Yep, pretty much. And it went on from there. The Church of England broke from the Catholic Church, and the Baptist Churches went further yet by not praying to angels, Mary, or Joseph, and went straight to the source. I don't think any of the denominations have complete agreement on anything.
Paul taught all four things listed in the Jerusalem Decree, so the level of mutual agreement between the parties seems to be very low. Timothy was circumcised under pressure but Titus wasn't. The Jerusalem Decree doesn't mention circumcision at all, but there was clearly an issue of whether mixed Jewish families needed to obey Torah by circumcising their sons.
As we all recall, the basic gospel plot outline starts with Jewish royals not observing Torah, which it turned out was fine after the brand new Jewish meaning of resurrection was created. The only people with a motive to create that new meaning were Jews interfacing peacefully with other nations, for example by intermarriage. The disciples remained Torah observant, but many Jews then clearly were not (as is also the case today).
Good points, both of them. The Decree's silence on circumcision is the tell. If Jerusalem had actually settled it, Paul wouldn't be fighting the same battle all over again in Galatians, and the Titus-Timothy split shows there was no clean rule anyone was really following.
So I'm curious about Paul's motives. Everybody has a reason for wanting acceptance. Money, fame, self-indulgence, notoriety? Did he just hate the strictures of the Jewish faith of Christ? Paul seems like a man possessed by a demon of his own making. I look forward to your and others' thoughts on this.
Paul's a puzzle precisely because the usual motives don't fit him well. He wasn't chasing money (he brags about supporting himself by tentmaking so he wouldn't burden his congregations), he wasn't gaining status (he was beaten, jailed, and run out of town repeatedly), and worldly comfort was the opposite of what the road got him. Whatever drove him, it cost him, and he kept going anyway.
My read is that Paul was a genuine zealot before and after, just pointed in opposite directions. He describes himself as advancing in Judaism beyond his peers, exceedingly zealous for the traditions, persecuting the new sect with real conviction. Then something flips him on the Damascus road, and that same intensity gets rerouted. The personality doesn't change, only its target. A man capable of hunting down heretics becomes a man capable of crisscrossing the empire to build the very thing he'd tried to destroy.
I agree with your assessment that Paul was always a zealot, before and after his vision, and I see him as obsessed with the Law his whole life. His flip was a fantastical/fanatical realization that his longing and hope for one who is completely obedient to the Law was fulfilled in Jesus. One then no longer has to comply with the Law but instead follow Jesus, the perfect servant of Adonai. And let us not forget that the early Christians, including Paul, lived with the expectation that Jesus would return in their lifetimes.
Really like this thread — the idea that Paul was a zealot both before and after just points in a different direction after Damascus is a good way to put it. Makes his 'flip' feel less like a personality change and more like the same guy, new target. Good discussion, thanks both.
Paul is a textbook example spiritual bypassing. He did heinous things, had a mystical experience and then used that to springboard into a new identity without doing any of the inner work necessary for true transformation, just like every other born-again Christian out there who "found Jesus" and put all of their bullshit on him rather than do the work of repairing the damage they have done to others through contrition.
Paul had visions of the resurrected Jesus. I believe he was not the only person at that time who had such visions, and that's why he was accepted at the Jerusalem church. Paul considered those visions as authoritative. As Paul established gentile churches and collected money for the Jerusalem church, the church discovered his anti-Torah positions.
Eventually Paul had to leave for Rome under the protection of a Centurion. Paul's fragmentary letter to the Philippians has some interesting name drops. There's Clement, who would write about Peter and Paul and go on to become Pope. There's the Household of Caesar, which was an organization managing the finances of the Roman Army. And there's Epaphroditus, who pays Paul his service, and who was Nero's right hand, and a member of the Household of Caesar. As a tent maker, Paul's biggest client would have been the Roman Army. Paul's fellow tent makers were Priscilla and Aquila. 'Aquila' is an interesting Latin word. It's feminine, thus an odd name for a man. But it is also the name for the totem of the legions. So perhaps Priscilla's husband took the name for marketing purposes.
