Warmed-Over Ashes?

What this page is asking

Dossier 29 argued that a person raised in the historic faith can end up holding the opposite of what he was taught without ever deciding to, and that the remedy is small: read a few passages, read what your own tradition wrote down, and ask your teacher one civil question. Pages like that attract a particular kind of reply. Not a counter-argument, but a word:

Typical labels, of the kind any argument like Dossier 29’s attracts. They are not quotations from any person, and this page describes no person, church, conversation or incident.

This page is not written at anyone. It is written for anyone — including a pastor — who has read Dossier 29, or heard about it, and thinks it is wrong. That is a perfectly respectable thing to think. The question is only what should follow the thought.

So the question, as the page’s author put it: anyone is free to disagree with the article. But its claims can be checked. Should disagreement be met with evidence rather than labels — and if so, what would that look like?

Two positions, labelled, and used consistently throughout

The page labels two ways of answering an argument, and states each as a thoughtful person who holds it would state it.

Notice what the two share. Both hold that not every argument deserves a long reply, and that some arguments are old mistakes. Both care about the people listening. The disagreement is narrow: once a reply is given, does a label count as an answer, or only as a conclusion with the answer left out?

What the page concludes, stated up front

The prompt behind this page

Everything below was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so that you can run it yourself, change it, sharpen it, or reverse it and see what comes back. Three experiments are worth more than reading this page. First, reverse it: ask for the strongest case that Dossier 29 is mistaken, and require it to name the numbered claim it disputes and the evidence for each objection. Second, narrow it: give it the eleven claims and ask it to check each against the primary source, marking each true, false, overstated or opinion. Third, make it personal: give it your own congregation’s statement of faith and ask what it says, and does not say, about baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the creeds.

Write a detailed, source-first response, in British English, for a
general reader who is willing to work. Quote scripture from the
Authorised Version. Date and attribute every other quotation: give the
work, the edition, the section, and the page where possible. Where an
attribution or date is disputed, say so at the point of use. Verify
every quotation against the article or a reliable published source;
where a quotation cannot be verified, cut it. Do not invent quotes.

  TITLE. Warmed-Over Ashes?

  CONTEXT. The article: https://thinkask.ai/articles/abandoned-without-
  meaning-to-simple.html (full dossier with sources: https://thinkask.ai/
  articles/abandoned-without-meaning-to.html). Read both before drafting.
  Some readers, including church leaders, may dismiss the article with
  labels rather than arguments, for example: "Baloney!", "Warmed over
  ashes from an ancient fire", "Legalistic". Write a response to this
  kind of dismissal in general. It must not address, describe or imply
  any specific person, church, conversation or incident. Write it so it
  could be read by anyone who holds this view, including a pastor,
  without feeling singled out.

  POSITION. Anyone is free to disagree with the article. But its claims
  can be checked, and disagreement should be met with evidence, not
  labels. Invite readers who dismiss it to engage on substance.

TWO LABELLED POSITIONS, used consistently:
  E - the Examined: a claim is answered by naming it and showing, from
      evidence, why it is wrong. HELD.
  L - the Label: a familiar error can be recognised and named without
      being argued afresh. State it as a sincere holder would. UNDER TEST.

