God presented him [Jesus Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood... [Rom 3:25]
God presented him? Excuse me, but here I read something to the effect that +Paul considers "God" something other than "him."
Now, in various +Paul's works, not all of which are necessarily his, he does say that Christ is God, but how do we know what was really written and what was later added? The phronema of the Apostle here seems to suggest otherwise.
""He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." -- Romans 4:25
I am reading here that +Paul is telling the Romans that Christ was delivered over to death...and raised by some higher authority, obviously, (i.e. God) who, after all, presented him as a sactifice of atonement...
Everything spoken of Christ here is in the passive. None of it is Christ's doing! But in all fairness, even +John uses the same format "This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after He was raised from the dead." It's as if even +John did not think Christ raised Himself from the dead!
I will tell you, I have serious, serious issues with this language and what it seems to suggest. Again, later supposed +Paul's writings seem to negate his earlier Epistles in many ways and I wouldn't put it beyond a possibility that the Church tried to mend some of the more spectacular statements of +Paul's [such as he didn't need to read and learn – it was all "delivered" to +Paul, later copied by Mohammad, personally by God,/cf Gal 1:12/).
Again, none of the Apostles seems to suggest what he suggests all over the place in his earlier works. One that stands out is that he calls Christ "man Jesus." Not Godman, not God and man, just "man Jesus." [cf 1 Tim 2:5]
It is no wonder that +Luke, who wrote acts as dictated by +Paul says "let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead..." [Acts 4:10]
"much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many..." [Rom 5:15]
Here +Paul is separating the grace of God from the grace of man, Jesus Christ.
And as for being delivered 'by God' to His death, Apostles matthew and Mark state that Christ came to give His life "as a ransom for many." Ransom.
In reality, all three members of the trinity raised Christ from the dead. Such is a great proof that there IS a trinity.
1 Thessalonians 1:10and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
Romans 8:11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
John 2:19-22
19Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
20The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken
What do you think a "ransom" is? What necessitates a "ransom?"
Without going in detail, Kosta, my opinion is that there is nothing in St. Paul's writing that in any way separates him from the other Apostles's writing.
Two groups try to separate him. One is a certain marginal nondenominational movement that looks for "authentic" or "historical" Jesus, and they sometime see in Paul somewhat of an impostor, someone who created organized or judaized religion out of a simple non-dogmatic ethical teaching, best described in the book of Matthew. The less we say of them the better.
The other is some currents of thought in serious Evengelical Christianity. They correctly see in St. Paul a different, more systematic and more theological kind of writer, someone who is convenient for their prooftexting. I have seen, for example, the view expressed (not by any of the posters here, although Blue Duncan seems to come close at times) that the parables of the gospels are something that was not addressed to us, and that the Epistles of St. Paul alone are sufficient to understand Christianity. If you look at St. Paul through such Protestant prism you will begin to separate St. Paul from the rest of the scripture. This is what your post reminds me of.
But I refuse the prism. St. Paul is different because his background is different. However, he teaches the same Orthodox Christianity as anyone else in the Church. In particuler, the notion that he somehow teaches the gospel of faith alone in contradiction to St. James is a myth. I once had a dispute with someone who was doing the familar couple-dosen quotes for Romans to prooftext for me that salvation is by faith alone. All I had to do was ask to read the same letter to Romans to the end. The myth was demolished by St. Paul himself.