Nuda Scriptura?

[historia]

One of the foremost principles of the Protestant Reformation is sola scriptura, or "Scritpure alone."

For the Reformers, sola scriptura entailed the belief that the Bible is the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. That doesn't, in itself, exclude the place of other authorities, including tradition and the creeds -- as Luther and Calvin's regular quoting of Augustine and other Church Fathers demonstrates -- just so long as these are considered as lesser authorities to the Bible.

However, in 19th Century America, some Protestants of a Baptist persuasion began to take this Reformation principle further, arguing that Christians should ignore tradition and the creeds and treat the Bible as the only authority for Christian faith and practice, period. In 1826, Alexander Campbell famously put it this way: "I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me; and I am as much on my guard against reading them today, through the medium of my own views yesterday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system, whatever" (source).

This latter view is sometimes called nuda scriptura, or "bare Scripture," to distinguish it from the historic Reformation view.

Question for debate:

Should Christians:

(a) follow the principle of sola scriptura (as Luther and Calvin understood it)
(b) follow the principle of nuda scriptura (as defined above)
(c) follow neither principle

And why?

[historia]

While I do not expect you to change your views, I hope you see that mine are based on scripture, not prior presumptions.

I can certainly appreciate the fact that you are looking to ground your position in the Bible. But it seems to me that your position -- like any interpretation of the Bible -- necessarily entails making prior assumptions. And those assumptions significantly influence your reading of the text.

That is perhaps nowhere more clear than in the first two passages you cited:

Just reading through these first two texts, I simply do not get the impression that they are saying that everything is going to go to pot once the apostles are gone.

On the contrary, both authors emphasize that the leaders left in charge of these congregations -- Luke refers to them as episkopoi, "bishops" -- have been put in place by the Holy Spirit and so are "anointed" by God. Because of that, as a group, they "know the truth" and have a "message that is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified." John says it is "what you heard from the beginning" -- that is, the oral Tradition -- that allows them to "abide in the Son and in the Father."

Now, to be sure, both Paul and John are warning their successors to "be alert" against heresy. But it's not clear to me why we should assume, as you apparently have, that the bishops were not ultimately successful in combating heresy. Warnings against people who are trying to deceive a congregation is not, in itself, evidence that false teachers did deceive all congregations.

The words you highlighted emphasised the situation during the time of writing while many apostles were still be alive when the church still retained its purity. I do not propose that everything went suddenly corrupt within the congregations after the apostles departed, but that then began a deterioration of what was originally established, a dilution, a contamination and indeed an apostasy, the process of which lasted several centuries.

Okay, but if these passages don't demonstrate that the Christian community became "corrupted" immediately after the apostles died, then they don't really establish the claim that the community became "corrupted."

It may well be the case that the community became "corrupted" centuries later due to false teachers in those later centuries. But it could equally be true that the successors to the apostles successfully fended off heresy in later centuries. These passages don't tell us one way or the other.

It seems to me the same is the case for the other passages you cited:

In the parable of the wheat and the tares, even if there are "weeds" (wicked people) among the wheat (righteous people) in the Christian community, that doesn't in and of itself indicate that the community is "corrupted." There were wicked people (e.g., Judas Iscariot) and false teachers (see Paul's epistles) in the community in the time of Jesus and the apostles, too. If the mere presence of wicked people in the Church makes it "corrupted," then it has always been "corrupted."

The same is true of the "rebellion," or "falling away," mentioned in 2 Thess. If some group of believers falls away from the Christian community, how does that make the community "corrupted"? It could, I suppose, if you imagine the community as a whole falling away. In the same way, the parable of the wheat and the tares could be interpreted that way, if you imagine the weeds somehow chocking out the wheat and dominating the field. But I would stress that these are things we have to first suppose and imagine -- that is, presuppositions we have to read into the text, rather than things that are inherent in the text itself.

As regards your comments on the NT canon, I acknowledge that they are questions to which we cannot be certain of the answers.

Fair enough. But this is a fundamental presupposition underlying your position, wouldn't you say? If that is uncertain, then it seems to me your whole position is uncertain. If Scripture alone is authoritative, then we need to know which texts are Scripture and which are not. How do we do that?

