Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Christian Topic => Topic started by: Walt Zingmatilder on December 03, 2017, 08:01:44 AM
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Prior to conversion Paul seems to be at maximum antichristianity.
On his confrontation with Jesus which Jesus initiates. Jesus confronts Paul with his true mission to personally persecute Jesus. Paul's true motivation is revealed and Paul does not later deny his true motivation. Psychologically Paul had been in denial of what it was he was really railing against.
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You doing the address today? Or was that today’s advent reading?
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On his confrontation with Jesus which Jesus initiates.
I din't think that Paul ever met Jesus.
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I din't think that Paul ever met Jesus.
This is a conversion prof, not just a '10.30'.
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All Christians claim to have met Jesus, right?
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This is a conversion prof, not just a '10.30'.
Which translates to Paul never met Jesus - thanks for confirming that I was right.
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Prior to conversion Paul seems to be at maximum antichristianity.
On his confrontation with Jesus which Jesus initiates. Jesus confronts Paul with his true mission to personally persecute Jesus. Paul's true motivation is revealed and Paul does not later deny his true motivation. Psychologically Paul had been in denial of what it was he was really railing against.
Paul was responsible for creating the religion, Christianity, imo.
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Paul was responsible for creating the religion, Christianity, imo.
I agree - if you have read The Tipping Point (I recommend you do if you haven't) Paul is a classic, critical early adopter who had influence due to his many connections with different groups.
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All Christians claim to have met Jesus, right?
I don't think that is true.
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I don't think that is true.
That they have met him or that they claim to have met him?
Some kind of encounter with Jesus is a feature of Christianity, if only through the Bible or through the sacraments.
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That they have met him or that they claim to have met him?
Some kind of encounter with Jesus is a feature of Christianity, if only through the Bible or through the sacraments.
Some claim to have met him, i.e. saying they have felt his presence, but many just believe in him, which is rather different.
When I was a Christian I begged Jesus to give me some indication he was out there somewhere, but I never had any sense he was.
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Which translates to Paul never met Jesus - thanks for confirming that I was right.
There must be a special New Atheist definition of ''Not Just''.
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Paul was responsible for creating the religion, Christianity, imo.
Citation?
Demands of citation from atheists who are keen to get citations from believers but turn a blind eye to atheist colleagues?
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There must be a special New Atheist definition of ''Not Just''.
So are you claiming that Paul actually met Jesus - "not just" in a dream or vision.
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Prior to conversion Paul seems to be at maximum antichristianity.
On his confrontation with Jesus which Jesus initiates. Jesus confronts Paul with his true mission to personally persecute Jesus. Paul's true motivation is revealed and Paul does not later deny his true motivation. Psychologically Paul had been in denial of what it was he was really railing against.
Paul was waiting for a Messiah to reveal Gods ultimate truth. A warrior maybe and even an earthly king with a heavenly seat.
But he knew of the teachings of Daniel too. He really hadn't a clue he was the Messiah till he went blind to enable him to see.
But even he wrestled with his conscience because what Christ did was good. Evil and good cannot come from the same place.
It was Pauls awakening and his rebirth rather than conversion he was already a Jew believing in God and awaiting the Messiah.
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Paul was waiting for a Messiah to reveal Gods ultimate truth. A warrior maybe and even an earthly king with a heavenly seat.
But he knew of the teachings of Daniel too. He really hadn't a clue he was the Messiah till he went blind to enable him to see.
But even he wrestled with his conscience because what Christ did was good. Evil and good cannot come from the same place.
It was Pauls awakening and his rebirth rather than conversion he was already a Jew believing in God and awaiting the Messiah.
WAFFLE!
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Paul was waiting for a Messiah to reveal Gods ultimate truth. A warrior maybe and even an earthly king with a heavenly seat.
But he knew of the teachings of Daniel too. He really hadn't a clue he was the Messiah till he went blind to enable him to see.
But even he wrestled with his conscience because what Christ did was good. Evil and good cannot come from the same place.
It was Pauls awakening and his rebirth rather than conversion he was already a Jew believing in God and awaiting the Messiah.
If Jesus had been the Messiah the Jews were expecting it would have been obvious to them all, not just a few.
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If Jesus had been the Messiah the Jews were expecting it would have been obvious to them all, not just a few.
Lots of things are obvious Floo doesn't mean that people actually get it...and what is it that usually has them supporting the opposite of obvious , bloody mindedness.
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Lots of things are obvious Floo doesn't mean that people actually get it...and what is it that usually has them supporting the opposite of obvious , bloody mindedness.
Rationality, in fact. What may seem obvious at face value is a very poor guide indeed to what's actually true. Most people usually work this one out fairly early on.
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Lots of things are obvious Floo doesn't mean that people actually get it...and what is it that usually has them supporting the opposite of obvious , bloody mindedness.
If people didn't get it, Jesus didn't make any impact in that regard.
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This is a conversion prof, not just a '10.30'.
Professor Davey
10-30 Does not conform to FCC Rules - American C B radio shorthand.
10-10
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Prior to conversion Paul seems to be at maximum antichristianity.
On his confrontation with Jesus which Jesus initiates. Jesus confronts Paul with his true mission to personally persecute Jesus. Paul's true motivation is revealed and Paul does not later deny his true motivation. Psychologically Paul had been in denial of what it was he was really railing against.
Okay - let's have a couple of quotes from Bernard Shaw. I found them interesting, but naively oblivious of the biblical scholarship which had done a lot of textual dissection even in his time. He seems to take the texts as he finds them - assuming everything attributed to Paul is in fact by him, and more importantly, presuming that we can actually trust the gospels as reliable reportage.
