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Title: Orthodox Problems with Penal Substitution
Source:
Preachers Institute
URL Source: https://preachersinstitute.com/2011 ... blems-with-penal-substitution/
Published: Jun 2, 2011
Author: Alexander Renault
Post Date: 2018-05-27 19:35:05 by A Pole
Keywords: Church, salvation, Christ
Views: 5981
Comments: 46
From book “Reconsidering Tulip” The penal substitution view was completely absent from the church for over 1,000 years. It was only in the 11th century that Anselm of Canterbury began to introduce the groundwork for this kind of theology to the West. Nor was it fully developed into the doctrine we now know as penal substitution until the 16th-century Reformers came along. To this day it has never been accepted in the east (nor has it ever been fully accepted by the Roman Catholics). 1. Penal substitution compromises the deity of Christ and puts a rift in the Trinity If Christ died for, and is our solution to, our sins against god the Father, then what about our sins against Christ? He’s just as god as the Father is. or our sins against the Holy Spirit? With penal substitution, God is pitted against God, either dividing God (and thus destroying the Trinity) or saying that Christ isn’t fully god. 2. With penal substitution, God is bound by necessity If god’s justice demands that He punish sin, then there is a higher force than God—necessity—which determines what God can and cannot do. Calvinists will be quick to argue, “No, justice is an aspect of God’s nature. There is no necessity laid on Him from outside His nature.” The problem, though, is that if I do “A” then God must do “B.” If I sin, God must punish. He does not have the freedom to do otherwise. Thus God’s actions are bound and controlled by some- thing outside of Himself, i.e. my actions. This becomes even more confusing if we add in the Calvinistic notion that God foreordained my sinful actions in the first place, thus forcing Him to respond to them. Furthermore, it is often argued by the Reformed that God is sovereign and doesn’t have to save anyone if He chooses not to. On the other hand, He does have to punish sin. So God has to punish sin, but He doesn’t have to save sinners. It’s very interesting that justice (or at least what the Reformed see as justice) becomes the defining characteristic of God rather than love. Justice forces God to respond to our actions, but love does not. 3. Penal substitution misunderstands the Old Testament sacrifices The Old Testament sacrificial system was not a picture of penal substitution. God was not pouring out His wrath on the animals in place of the Israelites. He didn’t vent His righteous judgment on the animals, sending them to hell in place of the Israelites. On the contrary, they were killed honorably and as painlessly as possible. Their life (i.e. their blood) was offered to God as a sweet smelling aroma. The resulting meat was good and holy—not just worthless carrion fit for dogs and vultures. Such is also the case with Christ’s sacrifice: it is a holy offering of blood to the Father, not a means whereby God can vent His wrath. 4. Penal substitution misunderstands the word “justice” A quick perusal of the psalms and prophets will reveal that the word “justice” is usually coupled with “mercy.” Justice really means to show kindness and deliverance to the oppressed, and to right the wrongs done to them. True justice is destroying our oppressors—sin, death, and Satan—not punishing us for the sins to which we are in bondage. 5. Penal substitution misunderstands the word “propitiation” Propitiation should not be thought of in the classical pagan sense, as if our god were some angry deity who needed appeasing and could only be satisfied through a penal sacrifice. It’s really quite different. Propitiation (Greek hilasterion) is also translated “mercy seat.” The mercy seat covered the ark of the covenant, which contained a copy of the ten commandments—the law. While the law cried out against us and demanded perfection and showed us our shortcomings, the mercy seat covered those demands and our failure to live up to them. Was the mercy seat punished for our sins? of course not. Likewise, Christ’s blood was not the punishment demanded by justice, but rather the ultimate mercy seat, covering and forgiving our sins. This is why “propitiation” is sometimes more accurately translated as “expiation” in some versions of the Bible. (“expiation” implies the removal of our sins, while “propitiation” implies appeasing an angry deity.) 6. With penal substitution, God does not show unconditional love With penal substitution, god Himself does not show the unconditional love that He commands us to show one another. There is a big condition attached: god must have an “outlet” to vent His wrath. His “self-giving” love is only made possible by His “self- satisfying” justice. 7. With penal substitution, God does not truly forgive With penal substitution, the debt is not really forgiven; it’s just transferred. But we are commanded to forgive as God forgave us. If my brother offends me, should I demand justice and vent my wrath on someone else? Should I beat myself up? No, obviously we are to simply let it go and graciously accept the offense. 