If we just accept the 27 books of the New Testament as a given, then we do so on the basis of Tradition, since it was the 4th Century Church (the one you think was "corrupted") who decided the NT canon. And if we are accepting Tradition on this or any other point, then we can no longer say we're following nuda scriptura.

[2timothy316]

What I mean by stand alone is something that is pulled out of thin air like the trinity.

Ah, I see. So, you weren't drawing a meaningful distinction between "prophecy" and other types of beliefs when you originally made this comment. This was just another attempt at disparaging orthodox Christian doctrines you happen to disagree with. Too bad, as, frankly, I find that aspect of your replies irrelevant.

Let's turn back to where we left off, then, and sorry for the delay:

In your opinion, then, are Christians at liberty to conclude that the year 1914 has no special significance?

No, because that year comes from the Bible . . . JWs just did the math and there are no other calculations that fit.

I think this doctrine is a good example to consider because it shows the role of tradition in your interpretation of the Bible.

No tradition here. I have looked to see what other things the books of Daniel and others could be talking about from other interpretations. Nothing fits. I care nothing for tradition. Those that think it is tradition are so used to believing out the habit of tradition they can't see anyone believing any differently. If there was something better then it would change. In a tradition belief system, change is NOT accepted as the tradition trumps anything different from the tradition. I personally do not fall into this trap.

To even imagine that it's possible to calculate a specific date for the End Times or Second Coming (or what have you) requires one to first adopt at least a half-dozen different presuppositions and supposed 'principles' of prophetic interpretation before one even starts reading the Bible.

LOL! 1914 wasn't a date for the end times was it. JWs today do not see 1914 as the End Times. It was the start of Christ being installed as king in heaven. It was also the start of the last days. Not because we just decided this, but because it matched Bible prophecy. This subject as been debated a lot on this thread so I'm going to stop here and allow you to go look at comments on those threads. No since in starting yet ANOTHER 1914 thread.

I'm just going to say that tradition has nothing to do with it as we are fully prepared to dump any teaching if something isn't matching the Bible. One shouldn't be be dogmatic when it comes to truth or believe something just for the sake of tradition. Yet that is what I constantly see in the world when it comes to beliefs.

Jehovah's Witnesses are clearly reading the Bible through the lens of that tradition -- at least when it comes to these End Times predictions -- which means you implicitly accept that tradition as authoritative.

I accept the Bible as authoritative and that the dates in it are 100% accurate. By the errors you speak about the 1914 discovery, I don't think you have any idea how we come by most of our beliefs or why we believe them. You're looking through the 'tradition' lens and I'm here to tell you that isn't the correct way to view our beliefs. If there is a JW that is following something out of tradition, they will not stay JWs for long.

Which it does beg the question, do you even know how the 1914 date was determined? I don't want details, it's just the way you're speaking about it, you don't understand where it came from. You sent the link to the article but did you even read it? Or do you just chalk it up to some JW thing that you don't need to understand?

[historia]

In a tradition belief system, change is NOT accepted as the tradition trumps anything different from the tradition.

That is simply untrue. All religions change over time, and all religions, including your own, have some kind of tradition.

Those that think it is tradition are so used to believing out the habit of tradition they can't see anyone believing any differently.

On the contrary, I don't think that every doctrine that Protestants (and Protestant-like sects) come up with can be considered part of their "tradition." Some ideas do just come straight-forwardly from the Bible. But it seems evident to me that this particular doctrine of yours is firmly grounded in Adventist tradition.

I have looked to see what other things the books of Daniel and others could be talking about from other interpretations. Nothing fits.

Have you read any historical-critical commentaries on the Bible?

To even imagine that it's possible to calculate a specific date for the End Times or Second Coming (or what have you) requires one to first adopt at least a half-dozen different presuppositions and supposed 'principles' of prophetic interpretation before one even starts reading the Bible.

LOL! 1914 wasn't a date for the end times was it.

Sure it was. Russell's original prediction -- as articulated in, for example, The Time is at Hand (1889) -- was that the year 1914 was going to mark the establishment of God's kingdom on earth, the end of all human governments, the end of the "time of trouble," the "glorification" of him and his followers, and so on.

