The Queer Contradiction Of Paul's Epistles

[antonio]

All through Paul's writing, the same message drums, over and over, Salvation is by faith alone. The law is useless and in fact, he says if you rely on your effort it offends God because your effort is based on pride.

THEN

In a few places, like 1 Cor 6:9 all of a sudden you have to be rightious to get to heaven and there is a list of sins that suck us all in that keep most of us out of heaven.
This has to be a contradiction. Either Paul was unstable or as some scholars say, others inserted these sections that seem to contradict Paul. Motive, Paul was not liked by Peter who believed in the jewish law, the christian-jews, the roman church.

What must be remembered is there are no originals of the writing that make up the New Testament Bible including the Epistles.. If they ever existed, they are gone. Further, there are no original of copies of what is found in these codices. No one knows what happened to any of these originals or copies or why. In addition, besides there being no originals, there are no copies of the Original nor copies of copies, there are only copies of copies of copies. Dating establishes this. For example, The earliest copies of the Gospel of Luke are four papyrus fragments the size of a credit card, dating from the first half of the 3rd century.

All total there are some 54,000 hand made copies of the New Testament. Some are mere fragments; others are massive tomes of all the books. No two copies agree with another in every detail. Scholars estimate there are some 200,000 to 300,000 undisputed differences.. Most differences are simply clerical errors and mistakes and easily understood but many involve missing or additional verses, words missing, words changed.

There are many sources, if your interested look in Wikipedia or the books of , Marcus Borg, Ehrman

This is what scholars say about the Pauline Epistles

Pauline Epistles allegedly written by Paul:
• Epistle to the Romans
• First Epistle to the Corinthians
• Epistle to the Galatians
• Epistle to the Ephesians
• Epistle to the Philippians
• Epistle to the Colossians
• First Epistle to the Thessalonians
• Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
• First Epistle to Timothy
• Second Epistle to Timothy
• Epistle to Titus
• Epistle to Philemon
The authorship of many of these epistles is contested by the majority of modern scholars and historians. In particular, with respect to the authorship of the Pauline epistles, the pastoral epistles are rejected by two thirds of modern academics and only seven of the Pauline epistles are regarded as uncontested. However , some scholars are of the opinion that passages even of these seven reflect interpolation (forgeries)
Please someone help me understand this.
antonio

[antonio]

All through Paul's writing, the same message drums, over and over, Salvation is by faith alone. The law is useless and in fact, he says if you rely on your effort it offends God because your effort is based on pride.

THEN

In a few places, like 1 Cor 6:9 all of a sudden you have to be rightious to get to heaven and there is a list of sins that suck us all in that keep most of us out of heaven.
This has to be a contradiction. Either Paul was unstable or as some scholars say, others inserted these sections that seem to contradict Paul. Motive? Paul was not liked by Peter who believed in the jewish law, the christian-jews, the roman church.

What must be remembered is there are no originals of the writing that make up the New Testament Bible including the Epistles.. If they ever existed, they are gone. Further, there are no original of copies of what is found in these codices. No one knows what happened to any of these originals or copies or why. In addition, besides there being no originals, there are no copies of the Original nor copies of copies, there are only copies of copies of copies. Dating establishes this. For example, The earliest copies of the Gospel of Luke are four papyrus fragments the size of a credit card, dating from the first half of the 3rd century.

All total there are some 54,000 hand made copies of the New Testament. Some are mere fragments; others are massive tomes of all the books. No two copies agree with another in every detail. Scholars estimate there are some 200,000 to 300,000 undisputed differences.. Most differences are simply clerical errors and mistakes and easily understood but many involve missing or additional verses, words missing, words changed.

