I’m so unbelievably happy I found your channel. I recently converted to the LCMS and I’ve been second guessing myself. Thinking I should’ve gone EO. Y’all are helping me keep my peace!
9:25 "In this respect they are not actually engaging with the scholarly debates whatsoever, showing they're apologists first and not actual scholars or historians." Absolutely scathing and undeniably true. I'm super honoured that my content was a source for this masterful video, so many thanks for that! The video itself is beautifully succinct and definitive in laying to rest the canon conundrum. I'll be sending this to people who need an answer to the conundrum but don't have the patience for my 2+ hour streams. Excellent work.
@@TheOtherPaul It is implicit in the protestant and orthodox paradigm: the reduction of divine revelation to the analysis of opinions. After seeing your debate with Jimmy Akin, I find it hard to put stock in what you say explicitly as well, because you seem to redefine everything as soon as it's challenged.
When my 13-year-old son asked me about this, I explained him the difference between the fact and witnesses to the fact. The witness to a crime or lack thereof do not make the crime. They simply provide evidence for it.
I am glad to see the Lutherans tackling this issue because the Calvinist position is to just repeat, “The scriptures are self-authenticating,” without explaining what that means or providing evidence for this assertion. Lutherans tend to actually want to explain why their position is both scriptural and reasonable.
This is excellent. Are you on Podbeam or something? I like to listen to stuff when i drive. I can always download the UA-cam video, but it's nice to just have the audio. Keep it up!
Okay, so this meme is 2-dimensional in form and argument. The "authority" question just pushes the step back. But how do we avoid the relativistic slide of "self-authenticating"? Because there can't be different truly Theopneustos works for each person. What do you say to an Orthodox who claims that Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Solomon) or 1 Maccabees is self-authenticating? That those books are believed to be Scripture by the majority of Christians for the majority of Christian history.
Well, we could dispute that empirical claim at the end. As for determining canon, there are many methods. Lutherans actually would affirm self-authenticafion as one means. Another, for NT books, is deciphering authorship. If a book has apostolic origin, then it is scripture. My blog post linked in the description also has a unique argument in it: If we can determine first that some set of Christian church bodies is correct prior to examining scripture at all, then we can determine that there are a set number of possible canons. The approach in my blog was to do that via natural theology, but it could also be done by empirical means of examining the truth of the events in the Gospels (and falsehood of heretical gospels), thus demonstrating the truth of Christian church bodies that accept the Gospels, which narrows the set of possible canons. -Seth
I would recommending watching the channel Apocrypha Apocalypse, a Catholic apologist, has an 8 part series interacting with Chemnitz, Gerhard, and may other important figures in the age of Lutheran orthodoxy, including other prominent figures such as Peipkorn. Whether you agree with his assessment or not it’s very informative and he has a strong case. It really an uphill battle for Protestant to make a case against the Orthodox and Catholic canon. Interestingly, if English speaking Lutherans were being true to their heritage, they would have all the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books in their bibles, which historically has always been the case. Lutherans like Anglican at least historically appear to take a “middle ground”. ua-cam.com/video/bhGjQTjRtbg/v-deo.html
Decided to give this a listen. In general, he's presenting a decent overview, but he often falls short on the details and some of the distinctions being made. I don't necessarily blame him for that-- if you haven't read too much on the topic, you'd probably miss some of the distinctions and details. That said, when the distinctions are properly made and details are rightly explained, it does undercut the strength of many of his points rather significantly. I have a rather high view of the apocrypha for a Lutheran, but I retain the distinctions between different categories of canonicity of the Bible that Lutherans have made. It's obviously a huge series, so I'll just give two examples of how his shortcomings on some of the distinctions really hurt his arguments: 1) He says Luther flip-flops on some of this when Luther uses apocryphal texts to make arguments. This is not the case. Luther's position, as that of later 16th and 17th century Lutherans, is that the apocrypha can be used to make arguments for doctrine, but they must be used as *support* and not the *foundation* of the argument. This is because apocryphal texts do have authority; it's just not infallible authority. It's similar to how church fathers have authority, yet they're not infallible. I'd contend, they tend to hold the apocrypha in higher regard than the opinions of the fathers. 