“Trees didn’t exist back then”

I overheard someone today saying that Genesis 3 can’t be literal because trees didn’t exist back then.  “Trees,” he said, “are a relatively recent development on this planet. They only evolved 50,000 years ago.”   I wasn’t aware that 50,000 years ago was relatively recent. Nor did I realize that the Bible placed the story of Adam and Eve further back than 50,000 years ago; silly me, I thought if you added up all the genealogies and historical clues you found that the Bible sets that story only about 6,000 years ago.  But I guess I got schooled today.

I’m amazed how stupid people are.  Why would anyone buy a moronic idea that trees evolved 50,000 years ago?  Ignore the question of the age of the earth for a moment.  Let’s pretend the earth really is 50 kajillion trillion million floptillian years old.  And let’s assume that the evolution fairy-tale is true too.  Even with those two lies granted, how would scientists know when trees evolved?  What’s the evidence?  This guy was mocking his mother for believing in the story of Adam and Eve, saying he was amazed how stupid she is, but the joke’s on him, because he sounds like an idiot.

Now, I may be a bit paradoxical on this myself because I believe in the literal creation story and the literal creation of an Adam and Eve, but not in the literal fall narrative.  I take the talking snake to be a clue that this is an allegory about obeying God or suffering the consequences.  That’s actually a position that was a long time in the making, and I’m not going to get into how I came to that conclusion.  But suffice* it to say, taking that part of the story to be allegory due to the talking snake and the mystical fruit is not completely absurd like saying “Trees didn’t exist then.”   If you don’t believe that trees existed then, then I don’t believe that your brain exists now.

Now the theory that Paul’s epistles are the first Christian documents, predating the gospels, is akin to believing that trees didn’t exist back then.  You’re telling me that Paul was the first Christian writer, yet he has such an uphill battle against a pre-existing doctrine that is contrary to his faith alonism?  A doctrine clearly taught in Matthew. But nah, Matthew didn’t exist yet.  Paul is fighting phantoms, not real people, not pre-existing documents.  Give me a break.  I guess papyrus didn’t exist prior to Paul, right?  Lol.

[* Also Jesus doesn’t base theology on the “fall” narrative. And if death didn’t exist and we were all immortal like people who take the “fall” literally think would be the case if there had been no “fall,” we’d all be stacked on top of each other living in each others’ feces by now. Only way around that would be an ever-expanding earth, and the earth doesn’t work like that, although heaven might.  Its obvious then that death isn’t really something imposed for the “fall” but something that God always intended to be part of the world. Wait…wasn’t there a guy in antiquity who said basically this (even if Adam hadn’t eaten the fruit he would have died), and got in trouble for it…oh yeah, Pelagius. Or was it actually Coeletius who said it, and Pelagius just gets blamed for it?  Actually, I think that’s it.]

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N.T. Wright – After you Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

I don’t actually have anything to say on this video yet. Its almost 45 minutes long and I’ve only got to about the 14 minute mark as of yet. I guess I’ll watch the rest at some point this week. When I finish it, I might have something to say. (Well, there’s my comment on the video there at youtube, but that’s just a response to someone I presume is a Calvinist who attacks NT Wright simply for saying that Christian character matters.) The title of the video is interesting: After you Believe: Why Christian Character Matters.  Sounds promising, depending on where he goes with it.

Ok, I’m at about the 28 minute mark and he said something that really tickled me. Tehe.

He does his Paulinist disclaimer around the 34 minute mark, although he undermines it right afterwards in his sneaky way.

36 minutes: “All the fruit of the spirit is easily counterfeited in happy healthy young people, except self-control.”  Its an interesting statement.  Yet, can anyone truly be happy without self-control?  Not for long.  Same goes for health too, ultimately.

Maybe something to discuss is who did the better job on promoting Christian character, Tom Wright, or Bizzle? Lol.

Krister Stendahl: accidentally shows how Paul leads to subjectivism

Paul was a great theologian. A theologian is someone who sees problems where nobody else sees problems, and who sees no problems where everyone else sees problems.

An interesting video of a Krister Stendahl Lecture being read by his son.  Krister Stendahl was, according to Wikipedia’s article on the New Perspective on Paul, one of the guys who got the “New Perspective” going.

HarvardX – Letters of Paul, Krister Stendahl Lecture

Something that emerges in this video is that keeping Paul but minimizing his doctrine (and everyone who keeps him must minimize some of his doctrine since he is so contradictory) ultimately leads to a sort of subjectivism: “Christianity is true for me, but not for everyone.”  It becomes clear, therefore, that a rejection of Paul is essential for Christianity to maintain itself (or rather, Jesus) as the truth, not just “a truth.”