AVENUES (use the strongest, not all):
1. Which claim is false? The article makes eleven numbered, checkable
   claims. A dismissal should name the claim it disputes and show why.
2. Age is not evidence. "Ancient fire" judges an idea by its age -
   C. S. Lewis's "chronological snobbery". The article's core texts are
   Acts, Ephesians and Hebrews. See Jeremiah 6:16 and Jude 3.
3. What does "legalistic" mean? Legalism usually means earning standing
   with God by rule-keeping (Galatians). The article prescribes no rule
   for salvation and takes no position on baptism or the Supper. There
   may be a real concern underneath, such as the "no creed but the
   Bible" instinct; acknowledge it and note the article presents that
   view fairly in its "second way of seeing it".
4. Statements of faith. Does a church's statement say what baptism is,
   what the Lord's Supper is, and whether it confesses the historic
   creeds? If silent, the teacher becomes the only standard.
5. The Bible's standard for teachers answering challenge: Titus 1:9;
   2 Timothy 2:24-25; 1 Peter 3:15. Quote them as the standard, not as
   an accusation.
6. Independent churches exist because people checked their teachers.
   Luther's 1523 booklet on a congregation's right to judge teaching.
7. Traditions that rarely agree, agree here: Catechism of the Catholic
   Church 907; the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs; Luther.
8. Concede what is fair. The "Where this page stands" sections are
   labelled opinion and persuasive, not neutral; readers may reject
   them. The factual claims should be met with evidence.
9. The article's own question - what does a teacher hold about baptism
   received as an infant, and about what is given in the Lord's
   Supper? Asking it privately and sincerely is a fair test.

TONE. Firm on evidence, generous about motive. Do not say or imply that
anyone who dismisses the article wants control, is insecure, or acts in
bad faith. Frame points as questions and invitations. No sarcasm, no
point-scoring, no lecture. Plain English.

EXCLUDED. Arguing baptism or the Lord's Supper themselves (cross-link
only). Repeating the article's evidence at length (point to it).
Assessing any actual church. Advice on staying or leaving.

NAMING. Name no living person. Deceased figures quoted from dated,
published sources only. Compose all examples and label them composed.

COUNTER-CASE. Objections answered inside the argument, no separate
section - including that not every article deserves a reply, and that
Scripture says to avoid foolish questions and quarrels.

INTERACTIVES. A priors quiz. A label-or-argument sorter. A claim-by-
claim audit of the eleven claims that turns a disagreement into a
written, sourced reply. A date slider testing "ancient means wrong". An
"is this legalism?" sorter. A statement-of-faith checklist. Memory cards
for the texts on answering challenge. A golden-rule drill in which the
reader writes his own answer first.

OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional and
readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating the
question at the top, publishing this prompt in full, repeating the key
points in prominent boxes for readers who skim, and giving the reader
something to do in every major section. Also produce a plain-English
quick version of about fifteen minutes with three short exercises.

The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked. Where a quotation could not be verified against a published source, it was cut or its uncertainty is stated. In two places the checking qualified the brief. The saying that tradition is “not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire”, which fits the title so neatly, is usually credited to Gustav Mahler, but no source for it in Mahler has been found, and Part III says so rather than use it as a quotation. And the claim-by-claim analysis in Part II found that not all eleven of Dossier 29’s claims are the same kind of claim: some rest on documents, some on observation, and it says which are which, because an honest invitation to check has to admit which claims are hard to check.

What do you currently think?

Ten questions. Each has a determinate answer, and you can check every one of them yourself in Part X. Answer them before reading and lock them in. They come back in Part IX with the sources beside them. The score matters less than the habit: this whole page is about saying what you think and then checking it.

What follows

A label is not a reason

Everybody uses labels, and most of the time they are useful. “Spam.” “Clickbait.” “That old chestnut.” A label is a conclusion compressed into a word, and a person with long experience can often reach the right conclusion quickly. Position L is right about that, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

The trouble is what a label does to the person who hears it. He is told the conclusion and given nothing to check. If the label is right, he cannot see why. If it is wrong, he cannot find out. Either way he is asked to take the verdict on the authority of the person who gave it — which, as it happens, is exactly the subject of Dossier 29.

What Position L gets right

Take its case at full strength. Nobody is obliged to answer every article on the internet. A pastor has a congregation to care for, sermons to write, the sick to visit. Silence is always an honourable reply, and this page does not ask anyone to reply to anything. Some arguments really are old mistakes, and a teacher who has met one a hundred times may reasonably not want to walk through it again. And there is a real pastoral instinct at work: a short word can reassure people who are unsettled.

Position E grants all of that. Its claim is narrower. Once a reply is given — especially one meant to tell other people what to think of an argument — the reply should carry its reasons. Not all of them; one will do. “Claim 5 is false; here is the verse.” That sentence is shorter than many labels, and it gives the listener something to check.

