What Are Your Thoughts On The Apostle Paul? (page 7)

JWoods

Paul was the first pope.

OMG - did anybody ever tell St. Peter? Next you are going to say that Paul is the real doorman to check your costume at the big nightclub in the sky???

Cognac said: However, if somebody is an extortioner, or sleeping with a married person, it totally makes sense. However, I don't really understand judging a fornicator like that. The law was written for our benefit, not us for the benefit of the law to begin with. So, if we are no longer under the Mosiac law, why should we be worried is a person is fornicating? Isn't that up to them if they want to fornicate if they are not hurting anybody?

Also, at what point would you say to not eat with a greedy person?

My reply: Well, a person claiming to be a Christian who is blatantly going around fornicating, all the while claiming to be a Christian- this is the type of person I see Paul addressing here, as opposed to a person who gave in in the heat of the moment. I see Paul as counseling a cong that was proud, almost bragging at how tolerant they were of this man and their own permissiveness. He is telling them to exclud ethis man from their private worship. And that is all there is to it...nothing of shunning, turning your head away, making the man grovel and display some prolonged repentance.

Regaridng the view that this admonition is not limited to only a cong setting, again we need to understand that sharing a meal with a person IN THAT CULTURE AT THAT TIME was far more intimate than sharing a meal with someone today. If this veiw is taken, Paul is counseling to not become intimate with such a person. Again, these should not be taken as hard and fast rules, but principles to aplly, with showing love to the person taking precedence.

isaacaustin

Cog, the not eating meat sacrificed to idols was simply to avoid stumbling the JEws who were repelled by this- to maintain peace in a divided cong. The meat itself was not at issue.

PSacramento

Cognac,

We mist remember that Paul was not writing a Gospel but letters to specific people with specific questions and issues and he liked, perhaps too much, to write according tot he audience.

For those that he knew (since he had seen them and preached to them before) that a soft tone and love with work best, he did that, for those he knew that a stern tone was needed, he did that too.

Also Paul was his own man, he did not follow the beat of the elders and apostles of Jerusalem, he follwed the direction that Jesus gave him directly.

Do I agree with all he said? Hell no, I also don't agree with all that Luke said that Jesus said too.

OnTheWayOut

There is a world of possibilities. Here's one possibility. Paul was indeed the first writer of any of the material we now call the New Testament. But it is possible, even highly likely, that he did not write all that is acredited to him. More and more evidence turns up that he may not have written the letters to Timothy and Titus. (Of course the evidence is subject to interpretation, no proof either way) It is also believed by some that Paul did not write Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and portions of the Corinthians, possibly portions of 1 Thesselonians.

These things are coming about from scholarly examination of the scriptures, so I know that many will say that God guided the hand, therefore the hand could have been out of style or historical placement.

But imagine the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church trying to take a mystic Christian's writings and make them fit a literalist religion. Paul seems to have written of a mythical saviour from a mythical time. He never makes reference to Mary, Joseph, the stories or the people in the 4 Gospels. A reference to James, the brother of Jesus, could well have been to a brother in belief just as Paul would be a brother to Jesus. The solution would be to let Jesus (the myth who became literal) to have brothers and sisters. It is quite possible that Paul was a follower of the Christ the same way Romans were followers of Jupiter.

There are plenty of holes in the problem. I don't generally believe in conspiracy, but that's the beauty of the manufacturing of more letters from Paul. It creates some holes. It fills in some holes. It muddies the whole reality. This is not some crackpot thinking. Real serious scholarly examinations have been done.

PSacramento

RE; Fornication

The greek word for fornicationis Porneia and can mean:

illict sexual intercourse, adultery, homosexuality, intercourse with animals, intercourse with close relatives, divorced man or woman, it is also a metaphoe for worshiping idols and the difilement of idoltary.

It wasn't just a couple of people doing the hunka-chunka before mariage.

Typically it was a "sinful" act when aplied to visitinga prostitute or having sex with someone you shouldn't ( Relative, same sex, assoted woodland creatures).

JWoods

Excellent thread.

One sudden thought that it gave me was that maybe women praying or teaching in the early congregation was not at all a rare thing...like the JWs made it as in "only at a meeting for service with no baptised males present".

If it were really so rare, then why would Paul waste this amount of ancient ink and papyrus on it?

Then too, why specifically mention both Aquilla and Priscilla?

I have always had the feeling that the WT elders are secretly a little afraid of their female majority members and go to quite some lengths to keep them suppressed.

Some of the stuff they put in the WT and particularly Awake on female rights is far worse (in this liberated modern day!!!) than anything the ancient Paul wrote back then.

cognac

Cog, the not eating meat sacrificed to idols was simply to avoid stumbling the JEws who were repelled by this- to maintain peace in a divided cong. The meat itself was not at issue.

Yeah, I know. That's what I meant by not just taking what he says at face value. You are just better at explaining things then me, lol. :)

snowbird

I have always had the feeling that the WT elders are secretly a little afraid of their female majority members and go to quite some lengths to keep them suppressed.

Ditto.

As well they should!

Sylvia

Deputy Dog

PS

Imagine if there was no epistles at all and only Matthew and Revelation for example or there was no Johnanine works, imagin if there was no Pauline theology AT ALL, no controversy AND no justification by Faith, no grace under God.

I'm not sure I completly agree. He does go into great detail, but, I see it in other books.

What Are Your Thoughts On The Apostle Paul?

Share this