Did Origen say that Paul’s epistles are not properly Scripture? and where?

I was searching google for “primacy of the four gospels” to see what I could find. And I chanced upon the following from here:

Section 4, “The Study of the Gospels is the First Fruits Offered by These Priests of Christianity.” The primacy of the four Gospels as the “first fruits of the Scriptures.” Origen clarifies that in one sense the epistles of the NT are not properly called “Scripture,” since when Paul says things like, “I say, and not the Lord” and “so I ordain in all the churches,” etc. Also when Paul says “Every Scripture is inspired and profitable by God” he is probably not referring to his own writings. The four Gospels are the first fruits of the Scriptures for Origen in that they are the first which are offered to God, after the whole has become ripe.

I wish I knew what writing of Origen was being referred to.  But, even if I did, its probably one that still languishes in Greek or Latin.  Since both Catholics and Protestants consider Origen to have been heretical on certain points, a lot of his writings haven’t been translated into English.  If anyone is familiar with where Origen says that the epistles are not properly Scripture, please shoot me a line.

Ok, I found it actually.  That site did say it was from Origen’s commentary on John. I just missed that.  So here it is, from Origin’s Commentary on John, Book I, Chapter 4:

Now our whole activity is devoted to God, and our whole life, since we are bent on progress in divine things. If, then, it be our desire to have the whole of those first fruits spoken of above which are made up of the many first fruits, if we are not mistaken in this view, in what must our first fruits consist, after the bodily separation we have undergone from each other, but in the study of the Gospel? For we may venture to say that the Gospel is the first fruits of all the Scriptures. Where, then, could be the first fruits of our activity, since the time when we came to Alexandria, but in the first fruits of the Scriptures? It must not be forgotten, however, that the first fruits are not the same as the first growth. For the first fruits are offered after all the fruits (are ripe), but the first growth before them all. Now of the Scriptures which are current and are believed to be divine in all the churches, one would not be wrong in saying that the first growth is the law of Moses, but the first fruits the Gospel. For it was after all the fruits of the prophets who prophesied till the Lord Jesus, that the perfect word shot forth.

And then chapter 5 of the same:

Here, however, some one may object, appealing to the notion just put forward of the unfolding of the first fruits last, and may say that the Acts and the letters of the Apostles came after the Gospels, and that this destroys our argument to the effect that the Gospel is the first fruits of all Scripture. To this we must reply that it is the conviction of men who are wise in Christ, who have profited by those epistles which are current, and who see them to be vouched for by the testimonies deposited in the law and the prophets, that the apostolic writings are to be pronounced wise and worthy of belief, and that they have great authority, but that they are not on the same level with that “Thus says the Lord Almighty.”  Consider on this point the language of St. Paul. When he declares that 2 Timothy 3:16 “Every Scripture is inspired of God and profitable,” does he include his own writings? Or does he not include his dictum, 1 Corinthians 7:12 “I say, and not the Lord,” and 1 Corinthians 7:17 “So I ordain in all the churches,” and 2 Timothy 3:11 “What things I suffered at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra,” and similar things which he writes in virtue of his own authority, and which do not quite possess the character of words flowing from divine inspiration. Must we also show that the old Scripture is not Gospel, since it does not point out the Coming One, but only foretells Him and heralds His coming at a future time; but that all the new Scripture is the Gospel. It not only says as in the beginning of the Gospel, John 1:29 “Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world;” it also contains many praises of Him, and many of His teachings, on whose account the Gospel is a Gospel. Again, if God set in the Church Ephesians 4:11 apostles and prophets and evangelists (gospellers), pastors and teachers, we must first enquire what was the office of the evangelist, and mark that it is not only to narrate how the Saviour cured a man who was blind from his birth, John 9:1 or raised up a dead man who was already stinking, John 11:39 or to state what extraordinary works he wrought; and the office of the evangelist being thus defined, we shall not hesitate to find Gospel in such discourse also as is not narrative but hortatory and intended to strengthen belief in the mission of Jesus; and thus we shall arrive at the position that whatever was written by the Apostles is Gospel. As to this second definition, it might be objected that the Epistles are not entitled “Gospel,” and that we are wrong in applying the name of Gospel to the whole of the New Testament. But to this we answer that it happens not unfrequently in Scripture when two or more persons or things are named by the same name, the name attaches itself most significantly to one of those things or persons. Thus the Saviour says, Matthew 23:8-9 “Call no man Master upon the earth;” while the Apostle says that Masters have been appointed in the Church. These latter accordingly will not be Masters in the strict sense of the dictum of the Gospel. In the same way the Gospel in the Epistles will not extend to every word of them, when it is compared with the narrative of Jesus’ actions and sufferings and discourses. No: the Gospel is the first fruits of all Scripture, and to these first fruits of the Scriptures we devote the first fruits of all those actions of ours which we trust to see turn out as we desire.