8. With penal substitution, God changes According to penal substitution, God is angry with us because of our sins. But once He expresses His wrath in His Son, He is no longer angry with us. Now He loves us as He loves His own Son. In other words, He changes. First He’s angry with us, then He changes His mind and decides to love us. But how can this be if God is love? How can a God who is infinite, self-giving love ever vary in His degree of love towards us? Besides, not only is God love (1 Jn 4:8, 16), but He’s also unchanging (Mal 3:6) and doesn’t change His mind (Num 23:19). 9. Penal substitution makes the resurrection unnecessary According to penal substitution, salvation is made possible only by a legal exchange. We are counted “just” and “forgiven” only because god’s wrath has been poured out on Christ instead. Since hell is said to be a punishment for sins, and since our sins have already been punished in Christ, we are free to go to heaven. The resurrection then becomes simply a nice bonus, nothing more than a “proof” that Christ is divine. 10. Penal substitution makes the incarnation unnecessary Was it Christ’s physical suffering or spiritual suffering which atoned for our sins (according to penal substitution)? If physical, then anyone who has suffered physically more than Christ (and there have been plenty in the history of our race), is exempt from hell, since they already paid for their own sins. If it was Christ’s spiritual suffering that counts, then He didn’t need to be incarnate. (After all, the demons will be punished without needing bodies.) The incarnation becomes just an “add-on” to help us out a little more. 11. One person cannot be punished for another Contra penal substitution, the Bible tells us that one person can- not be punished for another. each one shall die for his own sins: In those days they shall say no more: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But every one shall die for his own iniquity. (Jer 31:29-30) Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin. (Deut 24:16) The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezek 18:20) 12. Penal substitution makes death a punishment rather than a result God said, “In the day you eat the fruit, you will surely die” (Gen 2:17). He did not say “I will kill you” but rather “you will die.” To walk away from God (i.e. to sin) is by definition, death. death is the realm of “Not God.” likewise, if I pull the plug on my own life support system, the result is death. No one else is killing me. If I jump off the roof, after being warned by my mother not to, and I end up breaking my leg, does that mean that my mother broke my leg? No, that was simply the result of my own choice. Christ gave Himself up to death. If death is an active punishment from God, then Christ was punished by His Father (per penal substitution). But if death is the result of sin, then it is an outside enemy, and not God’s own wrath. 13. Penal substitution undermines union with Christ If death is a punishment for sin rather than a result of sin (continuing with the last point), then it makes little sense to speak of being united with Christ. St. Paul says that we were united together in the likeness of His death (Rom 6:5). He also says “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20). If death is a punishment, then St. Paul is saying “Christ and I have been punished together.” But again, why would two people be punished for one person’s sins? Perhaps it makes more sense to say that Christ, in union with our humanity, experienced the consequence of death, and through His death, defeated death for all of us. Besides, if we really believe that Christ defeated death, then we certainly can’t say that death is a punishment sent from god, or else we’d be forced to say that Christ defeated something that god willed for us. But Christ and His Father are not at war with each other. on the other hand, I will certainly confess that there is a substitution as well. Christ experienced the consequence of sin (i.e. death), as a substitute for us, so that we don’t have to experience the ultimate consequence sin (i.e. eternal death). But note that Christ is taking on the consequence of sin in our place, rather than the punishment for sin in our place. 14. Penal substitution was absent from the entire Church (both east and west) for at least 1,000 years To quote from the Theogeek blogsite, “If the apostles taught penal substitution as a central part of their gospel, then it seems almost entirely inconceivable that the generations that came after them and spoke the same language had, worldwide, managed to universally forget the major and central part of the gospel and replace it with something else entirely.” So what was Christ’s death for, if not to satisfy God’s justice? The purpose of Christ’s atonement was to defeat death and forgive us of our sins. It was the presenting of Christ’s blood, His humanity, to the Father to restore the unity that we had broken. It was a sweet-smelling aroma, a sacrifice acceptable to God. The depth and purpose of His sacrifice is far beyond the scope of this little book, but one thing is for sure: it was not about punishment. And when punishment is taken out of the equation, things look much different. We can no longer say that Christ was punished in place of John but not in place of, say, Judas. But we can say that Christ defeated death for both John and Judas, both of whom will be resurrected regardless of their acceptance or rejection of Christ…
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 41.
