Copaesthetic, Polycarp, et al.
Are you saying that we can call no action sin because in doing so we judge those who participate in that action?
Have you not just proclaimed fornication, lies, deceit, murder and whispering to be evil things, hence judging all who perform such actions? It seems that you are implying that participating in these actions is equivalent to turning away from God.
I am honestly interested in how you resolve these issues.
Tertius01: It’s a paraphrase of Paul, Romans chapter 1. Paul speaks of lots of evil things. That’s why we love Paul. Paul also declares his fallability, and his thanks that we follow Christ and not him.
As for akennett’s Matthew quote, I believe that Christ is speaking of His fulfillment of the scriptures concerning Him. He then lays out His commandments that we are to keep.
Luke 10:26-28
He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
Luke 24:44
And he said unto them, These [are] the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and [in] the prophets, and [in] the psalms, concerning me.
**akennett/b], do you eat shellfish?
Ah, Tertius I get where you’re coming from. No, that’s not what I was saying in respect to that passage. As I understand it, Paul is speaking of a whole host of things that people engage in in order to turn away from God. So, if I’m having sexual intercourse, even in my marriage bed, and I do so in order to turn away from God, then that would be the sin according to the passage. IMO.
I’d like to add that my inclusion of Luke 10:26-28 was as a refutation fo akennett’s interpretation of Matthew. I can add this, although it’s hardly necessary:
John 11:25-26
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
So, in both passages, Christ lays out a fairly simple doctrine for arriving in Heaven, if we are to assume that He was speaking of living in Heaven, and not Heaven or Hell. So, if Jesus is upholding Mosiac law, as akennett believes from his interpretation of Matthew, how can He have such a blatent double standard? Which are we to believe is the truth?
If Jesus says that we believe in Him = We Live, and Love God + Love Our Neighbor As Ourself = We Live, then how can He uphold the complexity of Mosaic Laws? By my interpretation, all these statements can be true, by akennett’s interpretation we lose some scripture, or we believe that Jesus was lying, or at the very least understating the truth to an extent that would cause people to go straight to Hell because of a misinterpretation.
Given this requirement, as laid out by Christ Himself, how can we say that a homosexual cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven?
What would you say of the homosexual who lives and believes in the divinity of Christ, has faith in their heart, is guided by the spirit, and loves God and their neighbor to the extent which they can? Can we deny their faith when they preach the word from the pulpit?
Do we teach that they go to Hell for their unreal Christianity?
I’m going to make a confession: I love crabs. I eat all manner of crab legs. I wear wool and knit together. I’m wearing them together right now. I have never purified myself before a meal, nor drained the blood from my meat. I have a tattoo, and I have marred the corners of my beard. I mow the lawn on Sundays.
I do all of this, and yet I arrogantly claim to have faith and love of Christ and be led by the spirit of the Lord.
Tertius, hardly. It’s the job of all Christians to live a moral life as God gives them grace to do so. That would include a real awareness of sin and its destructive effects on our lives.
Rather, where I’m coming from is that I have no right to judge you, in the sense of condemn your for your sins. My only right in connection with your moral life is to offer my understanding of how sin harms, and what you are doing that might be sinful and why I think that, but to do that with Christian love and charity overt in what I say and do, and with the goal both in mind and expressed that I do it to be of help to you in your own walk with Christ.
Further, I am forced by Jesus’s own words to be a situation ethicist. No act is in and of itself a sin by some definition – that is a measure by law, and we are not under the law. Rather, we are under grace and love, and the proper measure of sin is whether it conduces to the Two Great Commandments and the other guidelines Jesus gave to living a life of grace – that which fails to do so is sin, even if it consists of quoting the Bible in order to condemn another.
I think it is fallcious to cite Paul as moral authority anyway. Paul didn’t speak for God, and never met Jesus. The word of Paul != the word of God. It’s just one schmoe’s opinion, with no more authority than Carrot Top’s AFAIAC.
I’d like to align myself with my better on this point, and say that my viewpoint on judgement matches with Polycarp’s perfectly. I’m not saying that you can’t mention something to someone that you might feel is a sin, but this must be done with great care, and in the light of love.
I think there are some Christians out there that try to win points with other Christians more than they try to bring people to the faith in Christ.
Here are some examples:
Now, these are DrChuckie’s, who was officially pitted with this thread. This entire argument was aimed at him, and he’s not here yet. These are not partial quotes. For those of you who were wondering why I was angry, these are part of what did it. There’s more of course, but this represents a sampling.
