Catholicism - the true Anti-Christ?

[JRDelirious]

@Brandus

The man was routinely imprisoned, flogged, and eventually crucified.

Nitpick: beheaded, as far as we know (Roman citizen, and all that). Peter was the crucified one.

[Polycarp]

You know, human nature is such that virtually anything is possible, but as I’ve said in past discussions about the non-existence of Jesus, the non-validity of the Resurrection, etc., it’s fairly unlikely that a whole bunch of people would permit themselves to be persecuted, tortured, and executed for (a) a knowing fraud or (b) something they have permitted themselves to believe on debatable evidence. There were people around during the First Century in a position to know that post-Resurrection appearances were false and to debunk them – and a check of contemporary non-Jewish non-Christian writing reveals that there were enough skeptics to want to debunk such stories. But what we actually get is debunking of the Virgin Birth by a fable about a Roman legionnaire named Panthera who boinked Mary, business about communion being someone’s actual body and blood (as opposed to the Real Presence – a human sacrifice followed by cannibalism is what’s being talked about), and a few other slanders of the same ilk.

As for Paul, it’s clear-cut Scripture that he was a Pharisee of the strictest school prior to his conversion to Christianity – and I’m firmly convinced that he brought a lot of his prior attitudes along, and that they crept into his writings unintentionally. He’ll go through this whole spiel about how the Law cannot save, that salvation comes from the grace of God received through faith, and all that, and then turn around and set forth rules for human moral conduct that sound like the finest of Rabbinic “fencing” of the Law.

And you’ll find that conservative Christians today will do exactly the same thing, without even Paul’s excuse – after having said that they believe the entire Bible to be the inspired, inerrant Word of God, they will turn around and without blinking an eye explain to you that the clear words of Jesus don’t mean what they explicitly say, because He clearly inspired Paul to write something different in his epistles.

So to a certain extent, the “Paul rewrote Christianity” bit is right – but in a way that neither he nor anyone else intended.

[SnakeSpirit]

@Brandus

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.

If this is a genuine question, then: No.

BTW: I’m not prosyletising here, I’m discussing what I believe, i.e., “witnessing.” If I get the meaning of the term right. I’m not trying to prove anything.

[zoid]

I think we’re gettin off topic here - let’s get back to the OP

just kiddin!

[Zoe]

And Paul admitted that he screwed things up. He said that he didn’t do the things he should do and did the things he shouldn’t do. And to top it off, his belief faltered.

Despite his teachings about women, I think that Paul is a pretty fair example of Christians to come: cocksure, faltering, judgmental, loving – terribly human.

Meta-Gumble, does Jesus encourage judgmentalism, bitterness and hatred in the Synoptic Gospels? Also, is there discussion of the anti-Christ in these Gospels?

Governor Quinn, if my membership is still with the Episcopal Church, but I haven’t attended in a long time, does that make me a semi-demi-anti-Christ?

[Zoe]

This website allows some side by side comparison of the Synoptic Gospels:

http://religion.rutgers.edu/nt/primer/

[BrainGlutton]

@Snakespirit

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. . . .

<snip>

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.

Guess what! You’re not the only “pre-Pauline Christian”! From the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites:

The Ebionites (from Hebrew; Ebionim, “the poor ones”) were a sect of Judean followers of John the Baptizer and later Jesus (Yeshua in Aramaic) which existed in Judea and Palestine during the early centuries of the Common Era.

<snip>

All these sources within mainstream Pauline Christianity agree that the Ebionites denied the divinity of Jesus, the doctrine of the Trinity and the Virgin Birth.

The Ebionites emphasized the humanity of Jesus as the mortal son of Mary and Joseph, who was ‘adopted’ as a son of God (or rather elevated to the status of prophet) when he was anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism, and therefore could have become the messianic king-priest of Israel (by virtue of also being both a descendant of king David through his father and a descendant of high priest Zadok through his mother) but was chosen to be the last and greatest of the prophets.

It seems that the Ebionites also rejected the doctrine of atonement for sin through the death of Jesus, and judged sightings of the risen Jesus as spiritual experiences such as dreams and visions rather than an actual physical resurrection.

