Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
Christianity would have failed among Greeks had Paul not decided to separate Christianity from Judaism (i.e. the Law, circumcision, dietary mitzvot,e tc.). The Greeks would have never accepted it (for one they thought circumcision was silly and barbarian). Christianity had to be Hellenized (read: Plaotnized), or better yet de-judeazed, paganized, etc. to become acceptable to Greeks And Paul and John did a fine job of that.
As shown in Paul's words to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:28,29)
The OT God never made a promise to Abraham premised on any messiah, but on Abraham's obeduience.
Related but not the same. They are not interchangeable. The way the terms soul and spirit are used are used would reveal that.
Again this is a Pauline innovation (the guy was just unstoppable!). In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 he clearly mentions all three, body, soul and spirit. Which is complete nonsense. In Genesis 2:7 God made man out of dust and then blew life force (his breath) into Adam's nostrils, and from there on Adam was a living soul (a living being), body + spirit = living body, a being, period.
The body without life (spirit that quickens it, or the breath of life) is dead. Spirit simply means the power that moves the body.
What made Adam different from the animals is that he was made a rational being in the image and likeness of God. A different model, with the dominion over earth, to rule in a god-like manner.
Paul, however, decided to rewrite everything since he was preaching what he called "my gospel." No kidding!
If you read the OT and pay some attention you would see the concept of cleanness and uncleanness quite often discussed, being holy and sanctified versus profane, etc.
That doesn't make it any less hateful. Calling menstruating women "dirty" is not something you'd expect from people who received direct inspiration form God.
Paul had the testimony of Christ and those who knew Christ.
Again, you are spouting your personal beliefs as fact and have zero proof for them.
kosta, your religious training may have been extensive but your Biblical training appears to be about nothing, perhaps even a hindrance to understanding the Scriptures.
You are entitled to your opinion.
“And you believe him? Why?” And you don't. Why?
I don't believe anyone on his word. Especially on critical issues. because people lie, cheat and steal. Also, if something is stated as a matter of fact and not faith, I ask for proof. Facts must be provable or they are not facts.
“In Genesis 2:7 God made man out of dust and then blew life force (his breath) into Adam's nostrils, and from there on Adam was a living soul (a living being), body + spirit = living body, a being, period.”
That “breath” was the “naphash”, a word that is used elsewhere to mean “refreshment” as when a person would stop working and rest. (Ex. 23:12, Ex. 31:17)
That “naphash” was not the animating life force, the “ruwach”, but just what was said, breath, air that refreshed or enlivened an inert body.
Breath and body constituted a living soul, a “nephesh”, Adam.
“Nephesh” had very broad meaning and as I said, there is no good English equivalent.
Animals are nephesh, humans are nephesh, God is nephesh. But nephesh also are spoken of as dying, bleeding, etc. so apparently “nephesh” is all those attributes taken together that make a being or what a being is capable of, or something on that order.
“ruwach” was wind, air flowing, an invisible force like the breath but giving evidence of life and is used of animals and humans as “breath of life” or life force, spirit. (Gen. 6:17, Eccl. 3:19, Eccl. 12:7, Ps. 146:4)
In the sense of a invisible force Gen. 1:2 uses “ruwach” when speaking of the “spirit of God”.
Earlier we had this exchange (#1994):
“Nepehsh means breath. And what is breath in Greek? Pneuma. And what is pneuma translated as? Spirit (or soul), the power that quickens the body. So, man is a body with a spirit, a life force.”
Ahhh....not quite. Nephesh, soul is the Greek psykhe, spirit is pneuma, and the two are not treated as the same in the Scriptures. (Heb. 4:12) Unless you understand that difference then what the Scriptures say will not be clear.
“Pneuma” meant a breath in the sense of something invisible that had effect. A movement of air. Actual respiration was another term altogether.
In Acts 2:27 Peter quotes Psalm 16:10 which uses the term “nephesh” (and if Peter was speaking Hebrew he would have used “nephesh”) but the “nephesh” of Psalm 16:10 is translated by Luke as the Greek “psyche”.
Likewise Isa. 61:1 uses the term “ruwach” when referring to spirit but Luke 4:18 translates “ruwach” as the Greek “pneuma”.
Remember what I said above? If not lettuce review!
I said: “Ahhh....not quite. Nephesh, soul is the Greek psykhe, spirit is pneuma, and the two are not treated as the same in the Scriptures.”
The examples I've given demonstrate that quite well and It is the “pysche and pneuma” that Paul calls “soul and spirit”
But kosta says: “In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 he clearly mentions all three, body, soul and spirit. Which is complete nonsense”.