Clement reveals that Paul left Rome for western parts, likely Iberia. Clement also says that Paul was martyred under the Prefects, which means after Nero committed suicide and before Galba, governor of Iberia, became the next Emperor. Nero committed suicide because the Senate declared him an enemy of the state, so was Paul's martyrdom part of a Roman power struggle? Is Philippians fragmentary because Paul's connection to Nero was removed?
Clement also says Peter went to Rome and was arrested, made his witness, and was executed. The Ascents of Isaiah, maintained by the Ethiopian church, dates Peter's execution to October, 64 CE, following the Great Fire of Rome. So Peter was executed under the authority of Nero, while Paul was executed in June, 68 CE.
Jacob/James was martyred in 62 CE. The Great Fire was 64 CE. The Jewish Revolt started in 66 CE, in which Zealots occupied the Temple and destroyed all of the debt documents. Nero committed suicide in 68 CE, and General Vespasian Flavius adopted Josephus and started the Flavian dynasty in 69 CE. The Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.
When Roman citizen Paul first arrived in Antioch, having been called to join an existing movement, Manaen was already a leader there. Manaen had been raised in Rome with Herod Antipas as his foster brother. This puts Paul in the Herodian social circle from the start.
Joanna was a witness to the alleged resurrection of Jesus. This puts Joanna and her associate Mary Magdalene also in the Herodian social circle because she was married to Chuza. (I claim the sudden change in the meaning of resurrection was a Jewish royal creation.)
If we believe the gospel is a made up story, the disciples would not have had motive to make up a story in which their Jewish royal and apostate opposition gets an out to no longer obey Torah. Allowing the supernatural, there could have been supernatural events that led to this outcome, in which case it was God who vindicated Herodias, taking her side in the dispute found at the start of the gospel story.
"...the reason most Christians have never heard of them is that the winning side edited the table of contents." The reason I have spent and continue to spend so much time learning what I can about the beginnings. Also one of the reasons for my deconstruction; start finding out the truth and you start to wonder what's Jesus and what's bs. If the truth sets you free, the lie puts you in bondage and a small change makes the truth into a lie.
Thank you for giving us the truth, even if it upsets some people. I won't demand to know if you're a believer or not because reporting the history honestly is beyond what faith you have or don't. Some people would say that you're picking and choosing what to report and you're only picking what makes Christianity look bad. I think Christianity does enough to make itself look bad, mostly by ignoring what Jesus actually taught and glomming onto Paul or worrying about whether Peter was appointed pope. That battle still rages more than two thousand years later and you're telling us why. No one can convince me that you're the problem.
Paul never met Jesus. But, he spent time with Apostles and other disciples who did.
You know who didn’t do either? The Ebionites, Epiphanius, or any of the scholars Tanner relies on. You don’t get to throw Paul out because he’s one handshake away from Jesus and then reconstruct the “real Jesus” from people three centuries and God knows how many handshakes away.
And, if you believe, “The movement that produced our New Testament was Pauline and gentile.” The next question you to ask is, “Why did these ruthless Pauline winners preserve Galatians?”
If you’re editing the table of contents to conceal “the seam,” preserving the document in which Paul:
* admits his independence from Jerusalem,
* records the dispute over Titus,
* tells us James sent people to Antioch,
* tells us Peter withdrew from Gentile fellowship,
* tells us Paul publicly rebuked Peter,
is a major editorial blunder.
And then the Pauline victors preserve James too—the very document Tanner says represents the losing side’s response to Paul.
They preserve Matthew’s strong language about the Law.
They preserve Acts’ extraordinarily Jewish primitive church.
They preserve Paul’s collection for Jerusalem.
They preserve Paul’s acknowledgment of Peter, James and John as “pillars.”
They preserve Paul’s statement that he received resurrection tradition involving Cephas and James.
This is the most implausibly successful cover-up imaginable: the winners hid the evidence by canonizing it.
That’s the internal contradiction that really hurts the thesis.
