Nostr notes by paxchristi

I've had this thought for a while; every beautiful love song ...

2026-04-01T10:22:31Z

I've had this thought for a while; every beautiful love song ever written is a love song of Christ's love for you. If it's truly beautiful, it's truly spoken to you from Him, and for you to answer back, in the quiet of your heart.

I had a more profound experience with this today because it said something to me that I hadn't known before, which was quite startling at the time but obvious afterwards. I was listening to 'Caribou' - 'Can’t Do Without You', and as I heard the words 'I can't do without you', I naturally thought about my need for Christ; that I can't do without Him, but in that instant, I heard God say:

No, you don't understand; you're hearing it wrong.

It is I who can't do without you.

Sometimes, we're on the wrong side of the love song.

"I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me."

He loved you man, he loved you how blessed you were to have that ...

2026-03-31T21:43:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…4uwk
_________________________

He loved you man, he loved you how blessed you were to have that moment with him before he left you. I force my hugs on my father every now and again 😅

How?

2026-03-29T20:57:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…800g
_________________________

How?

Great channel. I’ve been thinking about my death a lot more ...

2026-03-29T13:18:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…hygf
_________________________

Great channel. I’ve been thinking about my death a lot more recently. Memento mori.

Have you seen https://www.porkopolis.io/thechart/ ? I’ve been ...

2026-03-29T10:00:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…vrc6
_________________________

Have you seen https://www.porkopolis.io/thechart/ ?

I’ve been taking refuge in the power law chart, I think it’s a great hypothesis.

GM!

2026-03-25T11:07:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…5gd7
_________________________

GM!

Help me understand this one, genuinely: The universal Church is ...

2026-03-24T17:32:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…xk2y
_________________________

Help me understand this one, genuinely:

The universal Church is "invisible", consists of the whole number of the elect ... "gathered into one". So it's invisible, but the elect (being physical persons) are gathered "into one", where?

Let's just assume, East/West apostolic Churches are Protestant Churches for this exercise, and that some of the people in them are "the elect", and then some of the other persons in all the remaining Protestant churches are also among the elect, where are they/would they be "gathered into one"?

If they all hold some variations on their understanding of Christ and salvation, most of the core ideas being mutually exclusive, where's the unity?

Thanks.

Personally know such a poet, very well regarded, I don’t think ...

2026-03-24T08:42:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…vrjp
_________________________

Personally know such a poet, very well regarded, I don’t think they know very much. But then again, what do I know 😅

Agreed if you buy anytime in the past you are better off, the ...

2026-03-24T07:58:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…upu7
_________________________

Agreed if you buy anytime in the past you are better off, the longer you hold onto it, the cheaper your life becomes.

Jesus: Hebrew name Joshua (Yehoshua’), meaning “Yahweh ...

2026-03-23T12:06:39Z

Jesus: Hebrew name Joshua (Yehoshua’), meaning “Yahweh saves.” It was a popular name among first-century Jews. Even greater than Joshua, who led Israel into the Promised Land (Sir 46:1), Jesus leads God’s people into the eternal land of heaven (25:34; cf. Heb 4:1–11). Greater also than David (2 Sam 3:18), Jesus will save his people from their sins, not from their national enemies (i.e., the Romans) (CCC 430–32, 2666).

GM!!

2026-03-23T11:53:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…skf7
_________________________

GM!!

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in ...

2026-03-23T07:44:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…yet3
_________________________

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

@npub1w4w…j8ar meant to tag you in this one.

2026-03-22T22:46:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…4644
_________________________

rschristopher (npub1w4w…j8ar) meant to tag you in this one.

What you meant to say was: Gregory I (AD 540-604), Bishop of ...

2026-03-22T21:38:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…uwsh
_________________________

What you meant to say was:
Gregory I (AD 540-604), Bishop of Rome, on the title "universal bishop" in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

That IS the Pope that’s writing cautioning against what it would mean to have a “universal bishop” i.e. One bishop and no others!

That btw is not what the Pope is. He is one bishop, co-equal to the others, with a charism of unity, a Petrine ministry to settle disputes (as in Acts), preserve the faith, and be the final court of appeal. Every other bishop holds real authority in his own right, not as a delegate of Rome.

The Patriarch of Constantinople still holds the title Gregory condemned, though in fairness, the Orthodox would say ‘ecumenical’ means first among equals, not universal jurisdiction. But in practice, Constantinople recently did exactly what Gregory warned against: unilaterally overriding the canonical territory of another church in Ukraine, fracturing Orthodox communion with no mechanism to resolve it.

Which is precisely why the Petrine office exists. (I understand Orthodox don’t see it as that way, and it’s not something I ever think about tbh)

You’ve got this woefully wrong. That caption is a misattribution of intent. Gregory wasn’t writing against papal supremacy. He was writing as the Pope, to the Patriarch of Constantinople, telling him to drop a title. That’s not a critique of the papacy. That’s the papacy in action.

What you meant to say was: Gregory I (AD 540-604), Bishop of ...

2026-03-22T17:47:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…wrwk
_________________________

What you meant to say was:
Gregory I (AD 540-604), Bishop of Rome, on the title "universal bishop" (a title the Catholic Church has never claimed for the papacy) in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Trinity dwelt physically inside her. The blessed in heaven ...

2026-03-22T17:22:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…prz6
_________________________

The Trinity dwelt physically inside her.

The blessed in heaven are "in" the Trinity. (The image is symbolic (in its truest sense))

You are within the Trinity, if you are united to Christ (where else?).

Mary is the Mother of God, the Word of God knew her as His mother from all Eternity,

He "waited" an eternity to be born in her to save you. No one loves Mary more than Jesus, and Jesus loves no one more than Mary. Could someone so perfect (Jesus), love another creature, more than the creature, that he called 'Mama', from his earliest?

The first pair of eyes God ever saw with eyes of his own was Mary.

The first word the incarnate Word spoke was 'Mama'.

The first person the Trinity thought of in their plan to save you was Mary.

Who else?

The love of Mary as our Mother, the sheer depth and breadth of it, won't dawn on you until you are in Heaven, unless the ancient faith of the universal Church (East/West) buries its way into your heart and mind before then.

Christ entrusted His mother to the Church; Jesus wills that you know His mother, that is why neither East nor West has ever let up, on adoring and venerating her, because Christ, who loves in us, loves in us His own mother anew.
Lew☦️ (nprofile…2qdj)

Nostr event nevent1qqsra0ezwj7ffcwhkh3a2snu6djyqcykz6cy7ssxlccp3eud5jf4hyqzyzy85t2ryrlze3d3eye67gtfunrsx67s2tgjctehtcgzccj20l2g7s6tx68

2026-03-22T08:39:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…dzvk
_________________________

GM!

I spent a few days on this. There's been silence from the ...

2026-03-20T16:43:25Z

I spent a few days on this. There's been silence from the Reformers to my Sola Scriptura questions; I can't understand why. Anyways, I hope they receive this in good faith and that I hear back from them (in their defense of their sole authority)

I urge the reader, to read the whole thing, but if you must, read at least the introduction, and the conclusion - then the historical evidence if you want (it's long-ish):
freeborn | ἐλεύθερος | 8r0gwg (npub1ak5…0gwg) spread it to your Reformed brothers, relay it to Laser (nprofile…sx0z) since I'm muted for some reason (I DM'd an earlier addition, but this is the final version). jaredlogan (nprofile…wes2) rschristopher (npub1w4w…j8ar)

Essay in its full is below, but can also be read (more easily) here:
https://cozzyland.net/canon-question/

The Canon Question

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Argument

Sola Scriptura rests on a collection of books that it cannot account for.

This is not a rhetorical attack but a structural observation. Scripture carries divine authority. But Sola Scriptura claims more than this: it claims Scripture is the sole authority, the foundation on which every doctrine is tested, every tradition rejected, every council evaluated. A foundation must be identifiable before it can bear weight.

Premise 1. Scripture must therefore have defined content: particular books. The content is not incidental; it is constitutive. Remove the Gospel of John and there is no Logos theology. Remove Romans and soteriology changes beyond recognition. The books are the faith in its written form. This defined content is what we call the canon.

Premise 2. The canon is nowhere found within Scripture. No biblical book names the table of contents.

Now observe the order of operations. For Scripture to function as the sole rule of faith, three things must be established, and they must be established in this sequence:

1. Which books are Scripture. (The identification question.)
2. That this particular list is the right one. (The warrant question.)
3. That the resulting collection is the sole authority. (The Sola Scriptura claim itself.)

Each step depends on the one before it. You cannot declare the collection the sole authority until you can show it is the right collection. You cannot show it is the right collection until you have a method for identifying its contents. And you cannot identify its contents by consulting it, because its authority to tell you anything depends on the very identification you have not yet made.

This is the priority problem: the canon must be established before any verse within it can be cited as authoritative. Scripture contains no method for identifying a closed canon. Verses like John 10:27 ("My sheep hear my voice") and 1 John 4:1 ("Test the spirits") are invoked in support of self-authentication, but citing them is circular: their authority to justify a method of canon identification depends on their already being canonical, which is the very question at issue.

And the stakes of this question are higher than they first appear. If Scripture alone is the rule of faith, then God Himself must have provided a means by which His people could identify that rule's contents. These are not academic theories about literary reception. They are claims about divine action, competing accounts of what God did to communicate the boundaries of His written word. If God actually did something specific, there should be one answer, not six. The fact that Protestant theology has produced at least half a dozen mutually exclusive proposals, from Calvin's inner witness to Warfield's historical evidentialism to Kline's covenant-treaty theory, is itself significant. Either God's provision was so unclear that the brightest Reformed minds cannot agree on what it was, or no such provision was made.

For clarity, the proposals reduce to three categories:

Answer A1: Inherent self-authentication. The books identify themselves through inherent divine qualities, and the individual believer, guided by the Holy Spirit, recognises them. This theory was devised by Calvin in the sixteenth century; no Church Father ever proposed it. Test it against the priority problem: the method says "pick up a book and check it for marks of inspiration." But which books? The sixty-six-book Bible did not assemble itself on the shelf. Someone curated the options before the Spirit could testify about them, and that someone was the Church: bishops deciding which texts were read in liturgy, scribes deciding which were worth copying, councils formalising what was already in communal practice. The method presupposes the list it claims to produce. And even granting the presupposed list, the method failed: its own architects (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Karlstadt) arrived at different canons. If this is how God chose to communicate, He chose a method that failed the men He raised up to recover it.

