Could Trump do anything to make you stop supporting him?
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It was never taught by Jesus. I believe Jesus is the representation of God and I am seriously beginning to doubt "Christianity" not based on Him. Just because a doctrine is fundamental doesn't make it of Jesus. Other religions have fundamental doctrines that also deviate from Jesus. Apart from Jesus, there is no salvation.
I am not trying to be a troll. I legitimately believe these things, and my beliefs are changing due to my study and experiences.
And you should know: one major contributing factor to my shifting beliefs is how people treat me. People who follow Jesus more closely tend to treat me nicer than people who advocate for Paul.
I am not trying to be a troll. I legitimately believe these things, and my beliefs are changing due to my study and experiences.
And you should know: one major contributing factor to my shifting beliefs is how people treat me. People who follow Jesus more closely tend to treat me nicer than people who advocate for Paul.
Gutting Paul's writings out of the Scriptures would end up creating a false gospel, the woefully erroneous, distorted message of which would save absolutely nobody.
Advocating for the gutting out of Paul's writings from Scripture would probably get you excommunicated from pretty much everywhere including here. Just letting you know it advance buddy.
You may not understand it yet, but the Bible is a divinely and miraculously written fully integrated message system originating from outside our time and dimensional space domain. Paul's writings are intrinsic and crucial.......obviously. And no less miraculous and divine.
And it is all absolutely true by the way.
That being the case, I would urge you to keep plugging away with your studies buddy. God willing you're going to "get it" eventually.
Advocating for the gutting out of Paul's writings from Scripture would probably get you excommunicated from pretty much everywhere including here. Just letting you know it advance buddy.
You may not understand it yet, but the Bible is a divinely and miraculously written fully integrated message system originating from outside our time and dimensional space domain. Paul's writings are intrinsic and crucial.......obviously. And no less miraculous and divine.
And it is all absolutely true by the way.
That being the case, I would urge you to keep plugging away with your studies buddy. God willing you're going to "get it" eventually.
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so, you have to follow Jesus OR Paul.
o k.
o k.
When I was a kid I could have devotions on the whole Bible and not see anything wrong with it. I would write pages and pages of explanations for myself as to how Paul fit with James. As far out as Paul's constantly reversing logic got, I didn't consider the idea that it might just contradict itself, or other scriptures.
Every so often enough time passes and I pick it up again, get out pens and looseleaf paper, and analyze it in depth in an effort to try to reconcile all of it with itself.
I continually set out to prove that the New Testament is cohesive.
Consistently, I run into serious problems.
For example, a couple weeks ago I decided to start at the beginning of Paul's theology: Romans. I read the first 3 chapters and appreciated much of what he had to say. Then I got to 3:19-end of chapter. This is where he introduced justification by faith for the first time. Now, in chapter 2 he had just made a case for Gentiles being judged by the law of nature written in their hearts. Interestingly, he said in 2:13: "So then, it is not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law who are justified." So this is pro-law.
Then in 3:19 he begins a different direction. In 3:20 he says "no flesh is justified by the law." Finally in the last verse he says, "Then do we nullify the law? But no! Rather we establish it." Then I was really really hoping to read his explanation of how his justification by faith theory establishes the law, but he gave nothing to that end.
I wrestled and wrestled and wrestled with how to make his claims reconcile with each other, and I never could, because of his own lack of connection between justification by faith and establishing the law.
This was just my last attempt to understand Paul. A year and a half ago I was studying other epistles of his and I ran into problems with those as well. Like three weeks ago, my studies were a fair attempt at genuinely trying to understand Paul from the perspective that he is legitimate. I made each attempt in good faith, but every time I really study his words deeply I come away with the same sour taste in my mouth and concerns in my mind that his statements are full of contradictions.
I hope you can see my genuine sincerity in studying the Bible. I gave it a fair shot countless times.
Maybe you can study Paul isogetically and tell me what you learn. I would love to discover some answers to the questions that arise as I study him.
Studying Jesus is a lot different from studying Paul. Granted, we don't have Jesus's words directly from Him, and Peter's flavor (of the synoptic gospels) and John's flavor are different, and John's emphasis on love closely resembling his own words in the epistle of 1 John might suggest that a lot of words ascribed to Jesus were actually from John, but I find the content of Jesus's words better. Less selfish, maybe. Definitely not as self-absorbed.
I think that a lifetime of studying the Bible has familiarized me with the various flavors of authorship, and over time the subtleties and peculiarities of the different authors has led me to ponder the age old question, just how much was the Bible written by man, versus how much was it written by God?
There are many things I still appreciate from the Apostle Paul, and I find some of his verses useful as quotes to live by. I suspect that the great truth about the Bible is muddy. Much of it is good, inspired by God, and some of it is far less useful or even dangerous, written by holy men on their bad days. I think all of it exists for our benefit, but we need to be careful how we use it, because its purpose is to draw people closer to Jesus and not further away from Him.
I hope you appreciate my transparency.
1) Paul was a Jew......an extremely learned one. Don't be disappointed that you don't know what he is talking about.
2) Put Jesus right in the middle of every verse. You'll get a different answer. The correct one.
3) The new testament cannot be properly understood without a comprehensive knowledge of the OT. This goes double for Pauls writings, he is the Hebrew of Hebrews.
4) This is not supposed to be easy. The book is written by God after all.
5) S. A. Chronister on sermons.com
2) Put Jesus right in the middle of every verse. You'll get a different answer. The correct one.
3) The new testament cannot be properly understood without a comprehensive knowledge of the OT. This goes double for Pauls writings, he is the Hebrew of Hebrews.
