We read in John 1:17: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realised through Jesus Christ.” Most of us knows what is the Law; but… what is GRACE AND TRUTH?
It is likely that we have heard grace being described as “the undeserved love of God,” which is a beautiful description of His merciful forgiveness, but it is only one part of the story, for that description should be taken further to expose its second hidden aspect of the gift of His grace. The first part deals with receiving the undeserved love of God, which marks the beginning of our Christian life, and the second part is for us to grow in the truth of His grace (or the holiness of His character) and give His undeserving love to others. For we read in 1John 3:16: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
So… should we be under the LAW and be a person living by a set of rules; or embrace the holy character of Christ and live in the freedom of that character. Galatians 5:1-6 makes the matter perfectly clear, for we read: “It was for freedom FROM THE LAW that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.
I do not know, why and how bible scholars have difficulty with this matter.
kendalynx said
David, thank you for your efforts….Back to the topic of “Jesus Christianity versus Pauline Christianity,” I recently read historian Reza Aslan’s Zealot. An alternate perspective with a faith-based Muslim thought melded into the gospel story, Aslan presents a table-turning, Jewish Jesus, rather than the milk-toast, gentile Jesus: Hebrew “revolutionary” to “Hellenistic demigod.” Using scripture for argument, Aslan lambasts Paul. Paul is accused of creating his own “heretical” version of Christ. It prickles my preconceived and indoctrinated thought patterns. Again, engaging to take a different view is quite a mental exercise. Any thoughts?
Paul… “heretical” I think not.
We read in John 1:17: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realised through Jesus Christ.” Most of us knows what is the Law; but… what is GRACE AND TRUTH?
It is likely that we have heard grace being described as “the undeserved love of God,” which is a beautiful description of His merciful forgiveness, but it is only one part of the story, for that description should be taken further to expose its second hidden aspect of the gift of His grace. The first part deals with receiving the undeserved love of God, which marks the beginning of our Christian life, and the second part is for us to grow in the truth of His grace (or the holiness of His character) and give His undeserving love to others. For we read in 1John 3:16: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
So… should we be under the LAW and be a person living by a set of rules; or embrace the holy character of Christ and live in the freedom of that character. Galatians 5:1-6 makes the matter perfectly clear, for we read: “It was for freedom FROM THE LAW that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.
I do not know, why and how bible scholars have difficulty with this matter.
kendalynx said
David, thank you for your efforts….Back to the topic of “Jesus Christianity versus Pauline Christianity,” I recently read historian Reza Aslan’s Zealot. An alternate perspective with a faith-based Muslim thought melded into the gospel story, Aslan presents a table-turning, Jewish Jesus, rather than the milk-toast, gentile Jesus: Hebrew “revolutionary” to “Hellenistic demigod.” Using scripture for argument, Aslan lambasts Paul. Paul is accused of creating his own “heretical” version of Christ. It prickles my preconceived and indoctrinated thought patterns. Again, engaging to take a different view is quite a mental exercise. Any thoughts?
I think the value of skepticism, however stimulated, is immense. I read Zealot right after it came out and found it very engaging. Aslan is a master with the pen… That said, further reading to include our hosts comments on the blog (just search Aslan) disclosed much of what Aslan wrote is old scholarship and with critical parts of it to the zealot argument …. held in less esteem. The very great difficulty in this arena is that the real work done is conducted by people that read Koine Greek, classical and vernacular Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic at the very least. They argue over whether a spot on an ancient manuscript is a zid or a zot or who knows what before getting down to what it means for casual readers like me. Aslan did not qualify why he thought the scripture he used was reliable. Dr. Erhmann at least gave a taste of that scholarship in “How Jesus Became God”.
I suspect (in line with scholarship that says the early Jesus Movement was very complex) that Jesus did share zealot like sympathies. What 1st century Jew (outside of the Sadducee’s) wouldn’t? I also suspect many scholars agree with Aslan’s view of Paul’s theology which ( I think) pretty obviously ignored Jesus message (whether its Dr. Erhmann’s apocplyptic herald or J.D. Croison’s “sagery”) to create a gentile religion which claimed the key to eternal life and placed that key in a new priesthoods hands.
Bart, Thank you for your kindness and respect for everyone who is on your blogs. I just now watched the 10 minute clip of “God on Trial” which you allowed to be posted on this thread. My heart broke when I watched it, not only for those Jews (portrayed) but for all of us who are struggling with our “faith” (or have already crossed the line and are struggling with all that ensues). You always seem to take into consideration that each of your members is at a different place in their life and their studies, and your respect means a lot.
kendalynx said
For your consideration on Youtube, Jews For Judaism have interesting perspectives on Christianity, most notably, the formation of the gentile church, which was in opposition to the teachings of Jesus’ disciples.
I agree with the rabbi that the Christianity as it is today is distinctly different from the way it started out. I also agree that later gentile Christians have used and cited Christianity to justify all kinds of evils under the sun. It’s like descendants of Jewish beliefs have mutated to persecute their parents.
