He said "those that win the wars write history"

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So I had a conversation while at work with a coworker, we got to talking about religion and such. He is the kind of guy who believes in sola scriptora, OSAS, and all the other protestant herasy’s. First off when I lumped him into the protestant catagory he said “im not a protestant”, when I tried to bring up the early church fathers so I could quickly denounce his claims, he would reply “history is written by those who win the wars”, he was trying to tell me that the CC won the wars so they wrote history. What I found so difficult here was that I could not bring up the early christians, or the church fathers since he insisted on the fact that the CC rewrote history.

His thoughts about OSAS was that if you sin after recieving jesus to be saved, then you were never really saved.

Again this was so difficult to talk to him, anything I said he dismissed as changed or altered history. This guy was stubborn, I think he said he was an anabaptist.

Any similar problems? sorry about my paragraph form, i know it looks like im rambling
 
MCS7474 said:
His thoughts about OSAS was that if you sin after recieving jesus to be saved, then you were never really saved.
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Can an osas who was never “really saved” keep trying?
Again this was so difficult to talk to him, anything I said he dismissed as changed or altered history. This guy was stubborn, I think he said he was an anabaptist.
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Like Iran trying to rewrite history by denying the holocaust after they won ww2?
 
How silly. History is written by historians. Any number of examples of histories written by losers are available. Here’s one really fascinating example:

Soldat by Siegfried Knappe

👍

– Mark L. Chance.
 
MCS7474 said:
So I had a conversation while at work with a coworker, we got to talking about religion and such. He is the kind of guy who believes in sola scriptora, OSAS, and all the other protestant herasy’s. First off when I lumped him into the protestant catagory he said “im not a protestant”, when I tried to bring up the early church fathers so I could quickly denounce his claims, he would reply “history is written by those who win the wars”, he was trying to tell me that the CC won the wars so they wrote history. What I found so difficult here was that I could not bring up the early christians, or the church fathers since he insisted on the fact that the CC rewrote history.
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If he rejects the early Christians he’ll have to reject the New Testament as well. It was written by early Christians and “approved” by the nasty old CC. When he objects, ask him why he has a double standard.
 
mark_a said:
Can an osas who was never “really saved” keep trying?

Like Iran trying to rewrite history by denying the holocaust after they won ww2?
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Ya, thats a pretty fair comparison. He pretty much eqauted the CC to rewritting history the way Iran wants to rewrite history on the holocaust. But how do you deal with someone like this? Is pray the only answer?
 
MCS7474 said:
His thoughts about OSAS was that if you sin after recieving jesus to be saved, then you were never really saved.
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These people who never sin after being saved are also the ones who have a problem with the sinless Mother of God.

It’s just amazing!
 
MCS7474 said:
Ya, thats a pretty fair comparison. He pretty much eqauted the CC to rewritting history the way Iran wants to rewrite history on the holocaust. But how do you deal with someone like this? Is pray the only answer?
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Maybe ask him if the Lutherans were able to change the history of the Catholic Church after pretty much replacing it in Germany.

Or maybe you could ask him to join the “winning team”.

Seriously though, A Popular History of the Catholic Church by Fr. Phillip Hughes is a good but slightly difficult read if you are interested in discussing specific Church history with him.

Fr. Hughes does not hide any of the Church’s warts.
 
Just tell your buddy that the winner’s write history because the losers all built their houses on sand and didn’t weather the storm. If he’s a bible-believer he ought to know what you’re referring to.

Darn right the winners write history.

May the best man win!
 
I have had some recent issues similar to that of the original poster, and here are my thoughts on the situation. Your coworker is clearly implying that because the Catholic Church “won,” we got to write the history of early Christianity, and in doing so, as your coworker assumes, Church history has been falsified. But now, in a certain way, non-Catholic Christianity is the current “winner” in American Christian culture. And here they are writing their own history, re-writing what they believe is incorrect. If his implication is that when winners write history they lie, how does this not prove that his history is not also lies.

In order to dialogue with anyone, you must find the common ground. If he is sola scriptura then you have to work with him only from scripture. Bringing up Church history and the early fathers will be like talking in a different language. Discuss the similarities between your views and his on the scriptures. If he only wants to rant about why Catholics are so bad and not have any real dialogue, then you hit a roadblock in constructive conversation. Catholicism is fully supported by scripture, even good protestant translations. But when people begin to bring up commentary and footnotes as proof, I always ask if they consider those things scripture. If they do, you’ve hit another roadblock with them and likely won’t get much further. Otherwise, you start the discussion on where those footnotes came from and then where the Bible came from. Patience is key.