The most famous test for “baloney”

The word has its own well-known test. The astronomer Carl Sagan, no friend of religion, published what he called a “baloney detection kit”. Its first two rules are these:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995), ch. 12, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection”.

Further down the same chapter he lists common fallacies, and his example of the first one is worth quoting exactly, because of who it is about:

ad hominem — Latin for “to the man,” attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously)

Ibid. Sagan’s own illustration, with his own invented minister.

Sagan’s illustration is a believer dismissed with a label. Christians rightly object when that happens to them: you have not answered her objection; you have only named her. The rule that protects the Reverend Dr. Smith from a sceptic’s label is the same rule this page is asking for. It cuts every way, including against readers who agree with Dossier 29 and are tempted to answer its critics with labels of their own.

Scripture put the same rule more briefly, long before:

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.

He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.

Proverbs 18:13, 17. Addressed to everyone, and quoted here as a rule for every side, this page included.

Try it: label or argument?

Ten replies to Dossier 29, all composed by this page; none is a quotation from any person. For each, decide whether it is a label (a verdict with no checkable reason) or an argument (a reason someone could check). An argument can still be wrong; that is not the question.

0 of 10 answered.

Which claim is false?

The quick version of Dossier 29 summarises its findings in eleven numbered points, and the full dossier gives the source for each. That is deliberate. It means that anyone who thinks the dossier is wrong does not have to argue with the whole thing. He can pick a number.

Not all eleven are the same kind of claim, and an honest invitation to check has to say so. Laid out plainly:

Claim 3 deserves a word of candour. It says that on questions of belief “almost nobody” checks credentials, gets a second opinion, hears the alternatives, or asks what happens if they are wrong. That is an observation, not a survey. Anyone who has seen otherwise is entitled to say so, and that would be a real answer.

Claim 5 deserves a word too, for the opposite reason. It says there is no passage anywhere that praises a hearer for not checking his teacher. That is a universal negative, which makes it the easiest claim on the list to overturn if it is false: one verse would do it. The full dossier discusses the two passages most often offered, 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and Hebrews 13:17, and says why it thinks neither is such a passage. If there is another, quoting it would settle the point.

Try it: a claim-by-claim audit

Go through the eleven. For each, choose where you stand. If you dispute a claim, say why and give a source. At the end the page turns your answers into a short written reply you can copy and send to anyone, including the author of this site. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere; it stays in this browser tab and disappears when you close it.

Is old the same as wrong?

“Warmed-over ashes from an ancient fire” is a vivid phrase, and it makes a definite claim: that the ideas in question were alive once, are dead now, and are being reheated. It is worth asking what, exactly, would make that true.

… what I have called my “chronological snobbery,” the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do?

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955), ch. 13, “The New Look”. Lewis is describing a habit of his own which a friend talked him out of.

Lewis’s question is the right one to put to the word “ancient”. If the ideas in Dossier 29 were refuted, somebody did the refuting, somewhere, and it can be cited. If they merely went out of fashion, their age tells us nothing about whether they are true.

How ancient, exactly?

Look at what the dossier actually rests on. Its central texts are the Book of Acts, the letter to the Ephesians, the letter to the Hebrews and the first letter to the Thessalonians — all first-century. Its later sources include an American court case from 1972 and the Catechism of the Catholic Church from 1992. The newest thing in the whole argument is the dossier itself. If “ancient” means discredited, it discredits Acts 17:11 and Hebrews 13:17 long before it reaches anything Luther wrote — and with them every sermon ever preached on those texts, including sermons preached last Sunday in churches of every kind.

Scripture itself does not treat age as a defect. It treats it, if anything, as a recommendation:

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.

Jeremiah 6:16.

… it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

Jude 3. “Once” here means once for all: the faith is something handed over, not something reinvented.