#1. To: A Pole (#0)
My current thinking on the subject is that the doctrine of sin is, theologically speaking, "messy". Not because of the atonement part, but because of what constitutes "sin" in the first place. One's intent must be a factor in wrong doing, and yet one's intent is clearly not easily defined or discernable. Though in defense of Christian doctrine, on the #1 point, I would say that yes, Christ's sacrifice on the cross certainly did pit "God against God", and yes, did destroy the trinity, but only for a time. While on the cross, Jesus was quoted as asking "why hast thou forsaken me?" which it seems to me to have not been intended to show his desperation out of physical pain, but rather, illustrating what was happening spiritually, that he was indeed, at that moment, forsaken by God out of necessity, by reason of being covered with sin. It was required that he be forsaken. That again, according to Christian doctrine which I generally no longer subscribe to. (Though yet, the story of his sacrifice has love as it's moral, and love is very much real). #2) I find is a very logically sound argument and one I've taken up myself. I've expressed it as: Did or did not God have a choice in how spiritual laws were written that determine the fate of mankind? Seems to me he must have, in which case, why would he have settled upon a set of laws that see most of his children end up in a sea of fire and brimestone for all eternity? To me, that is illogical. (And the "Newton model" as I term it, is arguably far superior to the Christian model in this regard). #7) That's funny! To forgive someone who wronged me, I must first go find some totally innocent person and beat them up. #8) I couldn't agree more. I've argued many times that anger is a result of weakness, primarily insecurity. If a co-worker flies off the handle one day, the Christian reaction is to start praying for him, which is a commendable response. But do we pray for God if God becomes angry? I cannot understand how any deity who is all powerful, all loving, all patient and all wise ever becoming angry. Anger is indeed the result of weakness, in every case. So I cannot agree that God have ever been angry. It makes no sense at all.
What you wrote rings a pleasant bell :) And it clarified an image that was at the tip of my tongue for a long time. Imagine a place where there is a delicate dim light, occupied by many people, who are embittered, confused and quarreling with each other, full of suffering and anger. At some moment a visitor comes - calm, meek and compassionate. He starts to sooth those around, by compassionate and kind words and by his friendly presence. People get attracted to him, some clinging like neglected and abandoned children (1), others hoping that he might have power to help them to defeat their enemies (2), some who have had longing to establish a semblance of moral order by a set of enforced regulations given them in the remore past in mysterious circumstances (3). The fourth group is full of pain, despair and corrution that can only hurt others and themselves. The fifth proud and talended try to rule over their world and find comfort in selfishness, see in him a threat to their hardly won position. ======================== The newcomer said: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." "I tell you: do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. And if someone takes you to court to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. ... love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" "My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight [for me]" ... about food, drink and clothes - "your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" At certain moment the wicked crowd decides to mistreat and kill this teacher, what they did. He submitted meekly without trying to fight back. His new friends and students became terrified and dejected. Yet their teacher rose from the death and appeared again showing them his wounds, urging them to persevere after he leaves their world and promising them to send them the power that will comfort and guide them further. Centuries later in far away lands, brave rugged and warlike tribes translated this message into story of crime and retribution paid by a generous stranger, accordingly to their savage mindset. "Sin" in the original Greek is "missing the mark" (the literal meaning of the Greek word for sin, "hamartia"), "falling short", "erring", or the Hebrew word "hata", which means "to miss the mark" and "flawed". Through the fall of our ancestors in Paradise, the instrument of our souls went out of tune and body got soiled. Christ came to do the tuning and purification.