What would you call that other than a prediction concerning the End Times?

It was also the start of the last days.

So, in other words, the End Times.

Not because we just decided this, but because it matched Bible prophecy.

I understand. But the idea that this date somehow "matched Bible prophecy" is precisely where you are making a number of assumptions.

we are fully prepared to dump any teaching if something isn't matching the Bible

Okay, but when I asked you earlier if Christians are at liberty to conclude that the year 1914 has no special significance, you said no, because "that year comes from the Bible." You didn't say something like, "our current, tentative understanding is that the year 1914 has some significance, although we're prepared to change our minds," but just "that's from the Bible." That tells rather strongly against your claim you're "fully prepared" to "dump" this teaching, even 110 years after the initial prediction was clearly proven wrong.

Which it does beg the question, do you even know how the 1914 date was determined? I don't want details, it's just the way you're speaking about it, you don't understand where it came from. You sent the link to the article but did you even read it?

I did read the article. And, more than that, I've studied Adventist history at some length, as I have an interest in 19th Century American Christian history. So, in addition to reading the article, I also have a pretty good understanding of the history behind the ideas that the article simply takes for granted -- like the idea that there is a "year-day principle" one can (often inconsistently) use to calculate supposed End Times dates.

There is no such principle explicitly stated in the Bible, of course. This is a tradition that developed within Christianity in the late Middle Ages and became very popular among American millenarian Protestant groups in the 19th Century. Those who employ it tend to think of it as an idea that just "comes from the Bible," and they turn to passages of the Bible to try to retroactively support it. But a more objective appraisal, I think, is that this is a tradition.

I also know how the specific date of 1914 was arrived at. Following the works of earlier Adventist authors, Russell picked up the idea that the prophecy in Daniel 4 concerning Nebuchadnezzar somehow predicts the so-called 'Gentile Times', and that, using several disconnected passages from other parts of the Bible, including Revelation, one can calculate this supposed period of time as 2,520 years. Russell tied the start date of that time period to the fall of Jerusalem, which he mistakenly thought occurred in 606 B.C., and wound up with the date 1914 because he, like William Miller before him, forgot there was no year zero when doing his calculations.

[2timothy316]

In a tradition belief system, change is NOT accepted as the tradition trumps anything different from the tradition.

That is simply untrue. All religions change over time, and all religions, including your own, have some kind of tradition.

Nope. You can't understand this can you? It is unbelievable for you accept. You seem to think this is impossible. You're so wrong.
Jesus opposed tradition many times. Only the scriptures are to be followed, not as a tradition but just as anyone would follow the laws of the land they live in. When one drives and follows the speed limit, it's not out of tradition one does this.

“Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely.” (1 Pet. 2:21)
THIS is what is to be followed. NOT tradition. If one makes a tradition out of following Christ, they have lost all meaning of what it means to do so.

Do trinitarians truly believe the trinity simply because its tradition?

[2timothy316]

Those that think it is tradition are so used to believing out the habit of tradition they can't see anyone believing any differently.

On the contrary, I don't think that every doctrine that Protestants (and Protestant-like sects) come up with can be considered part of their "tradition." Some ideas do just come straight-forwardly from the Bible. But it seems evident to me that this particular doctrine of yours is firmly grounded in Adventist tradition.

Nope. The only similarity is that both understood that there was to be an "appointed time of the nations". (Lu 21:24) Something I doubt you have any anything to say about. I doubt you even know what it means or care. That doesn't make it a tradition.

I really think how you define tradition is way too broad. I'm not convinced you know what it means. Just because someone does something more than once like someone else, doesn't make it a tradition. I eat breakfast every day like many other people. That doesn't make it a tradition.

You're grasping at straws.

[Ross]

if these passages don't demonstrate that the Christian community became "corrupted" immediately after the apostles died, then they don't really establish the claim that the community became "corrupted."
It may well be the case that the community became "corrupted" centuries later due to false teachers in those later centuries. But it could equally be true that the successors to the apostles successfully fended off heresy in later centuries. These passages don't tell us one way or the other.