2) He makes sweeping comments about how the church has "historically" received the apocrypha as if Lutherans changed this. He makes it sound as if the church has always received apocrypha at the same level as all the other texts of the Bible (though he sounds like he's willing to grant occasional exceptions to this). This isn't, IMO, the most honest or accurate take on the data. The data is rather scattered on this issue. Some fathers seem to place the apocrypha at the same level of the other books, without distinction. Others say it shouldn't really be read much at all-- only in specific circumstances (usually this is "in private" or "only the clergy/learned"). Others say they are to be read in churches but are not inspired. Perhaps the most abused example here is the council of Carthage, which puts forward the RC canon. Here the council is defining the canon as books to be read in church-- not necessarily books that are inspired. If that's our definition of canon, then the apocrypha are canonical for Lutherans since we have retained apocryphal readings in the church (the Lutheran Missal project has all the historic Western lectionary readings, including the apocryphal ones, which occur on weekday masses). Furthermore, Josephus' account of the destruction of the temple would be canonical for American Lutherans too since that was in the LCMS German hymnal to be read in church on a particular day of the year. Obviously, this is an absurd conclusion though since most ppl don't mean to use "canon" to refer to "books read in the church" in this debate. Most mean "list of inspired texts." --Seth
@@ScholasticLutherans And around and around we go. It really comes down to authority. Did the Orthodox and the Catholic Church have the authority to include the books that Protestantism rejected? Yes. Councils and the Church solve disputes (no single individual like Jerome … Jerome would submit to the Church not his opinions). There was no settled canon among the Jews at the time of Christ. Early Christians read the Greek Septuagint which included the seven deuterocanonical books Catholic use and the books the Orthodox use (3 maccabees, etc.). I understand that Lutherans and Anglicans see these books as non-canonical but important and useful to read (at least for Lutherans & Anglicans). The Reformed straight up reject these books full stop. Which I find ironic that modern American Lutherans would use reformed Bibles. You might find this website interesting. Article: Johann Gerhard, the Apocrypha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls hips.dormitionpress.org/?p=65 Grace and peace be with you.
An infallible magisterium is just the logical consequence of an infallible tradition and an infallible scripture, the Catholics are the only ones that seem to understand this. It makes no sense to speak of scripture's infallibility unless we can trust it has been infallibly delivered to us. In other words, scripture and tradition don't do anything unless lived. As for the notion that Catholics can't escape the circularity that plagues protestants, it needs to be understood that this "circularity" in both instances is the result of a faith that anything can be infallible at all. It isn't a problem for either party because we believe in God, and God is the one who protects from error. This infallibility though does indeed have an internal logic to it, which I spelled out above, and it is a logic which the protestants and the Orthodox don't deal with, or, if they do deal with it, need to resort to weird ideas that the content of our faith is somehow discernable scientifically, which often leads to some collapse between creator and creation. The Catholic claim was never that confusion is no more, it's that when the boat is rocking, we have to trust that Christ will wake up and calm the storm.
The magisterium is not infallible because you can plainly look at it and see it is not infallible. The layperson can look at the Roman church and see the corruptions, both historical and modern that plague it and come to that conclusion.
@@Furinkazan541Well this is where the RC schizophrenia really shows itself: The RCC believes an ecumenical council can err in it's reasoning, scientific facts used, arguments, and data presented. And if a council did err in it's reasoning, citations, etc. it's pronouncements are still infallibly correct. That is just straight up fideism, and makes the RCC completely unfalsifiable.
Dumb argument since there was no agreed upon fixed canon at the time of Christ so even if the Pharisees tried to use a version of the canon conundrum against Christ He could have rightly just said “you claim your tradition tells us which list of scrolls are inspired yet your list differs from the Sadducees and the Essenes”. If you don’t agree that there wasn’t a fixed canon at that point then take up your argument with the person who wrote this: “The entire process of canonization is murky. Scholars are simply unsure how certain books ultimately became authoritative and others did not. But from the (late) Rabbis’ perspective, Ben Sira’s had two things potentially going against it. First, it was attributed to an author who clearly lived after the “time of prophecy” had ceased.[5] That is, according to later rabbinic understandings Ben Sira was simply written too late to be considered the product of divine inspiration. Thus, it was excluded from the biblical canon. The second issue was that (in its Greek translation) it was accepted as authoritative by Christians IN THE THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURIES CE. If the book was on the edge, this argument goes, its acceptance by Christians might have pushed the Rabbis in the other direction.” www.thetorah.com/article/the-wisdom-of-ben-sira-how-jewish
Yeah but which one is right? Does Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Church of The East, SSPX, Genuine/ True Orthodox, Palmarians, Anglicans, Episcopals, Anglo-Caths, Lutherans, Old Catholics, etc. all hold equal authority? How can they all have authority if none of them agree?