And the churches that most value being new and unencumbered say the same thing in their own way whenever they speak of “getting back to the New Testament”. That is an appeal to the oldest standard available. On that point the independent churches and the historic ones agree completely: the older standard judges the newer teaching, not the other way round. The only disagreement is about which old things count.

The fair point inside “ashes”

There is something true in the phrase, and it should be granted plainly. It is possible to revere old forms for their own sake, to repeat words nobody means, and to mistake a museum for a faith. Jesus rebuked people for “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:7). The church historian Jaroslav Pelikan drew the line precisely:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (the 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities; Yale University Press, 1984), p. 65.

So the fair question is whether Dossier 29 asks for traditionalism. It does not. It does not ask anyone to revere the Westminster Confession or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, still less to adopt them. It asks people to use written, public documents as a standard that both hearer and teacher can check, and to read what their own family’s church once confessed so that any change is a decision rather than a drift. That is not worshipping ashes. It is checking the fire against the fire it was lit from.

Lewis, who coined the phrase this Part turns on, also gave the practical reason old books matter, and it is not reverence:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

C. S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books”, introduction to Athanasius, On the Incarnation (1944); reprinted in God in the Dock (1970).

Try it: where would you draw the line?

Suppose “ancient” really did mean “discredited”. Move the slider to the date before which, in your judgement, a source should no longer count. Watch what goes. Dates are approximate, and several New Testament dates are disputed by scholars; the order is not.

What “legalistic” means

“Legalistic” is a serious word in Christian vocabulary, and it is worth being careful with it, because it can mean two quite different things.

The case that provoked it is recorded in Acts:

And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.

Acts 15:1. The council that followed rejected the demand (Acts 15:19–29).

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ … for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

Galatians 2:16; 5:4.

That is what legalism is in the New Testament: a rule set up as a condition of salvation. So the fair test is simple. What rule does Dossier 29 set up as a condition of anything?

It lays down none. It does not say that anyone is saved, or lost, or a better Christian, for checking or not checking his teacher. It takes, in its own words, “no position on baptism or the Lord’s Supper”. It does not ask anyone to leave a church or join one. What it asks for is reading — a few passages, and one document from your own tradition — and one question, asked privately and politely. Reading earns nobody anything. Neither does asking.

The other meaning, and the real concern underneath

In ordinary speech “legalistic” often means something looser: rigid, preoccupied with rules and procedures, more interested in the letter than the spirit. If that is what is meant, it is a complaint about tone or emphasis rather than doctrine, and it is a fair thing to say about any piece of writing. The useful version names the part that reads that way.

And there may be a deeper concern behind the word, which deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms. Many sincere Christians hold, as a matter of conviction, that written confessions and creeds are human additions that come between a believer and his Bible — “no creed but the Bible”. To such a reader, an argument built on ordination vows and catechisms can feel like rules being brought back in by the side door.

That concern is not ignored by Dossier 29. It is stated there, sympathetically, as the view the page tests. In the quick version’s words:

God gives shepherds and tells us to follow them. Someone who sits in church marking his pastor’s doctrine has stopped being a learner. Written confessions are human documents that get between a man and his Bible. People who think this way mean it sincerely: they have seen congregations torn apart by members who fancy themselves theologians.

Dossier 29, quick version, “The second way of seeing it”.

The dossier’s answer is that the confessions themselves claim only a subordinate authority — the Westminster Confession says that councils “may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both” (ch. 31) — and that the real choice is not between a written standard and the Bible alone, but between a written standard and an unwritten one. Anyone who thinks that answer fails is welcome to say why; that would be an argument. The case for and against creeds is set out at length in Dossier 24 and Dossier 25.

Try it: is this legalism?

Eight statements. For each, decide whether it is legalism in Paul’s sense — a rule made a condition of being right with God. The composed examples are labelled as such.

0 of 8 answered.

The statement-of-faith test

Many churches, including most independent ones, publish a statement of faith. The best of them are careful, honest documents. The question Dossier 29 raised is not whether they are true — they usually are, as far as they go — but whether they answer the questions on which Christians actually divide.