There are many sources, if your interested look in Wikipedia or the books of , Marcus Borg, Ehrman

This is what scholars say about the Pauline Epistles

Pauline Epistles allegedly written by Paul:
• Epistle to the Romans
• First Epistle to the Corinthians
• Epistle to the Galatians
• Epistle to the Ephesians
• Epistle to the Philippians
• Epistle to the Colossians
• First Epistle to the Thessalonians
• Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
• First Epistle to Timothy
• Second Epistle to Timothy
• Epistle to Titus
• Epistle to Philemon
The authorship of many of these epistles is contested by the majority of modern scholars and historians. In particular, with respect to the authorship of the Pauline epistles, the pastoral epistles are rejected by two thirds of modern academics and only seven of the Pauline epistles are regarded as uncontested. However , some scholars are of the opinion that passages even of these seven reflect interpolation (forgeries)
Please someone help me understand this.
antonio

[Easyrider]

I wouldn't take Marcus Borg to a goat roping. His brand of Christianity is a pack of heresies and strawman arguments. He's part and parcel of the ultra-liberal Jesus Seminar, which carefully edited out of their thinking any supernatural miracles of Jesus, his resurrection, virgin birth, etc. They are mostly rationalists or pantheists who have never, IMO, known Jesus Christ personally. Ehrman is a slight improvement over Borg, but still has a large number of warts in his theology. The Jesus Seminar doesn't represent mainstream Christianity.

Another one of their pseudo-intellectual 'scholars' is Bishop Spong, whose own congregation declined under his watch, likely due to his pack of heresies and manufactured strawman arguments. Here's a better picture of Spong and Borg:

What's Wrong with Bishop Spong?

http://www.christian-apologetics.org/ht ... _Spong.htm

A Critique of Marcus Borg

http://www.tektonics.org/af/borg01.html

As for 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, I don't see any contradiction with that and Paul's teachings on salvation by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Antonio appears not to understand the sanctification process (look up "progressive sanctification" on the net), where believers are filled with the Holy Spirit at salvation, and where the Holy Spirit starts purging dead works and ungodly behaviors from their lives. This is a life-long event, and is not to be confused with a state of perfection. What this means is that those in I Cor. 6:9-10 who continually engage in lies, fornication, idolatry, homosexual sins, thievery, etc., have arguably never been born again by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Finally, today's study Bibles are normally written and edited by professional teams of scholars. I don't know of one popular study Bible that, across the board, believes the things Borg, Spong, and the liberal "scholars" believe about Jesus or about the authorship of the vast majority of NT works.

There's also no question for debate posed in this OP. Just another pseudo-Biblical diatribe from left field.

[Easyrider]

This is a duplicate thread. Moderators, please remove. I've already busted his premises in the other one.

[Cathar1950]

This is a duplicate thread. Moderators, please remove. I've already busted his premises in the other one.

Where is the other thread so we can bust your busted?
Most scholars think Paul wrote 7 of the letters, Paul's identity is questioned and his letters have been tampered with thru the ages.
Nothing clear about Paul or this letters.
I would love to read your so-called busted.

[Easyrider]

This is a duplicate thread. Moderators, please remove. I've already busted his premises in the other one.

Where is the other thread....?

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 0dd210445b

[Cathar1950]

I guess you have not busted it yet.But it does seem to be a repeat.There is a lack of focus and it seems he wants to information not debate.
But you have hardly busted anything.

Besides you didn't do it some other sites were used and they are questionable.

[antonio]

As for 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, I don't see any contradiction with that and Paul's teachings on salvation by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Antonio appears not to understand the sanctification process (look up "progressive sanctification" on the net), where believers are filled with the Holy Spirit at salvation, and where the Holy Spirit starts purging dead works and ungodly behaviors from their lives. This is a life-long event, and is not to be confused with a state of perfection. What this means is that those in I Cor. 6:9-10 who continually engage in lies, fornication, idolatry, homosexual sins, thievery, etc., have arguably never been born again by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Wow, if this is what you call "busting" a premise, we may as well all go home.

Seems you are quite the little interpolator yourself. Where in epistles does it set out this "Sanctification Process" or the "purging"- eeewwww, sounds painful and messy.

Maybe your looking for a boyfriend to take you those goat ropings but I'm not. OK, Borg and Ehrman are not cute or something, but I'm not looking for a boyfriend. What ever you say about them personally, has nothing to do with their scholarship. Virtually every scholar agrees that at least one of Paul's letters wasn't written by him. Lets start there.
Your confidence about writings that have no originals, or anything close to the originals is amusing. Perhaps you've been "purged" of common sense. The first thing you'd say if some reputable scholar claimed to have a portion of Mark's gospel that reveals that, for example, Jesus spent those middle years in India , is "lets see it." Then you'd begin to question it's authenticity. But here you don't even have one eye witness about what Paul wrote or even that he wrote anything.--except for the Bible, there isn't any other record to show he even existed.
antonio

[Easyrider]

Seems you are quite the little interpolator yourself. Where in epistles does it set out this "Sanctification Process" or the "purging"- eeewwww, sounds painful and messy.

