Biblical inconsistency?

OSV.com ^ | 07-25-18 | Msgr. Charles Pope

[Salvation]

Biblical inconsistency? Jesus does not negate himself but rather gives different teachings on following the commandments

Msgr. Charles Pope

7/25/2018

Question: In Matthew 5:19, Jesus rails against relaxing or changing even the least of the commandments, and yet verse 19 also says that if one does, “[he] will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” It seems the consequences should be “losing” the kingdom of heaven if Jesus is consistent with what follows in verse 20. Can you explain the seeming inconsistency? — Jim Flynn, via email

Answer: Two different teachings are being made here, hence it is not a matter of consistency.

In verse 19, the operative teaching is that while unrepented mortal sin excludes one from the kingdom of God, not all violations of the law are mortal. Even the Ten Commandments, while indicating grave sin in themselves admit of lighter matter.

For example, regarding the Seventh Commandment, stealing a large amount or something essential or irreplaceable is usually a mortal sin. However, taking something small or insignificant, while a sin, may not be a mortal sin that excludes one from the kingdom of God. Thus, if the Lord were to adopt your word, the condemnation might be too sweeping. It does not follow that if someone breaks the least of the commandments they necessarily lose the kingdom of God.

Further, you will note that there is a kind of parallelism or play of words at work here. The Lord is saying, in effect: “If you break even the least of my teachings, I am going to call you the least!” Preachers often use such sayings in order to be memorable.

For example, consider the following word stitch: “Say what you mean, and mean what you say. But don’t say it mean.” The word “mean” unites all three phrases, but in each case a slightly different sense of the word “mean” is used.

Here, the Lord is not only being careful not to imply that even small infractions would land us in hell, but he is also being artful, resourceful and memorable by his use of a parallelism.

As for verse 20, we encounter a different teaching: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Here we are dealing with the problem of minimalism. Though the Pharisees fancied themselves meticulous observers of the law, they were very minimalist in their application of it. Jesus said they were hypocrites because they followed exacting laws about small things, such as tithing, but neglected weightier matters of the law, such as justice and mercy (cf. Mt 23:23). It is one thing to pay tithes; this is good and required. But neglecting the poor and failing to feed and teach them is far more important to God.

Jesus will develop this teaching against minimalism in the verses that follow in the Sermon on the Mount. For example, he will teach that it is not enough to avoid murder; the command requires we let God banish vengeful hatred from our hearts. It is not enough to avoid acts of adultery; we must allow God to give us chaste minds and hearts. It is not enough to avoid excessive retaliation; we ought to avoid retaliation altogether.

Therefore, the message of verse 20 is a call to exceed the minimalist notions of the law. Grace equips us for more, and we are expected to attain more by that grace. The old law could not save. Only the “new law” of grace can save or make us sufficiently holy to enter heaven.

Thus verse 19 speaks of little things, verse 20 of weightier things.

[metmom]

I have NEVER seen you post a link.

You certainly didn’t to provide the credentials you claim Miles Jones has.

[ealgeone]

I don’t know what other Catholics were taught, but I was told by the priests at my church, that if I went to mass for 9 first Fridays and 5 first Saturdays, that I would get a soul released from Purgatory. I felt such great power and pride.

Amazing what false doctrines Rome teaches.

[ravenwolf]

The apostles, including Peter and Paul, definitely did not consider their letters to be scripture.

---

I agree.

[ravenwolf]

Well; he DID write Galatians 5:12!

---

I doubt if he got that from the holy spirit but that does not make him all bad.

[kosciusko51]

What proof do you have of that, or is it just speculation?

[ravenwolf]

Works and obedience are two separate things.

Works wherever it is mentioned in the NT is the keeping of the Pharisees false laws of Takanot and Ma’assim.

---

That is what Paul was referring to but James was not talking about keeping the laws of the Pharisees he was talking about exactly what Jesus told us to do.

