Promise? :)
Paul calls Jesus a man on a number of occasions.
So? Jesus DID have a human nature, did he not? And were there not certain things pertaining to that nature that were purely human? He died, he suffered, he rose again? He had a human body of flesh and blood, he came into the world through a woman's body, he was tempted, he did not ever sin.
Certainly. But if Jesus were to incarnate in front of you, would you call Him a man or would you call Him God and Creator? If you were speaking in a theological fashion, would you refer to His humanity, or to His Deity?
Paul, as well as the others believed in ONE God. Not three gods. He called the Father God, he called Jesus God and also the Holy Spirit, God. Paul was a monotheist. Why would he refer to Jesus and the Holy Spirit as God if they were not one with the Father?
Exactly. Why would Paul keeping referring to God the Father as the God of Jesus Christ?
Rah rah as in we accept Paul as an Apostle and the writer of God-breathed scripture who God used to reveal major doctrines of the Christian faith? Absolutely! Do we worship Paul? Give me a break! Do I really need to answer that? Name even one church that does that, one.
Any five point Calvinist church or individual.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible...
Very good. You could not prove the Creed from any Pauline verse. I don't think that you could even prove the Apostle's Creed from Paul. And at any rate, you forgot the ending.
I could show you from Paul's epistles that he confirms each and every one of these truths, but what would be the point?
You guys keep telling me that you could show me, but nobody here has. Where does Paul call Jesus the equivalent of co-eternal and co-existing God to the Father and the Holy Spirit? The dominant references to Jesus indicate that Jesus is a super David - an even more greatly favoured man than David, who was given all authority by God the Father, who had to be raised from the dead by God the Father, and sits at the Father's right hand (chief subordinate). If not super-man, than major subordinationist. Which also is expressly negated by the Creed.
My point here is that the Church took centuries to come up with the Trinitarian formula - the Jewish Apostles were not even sure of the Divinity of Jesus, much less the Holy Spirit. It is the Church that declared the formula, not Scripture and if you believe in the Creed, you are extra-Biblical, and not sola Scriptura at all.
Yes, and what so many Protestants forget is that, by necessity, his human nature remains hidden except in his passion. In order for Jesus (the man) never to sin, his human will had to be subordinated to his divine will at all times, and was therefore never expressed as something separate or discernible (except perhaps for a fleeting moment in the Garden of Gethsemane)
So, the Hollywood Jesus, sometimes man, sometimes God, of the Protestant world is a contradiction in terms. They like to portray him as this nice man who every now and then " switches" on his divine nature and acts as God.
The only part of Jesus' humanity that comes to be expressed is his bodily form, his suffering and death. That which suffers corruption (hunger, pain, thirst, sorrow, etc.) is not divine by definition.
Therefore his Incarnation is not an icon of the invisible God. When Paul refers to him as such, he is talking about the risen Christ in the glorified body.
I would venture to say that Paul probably shared the adoptionist views of so many early Christians, considering the pre-resurrection Jesus a man who was made God when, as Paul insists, God raised him.
You could not prove the Creed from any Pauline verse
The Pauline verses used in the Creed are somewhat altered. For instance, the Creed says "and he rose on the third day according to the scriptures." But Paul says "and was raised [by God] on the third day according tot he scriptures."
Subtle but significant.