Why not? I wasn't aware that there was a Gentile disease that requires eating pork three times a day, or mandates mixing meat and dairy together. Just as I'm capable of providing dairy-free meals for my lactose-intolerant friends or vegetarian meals for vegetarians, the early Gentile believers would have been fully capable of learning the basics of making kosher meals for communal purposes. Especially in the Diaspora, where the rules of kosher were generally more relaxed than in Judea.
So again: It is your assertion that the Mosaic Law, i.e., the Torah itself, makes it impossible for Jews and Gentiles to eat together without violating kosher. Cite chapter and verse.
At Cornelius' household, scripture explicitly describes Peter eating non-kosher food at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and direction of an angel.
Chapter and verse, please. As I recall, Peter had a vision of being offered unkosher food, which he turned down three times only to be chastened from Heaven, "Do not call what God has made clean common." Peter himself interprets the vision for us in v. 28: "And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful (note: the Greek word means 'against custom,' not 'against Torah') it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean."
The issue was not kosher. Unless the Gentile is just bent on being offensive, that can be handled. The issue was eighteen measures that had been passed about a generation before that pretty much declared even God-fearing, Torah-observant Gentiles to be completely unclean and unholy. These eighteen measures, it should be noted, were passed under dubious circumstances and were revoked by the rabbis in the second century, but at the time of Acts, they were a very big deal--and the zealots were willing to enforce them by assasinating those who got too close to the Gentiles.
Now, I don't blame you for not knowing about the Eighteen Measures. Most Jews don't even know about them and I only learned about them a year or so ago. However, I do hold you responsible for not actually reading the Torah for yourself and factoring it into your understanding of the New Testament.
If you had done so, you would have noticed that the Torah forbids despising the alien, but rather to love him (Deu. 10:19) and that the foreigner who wished to offer a sacrifice to Hashem was to be allowed to do so under the same laws as an Israelite (Num. 15:14-16). That means that declaring all Gentiles to be intrinsically unclean and creating a "middle wall of partition" (per Eph. 2) to separate a court for the Gentiles from the court of the Israelites was illegal according to the Torah. These were man-made traditions that opposed the true Torah, and just as He did in His earthly ministry, Yeshua now did in a vision to Peter: He removed the errant tradition so that the true Torah could be seen. Gentile believers in the God of Israel who had renounced idolatry were no longer to be considered unclean or unholy.
It is you who accuse Paul. I do not see anything wrong with him reasserting his status as Pharisee or going to the Temple.
But do you agree that Paul was a Pharisee--which is the equivalent today of an Orthodox Jew--and that he continued in the practices of the Pharisees? If he did, then that means that the Apostle not only kept kosher, but kept the stricter kashrut, the stricter standards of ritual purity, and other aspects of Jewish law? If he did, then on what basis can you claim the authority to tell Jews today not to do the same? If you think he didn't, then you accuse him of being a hypocrates, a pretender to the title of Pharisee. You know, the very thing Yeshua condemned in Matthew 23.
I accuse Paul of nothing because I don't assume that he changed his practices based on convenience or audience. I think he was a Pharisee through-and-through. I think he changed his terminology and his teaching methods to best reach the maximum number of people.
They did deemphasize the law, and not only for Gentiles.
If so, you have yet to produce a valid example. If you want to take another stab at it, save us both some time and go look up the actual commandment and the actual example of the supposed violation.
Bishops that pass along what they receive were not corrupt.
No matter how much simony and immorality surrounds them.
How would the imperfect animal sacrifices continue to please God after the perfect sacrifice has been made?
If Abraham was saved by faith (Rom. 4), why did he offer up sacrifices? Why did the Apostles?
You are accusing either me, Christian Tradition, or the Apostles.
I'm accusing you and your tradition of not following the Apostles and of persecuting those who have.
Mosaic law was not permanent but provisional until the coming of Christ . . . Galatians 3:19
The Torah itself declares that no one, not even a miracle-working prophet, can change its commandments (Deu. 12:32-13:5). So either Paul is a false prophet and you are a heretic for following him, or you have misunderstood Paul. I'm betting on the latter.
