Title: QnA: Does forgiveness get old? Does Paul agree with Jesus? How can I honor an abusive father? Source:
Bryan Wolfmueller URL Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur_fe-uTxjQ Published:Aug 17, 2023 Author:Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller Post Date:2023-08-17 02:40:43 by Charles_Byrd Keywords:None Views:2090 Comments:40
Pastors Bryan Wolfmueller and Andrew Packer answer your theological and Biblical questions.
Nah, I like Paul. But Paul does conflict with Jesus, James and John from time to time. Paul has good things to say, but he's not God.
See, this is the problem you Protestants have. You act as though the Bible itself is God. It isn't. God is God. Some of what God said is in the Bible, and what other people said is too. And it conflicts with itself, as any anthology covering 4000 years of history will do.
This doesn't bother me, for whom the highest authority is the most recent things God said, and Jesus is the most recent set of those things. So Jesus, not the whole Bible, is the gold standard. Where Paul conflicts with Jesus, Paul is to be ignored. Where James conflicts with Jesus, he's wrong. Where John conflicts with Jesus, ignore John. Where Yahweh conflicts with Jesus (over shellfish, for example, or death for sexual offenses), ignore Yahweh and go with Jesus.
Jesus alone is the ultimate authority. Obviously this puts Jesus above the rest of the Bible.
No Protestant can accept that. And so Protestantism is a welter of contradicting and competing sects.
The Catholic Church gets it right that the Bible isn't God, and it puts Jesus first in the Scriptures, which is better than the other positions. BUT then the Catholics (and the Orthodox) put the Church before Jesus, so if there's something they particularly like or want, they'll fetch it from Paul, or James, or themselves in the middle ages, and put that before Jesus.
Which makes the Orthodox and the Catholics wrong also, just differently wrong than the Protestants.
The Protestants place the Bible as an idol before God. The Catholics and the Orthodox place their churches as an idol before God. They're all wrong. The first authority is Jesus. Yes, he is in the Bible, but everything else in the Bible, or the Church, that conflicts with Jesus, is obviously wrong, because, simply put, Jesus was God Incarnate, and the Bible and the Church are not.
Period. Nothing more to discuss.
If you disagree, you're obviously wrong - and an idolater of the Bible or the Church. Do me a favor and go argue with the trees - I am not interested in you.
Paul is SAID, by Luther and others of his ilk, to have said "Faith alone, works are nothing." This is diametrically opposed to Jesus.
Now, of course, if one reads Paul CORRECTLY, he only APPEARS to say Faith Alone, that isn't what he means at all.
I know that.
But do many, many, many teach Faith Alone, and believe it, just like Martin Luther? Yep.
So, DOES Paul actually contradict Jesus? Not in the main aspects of faith, no, not if he is read properly. Most American Christians come from traditions that do not read Paul properly. If you read Paul like Martin Luther did, then you pit Paul directly against Jesus, and you're dead wrong.
So, DOES Paul actually contradict Jesus? Not in the main aspects of faith, no, not if he is read properly. Most American Christians come from traditions that do not read Paul properly. If you read Paul like Martin Luther did, then you pit Paul directly against Jesus, and you're dead wrong.
I'm sure you could teach me much about Martin Luther since I don't know much.
I'm sure you could teach me much about Martin Luther since I don't know much.
The crux: "Faith Alone!" was the great rallying cry of Luther and the Protestant Reformation, as opposed to "Faith and works" Catholicism.
Luther based it on a crabbed reading of part of what Paul said in Romans (and Luther went ahead and added the word "alone" after faith in his German translation of the letter).
It was the battle cry of the Reformation, and has been the primary battle front in theological warfare between Catholics and Protestants for 500 years.
Luther is obviously wrong. "Faith without works is dead." - James "What good does it do to say you follow me if you don't keep my commandments?" - Jesus
Luther, by the way, didn't oppose Mary. He actually even believed in the Immaculate Conception. His theological battle with the Catholics had nothing to do with Mary. Neither did the Anglicans. Mary wasn't the issue in the Reformation, Faith Alone was.
Faith Alone was to built on Scripture Alone (no traditions). But of course if one goes Scripture Alone, Scripture is chock full of direct refutations of the idea of Faith Alone. Jesus says you'll be judged by your works over and over and over again.