This dude would get crushed in a canon debate. The orthodox would love to talk to this guy. You should debate someone like jay dyer. You avoided the topic the whole video and talked around the point. Lutherans won't be around much longer. Dead faith
Unfortunately Jay Dyer doesn't have the proper nous to contemplate the writings of St. Elrak the Grey. Once he receives those energies, come back to me.
Reminds me of the hilarious debate between other Paul and Akin. After chest-thumping, bloviating for hours, and snidely denigrating anti Sola Scriptura opponents, OP got utterly annihilated by Akin and spent the next month making endless streams trying to defend himself and crying to his echo chamber. Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.
You've got to feel for the actual Orthodox around the world, when they find out they're represented online by Internet Catechumens whose main church affiliation is the Cathedral of St Jay Dyer of Brostantinople. (Not a sleight on Dyer himself, just an observation about a section of his avid followers). Hopefully I'm wildly wrong about you and my suspicions entirely misplaced. That would be good.
I don't mean this to be insulting, at all, but the massive internal incoherence, inconsistency, and infighting within Christianity is exactly why I threw my hands up and rid myself of this anxiety-inducing religion. Of course, atheism is foolish. That's how I wound up practicing the religion of my pre-Christian forefathers, informed by Neoplatonism. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants remind me of "Rock-Paper-Scissors". My own father has become an eternal neophyte, jumping from denomination to denomination in his youth, ultimately settling on Eastern Orthodox, but he still interprets so much through an undeniably Protestant lens. He listens to the bishops only when the bishops tell him what he wants to hear. Why am I leaving this comment? This channel was on my homepage for some reason. Good video though, I will be making use of it 😉
@@chemnitzfan654 That's not true, and it's a ridiculous assertion. Some societies practice it, others don't. Some cultures also treat the practice of war as tantamount to human sacrifice (which is obviously distinct from selecting victims from within a group's own populace), while others only make human sacrifices out of capital punishment (again, very different from selecting someone innocent). In fact, even animal sacrifice was comparatively rare, as animals were expensive. Most offerings from European Pagans involved cakes and other treats, money, libations of alcohol/milk/fresh spring water, the burning of incense, and votive deposits into bogs and such of weapons or other valuables. The Gods could also be honored through the swearing and keeping of oaths. To say that people aren't Pagan if they're not conducting human sacrifice is nothing but a strawman argument. The Pagan Romans sometimes claimed other groups were practicing human sacrifice as justification to take up arms against them.
@Liquid Oxygen you are just out here LARPing. Enjoy throwing your children into the bog to appease the swamp gods so they will bring housing prices down. 🤣
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I’m so unbelievably happy I found your channel. I recently converted to the LCMS and I’ve been second guessing myself. Thinking I should’ve gone EO. Y’all are helping me keep my peace!
9:25 "In this respect they are not actually engaging with the scholarly debates whatsoever, showing they're apologists first and not actual scholars or historians."
Absolutely scathing and undeniably true.
I'm super honoured that my content was a source for this masterful video, so many thanks for that! The video itself is beautifully succinct and definitive in laying to rest the canon conundrum. I'll be sending this to people who need an answer to the conundrum but don't have the patience for my 2+ hour streams. Excellent work.
Thank you! Your content for this was phenomenal, especially loved your response to Kyle on this.
@@ScholasticLutherans thanks boss!
That one would think scholarly study is necessary to know Christ tells us pretty much everything we need to know
@@account2871 none of us ever said that, try again.
@@TheOtherPaul It is implicit in the protestant and orthodox paradigm: the reduction of divine revelation to the analysis of opinions.
After seeing your debate with Jimmy Akin, I find it hard to put stock in what you say explicitly as well, because you seem to redefine everything as soon as it's challenged.
I did a video on this a while ago. Glad to see you tackling it too. Keep up the good work.
Yep! I referred to you in the description and in the script. Your stuff on that was so good!