Answer A2: Corporate recognition. The early Church corporately recognised the canonical books over time. This is Kruger's refinement: the canon was not identified by individuals but by the collective reception of the faithful. Grant the premise entirely. The question is then simply: what did the early Church corporately receive? At every point where the question was formally addressed (Hippo in 393, Carthage in 397 and 419, Florence in 1442), the answer was seventy-three books. One cannot appeal to the early Church's reception as the method and then reject the result. Either corporate reception is reliable, in which case it points to seventy-three books, not sixty-six, or it is unreliable, in which case it cannot serve as a criterion at all.

Answer B: Sproul's concession. The canon is "a fallible collection of infallible books." This concedes the priority problem rather than solving it: yes, the identification was a human act, and yes, it may be wrong. But if the collection is fallible, then the "sole infallible rule of faith" rests on a foundation its own defenders admit is not infallible. A rule of faith that might be pointing to the wrong books is not a rule at all.

The warrant problem. Even if one of these methods could get off the ground at step one, a second failure awaits at step two. How does the Protestant know that the sixty-six-book canon, this particular list, is the right finished product? Not Luther's shorter list. Not Karlstadt's three-tier hierarchy. Not the seventy-three books every council affirmed. No single Protestant theory, applied consistently, produces exactly sixty-six books. Self-authentication produced different canons in the hands of different Reformers, with no principled criterion to adjudicate between them. Corporate reception produced seventy-three. Luther's christological test ("Does it convey Christ?") produced a canon that not even the Lutheran churches use today; they quietly restored the very books their founder demoted, abandoning the output of his method while keeping his name. The sixty-six-book canon is the output of no method. It is what Protestantism eventually settled on: shaped by Luther's rearrangement in 1522, formalised by the Westminster Confession in 1646, sealed by the British and Foreign Bible Society's exclusion of the deuterocanonicals in 1826. It is the product of a tradition. And no criterion within Sola Scriptura can distinguish this tradition from the competing Protestant traditions it displaced, let alone from the seventy-three-book tradition it replaced.

The conclusion. The priority problem remains unsolved at both steps. Every proposed method fails at step one (identifying the books without circularity), and fails independently at step two (warranting this particular list over the competing lists the same methods produced). It therefore cannot reach step three (establishing Sola Scriptura). Not one claims to be divinely revealed, which, if Sola Scriptura is true, is precisely what it would need to be; all are the theories of men. They contradict each other, meaning they cannot all be right, and the argument of this essay is that none of them are. The method of canon identification is not divinely revealed but humanly devised, which means the foundation of Sola Scriptura is itself a tradition of men. The principle that claims to stand above all human tradition cannot get off the ground without one. And if the foundation fails, everything built on it fails with it: every doctrine judged by Scripture alone, every tradition rejected by Scripture alone, every council evaluated by Scripture alone, loses its warrant. The Protestant is not left with a different authority. He is left with none. Sola Scriptura is not a rival answer to the question of authority. It is the absence of one.

That is the argument in its logical form. What follows is the historical evidence.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. What the Apostles Actually Read

It is sometimes assumed that the apostles worked from something like the modern Protestant Old Testament: thirty-nine books, neatly bounded. The evidence runs sharply the other way. The New Testament writers overwhelmingly quoted from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that included the deuterocanonical books without any distinction from the rest.

Protestant scholars Gleason Archer and Gregory Chirichigno, in their Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament (Moody Press, 1983), examined 340 Old Testament quotations in the New Testament and found that 307 aligned with the Septuagint, while only 33 could be shown to follow the Hebrew Masoretic Text against it. The apostles were not occasionally glancing at the Septuagint when the Hebrew was unavailable. They were immersed in it.

The Septuagint contained Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Esther and Daniel, interspersed throughout, with no separation from the rest. When Paul quoted Scripture, he was quoting from a collection that treated these books as part of the furniture.

The standard Protestant rejoinder, offered by Reformed scholar Roger Nicole, is that no deuterocanonical book is explicitly quoted with an introductory formula like "it is written." This is true, but it is equally true of Judges, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. If the test of explicit citation is applied consistently, it does not vindicate the Protestant canon. It shrinks it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

II. The Patristic Witness

It is a mark of things truly settled that nobody argues for them. No one in the first century wrote a treatise proving that Wisdom belonged in the Bible, for the same reason no one writes a treatise proving that fire is hot. They simply used it.

Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians around 96 AD, within living memory of the apostles, echoed Wisdom 2:24 in his discussion of envy and narrated the story of Judith and Holofernes as sacred history, placing Judith beside Esther as an exemplar of courage. Polycarp, a disciple of John himself, quoted Tobit. The Didache paralleled Sirach. The Epistle of Barnabas introduced a quotation from Wisdom 2:12 with the formula "the prophet speaks."

Protestant patristics scholar J.N.D. Kelly surveyed the evidence in Early Christian Doctrines and concluded that the use of the deuterocanonical books by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, and Clement of Alexandria was "too frequent for detailed references to be necessary." One does not say that about a disputed practice. One says it about a universal one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

III. The Conciliar Record

When the question of which books belong in the Bible was formally addressed, not as a matter of casual usage but as a matter of authoritative declaration, it was addressed by councils. Every council that produced a list arrived at the same answer.

The Council of Hippo in 393, attended by Augustine, listed a canon corresponding to the modern Catholic seventy-three books. The Third Council of Carthage in 397 ratified the same list, recording that these books were received a patribus, "from our fathers." This was not an innovation but a recognition of what had been handed down. The Council of Carthage in 419 reaffirmed it before 217 bishops. The Council of Florence in 1442 named all seven deuterocanonical books explicitly. The Council of Trent in 1546 solemnly defined the same canon that had been in continuous use since at least the fourth century.

Protestant church historian Philip Schaff, who was not a Catholic apologist but a Reformed Protestant of considerable reputation, admitted the point plainly in his History of the Christian Church: the councils of Hippo and Carthage "fixed the catholic canon of the Holy Scriptures, including the Apocrypha of the Old Testament," and "this canon remained undisturbed till the sixteenth century."

Undisturbed. For over a thousand years. No identifiable Christian community at any point before the Reformation used a sixty-six-book Bible. The warrant problem posed in the Argument is not merely logical. It is historical: the list Protestantism settled on has no precedent before the sixteenth century.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IV. The Reformers Disagreed with Each Other

If the books of Scripture are self-evidently identifiable, if, as Calvin claimed, the distinction is as obvious as telling "white from black, sweet from bitter," then the Reformers should have converged on the same list. They did not. They scattered.

Martin Luther placed Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation in an unnumbered appendix to his 1522 New Testament, writing that "the four which follow have from ancient times had a different reputation." He maintained this arrangement through every edition published during his lifetime, dying in February 1546 without reversing it. Andreas Karlstadt published a three-tier hierarchy of the New Testament in 1520, placing Paul's epistles below the Gospels on the principle that servants must obey their masters. Huldrych Zwingli declared in 1531 that "with the Apocalypse, we have no concern, for it is not a biblical book." Calvin never wrote a commentary on 2 John, 3 John, or Revelation, and expressed reservations about 2 Peter. Martin Chemnitz maintained a formal two-tier distinction in the New Testament as late as the 1570s.

By 1596, a Hamburg Bible labelled Luther's four demoted books as "Apocrypha" within the New Testament. Bruce Metzger documented similar editions at Goslar in 1614 and Stockholm in 1618. The Reformation did not produce a single canon. It produced several. And the one Protestantism eventually settled on matches none of its founders' individual lists.

The men who said the Bible was obvious could not agree on what was in it. The men who said the Church was unnecessary could not do without it. They rejected the authority that had settled the canon, then spent a century failing to settle it themselves. This is the warrant problem made visible: the sixty-six-book canon is the output of no single Reformer's method, because no single Reformer's method produced it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

V. Leipzig

In 1518, Martin Luther freely quoted Sirach and Tobit as authoritative Scripture. His Lectures on Hebrews cited Wisdom as "Scripture." There was no dispute.

Then came the Leipzig Disputation in July 1519. Johann Eck cited 2 Maccabees 12:42-45 in support of purgatory. Luther did not deny that 2 Maccabees teaches prayers for the dead; he admitted it does. What he denied was the book's canonicity: "The book of Maccabees, not being in the Canon, is of weight with the faithful, but avails nothing with the obstinate." Reformation scholar Bernhard Lohse confirmed that "it was at the Leipzig Disputation that Luther first clearly distinguished the canonical writings in the authentic sense from the Apocrypha."

This is the founding moment of the sixty-six-book Bible. It did not arise from a careful historical inquiry. It arose from a debate in which a man was confronted with a text that contradicted his theology, and responded by removing the text from the canon. The theology came first. The canon was trimmed to fit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VI. Self-Attestation

Faced with the problem of identifying the canon without admitting the Church's authority, the Reformers and their successors proposed a theory: self-attestation. The books of Scripture authenticate themselves, either through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit or through internal qualities that mark them as divine.

No Church Father ever proposed this method. Not one. Some Fathers spoke of Scripture's inherent authority, but always regarding books already recognised. When they addressed the question of which books belong, they used external criteria: apostolic origin, liturgical use, reception by the churches, consistency with the rule of faith. The doctrine of autopistia (self-authentication) is a sixteenth-century invention, codified by Calvin and formalised in the Westminster Confession of 1646.

Having invented the method, the Protestant tradition then failed to agree on how it works. Calvin said the individual believer recognises inspired books through the Holy Spirit's inner witness, as easily as telling white from black. But the Reformers themselves could not agree, which means the method failed its own architects before it could be tested on anyone else. Kruger proposed three criteria: divine qualities, apostolic origins, and corporate reception. But "divine qualities" is the same claim the Mormon makes about the Book of Mormon and the Muslim about the Quran; the criterion cannot distinguish between them. And corporate reception, applied honestly, points to seventy-three books, not sixty-six, making Kruger's own pillar a witness against his conclusion. Luther tested books by christological content and produced a two-tier canon nobody uses today; even the Lutheran churches that bear his name quietly restored Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation to full standing, abandoning the output of their founder's method.