Very few things in history occur 'immediately', and this word is not part of the text of the scriptures I provided. I cannot see your logic in this comment.
The verses say:
"after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you"
and
"as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour"

Both verses confirm that the early church community would be corrupted. I cannot see how you can deny this. I do not claim that the entire community fell astray at this time because Jesus said in Matthew 28:
"And behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age"

But as the early and later Church Fathers attempted to make sense of what 1 Timothy 3:16 calls the "mystery of this Godliness", many versions of the teachings of the apostles became distorted, and massive divisions occurred, so that the early church community dissolved into a wheat an weeds. No longer a true one Christian church, but a divided and tainted one.

It seems to me the same is the case for the other passages you cited:

In the parable of the wheat and the tares, even if there are "weeds" (wicked people) among the wheat (righteous people) in the Christian community, that doesn't in and of itself indicate that the community is "corrupted." There were wicked people (e.g., Judas Iscariot) and false teachers (see Paul's epistles) in the community in the time of Jesus and the apostles, too. If the mere presence of wicked people in the Church makes it "corrupted," then it has always been "corrupted."
The same is true of the "rebellion," or "falling away," mentioned in 2 Thess. If some group of believers falls away from the Christian community, how does that make the community "corrupted"? It could, I suppose, if you imagine the community as a whole falling away. In the same way, the parable of the wheat and the tares could be interpreted that way, if you imagine the weeds somehow chocking out the wheat and dominating the field. But I would stress that these are things we have to first suppose and imagine -- that is, presuppositions we have to read into the text, rather than things that are inherent in the text itself.

You are correct in my opinion to address the wheat as 'righteous people' and part of a Christian community. As for further comments, yes it was always corrupted somewhat; that is human nature, but all of the verses indicate apostasy once the Apostles departed.

Fair enough. But this is a fundamental presupposition underlying your position, wouldn't you say? If that is uncertain, then it seems to me your whole position is uncertain.

I look to history after the first couple of centuries of our common era to explain the texts rather than any fundamental presupposition as you put it. The community fell under authoritarianism, encountered huge divisions of belief systems, amalgamated with the Roman state and became a 'Holy Roman Empire.' Popes were introduced as supreme pontiffs, and the church (congregations of believers) became a power crazy man made institutionalized organization.

If Scripture alone is authoritative, then we need to know which texts are Scripture and which are not. How do we do that?

If we just accept the 27 books of the New Testament as a given, then we do so on the basis of Tradition, since it was the 4th Century Church (the one you think was "corrupted") who decided the NT canon. And if we are accepting Tradition on this or any other point, then we can no longer say we're following nuda scriptura.

I accept your reasoning and argument; however the Jewish community was also corrupt and somehow managed to compile the Old Testament. We all individually have a responsibility to determine how we accept what God has handed down to us.

As for me, I don't trust men or institutions and would prefer to follow what is left of the writing of Jesus and the apostles. So for me it is sola scriptura as I prefer to call it.

[2timothy316]

I did read the article. And, more than that, I've studied Adventist history at some length, as I have an interest in 19th Century American Christian history.

Good for you. The Bible was written by Jews and I'm not Jewish. I do not view reading my Bible as a Jewish tradition just because Jews wrote it. Nor to I read the Bible out of duty to some tradition. I do not care about who figured out from the Bible when the appointed times of the nations ended. It could have been Ronald McDonald for all care. I believe it because it makes sense and I fully trust the dates in the Bible.

[historia]

Both verses confirm that the early church community would be corrupted. I cannot see how you can deny this.

Perhaps an analogy would be useful here.

Imagine we are looking at a letter written by the director of a health organization to doctors working in a village in west Africa. In the letter, the director alerts the doctors to the fact that there are confirmed cases of Ebola in their region, and so they should be on the look out for villagers exhibiting signs of the disease. He notes that they have been specially appointed to their positions by the health organization, and that, if they stick to their training, they can successfully combat the disease.

Now, based just on what the director wrote, can we conclude that one or two years after the letter was written that Ebola spread to all of the villages in west Africa, infecting most of the population?

I think you would agree with me that the answer to that question is clearly 'no'. The director isn't predicting what is going to happen in the distant future. He's simply describing the current state of affairs. The letter is not, in and of itself, evidence that the doctors were unsuccessful in combating the disease in their village, let alone evidence the disease spread to all villages many years later.