Works of the Law is not the same as the Law of Christ. Works of the Moses’s Law are now dead but Christ gave clear do’s and don’ts. Those are the Law of Christ and the Apostles had a better understanding and clear set of rules for it. Paul knew that but he also knew that man is saved by Grace apart from the Law of Moses. James is saying that faith without the works that Jesus commands are dead.
The historical problem is that "the Law of Moses is dead now" was Paul's position, and it's the exact thing the Jerusalem side refused to grant. James and Peter kept circumcising their sons and eating kosher for decades after the crucifixion. If Christ had already replaced the Torah with a clear set of do's and don'ts that the apostles understood better than anyone, the Antioch confrontation makes no sense, because Peter would have had nothing to fold on. And for Paul to be right, Jesus has to have taught his own handpicked disciples wrong, or taught them right and had every one of them miss it, while the man who never met him understood it perfectly. Both sides can't be correct at the same time.
Worth noticing too that "the law of Christ" is Paul's phrase (Galatians 6:2, 1 Corinthians 9:21). James never uses it. He calls it the royal law and the perfect law of liberty, and when he argues his case he reaches for Abraham and Genesis 15:6, which is the same proof text Paul builds his whole argument on in Romans 4 and reads the opposite way. Two men using one verse to reach two conclusions looks less like division of labor and more like a disagreement.
That's a coherent Pauline reading, and it's how most of the tradition after Paul has understood works. My question is narrower than the theology, though: what did James mean by it.
James 2:8-11 is where it gets hard to make his "law" anything other than the Mosaic one. He cites "love your neighbor as yourself" from Leviticus 19:18, then argues that whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles at one point is guilty of all of it, and his examples are adultery and murder straight out of the Decalogue. That's the standard rabbinic principle about Torah being indivisible, applied by a man in Jerusalem writing to Jewish believers. His examples of saving works are Abraham binding Isaac and Rahab hiding the spies, both from the Hebrew Bible, and neither one a spiritual gift in the 1 Corinthians 12 sense.
So I'd agree Luther read James through Paul and got frustrated when it wouldn't fit. The trouble is that reading James through Paul is still reading him through Paul, and James looks like he's making a case Paul would have argued with.
If the law of Moses is dead why is Paul using it as authoritative and applicable
“You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain” (Deut. 25:4).
In Galatians 5:19-21, Paul taught that if you disobey the Law of Moses, which is to walk in the flesh, you will NOT inherit the kingdom of God.
He mentions all of these lawless works:
Adultery (Exodus 20:14)
Sexual Immorality (Leviticus 18)
Uncleanness (Leviticus 7:21, Leviticus 17:15-16)
Debauchery (Numbers 4:4-6, Genesis 19:4-9)
Idolatry (Exodus 20:4-5)
Sorcery (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)
Hatred (Leviticus 19:17)
Strife (Leviticus 19:18)
Jealousy (Exodus 20:17)
Outbursts Of Anger (Numbers 20:7-12)
Selfish Ambition (Exodus 22:25-27)
Divisions (Num 13:30-33 & Num 14:1-10, 36-45)
Factions (Exodus 3:7-8 & Numbers 21:4-8)
(Prompted By)
Envy (Gen 4:3-12, Gen 37:9-28)
Murder (Exodus 20:13)
Drunkenness (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Revelries (Exodus 32:1-6, 17-19, 25)
Paul also said, "For it is not those who hear the Law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the Law who will be declared righteous." (Romans 2:13)
Great snakes 🐍 the total nonsense in these comments.
Are you good Christian’s practicing necromancy, sorcery, bestiality? If NOT then you are keeping the Law of Moses.
NO ONE BELIEVES SALVATION IS FROM OBEDIENCE, not even THE JEWS. So don’t even trot out that straw man.
Because the Law of Christ is not simply believe. It is believe and be transformed and if you are transformed you will not do all those things you listed. You are saved and as such be obedient to remain saved. It’s really that simple. So, yes, there are moral crossover between the Law of Christ and Moses because ceremonial laws are no longer necessary. This is not complicated.