@@ScholasticLutherans I meant on this particular meme. Mine on this was quite rambling without a script. They are also equivocating on “tradition”.
@@ScholasticLutherans I will say I’ve never been referenced with Chemnitz before.
Fantastic work. And thanks for the shout out!
Couldn't have done it without your contributions!
@@ScholasticLutherans yes, very good job
Concise and clear. Thanks brother, good work
When my 13-year-old son asked me about this, I explained him the difference between the fact and witnesses to the fact. The witness to a crime or lack thereof do not make the crime. They simply provide evidence for it.
Great video! Thank you for doing this.
I am glad to see the Lutherans tackling this issue because the Calvinist position is to just repeat, “The scriptures are self-authenticating,” without explaining what that means or providing evidence for this assertion. Lutherans tend to actually want to explain why their position is both scriptural and reasonable.
a very prescient presentation on a relevant topic, good work
Excellent video. Thank you.
This needs WAY more views. Why do the Romanists and Easternists seem to get so many more views?
Extremely well done. Thank you!
Good stuff, and I've come to pretty much the same conclusions. Thanks a lot!
This was excellent
Thanks! Big fan of your channel
Very well, guys! 👏🏻
Good stuff, I run into this argument a lot.
This is excellent. Are you on Podbeam or something? I like to listen to stuff when i drive. I can always download the UA-cam video, but it's nice to just have the audio. Keep it up!
Nice video.
Thanks! Desde México
Except the fact Jesus literally Sola Scriptura'd the devil in the wilderness.
Okay, so this meme is 2-dimensional in form and argument. The "authority" question just pushes the step back. But how do we avoid the relativistic slide of "self-authenticating"? Because there can't be different truly Theopneustos works for each person.
What do you say to an Orthodox who claims that Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Solomon) or 1 Maccabees is self-authenticating? That those books are believed to be Scripture by the majority of Christians for the majority of Christian history.
Well, we could dispute that empirical claim at the end. As for determining canon, there are many methods.
Lutherans actually would affirm self-authenticafion as one means.
Another, for NT books, is deciphering authorship. If a book has apostolic origin, then it is scripture.
My blog post linked in the description also has a unique argument in it: If we can determine first that some set of Christian church bodies is correct prior to examining scripture at all, then we can determine that there are a set number of possible canons. The approach in my blog was to do that via natural theology, but it could also be done by empirical means of examining the truth of the events in the Gospels (and falsehood of heretical gospels), thus demonstrating the truth of Christian church bodies that accept the Gospels, which narrows the set of possible canons.
-Seth
Arbitrary.
Just ask the RC and EO apologists, “says who?”
They answer, “sinful man.” I answer, “God.”
Who would you rather believe?
We do not. We say: "God, through sinful men". That is how the Bible was compiled, and much more importantly, how the books of the Bible were written
I would recommending watching the channel Apocrypha Apocalypse, a Catholic apologist, has an 8 part series interacting with Chemnitz, Gerhard, and may other important figures in the age of Lutheran orthodoxy, including other prominent figures such as Peipkorn.
Whether you agree with his assessment or not it’s very informative and he has a strong case. It really an uphill battle for Protestant to make a case against the Orthodox and Catholic canon.
Interestingly, if English speaking Lutherans were being true to their heritage, they would have all the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books in their bibles, which historically has always been the case. Lutherans like Anglican at least historically appear to take a “middle ground”.
ua-cam.com/video/bhGjQTjRtbg/v-deo.html
Decided to give this a listen. In general, he's presenting a decent overview, but he often falls short on the details and some of the distinctions being made. I don't necessarily blame him for that-- if you haven't read too much on the topic, you'd probably miss some of the distinctions and details. That said, when the distinctions are properly made and details are rightly explained, it does undercut the strength of many of his points rather significantly. I have a rather high view of the apocrypha for a Lutheran, but I retain the distinctions between different categories of canonicity of the Bible that Lutherans have made.
It's obviously a huge series, so I'll just give two examples of how his shortcomings on some of the distinctions really hurt his arguments:
1) He says Luther flip-flops on some of this when Luther uses apocryphal texts to make arguments. This is not the case. Luther's position, as that of later 16th and 17th century Lutherans, is that the apocrypha can be used to make arguments for doctrine, but they must be used as *support* and not the *foundation* of the argument. This is because apocryphal texts do have authority; it's just not infallible authority. It's similar to how church fathers have authority, yet they're not infallible. I'd contend, they tend to hold the apocrypha in higher regard than the opinions of the fathers.