JBSeth1 said
Based upon what is written in the Gospels, I believe that Jesus may have felt that one of his purposes was to bring about a new understanding and interpretation of God.
At the time of Jesus there were two major schools in Judaism – the “House of Hillel” and the “House of Shammai”. The teachings of Jesus seem, to me, to put him directly in the Hillel school (the whole of the Torah can be summed up in one sentence: “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.”) as opposed to Shammai, who was much more legalistic.
Early in the Rabbi Skovac video, the Rabbi refers to Matthew, 15:24 in which a woman’s sister is ill or suffering somehow, and how Jesus does not help the woman. I went to the online King James Bible, and we must all remember to check sources. Jesus does initially reject the woman’s pleas. Eventually, however, it he does help the woman’s sister. Or so it seems from the text.
Rosekeister said
That is a powerful lecture and its power lies in a straightforward presentation of what many know but prefer not to squarely face. Despite his conclusion veering into Christianity unraveling and people throughout the world coming to recognize Judaism as the true source of knowledge about God, the rabbi’s entire presentation of the origin of Christianity sounds dead on and unassailable.
Jesus was a traditional Jew who taught obeying the Torah and he did not proclaim his divinity.
His disciples were traditional Jews who taught obeying the Torah and did not consider Jesus God.
The Jerusalem Church were traditional Jews who taught obeying the Torah and did not consider themselves a new religion.
Paul was not a traditional Jew in teaching the end of the Torah.
Christianity as it exists today is a Greco-Roman Gentile church that does not reflect Jesus, his disciples and the Jerusalem Church because of its syncretism with pagan religion and philosophy.
That being said, how the very early followers of Christ, the ones who actually saw him and talked to him ended up worshiping him is one of the most profound events in human history. Because apparently by the time Paul is talking to James, they aren’t arguing over the divinity of Christ that Paul seems to have accepted……which suggests they agreed on his divinity by that time?
That is a monumental shift for the earliest Christians. Strange indeed the disciples wouldn’t consider themselves as following a separate religion from the Jews if these disciples are the very people who initiated Christ worship.
If they didn’t and someone else did, someone who never met Jesus, then the story of how they initiated Christ worship and spread it so that it actually dominated the religion of the very earliest followers of Christ who actually met him is a stunning event as well.
I want to know how the earliest Christians conflicted over whether Christ was in any way divine or not. Unfortunately it seems the earliest talk about disagreement is over things like salvation and law…..not the biggest topic of all, the divinity of Christ.
MMahmud said
That being said, how the very early followers of Christ, the ones who actually saw him and talked to him ended up worshiping him is one of the most profound events in human history. Because apparently by the time Paul is talking to James, they aren’t arguing over the divinity of Christ that Paul seems to have accepted……which suggests they agreed on his divinity by that time?
That is a monumental shift for the earliest Christians. Strange indeed the disciples wouldn’t consider themselves as following a separate religion from the Jews if these disciples are the very people who initiated Christ worship.
If they didn’t and someone else did, someone who never met Jesus, then the story of how they initiated Christ worship and spread it so that it actually dominated the religion of the very earliest followers of Christ who actually met him is a stunning event as well.
I want to know how the earliest Christians conflicted over whether Christ was in any way divine or not. Unfortunately it seems the earliest talk about disagreement is over things like salvation and law…..not the biggest topic of all, the divinity of Christ.
You make some very broad assumptions here. As I mentioned in the other thread we have no way of knowing what the disciples believed. We have no way of knowing whether or not they thought Jesus was divine. We have no way of knowing if Paul reconciled his views with James or any of the other disciples. We have no way of knowing who the first person was to posit that Jesus was divine. For all we know Paul’s conversion was a major psychotic event for him and he came out of it with visions of Jesus that no one had ever conceived of before and that it was Paul who first put forward that Jesus was divine. As we know there were major disagreements over who/what Jesus was. Was he 100% human? Was he 100% divine? Was he some combination of the two? Did he only become divine when he hung on the cross? There was a different heretical sect that believed each of those things. When did those sects first come into being? We don’t know. Who first started them? For many we don’t know.
G:
Have to agree here. Don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Film, The Princess Bride, but throughout a few scenes in the begining the one of the characters replies Inconceivable! when he is told what is happening. Finally, one of his associates says ” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. MMahmud’s use of words like profound and monumental reminds me of this.
Rosenkeister gets a second runner up for his sycretism metaphysics
spiker said
G:
Have to agree here. Don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Film, The Princess Bride, but throughout a few scenes in the begining the one of the characters replies Inconceivable! when he is told what is happening. Finally, one of his associates says ” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. MMahmud’s use of words like profound and monumental reminds me of this.
Rosenkeister gets a second runner up for his sycretism metaphysics
My big issue is there doesn’t seem to be any conversation between Paul and Disciples on the subject of Christology.