Jesus is the Word made Flesh, therefore, the Law of Christ is of one mind with the Logos.
I did not say the Law of Moses is ceremonial. It has laws regarding ceremony. These are called ceremonial laws like the prohibition against eating shell fish. But laws on how one should treat others and how one ought to live are moral laws. The moral laws remain for the most part the same from the Law of Moses to the Law of Christ but the ceremonial laws change. So the ceremonial laws of Moses are unnecessary, because the sacraments of Christianity are different and require new ceremonial laws under Christ.
So EATING is ceremonial and Messiah died a bloody death so His people can eat garbage disposals? Isaiah 66 doesn’t sound ceremonial when the second coming has people dying for eating abominations and swine.
Paul noticed probably through divine revelation what many of us only learn through years or decades of trying and failing, that wanting to get right by obeying a set of rules, even if the rules are summed up in: love God and your neighbour, just can't produce the kind of life Jesus embodied, wanting to measure up is the trap! Only grace and the full acceptance of that grace can free you to start to live the kind of life the Law righfully demanded but couldn't make you produce. Thanks to Jesus and his servant Paul for showing us The Way to obedience from the heart through mercy and indwelling of His Spirit!
(I noticed the post is probably leaning in the other direction, but still it nicely reveals the seams that were attempted to be sanded over and I loved that!)
Holy Moly somebody doesn’t have the Spirit of Truth. Or especially the Holy Spirit. Paul was The Gentile apostle his teachings were mainly to the Gentiles. Jesus came to for fill the Law and when He died on the Cross He finished the Law of the Old Testament. If you understand what the Law was all about then you would see that the Law showed that we are all sinners. We have all sinned (law) and have come short of the glory of God. Jesus died to fore fill the law on the Cross and shed His precious blood to cover us all in His righteous. Man cannot keep the law but Christ did. I am now in Christ and He is in me. Paul writings is the most important writing for Gentile of course it is still open to Jews. But the only way to salvation is through the Cross of Christ. NOT THE LAW!! God bless
Circumcision is not Christian. Glad Paul rejected it, it does not belong to Christianity whatsoever. The fact Paul rejected it so firmly should not be gaslighted. The gospel is not about love and light but about spiritual warfare. Paul rejecting circumcision is probably one of his greatest deeds.
Paul argues that there can be such a thing as works without faith and such works are worthless.
James in no way disputes Paul's proposition. James argues that a genuine faith will necessarily result in actions and those works are evidence of that faith. They are a result, not a substitute.
Together they are establishing the perimeter in which salvific faith dwells by identitying the false understandings at either end.
The contention here that two forms of Christianity existed in opposition is not a response to a Biblical discrepancy but a failure of logic and reading comprehension.
“Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”
Revelation 14:12 KJV
The book of Revelations tells the story…read what Jesus tells the seven churches which aligns with Paul’s teachings and James teachings. Paul never told us that the law wasn’t important, but it had nor does it have anything to do with our salvation which is a free gift of God through Jesus Christ who died for us to have eternal life and salvation. Romans 3:31 sets this part of the record straight and aligns with James teachings perfectly. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”
So Christianity, like Islam, was deeply divided nearly from its start. As soon as the founder was dead and gone, a schism began.
That pretty much sums it up.
Yep, pretty much. And it went on from there. The Church of England broke from the Catholic Church, and the Baptist Churches went further yet by not praying to angels, Mary, or Joseph, and went straight to the source. I don't think any of the denominations have complete agreement on anything.
Paul taught all four things listed in the Jerusalem Decree, so the level of mutual agreement between the parties seems to be very low. Timothy was circumcised under pressure but Titus wasn't. The Jerusalem Decree doesn't mention circumcision at all, but there was clearly an issue of whether mixed Jewish families needed to obey Torah by circumcising their sons.