Polycarp, I completely agree that as Christians we are primarily responsible for our own moral life, and that what constitutes sin may be slightly different from Christian to Christian (Romans 14). I also completely agree that any confrontation (and I hate to use that word) with another should be done with Christian love and charity, to edify not tear down. I’d like to think that there is a difference in recognizing another’s sin and condemning the one we believe is sinning.
I think we can all agree that love God and love your neighbor as yourself forms the basis of the New Testament ‘moral code’. It seems that we agree that things done in order to turn away from God are also sin (though we likely cannot identify this sin in others). I’d like to think that, say, murder and theft would be immediately viewed as violating “love your neighbor as yourself” and considered sin.
What is the view on drunkenness? Drunkenness can be accomplished without sinning against your neighbor or turning away from God, and yet it is resoundingly warned against in both the Old and New Testaments.
For the record, I find DrChuckie’s posts contemptible.
Okay, this is the third time I have tried to post this reply. I doubt it is as well-written as the first, but here goes:
None of the Biblical Bits that have been provided directly refute the statement from Matthew that Jesus has come to uphold, not tear down the old laws. In order for one to live up to the command to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself” one must (as much as is humanly possible) abide by God’s Law. As Christianity is a direct outgrowth of Judaism, this includes the Mosaic Laws. Openly flaunting these laws is not loving God with all one’s heart/soul/strength/mind. One can also make a case that loving one’s neighbor as oneself requires a Christian to try to help others live up to this code.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus hands down an even tougher law to live up to – one where even thinking of a sinful idea is in itself a sin. This hardly supports the idea that He was relaxing the requirements to gain entrance into heaven.
Yes, I do eat shellfish. I absolutely love lobster (mmmm…flashback to the last time I was in Maine – clambake/lobster boil on the coast) and crabs (especially yummy crabcakes with big lumps of delicious crab-meat). I also love bacon and couldn’t imagine a world without it. Does this make me a hypocrite? No, because I do not profess to be a Christian. I was raised as one, and believe in the basic moral code (which is shockingly similar to that of most religions!), but find the practice of any church I have seen to be counter to the true teachings of Christ. Also, I don’t really believe in a Creator being – so that kind of counts me out. I am, however, interested in religions and like to study them.
akennett, first of all, Luke 6:20 is the beginning of the second copy of the sermon on the mount in the NT, and it mentions nothing of the sort.
Now, if we are to have this discussion properly, we must settle on where we are coming from. akennett, I took you to be a Biblical literalist, and so began a long timely posting on different subjects within the bible.
But, let’s be clear about this, the bible is an all or nothing deal in this sort of conversation. So, on the one hand, we can say that taking Matthew’s word on what Jesus said over Luke’s, and over Paul’s interpretation, along with Hebrew’s anonymous author, is hardly prudent.
Since you’re not a Christian, I don’t have to worry about insulting you, so I’ll say it like it is: Matthew added it. Pure and simple. Matthew’s sources were Mark and ‘Q’ which both predate Matthew, and whatever he didn’t copy from them he added himself. Matthew wasn’t there and didn’t know Jesus. Ok?
No one obeys Mosaic laws as a part of Christianity and most of us agree that the message of Christ throughout the remainder of the Bible supports this idea. Paul and Matthew made things up, get it? A careful review of early Christian writings that predate and post-date the gospels indicates a great deal more than the gospels themselves and shows with a reasonable bit a certainty what was and was not an invention of the gospel writers. Taking that they are men and are fallible, we can assume that portions of what they added to ‘flesh out’ the message of Jesus was wrong.
Matthew was a disciple.
Matthew 9:9
Mark 2:14
Luke 5:27
Acts 1:13
He of all the gospel writers (along with John of course) was there and knew Jesus.
I’m sorry to have to say this Tertius01, but it’s not the same Matthew. The gospel of Matthew as it was originally written took verses from the gospel of Mark, who was a gentile and had never met Jesus either. Mark’s gospel predates Matthew’s as evidenced by the correction Matthew made to it, and the time references of Mark. The diciple Matthew probably wouldn’t have needed a source, and yet he used two. He shares Mark as a source with the Luke gospel writer, and they both share another source, historically called source ‘Q’. In other words, in the original texts, Matthew and Luke copied word for word from parts of Mark. Mathew duplicated nearly 90% of Mark’s gospel, Luke used about 50%. The areas where Matthew and Luke both used the exact same words to say the exact same thing, but did not take their reference from Mark, are the sections attributed to source ‘Q’. No two people submit a document describing events and use the exact same words to do it without sharing a source. Sorry.