[ravenwolf]

What proof do you have of that, or is it just speculation?

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If you are referring to my comment on 287 it is nothing more than speculation.

[kosciusko51]

I replied to post 404.

[ravenwolf]

And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

---

That is the way it would seem if this one scripture is all we read.

1 Cor 1532
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”if we just read part of it it appears that Paul is telling us to just live it up but if we read the rest of it we can see there is a little more to it..

“What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised,”

If the dead are not raised then we just as well eat drink and be merry.

“””Which is largely a strawman as directed to Bible Christians,”””

It may be to you but it is not to me.

Matthew 7:21
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. ...

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “ James was not talking about keeping the laws of the Pharisees he was talking about exactly what Jesus told us to do.” <<

Precisely!

No apostle ever called obedience to Torah “works.”

Works are completely man made every time they are mentioned.
.

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” <<

This is similar to what John presents in his first epistle.

“Believing in” is not in any way intellectual belief.

We ‘believe in’ someone if we live as they would have us live.

Anything else is not believing in them.

Anyone who thinks that believing that Yeshua is the son of Yehova, and that he died on the cross to pay for their sins is going to get them saved is in for a major gnashing of teeth on judgement day.

Even satan and his demons believe those things.

Our God has told us how to gain his righteousness, and it is not even related to the above beliefs.

Confession, repentance, and restoration of obedience is the only way to repair our frazzled righteousness.
.
.

[boatbums]

Exactly what are you falsely calling violent? I’m trying to introduce you to the real Word of Yehova.

Exactly what were YOU falsely calling "violent" when you accused me: "You react violently whenever the true word of Yehova comes into the picture to displace Satan’s Greek distortions of the word."??? You aren't introducing me to the "real" word of God but to the false, accursed and satanic words of cultists who hate the truth of the Gospel of the grace of God and twist the truth. I desire nothing you have to offer.

[Luircin]

“””Which is largely a strawman as directed to Bible Christians,”””

It may be to you but it is not to me.

***

The heck do you mean by that?

Because it really sounds like you’re saying that daniel1212 has told you that no, this is not what he believes, and you’ve just said “I don’t care; I’m going to keep on attacking in this manner anyways.”

[Concentrate]

I don’t know. That’s what my bonkers sister says. Ask her.

[boatbums]

Keep on gritting your ignorant teeth! You react violently whenever the true word of Yehova comes into the picture to displace Satan’s Greek distortions of the word. Your offerings are the tripe, as usual. If you love it, no surprise.

Dude...you desperately need to prayerfully reconsider your Internet manners! Don't you ever wonder why NO ONE joins you in your diatribes or defends your wacky ideas?

I'm pretty much DONE with trying to even have a semblance of a dialogue with you. Don't expect me to reply to any more of your missives no matter how badly you insult and offend me and other Christians here. You've taken up enough of my time. I'll still pray for you.

[Concentrate]

Look, I really don’t mean to be disrespectful to you. It’s just what I consider philosophical circular thinking.

No, I don’t think the Bible is fairy tales. But there are other scriptures and deities written about, as well. How are we really supposed to know the difference? Results? Personal experience could be the placebo effect.

If I give my heart over to the ______s, I’m highly likely to feel better about myself, and improve my life.

[boatbums]

IN ORDER to obtain a correct understanding of what is called the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very firmly in our minds one fact which is obvious enough when attention is once called to it. That is, that the Christian church did not require to form for itself the idea of a "canon," - or, as we should more commonly call it, of a "Bible," -that is, of a collection of books given of God to be the authoritative rule of faith and practice. It inherited this idea from the Jewish church, along with the thing itself, the Jewish Scriptures, or the "Canon of the Old Testament." The church did not grow up by natural law: it was founded. And the authoritative teachers sent forth by Christ to found His church, carried with them, as their most precious possession, a body of divine Scriptures, which they imposed on the church that they founded as its code of law. No reader of the New Testament can need proof of this; on every page of that book is spread the evidence that from the very beginning the Old Testament was as cordially recognized as law by the Christian as by the Jew. The Christian church thus was never without a "Bible" or a "canon."