How was that "tuning and purification" accomplished? I rest my case.
I'm not convinced by either position.
I think souls in Acts of the Apostles knew the basics. That Jesus Christ died for their sins and that in Him they have repentance and forgiveness: Luke 24: NASB 44Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48“You are witnesses of these things. 49“And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” The above is very simple and is the earliest Gospel message preached by the apostles after Christ's ascension. So, no, these theological battles should not detract from the simplicity of the Gospel. The problem comes when one denies the blood of Christ shed is for the remission of sins. Some may say, ok that's true but how did that happen and why? He died to pay the penalty for sin and death. Rising from the dead showed the penalty was satisfied. Indeed Jesus did rescue us. And rescue He did by a horrible suffering and death.
And I think they, and Paul, were Jews, wholly filled up with Jewish concepts of religion, and that they clearly, desperately need to square the new wine in the new bottle that Jesus gave them with the old wine in the old bottle they loved. So they spent a great deal of effort making a synthesis between their old religion, of Sinai, which always had been and still was of primary cultural and emotional importance to them, and this new thing that Jesus had done, the new things he taught them. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apostolic letters are the efforts of those Jewish men to square their Judaism with their Christianity. Within the Jewish world they were partly successful. Quite a few Jews converted, beyond just themselves, and, like them, continued to practice Judaism as Christians, with a new understanding of the significance of each element of Judaism. The Jewish scholars were not impressed by this synthesis. Still aren't. And will poke holes in it when teaching their own children and their own tribe. I'm not a sheep from that sheepfold. I'm a child of the far, far West, raised in science and logic and law. Jews need a continuity with their storied past, because it makes them who they are. And Easterners, by this I mean the Greeks and the other Eastern Gentiles - and to a lesser extent the Italians proper - they revere history, they revere their past, which was once glorious, but which has been in decay for 1600 years. Therefore, their religious focus is on what men of the past, of that era, when they were great, said and thought. They greatly inflate the importance of "the ancients" and "tradition" for precisely this cultural reason. As with the Jews, I show respect for the Greeks, the Italians, the Easterners, by quietly listening to their arguments, and by learning these things they think are of premier importance. But I don't really think that any of it actually IS important. It's old wine in old bottles, next to older wine in older bottles, and it is very thickly imbued with the wants and needs of THOSE men in THOSE cultures in THOSE times. I am not one of them I am from a completely different culture, I need different things, and I am not from those times. I listen to Jesus. I will accord the men of that time the authority that is claimed for them on one aspect - not their legal thinking, which is relatively poor and imprecise - not their way of blending old wine and what was to them new wine: their blend doesn't appeal to me - but what they came up with when they all came together and spoke authoritatively to the new Church at the Council of Jerusalem. Note how much of all of it they said that Gentiles like me needed to know and practice. Now, an Easterner, or a Messianic Jew, would say that those minima from that Council are merely the beginning, the first baby steps, that the Apostles were removing impediments, but that once one matures in faith that THEN one must learn the rest of their own cultural confection. To the extent that is necessary, I HAVE gone ahead and learned the Messianic Jewish and Eastern Christian dances. I understand what the Apostles were saying, and the "ancient Fathers". I'm neither ignorant nor dumb. I simply disagree with them. I think they have vastly overemphasized authorities that were of great cultural importance to THEM, and filled the bare bones of the religion up with THEIR culture and artifacts. And then they have asserted that THEIR cultural artifacts are fundamental to