As we all recall, the basic gospel plot outline starts with Jewish royals not observing Torah, which it turned out was fine after the brand new Jewish meaning of resurrection was created. The only people with a motive to create that new meaning were Jews interfacing peacefully with other nations, for example by intermarriage. The disciples remained Torah observant, but many Jews then clearly were not (as is also the case today).
Good points, both of them. The Decree's silence on circumcision is the tell. If Jerusalem had actually settled it, Paul wouldn't be fighting the same battle all over again in Galatians, and the Titus-Timothy split shows there was no clean rule anyone was really following.
So I'm curious about Paul's motives. Everybody has a reason for wanting acceptance. Money, fame, self-indulgence, notoriety? Did he just hate the strictures of the Jewish faith of Christ? Paul seems like a man possessed by a demon of his own making. I look forward to your and others' thoughts on this.
Paul's a puzzle precisely because the usual motives don't fit him well. He wasn't chasing money (he brags about supporting himself by tentmaking so he wouldn't burden his congregations), he wasn't gaining status (he was beaten, jailed, and run out of town repeatedly), and worldly comfort was the opposite of what the road got him. Whatever drove him, it cost him, and he kept going anyway.
My read is that Paul was a genuine zealot before and after, just pointed in opposite directions. He describes himself as advancing in Judaism beyond his peers, exceedingly zealous for the traditions, persecuting the new sect with real conviction. Then something flips him on the Damascus road, and that same intensity gets rerouted. The personality doesn't change, only its target. A man capable of hunting down heretics becomes a man capable of crisscrossing the empire to build the very thing he'd tried to destroy.
I agree with your assessment that Paul was always a zealot, before and after his vision, and I see him as obsessed with the Law his whole life. His flip was a fantastical/fanatical realization that his longing and hope for one who is completely obedient to the Law was fulfilled in Jesus. One then no longer has to comply with the Law but instead follow Jesus, the perfect servant of Adonai. And let us not forget that the early Christians, including Paul, lived with the expectation that Jesus would return in their lifetimes.
Really like this thread — the idea that Paul was a zealot both before and after just points in a different direction after Damascus is a good way to put it. Makes his 'flip' feel less like a personality change and more like the same guy, new target. Good discussion, thanks both.
Paul is a textbook example spiritual bypassing. He did heinous things, had a mystical experience and then used that to springboard into a new identity without doing any of the inner work necessary for true transformation, just like every other born-again Christian out there who "found Jesus" and put all of their bullshit on him rather than do the work of repairing the damage they have done to others through contrition.
Paul had visions of the resurrected Jesus. I believe he was not the only person at that time who had such visions, and that's why he was accepted at the Jerusalem church. Paul considered those visions as authoritative. As Paul established gentile churches and collected money for the Jerusalem church, the church discovered his anti-Torah positions.
Eventually Paul had to leave for Rome under the protection of a Centurion. Paul's fragmentary letter to the Philippians has some interesting name drops. There's Clement, who would write about Peter and Paul and go on to become Pope. There's the Household of Caesar, which was an organization managing the finances of the Roman Army. And there's Epaphroditus, who pays Paul his service, and who was Nero's right hand, and a member of the Household of Caesar. As a tent maker, Paul's biggest client would have been the Roman Army. Paul's fellow tent makers were Priscilla and Aquila. 'Aquila' is an interesting Latin word. It's feminine, thus an odd name for a man. But it is also the name for the totem of the legions. So perhaps Priscilla's husband took the name for marketing purposes.
Clement reveals that Paul left Rome for western parts, likely Iberia. Clement also says that Paul was martyred under the Prefects, which means after Nero committed suicide and before Galba, governor of Iberia, became the next Emperor. Nero committed suicide because the Senate declared him an enemy of the state, so was Paul's martyrdom part of a Roman power struggle? Is Philippians fragmentary because Paul's connection to Nero was removed?
Clement also says Peter went to Rome and was arrested, made his witness, and was executed. The Ascents of Isaiah, maintained by the Ethiopian church, dates Peter's execution to October, 64 CE, following the Great Fire of Rome. So Peter was executed under the authority of Nero, while Paul was executed in June, 68 CE.
