by Christ Alone 494 Replies latest social current
Science and archeology, and even the Bible can be challenged. But when it comes down to it, personal experiences can't.
Of course they can. In addition to plain old dishonesty, ignorance and confusion, many different things can cause such 'experiences'.
Hypoxia. Dehydration. Delusion. Association fallacy. Synaesthesia. Hysteria. Pareidolia. Psychosis. Lucid dreaming. Sleep paralysis. etc etc
Christalone:
Number one is that Paul was not an apostle while Jesus was on earth. He never had direct contact with Jesus on earth.
True; what does that have to do with the question? Did the miracle stories circulate prior to the Gospels? If so, why doesn’t Paul use them to reinforce his position that Jesus was the Messiah? He goes to great lengths to establish this by other means.
Also, IF the gospels had already been written (which I do not believe they had been while Paul was writing) he didn't have them to refer to. Paul's message was not about what Jesus did on earth. He took the assumption that those in the churches already knew what Jesus did. There was no need to reiterate. Paul said that the things Jesus taught on earth were a beginning. They were the milk. But it was time to press on to what it really meant to be a Christian. He expounded on what Jesus already taught and what Christians already believed. There was no need to tell them what they already believed due to eye witness knowledge.
The stories would have circulated; they would have been sensational. Why wouldn’t he trumpet loud and clear the miracles of Jesus, or to expound on Jesus' message of approach to God and the rule of God without religious structure?
Further, Paul already KNEW what the Christians believed about Jesus. He persecuted them for it. So there was no need to again tell them what they already knew about Jesus. And it's not accurate to say that Paul NEVER quoted Jesus. 1 Cor 11:23-25 says: " For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
Paul says he received this from the Lord, but you admit that Paul never spoke with Jesus, never knew Jesus. How did he ‘receive’ this from Jesus?
I know that many DO dispute all the apostles, but to try and only dispute Paul IS to dispute all the apostles. The conversion of Paul happened only a few years after Jesus' ministry. The apostles would have wanted to preserve what they were teaching about Jesus (as contained in the gospels). They would never have allowed Paul to begin teaching something that changed or distotred the teachings of Jesus. Paul spent three years adding to what he already knew about Jesus. Then he met with Peter and James. (Ga 1:18-19). Then after spending 14 years of ministry to the Gentiles, he met with the older men in Jerusalem and they officially endorsed him. (Ga 2:1-9)
Paul wrote what he wrote, regardless of what James and Peter thought; it is not like there is a great harmony between them.
So the older men in Jerusalem would not have asked Paul why he does not talk about miracles or teachings? Why not? Why wasn’t this a contentious issue?
Finally, Paul frequently referred to Jesus as a real historical person. He never denigraded Jesus' status. He frequently referred or alluded to Jesus and the traditions Jesus set down numerous times.
No argument from me that Jesus was a historical person. Whether or not he is the Jesus you talk about is unprovable, and unlikely to the highest degree possible. Paul bases his entire theological structure for a religion on Jesus; why would he denigrate Jesus? Other than the meal (drinking ‘blood’ and eating ‘flesh’) that cements the child sacrifice theme of the last supper, what traditions of Jesus does Paul refer to?
So Pistoff, no I do not agree that Paul created a new religion and went off on a tangent that cannot be supported by the gospels. I haven't seen anything that I can see that Paul wrote that disagrees with the gospel accounts.
Paul did set the basis for a new religion, not Jesus; it is not Jesus’ sayings that form the basis for congregations, that is Timothy and Titus territory. Jesus was about the individual pursuit of the rule of God; he did not run about setting up congregations. Jesus had no job; he broke the law of the Jews and was homeless.
Paul puffs up Jesus status, puts him into mythological stardom and the Gospel accounts, by your own admission written after Paul’s writings, further inflate Jesus’ credentials by the addition of miracle stories, the virgin birth myth and the addition of events to fulfill supposed prophetic pointers to a messiah.
The miracles of Jesus were either not known to Paul, inconceivable on the face of it they had actually happened, or he regarded them as nonsense. Since he does not mention them at all, even to discredit them, it is reasonable to conclude he had hever heard of them. That makes it obvious: they did not happen, but were circulated by his followers decades after his death to validate their opinion of him as God’s son, or God incarnate, depending on your view. The stories mirror other miracle stories from ancient times.
The omission of reference to miracles by Paul also casts doubt on the veracity of the Gospels as anything resembling history.
I'm sorry you think that I am putting on an air of superior positon or authority. I don't mean to come across that way. But I believe that God has made it obvious that He exists. And the only conclusion I can seem to come to (due to my own experiences of God in my life) is that the people that don't see what He is doing, just aren't looking. That's just trying to understand how people could come to a conclusion of accidental life and no creator. It doesn't mean I feel better than them. It just means, I don't understand it.
I won't pretend that I don't understand the idea that "creation" proves the existence of God. I was a JW. I followed that idea. But it is just one philosophy that was born in a time when man did not have the understanding of science to offer a viable alternate philosophy. Not the case anymore.