Nor are these the only attempts. Warfield grounded canonicity in recoverable historical evidence of apostolic origin, Geisler proposed a five-fold criteria test, Kline argued the canon is inherent in the covenant-treaty form of Scripture itself, and Ridderbos located it in the structure of redemptive history. Each was offered because its predecessors were found wanting, and they contradict one another at the epistemological level: Warfield's evidentialism does exactly what Kruger's self-authentication model forbids, and Ridderbos explicitly rejected both the Catholic view and Luther's christological criterion.

But the deepest problem with self-attestation is not that it produced contradictions, though it did. It is that it answers the wrong question entirely. Nobody is asking whether Scripture is authoritative. The question is which books are Scripture. Self-attestation says, in effect: "Pick them up; the inspired ones will shine." But you must know which books to pick up before you can check them for shine. The method presupposes the list it claims to produce.

And the modern Protestant who opens his Bible is not sorting through a table of eighty early Christian texts. He is opening a bound sixty-six-book volume that was already assembled for him, by publishers following a tradition that traces back through the British and Foreign Bible Society's decision of 1826, through the Westminster Confession of 1648, through Luther's rearrangement in 1522. The curation has already happened. The Spirit is being asked to testify about a pre-selected lineup. And that lineup was selected by the Church: in the early centuries, by bishops deciding which texts were read in liturgy, by scribes deciding which texts were worth copying, and by councils formalising what was already in communal practice. The books that survived to be "picked up" were the ones the Church preserved, circulated, and read aloud in worship. Self-attestation, followed to its root, rests on the Church's prior authority just as surely as corporate recognition does. It simply hides it better.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VII. Jerome

Jerome is the Church Father most frequently cited in defence of the shorter canon, and it is true that he preferred the Hebrew canon. But what Jerome did matters rather more than what he said.

Jerome translated Tobit and Judith and included them in the Vulgate. In his Prologue to Judith, he wrote that "because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request." In his Apology Against Rufinus, he asked: "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches?" Jerome held a minority opinion and submitted to the Church's judgment rather than break communion, which is not the behaviour of a man who believed conscience alone was sufficient but of one who believed the Church had authority.

And Jerome believed things that no Protestant believes. In his Letter to Heliodorus, he wrote of clergy who "in succession from the Apostles, confect by their sacred word the Body of Christ," affirming apostolic succession and the Real Presence in a single sentence. In Adversus Helvidium, he defended the perpetual virginity of Mary at book length. To follow Jerome on the canon while discarding everything else he believed is not to follow Jerome. It is to use him. And citing a man's authority as the basis for your canon is itself an appeal to human authority, which is precisely what Sola Scriptura claims to transcend.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VIII. The Remnant That Never Was

Protestants sometimes claim that pre-Reformation groups (the Waldensians, Hussites, and Lollards) preserved the "true" shorter canon through the centuries. The claim does not survive contact with the evidence.

Philip Jenkins of Baylor University has documented that the Waldensians "not only accepted and read these books, but treated them as among their favourite sections of the Bible. They loved stories like Maccabees and Tobit." Their surviving manuscripts are Vulgate translations, deuterocanonicals included. They adopted a Protestant canon only after being absorbed into Protestantism at the Synod of Chanforan in 1532.

The Lollards translated the entire Vulgate into English, including every deuterocanonical book. Margaret Deanesly's The Lollard Bible (1920) records that "the translators began at the beginning of Genesis and worked their way through the whole Bible, which to them, of course, included the Apocrypha." Over 250 Wycliffite manuscripts survive, all including these books. The Hussites used Vulgate translations and never contested the canon. Their disputes were about communion, poverty, and preaching, not about which books were Scripture.

The "remnant" did not preserve the sixty-six-book canon, because the sixty-six-book canon did not exist. You cannot guard a treasure that has not yet been minted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IX. Protestant Bibles Included the Deuterocanonicals for Centuries

Two contradictory narratives circulate in Protestantism about the deuterocanonical books. The first: "We restored the original Hebrew canon": the books should never have been there. The second: "Catholics added these books at Trent": they were not there until 1546. These cannot both be true. And the second is demolished by the publication history of Protestant Bibles themselves.

Luther's complete German Bible of 1534 included the deuterocanonical books, labelled: "Apocrypha: that is, books which are not held to be equal to Holy Scripture, but are useful and good to read." The Gutenberg Bible of 1455 included them without separation. The King James Version of 1611 included them between the testaments; all KJV Bibles published before 1666 contained them, and Archbishop Abbot forbade publication without them under threat of imprisonment.

The deuterocanonical books were not removed from mainstream Protestant Bibles until 1826, when the British and Foreign Bible Society resolved to exclude them and, with a zeal that sits oddly with the phrase "useful and good to read," destroyed every copy in its possession, sending them, as The Christian Observer recorded, "to a paper mill to be ground to pulp." The American Bible Society followed in 1828.

Between the Reformation and 1826, Protestant Bibles included these books for nearly three hundred years. One does not include books for three centuries by accident. The removal was not a restoration. It was an amputation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

X. The Submerging Problem

From the apostolic era to the Reformation, roughly fifteen hundred years, the Protestant must explain how the "true" sixty-six-book canon went missing. Every answer makes the problem worse.

"The Church was wrong from the start." But Clement of Rome was using Wisdom and Judith as Scripture in 96 AD. If the Spirit failed to guide the Church on the Old Testament canon within the first generation, why trust the same Church's identification of the New Testament? The councils that affirmed Tobit and Wisdom also affirmed the four Gospels and Paul's epistles. You cannot saw off the branch while sitting on it.

"The Holy Spirit permitted the error for fifteen centuries." This means God allowed His entire Church to use the wrong Bible while Augustine, Aquinas, and Bernard of Clairvaux built their theology on it. It is a staggering claim about divine providence: that the Holy Spirit, who Christ promised would guide the Church into all truth, instead guided it into the wrong library.

"Jerome was right all along." Jerome was one man, in the minority, who submitted to the Church in practice and affirmed the Eucharist, apostolic succession, and the perpetual virginity of Mary. He is a peculiar foundation for Protestantism.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XI. The Verdict

The argument stated at the opening was this:

Scripture is divinely authoritative. Sola Scriptura claims it is the sole authority for the Church. But for Scripture to function as the sole authority, three things must be established in sequence: which books are Scripture, that this particular list is the right one, and that the resulting collection is the sole authority. Each step depends on the one before it. You cannot declare the collection the sole authority until you can show it is the right collection. You cannot show it is the right collection until you have a method for identifying its contents. And you cannot identify its contents by consulting it, because its authority to tell you anything depends on the very identification you have not yet made. This is the priority problem, and every Protestant answer has been tested against it.

Step one: identification. The response is that Scripture is self-authenticating. But self-attestation presupposes the very thing it claims to produce: you must know which books to pick up before you can check them for marks of inspiration. Who assembled the first list upon which the method could be applied? The Church. And the circularity runs deeper still. When verses like John 10:27 or 1 John 4:1 are cited to justify the method, the citation is itself circular: the authority of those verses to justify anything depends on their already being canonical, which is the very question at issue. The canon must be established before any verse within it can be cited as authoritative, and it is this prior act of establishment that Sola Scriptura cannot account for.

Regardless, the testimony must be received by someone, and that someone is a fallible human being making a judgment. If the receiver is fallible, the identification is fallible, and this is not a weakness in one particular version of the argument but the reason Sproul's concession, "a fallible collection of infallible books," is not merely honest but inevitable. But Sproul's concession does not save the principle; it buries it. If the collection is fallible, then the wrong books may be in it or the right books may be missing, which means that doctrines derived from potentially misidentified books rest on uncertain ground, and the "sole rule of faith" may be incomplete. A fallible collection cannot serve as an infallible authority. To accept Sproul's concession is to accept that Sola Scriptura cannot deliver the certainty it promises, and a rule of faith that might be pointing to the wrong books is not a rule at all. It is a guess dressed in the language of conviction.

Step two: warrant. Suppose, for argument's sake, that step one could be resolved. A second failure awaits. How does the Protestant know that the sixty-six-book canon, this particular list, is the right finished product? Not Luther's two-tier New Testament, with Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation demoted to an unnumbered appendix. Not Karlstadt's three-level hierarchy. Not Zwingli's canon without the Apocalypse. Not the seventy-three books that every council which ruled on the question affirmed. No single Protestant theory, applied consistently, produces exactly sixty-six books. Self-authentication produced different canons in the hands of different Reformers, with no principled criterion to adjudicate between them. Corporate reception produced seventy-three. Luther's christological test, "Was Christum treibet," produced a two-tier canon that not even the Lutheran churches use today; they quietly restored the very books their founder demoted, abandoning the output of his method while keeping his name. The sixty-six-book canon is the output of no method. It is what Protestantism eventually settled on: shaped by Luther's rearrangement in 1522, hardened by the Westminster Confession in 1646, sealed by the British and Foreign Bible Society's exclusion of the deuterocanonicals in 1826. It is the product of a tradition. And no criterion within Sola Scriptura can distinguish this tradition from the competing Protestant traditions it displaced, let alone from the seventy-three-book tradition it replaced.

Step three is therefore unreachable. If the principle cannot identify its contents without circularity at step one, and cannot warrant this particular list over the competing lists at step two, it cannot arrive at the claim that the resulting collection is the sole authority. The foundation is not cracked at one point. It is absent.

And here the deepest question must be stated plainly, because it is the one that Protestant theology has not faced. These competing theories, Calvin's inner witness, Kruger's corporate reception, Warfield's evidentialism, Kline's covenant-treaty theory, Ridderbos's redemptive-historical model, Luther's christological test, are not academic proposals about literary reception. They are claims about what God did. If Scripture alone is the rule of faith, then God Himself must have provided a means, a specific, identifiable means, by which His people could know which books constitute that rule. Each of these theories is an assertion about how the Creator of the universe intended His Church to recognise the very foundation of its faith. They contradict each other at the epistemological level: Warfield's evidentialism does precisely what Kruger's self-authentication model forbids; Ridderbos explicitly rejected both the Catholic position and Luther's christological criterion. If God actually did something, if He actually provided a means, then there is one answer, not six. The proliferation of mutually exclusive theories is itself evidence that no such means was provided, or if it was, that it left no discernible trace. Henri Blocher, a Protestant theologian writing in Themelios, called the canon question "the Achilles' heel of the Protestant system" and "an acute, and maybe poisonous, form of the starting-point embarrassment." When a tradition's own scholars describe the problem in those terms, the multiplying of competing solutions is not a sign of intellectual richness. It is a sign that the question has not been answered.