Jacob/James was martyred in 62 CE. The Great Fire was 64 CE. The Jewish Revolt started in 66 CE, in which Zealots occupied the Temple and destroyed all of the debt documents. Nero committed suicide in 68 CE, and General Vespasian Flavius adopted Josephus and started the Flavian dynasty in 69 CE. The Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.
When Roman citizen Paul first arrived in Antioch, having been called to join an existing movement, Manaen was already a leader there. Manaen had been raised in Rome with Herod Antipas as his foster brother. This puts Paul in the Herodian social circle from the start.
Joanna was a witness to the alleged resurrection of Jesus. This puts Joanna and her associate Mary Magdalene also in the Herodian social circle because she was married to Chuza. (I claim the sudden change in the meaning of resurrection was a Jewish royal creation.)
If we believe the gospel is a made up story, the disciples would not have had motive to make up a story in which their Jewish royal and apostate opposition gets an out to no longer obey Torah. Allowing the supernatural, there could have been supernatural events that led to this outcome, in which case it was God who vindicated Herodias, taking her side in the dispute found at the start of the gospel story.
"...the reason most Christians have never heard of them is that the winning side edited the table of contents." The reason I have spent and continue to spend so much time learning what I can about the beginnings. Also one of the reasons for my deconstruction; start finding out the truth and you start to wonder what's Jesus and what's bs. If the truth sets you free, the lie puts you in bondage and a small change makes the truth into a lie.
Thank you for giving us the truth, even if it upsets some people. I won't demand to know if you're a believer or not because reporting the history honestly is beyond what faith you have or don't. Some people would say that you're picking and choosing what to report and you're only picking what makes Christianity look bad. I think Christianity does enough to make itself look bad, mostly by ignoring what Jesus actually taught and glomming onto Paul or worrying about whether Peter was appointed pope. That battle still rages more than two thousand years later and you're telling us why. No one can convince me that you're the problem.
Paul never met Jesus. But, he spent time with Apostles and other disciples who did.
You know who didn’t do either? The Ebionites, Epiphanius, or any of the scholars Tanner relies on. You don’t get to throw Paul out because he’s one handshake away from Jesus and then reconstruct the “real Jesus” from people three centuries and God knows how many handshakes away.
And, if you believe, “The movement that produced our New Testament was Pauline and gentile.” The next question you to ask is, “Why did these ruthless Pauline winners preserve Galatians?”
If you’re editing the table of contents to conceal “the seam,” preserving the document in which Paul:
* admits his independence from Jerusalem,
* records the dispute over Titus,
* tells us James sent people to Antioch,
* tells us Peter withdrew from Gentile fellowship,
* tells us Paul publicly rebuked Peter,
is a major editorial blunder.
And then the Pauline victors preserve James too—the very document Tanner says represents the losing side’s response to Paul.
They preserve Matthew’s strong language about the Law.
They preserve Acts’ extraordinarily Jewish primitive church.
They preserve Paul’s collection for Jerusalem.
They preserve Paul’s acknowledgment of Peter, James and John as “pillars.”
They preserve Paul’s statement that he received resurrection tradition involving Cephas and James.
This is the most implausibly successful cover-up imaginable: the winners hid the evidence by canonizing it.
That’s the internal contradiction that really hurts the thesis.
Works of the Law is not the same as the Law of Christ. Works of the Moses’s Law are now dead but Christ gave clear do’s and don’ts. Those are the Law of Christ and the Apostles had a better understanding and clear set of rules for it. Paul knew that but he also knew that man is saved by Grace apart from the Law of Moses. James is saying that faith without the works that Jesus commands are dead.
Thanks for reading and the feedback, Nicholas.