See, the gospel of Matthew is written in greek, and uses greek sources, it could not have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Of the 666 verses in Mark, 600 appear in Matthew most using the same words in the same order. Mark was a gentile, had poor knowledge of Jewish tradition, and wrote his gospel in greek, and he readily misquotes the OT. Matthew corrects the misquotes, but leaves much of Mark intact in his writing. Either Mark must have been written from Matthew, or Matthew from Mark. While it is comforting to think that Mark was written from Matthew, translating Hebrew into Greek, the idea that when the gospel of Matthew was translated into Greek as well, it’s phraseology matched in greek perfectly with Mark’s is rejected by historians.
Mark was originally written in Greek, as was Matthew, using Mark as one of his sources. Luke also matches Mark word for word on many of the passages, some 300, but Luke corrects Mark in a different way from Matthew.
This indicates that both Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source, not that Mark used Matthew as a source and Luke used Mark, if that makes any sense.
I’m not sure that the fact that the author used Mark and ‘Q’ as a source precludes the disciple Matthew from authorship, but I will cede that the exact authorship is unknown.
Will someone tackle my drunkenness question?
I am really enjoying this discussion and have given a lot of thought to your answers.
Oh, and I would invite you to check this stuff out for yourself as well:
Who wrote the Gospels?, By Randel Helms
The Gospel of John, By Hans Conzelmann
The History of the Synoptic Tradition, Trans. John Marsh
History of the Church, By G.A. Williamson
Who wrote the New Testament? By BurtonMack
The Complete Gospels, By Robert Miller
The Four Gospels, A Study of Origins, By B.H. Streeter
That’s a start 
To reply to your statement regarding sources Tertius01, the reasons historians give for Matthew’s sources precluding his being the Apostle Matthew are simply that the Apostle would presumably not use a source that was unconnected to Jesus. In other words, why would Matthew(Apostle) rely on Mark?
So, the argument is really a logical one. Plus the dating requires Matthew to be extremely old, dialects don’t match, ect.
I will tackle your drunkeness question tomorrow though. I must sleep now 
Copasthetic has already addressed a lot of this but just to throw in a couple of more things:
Matthew wasn’t written until at least 70 (and probably more like 80) CE which would have made the apostle a very old man at the time that he wrote it.
The gospel, itself, never names the author, and the tradition that it was written by Matthew stems from the second century.
Copa rather capabably addressed the linguistic issues, so I’ll leave those alone.
There was an early Christian historian named Papias who claimed that the apostle Matthew had arranged a book of Jesus’ sayings in Hebrew. No collection of sayings in Hebrew has ever been found, but it is just barely possible that this book of sayings was translated into Greek somewhere along the line and became Q. (The Q gospel contains only sayings, no narratives or miracles). Q was then utilized by the authors of Matthew and Luke as Copa described. Some early Christians may have recognized some of the sayings in Matthew as having been compiled by the apostle a generation before, and this may have given rise to the claim of apostolic authorship.
As it stands now, though, we do not have a single word of first hand, eyewitness testimony about the life of Jesus.
Oh, and if you were wondering, it’s not the same John either.
Paul, however, lived during the time of Christ, and although he was a convert of the Apostles after Christ’s death, he does represent a very close connection, perhaps what you would call second hand, where Mark is fourth, Matthew fifth, and John is it stands today perhaps 7th. Paul’s contribution also gives evidence to the nature of early Christian writings, as he never wrote a gospel.
Records of the lost ‘Q’ gospel can be largely reconstructed from Matthew and Luke, creating a solid form of the sayings of Christ. The gospel of John provides us with a unique look at what was called the ‘signs gospel’ a mid 50’s AD dosument that attests to the miracles of Christ, and His place as the messiah, fulfilling the Hebrew prophecies.
Early Christian texts from the ‘lost gospels’ as well as the uncanonized texts can provide a much clearer image of the life of Christ. The gospels of Thomas and Peter have already been discovered and place different emphasis on His life and works.
Thank you, Diogenes, for ruining the bible for everyone. 
Did I stumble into Great Debates by accident? For the love of all that’s holy, at least give me a swear word or something. It’s the second page, for cryin’ out loud…
Sorry, slotar, here you go:
FUCK!!!