Nonetheless; here he is on Paul's conversion:
Suddenly a man of genius, Paul, violently anti-Christian, enters on the scene, holding the clothes of the men who are stoning Stephen. He persecutes the Christians with great vigor, a sport which he combines with the business of a tentmaker. This temperamental hatred of Jesus, whom he has never seen, is a pathological symptom of that particular sort of conscience and nervous constitution which brings its victims under the tyranny of two delirious terrors: the terror of sin and the terror of death, which may be called also the terror of sex and the terror of life. Now Jesus, with his healthy conscience on his higher plane, was free from these terrors. He consorted freely with sinners, and was never concerned for a moment, as far as we know, about whether his conduct was sinful or not; so that he has forced us to accept him as the man without sin. Even if we reckon his last days as the days of his delusion, he none the less gave a fairly convincing exhibition of superiority to the fear of death. This must have both fascinated and horrified Paul, or Saul, as he was first called. The horror accounts for his fierce persecution of the Christians. The fascination accounts for the strangest of his fancies: the fancy for attaching the name of Jesus Christ to the great idea which flashed upon him on the road to Damascus, the idea that he could not only make a religion of his two terrors, but that the movement started by Jesus offered him the nucleus for his new Church.
And this on the subsequent developments of Christianity reliant on his view of things:
Paul must soon have found that his followers had gained peace of mind and victory over death and sin at the cost of all moral responsibility; for he did his best to reintroduce it by making good conduct the test of sincere belief, and insisting that sincere belief was necessary to salvation. But as his system was rooted in the plain fact that as what he called sin includes sex and is therefore an ineradicable part of human nature (why else should Christ have had to atone for the sin of all future generations?) it was impossible for him to declare that sin, even in its wickedest extremity, could forfeit the sinner's salvation if he repented and believed. And to this day Pauline Christianity is, and owes its enormous vogue to being, a premium on sin. Its consequences have had to be held in check by the worldlywise majority through a violently anti-Christian system of criminal law and stern morality. But of course the main restraint is human nature, which has good impulses as well as bad ones, and refrains from theft and murder and cruelty, even when it is taught that it can commit them all at the expense of Christ and go happily to heaven afterwards, simply because it does not always want to murder or rob or torture.
(From the Preface to Androcles and the Lion)
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WAFFLE!
Again... You think that an educated answer to factual beliefs based on the Jewish faith and the fact that Paul was a Pharisee?
Maybe you should get yourself an education in the Jewish beliefs about the Messiah.
25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.
Instead of answering out of blatant dislike for myself... how about using your brain and answering on the basis of the discussion contents. I personally find adult bullying and even blatant rudeness a sign of stupidity and ignorance rather than being big. It definitely isn't clever or setting a good example for the young people in the world. Shut up or make a sensible contribution.
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If Jesus had been the Messiah the Jews were expecting it would have been obvious to them all, not just a few.
Had you read your bible as you so often tell us you have...you would know why it would not have been obvious to all at that time.
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Had you read your bible as you so often tell us you have...you would know why it would not have been obvious to all at that time.
Of course it would have been obvious!
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Again... You think that an educated answer to factual beliefs based on the Jewish faith and the fact that Paul was a Pharisee?
Maybe you should get yourself an education in the Jewish beliefs about the Messiah.
25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.
Instead of answering out of blatant dislike for myself... how about using your brain and answering on the basis of the discussion contents. I personally find adult bullying and even blatant rudeness a sign of stupidity and ignorance rather than being big. It definitely isn't clever or setting a good example for the young people in the world. Shut up or make a sensible contribution.
Maybe you should get yourself an education on the difference between lecturing and discussing; and on the difference between what you know and what you like to think you know - you think you know everything there is to know about religious belief, you might except that you do not know the most important fact of them all - Religion is FAITH NOT FACT - you cannot prove one word of the contents of your Bible to be truth and until you learn this fact, every single word you post here trying to get everyone else to believe as you do is precisdeley and exactly the same as what come in great dollops out of a horse's backside!
Until you admit that your religious beliefs are, as are mine, FAITH NOT FACT and you admit to the monstrous arrogance you display in every post on the subject - Shut up - when you do I'll talk to you again
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Of course it would have been obvious!
There's a saying that there is none so blind as those who cannot see. That's true of many of us in all sorts of situations, we even see it on here when someone (no doubt including occasionally you and me), can't see the bleedin' obvious! Especially if we're not thinking laterally that day. So, no, it wouldn't necessarily have been obvious.
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There's a saying that there is none so blind as those who cannot see. That's true of many of us in all sorts of situations, we even see it on here when someone (no doubt including occasionally you and me), can't see the bleedin' obvious! Especially if we're not thinking laterally that day. So, no, it wouldn't necessarily have been obvious.
Jesus must have been a useless messiah if only a small number of people actually believed him to be the one they were awaiting. The Jews are still expecting their messiah to turn up.
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There's a saying that there is none so blind as those who cannot see. That's true of many of us in all sorts of situations, we even see it on here when someone (no doubt including occasionally you and me), can't see the bleedin' obvious! Especially if we're not thinking laterally that day. So, no, it wouldn't necessarily have been obvious.
Or it could be simply that Jesus didn't fit the requirements of what most Jews understand those to be of their Messiah.
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Or it could be simply that Jesus didn't fit the requirements of what most Jews understand those to be of their Messiah.
How very remiss of him!
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Or it could be simply that Jesus didn't fit the requirements of what most Jews understand those to be of their Messiah.
A reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls evokes the response of the old Glasgwegian drunk on seeing Mike and Bernie Winters: "Och Jaysus, there's two of them!"
Yes, two messiahs, neither of which exhibit the characteristics which Christians claim make Jesus the ideal incumbent for the role.