The same is true of Acts 20 and 1 John 2:

(1) These passages describe a particular moment in time for a couple of congregations in the primitive Christian community. They are not predictions about what is going to happen to all congregations in the Christian community over the course of the next two hundred years.

(2) It is an inconsistent interpretation of these texts to say (a) the mention of false teachers here somehow in itself indicates that heresy is going to spread to all congregations over the next two centuries, while simultaneously saying (b) the Spirit-appointed leaders mentioned in these texts, who serve as a bulwark against false teachings, are somehow just unique to that earlier period of time. If these text are somehow predictive of what is going to happen centuries later, then we should assume that both false teachers and Spirit-appointed leaders obtain into the future. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

(3) These texts are not describing heresy in some general sense, but specific false teachings. 1 Tim. 1:3-8 describes the false teachings that Paul says will soon arise at Ephesus in Acts 20. 1 John 2:22 and 2 John 7 describe the false teachings that had cropped up in the congregations John is writing to, perhaps also in Ephesus.

It's clear from these passages that the false teachings here are Judaizing and proto-Gnostic beliefs. They have to do with following the Jewish Law and the belief that Jesus did not come in the flesh. Paul describes similar false teachings emerging in the congregations to which he sent his letters, too. Indeed, we know from the early Church Fathers that there were both Gnostic and Jewish Christian groups in later centuries who would continue to hold and develop these heretical teachings.

But, importantly for our purposes, there were also a large number of proto-orthodox churches throughout the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and into the future, who did not promote these Judaizing and Gnostic beliefs. To argue, then, as you have above, that these passages from the Bible somehow predict that these proto-orthodox churches also fell into apostasy seems to run well beyond the evidence described in these two passages.

[Ross]

Both verses confirm that the early church community would be corrupted. I cannot see how you can deny this.

Perhaps an analogy would be useful here.

Imagine we are looking at a letter written by the director of a health organization to doctors working in a village in west Africa. In the letter, the director alerts the doctors to the fact that there are confirmed cases of Ebola in their region, and so they should be on the look out for villagers exhibiting signs of the disease. He notes that they have been specially appointed to their positions by the health organization, and that, if they stick to their training, they can successfully combat the disease.

Now, based just on what the director wrote, can we conclude that one or two years after the letter was written that Ebola spread to all of the villages in west Africa, infecting most of the population?

I think you would agree with me that the answer to that question is clearly 'no'. The director isn't predicting what is going to happen in the distant future. He's simply describing the current state of affairs. The letter is not, in and of itself, evidence that the doctors were unsuccessful in combating the disease in their village, let alone evidence the disease spread to all villages many years later.

The same is true of Acts 20 and 1 John 2:

(1) These passages describe a particular moment in time for a couple of congregations in the primitive Christian community. They are not predictions about what is going to happen to all congregations in the Christian community over the course of the next two hundred years.

(2) It is an inconsistent interpretation of these texts to say (a) the mention of false teachers here somehow in itself indicates that heresy is going to spread to all congregations over the next two centuries, while simultaneously saying (b) the Spirit-appointed leaders mentioned in these texts, who serve as a bulwark against false teachings, are somehow just unique to that earlier period of time. If these text are somehow predictive of what is going to happen centuries later, then we should assume that both false teachers and Spirit-appointed leaders obtain into the future. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

(3) These texts are not describing heresy in some general sense, but specific false teachings. 1 Tim. 1:3-8 describes the false teachings that Paul says will soon arise at Ephesus in Acts 20. 1 John 2:22 and 2 John 7 describe the false teachings that had cropped up in the congregations John is writing to, perhaps also in Ephesus.

It's clear from these passages that the false teachings here are Judaizing and proto-Gnostic beliefs. They have to do with following the Jewish Law and the belief that Jesus did not come in the flesh. Paul describes similar false teachings emerging in the congregations to which he sent his letters, too. Indeed, we know from the early Church Fathers that there were both Gnostic and Jewish Christian groups in later centuries who would continue to hold and develop these heretical teachings.