So what is Paul's point, taken in context? Simply this: The promise to Abraham and his seed (which Paul midrashically renders as singular instead of the collective to point to Yeshua, but explaining that gets into the Hebrew) came 430 years before Moses was given the Torah on Mt. Sinai. Ergo, the unilateral promise that Abraham's seed would inherit the physical land of Israel and be a blessing to the whole world is not and has never been contingent on Israel's obedience. There is literally nothing Israel can ever do to to annul that Covenant. Our disobedience may put the blessings on hold and result in punishment, but God has assured us over and over again through the prophets that He will bring us to that place of blessing in the end.
And that is what makes replacement theology a heresy: You claim that because Israel disobeyed, the promises were taken from the natural seed and given to another. You annul not only the Torah, but the very Apostle that you depend on to attack the Torah!
Paul then answers the question: "So why have a Law at all, if it isn't relevant to the promise and only incites the will of man to sin the more?" The answer, more literally rendered: "It was gathered together because of transgressions, ordained by messengers by the means of a mediator"--referring to Moses--"until the Seed would come to whom the promise had been made"--referring to Messiah.
Now here, and in many other places in Paul's writings, I'm not convinced that "Law" means the written Torah only. The Torah of Moses, in the Jewish mind, was never "gathered together," but was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Rather, being a Pharisee, Paul was used to thinking of Law as meaning not only the written Torah, but the corpus of Jewish law that had grown out of it. Here, the "gathering together" of what became known as the Mishnah may be in view, especially since the verbs are in the aorist, rather than the past, tense.
But even if it isn't, since the Greek word translated "until" does not necessarily connotate a stopping point, but is rather a conjunction indicating purpose or direction; e.g., "Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is [fn] with us unto this day." That doesn't mean the tomb of David suddenly vanished that morning. I know, because I've been there.
So what does it mean? Here is my paraphrase for you to judge: "Israel's transgressions of the Law could not annul an unconditional promise given 430 years before the Law was ever given on Mt. Sinai. So why have the Law at all? It has been, is being, and will be gathered together and added to because of our transgressions (trying to legislate morality, as it were), having been ordained by messengers--the prophets, the men of the Great Assembly, and the rabbis--who received it by the hand of our mediator, Moses, even unto the present time when the Seed has appeared to whom the promises were ultimately made and through whom they will be fulfilled."
So basically, we have two possible ways to read this verse. Your way takes it out of context and pits it against the rest of Scripture, not to mention the life of the person who penned it. My way takes into account the context, the life of the author, and the meaning of the original Greek and reconciles the verse to the rest of the Scriptures.
The Church is infallibly guided in her legislation by the Paraclete.
Baloney. But your belief that this is the case is why this discussion is ultimately a waste of time: We simply don't have a mutually-accepted source of authority. You accept that everything the Roman Catholic Church does and teaches is to be received uncritically. I believe that we are to test what we are taught even by an Apostle to see if what he says is true (Acts 17:11).
If the Church is false, then you should cut all ties and be done with her.
I think the Roman Catholic Church is false, but I don't think the true Ekklesia, the true Kingdom of Heaven, made up of both Jews and Gentiles by the work of the Spirit is. That Kingdom has many Catholics in it, but it is not to be confused with the Magisterium.
And no, the Bible does not teach unconditional, unthinking submission. It does teach us to honor the duly appointed authorities and to obey them in every way that does not directly contradict God's commandments. That is why I honor and obey the rabbis, the duly appointed authorities of my people. There are of course areas in which I must follow Yeshua instead of our traditions, but one of the nice things about Judaism is that no one is expected to blindly submit and there is always room for debate and variations in practice between different rabbis.
Shalom and an early Merry Christmas to you and yours.
If a member of any traditional culture heard you say that, they would think you were crazy. Sharing meals in traditional societies is a communal intercourse. Refusing to partake in the general fair would be unthinkably rude. The assimilated, individualist culture of the modern West in an historical anomaly.
It is your assertion that the Mosaic Law, i.e., the Torah itself, makes it impossible for Jews and Gentiles to eat together without violating kosher.