But the Old Testament books were not the only ones which the apostles (by Christ's own appointment the authoritative founders of the church) imposed upon the infant churches, as their authoritative rule of faith and practice. No more authority dwelt in the prophets of the old covenant than in themselves, the apostles, who had been "made sufficient as ministers of a new covenant "; for (as one of themselves argued) "if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory." Accordingly not only was the gospel they delivered, in their own estimation, itself a divine revelation, but it was also preached "in the Holy Ghost" (I Pet. i. 12) ; not merely the matter of it, but the very words in which it was clothed were "of the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. ii. 13). Their own commands were, therefore, of divine authority (I Thess. iv. 2), and their writings were the depository of these commands (II Thess. ii. 15). "If any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle," says Paul to one church (II Thess. iii. 14), "note that man, that ye have no company with him." To another he makes it the test of a Spirit-led man to recognize that what he was writing to them was "the commandments of the Lord" (I Cor. xiv. 37). Inevitably, such writings ', making so awful a claim on their acceptance, were received by the infant churches as of a quality equal to that of the old "Bible"; placed alongside of its older books as an additional part of the one law of God; and read as such in their meetings for worship -a practice which moreover was required by the apostles (I Thess. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; Rev. i. 3). In the apprehension, therefore, of the earliest churches, the "Scriptures" were not a closed but an increasing "canon." Such they had been from the beginning, as they gradually grew in number from Moses to Malachi; and such they were to continue as long as there should remain among the churches "men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

We say that this immediate placing of the new books - given the church under the seal of apostolic authority - among the Scriptures already established as such, was inevitable. It is also historically evinced from the very beginning. Thus the apostle Peter, writing in A.D. 68, speaks of Paul's numerous letters not in contrast with the Scriptures, but as among the Scriptures and in contrast with "the other Scriptures" (II Pet. iii.16) -that is, of course, those of the Old Testament. In like manner the apostle Paul combines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Luke under the common head of "Scripture" (I Tim. v.18): "For the Scripture saith ' 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn ' [Deut. xxv. 4]; and, 'The laborer is worthy of his hire'" (Luke x. 7). The line of such quotations is never broken in Christian literature. Polycarp (c. 12) in A.D. 115 unites the Psalms and Ephesians in exactly similar manner: "In the sacred books.... as it is said in these Scriptures, 'Be ye angry and sin not,' and 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."' So, a few years later, the so-called second letter of Clement, after quoting Isaiah, adds (ii. 4): "And another Scripture, however, says, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners'" -quoting from Matthew -- a book which Barnabas (circa 97-106 A.D.) had already adduced as Scripture. After this such quotations are common.

What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival "canon" of "new books" which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the "old books"; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally "Scripture" with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.