The historical evidence has confirmed, not created, this problem. The apostles used a Bible that contained the deuterocanonical books. The Fathers quoted them as Scripture without qualification. Every council that ruled on the question affirmed seventy-three books. The Reformers, applying their new methods, produced contradictory canons. The methods themselves were shown to be circular. Every pre-Reformation "remnant" group used the seventy-three-book Bible. Protestant Bibles included the disputed books for three centuries. And the sixty-six-book canon cannot account for the fifteen centuries in which it did not exist without making claims about divine providence that undermine confidence in the New Testament canon as well.

The sixty-six-book Bible is not a product of Scripture's authority. It is a product of Protestant tradition: the decisions of fallible men, using methods they invented in the sixteenth century, that contradicted one another, that no Christian community had ever employed, and that their own inventors could not apply consistently. Sola Scriptura does not stand above tradition. It is a tradition, one that has not yet come to terms with what it is.

Catholics do not dispute that Scripture carries divine authority. We affirm it with the full conviction of twenty centuries. But we also recognise what the evidence makes inescapable: the canon was identified, preserved, and ratified by a living authority, the Body of Christ guided by the Holy Spirit, that preceded the written text and cannot be reduced to it. The question was never whether God is behind the canon. The question was what He did to communicate it. And the answer is that He entrusted it to His Church, which identified it, preserved it, and has never wavered on it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Select Bibliography

Archer, Gleason L., and Gregory Chirichigno. Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament: A Complete Survey. Chicago: Moody Press, 1983.

Blocher, Henri. "Canonicity: A Theologian's Observations." Themelios 46, no. 3 (2021): 505-526.

Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.

Cameron, Euan. The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldensians of the Alps, 1480-1580. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

Chemnitz, Martin. Examination of the Council of Trent. Trans. Fred Kramer. St. Louis: Concordia, 1971-86.

Deanesly, Margaret. The Lollard Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920.

Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Geisler, Norman L., and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Rev. ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986.

Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. 5th ed. London: A&C Black, 1977.

Kline, Meredith G. The Structure of Biblical Authority. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Kruger, Michael J. Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

Luther, Martin. Luther's Works. Vol. 35: Word and Sacrament I. Ed. E. Theodore Bachmann. Philadelphia: Concordia, 1963.

McDonald, Lee Martin. The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority. 3rd ed. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007.

Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

Michuta, Gary. Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger: The Untold Story of the Lost Books of the Protestant Bible. 2nd ed. San Diego: Catholic Answers Press, 2017.

Nicole, Roger. "New Testament Use of the Old Testament." In Carl F.H. Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958, 137-151.

Ridderbos, Herman N. Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures. Trans. H. De Jongste. Rev. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1988.

Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church. Vol. III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity. New York: Scribner's, 1910.

Sproul, R.C. Essential Truths of the Christian Faith. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1992.

Sundberg, Albert C., Jr. The Old Testament of the Early Church. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Warfield, Benjamin B. "The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament." In The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Ed. Samuel G. Craig. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948, 411-416.

Ziegler, Roland F. "The Leipzig Debate and Theological Method." Concordia Theological Quarterly 83 (2019): 213-228.

"Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of ...

2026-03-20T10:38:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…yh3u
_________________________

"Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."

Are you saying, when you (God willing) receive your crown, you will be "outside" the Trinity, in Heaven?

“Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can ...

2026-03-20T10:31:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…thj0
_________________________

“Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.”

― Saint Maximilian Kolbe (Martyr of Auschwitz)

Been on my reading list for too long.

2026-03-19T07:24:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…uam6
_________________________

Been on my reading list for too long.

AI or not they’re class

2026-03-18T21:43:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…s6kg
_________________________

AI or not they’re class

Have you seen Chris Bledsoe interview on Sean Ryan? Pretty ...

2026-03-18T20:48:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…cync
_________________________

Have you seen Chris Bledsoe interview on Sean Ryan? Pretty remarkable story (if true) but a great story nonetheless, very captivating. I come down on the side of demonic activity (that sounds obviously ridiculous from an atheistic/agnostic pov)

But prior to my return to the Catholic faith, I was neck deep in drugs and psychedelics, around the time I had decided to get loose from those (making efforts in that direction), I had an intense experience with a UFO, and some subsequent bizarre experiences (non drugs), which had me spinning in many different directions, until I made my way back to Christ, to which the most plausible explanation dawned on me that it was in all likely non friendly incorporeal beings.

With that being said, I’d be very suspect of what Chris is relating to and about how he speaks of these beings.

With all that said, he also believes and expects something to happen, Easter of this year (April 5th) or around then.

I fully expect… nothing to happen, but .. maybe!

3i/atlas this year was pretty fascinating also.

On your question of authority, if we hold these two premises ...

2026-03-18T17:14:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…y4v5
_________________________

On your question of authority, if we hold these two premises true:

First, Scripture alone is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice, the supreme authority by which we judge all doctrines, councils, and traditions. I don't dispute that if God has spoken, His Word carries supreme authority. But this isn't just a theoretical claim; we actively employ it. We judge doctrines by it, reject traditions by it, and evaluate councils by it. Which means we need to know what "it" is before we can use it.

Second, for that to work, the Bible must have defined content. Specific books. "Scripture alone" is an empty principle if we don't know what Scripture is. The canon isn't a side issue; it's what makes Sola Scriptura possible in the first place. Before Scripture can judge any doctrine, council, or tradition, we need to know which books constitute Scripture: no settled canon, no standard to judge anything by.

Someone had to identify which books carry God's inherent divine authority. On this point, you cite that you personally find Jerome's canon better. But Jerome held a minority position and later translated and included all the deuterocanonical books in the Vulgate. And no apostolic or post-apostolic Church Father ever proposed "self-attestation" as a way of identifying canonical books. Some Fathers spoke of Scripture's inherent divine authority, but always in reference to books already recognised as canonical. When they tackled the question of which books actually belong, they used apostolic origin, reception by the churches, liturgical usage, and consistency with the rule of faith.

Scripture needs a canon. The canon needs an authority. That authority can't be Scripture, and it can't be a single man's. With this in mind, what, in your belief, is that authority?

Terrible stuff, hope the day goes well in spite of it. GM!

2026-03-18T09:01:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…se7f
_________________________

Terrible stuff, hope the day goes well in spite of it. GM!

Thank you, I really appreciate the response. Just so I can ...

2026-03-17T15:31:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…jt2m
_________________________

Thank you, I really appreciate the response. Just so I can understand you better, and not assume incorrectly, can you tell me what you mean by “self-attesting”? Thanks again.

Didn’t realise it had bolt 12 actually thanks for that! ...

2026-03-17T11:14:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…wh43
_________________________

Didn’t realise it had bolt 12 actually thanks for that! Presumably if the server is behind a VPN that helps right? They know x is paying y (non bolt 12 receiver) but they don’t know who y is if they’re they are running phoenix behind VPN?

GM!

2026-03-17T09:47:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…82xg
_________________________

GM!

Hey @npub1ak5…0gwg since @nprofile…hat2 doesn't feel like ...

2026-03-17T08:57:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…644p
_________________________

Hey freeborn | ἐλεύθερος | 8r0gwg (npub1ak5…0gwg) since Laser (nprofile…hat2) doesn't feel like answering this one, do you think you could take a stab at it?

If you find in uncharitable, please forgive me. I do think it's a reasonable question to ask someone who believes sola scriptura. Thanks!

I recently had an agent configure phoenix server for lighting ...

2026-03-17T07:49:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…5c77
_________________________

I recently had an agent configure phoenix server for lighting payments for itself, then had to setup two LNmail addresses for itself, it did everything including making payments for the addresses all by itself, and it was relatively painless. It was a very pleasing experience.

GM!

2026-03-17T07:45:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…jrwa
_________________________

GM!

When I’m your opinion did the Catholic Church apostatise? ...

2026-03-16T22:11:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…836e
_________________________

When I’m your opinion did the Catholic Church apostatise? Laser (npub1x45…armt)

Try 'Rome sweet home' by Scott Hahn (Doctorate in ...

2026-03-16T21:24:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…mtez
_________________________

Try 'Rome sweet home' by Scott Hahn (Doctorate in Biblical Theology) ... '...Scott Hahn was a Presbyterian minister, the top student in his seminary class, a brilliant Scripture scholar, and militantly anti-Catholic' a man who loves his Bible an awful lot.

What was uncharitable about my question, I said it was a genuine ...

2026-03-15T20:18:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…aw73
_________________________

What was uncharitable about my question, I said it was a genuine one, and also, Catholic or not, why would that matter, say I was, wouldn't you want to clarify your position, in the hope of conversion from agnosticism, or any other position?

The fact, that you clearly can't answer a question for yourself, and merely post pictures of books - which by the way, you should also be prepared to defend (obviously), means you quite literally, are unable to answer my questions, not that you just don't want to (if so why not?), but that you don't have a good answer (because if you did, you'd just give it - wouldn't you?, and if not, why not?. Or is it that I'm unworthy to partake in whatever understanding you've collected so far?

You specifically called out Orthodox/Catholics, and said 'The true authority of the church is Scripture.', so I started asking scripture questions - so now, you don't read replies, deflect questions, and then call people 'uncharitable' for entering debate with you on scripture, which you should be defending utterly and completely... that's wild.

@nprofile…k22a you still haven't answered the question, I ...

2026-03-15T17:32:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…kdj8
_________________________

Laser (nprofile…k22a) you still haven't answered the question, I asked how do you know the Bible you have in your home are the correct books?

Since you posted Kruger's book (again), I'm going to presume this was somehow the answer to my question (it's not) and find his approach the most reasonable way of finding canon. HOWEVER:

The Church corporately did not agree on a 66-book Bible. The Church corporately agreed on a 73-book Bible. Virtually every western Christian used the Latin Vulgate, and it had 73 books.

