Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha * ::: snort ::: *
Complete hijack:
Is this where the pre-Iraq-war Bush rhetoric of “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” came from? Did everyone else know this already? And if so, holy shit.
Yeah I found this stupid too.
It’s probably the most reference-point for where the phrase entered the culture, but the figure of speech itself had become embedded in secular discourse for a long time now.
Okay, guys, fess up. This is a parody thread, and I don’t get it, right?
I mean, long-time posters sounding like they’re wearing tinfoil hats, Aldebaran quoting Abdul Alhazred, for Allah’s sake!, Tom~ (who would give a clear and unstressed explanation of abdominal surgery to someone proposing to extract his pancreas while he’s still alive) providing a “Bwahahaha” —
“All these things shall come to pass before this generation passeth away.”
I was born and raised Catholic. No choice. My initial religious education came from the priests, nuns and the Cathecism.
Then I went to undergraduate school and studied religions. Did a course on the synoptic gospels (Matt., Mark, Luke), and a course on the teachings of Paul. Also read the entire Old and New Testaments in relation to other courses. Lots of it stuck, but particularly Paul and the Synoptic Gospels.
What struck me particularly was that there were many discrepencies between the teachings of Jesus as presented in the synoptic gospels and the teachings of the apostle Paul. In fact I was impressed that Paul was deliberately misinterpreting the teachings of Jesus and presenting false doctrine. Unfortunately, my college notes are irretrievably lost, and I don’t have the specific references as to where those conflicts in doctrine occurred, so please, don’t take my word for it, and I can’t give specific cites without reading all that stuff over again.
Consequently I started taking a good look at the Catholic Church and comparing its practices to the teachings of Jesus. For example:
“Call ye no man father but your Father who is in heaven.”
Yet the church taught us to call the priests “father.”
There were many others I ran into as well.
Well, Paul was one of the founders of the Catholic Church, and I found so many contradictions that I decided that Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of Jesus, was the Anti-Christ! He was *still * working against Jesus, he just changed his methodology, and boy, did it work!
Consequently, I left the Catholic Church. I won’t call Saul of Tarsus by the name Paul and I believe he is, at least, the cause for the corruption of the teachings of Jesus. My later readings on the Anti-Christ brought into doubt whether or not he actually was the antichrist, but my belief in him as the corrupter of Christianity through his conflicting teachings and establishment of the Catholic Church persist.
Whew! I guess that qualifies as witnessing, right?
So, in relation to the OP, no, I don’t think the Catholic Church is the antichrist; I think the Catholic Church (and by extension, its followers) are the victims of a corruption in Christ’s teachings introduced by Saul of Tarsus.
I derive my Christian beliefs directly from the words of Jesus as attributed in the synoptics, and I supplement them with other teachings that are spiritually aligned with those texts.
No, don’t blame yourself. I’ve spoken English my entire life and have no idea what the first line of the OP means.
Although, I don’t eat seafood, so perhaps it’s a reference to eating fish on Friday instead of meat and I’m just not seafood savvy enough to know that fish is garnished with parsley, Or something.
I was raised Catholic. I am also slightly familiar with other religions. After hearing the rhetoric they all offer ( We are right, obey us or burn in hell. Death to the unbelievers. We know what is best for you. We must change laws to reflect our narrow bigoted intolerant views.), I decided they all are full of shit. They all have so much to be proud of - crusades, witch trials, forced reformations, holy wars, inquisitions which no one expects, etc. Everybody judging and killing in God’s name. I wonder, does it even matter? If nobody believes in a God will he die? If there was no God, would believing create him? Paul/Saul was already mentioned (an intolerant, bigoted perscutor). Toss in Augustine as well - a drunken womanizer who deserted his family and then “made it better” by telling other people how to live and introduced the idea that all sex is evil (but only after he got his). :dubious:
Well, that was certainly my impression (or close to it). A post from a member who has been around long enough to know the rules, showing up in *GD with Pit or MPSIMS material that is so incoherent as to be nearly undecipherable, followed by a couple of replies that make Jack Chick look like Karl Barth? I cannot understand the folks who even attempted to respond with facts, logic, or faith. I can’t figure out to what “point” they though they were responding.
I know. That just drives the God of the Cosmos wild.
I can understand you not liking the man, I guess, but why not? Wasn’t Paulus his Latin name?
Yes. And it isn’t really clear why his name is changed either. The narrative just stops calling him Saul and starts calling him Paul. There is a short little bridge where it says “Saul, who was also called Paul,” and after that it just keeps calling him Paul with no explanation. If you look to the Latin for meaning, then “Paulus” means “small,” which could indicate some newfound humility on the part of Saul (changing his name from that of a king to something akin to “small one”) and I suppose that would make sense if it occurred immeditely after his conversion but it doesn’t. It still calls him Saul for quite awhile after his conversion.
There is some argument that it shows a shift in Luke’s source material, or perhaps a shift from source material to Luke’s own composition (or memory, if you prefer). This would make sense as a practical explanation, even it it’s a bit jarring. If it was meant to be a symbolic literary device then Luke was uncharacteristically clumsy (and lazy) about articulating it. Either that or he’s making some other more subtle point which has whooshed right over me.
