Question for conservative Christians

[Neil_Anthony]

How blinding was the Gentile salvation truth of John 3:16?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

That doesn’t mention Jews or gentiles, … nor does it require obeying the law. What are we supposed to see there?

First, in Matthew 28, the resurrected Jesus instructs the apostles to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

That’s a better point. You’d think the apostles would have asked Christ for more specifics on how to preach to the gentiles. But Matthew presents these as the parting words of Christ before the ascension. It doesn’t sound like he left time for questions.

Jesus’ preaching was very mysterious, even to the apostles. It’s a theme throughout the gospels, that the disciples were often confused and didn’t understand what Jesus meant.

 

[Teflon93]

Excellent point!

spirit5er, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you posed this question on a Jewish forum.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they agreed with your conclusions. Would that then mean that God doesn’t exist?

(Hint: Jews believe in God too. )

Why that would mean applying one’s own standard in criticizing the Catholic Church to one’s own favored community…it’ll never fly.

 

[Dauphin]

Which is still enough to place Paul in opposition to Jesus, who told the rich young ruler that obeying the law was the key to eternal life (Matthew 19:17)

Quite right. Who is the Law?

Paul’s denial that the law justifies one before God contradicts Luke 1:5-6, where a couple’s devotion to the Temple rituals and ceremonies is cited as the reason God viewed them as righteous.

That’s just a plain absurd conclusion. These people were adhering to the Mosaic Law before its fulfillment by Christ. You’re grasping at straws at this point.

Paul’s denial that the law justifies is also contrary to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus told an audience of Jews and Gentiles that anybody who annuls the least of the law, will be least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5), (Do you say Paul is least in the Kingdom of Heaven, for his teaching that faith in Christ annuls the law in Galatians 3:24-25?) Jesus then explained that one must be even more careful to obey Mosaic Law than even the Pharisees or they cannot be saved.

Precisely. I get the feeling you haven’t read my earlier post, in which I explain that Christ is the Law Incarnate, the “Lord of the Sabbath” (using His own words), the Eternal Logos made flesh.

I’m surprised that someone who presents himself as expertly familiar with Christian matters in unfamiliar with this interpretation, since it is one which the Church takes.

Since Christ is the Law Incarnate, all law is fulfilled by living in Christ.

Furthermore, the multiple thousands of James’s converts in Acts 21:18-24 came across the information that Paul told Jews to stop observing the Law, and their trust in this “rumor” was so great, James felt nothing short of a public display by Paul of conformity to temple ritual would dissuade them.

Were these thousands of converts under James, stupid for accepting unproven rumors about Paul, so much that they needed a physical act by Paul to change their mind?

Or did this large crowd of first-century Christians have good reasons to believe that rumor on Paul was true?

#2. What’s the problem? There was a dispute about adherence to the prescripts of the Mosaic Law. I concede this freely.

The trouble for you is, I’ve advanced arguments and reasons why my interpretation of the biblical data is better than those who oppose me. If you are so sure I’m wrong, you should find it easy to refute my specific arguments. I’m waiting. While you wait, study up on the great corruption that existed in the Roman Catholic church in the bad old days, then ask yourself if all really is well, just because you feel good to think that way.

The trouble for you is, you don’t seem to have understood (or perhaps you haven’t read) any of the arguments I’ve made.

I want you to address these arguments:

1. Christ as logos
2. Peter’s dilemma being about adherence to the prescripts of the law, not the possibility of gentile salvation.

Then, we can have a dialogue!

Btw, if the “corruption” you refer to includes the Crusades and the Inquisitions, I say “Deus Vult”!

When I appear in Mormon chat rooms, they quickly discern that “this one is here to argue and not to try and understand.” I find such words indicative of their inability to refute me, I therefore conclude the Mormon religion is false. I have no reason to interpret your own identical cop out differently. Maybe you can get one of your apologists to debate me formally?

Eh? I haven’t complained that you’re just here to debate. I like debate.

Please don’t compare me to those Mormon nutters. My arguments are anything but irrational. They could be wrong, but you have to refute them!

 

[spirit5er]

Originally Posted by spirit5er
First, in Matthew 28, the resurrected Jesus instructs the apostles to take the gospel to the Gentiles. It is absurd to suppose that he didn’t instruct them on what Gentiles must do to get saved. Since we have the right to assume Jesus wasn’t stupid, the apostles therefore WOULD have known the answer to the Gentile/Law issue, and Acts 15 would never have been necessary, and therefore appears to be spin-doctored history.

Scripture also records Jesus as telling Gentiles in his Sermon on the Mount to carefully obey the Law and be more righteous than the Pharisees or they cannot be saved. Jesus presumably wouldn’t change his mind after being resurrected.

Scripture also records Jesus telling a man that obeying the Mosaic Law was the key to eternal life, Matthew 19:17.

James would never have called the Council of Jerusalem, because he and the other orignal apostles already knew Jesus’ clear answer to the Gentile/Law issue. Acts 15 is mere Pauline propgandizing fiction to make the apostles seem more conformed to Paul’s theology than they really were.

Certain apostles seem to have misinterpreted this as being an addition to the law, instead of something altogether sufficient. This is hardly a critical flaw in Christianity. It reveals that God chose to use even very poor instruments to achieve His aims.