Why? I think that’s huge. Really huge.
gmatthews said
MMahmud said
That being said, how the very early followers of Christ, the ones who actually saw him and talked to him ended up worshiping him is one of the most profound events in human history. Because apparently by the time Paul is talking to James, they aren’t arguing over the divinity of Christ that Paul seems to have accepted……which suggests they agreed on his divinity by that time?
That is a monumental shift for the earliest Christians. Strange indeed the disciples wouldn’t consider themselves as following a separate religion from the Jews if these disciples are the very people who initiated Christ worship.
If they didn’t and someone else did, someone who never met Jesus, then the story of how they initiated Christ worship and spread it so that it actually dominated the religion of the very earliest followers of Christ who actually met him is a stunning event as well.
I want to know how the earliest Christians conflicted over whether Christ was in any way divine or not. Unfortunately it seems the earliest talk about disagreement is over things like salvation and law…..not the biggest topic of all, the divinity of Christ.
You make some very broad assumptions here. As I mentioned in the other thread we have no way of knowing what the disciples believed. We have no way of knowing whether or not they thought Jesus was divine. We have no way of knowing if Paul reconciled his views with James or any of the other disciples. We have no way of knowing who the first person was to posit that Jesus was divine. For all we know Paul’s conversion was a major psychotic event for him and he came out of it with visions of Jesus that no one had ever conceived of before and that it was Paul who first put forward that Jesus was divine. As we know there were major disagreements over who/what Jesus was. Was he 100% human? Was he 100% divine? Was he some combination of the two? Did he only become divine when he hung on the cross? There was a different heretical sect that believed each of those things. When did those sects first come into being? We don’t know. Who first started them? For many we don’t know.
You don’t think it’s profound that a dude with a psychotic event literally managed to bring about a view of a man who would have disagreed with him, as well as is followers to eventually become the mainstream beliefs of Christianity? One man comes later and screws over the teachings of Christ AND his earliest followers and actually succeeds….that is beyond amazing to me. Paul ended up winning in that sense which is really just…wow.
It’s true we don’t know when Christ was first worshipped. It definitely has something to do with his supposed Crucifixion because he certainly didn’t tell anybody he was god while he walked and ate and talked.
The thing that’s itching me is that there is no record of Christological arguments between Paul and Disciples. Did early Jewish Christians find it ok that early Roman Christians thought of Jesus differently?
I guess the reason we don’t know is lack of record. I think it’s likely early Church Daddies had a big role in that. Not to hard to get rid of information permanently back then. Our biggest limitation is probably this-our lack of access to opposing arguments.
The winning group in Christianity made damn, damn sure there wasn’t much opposition. There are probably thousands of manuscripts the destroyed to preserve their version.
Itch remains but I’ll keep scratching. metaphors lol
MMahmud said
The thing that’s itching me is that there is no record of Christological arguments between Paul and Disciples. Did early Jewish Christians find it ok that early Roman Christians thought of Jesus differently?
Itch remains but I’ll keep scratching. metaphors lol
Paul wasn’t the only one with different views. See 2 Cor 11:3-5. Paul speaks here of “super-apostles”. Whether or not he’s talking about the apostles in Jerusalem or other itinerant preachers is widely debated among scholars. If he is in fact talking of non-Jerusalem apostles then there were obviously variant views besides what Paul held and what Jerusalem held. In other places Paul talks about apostles who also may have been different from those in Jerusalem. I don’t know of any Apostolic Fathers who quote or reference (or who are suspected of quoting or referencing) any of these variant views so apparently the synchronizing with Pauline beliefs was somewhat swift (as far as I know).
spiker said
G:
Have to agree here. Don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Film, The Princess Bride, but throughout a few scenes in the begining the one of the characters replies Inconceivable! when he is told what is happening. Finally, one of his associates says ” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. MMahmud’s use of words like profound and monumental reminds me of this.
Rosenkeister gets a second runner up for his sycretism metaphysics
Try to make yourself useful.
gmatthews said
MMahmud said
The thing that’s itching me is that there is no record of Christological arguments between Paul and Disciples. Did early Jewish Christians find it ok that early Roman Christians thought of Jesus differently?Itch remains but I’ll keep scratching. metaphors lol
Paul wasn’t the only one with different views. See 2 Cor 11:3-5. Paul speaks here of “super-apostles”. Whether or not he’s talking about the apostles in Jerusalem or other itinerant preachers is widely debated among scholars. If he is in fact talking of non-Jerusalem apostles then there were obviously variant views besides what Paul held and what Jerusalem held. In other places Paul talks about apostles who also may have been different from those in Jerusalem. I don’t know of any Apostolic Fathers who quote or reference (or who are suspected of quoting or referencing) any of these variant views so apparently the synchronizing with Pauline beliefs was somewhat swift (as far as I know).
Interesting. One would think after Christ most if not all Christians would rally around his inner circle but that is clearly not what happened. From very, very early on there were lots of disagreements and hatred and animosity emerged.
It would be interesting to know how Paul’s views influenced the gospels and were ultimately (fully?) adopted by the time of Luke and John.
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