My question was "How do you know that guy A speaks Truth as opposed to person B whom also sites scripture for his case?".
What you do not seem to be understanding is that citing scripture is not the be-all and end-all of making an argument. In fact, Marcion, one of the earlier heretics of note (in terms of the effect that his heresy had on the development of Christianity), is chiefly remembered for having put together his own Biblical canon to reflect his ideas about God. He did not believe that the God of the Old Testament was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and produced an edited collection to reflect this. This was c. 140s, so a few hundred years before St. Athanasius the Apostolic would lay down the standard canon in his 39th festal letter of 367.
If Christianity or the Church viewed matters as you do, then in this situation we would not be able to say with certainty whether Marcion was correct or whether his critics were. After all, he was clearly concerned with scripture and knowledgeable in it to have produced the earliest canon of it. And his views were based on that scripture which was (though edited) largely the same books as were already circulating in the Christian community at the time. So who could really know that Marcion was wrong, or whether it was just a matter of "well guy C told me that guy A was right", as you've put it?
Here, interestingly, the chief critic of Marcionism in its own day, the great Latin writer Tertullian (d. c.220), answers in his own work against Marcion with the following observation:
"Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. But even if a discussion from the Scriptures should not turn out in such a way as to place both sides on a par, (yet) the natural order of things would require that this point should be first proposed, which is now the only one which we must discuss: “With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong. From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule, by which men become Christians?” For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be,
there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions." (
source)
In other words, even assuming for the sake of argument that we cannot know who is right based on the fact that they can cite scripture (since guy A and guy B can both cite it, even though they disagree with one another), we can still know by examining
the content of what they argue. In fact, because scripture can thus be twisted to fit this or that conception of who God is (this is, after all, what Marcion did), in the end the examination of the actual ideas is unavoidable and necessary. And in that we find that some ideas, such as Marcion's rejection of the Old Testament God and the associated scriptures, to simply not be a feature of Christianity as taught in the Church before him. It is something that he invented, as all heretics invent their heresies using bits of the truth to fashion their own falsehoods.
Also directly relevant to this conversation, Tertullian writes in the same anti-Marcion work of the feature of heresy which is relentless curiosity:
"So long, however, as its form exists in its proper order, you may seek and discuss as much as you please, and give full rein to your curiosity, in whatever seems to you to hang in doubt, or to be shrouded in obscurity. You have at hand, no doubt, some learned brother gifted with the grace of knowledge, some one of the experienced class, some one of your close acquaintance who is curious like yourself; although with yourself, a seeker he will, after all, be quite aware that it is better for you to remain in ignorance, lest you should come to know what you ought not, because you have acquired the knowledge of what you ought to know. 'Thy faith,' He says, 'hath saved thee', not
observe your skill in the Scriptures. Now, faith has been deposited in the rule; it has a law, and (in the observance thereof) salvation. Skill, however, consists in curious art, having for its glory simply the readiness that comes from knack. Let such curious art give place to faith; let such glory yield to salvation. At any rate, let them either relinquish their noisiness, or else be quiet. To know nothing in opposition to the rule (of faith), is to know all things. (Suppose) that heretics were not enemies to the truth, so that we were not forewarned to avoid them, what sort of conduct would it be to agree with men who do themselves confess that they are still seeking? For if they are still seeking, they have not as yet found anything amounting to certainty; and therefore, whatever they seem for a while to hold, they betray their own skepticism, whilst they continue seeking. You therefore, who seek after their fashion, looking to those who are themselves ever seeking, a doubter to doubters, a waverer to waverers, must needs be 'led, blindly by the blind, down into the ditch.' But when, for the sake of deceiving us, they pretend that they are still seeking, in order that they may palm their essays upon us by the suggestion of an anxious sympathy, when, in short (after gaining an access to us), they proceed at once to insist on the necessity of our inquiring into such points as they were in the habit of advancing, then it is high time for us in moral obligation to repel them, so that they may know that it is not Christ, but themselves, whom we disavow. For since they are still seekers, they have no fixed tenets yet; and being not fixed in tenet, they have not yet believed; and being not yet believers, they are not Christians. But even though they have their tenets and their belief, they still say that inquiry is necessary in order to discussion. Previous, however, to the discussion, they deny what they confess not yet to have believed, so long as they keep it an object of inquiry. When men, therefore, are not Christians even on their own admission, how much more (do they fail to appear such) to us! What sort of truth is that which they patronize, when they commend it to us with a lie? Well, but they actually treat of the Scriptures and recommend (their opinions) out of the Scriptures! To be sure they do. From what other source could they derive arguments concerning the things of the faith, except from the records of the faith?"