Disagreement among two “inspired” apostles requires that one of them MUST be wrong, unless you say God inspires logical contradiction.

And I’m sorry to hear that you agree with Paul’s unbiblical downplaying of James’s authority. Yeah, the only way you can maintain Paul’s doctrines is to do exactly what Paul and the Acts-author did…portray them as misunderstanding the gospel. Jesus’s own words that gentiles need to conform to the Law to be saved, makes the Acts 15 controversy a non-issue. If the legalists were “obviously” heretical, there would no more need for James to call them to council to give their theological (name removed by moderator)ut, than for the pope to call the Mormons to council and ask for their theological (name removed by moderator)ut. The only reason for a council is if the belief in question was NOT obviously heretical. So James didn’t automatically conclude that the Judaizers were obvious heretics, as Paul did, if there is any truth to Acts 15 at all.

Quote:
Second, the spiritual progress of the apostles before Acts 15 DOES allow you to make the assumption that they finally understood.

Well, isn`t that gratifying?

It shouldn’t be gratifying to you, since you cannot explain how they could have all this spiritual progress before Acts 15, yet STILL remain ignorant of the Gentile question!

Quote:
If Acts 2 is correct (they all recieved the Spirit on Pentecost), if Acts 3-5 is correct (that Peter became a fearless wonder working preaching with the gift of knowledge), then his failure to understand that Gentiles can be saved too, as reported later in Acts 10, is just unbelievable.

Exactly, which is why your interpretation is incorrect. Peter`s dilemma does not involve the issue of salvation, but of strict adherence to the Mosaic Law.

False, I already cited Acts 10 and 11 to show that Peter’s mere ASSOCIATION with Gentiles caused an uproar among his Jewish Christian brethren, and showed that Peter’s own explanation of the his vision was the “news” that God accepts all people who obey him. That’s what Jesus preached for three previous years with Peter by his side, so why the need for a divine vision to know something he already knew? Could it be that the original gospel never gave it’s Jewish converts a reason to think Gentiles would ever get saved…meaning our canonical gospels were corrupted to make Jesus slightly more friendly to Gentiles than he really was?

Sorry, you haven’t explained how the “inspired” apostles could be so ignorant about something that the biblical data shows was so obviously true. did they also hold councils to argue about who Jesus’ mother was? How stupid must a story character be, before you decide that the level of gullibility just sounds too high to be believed?

Quote:
But you sure expect that a weak fallen man called Paul sure was exactly on the same page at all times after his conversion! If you think more critically, YOU don’t even believe what you just wrote.

Yikes! Next you`re going to tell me to open my mind or something. Please refrain from using the atheist cliches.

Im doing plenty of critical thinking. Im sure that St. Paul sinned and made mistakes just like everyone else,

That’s puzzling, since nobody says anything about Paul committing specific sins after his Christian conversion. Yeah, go ahead and cite the New Testament passages where Paul himself, or some other writer, says that the Paul committed any sins after his Damascus Road experience. Good luck.

except in Canonical scripture, which has its inerrancy assured by the Holy Ghost

.

You think citing the Roman Catholic belief that inerrancy is assured by the “Holy Ghost” constitutes “apologetics”?

Do you know any Catholic apologists who would defend biblical inerrancy with such a statement?

 

[Teflon93]

Do you know any Catholic apologists who would defend biblical inerrancy with such a statement?

Sure, all of us.

Scripture is the product of the Catholic Church.

The real question is how one can claim that Scripture is inerrant and the Catholic Church which produced it is wrong.

 

[spirit5er]

Originally Posted by spirit5er
How blinding was the Gentile salvation truth of John 3:16?

Then what do you think “whosoever” means, except “Jews and Gentiles”?

… nor does it require obeying the law.

Irrelevant. Unless you think Jesus contradicted himself, you MUST find a way to reconcile his statement that one must obey the Mosaic Law to have eternal life (Matthew 19:17, Matthew 5:18-20) with John 3:16.

What are we supposed to see there?

You are supposed to see “Jesus preached the salvation of both Jew and Gentile very early in his ministry, so that his first disciples with him from the beginning, such as Peter, would have been hearing Jesus preach upon Gentile salvation for the entire 3 year ministry of Jesus”.

After seeing that, you can then wonder greatly how Peter could need a divine vision in Acts 10 to learn what was already made obvious in John 3:16, salvation of Gentiles. Peter’s stupidity, as depended on by the Acts-author, is just too acute to be believable.

If somebody said the Pope tried to recite John 3:16 from memory, but couldn’t remember what it said, how believable would that be to you?

Quote:
Originally Posted by spirit5er
First, in Matthew 28, the resurrected Jesus instructs the apostles to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

That’s a better point. You’d think the apostles would have asked Christ for more specifics on how to preach to the gentiles. But Matthew presents these as the parting words of Christ before the ascension. It doesn’t sound like he left time for questions.

The disciples conversed with the resurrected Jesus for 40 days according to Acts 1:3. 40 days is not enough time to ask Jesus what exactly Gentiles must do to be saved?

Jesus’ preaching was very mysterious, even to the apostles.

