It seems to me that if Jesus was God in human form on Earth, in His infinite wisdom He would have done everything He set out to do in His short time here. This leads me to ask - why do we need any book in the New Testament other than the Gospels? In fact, to go one step futher, why do Christians need any books other than the Gospels?
One explanation I’ve heard is that the Epistles are there to further clarify what it was that Jesus said. What I ask in response to that is, if it came directly from the mouth of Jesus, does it need further clarification? Wouldn’t He put it in such a form so that everyone would be able to understand it?
In the opening scene of Life of Brian, Brian and his mother are listening to the Sermon on the Mount for the far fringes of the crowd gathered to hear Jesus speak. Because of the distance and the noise of the crowd, they are having trouble hearing Jesus’ voice:
“What did he say?”
“Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
“Cheesemakers? What’s so bloody special about cheesemakers?”
“I think he was referring to the manufacturers of all dairy products.”
Putting aside all debates about J.C. and his status, there’s your answer right there. Even if Jesus was the Son of God, perfect, and said everything he wanted to in perfect form, he didn’t write any of it down. Other (imperfect) people did. Inevitably, there would be errors, misstatements, misunderstandings, etc. So, clarification would be needed.
Now, whether the Epistles provide the correct clarification is another story.
Lord Ishtar, I think your error lies in assuming that “everything He set out to do” must necessarily include the transcription of the Epistles’ content.
I don’t think that necessarily follows. One could argue that Jesus’ goal was to communicate those truths, and leave others to disseminate them. As SuaSponte pointed out, he did not personally write this information down.
I guess my problem is that if the words came from the mouth of God, Himself, and if God wanted to communicate a truth, wouldn’t he communicate it in a way nobody can get wrong? If this is the case, then there would have been no need to add to the Gospel. The Gospel would have been the perfect Holy Scripture, and anyone with a question would be able to open the Gospel and find their answer.
I believe that the Epistles are the result of man’s self-righteous opinion that he can make anything better, more clear than it already was.
These are the opinions that lead to my belief that they do not belong in the Bible.
No, but that’s still an interesting little tidbit. Thanks.
Yeah, I guess I do wonder that. We have Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also a few in the Apocryrpha, but that’s another matter entirely). Why is there not a Gospel of Jesus? Why did He not just write it down himself?
We can speculate, but I don’t see how that would be a meaningful objection to anything. One might as well ask why Socrates wrote down none of his work, leaving such tasks to Plato instead.
Besides, based on past SDMB discussions, I suspect that many skeptics would reject anything that Jesus wrote, on the grounds that he would be testifying about himself. Some of them raise similar objections to the New Testament accounts, alleging that they are “biased” and should thus be rejected. It’s a no-win situation, really.
Have you actually READ any of the Epistles? If you have, it’s hard to understand why you don’t see their necessity.
Initially, Paul and the other Apostles did exactly what the OP suggests! They went from town to town, preaching the word of Jesus, and establishing church communities. Once a church community was established, they’d move on to a new place. But inevitably, the people they’d left behind started…
coming up with questions about what they’d been taught.
interpeting what they’d been taught in bizarre ways, which led to equally bizarre practices.
At this point, either Christians in the communities Paul (or james or Peter or whoever) had founded would write him a letter asking for guidance and clarification, or he’d find out second-hand what was going one. At that point, Paul/other Apostle would have to write to them and either answer their questions or try to set them straight.
Perhaps the OP thinks the words of Jesus hold all that Christians need to know, but that wasn’t obvious at the time. Once you accept the idea that Jesus was divine, and that those who believe in him and obey his teachings will have eternal life… well, all kinds of questions are bound to pop up! The early Christians were asking questions nobody had ever had to think about before, and the poor Apostles (especially Paul) had the unenviable task of trying to come up with answers.
Early Christians wanted to know many things. Among the major issues…
Are we still Jews? Is the Jewish covenant with God still important? Don’t we still have to follow the kosher laws and circumcise out kids and go to the temple, as Jesus Himself always did?
What’s the nature of the resurrection? I mean, our dead bodies don’t come back to life… or do they?
Once we get baptized and profess belief in Jesus, our sins are forgiven, right? So… we’re saved, we’re going to Heaven, and we don’t have to do anything else, right? Or do we? Is belief enough to get us into Heaven, or do we have to do more?
The answers to those questions are NOT immediately obvious just from sifting through the collected sayings of Jesus. Somebody (usually Paul) had to think about them, and come up with an answer. His answers were usually persuasive enough that many (perhaps most) of them eventually became core Church teachings.
It doesn’t follow that you have to buy EVERYTHING Paul wrote (even Paul often prefaces his statements in the Epistles with “this is only my opinion”). But if you read the Epsitles, and try to grasp the issues Paul was being asked about, you’ll see why the Epistles were necessary. Jesus gave us many answers, but he ALSO left us with many questions. It’s only natural Christians looked to their leaders for answers to some of those questions.
It has been argued that the church should be called “Pauline”, instead of “Christian”. Paul is the one that set the doctrines using the authority passed on to him during his revelation on the way to Damascus. He never once quotes Jesus or uses any of his teachings. To Paul Jesus’ mission began and ended on the cross. Perhaps the OP should have asked why we need the gospels when we have the epistles.
I don’t doubt that the letters that Paul, James, John, et al wrote to the early churches were signifigantly helpful to those people. After all, as tomndebb points out:
What I’m questioning is their necessity in the modern Bible. I don’t think that they aren’t worthy of reading. In fact, there are many insights and gems of wisdom within the various books of the Epistles. But do they really belong in the Bible? To quote astorian again:
So the Epistles were opinion pieces? Does one man’s opinion really belong in the Bible? I had always thought that the position of the Church was that the Bible (aside from a few myths) was supposed to be fact. If this is the case, then there is NO room for opinion.
It may well be that one way God made sure that nobody got it wrong was with a well-aimed lightening bolt on the road to Damascus. According to the bible, Paul was delegated by God himself to do his work. This may not seem like the most efficient way to do things, but there is no particular reason to believe that God hold human efficiency as a particular virture. It’s the whole ineffability thing again.
For the record, the “Words of Institution” used by nearly every Christian group when celebrating communion are from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, quoting Jesus as having said words not found in any of the four Gospels.
Well, many strong conservative Christians think this is exactly what the Bible as a whole is supposed to be. Of course, they then differ from each other, to say nothing of the branches of Christianity with a longer history as well as the nonbelieving world at large, as to what he “communicated…in a way nobody can get wrong.”
The Gospels are the result of (at minimum four) writers attempting to record eyewitness accounts of what Jesus actually said and did before the last eyewitnesses died off, several years after several Christian leaders (Paul, Peter, James, John, and Jude, and possibly Barnabas) had written to churches with clarifications on questions of doctrine and behavior that seemed appropriate to the problems faced by those individual churches.
Well, you may be right. But that is not the flavor that I get from John’s three letters, and from most of what Paul wrote. James too is more interested in discussing practical good behavior than in attempting to dogmatize over what Jesus had to say.