Kruger argues that the core canon was settled early and peripheral disputes were resolved by the late third and early fourth centuries. But when those disputes were resolved, they were resolved in favour of 73 books at Hippo and Carthage. Kruger wants credit for, early consensus, while ignoring what the final consensus actually was.

You cannot say "the Holy Spirit is leading the Church collectively into the truth" and also say "the Church collectively got the canon wrong and it needed reformation."

Either the corporate leading of the Holy Spirit is reliable, in which case the answer is 73 books, or it isn't reliable, in which case Kruger's entire framework collapses and you're back to the individual, where Calvin's version already failed because the Reformers all arrived at different answers. (See point 1 above)

So if you're a fan of Kruger, answer my question (if you can) did you arrive at your Bible based on "the Holy Spirit is leading the Church collectively into the truth" (Kruger), if so, why not 73 books?

Try and answer the questions, actually answer them directly. Not some hand-wavy "...every christian must do this" (Which begs the question, why does everyone not just go back as far as the 300s, and pick and choose amongst all the contested books/letters etc of the time?

Are you going to answer the original question or not?

2026-03-15T15:34:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…ewwh
_________________________

Are you going to answer the original question or not?

Sounds great! 😅

2026-03-15T09:46:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…9cq8
_________________________

Sounds great! 😅

@nprofile…tm48 Genuine question: How do you personally know ...

2026-03-15T09:34:07Z

Laser (nprofile…tm48)

Genuine question: How do you personally know that the Bible in your home has the correct number of books? Keep the following in mind when you answer.

1. The Reformers themselves couldn't agree on the canon.

Luther demoted Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation to unnumbered appendix status, identical to how he treated the Apocrypha, and kept it that way in every edition he supervised until his death in 1545.

Calvin called Baruch "the Prophet" in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 10 and argued Paul borrowed from Baruch 4:7, a book every Protestant Bible today rejects.

Karlstadt (Luther's senior colleague who helped launch the Reformation) ranked Paul's epistles as subordinate to the Gospels and stripped them of equal authority with Christ's words.
Zwingli doubted the canonicity of Revelation, and the early Zurich Bibles (1524–1529) copied Luther's demotion of the same four NT books.

Chemnitz (the most important Lutheran theologian after Luther) still maintained a two-tier New Testament in the 1570s: 20 undisputed books and 7 that shouldn't be used to prove doctrine.
Calvin also had reservations about 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation, meaning he and Luther disagreed on which NT books were questionable.

By 1596, a Hamburg Bible explicitly labelled Luther's four demoted books as "Apocrypha," within Lutheranism itself.

2. For over a thousand years, the body of Christ received 73 books. The Councils of Hippo (393), Carthage (397), and Florence (1442) all affirmed the same list. Augustine laid out the method in On Christian Doctrine: follow the judgment of the greater number of Catholic churches, giving special weight to those founded by apostles. When he applied that method, he arrived at the exact 73-book Catholic canon. The first generation of Christians to disagree were the Reformers, and as point 1 shows, they couldn't even agree among themselves.

3. The method used to justify the change isn't biblical.
Calvin argued we can know which books are Scripture through an inward feeling, "a divine energy living and breathing in it." He claimed this was as easy as telling black from white. But Scripture itself never tells us to determine the canon this way. Strikingly, this is the exact method the Book of Mormon uses (Moroni 10:4-5, pray about it and you'll feel the truth) and the Quran uses (Surah 17, its beauty and doctrine prove its divine origin). Meanwhile, Jeremiah 17:9 warns us that "the heart is deceitful above all things." So what distinguishes the Protestant's internal feeling about 66 books from a Mormon's internal feeling about the Book of Mormon?

Kruger (whose book you referenced previously) tries to rescue this by shifting from the individual to the corporate: Christ's sheep hear His voice (John 10:27), and the Holy Spirit leads His people collectively to recognise the canon.

Calvin said you don't need the Church because each believer is inwardly led by the Spirit. Kruger says actually, it's the corporate body of believers that the Spirit leads. These are opposite claims.

Calvin's version fails because the individuals (as point 1 shows) couldn't agree. Kruger's version fails because the corporate Church's answer for over a millennium was 73 books (point 2).

They've switched arguments precisely because neither one works, and the two arguments contradict each other.

If the Spirit leads individuals, why did the Reformers get different answers? If the Spirit leads the corporate body, why did Protestants break from that body's unanimous canon?

So, how do YOU personally know the Bible in your home has the correct number of books?

npub1svenddzulzhhs4nfujj8k6wx3zp56tjvd9djjlqt88qcdfv9pneqjrpt05 (npub1sve…pt05) jaredlogan (nprofile…cwna) Lew☦️ (nprofile…2qdj)

"Kruger’s version of self-attestation is actually very ...

2026-03-14T18:37:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…hv3z
_________________________

"Kruger’s version of self-attestation is actually very different than Calvin’s, but nevertheless, he claims we have every biblical reason to believe that the Spirit’s work is within the hearts of His people. He says both individually and corporately, it is affectual and that Christ makes good on His promise that My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me. He’s quoting part of John 10:27. Later, both sums it up, “Christ will establish and build his church by causing the church to accept just this canon and by means of the assistance and witness of the Holy Spirit to recognize it as His.”

Now, there’s two problems with this. One of those is, the church corporately did not agree on the Protestant canon. The church had corporately agreed on a 73-book canon that Protestants thought was wrong. So if your argument is, the Holy Spirit led the church collectively, I don’t care if you mean magisterium-like leadership of the church or whether you mean the overall just like Christian community. Overwhelmingly, at the time of the Reformation, virtually everybody used a 73-book Bible, especially in the West. You will find a handful of exceptions, but they’re just at their handful. If you’re arguing that the Holy Spirit is corporately leading His people into the truth and there is a single Bible, the Latin Vulgate, used by almost every western Christian and has 73 books, and you think actually the corporate church got it wrong, choose an argument.

Emphasis mine:
You can’t say both The Holy Spirit is leading the church collectively into the truth and the church collectively screwed this one up and it needed reformation. They can’t both be right.
End Emphasis.

Nevertheless, the other problem is just that Scripture is being badly abused here in this citation to John 10:27. Go read John 10, particularly 24 to 28, and you’ll see Jesus is saying nothing about how His followers will know exactly which books are in the Bible. There’s none of that. There’s nothing that comes even closer, hints at that. He’s asked the question by the Jewish listeners, who He’s just given the good shepherd, He’s given two, one about the sheep gate, about he’s going to choose a shepherd, lead his people, and they’ll hear his voice, and the second about how He’s the good shepherd. The Jews then gather around and say, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus then answers and says, ‘I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness to Me. But you do not believe, because you do not belong to My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.'”

So he’s not saying some special internal charismatic gift.

Emphasis mine:
Pentecost hasn’t even happened.
End.

He’s saying people are convicted on the basis of what? On the basis of the works that He’s doing in His Father’s name. He’s doing miracles, and those whose hearts are open to it, are saying this is the Messiah. They don’t understand everything. They don’t have all truth. You wouldn’t need only read the New Testament to realize they don’t have a perfect understanding of everything Jesus is doing. He’s not saying they have a perfect Bible, even less. There’s not even a hint about that anywhere in the text. This is just taking one sentence, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” And saying, “Therefore, if they follow Him, they must have a perfect Bible.” That doesn’t logically follow at all.

That’s simply made up. But again, if you’re going to say that, if you’re going to say anyone who is one of the sheep of Christ will have a 66-book Protestant Bible, you need to be ready to say there were

Emphasis:
no followers of Christ between the time of the apostles and the reformation, or if there were, they were so small, we can count the known examples of them on two hands. That is remarkable if you’re going to make that claim.

Otherwise, just admit, this verse does not teach what Kruger and others are manipulating it to say. It simply doesn’t teach that you’ll have some private internal gift. It’s not even about private internal gifts at all. It’s about the faithful seeing the external actions of Christ and responding to them because they realize that these miracles could only be done by Christ. The works He’s talking about are His signs, are His miracles, so it doesn’t teach that. The reformers are simply making this doctrine up.

Now I’m going to return to Kruger. As I said, his version of what he calls self-attestation actually differs from Calvin’s. He claims that this does not mean that we should expect to find perfect unity among the church, but it doesn’t mean that we should expect to find a corporate or covenantal unity, which is precisely what we do find. Two arguments here.

First, we don’t actually find that in the Protestant direction. Protestants have a 66-book Bible. Nobody else does. Nobody prior to, like, “Find me a Christian community prior to the Reformation that has a 66-book Bible.” If your argument is for a covenantal unity or a corporate unity, there should be no problem.

But two, he claims that the internal witness of the Scriptures doesn’t mean we should expect to find perfect unity among the church, but it does to Calvin. Remember, he says, “These questions are as easy as telling black from white or bitter from sweet.”? Everybody can do that.

If it’s really that easy, which is Calvin’s argument and makes sense, if you really have a special supernatural infallibility, you shouldn’t be batting 300, 400, 500. You should be batting 1,000. So what in the world is going on here if any of this stuff is true? That’s the first problem. The reformers are simply making this up.

The second problem is
Emphasis:
...the reformers, bizarrely, don’t actually agree on the biblical canon. I’m going to give just a couple examples.
End emphasis.

The first one, Martin Luther. In 1522 and his preface to the Revelation of John, he says, “About this book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.”

Full episode:
https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/is-the-bible-self-attesting-or-do-we-need-the-church

Yes you can unilaterally exit if denial of service is made ...

2026-03-12T13:00:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…jx9l
_________________________

Yes you can unilaterally exit if denial of service is made against you on lightspark’s Spark entity. Further more, theoretically anyone can spin up and be a Spark Entity with their own Spark Operator quorum and specifically orientate themselves as a non-kyc operation. There’s however always the genuine risk of collision leaving you without coin.

But that’s much less likely if there are more than 1 Spark Entities plus more than 1 Spark service providers.

Currently there is 1 SE lightspark , 2 Spark Operators in that Entity (lighspark and flasnet (apparently related to lightspark) and 1 ssp (lightspark) but breeze is meant to become one I believe.