So the story goes, but I don’t find it anywhere near as mysterious as they did. If Jesus insisted he needed to die for sins, if He himself showed from the OT that this must be the case with the messiah, then Peter’s refusal to accept this is unbelievable. A better explanation for the biblical data is that the New Testament authors embellished their stories to make them more dramatic for the hearers, a device used today in Hollywood. You know the drill…that movie where the victims act dumber than dumb, causing tension for the viewer, perhaps causing them to scream out “you stupid IDIOT!?”

Moral stories perform their jobs better when the bad guys are unbelievably bad and the ignorant person is unbelievably ignorant.

It’s a theme throughout the gospels, that the disciples were often confused and didn’t understand what Jesus meant.

In stark contrast to Paul, who seems to never have made any theological mistakes whatsoever after his conversion, testifying once again to an embellishing Pauline influence on the canon. Paul never knew the earthly Jesus and makes no theological mistakes. Peter knew Jesus personally and is presented as making the most elementary and unexpected theological blunders possible. The Pauline bias of the New Testament is extreme enough to warrant suspicion against it’s full historicity.

Ain’t it funny that we have nearly NOTHING in the NT from the original 12 disciples, who knew Jesus personally, while Paul, whose connection to Jesus was restricted the less certain visionary type, dominates?

 

[spirit5er]

Sure, all of us.

Scripture is the product of the Catholic Church.

The real question is how one can claim that Scripture is inerrant and the Catholic Church which produced it is wrong.

I was obviously talking about known established apologists who have done public debates against Protestants. THOSE genuine representatives of the Catholic faith would never try to refute a Protestant argument by merely citing the existence of the Catholic viewpoint. Why then is “assured by the Holy Ghost” used here? That’s not an argument, that’s a faith-expression, no business in an apologetics debate. I’m also not convinced by Mormons, who respond to my rebuttals of their faith with “I testify to you that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God”.

 

[Dauphin]

Scripture also records Jesus as telling Gentiles in his Sermon on the Mount to carefully obey the Law and be more righteous than the Pharisees or they cannot be saved. Jesus presumably wouldn’t change his mind after being resurrected.

Exactly. I urge you to read what I’ve written on the subject. I’m not sure what more I can say: Christ is the Law.

Scripture also records Jesus telling a man that obeying the Mosaic Law was the key to eternal life, Matthew 19:17.

Of course, you carefully omit the dialogue which follows. What does Christ say the young man must do when he persists? What does it imply about Christ’s relationship to the Law?

James would never have called the Council of Jerusalem, because he and the other orignal apostles already knew Jesus’ clear answer to the Gentile/Law issue. Acts 15 is mere Pauline propgandizing fiction to make the apostles seem more conformed to Paul’s theology than they really were.

Christ’s answer was oblique. Some apostles evidently did not fully understand. The confusion which followed is hardly unbelievable.

As a Christian, I’m convinced that Christ had some purpose in allowing the Church to undergo this trial.

Disagreement among two “inspired” apostles requires that one of them MUST be wrong, unless you say God inspires logical contradiction.

For an atheist, you seem to make many extraordinary leaps of logic. Try confining yourself to reason, and our debate may become a bit more sensible.

I didn’t say that there were contradictions in Canonical scripture. My argument is, that as people, the apostles were not impecabble or totally inerrant in all their behavior.

And I’m sorry to hear that you agree with Paul’s unbiblical downplaying of James’s authority. Yeah, the only way you can maintain Paul’s doctrines is to do exactly what Paul and the Acts-author did…The only reason for a council is if the belief in question was NOT obviously heretical.

It makes sense to attempt to reconcile Christians in the truth. Even if certain participants in the council saw others as heretics, the divisions were hardly as entrenched as they are in the modern age.

So James didn’t automatically conclude that the Judaizers were obvious heretics, as Paul did, if there is any truth to Acts 15 at all.

That seems true enough. I fail to see the problem.

It shouldn’t be gratifying to you, since you cannot explain how they could have all this spiritual progress before Acts 15, yet STILL remain ignorant of the Gentile question!

I think I did a reasonable good job of explaining where you went wrong. Go back to that post and refute me point-by-point if you’d like a dialogue on the issue. I’m not going to repeat myself.

False, I already cited Acts 10 and 11 to show that Peter’s mere ASSOCIATION with Gentiles caused an uproar among his Jewish Christian brethren

PRECISELY! Now we’re getting somewhere!

The issue was of association with the gentiles, which the Old Law treated as unclean. Peter realized that the prescripts of the Old Law no longer required strict adherence, since Christ had fulfilled them in His own person.

and showed that Peter’s own explanation of the his vision was the “news” that God accepts all people who obey him. …meaning our canonical gospels were corrupted to make Jesus slightly more friendly to Gentiles than he really was?

No, not at all. I guess I will repeat myself after all.

This is a matter of adherence to the Mosaic Law, which is to be separated from the issue of whether or not gentiles can be saved. Peter already knew that the gentiles could be saved, but remained confused about how precisely to practise the Old Law concerning them.

Sorry, you haven’t explained how the “inspired” apostles could be so ignorant about something that the biblical data shows was so obviously true. did they also hold councils to argue about who Jesus’ mother was? How stupid must a story character be, before you decide that the level of gullibility just sounds too high to be believed?