The historical problem is that "the Law of Moses is dead now" was Paul's position, and it's the exact thing the Jerusalem side refused to grant. James and Peter kept circumcising their sons and eating kosher for decades after the crucifixion. If Christ had already replaced the Torah with a clear set of do's and don'ts that the apostles understood better than anyone, the Antioch confrontation makes no sense, because Peter would have had nothing to fold on. And for Paul to be right, Jesus has to have taught his own handpicked disciples wrong, or taught them right and had every one of them miss it, while the man who never met him understood it perfectly. Both sides can't be correct at the same time.
Worth noticing too that "the law of Christ" is Paul's phrase (Galatians 6:2, 1 Corinthians 9:21). James never uses it. He calls it the royal law and the perfect law of liberty, and when he argues his case he reaches for Abraham and Genesis 15:6, which is the same proof text Paul builds his whole argument on in Romans 4 and reads the opposite way. Two men using one verse to reach two conclusions looks less like division of labor and more like a disagreement.
Yes, you've described the exact error of Martin Luther. Having works to do in your Christian life is not the same thing as following the Law of Moses.
The Law of Moses is an external standard of behavior.
Each Christian has works to do on his life, as they are called to do in Christ. According to the gifts that God gives them.
That's a coherent Pauline reading, and it's how most of the tradition after Paul has understood works. My question is narrower than the theology, though: what did James mean by it.
James 2:8-11 is where it gets hard to make his "law" anything other than the Mosaic one. He cites "love your neighbor as yourself" from Leviticus 19:18, then argues that whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles at one point is guilty of all of it, and his examples are adultery and murder straight out of the Decalogue. That's the standard rabbinic principle about Torah being indivisible, applied by a man in Jerusalem writing to Jewish believers. His examples of saving works are Abraham binding Isaac and Rahab hiding the spies, both from the Hebrew Bible, and neither one a spiritual gift in the 1 Corinthians 12 sense.
So I'd agree Luther read James through Paul and got frustrated when it wouldn't fit. The trouble is that reading James through Paul is still reading him through Paul, and James looks like he's making a case Paul would have argued with.
Sure but it’s hard to understand your argument when you’re talking about eating garbage disposals. It sounds like I’m arguing with a schizophrenic.
Swine and shellfish are garbage disposals..
So can you explain what you’re trying to say instead of speaking gibberish?
Can you?
If the law of Moses is dead why is Paul using it as authoritative and applicable
“You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain” (Deut. 25:4).
In Galatians 5:19-21, Paul taught that if you disobey the Law of Moses, which is to walk in the flesh, you will NOT inherit the kingdom of God.
He mentions all of these lawless works:
Adultery (Exodus 20:14)
Sexual Immorality (Leviticus 18)
Uncleanness (Leviticus 7:21, Leviticus 17:15-16)
Debauchery (Numbers 4:4-6, Genesis 19:4-9)
Idolatry (Exodus 20:4-5)
Sorcery (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)
Hatred (Leviticus 19:17)
Strife (Leviticus 19:18)
Jealousy (Exodus 20:17)
Outbursts Of Anger (Numbers 20:7-12)
Selfish Ambition (Exodus 22:25-27)
Divisions (Num 13:30-33 & Num 14:1-10, 36-45)
Factions (Exodus 3:7-8 & Numbers 21:4-8)
(Prompted By)
Envy (Gen 4:3-12, Gen 37:9-28)
Murder (Exodus 20:13)
Drunkenness (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Revelries (Exodus 32:1-6, 17-19, 25)
Paul also said, "For it is not those who hear the Law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the Law who will be declared righteous." (Romans 2:13)
Great snakes 🐍 the total nonsense in these comments.
Are you good Christian’s practicing necromancy, sorcery, bestiality? If NOT then you are keeping the Law of Moses.
NO ONE BELIEVES SALVATION IS FROM OBEDIENCE, not even THE JEWS. So don’t even trot out that straw man.
Because the Law of Christ is not simply believe. It is believe and be transformed and if you are transformed you will not do all those things you listed. You are saved and as such be obedient to remain saved. It’s really that simple. So, yes, there are moral crossover between the Law of Christ and Moses because ceremonial laws are no longer necessary. This is not complicated.