No, but keeping kosher while sharing meals as a guest of First Century Greeks would be prohibitively impractical. Otherwise, Peter and Barnabas would not have thought they had to stop eating with the Gentiles.
Jewish Christians were angry with Peter after his visit to Cornelius because apparently they understood that eating with Gentiles leads to breaking kosher laws. If Peter had kept kosher during those meals, he would have said so. Instead he did the opposite. Peter stated that God ordered him to eat nonkosher food and stop calling it impure since God had made it clean.
Acts 11:2 "So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3 and said, 'You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.' 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’ 8 “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ 11 Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them."
The issue was not kosher. Unless the Gentile is just bent on being offensive, that can be handled. The issue was eighteen measures
It sounds like the eighteen measures were extreme, but think of the motivation. It is likely that Jews who trafficked with Gentiles were less able to keep the ceremonial law.
I think he was a Pharisee through-and-through.
Paul received revelations directly from Christ not available to other Pharisees. He must have thought that a true Pharisee's obligation was to follow commands of God over the rules of men. Scripture does not say Paul was inspired to attend the temple but I do not think that Paul compromised himself. That is where Jesus had preached and chastised the money changers. Your reasoning of compromise is faulty but even if it were correct, that would still have been a very minor mistake compared to those that Peter had made.
They did deemphasize the law, and not only for Gentiles. If so, you have yet to produce a valid example.
Previously I had offered the kosher examples. In addition:
Rom 7:2 by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3 So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. 4 So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead
Hebrews 8:4... there are priests that offer gifts according to the law: 5 Who serve to the example and shadow of heavenly things
Hebrews 10:1 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.
Gal 5:1 Stand fast, and be not held again under the yoke of bondage. 2 Behold, I Paul tell you, that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.
Gal 4:21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 23His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. 24 These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. 31 Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
These passages should suffice but there are many, many more. You tried to explain away the plain meaning of Galatians 3:19. Will you try to nullify the inspired testimony of Paul? The Old Testament cannot be properly understood without the New.
Bishops that pass along what they receive were not corrupt.
No matter how much simony and immorality surrounds them.
I should say that the sacraments of morally corrupt priests are valid because they come directly from God, not from the man. The doctrinal teaching of orthodox, but morally corrupt bishops are valid. However all moral and doctrinal corruption is scandalous and reprobates deserve punishment in this life and the next.
the unilateral promise that Abraham's seed would inherit the physical land of Israel and be a blessing to the whole world is not and has never been contingent on Israel's obedience. There is literally nothing Israel can ever do to to annul that Covenant.
The Old Covenant is reciprocal:
Deut 4:23 ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, to provoke him to anger: 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed. 27 And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen 29 But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 30 When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; 31 (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) He will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them."
The Church is infallibly guided in her legislation by the Paraclete.
You accept that everything the Roman Catholic Church does and teaches is to be received uncritically.
No. I only accepter her infallible teachings. These are rarely defined and few in number. The actions of Church leaders are not necessarily more acceptable to me than what Judas did.
I think the Roman Catholic Church is false
Do you believe in the infallibly of New Testament Scripture? If so, you must accept the infallibly of the Catholic Church at least through the Forth Century.
the Bible does not teach unconditional, unthinking submission. It does teach us to honor the duly appointed authorities
The Church does NOT teach unconditional, unthinking submission to authorities. It simply recognizes the necessity and reality of Christian orthodoxy. Logically, there really can only be one true faith. Especially today, it is often necessary to resist authorities in defense of that One Truth. This is what St. Athenasius, bishop of Alexandria, did in the Forth Century. The Roman Emperor and almost all Church leaders had fallen under the heresy of Semi-Arianism. While St. Athenasius wrote polemics from exile, lay Catholics would string up heretical priests in front of their churches. This went on for decades until a new Emperor finally relented to the restoration of orthodoxy.
During the struggle, St. Athenasius revised the NT canon to ensure absolute Catholic orthodoxy. All Christians have St. Athenasius to thank for the final form of the NT Bible.
Today there is universal heresy worse than during the Forth Century. Traditional Catholics perform the role of St. Athenasius.