To JerseyDiamond again:
Yes, many OT rules still apply in the NT. However, you’ll need to cite the NT, not the OT, if you wish to support your position on this one. I believe the whole debate here is over the fact that somebody said that there were only six rules that Christians had to live by in the NT, and that monotheism was not included in those commandments.
Yep. If you wear a beard, or worse, your hair falls over your collar, guys, well, there’s sin in your heart [i.e., you’re a faggot or damn close]. Never mind that Jesus had a beard. And long hair, too, if the pictures on the Sunday School wall are to be believed.
I could go on, but basically these people have prejudices from their own society that have nothing to do with the Bible, and try to use the Bible to justify them. They just got lucky on homosexuality. Of course, everyone hates homosexuals. They’re expendable.
Jersey Diamond, I may be wrong but I think a more careful reading will show that you and Captain Amazing are not in disagreement. What the Capn’ is saying is that it WOULD not be obvious that G-d objected to certain activities if it WERE NOT so stated in the Torah. But it IS so stated. You are both making the same point.
:
Matthew 5:17-18
17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
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by minister mike scott … Jesus said that he came to fulfill the law and the prophets. The only way Jesus could destroy the prophets would be to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning himself and the kingdom of God. But to do this would have been to act contrary to his purpose in coming to the earth. Therefore, he did not come to destroy the prophets but to fulfill them, and in fulfilling them, he carried out their predictions concerning himself and the kingdom of God. He fulfilled the law, he fulfilled the types in the law, which had reference to himself and to the church. This was the purpose for coming to the world. Some of the prophecies of the Old Testament concerned Jesus personally. Some of them concerned his work in the church and salvation of souls in the church and in heaven. It was his mission to fulfill personally those prophecies that referred to himself and through the administration of the affairs of the church, to fulfill those prophecies which had reference to the church and its mission in the world.
In the book of Hebrews we are told that Jesus came to establish a new and better Covenant because he found fault with the Old Covenant (Hebrews 8:7,8). The Old Covenant, the law, was perfect for the purpose for which it was given, but it was only a temporal law and consequently was not adequate for a universal and a spiritual law. Jesus is drawing a contrast between the law of Moses and the law of the kingdom (the New Testament or New Covenant), showing the superiority of the law of the kingdom, the New Covenant, over the law of Moses, the Old Covenant.
You will notice that six times (in Matt. 5) Jesus says “You have heard that it was said,” meaning by the old law that certain things were true, “but I say to you.” He then contrasts his teachings with the teachings of the Old Covenant. Each time he points out the inadequacy of the law and shows the superiority of the New Covenant.
We are to allow the superiority of the New Covenant (the New Testament) to govern our lives today. The Old Covenant (Old Testament) is not binding on man today.
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Heb. 7:12
“For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also.”
Heb. 7:18-19
18* For, on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness
19* (for the Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.
Heb. 9:15
15* For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
16* For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it.
Galatians 3:23-25
23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. 24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
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minister mike scott… This is a very important and significant Bible teaching which many people have missed. Jesus died to establish a new law, the law of the New Testament. We are no longer bound to the laws of the Old Testament.
We are not required to do anything stated in the Old Testament that is not repeated by the New Testament. The Ten Commandments were given only to the Jews. It is interesting, however, that 9 of the 10 commandments are restated in the New Testament. The only one that is left out is the command to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. Christian’s worship on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7) which is the Lord’s Day (Rev. 1:7). The many laws and regulations of the Old Testament are of no concern to Christians today except to illustrate the seriousness with which God takes his relationship to His people. We are not to live by these laws.
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Sorry that I didn’t use the NT the first time Opus1.
Sorry to all for making the last post so big, I’m not real good with organizing on the message board yet!
Tenar’s right about what I meant. We know that G-d wants us to worship only him because He’s told us to. It’s not something that a newborn baby knows. That’s the reason it’s immoral for a Jew to eat pork, and not for somebody who isn’t Jewish; because G-d has told Jews not to, and He didn’t tell anybody else not to. (Well, Muslims say He told them not to, but my point still stands).
My last post was a bit too flip, and not exactly true. To a great degree, the moral beliefs of modern Fundamentalists do derive from the moral beliefs of previous generations of Christians, and from their Bible. Which “Bible” needs to be understood as “the New Testament, and only the Old Testament when we care about a particular subject and it happens to agree”–a mode of reverence for scripture perhaps not alien to the early Church Fathers.
Of course, like the rest of Christendom, Fundies have evolved their own particular viewpoint which may not exactly correspond with that of say, St. Paul.