I'll be glad to lay it out for you. Also, you can do a Google search on progressive sanctification for additional information.

PROGRESSIVE SANCTIFICATION

Now whereas definitive sanctification is seen as a completed act by Christ for His body of believer's, where they are "positionally" seated in righteousness and holiness in God's eyes at the point of faith in Christ (Acts 26:18), as long as the individual's life continues, there also occurs in their lives what is referred to as "progressive sanctification." The Westminster Catechism (Q. 35), seems to provide a fine description of what takes place in progressive sanctification:

"Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness." (Geneva Study Bible 1806)

Progressive sanctification then, is a process of refinement that God performs in the lives of His believers.

"Because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those
who are being made holy." (Hebrews 10:14)

Next we see the "refiner's fire" that we see mentioned in Malachi 3:3, which states,

"He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the
Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will
have men who will bring offerings in righteousness."

The refining of an individual unto purification is a process, BY GOD, that occurs over time. It is a process whereby the Lord may use trials, suffering, and tribulations to break down the individual so that they come to trust and believe in the Lord, instead of trusting in themselves. In Romans 5:3 the apostle Paul speaks of rejoicing in our sufferings because, "we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." If sanctification is a process by which we come into the likeness of God, then the "character" of which Paul is speaking is the Christ-likeness that God is trying to instill in us, and suffering (refinement) is one of the vehicles by which it is attained.

Concerning the premise that progressive sanctification is a life-long process, Wayne Grudem remarks in Systematic Theology:

"Sanctification is a process that continues throughout our Christian lives. Although Paul says that his readers have been set free from sin (Romans 6:18) and that they are 'dead to sin and alive to God' (Romans 6:11), he nonetheless recognizes that sin remains in their lives, so he tells them not to let it reign and not to yield to it (Romans 6:12-13). Their task, therefore, as Christians is to grow more and more in sanctification, just as they previously grew more and more in sin: 'Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification' (Romans 6:19)." (Grudem 748)

THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION

In Matthew 5:48 Jesus gives this command: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." From initial perception, it appears that Jesus is calling His people to achieve a life of sinless perfection. We see this same type of statement in I John 3:6: "No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him." And again, in I John 3:9 we read, "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God." A related commentary on I John 3:9 provides the following clarification: "The verb 'to sin' (Greek hamartano) is a present active infinitive, implying continued action. John emphasizes that those born of God cannot make sin their normal way of life, because God's life cannot exist in those who practice sin". Clarifying this further, I understand John to mean that once a person is born of God, they will not continue to let sin dominate their lives. That's not to say they will never have any occurrences of sin ever again, but that they will not continue to let sin run rampant without restraint. Actively seeking out and engaging in sin as a normative life-style will cease for the born-again believer. I think John himself would agree with this considering what he wrote in I John 1:8: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." James, the brother of Jesus states that, "We all stumble in many ways" (James 3:2). Wayne Grudem makes an interesting observation concerning this: "If these verses were taken to prove sinless perfection, they would have to prove it for all Christians, because they talk about what is true of everyone born of God, and everyone who has seen Christ and known him" (Grudem 751). So it appears it wouldn't suffice for just some Christians to achieve sinless perfection in this life - all who are born of God must achieve it.

With this in mind, I think we now have to consider Paul's words in Romans 3:23: "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." One might say that Paul is referring to acts of sin that occurred prior to the new life. Yet from practical observation I have yet to find any true born-again believer that claims to be without some type of sin (omission or commission) in their lives. And once again, if the doctrine of sinless perfection is to apply, it must apply to all who have been born again.