I won't pretend that personal experiences with God are fictions. Heck, I had one myself. It proved to me that Jehovah's Witnesses are the way to spiritual enlightenment. And we know that isn't true. Others' personal experiences prove to them that various conflicting paths are the correct paths to follow (for them) and that all other paths are wrong. Some prove there are many paths to enlightenment.
All that anecdotal evidence, much of it conflicting, makes it necessary for me to consider that the psychological explanations for such evidence need to be examined. I also understand that until the individual decides to question his own personal revelations, I might as well be trying to teach how to speak the French language to a German Shepherd dog. (Yes, I deliberately put that in similar condescending terms so you might see what you do.) But I hope to at least help you to see that you must dismiss millions (or maybe billions) of other personal revelations in order to be sure that yours is correct. The atheist, the Muslim, the Mormon, the Buddhist- all can say that YOU ARE NOT LOOKING.
Even in your admitted ignorance, you have to reduce your cognitive dissonance. "...the only conclusion I can come to....is that people who don't see what he is doing, just aren't looking." Put that aside. Everyone is looking to some degree.
I would love to see this, on nationls TV a dialogue among
Muslim, JW,s, , Christian and you folks here.
Can you imagine how the discussion might go. The Muslim,
if you don,t think I worship the true GOD, watch him give me
the power to slit your throat. The Christian, well Jesus spoke
to me last nite and he told me to tell you, your God is satan.
The JW, all of you will die soon, your children, your mother and
father, everybody you know. You folks here, well we are still waiting
for Jesus to tell us who,s right, but in the mean time you all are nuts.
I respect Karen Armstrong. Why do you think she concluded that they were authentic when the consensus appears to be that they are not?
There is a strain of gospel accounts that Jesus did marry Magdalene. I don't think the idea is outlandish.
Magdalene is an amazing figure for me. She has moved from common, wretched prostitue to intimate of Jesus, supporting Jesus and his ministry financially , a true feminist.
The Bible never said she was a prostitute. The image by Donatella is so fresh in my mind. It is iconic.
I imagine the story behind these manuscripts would make a good thriller or political novel.
The core point concerning Paul is that he did not know Jesus on earth but experienced the Risen Christ. For Paul, the Risen Christ experience was even more important than knowing the historical Jesus. The Risen Christ is at the center of Christian theology. Christ is present now. Altho I am full of doubt, I experience Christ now. He is not some dead person to me. Paul knows Christ through faith.
If Christian belief depended on the historical Jesus, it would have faded away within a few generations. Paul's letters contain credal statements of the earliest Church. The gospels were written later, quite a bit latter. Most Christians, including Paul, assumed that Christ would come again at any second. Christians then alive would never know death. It was a trauma for the community when believers started to die and still no Christ in person.
He called it the folly of the Cross.
I assume Paul and his readers heard various stories and sayings of Jesus orally. It takes much more of an institution to develop written historical documents. The written gospels acknowledge that Christ did not arrive on the time line that they assumed he would. The Jesus portrayed in the canonical gospels is different in each gospel. The Church debated one gospel but found all four told a larger story. Whether or not Q existed is debated now. I read that Q contained many sayings but not a narrative. The Passion was not included.
Anway, Paul argues that his experience of the ressurected and ascended Jesus is just as valid as the experience of Jesus that James and Peter shared. Paul makes Christ active in the now, not only the past.
BOTR said:
"If Christian belief depended on the historical Jesus, it would have faded away within a few generations."
Not only does Xian faith NOT depend on historical Jesus, it likely would be harmed by him. It's much easier to build the narrative of a cultic mystical figure around someone who is dead, since there's no chance for them to interfere with their "own" story. It's happened 100s of times before, where someone died and their story assumed larger-than-life status, even better than the real thing.
?
So, BOTR, in your view:
--The entire basis for the established christian church in your view is on the experience of one man, Paul, whose only interest in Jesus was in his being raised.
--He didn't know Jesus the man, but because of a supernatural experience began to believe Jesus was resurrected to heaven.
--It takes institutions to write documents like the gospels, can't be done by eyewitnesses or individuals
--The believers around Paul, and Paul himself, were wrong that Jesus would return in his generation.
--The gospels each tell different stories about Jesus (but they share common threads, except for John, which is one of the supporting arguements for the existence of Q).
--And if we had to rely on 'the historical Jesus', let's call him the man who actually lived and not the theological construct of the Paul and the gospels, that christianity would die within a generation.
--Each believers (Paul, James and Peter) experience re the raised Jesus was just as valid as anyone elses, even though it was different (ie, a subjective experience)
These are the arguments of a non-believer.
I have felt God in my life - always. I have learned to see Him through His Son, and i have also felt and heard His Son.
Tammy wrote this in another thread. I think it's interesting because the advice she is giving to NC is that the had to ask Christ to know God through him and then he will talk back.
But this seems to indicate that Tammy had Christ before she had that understanding. Indeed it seems Christ is partial.
As an experiment, I prayed for the past two days, asking for exactly what Tammy said I should ask for and being open to hearing voices.
I got nothing. Although I did go to an Oktoberfest yesterday, so that was pretty awesome.