Messiah stated His doctrine is that of the Father.
John 7:16
Was the Fathers doctrine “The Law of Christ”?
Proverbs 4:2. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law.
Please provide scripture stating Moses Law is “ceremonial”. It does not exist, it is a man made tradition
Ceremonial Laws are no longer necessary? Baptism is ceremonial.
Define sin: 1 John 3:4 Sin is transgression of the LAW.
What does the WORD state the NEW COVENANT is?
Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8
A covenant cut with Israel and Judah placing the Law (TORAH) within one’s mind and heart.
Jesus is the Word made Flesh, therefore, the Law of Christ is of one mind with the Logos.
I did not say the Law of Moses is ceremonial. It has laws regarding ceremony. These are called ceremonial laws like the prohibition against eating shell fish. But laws on how one should treat others and how one ought to live are moral laws. The moral laws remain for the most part the same from the Law of Moses to the Law of Christ but the ceremonial laws change. So the ceremonial laws of Moses are unnecessary, because the sacraments of Christianity are different and require new ceremonial laws under Christ.
So EATING is ceremonial and Messiah died a bloody death so His people can eat garbage disposals? Isaiah 66 doesn’t sound ceremonial when the second coming has people dying for eating abominations and swine.
You need to calm down the hyperbolic language of you want to continue this conversation.
Paul noticed probably through divine revelation what many of us only learn through years or decades of trying and failing, that wanting to get right by obeying a set of rules, even if the rules are summed up in: love God and your neighbour, just can't produce the kind of life Jesus embodied, wanting to measure up is the trap! Only grace and the full acceptance of that grace can free you to start to live the kind of life the Law righfully demanded but couldn't make you produce. Thanks to Jesus and his servant Paul for showing us The Way to obedience from the heart through mercy and indwelling of His Spirit!
(I noticed the post is probably leaning in the other direction, but still it nicely reveals the seams that were attempted to be sanded over and I loved that!)
Holy Moly somebody doesn’t have the Spirit of Truth. Or especially the Holy Spirit. Paul was The Gentile apostle his teachings were mainly to the Gentiles. Jesus came to for fill the Law and when He died on the Cross He finished the Law of the Old Testament. If you understand what the Law was all about then you would see that the Law showed that we are all sinners. We have all sinned (law) and have come short of the glory of God. Jesus died to fore fill the law on the Cross and shed His precious blood to cover us all in His righteous. Man cannot keep the law but Christ did. I am now in Christ and He is in me. Paul writings is the most important writing for Gentile of course it is still open to Jews. But the only way to salvation is through the Cross of Christ. NOT THE LAW!! God bless
You can not keep the law? Are you saying you can not refrain from sex with family or animals?
YHVH states in Deuteronomy 30 you can keep the law. Is He a liar?
Circumcision is not Christian. Glad Paul rejected it, it does not belong to Christianity whatsoever. The fact Paul rejected it so firmly should not be gaslighted. The gospel is not about love and light but about spiritual warfare. Paul rejecting circumcision is probably one of his greatest deeds.
If you read Paul you can see his arrogance and pride about himself.
There is no division between Paul and James.
Paul argues that there can be such a thing as works without faith and such works are worthless.
James in no way disputes Paul's proposition. James argues that a genuine faith will necessarily result in actions and those works are evidence of that faith. They are a result, not a substitute.
Together they are establishing the perimeter in which salvific faith dwells by identitying the false understandings at either end.
The contention here that two forms of Christianity existed in opposition is not a response to a Biblical discrepancy but a failure of logic and reading comprehension.
“Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”
Revelation 14:12 KJV
The book of Revelations tells the story…read what Jesus tells the seven churches which aligns with Paul’s teachings and James teachings. Paul never told us that the law wasn’t important, but it had nor does it have anything to do with our salvation which is a free gift of God through Jesus Christ who died for us to have eternal life and salvation. Romans 3:31 sets this part of the record straight and aligns with James teachings perfectly. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”
Romans 3:31 KJV
excellent