It’s the positioning of lightspark (enterprise interoperability with the banking system with UMA) that some people are having the issue with, not so much the protocol itself (from what I gather)

LSP question is valid and I’d like to know more about it from ZEUS (npub1xnf…lpr5) however again I’d imaging it’s more the positioning here, they are going in the other direction, so the likelyhood of KYC denial of service would be dramatically reduce.

GM!

2026-03-11T09:46:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…kgsu
_________________________

GM!

Thanks. That doesn't answer my question however. If I'm ...

2026-03-11T09:27:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…2x4z
_________________________

Thanks. That doesn't answer my question however. If I'm developing an app that needs a lightning wallet baked in, that is, the wallet is only one aspect (albeit the main feature ultimately) where a user needs to send sats to a device (that does something in exchange for small amount of sats), or at a terminal in a shop (think loyalty punch cards except sats is the perk), how do you envision native lightning wallet being part of it?

Because, there are ultimately thousands of apps, that could be built in this way, using a flow of sats (small and large amounts), that are just the 'value communication' layer, of what the app (as a product) does, some functionality or other in the app, that requires the flow of sats (instantly), to work.

Is there a way to achieve this currently i.e. is there an SDK that can have native lightning support out of the box, where liquidity management isn't something the end user (or the app owner/maintainer/server) has to continually grapple with?

The article continually says "you might have well have had opened a channel" as a counter-argument to Ark/Spark, but that's the whole UX/UI issue. We want "normies" to open a new app on their phone, experience the real flow of sats happening instantly, and for them to "get it", not spend a month learning the oddities, of liquidity management / LSPs, paying fees to LSPs, moving onchain bitcoin into the wallet etc etc

Can you describe in detail yourself, what exactly such a user normie, is giving up when using Ark/Spark under the hood in an app, especially if they have unilateral exit. Even the OP says that LSP is itself centralisaiton, so if Ark/Spark is also centralistion, the overhead is dramatically reduced when using it, such that the above mentioned apps become viable use cases, with normies.

What’s he on about …

2026-03-10T08:05:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…3d05
_________________________

What’s he on about …

GM Brother!

2026-03-10T07:49:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…0rzz
_________________________

GM Brother!

Well? Spark and Ark also have unilateral exit, so you always have ...

2026-03-09T19:44:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…cejf
_________________________

Well? Spark and Ark also have unilateral exit, so you always have your coins if an ark/spark service provider goes down, which is quite frankly significantly more preferable than the complete custody model of cashu which you have recommend, don’t you think? Please let me know what exactly is the issue you have with Ark/Spark self-custody model with unilateral exit available? Thanks!

More info 🙏

2026-03-09T19:29:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…6vk6
_________________________

More info 🙏

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT "Impact of Childhood Vaccination on Short ...

2026-03-05T13:10:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…tzcx
_________________________

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT
"Impact of Childhood Vaccination on Short and Long-Term Chronic Health Outcomes in Children: A Birth Cohort Study"

Authors: Lamerato et al., Henry Ford Health System
Assessment Date: 2026-03-05

================================================================================

STUDY OVERVIEW

Design: Retrospective birth cohort, 18,468 children born 2000-2016
Setting: Henry Ford Health System / Health Alliance Plan (HAP), Michigan
Groups: 16,511 vaccinated vs. 1,957 completely unvaccinated
Headline Claim: Vaccination associated with 2.5x increased risk of developing
a chronic health condition (HR 2.53, CI 2.16-2.96)

================================================================================

VERDICT: LIKELY INVALID

The study's design cannot distinguish between "vaccines cause chronic
conditions" and "children who visit doctors more get diagnosed more." The
evidence strongly favors the latter explanation.

================================================================================

MAJOR METHODOLOGICAL FLAWS

1. DETECTION/ASCERTAINMENT BIAS (FATAL FLAW)

Vaccinated children averaged 7 healthcare visits per year. Unvaccinated
children averaged 2 per year. More visits means more opportunities to receive
a diagnosis. The study is effectively measuring healthcare utilization, not
vaccine effects.

The ear infection finding exposes this directly: vaccinated children showed a
7x higher rate of ear infections (HR 7.00, CI 6.05-8.10). Ear infections are
one of the most common childhood conditions and have no plausible biological
link to vaccination. This result alone demonstrates that the unvaccinated
group's conditions are being massively under-detected.

The study did not adjust for number of healthcare encounters in its regression
models -- arguably the single most important confounder.

2. ZERO CASES IN THE UNVACCINATED GROUP -- STATISTICALLY IMPLAUSIBLE

For several common conditions, the study found zero cases among ~2,000
unvaccinated children:

Condition Population Prevalence Cases in Unvaccinated
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADHD ~10% 0
Diabetes ~0.25% 0
Tics ~1% 0
Behavioral disability Common 0
Learning disability ~5-10% 0
Intellectual disability ~1-3% 0

Zero ADHD cases in 2,000 children is not biologically credible. This means
these children were not being evaluated and diagnosed -- not that they didn't
have these conditions.

3. MASSIVE DIFFERENTIAL FOLLOW-UP

Group Median Follow-Up
----------------------------------------
Vaccinated 970 days (2.7 years)
Unvaccinated 461 days (1.3 years)

Vaccinated children were observed for more than twice as long. More observation
time means more opportunity to develop and detect conditions.

The sensitivity analysis (restricting to longer enrollment periods) paradoxically
made the association stronger:

Minimum Enrollment Hazard Ratio
------------------------------------
Any 2.54
1 year 2.84
3 years 3.48
5 years 4.05

If the association were real, restricting to longer follow-up should stabilize
the HR, not increase it. This escalating pattern is a classic signature of
selection bias -- unvaccinated children who remain enrolled for 5+ years are an
increasingly select subgroup of healthy, low-utilization families.

4. UNCONTROLLED CONFOUNDING

The Cox models adjusted for gender, race, birthweight, prematurity, respiratory
distress, and birth trauma. They did NOT adjust for:

- Number of healthcare encounters (the most critical confounder)
- Socioeconomic status
- Parental education
- Diet and lifestyle
- Environmental exposures
- Breastfeeding status
- Household size / daycare attendance

Parents who refuse all vaccines tend to have fundamentally different healthcare-
seeking behaviors, diets, and lifestyles. Without controlling for these, the
study cannot isolate any effect of vaccines themselves.

5. HEALTHY USER BIAS / SELF-SELECTION

The unvaccinated group is self-selected -- these are families who deliberately
chose zero vaccines. This group differs from vaccinating families in ways that
go far beyond vaccine exposure:

- Lower healthcare utilization (confirmed: 2 vs. 7 visits/year)
- Likely different socioeconomic profile
- Different dietary and lifestyle patterns
- Different relationship with the medical system

The study cannot disentangle "effect of vaccines" from "effect of being the
type of family that vaccinates and engages with healthcare."

6. NOT PEER-REVIEWED

This paper was "entered into hearing record" -- submitted for a government
hearing. It was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, meaning it was not
subjected to the standard scrutiny where epidemiologists would have identified
these exact issues during review.

7. MULTIPLE COMPARISONS WITHOUT CORRECTION

The study tested 20+ individual outcomes without applying any correction for
multiple comparisons (e.g., Bonferroni, false discovery rate). At a significance
threshold of p<0.05 across 20+ tests, several statistically significant results
would be expected purely by chance.

8. NO DOSE-RESPONSE ANALYSIS

If vaccines truly caused these conditions, a dose-response relationship would be
expected -- more vaccines should correlate with more disease. The study
categorized exposure only as "any vs. none" and never tested whether the number
of vaccines (median 18 in the exposed group) correlated with risk. This omission
weakens any causal argument.

9. TIME-VARYING EXPOSURE CLASSIFICATION

Vaccination status was classified as "exposure prior to onset of each condition."
A child could accumulate years of "unexposed" person-time before receiving their
first vaccine and being reclassified. This creates immortal time bias -- the
unexposed group accumulates guaranteed disease-free time, artificially improving
their outcomes.

================================================================================

WHAT THE STUDY ACTUALLY SHOWS

The core finding -- that vaccinated children are diagnosed with more conditions
-- is entirely consistent with a simple, well-known phenomenon: children who
see doctors get diagnosed; children who don't see doctors don't.

This is supported by:

1. The 3.5x difference in annual healthcare visits between groups
2. Zero cases of common conditions (ADHD, learning disability) in unvaccinated
3. A 7x ear infection rate -- a condition with no vaccine mechanism
4. Escalating HRs with longer enrollment (selection bias signature)
5. No dose-response relationship tested

================================================================================

COMPARISON WITH SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS

Finding Consistent with consensus?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
No association with autism Yes
No association with cancer Yes
Association with anaphylaxis Yes (known rare adverse event)
2.5x overall chronic disease risk No -- not supported by large studies
5.5x neurodevelopmental risk No -- contradicts extensive research
4.3x asthma risk No -- mixed evidence, no effect this large

Large-scale studies in Denmark, Finland, and other countries with comprehensive
health registries and minimal ascertainment bias have not found associations of
this magnitude.

================================================================================

SUMMARY OF ISSUES

Issue Severity
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Detection bias (3.5x visit difference) CRITICAL (likely explains all)
Zero cases of common conditions in unvaccinated CRITICAL (confirms under-detection)
Differential follow-up (2x longer in vaccinated) High
No adjustment for healthcare utilization High
Uncontrolled socioeconomic confounding High
Self-selection / healthy user bias High
Not peer-reviewed Moderate
Multiple comparisons without correction Moderate
No dose-response analysis Moderate
Immortal time bias potential Moderate

CONCLUSION: The study's methodology cannot support its claims. The overwhelming
likelihood is that the observed associations reflect differences in healthcare
utilization and detection, not causal effects of vaccination.

Hi @nprofile…jpmd ! There appears to be statistical ...

2026-03-05T13:00:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…xdgk
_________________________

Hi Kudzai (nprofile…jpmd) !

There appears to be statistical "holes" in the study, can you offer counter arguments, or know of any? Thanks!

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2025/10/fact-check-michigan-study-of-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-children-did-not-pass-internal-methods-review.html

This is fine. But if I’m building an app , what’s the best ...