Christ as logos fulfilling the Law in His own person is actually quite a bit more than the apostles would have understood. It isn’t laid down in scripture in a definitive fashion, but it is the perfect reconciliation.

That’s puzzling, since nobody says anything about Paul committing specific sins after his Christian conversion. Yeah, go ahead and cite the New Testament passages where Paul himself, or some other writer, says that the Paul committed any sins after his Damascus Road experience. Good luck.

Scripture doesn’t record whether Jesus went to the toilet, either, but I think we can assume He did.

You think citing the Roman Catholic belief that inerrancy is assured by the “Holy Ghost” constitutes “apologetics”?

Do you know any Catholic apologists who would defend biblical inerrancy with such a statement?

The earliest Catholic apologists (the Apostles) didn’t use complex reasoning. They simply proposed the truth.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Then what do you think “whosoever” means, except “Jews and Gentiles”?

Irrelevant. Unless you think Jesus contradicted himself, you MUST find a way to reconcile his statement that one must obey the Mosaic Law to have eternal life (Matthew 19:17, Matthew 5:18-20) with John 3:16.

In John 3:16 Jesus doesn’t say anything about extending salvation to the Gentiles. It says ‘whoever believes in Him’ but he is speaking to a Jewish audience about the Jewish religion, it would be safe to assume that most listening didn’t hear the implicit “including the gentiles” that we assume when we read it today.

Also Matthew 19:17 says this:

He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, " ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’"

Jesus doesn’t mention the mosaic law here, he talks about a few commandments that are based on natural law. Christians follow all of those commandments today. They aren’t part of Jewish ceremonial law.

 

[spirit5er]

Originally Posted by spirit5er
Which is still enough to place Paul in opposition to Jesus, who told the rich young ruler that obeying the law was the key to eternal life (Matthew 19:17)

In Matthew 19, Jesus refers to the law one must keep to be saved, as a set of moral instructions, not a “who”.

Paul’s denial that the law justifies one before God contradicts Luke 1:5-6, where a couple’s devotion to the Temple rituals and ceremonies is cited as the reason God viewed them as righteous.

That’s just a plain absurd conclusion. These people were adhering to the Mosaic Law before its fulfillment by Christ. You’re grasping at straws at this point.

You must think James and his congregations of “tens of thousands” were also grasping at straws too, since in Acts 21, long after the death of Jesus, they are all remaining “zealous for the Law”. Had James taught them that Jesus “fulfilled” the law in the way you believe, their choice to continue in the Old Covenant would be less than “zealousness”. They remained zealous to adhere to a system that Hebrews 8 says was “decaying” and “ready” to vanish away? Maybe their continued zeal for the law shows that they didn’t honestly CONVERT?

Where did Jesus ever teach that he would fulfill the Mosaic Law any differently than by simply obeying?

Paul’s denial that the law justifies is also contrary to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus told an audience of Jews and Gentiles that anybody who annuls the least of the law, will be least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5), (Do you say Paul is least in the Kingdom of Heaven, for his teaching that faith in Christ annuls the law in Galatians 3:24-25?) Jesus then explained that one must be even more careful to obey Mosaic Law than even the Pharisees or they cannot be saved.

Precisely. I get the feeling you haven’t read my earlier post, in which I explain that Christ is the Law Incarnate, the “Lord of the Sabbath” (using His own words), the Eternal Logos made flesh.

I don’t need to read your earlier post, because your stated position doesn’t account for James and Peter’s legalism after the Cross. They certainly didn’t agree that “the law is done away in Christ”.

I’m surprised that someone who presents himself as expertly familiar with Christian matters in unfamiliar with this interpretation, since it is one which the Church takes.

Or maybe I glossed over it since it doesn’t help you explain the continued legalism of the apostles after the cross.

Since Christ is the Law Incarnate, all law is fulfilled by living in Christ.

So when Acts 21:20 says the tens of thousands of Christian Jews converted under James, continue to remain “zealous for the law” long after the cross, it means they were zealous for Christ?

If Peter believed your argument, why does he cease his perfectly Christ-like practice of eating with Gentiles after legalistic “men from James” show up (Galatians 2:12)? You have nowhere near the intimate assocation with the historical Jesus Peter had, yet you are confident you’d never give in to imitating false Christians like the Mormons, and you’d never so much as “fear” them anyway. If YOU, 2000 years removed from the original, can have this confidence, it is thereby most unbelievable that Peter, knowing the truth, would give in to the legalists…unless he knew their legalism correctly represented James and Jesus.

Furthermore, the multiple thousands of James’s converts in Acts 21:18-24 came across the information that Paul told Jews to stop observing the Law, and their trust in this “rumor” was so great, James felt nothing short of a public display by Paul of conformity to temple ritual would dissuade them.

Were these thousands of converts under James, stupid for accepting unproven rumors about Paul, so much that they needed a physical act by Paul to change their mind?

Or did this large crowd of first-century Christians have good reasons to believe that rumor on Paul was true?

#2. What’s the problem? There was a dispute about adherence to the prescripts of the Mosaic Law. I concede this freely.

