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Sure, but this all leads to questions on what/who The Church is, if it’s to be structured as an apostolic succession, if that succession holds a certain Automatically Right stature regardless of its actual conduct, and so on. We both agree that the Catholic/Orthodox structure does not benefit from Automatically Right stature, otherwise we’d regard Pope Francis as legit.

Where we disagree, I think, is on the indefectibility, inerrancy, infallibility, etc, of scripture. My argument against this is that we’re getting third hand (or even further removed) texts that have gone through who knows how many rounds of editing, reconstruction, compilation, and who knows what else, to arrive at what we’re reading. It’s why I’m very open to reading basically anything, but when I do, you should imagine in my mind every bit of being prepended with: “Consider the following:”

As a consequence of the aforementioned third handness of all of these texts, it’s my view that the buck stops at me to sort the wheat from the chaff. This amounts to cherry picking. In my daily life, it is my duty to behold and be honest about what I’m seeing, and in my literary life, it is my duty to read and to be honest about what I’m reading. And I have to go in knowing that there is some verrrrrryyyy sophisticated bullshit out there designed specifically to deceive me, and everybody else. What this amounts to is a duty to pierce the veil, basically. In this respect, I am unironically Gnostic, because I believe that I will receive divine guidance on these topics.