The Ebionites revered the Desposyni (a sacred name reserved only for Jesus’ blood relatives), especially James the Just, as the legitimate apostolic successors of Jesus, rather than Peter. They considered Paul to be an apostate, and of the books of the New Testament only accepted an Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew, referred to as the Gospel of the Hebrews, to be scripture. Ebionites believed that all followers of Jesus, whether they be Judean or Gentile, must adhere to Noahide Laws and Mosaic law through an either more restorative (Essene) or progressive (Pharisee) interpretation and observance, tempered with the wisdom teachings of Jesus.

<snip>

Modern Ebionites

In 1995, former Baptist minister Shemayah Phillips started a modern Ebionite revival by forming the online Ebionite Jewish Community whose goals are the promotion of Yahwism and a conservative form of Talmidaism to Gentiles, the restoration of Yahushua (Jesus) as a Jewish prophet through the deconstruction of the “Christ myth,” and disproving that Christianity is a biblically-related religion.

Here’s a link to the Ebionite Jewish Community:

http://ebionite.org/

And there’s one more, but I’m not sure what to make of it . . . the “Celtic Apostolic Church,” which is headed (as hereditary leader) by “Prince Michael of Albany.” Michael Lafosse is a Belgian who claims to be a lineal descendant of Bonnie Prince Charlie (and also of Jesus of Nazareth). You can read a short Wikipedia article on him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Michael_of_Albany I’m not clear on how many members this church has, but it exists, at least as a registered charity in Scotland, and has some members other than “Prince Michael.” From http://www.royalhouseofstewart.org.uk/church.htm, here’s a blurb written by “The Bishop Primus the Most Rev. David Cuthbert Stalker OSB (Obl), Bishop of Jedburgh, Lothians and Golovidia for the Celtic Church in Scotland”:

Although Christian in concept, the original Celtic Church had no links with the Pauline movement which eventually became known as Roman Catholicism. The Celtic Church’s roots were really twofold: Judaic-Essene coupled with the Druidic tradition. Indeed, St Columba’s own motto proclaimed ‘Christ is my Druid’. The early Church was, moreover (in accordance with Judaic and British custom), an hereditary institution. Just as in Jerusalem, where the High Priesthood remained within a dynastic family and passed from father to son in many instances, the same applied to the Celtic bishops in Britain. The Celtic Church first appeared in Britain in AD 37, within a few years of the Crucifixion and about three centuries before Roman Christianity was established. Then in AD 62 Jesus’s brother James, the exiled Nazarene Bishop of Jerusalem, settled in Britain and the Church was reformed under his guidance From that time the Celtic Church became more generally influenced by the Hellenist movement which had supported Jesus and the Nazarenes - a liberal Greek culture which had flavoured the Gospel teachings in the Holy Land. Alongside this, and in respect for ancient traditions, the British gods and goddesses were incorporated within the structure and the Church sponsored its own saints. Through the ages these included such well-known characters as St Bridget (St Bride), St Patrick, St David, St Cadoc, St Aidan, and of course the gentle St Columba. Although now generally perceived to have been part of the overall Christian movement, the ministry of these saints was quite divorced from the evolving Church of Rome.

[tomndebb]

And there’s one more, but I’m not sure what to make of it . . . the “Celtic Apostolic Church,” which is headed (as hereditary leader) by “Prince Michael of Albany.”

Given that “Prince Michael of Albany” is the patron of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail idiocy, I would put most of this into the same basket.

There genuinely was a Celtic Rite that existed in Britain and certain other European locations prior to being swallowed by the Roman Rite. There were also a number of feuds carried out by the proponents of each rite as Roman missionaries moved into Celtic lands and as Celtic missionaries moved into Roman lands. Eventually, the 900 lb. gorilla of Rome won, but the fight was never bloody or harsh (although several of the participants were rather intemperate).

Some time in the last 75 to 150 years, a number of people have attempted to resurrect the idea of a “Celtic Church” that had no connection with the Roman church, taking their theology directly from the Greek Fathers (or even from the Apostles), directly, with a dash of re-creatred Druidic knowledge added for spice. There is no evidence for these claims. They tend to be created in the manner of Holy Blood, Holy grail combined with some of the wishful thinking that a few neo-Wiccans have invested in their “history” of a religion that survived 1500 years underground. (This is not a slap at actual modern Wiccans who do know their history. I am only pointing out that a few people among both the Wiccans and the “Celtic Church” have invested a fair amount of energy creating a “history” that never was.)