It is abundantly clear that it is not Paul who is speaking nonsense. It is the kosta.
I’m removing the following as it was not meant to be part of this post:
That “breath” was the “naphash”, a word that is used elsewhere to mean “refreshment” as when a person would stop working and rest. (Ex. 23:12, Ex. 31:17)
That “naphash” was not the animating life force, the “ruwach”, but just what was said, breath, air that refreshed or enlivened an inert body
“All the Jews, sure.”
Nope. They were to make disciples of people of the “nations”. “the nations” were Gentiles.
“Paul says a lot of things, mainly to convince his audience (by his own admission). His interpretation of the Law is quite blatantly faulty and hardly reflective of a Jewish “scholar” . Here are some of many examples where Paul contradicts the Torah.”
Half baked opinions, no, quarter baked. Christ and his apostles had opponents then, and there's always a new crop.
Whoever or whatever is behind these websites do not keep the Torah and so under the Law are worthy of death. They are apostates to what they claim Paul contradicts.
Is that it? Or is there more?
Nope to your nope. The word "ethne" in Greek means tribes, any tribes. In Judaism, Gentiles (goim) can be both Jews and non-Jews. Gentiles simply means non-believers. In the OT there are instances where Jewish tribes are referred to as the "gentiles". It was Paul (again!) who made Gentiles synonymous with non-Jewish.
Oh, yes, the final authority is cyc. No one knows what they are talking about...except Paul. What a joke!
Wrong. Acts 15:19,20,28,29, shows who made the decision about what was necessary for the Gentiles to observe and it wasn't Paul and John!
“The OT God never made a promise to Abraham premised on any messiah, but on Abraham's obeduience.”
The part of that promise Paul discussed (Gal. 3:28,29) was that all nations would bless themselves by means of Abraham's seed.
Paul shows who that “seed” was. What the Greeks wanted or would accept was irrelevant.
“Facts must be provable or they are not facts.”
Something you could repeat before every post.
As I said, “Finally as Jesus foretold Jerusalem was destroyed”.
That's really not a complicated sentence.
“Did he? How can you foretell something that has already happened?!? You mean would be destroyed? Well, is’t still standing. :)”
What? Luke 21:20-24 was spoken long before 70 A.D. You do know what happened to Jerusalem in 70 A.D., don't you? Roman armies with bad attitudes, etc.?
“What a joke!” Ridicule is not a substitute for knowing what you are talking about. In fact the greater the amount of ridicule the more obvious the paucity of knowledge.
Kosta, God wasn't trying to be hateful when he commanded the children of Israel (the children of Jacob) to follow certain laws of cleanliness. You have to understand that the children of Israel were different in God's eye than anybody else. They were to be a nation of Priests, and they were to be Holy, as God is Holy, and they were to be sanctified by God:
Exodus 19:4-6
Ye have seen what I have did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on Eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.
Now, while Moses and the children of Israel were in the sinai, they were commanded by God to build the Tent of the Congregation, which was to house the Tabernacle and the Ark of Testimony (Covenant) among other things. In this tent of the Congregation, God appeared to them, many times, and for whatever reason, there are physical things which are unclean to God, and if those things come near to God disaster will result, likely with the result being death, which is referenced often.
There is a section in Leviticus, where Aaron's sons die while in the tent of the Congregation, and while God has appeared to them after following a ritual of burnt offering. Arron was the high priest, appointed directly by God, and his son's and all the generations of his descendants were to maintain the role. After the burnt offering, God appears to them:
Leviticus 9:22-24; 10:1-2
And Aaron lifted up his hand to the people, and blessed them,and came down from the offering of the sin offering, and the burnt offering, and the peace offerings.
And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation, and came out, and blessed the people: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people.
And there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces.
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them their censor, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered a strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not.
And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.
Now, why certain physical things are unclean before God, I don't know. We just know that they are, because he tells us so, or at least he told them, and as I said, the children of Israel were to be most Holy before God.
Ye shall be holy, for I am holy
God says that many times in slightly different ways in Leviticus. You have to read all of Leviticus to understand what is going on, and you have to read Genesis and Exodus to really understand Leviticus, just as you have to read Genesis to understand Exodus. In other words, you have to start at the beginning and just keep reading through. I had never done that before. I had never actually sat down and read through the books of Moses, page by page, chapter by chapter, line by line, and word for word. I hadn't done that until now, and right now I am almost at the end of Leviticus. I actually enjoy it. And although I thought I had a good casual understanding of it, I didn't, and I found that out when I actually read it. Slowly, with deliberation, and with intent on trying to understand it. I now look forward to reading it almost every day, at least a couple of chapters, and oddly enough, it has a very calming affect on me...something I actually need right now because I lost my joe about 8 weeks ago and my world is literally falling apart all around me.