The problem is very simple to see: the rumor about Paul in Acts 21, when pondered critically, opens the door to the possibility that Paul DID tell Jews to reject Mosaic law and advise against circumcision of their kids. It is NOT obvious that this rumor was false. Paul’s choice to obey James’s damage-control request that he go along with some other guys doing a vow in the temple, to make that rumor seem false, need constitute nothing more than Paul pretending to be under the law for the sake of public relations, when he actually believes the opposite, as he specifically stated he would do in such situations…1st Corinthians 9:20.

As such, that rumor about Paul trivializing the Mosaic Law and forbidding circumcision seems more likely true than false (how likely is it that “tens of thousands” of James’s own converts would buy into a FALSE rumor about Paul? Was that the gullibility of the original Christians?

As such, the concern of James’s converts that Paul taught abandonment of the Mosaic Law, testifies to their belief that the Law still applied to them even as Christians, which they most likely learned from their apostle James, which is therefore a biblical proof that James’s faction disagreed with Paul about the continuing applicability of the Law to Christian Jews.

 

[Teflon93]

I was obviously talking about known established apologists who have done public debates against Protestants. THOSE genuine representatives of the Catholic faith would never try to refute a Protestant argument by merely citing the existence of the Catholic viewpoint. Why then is “assured by the Holy Ghost” used here? That’s not an argument, that’s a faith-expression, no business in an apologetics debate. I’m also not convinced by Mormons, who respond to my rebuttals of their faith with “I testify to you that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God”.

Why not? Protestants attempt to dismiss Catholicism all the time without taking on the tradition of the Church, the ECFs, etc.

And “faith expression” is actually synonymous with “apologetics debate”.

The atheist’s “faith expression” is to insist on arguments solely from materialism, just as the Protestant’s is to insist on arguments solely from Scripture and often solely from the KJV.

Having the better argument, Catholics never fail to challenge you on whatever ground you favor, regardless of how you try to slant it. What you should ask is why you cannot challenge Catholics on their own ground.

Thus Dawkins and his ilk just spew howlers ignorant as they are of Christianity. Since their goal is not to persuade Christians but to sell books to atheists, they remain imperturbed by their ignorance.

 

[spirit5er]

Originally Posted by spirit5er
Scripture also records Jesus as telling Gentiles in his Sermon on the Mount to carefully obey the Law and be more righteous than the Pharisees or they cannot be saved. Jesus presumably wouldn’t change his mind after being resurrected.

Exactly. I urge you to read what I’ve written on the subject. I’m not sure what more I can say: Christ is the Law.

You offer no proof that Jesus believed himself to be the law here in the Sermon on the Mount. Even if he did, any Judaizer could say that the requirement for Gentiles to be circumcised exists because Jesus IS the law, and Exodus 12 is part of the Law. Your belief, even if correct, doesn’t do anything for you.

Quote:
Scripture also records Jesus telling a man that obeying the Mosaic Law was the key to eternal life, Matthew 19:17.

Of course, you carefully omit the dialogue which follows. What does Christ say the young man must do when he persists? What does it imply about Christ’s relationship to the Law?

How does “and come, follow me”, negate the Judaizer-gospel Jesus just spoke to that ruler a few seconds before? It doesn’t matter if Jesus IS the Law, that fact doesn’t erase his demand that his followers obey it. Again, a Judaizer would find nothing disconcerting in saying Jesus IS the law. The demand that the individual sinner individually obey the Mosaic law remains the same.

Christ’s answer was oblique. Some apostles evidently did not fully understand. The confusion which followed is hardly unbelievable.

Saying they evidently did not understand is just fallaciously begging the question, which is whether their “misunderstanding” was genuine or a mere fiction. I gave you ARGUMENTS why their “misunderstanding” was unbelievable, so your expression of opinion that it wasn’t so unbelievable, is not a rebuttal.

As a Christian, I’m convinced that Christ had some purpose in allowing the Church to undergo this trial.

This is expression of opinion, not apologetics, and nothing here refutes my attack on Paul’s theology.

Disagreement among two “inspired” apostles requires that one of them MUST be wrong, unless you say God inspires logical contradiction.

I didn’t say that there were contradictions in Canonical scripture.

I never said you did. I was the one who formed the conclusion that two inspired apostles who disagree with each other on the gospel, cannot logically both be right. That’s MY argument, it has nothing to do with whether you believe apostles contradicted themselves.

My argument is, that as people, the apostles were not impecabble or totally inerrant in all their behavior.

Then you open the door to the possibility that Paul’s sinful nature may have infected his theological opinions.

It makes sense to attempt to reconcile Christians in the truth.

But not when the attempt requires absurd stretches of rationality, such as your first pope failing to understand something as simple as John 3:16 (salvation to Gentile and Jew) up until Acts 10, where he then “discovers” Gentile salvation, which then causes arguments from his Jewish converts who also are shocked at the “news”.

Even if certain participants in the council saw others as heretics, the divisions were hardly as entrenched as they are in the modern age.

How Acts 15 compares to modern Christian division is irrelevent, It is not arguable that James was a legalist, the leader of the Judaizers, that Paul himself reported Peter as a Judaizer in Galatians 2:14, and that therefore, these two were against theology like Paul’s.

So James didn’t automatically conclude that the Judaizers were obvious heretics, as Paul did, if there is any truth to Acts 15 at all.

That seems true enough. I fail to see the problem.

