This post begins what I believe will be a series of questions I have been dealing with regarding the subject of Contemporary Christianity. I do not have answers to these questions nor do I fully believe the possible scenarios implied by my questioning. I am simply submitting them for your thoughts, dear reader.
The first question is: What if Paul's understanding of Christ's words and deeds was incorrect? I suppose by asking this I am in actuality questioning the validity of any of the New Testament writers (other than those who wrote the Gospels) interpretations. How much of our Theology is based upon the thoughts of those other than Christ Himself? What would Christianity look like if we only had the Old Testament and the Gospels?
6 comments:
I've thought about that before too. I think there would be some vast changes in Christianity (not all nessecarily bad). People against women leadership would have a lot less ammo for one. However,I think we would have a lot more questions if we didn't have any of Paul's writings.
there are christians who think paul's teachings were corrupt. but if you deny his teachings you probably deny his divine encounter with jesus. but i don't know
Bouncing off of Ryan, do we not have an account of Paul correcting a certain teaching of Peter's involving circumcision? Does this diminish the very real encounter(s) Peter had with Jesus?
Secondly, and unrelated, I thought it was interesting that we had a discussion about the relationship between moral goodness (I insufficiently used the word "correct") and obedience of the law, before having watched the latest Batman movie. Or at least we could have discussed it if I had not been so miffed. I feel as though the entire context of the concept was not misplaced in our discussion about American Government policies, law, etc. Anyway: http://books.google.com/books?id=EN2aX6uj27UC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=obeying+laws+is+morally+correct&source=web&ots=2e0Tkzf3n5&sig=rzTWZ1JndnQZeJZ8Qbjsmb2jZWo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
Keep thinking, friend. I appreciate your thoughts as well as the whole of your existence. Peace.
Is there something inherently wrong with questioning someone's encounter? I believe he did, but is it not possible that He never actually had an encounter?
In general I definitely don't think it is wrong to question the authenticity of someone's experience. We are told that if a person's experience is authentic there will be fruit and if there is not fruit is important for us to notice. There is a big difference between the type of not judging that Jesus talks about and the type of not judging that the world calls us to.
I also definitely believe that it is possible for Paul to not have had an experience, but despite that possiblity I believe he did.
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