The word “justification” is a problem

I don’t know how to put this that won’t scandalize those who still accept Paul as an apostle.  And I need help with my presentation to be sure.  But here it goes:

The was a post recently on Paul’s Passing Thoughts (Why Young People Leave Church) and another on Spiritual Sounding Board (Why Don’t Young People go to Church?) basically on the same topic, as you can see by the titles.

Paul D’s conclusion is that “ALL spiritual abuse, I repeat, ALL spiritual abuse flows from the presuppositions of the church’s institutional gospel of perpetual justification.”

He’s right in a way. He’s wrong in a way.  I’m fairly young, early 30s. So let me answer this from my perspective.

Church is typically a brainwashing session in the misosophy which says actions don’t matter. Well, if you already agree with that misosophy, then going to church doesn’t matter because its an action or work.  If you don’t agree with that misosophy then you don’t want to hear some mystic get up and rant and rave about how great that misosophy is.  So people who don’t buy into faith alone ain’t gonna go to church; and people who do buy into it have no reason to go.

Just for the record, I do go to church now, but I was out for 4 years. And it was precisely because of this misosophy of faith vs works. I was tired of hearing it. Faith is not opposed to obeying the one you claim to have faith in, and if you say that it is opposed, then you don’t really have faith. Thank God not every congregation in my denomination buys into this misosophy. Otherwise, I’d still be gone. Unfortunately for most of you, every congregation in yours probably does.

I’m still convinced the very term ‘justification’ is the problem. Paul is like foreign gibberish to me. As far as this terminology goes, I was raised on the idea of becoming a Christian, not of getting justified. You become a Christian by believing, repenting, confessing your belief, and being baptized. And then, you’re a Christian from then on out. Even if you leave, you can come back without having to go through the same again: you just have to repent and confess. Not this time confess your belief as if you’ve never believed before but confess that you screwed up royally in leaving the Lord. In this scenario, what is ‘justification’? Its becoming a Christian. Well, why don’t we just call it that then? (Actually, some of us do, but why doesn’t everyone?)

N.T. Wright has kind of seen the problem here and he’s redefined ‘justification’ from meaning that you’re ‘declared righteous’ with some bogus forensic righteousness to meaning rather that you’re ‘declared to be IN’ i.e. to have become a Christian. Yet that doesn’t fix the whole problem, because as long as you’re still using the term ‘justification’ and as long as you say its by ‘faith alone’ you’re wrong. Ain’t nobody a Christian by faith alone, because Jesus said “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…” And repentance is a prerequisite to baptism (Acts 2:38) as is belief (Mark 16:16) and confession of faith (Acts 8:37). So ain’t nobody a Christians without faith, repentance from sins, confession of faith, and baptism. So, at the most fundamental and basic level Paul was just wrong: (1) ‘justification’ is the wrong word to use, and (2) it ain’t by faith alone. (3) making it by faith alone makes it perpetually sought rather than a one-time thing, because for something to be one-time, it needs a sealing act: Hence baptism.

So, I left for a time…and I did it because I got sick of hearing about faith vs works. When I came back I moved to a congregation that doesn’t focus on Paul’s leftist lies. Faith is not opposed to works, unless by works we mean actual sins. Faith certainly is not opposed to obedience to the one you have faith in, and anyone who says so (even Paul) is a lunatic. Now is faith required to become a Christian? Yes. Are works required to become a Christian? Only repentance, confession, and baptism. Not circumcision, Sabbath keeping, giving money to charity, building a new hospital, whatever else. Paul ruined the church by coming up with a false dichotomy that enemies of Christ use against the actual means to becoming a Christian. Maybe all Paul meant by works was as E.P. Sanders thought “the tokens of national belonging” as in circumcision, etc. Or maybe Paul was a full-on Gnostic. Doesn’t matter. He was wrong, and that’s what’s wrong with “church.”

Anyone have a better way to explain that “justification” is the wrong word?