the religion. They are wrong and I reject that in totality. It is not true. I prefer different furniture, and different ways of looking at things. I know the structure of the universe and God's creative hand far better than they collectively ever did, or could. They are like children, superstitious children, or like pagans, whose stories about their gods, or their God, infused with their cultures to make something very appealing - to their co-culturalists, AND to primitive tribes on the frontier who wanted in. But I am not some primitive tribesman looking in. I am a 21st Century scientific man looking back at them, and I see how primitive they really are in everything BUT their realization that God is. I have talked to God myself, not through their filter but directly. I don't like their filter between me and God, it is cranky, annoying and distracting. Most importantly, it isn't NECESSARY. THEIR heirs - the Messianics and the Easterners - assert that their cultural apparatus IS necessary, and they wave this Bible around AS THOUGH they were lawyers of God. Trouble is, they're NOT lawyers, and I am. I read the same book, and I read it with better comprehension and far greater care, and I see where they joints of their argument fall apart - they believe in a set of connective tissue that IS NOT THERE in that book. They ASSERT that it is, but it isn't. So BECAUSE i know the law book so well, I SEE where people are clinging to their cultural confections and throwing them at me AS THOUGH it were law, and AS THOUGH it were necessary, but I know that it isn't, and that it does not flow from the law AS WRITTEN. It flowed from all of the unwritten laws and cultural concerns of ancient Jews and ancient Greeks - these Apostolic letters and Church Fathers were part and parcel of THOSE people, in THOSE cultures, in THAT time, with their primitive and superstitious knowledge of how the world works. THEY asserted things about the Jewish sacrifice that are not actually IN the Torah. They mangle the structure of authority that God revealed. But I don't want to go tearing it all apart: this is the religious basis of huge numbers of people. It "does it" for them, and that's fine. It doesn't do it for me, because it isn't actually true. It's their culture, and it really rubs my own culture the wrong way. I don't load up my religion with my own culture either: I keep it as simple and austere as it really is. It has the virtue of being true, and I know it. I have shared it. It doesn't persuade people of the other cultures, who return to the vomit of old because they like it. That's fine. They like it. Ambergris is whale vomit, but it's the sweet smelling substance at the heart of much good perfume. To each his own. Penal substitution was the reasoning of Jews about the sacrifices on the altar. God did not reveal what the Jews thought they were doing. Humans reasoned that out, which is to say, they made it up. Then Jewish Christians faced the death of Christ, in that way, and incorporated what happened to Jesus within the thought box of their Judaism. They wrote a lot about it and struggled about it because they were trying to effect a synthesis between the faith of their fathers and their new faith. They were taking old wine and blending it with the new wine in the new bottle. They succeeded. We're talking about what they said today, 2000 years later. Their efforts were necessary for them. The whole line of argument leaves me cold, because it starts on a legally false premise: that what happened on the altars of Israel was itself a penal substitution, and that the priests and Jews of old actually understood why they were sacrificing animals, or that fishermen on the margins of Judaism of the time understood it. Paul and the Apostles had strong ideas about these things. They wrote them. The ancient Greeks of the East had their own strong ideas, and they wrote, and met and jawboned a lot, and left a great corpus of material arguing for their position. The logic is built on false initial premises and it all falls down. I have not incorporated it into my religion, because it is not true. For me to make the great effort to incorporate a great mass of ancient tradition into my religion, for the sake of respect...well, I'm not Greek. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Italian. So no. Other cultures are ok, but they're not important enough to me for me to adopt them into my religion. No.
