holy Spirit who
worked in the hearts and the minds of the Church Fathers avoids the
issue. How do we know? How can we tell?

> TTV: Again, I would say the guidance of the Holy Sprit. If not, then
> all bets are off and any document could be considered to be equally
> relevant. You may think that referring to the Holy Spirit is a “cop
> out” on my part but citing any other force, sincerity, skill ,
> intuition or what-have-you has to diminish the uniqueness of what we
> believe.
>
Sigh, so we have to invoke something ad hoc to explain that which we
believe. So how can we be sure it was the Holy Spirit? Why was it not
the Holy Spirit which guided the Gnostiscs? Just because they 'lost the
war'?

> TTV: Indeed! This **is** complex. Luke echoes Matthew and Mark’s
> comment [Luke 22:22]. And, yet, Jesus basically told Judas “to get on
> with it” [John 13:27: "What you are about to do, do quickly,"].
> However, Judas had remorse [Mat 27:5; Acts 1:18] and that makes me
> doubt that he was “just following [God’s] orders.
>
The issue was that the Gospel already contained the information in the
Gospel of Judas. So many contradictory stories about Judas... Can one
not have remorse even for following orders? Why are we so reluctant to
accept the Gospel of Judas when other Gospels suffer from similar
contradictions and conflicts? What makes one 'better' than the other?
And invoking the Holy Spirit explains nothing since we have no reasons
to know if/why the Holy Spirit was even involved in the works by the
Church Fathers.
Received on Sun Apr 9 00:00:32 2006