Perhaps from this you see now why I have reacted as I have to your disingenuous questioning. Would that you would have such questioning of your own faith and by that come to doubt for it is own breaking of this rule (by, e.g., having 'modern apostles' by which nothing is ever settled). But alas "well guy C told me that guy A was right", which is apparently 'a poor epistemological methodology' when you contend that Christians are using it (though we aren't; we are looking at the ideas advanced, not only their source, so it is never a matter of guy C versus guy A; point of fact: Tertullian himself was towards the latter half of his life cast out of the Church after having fallen prey to the heresy of Montanism) is actually totally fine and commendable for Mormons, so long as 'guy C' and 'guy A' are both Mormons. Hence your whole religion is established on 'guy C' (Joseph Smith) talking about a fictional 'guy A' (Moroni), and from that comes all this "what if" nonsense.
Again, you clearly do not see it this way, which is fine, but I'm not going to pretend as though it doesn't follow the clear pattern given above some 1600 years before Joseph Smith ever existed. All heretics may be confirmed as such by similar means: Do they have this characteristic? Are they teaching something originating with them?, etc. It is most emphatically not a matter of "What does this individual guy say about them?", because individuals can be right in some things and wrong in others (e.g., Tertullian, above). There's a reason why we can talk about what is
mainstream within Christianity and what is not, rather than placing all our trust in one charismatic guy. Because we are talking about a
breadth of teaching that is observable as having continued from the apostles who brought it to us until today. This is why in most churches that were founded by apostles (with the notable exception of the Roman Catholic Church), there are mechanisms for removing errant patriarchs/bishops by force. This has happened as recently as the 1950s in my own church (to Pope Yusab II), and even more recently for the Greeks (their Patriarch of Jerusalem, Irenaios, was dismissed in 2005, to be replaced by the current Patriarch Theophilos). Because it's not at all about "Guy C told me guy A was right" -- it's about whether or not they are teaching and governing in conformity with the faith as it has been given to us.
Lex orandi, lex credendi and all that.
Answering "well guy C told me that guy A was right" is a poor epistemological methodology. Guy C might agree with Guy A, but then person D agrees with person B. Hence, you are reduced to the redundant question of "How do you know that guy C speaks Truth as opposed to person D whom also sites scripture for his case and support of this person?" If you then cite guy E and person F for the review, the cycle the again continues relentlessly
See above. For those of us who don't believe in restorationism, matters are settled by recourse to the faith as established by the apostles, brought to us by them and/or their disciples, confirmed in the churches by what we actually do/have done throughout 2000 years of history, including the early church fathers, the councils, the synods, etc. down to this very day. It is most emphatically not a matter of endless appeal to
individual ancient writers and pitting them against one another, as you have bizarrely done here to no good end. When you know what is mainstream in your own faith, those that stick out may become apparent precisely due to the degree to which they vary from what has already been accepted. Hence for instance Mormonism is not accepted, as it has never been the case that we would throw away Christ's promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church in favor of the fantasy of ancient Hebrew Indians in the Americas written about by Joseph Smith. Where is the antecedent to that in the apostles, the disciples, the fathers, the councils, etc.? Nowhere. It is quite clearly from outside of the Church. And so it is rejected on that account without even having to appeal to a 'guy C' or a 'guy A'.
Hence why I am asking for something outside of this cycle. Do you or do you not have such an epistemological method?
Again, see above.
Aside-- I am not attacking you, and honestly admire your vast knowledge of a faith I know little about. [Staff edit]. I would really like to have a quality respectful conversation with you.
If this is true, then you will accept the answers I give about my faith on the basis on which I give them, and not demand that I only use sources that fit within your narrow definition of how Christianity must work, which is inherently flawed and skewed by your own religion's epistemology which reduces the holy fathers and councils and all that make up the content of 2,000 years of living history to "the opinions of sinful men", as you have been dismissing everything I have said to you to date. I'm tired of that. You cannot continue to credibly claim to be simply asking questions or seeking answers if at every turn they are used as a soapbox to spout your Mormon restoration fantasies. That's not even what this thread is about, so I would suggest to you that if you cannot take an answer as given (not saying you have to accept it as true, but accept it as the answer to your question of how my faith operates regardless) that you start your own thread to satisfy what you claim is 'curiosity' (a.k.a., a need to stealthily proselytize others, as Tertullian noted above of heretics and their endless curiosity).