And Paul’s views didn’t exactly correspond with those of Moses, in part for the same reasons Billy Graham’s & Thomas Aquinas’s viewpoints differ from each other and from Paul’s. Over time, cultures mutate. And the leaders are individuals, and the followers are individuals, and different individual minds will interpret things in different ways, and there isn’t absolute agreement even when people are sure there is…
For that matter, a modern rabbinical Jew, even “ultra-orthodox” probably doesn’t believe in the same Torah as Moses. The “oral Torah” (which is quite arguably spurious) was codified between 1800 and 1300 years ago, and defines Jewish morality and custom in a different way than a fundamentalist Mosaicism would.
For example, the Torah never mentions the Temple/Tabernacle and its rites as belonging to a particular place. If one merely wished to follow the law of Moses, one could rebuild the Temple anywhere*. But Jewish, as opposed to Mosaic, devotion is considered marked by one’s passion for this particular hill–nothing to do with Moses’s Torah, but a great deal to do with David, founder of the Messianic line, & the quaint belief that God would not let David’s line perish.
Also, Danimal seems to me to be in error when he implies that the Church demands maximum devotion to God from its followers generally. But he gives a pretty good analysis of the underlying impulse of extreme asceticism; the influence of which on really early Church doctrine–and prejudice (which became doctrine)–is debatable. And when I say debatable, in this case, I mean I really don’t know, and the experts don’t seem too sure either.
A simple answer to a simple question:
Fundies don’t recognise that they (more or less) see Paul as God incarnate, so they don’t realise they’re being ridiculous.
Now, was that so hard?
Another answer: Paul isn’t revered as a man per se, but as a book. Or part of a book. The underlying axiom of Christian Fundamentalism is “The Good Book Is True.” This prejudice was the founding precept of the Fundamentalist movement (which perhaps largely comprised the children of ignorant and superstitious parents who taught their children to revere the Book as Book?). For Fundamentalism, extensive familiarity with the Bible came only after this reverence, an apotheosis of a text. And a critical understanding of the Bible came later, if at all.
To your question, since Paul contributed to that all-important Book, he must have had some moments of divine inspiration which gave rise to that Book. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Paul would be worshiped in person (though he might be).
And in any case, the writings of say, Pius X or John Paul II aren’t in that supposedly all-important Book, so they’re not nearly so important as men or as writers. They’re just men, after all, and Fundies don’t (they claim) worship men. They worship God. And “His Book,” of course.
Then of course, there are those charlatans who make themselves Instant Mini-Popes. They’re perhaps not quite the same thing as true Fundamentalists, but easily get lumped in with them. There is some intersection between Pentecostal charlatanism and Fundamentalist devotion, and a Fundamentalist church is often disturbingly vulnerable to almost any old cheap Mini-Pope that comes along.
Also, I should note that a serious-minded Fundie will accept that the bits where Paul steps out of his in loco Deis role and says more human stuff–like, “Tell Hymenaeus I said hi,” or “I don’t know for certain, but I think this…,”–are actually Paul, himself, and not God.
Then there’s this argument: Since in certain places, Paul explicitly says, “I have no revelation on this matter,” the rest of the time it’s implied that he does have a revelation. So a lot of Fundies figure that the majority of the Pauline Epistles are as authoritative as GOD’S OWN WORDS. And basically, this is because the guy didn’t go through and second-guess himself and undermine his own authority constantly.
Think about that.
Oh, yeah, my current sig is now as follows:
The Ryan : You don’t think that speaking for God is a mark of divinity?
**tbea925 : **Ummm…no. A lot of people speak for God. The trick is to know which ones actually listen to God and which ones just like the sound of their own voice.
(from somewhere on this page…)
The reason that fundies go after gays but not people who shave is much the same reason that they go after Evolutionists in talk.origins, but they don’t post in sci.lang about how the Tower of Babel explained all that.
In short, very few people claiming to be Christian ever read the bible outside of church, and the few who do do so out of a feeling of duty.
Way back in the day when I was in Sunday School, the teacher played a tape for us that used biblical evidence to prove that dinosaurs existed in Biblical times. Specifically, the description of one of the monsters from Job didn’t jibe with the usual interpretation: The thing is usually referred to as an elephant, but elephants don’t have a tail like a cedar. And so on.
After that was finished, I asked her if the verse immediately after was evidence of sea monsters. She told me “No, Leviathan is an alligator”. Alligator wrestling is a stunt that’s been performed since at least the glory days of Rome. But she still said it was an alligator.
You can interpret it however you want to, but please don’t expect us to believe it.