I don't see any evidence of this at all in Acts and the epistles. So they spent a great deal of effort making a synthesis between their old religion, of Sinai, which always had been and still was of primary cultural and emotional importance to them, and this new thing that Jesus had done, the new things he taught them. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apostolic letters are the efforts of those Jewish men to square their Judaism with their Christianity. Within the Jewish world they were partly successful. Quite a few Jews converted, beyond just themselves, and, like them, continued to practice Judaism as Christians, with a new understanding of the significance of each element of Judaism. The Jewish scholars were not impressed by this synthesis. Still aren't. And will poke holes in it when teaching their own children and their own tribe. Considering Jesus Christ was fulfilling the Law and Prophets, again not seeing the above as a credible argument. THEY asserted things about the Jewish sacrifice that are not actually IN the Torah. They mangle the structure of authority that God revealed. How did the apostles do this? Leviticus 16 is all over Paul's and Peter's epistles. Paul and the Apostles had strong ideas about these things. Probably because Jesus gave them such authority? The logic is built on false initial premises and it all falls down. Therefore, according to your own view, the apostles were false prophets in accordance with Deuteronomy 18? Deuteronomy 18:15-22 New American Standard Bible (NASB) 17 The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. 18 I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ 21 You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ 22 When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. So in the case of the apostles and NT writers, if they did not faithfully communicate the Gospel of Christ and His doctrines, by the above passage they would be false prophets. A very tenuous position to be in for a Roman Catholic. Even under the Vicarius Filii Dei of Francis.
By the standards of Deuteronomy 18:22, Jesus was a false prophet. This was the reason for his execution, and Jews still believe that about him (though they are nice about it). He said he was returning soon many times. He never did. False prophet. Christianity is a lie. Here endeth the discussion, for a Jew. If you're going to cite Jewish law, which never applied to anybody but Jews, then I'm going to apply Jewish law and dismiss Christianity as a religion based on a false prophet. Jesus did not return SOON. He was a false prophet. End of story. End of religion. I'm not a Jew, and I recognize that the Torah, on its own terms, has no authority whatever over anybody but Jews before the Temple was destroying. If the Roman Catholic Church does not understand it, then it's wrong on that. Oh well. The Church burnt a messenger of God alive as a witch, so it has certainly made some really terrible errors. This would not be the only one - if, of course, the Catholic Church actually takes up whatever the position it is that makes what I think "problematic". I don't think you should have this conversation with me.
We were speaking of the apostles and how you did not view their works as inspired writings. But that was a good attempt at changing the subject. It's not about the Jews of the 1st century, but your views here in 21st century.
Ok, then let's have the conversation then. What the Apostles wrote was inspired by God. Like Genesis. That does not mean that it is without error, or factually true. The Sistine Chapel painting is also obviously inspired by God. That does not mean that the painter's vision is really what happened. Inspired by God means just that. It means that the man was filled with zeal and faith and took up the pen. It does not mean that God was dictating what he wrote. Jesus is the one we have to follow. What Jesus says is what counts. So, what did Jesus say? He said that you will not be forgiven if you do not forgive. Therefore, doctrines that say you are forgiven by his blood, or by confession to a priest, or any other technique that does not require forgiveness of others on your part, is false. Jesus death and blood, penal substitution, does not forgive your sins if you refuse to forgive others theirs. Jesus himself said so, directly. Jesus is God, speaking directly. Paul is merely inspired by God. What Paul writes is utterly erased by Jesus where it contradicts Jesus. What is in the Torah is, likewise, erased by Jesus where Jesus changes it - that's for Jews. Nothing in the Torah, including the Ten Commandments, ever applied to Gentiles. A different law was revealed to us.