Faith Alone was the very cornerstone of Protestantism as it was originally fought for. Luther was the first, but the whole movement that followed him relied on Faith Alone and Scripture Alone as their very bedrock.
And Faith Alone is - paradoxically - humorously - really quite the OPPOSITE of what Scripture SAYS. Of course, in the 1500s when all of this was being first fought out, only about 20% of the population could read anything, let alone Scripture, and the Protestants and Catholics were all burning each other for heresy, so literate, critical thinking was in short supply.
I saw your question. I won't be able to sit down with the Bible and pull out quotes until the weekend, but I will definitely do it. There are so many! Jesus says repeatedly that you will be judged by your works/acts/deeds/what you do that it is a long list.
He never says that you will be judged by your faith alone. In fact, he asks what good it will do you to say that you follow him if you don't keep his commandments, and he pointedly says that those who cry to him "Lord, Lord!" he will not know. According to Jesus, it's not what you think, it's what you do.
I've said it, and now I'll pull out quote after quote directly from him that demonstrates it.
Against this...well, I don't really understand WHY people want to oppose this rather obvious thing, but they do. Martin Luther reacted violently against this idea, saying "Faith ALONE". He even inserted "ALONE" into his translation of Paul's letter to the Romans.
But even Paul didn't believe that. Luther did, and foisted it on Paul. Paul actually says that if you have faith and no love, you have nothing.
Truth: Martin Luther took some strong, hyperbolic positions during a period of violence and change. He himself, in less ignorant and more sober times, would probably have said that "Faith ALONE", the way it has come down to us as a hard position, isn't really what he meant.
It is, howwver, what many people believe, and on account of all of those bitter, violent politics of the past, they are stubbornly firm in their positions.
It's no skin off my nose that they believe this. I merely note that what they assert is NOT what Jesus said. I stick with Jesus. He's straightforward and not hard to understand, and unlike Paul or James or John, he's actually GOD, according to the Christians anyway. He HIMSELF said he was the SON of God, which settles that issue for me too. I don't know why Christians take positions that argue with Jesus himself about what he was, but they do. I ascribe it to cussedness. People are cussed. They get something in their head, like it, defend it, and God Himself can say something else - quite literally - Jesus SAYS the opposite - and they will fight with you anyway, and tell you you can't read, and shuck and jive and do every other damned thing to avoid admitting their religion is wrong on some point or other.
Hint: If you're a Christian, and you're contradicting Jesus, you're wrong.
(1) That Jesus says that he judges people by what they do - their works, actions, deeds. (2) That Jesus says that belief in him - faith - isn't what matters, what you do does.
That's what the focus will be, what I think you want to see. If I'm wrong, tell me now, because that is what I am going to show.
In essence, I am going to use Jesus' words to blow Martin Luther's "faith alone" claim out of the water, and say that, no, Jesus emphasized works - what you DO - not what you think.
Yes, and you will wait longer. I am going through the four gospels and revelation comprehensively, in order, citing everything on the subject (either way). This entails, essentially, re-reading much of the four gospels and revelation, and then transcribing it faithfully into a document that I can then paste here.
There is about 300 pages of material to do through, and I'm not going to half-ass it. If I were a housebound guy without a family and other things to do, I could have knocked it out already. But that is not me, so I only have so much time to devote to it. What you get will be comprehensive. Nobody who reads it will be able to say "you forgot about". Much more importantly to me, none of the hyenas will be able to say "you failed to mention". Nope. Every word of Jesus on the subject will be in the final product. I will not really need to say anything when I'm done. He'll do all of the talking.
Nope. Every word of Jesus on the subject will be in the final product. I will not really need to say anything when I'm done. He'll do all of the talking.
As I wrote on the wrong thread, I am 80 pages into a 183 page deep dive into every recorded word of Jesus in the Bible: Gospels, Revelation and the one line in a letter of Paul. I won't send you what I have written until I have finished entirely. I want to give you something complete and absolute - no loose ends. Ir is simply what Jesus said. To quote him: "If you are remaining in my word, you are truly my disciple, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (Jesus, as quoted by John at 8:31-32.)