By the way, while writing this I was also listening to Paul Dohse’s Gnostic Watch Weekly Program 11:

If you watch this you’ll be thoroughly confused on how law vs grace works in Paul, as you should be, since Paul didn’t know what he meant by it either!  Dohse doesn’t do any worse than anyone else in trying to systematize and understand this incomprehensible Gnostic nonsense in Paul.  But Paul Dohse does make one very positive contribution to my way of thinking here: he coins the term “academiacs” to refer to John Piper and all the rest of the Calvinist academic theologians.  Now I have a new term by which to call Paul, since Paul is obviously in the same category as these guys:  Paul the academiac “apostle.”  I love that alliteration!

[By the way, I know some might be confused by two Pauls being mentioned.  When I say just “Paul” without a D afterwards, I always mean Paul the so-called “apostle” and supposed author of Romans and Galatians. My criticism of Paul D is limited to his hanging on to Paul despite seeing how Gnostic all the fruit from Paul is. But at least he’s trying to figure out the truth! Unlike Piper et al. who just purposefully teach the Pauline lies for money and fame. Everyone has to go through a period of trying to save Paul from Paul, trying to make Paul work via re-translation etc. I certainly went through that, for probably 10 years, before I finally realized it was hopeless and that Paul simply is wrong.]

God’s finite Law of actual commandments or Paul’s infinite thought-crime legislation?

Paul D has a new post up on Paul’s Passing Thoughts called Romans 13:14B; Part 1, “Overcoming Sin and Living Righteously, a Righteous Life of Real and Lasting Change”

Having just read it, I zeroed in on this paragraph which he placed at the head of the post in bold, but which is also repeated in the article:

I only have ONE comment concerning all of the drama that is part and parcel with the institutional church: ‘under law.’ That’s it. To be under law is to be cut off from bearing fruit for God. To be under law is to be cut off from its life and love.

Now I posted a comment, saying the following:

They’re not under the [ceremonial side of the] Torah, because Gentiles never were.  So what “law” are they under?  Their own invented emotional-crime and thought-crime legislation.  Because you’ll notice whenever they list off sins, its always emotional or thought-crime sins…sins that the Torah never condemned because they’re not sins but either simply human emotions or temptations that will lead to sin if you give in to them.  You’ll never find them listing adultery, drunkeness, fornication…no real sins.

To them getting angry, or being sad, or wishing you had more money are sins.  Well no wonder they always feel condemned!!!!!

The Torah, what part of it always applied to Gentiles, i.e. the moral side, cannot condemn me.  Because I’m not murdering, raping, stealing, committing adultery, fornication, etc.   So being under the moral Law of the Torah is not going to hinder my bearing fruit.  Its the Pauline thought-crime law that hinders you bearing fruit; let’s be honest, Paul invented his own law of thought-crime legislation and then acted like the Torah taught it, and attacked the Torah as teaching what in fact does not come from it but from his own made-up law.  That’s where Protestants go wrong; they are under Paul’s law, not God’s.

Now, I want to unpack this a little bit more.  Is Paul really responsible for the Protestant thought-crime legislation or did Catholic and Protestant theologians invent that later?

Well, look at Paul’s “ode to love” in 1st Corinthians 13.  We discussed this in the comments on another post here a few days back, but let’s look at it again.

1st Corinthians 13:4-8a (NIV):

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails….

So, if you ever dishonor someone (even if they are a criminal or very guilty of horrible things) then you don’t love…according to Paul.  Or if you keep a record of wrongs, like to say this person turned on me 10 times so I’m not trusting them again like an idiot…then you don’t love.  Or, if you are ever proud of an accomplishment…then you don’t love.

Now is that what Paul means or is it Protestant misinterpretation?  Because we know this is how their pastors preach it!  Either way, either he meant it, or he wrote incautiously in a way that results in that.

So what Paul has basically done is replace actual rules like “thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not commit adultery, etc. etc.” with an impossible standard of love that is thought-crime legislation.  If you don’t meet this standard perfectly, then under Paul’s Law, you will constantly have a cloud of guilt hanging over you.

“Oh no, I dishonored that rapist by telling him he’s scum…..I don’t love. I must not really be saved.”

That’s exactly where this doctrine ends up.

Or here, a personal “favorite”:

 Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. (Colossians 4:6)

So, if somebody comes at me with Calvinism and I say “That’s just stupid. Only a complete idiot would believe that, or a devil worshiper, because denying free will makes God out to be the author of evil and more foul than Satan,” is that a sin?  According to Paul’s infinite thought-crime legislation, it is.  But that would make Jesus a sinner since he calls the Pharisees “vipers” and Herod (the king!) a “fox”!