If the Judaizer gospel is as obviously false as Paul says in Galatians, HOW could James, who knew the earthly Jesus, thought the Judaizers were anything BUT heretics? The Judaizer gospel is in great conflict with Jesus’ gospel, according to you, so how did James NOT immediately notice?

PRECISELY! Now we’re getting somewhere!

The issue was of association with the gentiles, which the Old Law treated as unclean

.

And Paul linked the issue of association with Gentiles to the issue of salvation, see Galatians 2:12-21

Peter realized that the prescripts of the Old Law no longer required strict adherence, since Christ had fulfilled them in His own person.

False, Peter was a Judaizer according to Paul, Galatians 2:14 (“why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?”).

If you know the Mormon gospel is false, what is the likelihood that you’ll give in to peer pressure as you travel through Salt Lake City and begin acting like a Mormon? ZERO.

That’s exactly why Peter’s choice to acquiesce to the Judaizers is unbelievable. If he knew it was a false gospel, he darn sure would not have “compelled the Gentiles to live as Jews” anymore than YOU would “compell Catholics to become Mormon”. The point is that Peter’s giving in to the Judaizers sounds more like a proof that the Judaizer gospel was true, not that he was fickle and unstable. By the way, those Judaizers were “men from James”. Peter knew James personally, and would have immediately known if they were incorrectly representing James.

 

[spirit5er]

This is a matter of adherence to the Mosaic Law, which is to be separated from the issue of whether or not gentiles can be saved.

Now you contradict Jesus who told Gentiles they wouldn’t enter the kingdom unless they adhered to the Law more closely than Pharisees. See Matthew 5.

Peter already knew that the gentiles could be saved, but remained confused about how precisely to practise the Old Law concerning them.

How could he remain ignorant with Jesus teaching salvation of Gentiles to him for three years (John 3:16), and then conversing with him after resurrecting for 40 days about gentile salvation?

Nothing you say here refutes my arguments which show how improbable Peter’s level of “ignorance” was.

Christ as logos fulfilling the Law in His own person is actually quite a bit more than the apostles would have understood.

Which is a roundabout way of saying the apostles didn’t believe the way you do, a classic sign of misunderstanding on your part.

It isn’t laid down in scripture in a definitive fashion, but it is the perfect reconciliation.

Oh, ok, so then one way you reconcile the truth with apostolic teaching is by saying the apostles probably didn’t realize the truth about Jesus fulfilling the law in his own person?

That’s puzzling, since nobody says anything about Paul committing specific sins after his Christian conversion. Yeah, go ahead and cite the New Testament passages where Paul himself, or some other writer, says that the Paul committed any sins after his Damascus Road experience. Good luck.

Scripture doesn’t record whether Jesus went to the toilet, either, but I think we can assume He did.

First, it’s not an issue of whether he DID.

It is a question of why he deliberately chose to avoid all mention of specific sins. It’s worse, because he was quick to point out specific sins in other people.

Second, I don’t know if your Christianity will allow such an assumption. Does a perfect human, who is himself fully God, produce feces? God identified feces as something that defiles him, see Deuteronomy 23:13-14. Apparantly, the fact that Jesus was “fully” human doesn’t necessarily mean he did everything humans do. Or, if your assumption is correct, then Jesus produced things from his body which defile the Lord God. Welcome to your nightmare.

The earliest Catholic apologists (the Apostles) didn’t use complex reasoning. They simply proposed the truth.

two contradictory forms of the “truth”, yes.

 

[spirit5er]

Why not? Protestants attempt to dismiss Catholicism all the time without taking on the tradition of the Church, the ECFs, etc.

And “faith expression” is actually synonymous with “apologetics debate”.

The atheist’s “faith expression” is to insist on arguments solely from materialism, just as the Protestant’s is to insist on arguments solely from Scripture and often solely from the KJV.

I disagree with you that the “faith” atheists have in materialism is comparable to the “faith” of Christians. I have “faith” that my car remains in the driveway after I turn away from looking at it. YOU have “faith” that Jesus rose from the dead 2000 years ago. Such faiths are clearly worlds apart.

Having the better argument, Catholics never fail to challenge you on whatever ground you favor, regardless of how you try to slant it. What you should ask is why you cannot challenge Catholics on their own ground.

Don’t need to ask it, I’ve been assuming the truth of many biblical passages, which is YOUR ground, to demonstrate that even granting most of what you believe, it is still false.

Thus Dawkins and his ilk just spew howlers ignorant as they are of Christianity. Since their goal is not to persuade Christians but to sell books to atheists, they remain imperturbed by their ignorance.

Thus Catholics and their ilk just spew howlers ignorant as they are of Christianity. Since their goal is not to presuade atheists but to sell indulgences, profiting from the victim’s belief in God’s forgiveness, they remain imperturbed by their ignorance.

The most ironic thing in this world is a Roman Catholic apologist exposing moral faults of non-Catholics.

Can we both agree that moral faults in individual people don’t negatively impact the truth of their worldview?

 

[Dauphin]

In Matthew 19, Jesus refers to the law one must keep to be saved, as a set of moral instructions, not a “who”.

What He says in Matthew 19 is actually a good example of Christ’s intrinsic relationship to the Law. Christ reveals that following Him is in fact a form of adherence to the Law.