But anyway, I found out that Moses wasn't fairly young, as portrayed by Charlton Heston, but was actually 83 years old (four score and three) and Aaron was 80 (four score)
Jacob, who later became Israel, and the father of the twelve tribes...his brother Esau, was born red and very hairy, while Jacob himself was born of smooth skin, and not red, or so it's implied. In fact, Esau was so hairy, that when Rebekah commanded Jacob to impersonate his brother Esau before his father Isaac, who was almost blind at the time, she had him war goats skin, so when his father touched him, he would think it was Esau.
That the children of Israel, under God's command and specific directions, built an altar in the Sinai, the tent of the congregation, where God appeared to them many, many times. I never knew that.
Read the Bible with an open heart, and with deliberation, and I assure you, you won't regret it.
Yes indeed. As Jesus commented:
“But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows,
And saying ‘We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented’”
(Matt.11:16,17)
snip: It’s not as much revolting against a hypothetical, esoteric (or even Deistic) “God” as much as it is revolting against the God-figure of the known religions (including and especially yours) — all of which are flawed.
Spirited: It is only after passage of many long years of programatic forgetfullness coupled to relentless receipt of false revelation that an observation of this nature can be made and made with the confidence of received truth.
Those whose lies are accepted today as “truth” knew that not only does the Triune God exist, but so do heaven, hell, man’s soul/spirit, sin, and universal moral law. For this reason the apostles of lies required that “no questions be allowed.”
From Kant to Hegel,Feuerbach, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Sartre, et al, the active revolt against God has always been against the Triune God and no other.
It was Nietzsche who understood that if the Triune God does not exist then “nothing” exists, including the soul/spirit of man, which means that the rebels discovered to their utter dismay that without the Triune God they were nonbeings, for there is no source for “being” within nature.
Sartre understood this as well, as made evident in the tormented, paranoid ramblings of a nonbeing who realized that just beneath his feet there awaited the gaping maw of an abyss.
In active rebellion against the Triune God, the “nonbeings” desperately sought power here below, for which reason they lauded the Devil as the first free thinker, liberator and genetic creator of man.
From the first, the nature of the rebellion has been satanic. It is in our own day that its’ satanic nature has openly declared itself. From certain spiritual transhumanists who boldly speak of themselves as the “spawn of satan” to globally powerful New Age insiders who say that all who seek entrance to the coming New Age must undergo a spiritual-counter-conversion, which means a “Luciferian initiation.”
That the rebels, both active and passive exist within a matrix of powerful spiritual deception goes without saying.
Read: Progressive Satanic Revolt: From Nothingness to Worship of Satan:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2714702/posts
Very well said, dear sister in Christ! Thank you!
Man is made in the image (reflection) of his Creator — that is, he possesses as his natural birthright reason and free will. He evidently is fully able to choose God, or to reject Him. Also evidently, this being the case, then God must want it this way.
If God wanted to create a race of slaves — or robots — then perhaps He would have "programmed" them, in the way you suggest. But then there would be no liberty in the world at all; everything in the human sphere would have been determined from the get-go.
But in my heart I believe/know that God made men free, to be His sons — created in Love, for Love. Individual men, of course, are free to reject Him.
I do not know how our Lord judges such souls, in the end. But if I were they, I'd be a little queasy on this point ... for eternity is a very long time....
Thanks for writing, JCB!
Time as we experience it now, may be long or short. Time as we will expereince it ‘then’ will be alrge, very very large, as in a nearly infinite volume. [Since Time as a dimensional expression had a beginning, it is not exactly correct to refer to ‘unending’ as eternal, is it?]
I so agree, dear spirited!
Nature is rather the image or reflection of Being: It has (finite) existence because it is a participation in (infinite) Being.
This is the classical philosophical view. I believe it is fully consistent with the Christian view....
Thank you so much for your outstanding essay/post, dear sister in Christ!
Certainly it is the experience of man that things that "begin" in time have their "ending" in time. In Nature, there appear to be no exceptions to this rule.
Yet Christian prayers invoke a divine context that transcends Nature. For instance, "For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever and ever. Amen."
And —
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost —Which to my mind definitely suggest that, from God's standpoint (outside of human conceptions of time), things which "begin" do not necessarily have "endings."
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen.
In this context, of those "unending things," what shall we call them but: eternal?
1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
3There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Romans 1:18-23
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
May God ever bless you and all your dear ones!
From all the insight you’ve apparently gained recently, I ask this again:
What happens to those isolated tribals I was talking about earlier? Are they “saved” due to ignorance?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.