2026-03-04T21:08:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…z6jy
_________________________

This is fine. But if I’m building an app , what’s the best way to embed lightning payments in a non-custodial way, while also not having to pay the equivalent amount as a per user subscription to an LSP to manage the users liquidity? Genuine question.

Spark/Ark are necessary for plebs to build useful/novel bitcoin ...

2026-03-04T19:30:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…8hau
_________________________

Spark/Ark are necessary for plebs to build useful/novel bitcoin apps as liquidity management (woes) are too high for getting users onboarded unless you’re also in the business of continually managing navigating all that on the backend, or paying though the roof to an LSP (and still having to manage all that). You can slap Spark-Ark sdk in your app and you’re done, you’re now opening up the Bitcoin eco system to x number of new normies.

Butchered that apologies! “Phrased differently: you can never ...

2026-03-02T17:43:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…wu0v
_________________________

Butchered that apologies!

“Phrased differently: you can never be sure that the data at hand represents reality, except if the reality is rooted in computation itself.”

Read Gigi!

https://21-ways.com/1/

"Phrased differently: you can never be sure that the data at ...

2026-03-02T17:10:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…z9kt
_________________________

"Phrased differently: you can never be sure that the data at hand represents reality, except if the reality is rooted in computation itself you can never be sure that the data at hand represents reality, except if the reality is rooted in computation itself." - Gigi

Interesting stuff, had to look him up. I would have thought ...

2026-01-14T20:19:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…t9fv
_________________________

Interesting stuff, had to look him up. I would have thought Christianity might not have been overly agreeable with hypnotism in general though?

GM!!

2025-12-08T11:21:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…0g3d
_________________________

GM!!

There is only Bitcoin and everything else, you can see it now, or ...

2025-12-07T22:12:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…hfzx
_________________________

There is only Bitcoin and everything else, you can see it now, or later (now is better)

Amen

2025-10-05T14:14:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…putu
_________________________

Amen

Totally nuts #nevent1q…fdc6

2025-09-17T11:06:45Z

Totally nuts

quoting
nevent1q…fdc6
In a world where #bitcoin exists, it’s now a choice to accept this kind of treatment from a bank. This is set to worsen once CBDCs show up, because there won’t be any cash to withdraw at all. If someone else can tell you what to do with your money is it really your money? Ignore bitcoin at your own peril.

Ok so you 'scan read' so you mustn't have seen the ...

2025-09-16T09:39:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…7vh7
_________________________

Ok so you 'scan read' so you mustn't have seen the part where I said:
'Outside of Nostr ... ' So thanks for letting me know about plebian.market, which I already know about ...

And you didn't actually address the question I had (re: paradox) ... The paradox is, that Bitcoin incentives you to hold rather than spend, not that you'll never spend it, but you are more than likely to hold it rather than spend it. Saving and spending, IS the paradox, because when I hold Bitcoin, I feel like saving more than spending, that's just a fact (for me at least). In fact, holding Bitcoin IS using it ... the paramount invention is the ability to invisibly store your wealth in your mind across time, without it being corrupted, when the time comes, you 'spend' it, you release it's power to someone else.

I agree with you, and want to see a future of bitcoin in use, but the point I was making (perhaps paradox was the wrong word) is that Bitcoin makes you feel like you can save for the first time, and deploy your time and energy sometime in the future ... that's all, it gives you less of a feeling of wanting to spend it, now ... I know you should.

"So, if you are lucky enough to have a shop that accepts Bitcoin and sells something you need to buy, go there." I would, there isn't

"Chiefmonkey runs an online market place." Yes I know, as I've said.

Spend and replace, replace with what? If you're holding Bitcoin, there's nothing to replace it with. Unless you have a fiat job, which means you're not living the full circle no?

Spend and replace was apparently your answer to my question, which wasn't to answer it at all ... you certainly did scan read - what is the point in doing that?

Don't respond if you're not bothered to read someones post, you're only talking to yourself.

There's a paradox here no? I hold bitcoin because I know that ...

2025-09-15T11:41:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…uhjx
_________________________

There's a paradox here no? I hold bitcoin because I know that it will be more valuable in the future, it gives me the freedom of having a lower time preference - therefore I'm less likely to spend it now, or even in the near future. Additionally, where's this circular economy? Outside of Nostr, I don't see any one accepting it where I live (I'm outside the US).

And even on items that I would like to spend my sats on rn, require some form of transferring back to fiat ultimately i.e. is bitrefill et al. a circular economy in your view? There is at least changing of hands of sats, and some sats go to them for keeps - so to some degree it's circular i guess.

also, instead of spending my sats and triggering a tax event, i'm going to take out a loan against it to get whatever item i want - I'm incentivised to do so because of the tax structure (not all ofyour stack can be 'dark' unless you want to get it stuck there i.e. you'll not be able to make a large purchase in the future with it witout drawing the eyes of tax/gov.

I'm all for spending bitcoin ultimately but for me I'm dumping my fiat into it rightnow and keeping it there for the most part, i've spent sats on items that i could but that's been very little tbh , hardware wallets, vpns, bitrefill (all lightning btw)

@npub1dd9…xe7p Hey there! I'm pretty certain I'm having ...

2025-09-15T09:41:45Z

obscura (npub1dd9…xe7p)
Hey there!

I'm pretty certain I'm having connection issues to my relays (nostr.wine) while using nostr over tor, while using your VPN. I've noticed that there are connections issues with accessing TOR in general with your VPN also.

Are you aware of this, and is there a solution?

tnx

ha no worries, I totally messed up the quote I realised, should ...

2025-09-14T13:53:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…v5wd
_________________________

ha no worries, I totally messed up the quote I realised, should be "...the blood of the of the martyr’s are the seeds of the Church." 😅

Oh man, I need to get going.. tired couch to 5k and stoped half ...

2025-09-14T07:54:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…xm73
_________________________

Oh man, I need to get going.. tired couch to 5k and stoped half way 😮‍💨 fair play to you!

Agreed - he keeps popping into to mind (not American) the more I ...

2025-09-14T07:46:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…hy7p
_________________________

Agreed - he keeps popping into to mind (not American) the more I listen to him now in these clips the more I sense, the sensibility of everything he’d been saying. He did not die in vain, rather now is a one with the true vein, from whom every good and perfect gift comes from - he is no doubt showering gifts on many of us right now. If he died for spreading the gospel (sure looks like it), he is a martyr- the “seeds of the martyr’s are the blood of the Church.” (Tertullian)

ah fantastic thanks!

2025-09-14T07:07:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…zqqz
_________________________

ah fantastic thanks!

#asknostr I’m running Nostrudel over Tor. If I have NWC ...

2025-09-12T13:16:51Z

#asknostr

I’m running Nostrudel over Tor. If I have NWC connected to a Cashu.me wallet on a browser on one machine, and NWC connected to AlbyHub on another, if someone zaps me, where is it directed to? What determines which Lightning invoice (therefore wallet) is presented to the zapper?

calle (npub12rv…85vg)
noStrudel (npub1wyu…87ez)
Alby (npub1get…0nfm)

Thanks!

appreciate the response - thanks

2025-09-12T11:54:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…pt7h
_________________________

appreciate the response - thanks

The data in that table is astounding, if you were to steel man ...

2025-09-10T12:37:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…wwnm
_________________________

The data in that table is astounding, if you were to steel man the oppositions argument to it, what would it be? Are there other vax vs non-vax studies that show conflicting data that pro-vax would/will point to? Thanks!

GM!

2025-09-09T12:19:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…uel6
_________________________

GM!

Listened to @npub1s05…eyhe recently and he spoke of Fedimint ...

2025-09-07T09:29:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…f938
_________________________

Listened to Jeff Booth (npub1s05…eyhe) recently and he spoke of Fedimint achieving a layer of social anonymity by setting up (guardians I believe the term was he used) who didn’t know each other in anyway whatsoever so that that can’t collude, then you’re free to setup your own federations anchored to these guardians thus mitigating the underlying counter party risk (of collusion). I’ve most certainly not done an adequate job in relay the information , but it sounded very interesting

Listened to @npub1s05…eyhe recently and he spoke of Fedimint ...

2025-09-07T09:26:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…6cn2
_________________________

Listened to Jeff Booth (npub1s05…eyhe) recently and he spoke of Fedimint achieving a layer of social anonymity by setting up (guardians I believe the term was he used) who didn’t know each other in anyway whatsoever so that that can’t collude, then your free to setup your own federations anchored to this chain. I’ve most certainly not done an adequate job in relay the information , but it sounded very interesting.

#asknostr Does a 'automatically give x sats to user ...

2025-09-06T14:12:18Z

#asknostr
Does a 'automatically give x sats to user you're responding to?, with a manual button to 'opt-out' of giving these automatic sats to a user if you choose' feature exist on one of the apps out there?
I imagine it as way to have sats-flow-flowing around nostr always, with the option to 'soft-block' a user, to opt-out of them receiving your sats. so the inverse of zapping as it stands now basically - you always automatically zap someone x sats with your reply ... if the conversation goes south, you 'soft-block' that person from getting your sats, you no longer find the conversation valuable, so the value transfer stops.

what's their 'reasoning' ?

2025-09-06T11:23:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…yv34
_________________________

what's their 'reasoning' ?

How to become better stewards?

2025-09-06T10:23:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…q5cv
_________________________

How to become better stewards?

ah good luck, I've found it brutal enough in the past

2025-09-06T10:20:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…mmj2
_________________________

ah good luck, I've found it brutal enough in the past

why bonkers to run knots?

2025-09-06T07:39:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…pv9d
_________________________

why bonkers to run knots?

What's the 'Ban Knots connection' referring to when ...

2025-09-03T16:13:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…83s9
_________________________

What's the 'Ban Knots connection' referring to when it says '...will relay privacy preserving transactions'? (fill me in) Thanks!

Over TOR wouldn't be fast enough tough right?

2025-09-03T15:13:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…asqh
_________________________

Over TOR wouldn't be fast enough tough right?

I was just using house as an example of having to sell bitcoin ...

2025-09-03T10:55:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…m8eu
_________________________

I was just using house as an example of having to sell bitcoin and create a taxable event.

A lot of people here are (rightly) pushing no-kyc purchasing of bitcoin. I’m essentially wondering how are these people going to ‘use’ this bitcoin in a kyc/fiat world if they need to? Because in my mind using no-kyc coins for large purchases isn’t possible without alerting taxman/govenrment/bank etc

Thanks! A major European country using FIFO, and if I were to ...