2) He makes sweeping comments about how the church has "historically" received the apocrypha as if Lutherans changed this. He makes it sound as if the church has always received apocrypha at the same level as all the other texts of the Bible (though he sounds like he's willing to grant occasional exceptions to this). This isn't, IMO, the most honest or accurate take on the data. The data is rather scattered on this issue. Some fathers seem to place the apocrypha at the same level of the other books, without distinction. Others say it shouldn't really be read much at all-- only in specific circumstances (usually this is "in private" or "only the clergy/learned"). Others say they are to be read in churches but are not inspired. Perhaps the most abused example here is the council of Carthage, which puts forward the RC canon. Here the council is defining the canon as books to be read in church-- not necessarily books that are inspired. If that's our definition of canon, then the apocrypha are canonical for Lutherans since we have retained apocryphal readings in the church (the Lutheran Missal project has all the historic Western lectionary readings, including the apocryphal ones, which occur on weekday masses). Furthermore, Josephus' account of the destruction of the temple would be canonical for American Lutherans too since that was in the LCMS German hymnal to be read in church on a particular day of the year. Obviously, this is an absurd conclusion though since most ppl don't mean to use "canon" to refer to "books read in the church" in this debate. Most mean "list of inspired texts."
--Seth
@@ScholasticLutherans And around and around we go. It really comes down to authority.
Did the Orthodox and the Catholic Church have the authority to include the books that Protestantism rejected? Yes. Councils and the Church solve disputes (no single individual like Jerome … Jerome would submit to the Church not his opinions). There was no settled canon among the Jews at the time of Christ. Early Christians read the Greek Septuagint which included the seven deuterocanonical books Catholic use and the books the Orthodox use (3 maccabees, etc.).
I understand that Lutherans and Anglicans see these books as non-canonical but important and useful to read (at least for Lutherans & Anglicans). The Reformed straight up reject these books full stop. Which I find ironic that modern American Lutherans would use reformed Bibles.
You might find this website interesting. Article: Johann Gerhard, the Apocrypha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
hips.dormitionpress.org/?p=65
Grace and peace be with you.
An infallible magisterium is just the logical consequence of an infallible tradition and an infallible scripture, the Catholics are the only ones that seem to understand this. It makes no sense to speak of scripture's infallibility unless we can trust it has been infallibly delivered to us. In other words, scripture and tradition don't do anything unless lived.
As for the notion that Catholics can't escape the circularity that plagues protestants, it needs to be understood that this "circularity" in both instances is the result of a faith that anything can be infallible at all. It isn't a problem for either party because we believe in God, and God is the one who protects from error. This infallibility though does indeed have an internal logic to it, which I spelled out above, and it is a logic which the protestants and the Orthodox don't deal with, or, if they do deal with it, need to resort to weird ideas that the content of our faith is somehow discernable scientifically, which often leads to some collapse between creator and creation.
The Catholic claim was never that confusion is no more, it's that when the boat is rocking, we have to trust that Christ will wake up and calm the storm.
The magisterium is not infallible because you can plainly look at it and see it is not infallible.
The layperson can look at the Roman church and see the corruptions, both historical and modern that plague it and come to that conclusion.
@@gumbyshrimp2606 Did you even read my comment?
@@account2871Yes, now why did an infallible Magesterium use a forged document to justify its own Supremacy?
@@Furinkazan541Well this is where the RC schizophrenia really shows itself:
The RCC believes an ecumenical council can err in it's reasoning, scientific facts used, arguments, and data presented. And if a council did err in it's reasoning, citations, etc. it's pronouncements are still infallibly correct. That is just straight up fideism, and makes the RCC completely unfalsifiable.
Dumb argument since there was no agreed upon fixed canon at the time of Christ so even if the Pharisees tried to use a version of the canon conundrum against Christ He could have rightly just said “you claim your tradition tells us which list of scrolls are inspired yet your list differs from the Sadducees and the Essenes”. If you don’t agree that there wasn’t a fixed canon at that point then take up your argument with the person who wrote this:
“The entire process of canonization is murky. Scholars are simply unsure how certain books ultimately became authoritative and others did not.