It happens in Acts 13, right at the same time he’s talking to another Paul, interestingly enough (Sergius Paulus, governor of Cyprus) Up to the middle of Acts 13, Saul/Paul is mostly talking to and trying to convert Jews. Then, in 13, he starts being known as Paul, and, later in the chapter, says
So, maybe the shift in his name from Hebrew to Latin signals the shift of his ministry. He’s no longer the Jewish Saul, sent to bring Jesus’s message to the Jews, he’s now the Roman Paul, sent to bring the message to the gentile world.
That would make sense, even though it lacks a little connective tissue.
I’m impressed. You and DtC kept studying the bible after I had moved on to other stuff, evidently.
Anyway, for me the shift from Saul to Paul is symbolic of his “conversion” on the road to Damascus, and I question the validity of that experience. IMNSHO, he just pulled a dramatic “If you can’t lick 'em, join 'em,” and proceeded to destroy Christianity from within. Ref. my earlier (long) post on the subject.
S~<
Boy, talk about symbolic! My use of symbols doesn’t do much for my claims of being a devoted Christian… But that’s another story for another day.
Well, Saul/Paul was one of the founders of Christianity, period, and the Pauline letters are the oldest pieces of Christian writing we have…even older than the synoptics. So, I guess your complaint isn’t with Catholicism, per se, so much as with all of modern Christianity.
As a side note, I’ve never really understood why some people are so anti-Paul, because most of what he says doesn’t even seem all that offensive to me, although I have a theory. It seems like, while Jesus in the gospels says a lot of things, ranging from the generally pleasant (“Blessed are the peacemakers, they are the sons of God”) to the unpleasant (“Sell all that you have and give the money to the poor.”) to the batshit crazy (“If your eye offends you, pluck it out. Better to go to heaven with one eye than gehenna with both”), the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels really doesn’t talk about how the average person who doesn’t want to be an itinerant preacher should live. It’s not very much of a guide to everyday life.
The Pauline letters, on the other hand, are. They set up a kind of consistant ethical framework (Be obedient to your superiors and kind to your inferiors, be sexually continent, help those in need of assistance, settle your disputes peacefully, etc.). This is the strength of the Pauline letters…they’re relatively easy to understand and are specific. However, this also means that you can have something to disagree with. It’s kind of hard to disagree with the Jesus of the Gospels, because he pretty much never gets into specifics. But Paul, you can.
Be careful what you assume and infer. Do not bait me or twist my words to mean something other than what I have stated or intended.
I’m well aware of the ages of the texts in question and the relative veracity of texts that were written 100 years AD and derived from oral traditions. As I already said, I have a problem with Saul’s presentation of Christianity vs. the quotes from Jesus (even though they may not be perfectly accurate).
After I left Catholicism I tried exploring various forms of Protestantism, and indeed, in many of them I found little of the Christ as represented by His words in the synoptics. I found also, a lot of hypocracy. (For instance, the Baptists wouldn’t let me bring my black friends to services with me.) After a while I gave up looking for a church that followed Jesus and decided I had what I needed and proceeded to try to live my life by Jesus’ words. It’s not an easy path. It’s much easier to allow someone else to make my decisions for me, but I won’t do that.
I don’t really have a problem with all of modern Christianity, as you suggest; I have a problem basically with Saul, because I believe he corrupted Jesus’ teachings, and with the Catholic Church because they perpetuate the corruption. Protestants, on the other hand, are at least trying to effect positive change (or imagine they are).
Another problem I have with Saul is that he never knew Jesus. He only knew of Jesus, and then only as an adversary. Please don’t harp on the tale that he claims to have met Jesus on the road to Damascus and was subsequently temporarily blinded. We only have his word for that, and frankly, I don’t trust his word.
I’m not saying that I’m right, or that I am a perfect practitioner; I’m just saying what I believe, and why.
Can you be a bit more specific? What teachings of Jesus did he corrupt? How do the Catholic church perpetuate these corrupted teachings, while the Protestant church avoids them? So far, the only specific complaint I see is the one about “Call no man father.”
Alas, no.
In my initial post in this thread I stated that I established these views during my undergraduate years in the mid 1970’s, and that numerous major moves and several more minor ones since that time (Connecticut to California to Oahu to Kauai back to Oahu) have made my treasured college notes and some of my most treasured biblical reference books no longer available to me. I have no desire (nor the time) to do all that research all over again.
However, that doesn’t stop you. All you need do is read quotations attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels and compare his instructions to the instructions given by Saul in his AD writings. As I recall, the conflicts were quite obvious, but I don’t recall all the specifics now, thirty years later. I do recall being astonished that no one had ever brought this up before, but then perhaps the message was only for me? (Not that I’m special, but that my readings determined my path in life).
It was easy for me at the time because I was taking college classes in the subject. I recommend a book called The Synoptic Gospels which lays out the three gospels in columns so one can see how they relate chapter by verse. I have been unable to find another copy of the book, but there is another book by the same name out right now that isn’t half as good. Try to find the columnized version, I’d recommend a college library.
I truly wish I could be more helpful.
S
Don’t you think that Saul suffered a bit much just to propogate insidious lies that women should wear head coverings (or whatever other nitpicks you have with him)? The man was routinely imprisoned, flogged, and eventually crucified. If he did that all just to undermine this fledgling cult then he has superhuman determination on par with Jesus Christ.