4) This is not supposed to be easy. The book is written by God after all.
5) S. A. Chronister on sermons.com
Jesus was the Hebrew of Hebrews. Placing anyone else in pre-eminence is a mistake, which kind of validates my belief about Paul, who put himself there. And Paul was the kind of Pharisee who exercised his religion to violently persecute followers of Jesus, the kind that Jesus came into direct conflict with, about whom Jesus said, "You do not allow anyone to enter into the kingdom of heaven; nor do you enter into it yourselves." Paul didn't understand the law: Jesus said, "If you had believed Moses you would recognize Me." Paul's so-called excellence is only testified to by his own claims. And Paul did not use the Jewish scriptures' messianic passages to explain the gospel of Jesus, a big opportunity wasted. By contrast, on the road to Emmaus Jesus explained His coming foretold by the whole collection of Jewish scripture. Paul never did any such thing. Instead, Paul created a dismissive stance toward the law, calling it a schoolmaster, only useful for exposing sin. He pretty much ignored all the scripture that prophesied about the Lord, and came up with his theology about Christ from his own understanding. So clearly, he was not the expert that he purported himself to be, and people take him to be based on his own claims about himself. Jesus taught about the law in a positive light, and I have studied it accordingly, like Leviticus 19. If Paul were such a great scholar, he would have rooted his words in the goodness of the scriptures. But he was so negative in his view of everyone that he saw the scriptures as a negative tool, too.
Do you honestly think it is God's words speaking through Paul when he writes things like, "Clever man that I am, I have taken you all by deceit."? Or, "Anathema maranatha!"
And Paul would get so carried away with baseless ideas a few times so that he would come to a point where he realizes that it looks like he's saying something wrong, so he doubles back on it, like, "So then shall we sin more that grace may abound? May it never be!" He does this in more than one place, and he has a tendency to not explain why the wrong thing he wants to avoid saying isn't exactly what he is saying.
There comes a point when you are paying attention to someone you don't understand when you realize that it's not because you lack intelligence, but because they are generating nonsense. For most of my life I thought I was just too ignorant and inexperienced in theology to understand Paul, but having matured more, I am really starting to believe that I'm not the one with the problem.
If you want to argue with me with any effect, you'll have to use some intelligent analysis of scripture with actual verses, like I have been doing. And if you really want to get through to me, it would really help if you acknowledge my verses and points I have made based on them.
Having said all that, I am not ready to dismiss Paul completely. I still have many of his verses deeply embedded in my heart. Peace, CV5.
Do you honestly think it is God's words speaking through Paul when he writes things like, "Clever man that I am, I have taken you all by deceit."? Or, "Anathema maranatha!"
And Paul would get so carried away with baseless ideas a few times so that he would come to a point where he realizes that it looks like he's saying something wrong, so he doubles back on it, like, "So then shall we sin more that grace may abound? May it never be!" He does this in more than one place, and he has a tendency to not explain why the wrong thing he wants to avoid saying isn't exactly what he is saying.
There comes a point when you are paying attention to someone you don't understand when you realize that it's not because you lack intelligence, but because they are generating nonsense. For most of my life I thought I was just too ignorant and inexperienced in theology to understand Paul, but having matured more, I am really starting to believe that I'm not the one with the problem.
If you want to argue with me with any effect, you'll have to use some intelligent analysis of scripture with actual verses, like I have been doing. And if you really want to get through to me, it would really help if you acknowledge my verses and points I have made based on them.
Having said all that, I am not ready to dismiss Paul completely. I still have many of his verses deeply embedded in my heart. Peace, CV5.
Did Paul love Jesus? He never ever claimed to. What he did say was, "I have determined to to know nothing other than Christ and Him crucified." That can actually be taken pretty darkly, considering that it entirely excludes Jesus's resurrection. It seems to me that Paul was more interested in usurping Jesus than praising Him. Where did Paul EVER compliment Jesus of Nazareth on being an excellent person? Compare that to how many times Paul complimented himself on being an excellent person. You see what I mean?
As far as Paul's death is concerned, history is unclear how he died. Most commonly it is believed that Nero executed him, but another theory is that he went to Spain, and after that his story was lost to history.
As far as Paul's death is concerned, history is unclear how he died. Most commonly it is believed that Nero executed him, but another theory is that he went to Spain, and after that his story was lost to history.
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Paul had the highest regard for both the Father and Jesus. So devoted to Jesus was he that he was beaten with 39 lashes on 5 occasions, was stoned and left for dead, spent a day and a half floating in the ocean, was imprisoned often, was often in peril and want, and ultimately gave his life for the cause of Christ.
Few people have suffered as much or accomplished more for the cause of Christ. You are considerably off base when it comes to Paul.
Few people have suffered as much or accomplished more for the cause of Christ. You are considerably off base when it comes to Paul.
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Suffering and love are not the same thing. Paul said, "I make up in my body for the lack of the afflictions of Christ." And Paul constantly wrote about how much he was suffering, to the extent that it became self-adulation. And this is exactly the effect that it had. We Christians admire and follow Paul because of his sufferings so much that we often forget that we are supposed to be admiring and following Jesus exclusively. Paul literally said, "Imitate me" in one place, and "Imitate me as I imitate Christ" in another place, putting himself first before Jesus. Paul constantly reminded his readers about his great suffering for their sakes. This is not love for Jesus. This is treachery. This was glory-seeking and usurpation, which amounts to treachery. Remember Jesus's words: "Do not call anyone teacher, or Father, for one is your teacher/father."