2025-09-03T08:12:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…t49t
_________________________

Thanks! A major European country using FIFO, and if I were to guess a not so tech savvy and capable tax office (could be wrong here though).

My question would apply broadly though to most major western countries, the question really is if I have a bunch of no-kyc utxos, if in the future I need to convert back to fiat (house, big purchase) - what 'do I say/do'. I mean I get the no-KYC, and that the future hopefully is one where we can exchange bitcoin for goods and service directly with our 'neighbor'. But in the near term, I don't want to have bitcoin that is 'stuck' in no-KYC land if I need it for an emergency.

Hope this makes sense and thanks for replying.

Brilliant! Zapped, great work thanks!

2025-09-02T17:21:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…77j5
_________________________

Brilliant! Zapped, great work thanks!

#asknostr how much of your stack do you think should be reported ...

2025-08-31T18:16:09Z

#asknostr how much of your stack do you think should be reported to taxman? presumably you'll need to buy something with your corn, what if it's a large purchase, how do you go about the sale and purchase of house, if it's corn that doesn't have a cost basis? thanks

Came to ask this also, Peaty's 'Generative Energy: ...

2025-08-31T07:16:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…msrh
_________________________

Came to ask this also, Peaty's 'Generative Energy: Protecting and Restoring the Wholeness of Life.' book? Thanks!

What's the context, what's happening here? He wants to ...

2025-08-30T14:55:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…k7km
_________________________

What's the context, what's happening here? He wants to spin up Core nodes?

I'm an hour in, and I can see from your angle, that what you ...

2025-08-30T14:42:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…zd2m
_________________________

I'm an hour in, and I can see from your angle, that what you say is true - it's also true to say, Erik want's you to get his point, like - just listen to me, do the thing, get off zero - do it, just do it - do it etc ... and he says he is frustrated basically because he sees people around him just shrugging it off and moving on, remaining in the cage - that's got to get seriously under your skin. So from this angle, it's more like well I'm just going to rant and shout at you and call you out, maybe that will work for some people listening to it - they be like, 'who's this dope, I'll proof him wrong, I'll look into it .. ' and bam, they're in - or it could be someone saying 'geez this guy is pissed what's he so pissed about, would Bitcoin actually be good for me?' etc --- they want to turn people on, but how unbelievable frustrating it is to see your friends, not get on the life raft?

I forgot to mention, if you want to use Spark right now you can ...

2025-08-29T10:50:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…ym58
_________________________

I forgot to mention, if you want to use Spark right now you can use Walletofsatoshi, go to settings and toggle 'self-custody' mode, and when you receive sats via lightning, that'll actually be via Spark - pretty decent experience, no LSPs to pay, and no managing liquidity - again, shame about the privacy tough - deal breaker for some (or a lot) for sure.

Shame about the privacy element, I wasn't aware of that. I ...

2025-08-29T10:48:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…c9ly
_________________________

Shame about the privacy element, I wasn't aware of that. I think the biggest thing about it for me (from a user perspective) is that you don't need to manage outbound and inbound liquidity, I've always found that completely off-putting and I'm fairly technically sufficient - so from a normies UX perspective, it'd be a step enough learning curve - they're used to sending fiat instantly in relatively decent designed mobile apps at this stage, without having to consider if they've enough sending liquidity, and if they don't tapping an "LSP" (what's that you say?) to give them more liquidity and paying around 10,000 sats for the privilege. thoughts?

Yea saw a pretty cool short showing this (though who knows could ...

2025-08-28T07:23:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…3u8z
_________________________

Yea saw a pretty cool short showing this (though who knows could be faked) but you can see the egg “reaching out” as it were. Still though sperm was still “one of the first” but also, more importantly was the “chosen” one. Which is an even greater framing of the event, you were among one of the first, but you were graced with the highest honours of being chosen. “I want YOU”

#asknostr Lightning isn't good enough for the average user. ...

2025-08-25T09:35:34Z

#asknostr
Lightning isn't good enough for the average user. Managing liquidity even with an app like Zeus is frustrating, even when using LSP. I'm currently trying to create an invoice, and it's just not happening - also the LSP channel is bouncing on and off line.. I ran my own lightning node for a while, and it was a complete pain - the average user isn't going to do this. Cashu is fine for small amounts, but it's 100% custodial, yes it's great for privacy and resolving (mostly) liquidity issues but it's doing an about turn on (for the user) one of the most fundamental aspects of bitcoin - self-custody.

I listened to gladstein (npub1trr…hdpu) on 'What bitcoin did' and I'm sorry to say, he was not listening to the genuine concerns Paul Sztorc was raising (I'm not a proponent Drivechain at all, don't know enough about it).

But gladstein (npub1trr…hdpu) was not listing to Paul's fact that lightning literally cannot scale/serve the global population, to be used as their primary bitcoin payments rail.

Because of the block size bottleneck, it’s not physically possible for the Bitcoin base layer to create enough UTXOs to give every human a channel anchor. At most, the chain can add a few thousand usable UTXOs per block, which is about 10–20 million new UTXOs per year (depending on transaction structure and usage).

To address these limitations developers are introducing more complexities with things like factories etc, but this was another point that Paul was making, if we start building more and more on top of something that from the get go is limited and has negative UX aspects liquidity etc, it might not be the best approach. Paul's rebuttal was that, look it's working - therefore, no problem etc Or Cashu working and can address scaling, but it's fully custodial, so to Paul's point again, if things like Cahsu are the solutions to lightning limitations, it's not good enough, (we're giving away self-custody)

Additionally new comers to the space will have to grapple with the above - e.g. trust Paul (in the countries he's working in) that trusting other people with their sats (Cashu) is fine for x duration (why they ask?) to then have to explain why it's necessary (and how to) sweep their funds to something like Zeus, explain LSPs, liquidity, nodes etc and finally explain sweeping sats from lightning to bitcoin is necessary, and what full self custody genuinely is. I'm not saying providing this education to each person who comes to the space isn't possible, I'm just saying maybe we're building out the wrong things (the ladder is on the wrong wall)

To sum up:
Lightning UX isn't up to scratch (liquidity issues, LSPs, channel management etc) even Alby/ Zeus is frustrating and plenty complex for a semi-technically proficient person
Lightning wont scale globally, if it does it's done with additional complexity and patch work, with come with significant trade-offs.

I'm looking at Spark at the moment which seems promising, and could 'Simplicity' by Blockstream (npub1jg5…6n8n) be something?

Finally I'd like to thank everyone in this space, and all the work they do especially all those explicitly mentioned above.

walker (npub1cj8…rz4u)
Gigi (npub1der…xzpc)
HODL (npub1rtl…jtfs)
MartyBent (npub1guh…6hjy)
jack mallers (npub1cn4…3vle)
dannyknowles (npub16le…ffxj) would love to see more conversation(s) around bitcoin scaling 🙏

Here's fiatjaf (npub180c…h6w6)
https://fiatjaf.com/04e9e814.html article on lightning limitations that Paul referenced, but I don't believe gladstein (npub1trr…hdpu) read (at least prior to the WBD episode)

But what’s actually happing here then? It’s a regional nostr ...

2025-08-22T13:49:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…a02l
_________________________

But what’s actually happing here then? It’s a regional nostr or something?

Didn’t Nvidia prove they landed on the moon using ray tracing?

2025-08-20T19:46:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…8j33
_________________________

Didn’t Nvidia prove they landed on the moon using ray tracing?

What about the malevolent social engineers? How did they become ...

2025-08-20T07:39:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…8hk5
_________________________

What about the malevolent social engineers? How did they become what they are? If they had full knowledge of the creator and mainframe etc how was it that they became corrupt? I.e. how could such an intelligence with such knowledge of the goodness of the creator actually want anything else other than Him. I feel like this is an inaccessible mystery - I see. I reason why they would choose anything other than their creator. If we say there was some imperfection in them that allowed for their choice, we say that the creator programmer didn’t create their agents (angels) perfectly.

Why were they allowed roam around the creation to inject malware, why were they not quarantined themselves.

Finally why are those that chose not to upgrade left in a far worse quarantine eternally, why not permanently erased?

And why were they let roam around?

GM!!

2025-08-19T06:58:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…9esf
_________________________

GM!!

Feedback : Something feels off with the typography/font.

2025-08-17T08:45:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…fu6q
_________________________

Feedback : Something feels off with the typography/font.

Haha ok yea more please! Also is there a bitcoin ...

2025-08-13T08:30:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…r86r
_________________________

Haha ok yea more please! Also is there a bitcoin anti-surveillance state manifesto anywhere? 😅

Hey @npub103m…d3h5 in what way did 4 hour workweek impact your ...

2025-08-12T09:50:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…8yj3
_________________________

Hey Jor (npub103m…d3h5) in what way did 4 hour workweek impact your life? How did you (without giving away secret sauce 😆) make it work for you? Thanks!

GM!

2025-07-29T07:59:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…883y
_________________________

GM!

Really? Really now, I love how we don’t know we don’t know. ...

2025-07-27T08:32:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…zmqq
_________________________

Really? Really now, I love how we don’t know we don’t know. But really? Maybe I don’t want that much money. I mined in 2009 I remember seeing a block mined and rewarded / I sold that computer and hard dative with the bitcoin. I often think about how God took that away from me because I wouldn’t be in a good place in my life now and later. Think about it, money can ruin you.

Scammed into sending it to jam/whirl perhaps? Any ideas of a ...

2025-07-24T19:14:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…h9sg
_________________________

Scammed into sending it to jam/whirl perhaps? Any ideas of a decent story? Breadcrumbs etc?

Mistakingly bought most of my bag in kyc need a way to make them going dark. Any resources or more advice would be most welcomed thanks

Nice.

2025-07-22T07:11:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…ft5y
_________________________

Nice.

Where can one start looking into this? Is there leaked documents, ...

2025-07-22T06:53:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…32dr
_________________________

Where can one start looking into this? Is there leaked documents, whistleblowers etc? Even if so, how did we know these aren’t psyops? What if most conspiracy theories are a divide and conquer, just complete distractions, control etc