You must think James and his congregations of “tens of thousands” were also grasping at straws too, since in Acts 21, long after the death of Jesus, they are all remaining “zealous for the Law”. …They remained zealous to adhere to a system that Hebrews 8 says was “decaying” and “ready” to vanish away? Maybe their continued zeal for the law shows that they didn’t honestly CONVERT?

Now I’m just plain disappointed.

Obviously, they remained zealous for the Law. They thought it was necessary for salvation. Their “zealousness” isn’t praised by the author of Acts.

They had certainly been converted, but failed to understand the true status of the Mosaic Covenant.

Where did Jesus ever teach that he would fulfill the Mosaic Law any differently than by simply obeying?

To fulfill means more than to obey. It is evident that Christ fulfilled the Law in His own person; this is the only coherent reconciliation between the statements you have already pointed to. It is also in accord with John’s theology of Christ as “logos”.

I don’t need to read your earlier post, because your stated position doesn’t account for James and Peter’s legalism after the Cross. They certainly didn’t agree that “the law is done away in Christ”.

I think you’re afraid to confront the argument directly because of its power, and you’re struggling to find a way to refute it.

The Law was not done away with, but fulfilled in Christ’s own person. This is an important distinction.

In order to account for the legalism Peter had fallen into, we can say that he either never genuinely understood that adherence to the prescripts of the Old Law was no longer neccessary, or otherwise gradually became convinced of the legalistic error in a human attempt to conform to certain statements Christ made.

So when Acts 21:20 says the tens of thousands of Christian Jews converted under James, continue to remain “zealous for the law” long after the cross, it means they were zealous for Christ?

No, it means they were zealous for the prescripts of the Mosaic Covenant.

It appears that you’ve taken scripture out of context in this instance. The description of the Jewish Christians as “zealous for the law” was placed in the mouth of the people who were confronting Paul. It is not the assertion of the author of Acts that this was desirable.

If Peter believed your argument, why does he cease his perfectly Christ-like practice of eating with Gentiles after legalistic “men from James” show up (Galatians 2:12)? You have nowhere near the intimate assocation with the historical Jesus Peter had, yet you are confident you’d never give in to imitating false Christians like the Mormons, and you’d never so much as “fear” them anyway. If YOU, 2000 years removed from the original, can have this confidence, it is thereby most unbelievable that Peter, knowing the truth, would give in to the legalists…unless he knew their legalism correctly represented James and Jesus.

I don’t think Peter understood correctly that which Christ had taught. It’s also possible that he gradually, in his human intellectual weakness, drifted from the genuine teaching towards a legalistic interpretation.

I, myself, 2000 years later, have the benefit of the teaching of the Doctors of the Church and many eminent theologians throughout history who gave the faith greater definition. I’m simply repeating what they have offered. I’m sure if I were living at the time of St. Peter, I’d be just as clueless as he was at times.

The problem is very simple to see: the rumor about Paul in Acts 21, when pondered critically, opens the door to the possibility that Paul DID tell Jews to reject Mosaic law and advise against circumcision of their kids. It is NOT obvious that this rumor was false. Paul’s choice to obey James’s damage-control request that he go along with some other guys doing a vow in the temple, to make that rumor seem false, need constitute nothing more than Paul pretending to be under the law for the sake of public relations, when he actually believes the opposite, as he specifically stated he would do in such situations…1st Corinthians 9:20.

As such, that rumor about Paul trivializing the Mosaic Law and forbidding circumcision seems more likely true than false (how likely is it that “tens of thousands” of James’s own converts would buy into a FALSE rumor about Paul? Was that the gullibility of the original Christians?

…which is therefore a biblical proof that James’s faction disagreed with Paul about the continuing applicability of the Law to Christian Jews.

That’s all well and good.

I still don’t see the problem. Clearly, there was a certain doctrinal cleavage in the early Church. Some believed that adherence to the precepts of the Mosaic Law was still necessary for salvation. Is it your argument that the existence of this cleavage disproves Christian revelation? In what respect?

 

[Dauphin]

IThus Catholics and their ilk just spew howlers ignorant as they are of Christianity. Since their goal is not to presuade atheists but to sell indulgences, profiting from the victim’s belief in God’s forgiveness, they remain imperturbed by their ignorance.

I’d bet you don’t even know what an indulgence is, or what form they take in modern times. Without scrambling off to Wikipedia, would you care to give me your definition?

 

[Teflon93]

I disagree with you that the “faith” atheists have in materialism is comparable to the “faith” of Christians. I have “faith” that my car remains in the driveway after I turn away from looking at it. YOU have “faith” that Jesus rose from the dead 2000 years ago. Such faiths are clearly worlds apart.

Only because you are ignorant of how much of an illusion of your senses your car is.

Indeed, what leads you to call it “your car” at all? It is a collection of various materials, nothing more. That it will be in “your driveway” at all is due to the culture Christians have erected, with its notions of property rights and civil behavior.

As we have seen in those countries where atheists have run the show lock, stock, and barrel, “your car” and “your driveway” are abstractions you will be disabused of in short order.

Don’t need to ask it, I’ve been assuming the truth of many biblical passages, which is YOUR ground, to demonstrate that even granting most of what you believe, it is still false.