But, importantly for our purposes, there were also a large number of proto-orthodox churches throughout the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and into the future, who did not promote these Judaizing and Gnostic beliefs. To argue, then, as you have above, that these passages from the Bible somehow predict that these proto-orthodox churches also fell into apostasy seems to run well beyond the evidence described in these two passages.

I guess if you pick out my one sentence out of context and apart from everything else I have said, then you can form a substantial argument against it.

How about answering this for me:

I look to history after the first couple of centuries of our common era to explain the texts rather than any fundamental presupposition as you put it. The community fell under authoritarianism, encountered huge divisions of belief systems, amalgamated with the Roman state and became a 'Holy Roman Empire.' Popes were introduced as supreme pontiffs, and the church (congregations of believers) became a power crazy man made institutionalized organization.

[historia]

I do not claim that the entire community fell astray at this time because Jesus said in Matthew 28: "And behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age"

And by "this time" you mean the first century? Do you interpret "the end of the age," then, to mean the end of the first century?

When Jesus said, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18), does that not indicate that the entire Christian community cannot fall astray?

But as the early and later Church Fathers attempted to make sense of what 1 Timothy 3:16 calls the "mystery of this Godliness", many versions of the teachings of the apostles became distorted, and massive divisions occurred, so that the early church community dissolved into a wheat an weeds. No longer a true one Christian church, but a divided and tainted one.

But the Christian community was already divided well before the last apostle died. One of the earliest Christian texts we have is 1 Corinthians (probably written about 53), and there Paul is already talking about divisions in the community:

I hear that there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine.

Heck, in Galatians, another one of the earliest Christians texts we possess (likely written in the late 40s), Paul is arguing with other apostles! He criticizes James and Peter, in particular, saying that some of their teachings and practices regarding non-Jews and the Law were wrong and creating divisions in the community.

The idea, then, that the time of the apostles was this pristine era when there was an undivided Christian community seems to run contrary to the evidence.

There were wicked people (e.g., Judas Iscariot) and false teachers (see Paul's epistles) in the community in the time of Jesus and the apostles, too. If the mere presence of wicked people in the Church makes it "corrupted," then it has always been "corrupted."

. . .

yes it was always corrupted somewhat; that is human nature

Okay, but if the Christian community has "always been corrupted," then we can't really say that it "would become corrupted" after the apostles died, as you originally suggested in post #94.

Fair enough. But this is a fundamental presupposition underlying your position, wouldn't you say? If that is uncertain, then it seems to me your whole position is uncertain.

I look to history after the first couple of centuries of our common era to explain the texts rather than any fundamental presupposition as you put it. The community fell under authoritarianism, encountered huge divisions of belief systems, amalgamated with the Roman state and became a 'Holy Roman Empire.' Popes were introduced as supreme pontiffs, and the church (congregations of believers) became a power crazy man made institutionalized organization.

First, let me just note that my comment here about fundamental presuppositions was in regards to the canon of Scripture, rather than about your views on apostasy, to which your reply is addressed.

But you've illustrated here the point I made above in post #97. Clearly, you've come to the conclusion that the Church fell into apostasy based on later historical events. This is a presupposition you bring to your reading of the Bible.

Presuppositions aren't typically ideas that one just makes-up out of whole cloth, which seems to be the concern you are addressing in your comment here. They are often grounded in scientific observations, considerations of history, philosophical reflection, and so on. But they ultimately come from sources outside the Bible.

My overarching argument here is not that you are necessarily wrong, or unjustified, in making these presuppositions. I think by any objective measure the passages you've cited in this thread don't explicitly say that the Church would fall into apostasy centuries after the apostles died. But I can certainly see how, if one first adopts your prior conclusion that that is what happened, then these passages are congenial to that interpretation.

But an Orthodox or Catholic reader of the text, who doesn't share your prior conclusion that the Church later fell into apostasy, can just as easily see these texts as saying that, while wicked people and false teachings have been there from the very beginning, the Holy Spirit has put in place bishops, serving as successors to the apostles, to preserve true Christian faith and practice.

But here's my ultimate point: Neither view can really be said to be based on Scripture alone. Everyone comes to the text with presuppositions and prior conclusions. And it's the presuppositions each person brings to the text that is ultimately decisive in how they interpret these verses.