Rightly,
I am truly thankful that you turned your life around that you “conquered your demons”. I wish you the best.
At the same time, I am exiting this “debate” because you told me what I was afraid I would hear: that you suddenly said a prayer one day, “felt” the Lord, read the Bible, and now you know more than the best minds in the history of the world (St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Thomas More, Venerable Cardinal Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, et al.).
NO ONE can win a debate when one side uses “feelings” and the other side calls for but gets no facts. I cannot convince you that your “feelings” are wrong - I would never presume to do so. I simply thought that you (based on what you said) were an educated person and that based on a higher education, you understood the basic principles of logic and rhetoric (which have been around since the days of Aristotle).
I will point out WHY you would lose a formal debate. You have not been losing what I thought was going to be a debate on the OT/NT canon - you have simply refused to participate. Debates require evidence. Evidence consists of facts or documents. You have presented neither.
If you REALLY wanted to have an honest discussion about the OT canon, you have LONG since answered the following that I asked you long ago:
- WHO determined what the OT canon would be? If you say “God” or “the Holy Spirit”, then tell me WHAT PEOPLE - NAMES - that God or the Holy spirit communicated that canon to.
- For the people that you list in response to No. 1 above, tell me BY WHAT AUTHORITY did these people have to tell/teach/determine for the rest of the world that the OT canon was X or Y or Z.
- WHEN did the people you listed in response to No. 1 above make the canon-determination known to everyone else? A year is fine - you don’t have to give a month or a day.
So, without answering the above questions - which calls for evidence, Rightly - evidence you so painfully lack - there can be no further debate (at least for me).
Good luck.