At least he is Christian, and you have somewhere to start with him. I had trouble with a student of mine who as an atheist believed the whole Bible was made up by some monks at some monastery in the eighth century. My response was this: Why in the world were there already monks living in a monastery if the whole idea of Jesus and the monastic way of life had not yet been created? She didn’t have an answer, and really all I could do was pray for her.
 
By the way, the ultimate victor and the greatest winner is Jesus. I know I can trust him if He was to ever write a history book. To imply that winners lie when they write history… that would be tantamount to not believing Jesus would be truthful! :eek:
 
MCS7474 said:
when I tried to bring up the early church fathers so I could quickly denounce his claims, he would reply “history is written by those who win the wars”,
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When I tried to tell my mother that books were removed from the Bible during the reformation (because she believed the Church added them) she replied to me, “Well, you know who writes those history books. Catholics!” It was then that I knew that she was protected by such a thick wall of denial that none of my logical arguments were going to work. They would simply be repelled and rebound onto me. The result being a massive headache. :rolleyes:
 
MCS7474 said:
…when I tried to bring up the early church fathers so I could quickly denounce his claims, he would reply “history is written by those who win the wars”, he was trying to tell me that the CC won the wars so they wrote history. What I found so difficult here was that I could not bring up the early christians, or the church fathers since he insisted on the fact that the CC rewrote history…
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Won the wars? :confused: :eek:
Does he know what happened to St Peter. (Or to Christ for that matter)
I get a kick out of these guys who posit some sort of conspiracy amongst the Apostles or early Fathers because they wanted “power”
Imagine all the “power” that attracting the special interest of Nero got you.

Where does he draw the line on “early Christians”? The Church was an oppressed organization for over 3 centuries.

She won brief political ascendancy in Rome but Rome soon fell and the new ruling elite were pagans for a few more generations. Then the Levant was lost and then North Africa…eventually all of Anatolia. Iberia and the Balkans were occupied for centuries.
The moguls devastated eastern Christendom the Great Schism and the various heresies provided plenty of opportunities for others to write their “history” …and then Luther came along.

By the time the Age of Gunpowder and global exploration started there was enough differences and warfare amongst Christian states that there would be more than enough opportunity for all sorts of “history” to be written.
 
Verita said:
When I tried to tell my mother that books were removed from the Bible during the reformation (because she believed the Church added them) she replied to me, “Well, you know who writes those history books. Catholics!” It was then that I knew that she was protected by such a thick wall of denial that none of my logical arguments were going to work. They would simply be repelled and rebound onto me. The result being a massive headache. :rolleyes:
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So she thinks that Catholicism “won” the Protestant Reformation and eliminated all traces of Protestantism from the world? I never met a Protestant who thought that before. 🙂
 
His basic view was that there were a group of people called anabaptists going around baptizing people in early christainity, then they had to go underground because of the big bad church for fear of death.

aside from the history problem I ran into with him, I also could not tell him why the church believed certain things, because he refused to listen, I would bring a few scriptures refrences up, and he would go back to the same passage.

In referance to purgotory after only giving a few referances I got “our rightousness is like dirty rags to the lord”, he uses that passage for 60% of all his rebuttles and we could be talking about several different issues, and I will get that passage thrown at me.

Well I guess all I can do is pray, because its literally like talking to a brick wall.
 
Which Saint was it that said in rebuttal to the concept of the corruption of the Bible that “the accusers have as of yet failed to produce uncorrupted ones”, or something to that effect?

If he keeps using only a few passages in your conversation, ask him if he’s really read the whole thing, or if he’s just a scholar of those few passages. Maybe he’s not Biblical, maybe he’s just “passageical”. 😃
 
VociMike said:
So she thinks that Catholicism “won” the Protestant Reformation and eliminated all traces of Protestantism from the world? I never met a Protestant who thought that before. 🙂
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She’s one of those that thinks the real Christians hid in the hills while the apostate Catholic Church took over. :rolleyes:
 
papaspicy said:
If he only wants to rant about why Catholics are so bad and not have any real dialogue, then you hit a roadblock in constructive conversation… . . . But when people begin to bring up commentary and footnotes as proof, I always ask if they consider those things scripture.
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Never thought of that. Nice one.
 
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