And so, unless there is a greater outpouring of the Spirit of God in these last days, Jesus' commandment to be perfect would seem to indicate a Godly standard, or a target, for us to shoot for. I think some scriptural evidence of this statement can be found in 2 Corinthians 7:1 (it should be understood that the following verse was given to "the Church of God in Corinth" - 1:1):

"Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify
ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit,
perfecting holiness out of reverence for God."

Paul's call to holiness and perfection is interesting since apparently the Corinthian Church, though surely comprised of many born-again Christians, had not yet achieved that perfection. Otherwise, the call to perfection would have been superfluous. We see similar examples in Colossians 3:10, where Paul exhorts the believer's to "put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." And also, in I Timothy 6:11, Paul again charges the believers to, "Flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness..." And there are many such verses throughout both the Old and New Testaments. The point to be made is this - there is always the call to perfection, sinlessness, and holiness, yet seldom in scripture are there examples of anyone having achieved it, save for the faith that makes one justified righteous and sanctified through Christ Jesus.

[Easyrider]

Virtually every scholar agrees that at least one of Paul's letters wasn't written by him. Lets start there...

I seriously doubt "every scholar" agrees with that. Whatever Epistle you find there's undoubtedly scholars on both sides of the issue.

Your confidence about writings that have no originals, or anything close to the originals is amusing.

We can look at the earliest manuscript copies from all of antiquity on other subjects and the NT works more than compare favorably to the vast majority of those.

Perhaps you've been "purged" of common sense.

If yours is so "common" then why are the majority of Americans Christians? Perhaps yours is uncommon sense?

The first thing you'd say if some reputable scholar claimed to have a portion of Mark's gospel that reveals that, for example, Jesus spent those middle years in India , is "lets see it." Then you'd begin to question it's authenticity. But here you don't even have one eye witness about what Paul wrote or even that he wrote anything.--except for the Bible, there isn't any other record to show he even existed.
antonio

Luke speaks quite a bit about Paul. And there are also a number of early church fathers are also quite aware of his writings. There's also statistical probabilities concerning Paul as we can see below:

http://www.harvardhouse.com/apostle_paul.htm

On the other hand, you have your illustrious liberal "scholar," Bishop Spong (the apostate), from my previous link:

Spong the (so-called) Greek scholar

Spong boasts that he spends hours studying the Bible and professes an acquaintance with Koine Greek, the language the NT was first written in. Therefore it is not surprising that in RMR, where he denies Jesus' bodily resurrection, that he turns to an analysis of the Greek text to see what the Bible really means.

In RMR p. 53-55, Spong draws our attention to Gal. 1:15-16a which says:

v15 But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother's womb, called me through His grace, was pleased v16 to reveal His son in me ...

From v. 16, "to reveal His son in me", Spong claims:

This was not a physical body recalled from the grave. The word for "reveal" in this text is ophthe, the same word used in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the appearances of God (theophanies) or angels of God (angelophanies).... What was the nature of a theophany? Was it really "physical"? What was the means of hearing God's voice speak? Was it audible to any ear? Was it capable of being recorded or objectified?

At first, we were impressed by this depth. But on checking a computerised concordance, we found that ophthe is sometimes used of ordinary physical "seeing" (Acts 7:26, 1 Tim. 3:16). A logician would also note that Spong commits the fallacy of false alternatives, because he overlooks the possibility that seeing could be both physical and supra-physical, rather that either/or. We thought that it was strange that Spong should ignore this point. However, we decided to check a Greek NT to see if Spong had at least analysed the word correctly in this passage. But we could not find ophthe in the passage. To give Spong a second shot, we checked a NT Greek Interlinear. The word was not there either. Instead, the Greek word for "reveal" in Gal. 1:16 is actually apokalupsai, not ophthe! Apokalupsai is often used in the NT in an objective sense.

It is shocking to see that Spong was trying to attack traditional Christian belief by appealing to a mis-translation of a Greek word which is not even in the passage he is explaining. Prof. O'Collins is undoubtedly referring to this blunder when he wrote: "What is said about a key verb St. Paul uses in Gal. 1:15f. shows that the bishop [Spong] has forgotten any Greek that he knew." Spong should heed O'Collins' kindly "advice for his next book [which] is to let some real experts check it before publication."

But that's your liberal "scholarship" for you!