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Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
So what is wrong with this logic?
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Awareness's counter-argument that "there is no NT dogma" is a weak argument based on descriptive vs prescriptive reading of the Bible. Passages in the bible are either descriptive or prescriptive. Descriptive meaning something that happened, and prescriptive meaning something that should happen (e.g. a command).
Sometimes it is not clear if a passage should be descriptive or prescriptive. For example, the Lord's Table in Mark 14:22-25 seems prescriptive, and it has been viewed as such by Christians for a long time, particularly Catholics and their Protestant derivatives which make such a big fuss about it, even to say that the Priest must drink all the wine and must not drop one little bit. However someone could argue that it is only descriptive, as it applied only to the 12 disciples at the time, and not to us today. People make this same sort of argument all the time against head coverings - explain away a prescriptive passage (to wear head coverings) as if it were descriptive ("it only applied to them at the time").
When people cherry-pick the prescriptive commands out of the bible they are missing the bigger picture - descriptive and prescriptive passages go together. Descriptive verses are like "teaching by example", and prescriptive are like "teaching by word".
For example:
Jesus appeared to command meeting together to break bread to remember Him (1 Cor 11:23). That can be considered prescriptive.
In practice, they broke bread from house to house each Sunday (Acts 2:46 and others) - this is how they obeyed Jesus's prescriptive command.
Baptism is a command.
In practice, they baptized adults by full immersion - that is how they obeyed the command.
Similarly, God commanded unity between believers, no divisions, and no one saying "I follow Paul, I follow Apollos".
In practice, they met as the church in each city.
To ignore the descriptive verses is to ignore how the early church obeyed the prescriptive commands. It it as if to say, "I think I know how to obey these commands better than the apostles and Christians who actually knew Christ in the flesh". "We don't need to break bread every Sunday, we can do it whenever we feel like it", "we don't need to baptize in water, we can baptize in sand, scripture doesn't say we have to use water", "we don't have to meet as the church in the city, we can meet with any denomination that we like".
People use this descriptive vs prescriptive argument to excuse themselves from following the Bible, even though many of Christianity's practices are from descriptive reading of Scripture anyway (or even paganism, as shown by Viola and Barna's book). We can use this "descriptive vs prescriptive" argument to justify just about anything.
People who argue "descriptive vs prescriptive" also must not think the whole bible is God's Word - God gave us the whole bible but we only need to observe the prescriptive parts. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is useful. In other words, we should take inspiration and instruction not only from the prescriptive parts, but from the descriptive parts as well. Often in the new testament, old testament descriptive passages are used as examples to follow, for instruction and teaching.