But from the (late) Rabbis’ perspective, Ben Sira’s had two things potentially going against it.
First, it was attributed to an author who clearly lived after the “time of prophecy” had ceased.[5]
That is, according to later rabbinic understandings Ben Sira was simply written too late to be considered the product of divine inspiration.
Thus, it was excluded from the biblical canon.
The second issue was that (in its Greek translation) it was accepted as authoritative by Christians
IN THE THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURIES CE.
If the book was on the edge, this argument goes, its acceptance by Christians might have pushed the Rabbis in the other direction.”
www.thetorah.com/article/the-wisdom-of-ben-sira-how-jewish
Apostolic succession gives the Catholic and EO authority
Yeah but which one is right? Does Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Church of The East, SSPX, Genuine/ True Orthodox, Palmarians, Anglicans, Episcopals, Anglo-Caths, Lutherans, Old Catholics, etc. all hold equal authority?
How can they all have authority if none of them agree?
@@ScroopGroop the answer is roman catholics. They have all 4 marks of the true church
@@USDebtCrisisDoes that include all the medieval inventions?
@@ScroopGroop Rome obviously. They're the only ones who still hold councils.
This dude would get crushed in a canon debate. The orthodox would love to talk to this guy. You should debate someone like jay dyer. You avoided the topic the whole video and talked around the point. Lutherans won't be around much longer. Dead faith
Unfortunately Jay Dyer doesn't have the proper nous to contemplate the writings of St. Elrak the Grey. Once he receives those energies, come back to me.
@@ScholasticLutherans Wise dodge
Reminds me of the hilarious debate between other Paul and Akin. After chest-thumping, bloviating for hours, and snidely denigrating anti Sola Scriptura opponents, OP got utterly annihilated by Akin and spent the next month making endless streams trying to defend himself and crying to his echo chamber. Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.
You've got to feel for the actual Orthodox around the world, when they find out they're represented online by Internet Catechumens whose main church affiliation is the Cathedral of St Jay Dyer of Brostantinople. (Not a sleight on Dyer himself, just an observation about a section of his avid followers).
Hopefully I'm wildly wrong about you and my suspicions entirely misplaced. That would be good.
@@Mic1904 Wait until you find out Apologists who make coherent arguments gain traction and a following🫣
I don't mean this to be insulting, at all, but the massive internal incoherence, inconsistency, and infighting within Christianity is exactly why I threw my hands up and rid myself of this anxiety-inducing religion. Of course, atheism is foolish. That's how I wound up practicing the religion of my pre-Christian forefathers, informed by Neoplatonism. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants remind me of "Rock-Paper-Scissors". My own father has become an eternal neophyte, jumping from denomination to denomination in his youth, ultimately settling on Eastern Orthodox, but he still interprets so much through an undeniably Protestant lens. He listens to the bishops only when the bishops tell him what he wants to hear.
Why am I leaving this comment? This channel was on my homepage for some reason. Good video though, I will be making use of it 😉
You're just worshipping according to your own personal conception..how is that better than an actual tradition?
@@CHURCHISAWESUM That’s not an issue for Pagans as long as you’re being true to the sources, nor is there the looming threat of hell
If you don't do human sacrifices then you aren't pagan.
@@chemnitzfan654 That's not true, and it's a ridiculous assertion. Some societies practice it, others don't. Some cultures also treat the practice of war as tantamount to human sacrifice (which is obviously distinct from selecting victims from within a group's own populace), while others only make human sacrifices out of capital punishment (again, very different from selecting someone innocent). In fact, even animal sacrifice was comparatively rare, as animals were expensive. Most offerings from European Pagans involved cakes and other treats, money, libations of alcohol/milk/fresh spring water, the burning of incense, and votive deposits into bogs and such of weapons or other valuables. The Gods could also be honored through the swearing and keeping of oaths.
To say that people aren't Pagan if they're not conducting human sacrifice is nothing but a strawman argument. The Pagan Romans sometimes claimed other groups were practicing human sacrifice as justification to take up arms against them.
@Liquid Oxygen you are just out here LARPing. Enjoy throwing your children into the bog to appease the swamp gods so they will bring housing prices down. 🤣