The dossier’s point, in one sentence:

That is not a charge against anyone. A short statement may be short for good reasons: to welcome people, to focus on essentials, or because it was written for co-operation between churches that differ. Many congregations also have a fuller constitution or membership booklet that says more. But it does mean that on any question the statement leaves open, a hearer who wants to check what he is taught has nothing to check it against except the teaching itself.

Try it: five questions for any statement of faith

Take the statement of the congregation you attend — your own, nobody else’s — and answer honestly. If you do not know, that is an answer too, and the most useful one.

The Bible’s standard for answering

The New Testament does not leave open how a Christian teacher should respond when his teaching is challenged. It says so directly, more than once. These passages are quoted here as the standard every Christian teacher already accepts — not as a charge that anyone has failed it. They bind this page and its readers first.

Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.

Titus 1:9. Among the qualifications of an elder. “Gainsayers” means those who speak against.

Notice what this assumes. The elder is expected to be able to convince those who disagree, and to do it “by sound doctrine” — by content. Paul does not treat that as a burden laid on the office. It is part of the description of a man fit for it. It is, in a sense, a compliment.

But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.

2 Timothy 2:23–25.

This passage contains the strongest objection to this page, and it should be met directly. Position L can fairly say: Scripture tells me to avoid foolish questions and quarrels, and that is what I am doing. Two things are worth noticing. First, the same sentence that says “avoid” goes on, without a break, to say “in meekness instructing those that oppose”. Paul evidently did not think avoiding quarrels meant declining to instruct. Second, the “foolish questions” Paul has in view are described elsewhere in the same letters as “genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law” (Titus 3:9) — speculative disputes that go nowhere. Whether Acts 17:11 says what it says, or whether an ordination vow contains what it contains, is not that kind of question. It can be settled by reading. And even of the man Paul calls “an heretick”, he says to reject him only “after the first and second admonition” (Titus 3:10).

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

1 Peter 3:15. Addressed to all Christians, not only to teachers.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.

James 1:19.

Read together, these give a shape any Christian would recognise: listen first; answer with content; answer gently; and be ready to give a reason. Nothing in them requires a teacher to answer every article. Everything in them suggests that when he does answer, the answer should be a reason. And every one of them applies with equal force to readers who agree with Dossier 29. A label thrown back from the other side fails exactly the same test, and this page uses none.

Try it: the texts, as cards

Eight passages. Read the reference and the prompt, try to say what the text asks of someone answering a challenge, then turn the card. Mark honestly whether you already knew it.

0 of 8 turned over.

Where independent churches came from

It is worth asking where the freedom to start a church without a bishop, a synod or a confession came from in the first place. Every church that has ever separated from another, or begun without one, has rested on the same claim: that teaching must be tested against Scripture, and that ordinary Christians may do the testing. The Reformers made that claim against Rome. The free churches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made it against the Reformers’ own state churches. Every independent congregation founded since has made it, at least implicitly, simply by existing.

Luther made the argument in so many words, in a short treatise written in 1523 for the congregation of a small Saxon town, Leisnig. Its title is the argument:

That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Right and Power to Judge All Teaching and to Call, Appoint, and Dismiss Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture.

… all teachers and their teaching should and must be subject to the judgment of the listeners.

Martin Luther, 1523. WA 11:401–416; English in Luther’s Works (American Edition), vol. 39, pp. 301–314. Quoted from the LW translation, as in Dossier 29.

So there is a question here worth sitting with, offered as a question and not as a charge. If a church exists because Christians once claimed the right to test their teachers, can the exercise of that right, politely and in private, be the thing that threatens it? Asking a pastor where he stands on baptism is the same act as the Reformation, in miniature and with better manners.

Traditions that rarely agree, agreeing

The point is not only Protestant. On this narrow question, documents from traditions that contest almost everything else say the same thing.

A Roman catechism, four Orthodox patriarchs answering a pope, and the Reformer the pope excommunicated. None of them treats the hearer’s part in guarding the faith as insubordination. Each would add conditions — reverence, order, due process — and Dossier 29 asks for exactly those: private, polite, sincere.