Jesus is the one we have to follow. What Jesus says is what counts. So, what did Jesus say? He said that you will not be forgiven if you do not forgive. Therefore, doctrines that say you are forgiven by his blood, or by confession to a priest, or any other technique that does not require forgiveness of others on your part, is false. Pardon me for wading in here... Obviously the words of Jesus Christ "count". But in the case of the prophets as well as the Apostles, their passion was far beyond mere "zeal"; the Holy Spirit was the "inspiration". The authority of the Holy Spirit is co-equal with God the Father and the Son. Paul is merely inspired by God. What Paul writes is utterly erased by Jesus where it contradicts Jesus. Paul's authority is as the voice of Jesus Christ. As is the case with all the NT authors. Speaking of which: Dismissing the NT Epistles and "inspired" writings as Authority or proxies of Jesus Christ strips away the absolutes of the entire NT, other than Jesus own Red Letter quotes. You ask, "What DID Jesus say?" DID He dispense and assign His authority? "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." ~ Jesus Christ (John 14:26, NKJV) With respect specifically to Paul, Jesus Himself selected Paul for his task and position and message of spreading and fulfilling the ministry of Jesus Christ. This claim is indeed supported and cited in several NT verses.
I think that is the goal here. Strip away apostolic authority imbued by God and we only have Vic left to interpret Jesus's red letters for us. While ignoring it was the apostles who actually recorded the words of Jesus. Also consider the very early belief by the church which had Luke's gospel account from Paul's perspective.
Had to go personal, hmm? "Only have Vic left?" I have done nothing like that, or suggested anything like that. I really detest your religion, because you people cannot talk to other people like decent human beings. You go nasty. I'm not trying to lead you at all. Go where you please. I'm simply going to go away. I don't care what you believe. And I'm not going to talk to you anymore.
#43. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter (#41)
I have done nothing like that, or suggested anything like that. That was obviously only tongue in cheek, Vic. Come on.
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#3. To: Pinguinite, redleghunter, sneakypete, Vicomte13, Vicomte13, Tooconservative, Deckard, Justified (#1)
My current thinking on the subject is that the doctrine of sin is, theologically speaking, "messy".
#15. To: A Pole (#3)
Through the fall of our ancestors in Paradise, the instrument of our souls went out of tune and body got soiled. Christ came to do the tuning and purification.
#18. To: redleghunter, A Pole (#15)
#20. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
I'm not convinced by either position.
#24. To: redleghunter (#20)
I think souls in Acts of the Apostles knew the basics.
#27. To: Vicomte13 (#24)
And I think they, and Paul, were Jews, wholly filled up with Jewish concepts of religion, and that they clearly, desperately need to square the new wine in the new bottle that Jesus gave them with the old wine in the old bottle they loved.
15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him. 16 This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’
#29. To: redleghunter (#27)
(Edited)
22 When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
#30. To: Vicomte13 (#29)
By the standards of Deuteronomy 18:22, Jesus was a false prophet. This was the reason for his execution, and Jews still believe that about him (though they are nice about it). He said he was returning soon many times. He never did. False prophet. Christianity is a lie. Here endeth the discussion, for a Jew. If you're going to cite Jewish law, which never applied to anybody but Jews, then I'm going to apply Jewish law and dismiss Christianity as a religion based on a false prophet. Jesus did not return SOON. He was a false prophet. End of story. End of religion. I'm not a Jew, and I recognize that the Torah, on its own terms, has no authority whatever over anybody but Jews before the Temple was destroying. If the Roman Catholic Church does not understand it, then it's wrong on that. Oh well. The Church burnt a messenger of God alive as a witch, so it has certainly made some really terrible errors. This would not be the only one - if, of course, the Catholic Church actually takes up whatever the position it is that makes what I think "problematic". I don't think you should have this conversation with me.
#31. To: redleghunter (#30)
#32. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter (#31)
Inspired by God means just that. It means that the man was filled with zeal and faith and took up the pen. It does not mean that God was dictating what he wrote.
#39. To: Liberator, Vicomte 13 (#32)
Dismissing the NT Epistles and "inspired" writings as Authority or proxies of Jesus Christ strips away the absolutes of the entire NT, other than Jesus own Red Letter quotes.
#41. To: redleghunter (#39)
Replies to Comment # 41. Had to go personal, hmm? "Only have Vic left?"
End Trace Mode for Comment # 41.
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