The earliest name given to this new section of Scripture was framed on the model of the name by which what we know as the Old Testament was then known. Just as it was called "The Law and the Prophets and the Psalms" (or "the Hagiographa"), or more briefly "The Law and the Prophets," or even more briefly still "The Law"; so the enlarged Bible was called "The Law and the Prophets, with the Gospels and the Apostles" (so Clement of Alexandria, "Strom." vi. 11, 88; Tertullian, "De Prms. Men" 36), or most briefly "The Law and the Gospel" (so Claudius Apolinaris, Irenaeus); while the new books apart were called "The Gospel and the Apostles," or most briefly of all "The Gospel." This earliest name for the new Bible, with all that it involves as to its relation to the old and briefer Bible, is traceable as far back as Ignatius (A.D. 115), who makes use of it repeatedly (e.g., "ad Philad." 5; ("ad Smyrn." 7). In one passage he gives us a hint of the controversies which the enlarged Bible of the Christians aroused among the Judaizers (" ad Philad." 6). "When I heard some saying," he writes, "'Unless I find it in the Old [Books] I will not believe the Gospel' on my saying,' It is written.' they answered, 'That is the question.' To me, however, Jesus Christ is the Old [Books]; his cross and death and resurrection and the faith which is by him, the undefiled Old [Books] - by which I wish, by your prayers, to be justified. The priests indeed are good, but the High Priest better," etc. Here Ignatius appeals to the "Gospel" as Scripture, and the Judaizers object, receiving from him the answer in effect which Augustine afterward formulated in the well known saying that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is first made clear in the New. What we need now to observe, however, is that to Ignatius the New Testament was not a different book from the Old Testament, but part of the one body of Scripture with it; an accretion, so to speak, which had grown upon it. This is the testimony of all the early witnesses - even those which speak for the distinctively Jewish-Christian church. For example, that curious Jewish-Christian writing, "The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs" (Beni. 11), tells us, under the cover of an ex post facto prophecy, that the "work and word" of Paul, i.e., confessedly the book of Acts and Paul's Epistles, "shall be written in the Holy Books," i.e., as is understood by all, made a part of the existent Bible. So even in the Talmud, in a scene intended to ridicule a "bishop" of the first century, he is represented as finding Galatians by "sinking himself deeper" into the same "Book" which contained the Law of Moses ("Babl. Shabbath," 116 a and b). The details cannot be entered into here. Let it suffice to say that, from the evidence of the fragments which alone have been preserved to us of the Christian writings of that very early time, it appears that from the beginning of the second century (and that is from the end of the apostolic age) a collection (Ignatius, II Clement) of "New Books" (Ignatius), called the "Gospel and Apostles" (Ignatius, Marcion), was already a part of the "Oracles" of God (Polycarp, Papias, II Clement), or "Scriptures" (I Tim., II Pet., Barn., Polycarp, II Clement), or the "Holy Books" or "Bible" (Testt. XII. Patt.).

The number of books included-in this added body of New Books, at the opening of the second century, cannot be satisfactorily determined by the evidence of these fragments alone. The section of it called the "Gospel" included Gospels written by "the apostles and their companions" (Justin), which beyond legitimate question were our four Gospels now received. The section called "the Apostles" contained the book of Acts (The Testt. XII. Patt.) and epistles of Paul, John, Peter and James. The evidence from various quarters is indeed enough to show that the collection in general use contained all the books which we at present receive, with the possible exceptions of Jude, II and III John and Philemon. And it is more natural to suppose that failure of very early evidence for these brief booklets is due to their insignificant size rather than to their nonacceptance.

It is to be borne in mind, however, that the extent of the collection may have - and indeed is historically shown actually to have varied in different localities. The Bible was circulated only in handcopies, slowly and painfully made; and an incomplete copy, obtained say at Ephesus in A.D. 68, would be likely to remain for many years the Bible of the church to which it was conveyed; and might indeed become the parent of other copies, incomplete like itself, and thus the means of providing a whole district with incomplete Bibles. Thus, when we inquire after the history of the New Testament Canon we need to distinguish such questions as these: (1) When was the New Testament Canon completed? (2) When did any one church acquire a completed canon? (3) When did the completed canon -the complete Bible - obtain universal circulation and acceptance? (4) On what ground and evidence did the churches with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books when they were made known to them?

The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98. Whether the church of Ephesus, however, had a completed Canon when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would depend on whether there was any epistle, say that of Jude, which had not yet reached it with authenticating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for historical investigation here. Certainly the whole Canon was not universally received by the churches till somewhat later. The Latin church of the second and third centuries did not quite know what to do with the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Syrian churches for some centuries may have lacked the lesser of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But from the time of Ireanaeus down, the church at large had the whole Canon as we now possess it. And though a section of the church may not yet have been satisfied of the apostolicity of a certain book or of certain books; and though afterwards doubts may have arisen in sections of the church as to the apostolicity of certain books (as e. g. of Revelation): yet in no case was it more than a respectable minority of the church which was slow in receiving, or which came afterward to doubt, the credentials of any of the books that then as now constituted the Canon of the New Testament accepted by the church at large. And in every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or doubts against it laid aside, was the historical tradition of apostolicity.

Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was not exactly apostolic authorship which in the estimation of the earliest churches, constituted a book a portion of the "canon." Apostolic authorship was, indeed, early confounded with canonicity. It was doubt as to the apostolic authorship of Hebrews, in the West, and of James and Jude, apparently, which underlay the slowness of the inclusion of these books in the "canon" of certain churches. But from the beginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity was not apostolic authorship, but imposition by the apostles as "law." Hence Tertullian's name for the "canon" is "instrumentum"; and he speaks of the Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and New Testament. That the apostles so imposed the Old Testament on the churches which they founded - as their "Instrument," or "Law," or "Canon" - can be denied by none. And in imposing new books on the same churches, by the same apostolical authority, they did not confine themselves to books of their own composition. It is the Gospel according to Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul parallels in I Tim. v. 18 with Deuteronomy as equally "Scripture" with it, in the first extant quotation of a New Testament book as Scripture. The Gospels which constituted the first division of the New Books, - of "The Gospel and the Apostles," - Justin tells us were "written by the apostles and their companions." The authority of the apostles, as by divine appointment founders of the church was embodied in whatever books they imposed on the church as law not merely in those they themselves had written.

The early churches, in short, received, as we receive, into the New Testament all the books historically evinced to them as given by the apostles to the churches as their code of law; and we must not mistake the historical evidences of the slow circulation an authentication of these books over the widely-extended church, evidence of slowness of "canonization" of books by the authority or the taste of the church itself. Formation of the Canon of the New Testament

[daniel1212]

And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness. That is the way it would seem if this one scripture is all we read. 1 Cor 1532 Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”if we just read part of it it appears that Paul is telling us to just live it up but if we read the rest of it we can see there is a little more to it.. “What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised,” If the dead are not raised then we just as well eat drink and be merry. “””Which is largely a strawman as directed to Bible Christians,””” It may be to you but it is not to me. Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. ..

You are guilty of arguing a false dichotomy, that either faith being counted for righteousness means one can believe and hold to "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," or that one is justified before God/accepted in the Beloved due to his holy level of living.

But which simply ignores the the plethora of posts which define what saving faith is, which effects obedience by the Spirit and its characteristic holy living, and penitent repentance when convicted of not doing so. And thus Abraham believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness is true, and means what it says, but the faith of Abraham was one which went so far as to be willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice

. But that this was not when Abraham was counted righteous, but it justified Abraham as being a believer, versus the faith without works belief which James counters.

Thus faith being counted it to him for righteousness does not mean let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die, nor do the merit of works themselves obtain a right standing before God, but the effectual heart-faith behind them do, purifying the heart in conversion, and rendering one accepted in the Beloeved, on Hi account. Thanks be to God.

But as you seem unwilling to understanding what I have patiently explained to you, and instead respond with this non-sense, then why should I continue to do so? Bye.

[daniel1212]

Because it really sounds like you’re saying that daniel1212 has told you that no, this is not what he believes, and you’ve just said “I don’t care; I’m going to keep on attacking in this manner anyways.”

That saving faith does not mean Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. has been explained to him at length, but since it means he no longer can use his antinomian charge in order to defend Rome, which teaching salvation by actually becoming good enough to be with God thru Purgatory, then it seems his required recourse is to keep on employing this strawman.

This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”[Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341] More .

Rather than the easy believism Catholics (with a church half full of liberal members) associates with sola fide, in Puritan Protestantism there was often a tendency to make the way to the cross too narrow, perhaps in reaction against the Antinomian controversy, as described in an account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period:

“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”