Christ was charged with blasphemy--equating himself with God. He did not deny this.
John 17 also disputes unitarianism. "Restore unto me the glory I had with you *before the worlds were made*."
What you're promoting here is Christian heresy. As I said before: believe it if you'd like, but don't call it "Christian."
I will also reiterate that I am thankful to be a co-belligerent with you on other causes/topics.
🤙🏼
I likewise agree we are on the same side as followers of Christ and other issues. I will accept your authority on the definition of what it means to be christian, and am happy to be rejected by people that would not have me in their group. Its a price I'm more than willing to pay to not betray what I know to be true, and I have paid dearly.
Please don't misunderstand me -- rejecting your belief *is not* the same thing as rejecting *you*. Even though we disagree, I would defend your right to believe what you'd like, and I applaud your willingness to suffer for what you believe in. Just because we could not worship together doesn't mean we cannot work and even socialize together. One of my oldest and most dear friends firmly holds to a set of doctrines against which I would vehemently protest. We're still dear friends.
Heresy is to disagree with the church. Which church should I accept as the authority of what is heresy?
That's a good question.
To drastically oversimplify it ("the medium affects the message"):
The whole church embraced the Apostle's Creed, so start there. For what is meant by it, see the Nicene Creed, Athanasian "creed", and the definition of Chalcedon. This means orthodox (with a small 'o') Trinitarianism.
From there, testing everything according to Scripture, decide who continued the Apostle's teaching, and *on what grounds*, whether Rome or the Reformers.
Then, decide your position on the Synod of Dordt.
There hasn't been much new by way of "heresy" since then--just periodic revivals of questions long since answered.
Shortcut: embrace the Westminster Standards, the Three Forms of Unity, or (if you reject household baptism) the 1689 LBCF. And you'll generally be in a good spot in terms of where the Apostle's teaching persists today.
*Westminster (American Revision of 1788)
I accept your argumentum ab auctoritate regarding the definition of christianity.
Sola Scriptura above all.
The question is, which groups have remained most faithful to the teaching of Scripture (Acts 17:11) -- despite any self-referential claim to authority?
As a Protestant I affirm the "succession of truth" over the so-called "Apostolic Succession" of Rome -- for the simple reason that God's Word always takes the place of preeminence over man's word.
Hence: sola scriptura
I have no qualms with sola scriptura. I also have no contention with the fruit of the tree argument. As a reformed catholic myself, we are on the same side there. The only difference is in the interepretation of the word. Knowing what I have learned from this interepretation and hence the consequence of this knowing that leads me to very different conclusions than what the church has taught since Constantine and the Council of Nicea.
Sola scriptura is a fallacy from a mind that made up a lot of new formulas ignoring fundamental theological aspects.
The tradition came first.
If you did believed scriptures came first, you would have never accepted the removal of 7 books, from the original 73 to 66 of the protestant imposters.
How do you explain their removal without attacking the scriptures themselves?
We received the OT from the church under age. The "aprocrypha" were never considered the Word of God, even if helpful or historical (or not). See Kline, [The Structure of Biblical Authority](https://amzn.to/3rz8MMj). Either way, authority of an inspired text is not bestowed (per Rome) but recognized and acknowledged (as per the Reformers). God's word speaks for itself.
In our circles, this is reffered to as [the self-attestation of scripture](https://modernreformation.org/resource-library/articles/the-self-attestation-of-scripture/) (q.v.).
Some books, even of the 66, are more important than others.