Try it: who said it?

Six sentences on testing teachers. Guess the source before you are told. The point is how little the answer changes the sentence.

What is fair to reject, and one question

An invitation to argue is worth nothing unless it concedes what can fairly be rejected. So here is Dossier 29, sorted honestly.

The dossier also qualifies itself in places a critic might not expect. It says that the Berœans were testing a travelling preacher, not a settled pastor, and uses Acts 17:11 only for what it shows. It refuses to soften Hebrews 13:17 and grants that it commands real submission to real authority. It takes no position on baptism or the Supper, and none on whether anyone should stay in or leave a church. A reply that engages those qualifications will be far more persuasive than one that ignores them.

The dossier’s own question

Dossier 29 ends with one practical request, and it is a fair test in every direction:

A teacher of any tradition can answer that in a few sentences, and most would be glad to be asked. A clear answer, whatever it is, serves everyone: the hearer knows where he stands, and the teacher has been heard on his own terms rather than described by someone else. If the dossier is wrong to think the question matters, one conversation will show it.

Try it: the golden-rule drill

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). Write your own answer before you see one.

Your answers, revisited

Here are the ten questions you answered before reading, with what the sources say. If you skipped the quiz, this section will be empty. Go back to the top, answer them, and return.

Check it yourself

Thirteen items. Nearly everything here is free, online and short. If you read only three, read the first three. If you do only one thing, do the last.

1. 1. Dossier 29, quick version, “The short answer”. Read this first. Ten minutes. The eleven claims, in order. Then the full dossier for the source behind any claim you doubt.
2. 2. Titus 1:5–9 and 3:9–11; 2 Timothy 2:14–26; 1 Peter 3:13–17. Read this first. Fifteen minutes. What a teacher is to do when challenged, and what he is to avoid.
3. 3. Acts 15:1–29 and Galatians 1–3. Read this first. Thirty minutes. What legalism was, in the case that defined it.
4. 4. Acts 17:10–12; 1 Thessalonians 5:12–22; Ephesians 4:11–16; Hebrews 13:7–17. Fifteen minutes. The texts Dossier 29 rests on, whole.
5. 5. Jeremiah 6:16; Jude 3; Mark 7:1–13. Ten minutes. The old paths, the faith once delivered, and the warning against human tradition.
6. 6. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955), ch. 13; “On the Reading of Old Books” (1944), in God in the Dock. Twenty minutes. Chronological snobbery and the case for old books.
7. 7. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (Yale, 1984). A short book of lectures. Tradition versus traditionalism.
8. 8. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995), ch. 12. Twenty minutes. The baloney detection kit, including its example of a believer dismissed by a label.
9. 9. Luther, That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Right and Power to Judge All Teaching… (1523). Thirty minutes; Luther’s Works vol. 39, pp. 301–314 (WA 11:401–416).
10. 10. Catechism of the Catholic Church §907; the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848), §17. Ten minutes, free online. Read the paragraphs, not just the sentences.
11. 11. Westminster Confession, ch. 31; Thirty-Nine Articles, XXI. Five minutes. Two confessions stating their own fallibility.
12. 12. Your own congregation’s statement of faith. Ten minutes. Apply the five questions in Part V. If there is a fuller document, ask for it.
13. 13. One reply, with one reason. Do this one. If you think Dossier 29 is wrong, write to say so — to a friend, in a comment, or to the author — and name the claim and the evidence. If you think it is right, ask the one question in Part VIII, privately and politely. Either way, you will have turned a verdict into a conversation.

Every individual named on this page is deceased and is quoted from a dated, published source. Churches are named only where their own published documents are quoted. No actual person, congregation, conversation or incident is described, addressed or implied. Every example of a reply or a scenario is composed by this page and labelled as composed. Where an attribution or date is uncertain the page says so at the point of use: the saying about ashes and fire, and the dates of several New Testament letters.