Oh, please. You’ve slaughtered millions of pixels and haven’t even made a coherent argument yet.

You don’t understand what you’re reading and thus keep bouncing up against barriers even the Sunday Schooler successfully avoids.

Thus Catholics and their ilk just spew howlers ignorant as they are of Christianity. Since their goal is not to presuade atheists but to sell indulgences, profiting from the victim’s belief in God’s forgiveness, they remain imperturbed by their ignorance.

Hey—there’s one of your ridiculous howlers now, right on time!

The most ironic thing in this world is a Roman Catholic apologist exposing moral faults of non-Catholics.

And you don’t understand what the word “irony” means either. How rich!

Can we both agree that moral faults in individual people don’t negatively impact the truth of their worldview?

Can we both agree that your last sentence and your second-to-last are in violent disagreement?

We don’t even need to refute you—you refute yourself.

 

[Dauphin]

Now you contradict Jesus who told Gentiles they wouldn’t enter the kingdom unless they adhered to the Law more closely than Pharisees. See Matthew 5.

You’re nothing if not persistent.

As I’ve explained, Christ is referring to His own person when He speaks of cleaving to the Law.

How could he remain ignorant with Jesus teaching salvation of Gentiles to him for three years (John 3:16), and then conversing with him after resurrecting for 40 days about gentile salvation?

Nothing you say here refutes my arguments which show how improbable Peter’s level of “ignorance” was.

You know, I don’t think you’re a very good atheist. Atheists I know are always very good at reasoning. Maybe, though, this is more a problem with listening.

As I’ve explained, the issue is not one of salvation of gentiles but of the need to adhere to the prescripts of the Mosaic Law. Instead of addressing the argument, you’re simply parroting what you’ve already told me (ie. “Peter suddenly realized the gentiles can be saved! How crazy is that?”). I don’t accept this conclusion for the reasons I’ve already offered.

Which is a roundabout way of saying the apostles didn’t believe the way you do, a classic sign of misunderstanding on your part.

That’s clever.

Christ as logos was an implicit part of the deposit of faith, which would later become defined by St. John.

Oh, ok, so then one way you reconcile the truth with apostolic teaching is by saying the apostles probably didn’t realize the truth about Jesus fulfilling the law in his own person?

Oy vey! Has it taken this long?

That’s basically it. The teaching is implicit in Christ’s own words, but was not defined with any clarity until later.

First, it’s not an issue of whether he DID.

It is a question of why he deliberately chose to avoid all mention of specific sins. It’s worse, because he was quick to point out specific sins in other people.

I’m sure he went to confession, which would have been public at his time.

Second, I don’t know if your Christianity will allow such an assumption.

First, it’s not my Christianity. Let’s get that straight. If you can produce a Canon of an ecumenical council that contradicts anything I’ve said here, I’ll immediately reform my belief and apologize publicly. I adhere to the Catholic faith.

Does a perfect human, who is himself fully God, produce feces? God identified feces as something that defiles him, see Deuteronomy 23:13-14. Apparantly, the fact that Jesus was “fully” human doesn’t necessarily mean he did everything humans do. Or, if your assumption is correct, then Jesus produced things from his body which defile the Lord God. Welcome to your nightmare.

You clearly fail to understand the way in which ritual law in the old covenant has been made unnecessary. God has made clean that which was unclean.

Although it would be odd, an argument could be made that this particular aspect of Christ’s incarnation foreshadowed the definitive abrogation of the prescripts of the Mosaic Covenant, since it contradicts the idea that God is defiled by feces.

Also, God deliberately humbled himself by taking on human form. This fact of Christ’s full humanity is probably best understood as an aspect of His humility.

 

[BrianH]

This has really gone in many different directions. I do have a quick question. What would be the reason that the “Acts-author” would include passages like Luke 18:18-27 but “lie” about Acts 10 and 15?

 

[spirit5er]

Originally Posted by spirit5er

On the contrary, whether the faith of the church is a supernatural gift from god or otherwise, has nothing to do with answering my question. the author of 1st John obviously felt compelled to issue rebuttal statements against the gnostic view that Jesus wasn’t manifested in the flesh. Why? This gnostic viewpoint was an “obvious” heresy, wasn’t it? Would the author of first John have also taken time to refute anybody who said Virgin Mary was a man? how many other totally obvious things did this author feel compelled to “refute”? The whole point is that his desire to refute the “heresy” implies that the heresy caught on with enough people to make it a possible threat to the “standard” Christian faith. That leaves you with the question, how could something that is “obvious” heresy, become sufficiently dominate that it required being checked by an apostle? If the idea of Jesus never being manifested in the flesh was as ridiculous as you think, it would never have caught on, unless you agree with skeptics that first-century Christians were intensely gullible.

and that the deceptions of Satan also do not exist.

Call that gnostic view a deception from Satan if you wish. You still haven’t explained why something you view as “obvious” heresy, became so popular that 1st John’s author felt compelled to refute it.

Or… are you just blaming Satan for every stupid move made by ancient Christians so you don’t have to wrestle with the real life implications of their beliefs?

You can’t possibly expect to find common ground with Catholics reasoning from that basis.

On the contrary, your supernaturalist assumptions don’t seem to do you a lot of favors explaining this.