Remember, also Paul’s interpretation is that you can’t insult a ruler in any way. In Acts 23 when he rebuked the high priest for punching him in the face in a manner contrary to the law, Paul is then informed that this was the high priest, what does he say?

I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.

So, the scripture (which properly translated, by the way, says) “thou shalt not curse a ruler of thy people” according to Paul means that you can’t even rebuke them when they break the law!!!!!!  Was John the Baptist speaking evil of the ruler of the people when he told Herod it was unlawful for him to have his brother’s wife??? Absurd!  You see how Paul overturns the law itself to replace it with infinite thought-crime legislation.

We don’t have to always speak in a politically correct manner as Christians, like Paul and his disciples teach, because Jesus himself didn’t always do so.  In fact, when did he do so?

So its not the Torah, the moral law from the Torah that’s the problem, but Paul’s rejection of it for an infinite thought-crime legislation of his own making.

Now, in Acts 15:10, speaking of the ceremonial law, Peter says:

¹⁰ Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

They were able to bear the moral law!  In fact, this very council in Acts 15 sends letters to the Gentile churches telling them that although they don’t have to be circumcised they do have to “avoid fornication”!!!!

What Paul does, it seems to me, is toss aside the actual moral law that prohibits actives of an evil nature, and replace it with a prohibition on emotions and thought.  With respect to actives he goes so far as to say “all things are lawful”:

Right after speaking in 1st Corinthians 6:9-10 about

fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminates, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners

he says in verse 12:

 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient

So Paul point blank allows anything the law forbids!  Idolatry, extortion, adultery, etc.  He allows any activity that is evil.  But oh boy, you best not think a thought he doesn’t like or say a harsh word to anyone!!!!!!!

So why are people still following this guy????

In short, to put this simply: If I commit an actual sin, I will repent and confess it. But if I commit one of Paul’s made up sins, I’m not going to feel guilty at all about that.

Does Jesus teach that we are his body?

Argo of the blog unreformingtheology has put out a post called Part Eight of: Collectivist Philosophy Masquerading as the Christian Orthodox Ideal. (There is some profanity in his post, BTW.)

He’s been harping on this point for 8 posts from his (somewhat strange) philosophical position.  His point being that modern Christianity makes the collective (the institutional church) the only thing important and the individual of no value whatsoever, and that this should not be the case.  But let’s dispense with philosophy and approach it purely from the perspective of a disciple of Christ but not of Paul. Let’s approach it from the perspective of the four gospels.

Ultimately, like pretty much everything else, this problem goes back to Jesus vs Paul because collectivism comes from Paul’s doctrine that we are the body of Christ.  Paul says we are all “members of the body”—or for a more modern phrase “cogs in the machine.”  We don’t exist as full people: we’re just a hand, a foot, an eye, or a nose. 

Now did Jesus ever teach that? No.  Of course not.  Let that truth soak in for a minute.

To Jesus, Jesus’ body was, well, his actual body.  But Paul, who barely thinks of Jesus in historical terms as an actual man, and who makes Christ a mystical/mythical figure, Christ has no body but us, as that modern poem says “Christ has no hands but your hands,” etc.  Because Paul and his followers don’t seem to believe Jesus was real; they’re functional Docetists if not outright Docetists. And their Docetism extends beyond disbelieving that Jesus has a real body of flesh and blood, to disbelieving that we are real (essentially).

Paul makes the argument (as anyone who has ever studied the Lord’s Supper as it is taught in Paul will know) that when we partake of the bread “we being many are that one bread, for we are all one body.” (That was from memory, and I accidentally combined Romans 12:5 and 1st Corinthians 10:17, but that sums up Paul’s thought on this point.)

Well, Paul, that’s not true.  We are not the body and our eating from that one bread does not represent us being the body.  It represents us partaking in the benefits that come from Jesus having given his body (his actual flesh and blood body) for us on the cross.  But it doesn’t mean we are the body.  Jesus’ physical body is his body; we are not. And Jesus views us not merely as a collective, as a “body,” but as individuals, as is so obvious from everything he says in the gospels.

To Paul, salvation is a corporate affair.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. (Ephesians 5:23)

We’re a toenail or hair follicle or whatever, and Christ, who is only the head of his body, saves us along with all the other non-sentient body parts, according to Paul.  So salvation = being in the body.  This isn’t how Jesus puts it.  Its always on an individual level in the gospels.