1 Corinthians 2:13, Paul Contradicts Jesus, part II of III
And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.
//Continuing the theme from yesterday, and presenting another verse about Paul’s insistence that his understanding came through supernatural means, let’s highlight a few more “contradictions” between Paul and Jesus. While all of these comparisons are somewhat shallow, the question at hand is whether or not Paul properly preserved the atmosphere Jesus left behind.
Today’s comparisons highlight Paul’s tendency to remove the conditions of our salvation. Jesus set conditions, and Paul negated them.
Jesus: Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. –Matthew 5:7
Paul: Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy –Romans 9:18
Jesus: For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. –Matthew 6:14
Paul: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace –Ephesians 1:7
Jesus: For by your words you will be justified –Matthew 12:37
Paul: Much more then, having now been justified by His blood –Romans 5:9
Galatians 1:11-12, Paul Contradicts Jesus, part I of III
But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
//I’ve been accused many times of reading the Bible superficially; particularly when I point out a discrepancy between the teachings of two Bible writers. Sometimes a supposed “contradiction” in scripture can be from a superficial reading, but sometimes a “superficial” reading highlights a different flavor. My question over the next series of posts is this: Did Paul properly preserve the atmosphere Jesus left behind?
Paul never met Jesus. He never took instruction from anyone who did meet Jesus. The only thing Paul knows of Jesus’ teachings is what was presented to him in visions by Christ. That is what we should understand from today’s passage, written by Paul himself. Do you find that just a little too convenient?
So to kick off this series, let me start with a number of “contradictions” that relate to Paul’s assumed authority. This first batch have to do with an authority figure. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether Paul properly represented Jesus’ teachings:
Paul: for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.. –1 Corinthians 4:15
Jesus: And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. –Matthew 23:9
Paul: And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers –1 Corinthians 12:28
Jesus: But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. –Matthew 23:8
Paul: So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors [shepherds] and teachers –Ephesians 4:11
Jesus: and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.. –John 10:16
Paul: For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ … –1 Corinthians 4:15
Jesus: Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. –Matthew 23:10
Paul: If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? –1 Corinthians 9:11
Jesus: Freely you have received, freely give. –Matthew 10:8
Book review: Heretics for Armchair Theologians
by Justo L. and Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez, illustrations by Ron Hill
★★★★★
An excellent little book covering the major “heretics” of the first five centuries. The authors do not try to present these men as evil or anti-Christian at all. On the contrary, they were sincere people trying to understand the Christian faith in their own context, asking important questions and seeking to lead others to what they took to be a fuller understanding of the Gospel. The authors eventually describe a “heretic” as a person who carries one truth about God too far, such that it distorts other doctrine. For example, who can comprehend the Trinity? The divine mystery gets out of balance by focusing too heavily on any one aspect.
You’ll see how Marcion’s early ideas shaped Christianity; heretical views did serve a role in sharpening Christian theology. You’ll learn how Augustine battled Pelagius. You’ll learn about the Ebionites, Docetists, Gnostics, and Montanists. You’ll learn how Christology developed and the Trinitarian battles, which the authors explain with a cute baseball analogy.
All of this is extremely well-written, informative yet friendly. The book goes into just enough theology as necessary to paint a descriptive picture of each Christian offshoot. Very highly recommended and fun to read.
Westminster John Knox Press, © 2008
ISBN: 978-0-664-23205-4
Reviewed on Logos Bible Software
Revelation 13:17: Susan B. Anthony and the Beast
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
//No, this isn’t a “beauty and the beast” post. It’s just the opposite.
Many readers of Revelation, in explaining the ability of the beast to prevent buying and selling unless they carry his mark, point out that a “mark” is a common term for an image struck on a coin. The “mark of the beast” way back in the first century was probably the emperor’s head on all those devilish Roman coins. Such coins, for example, had to be traded for acceptable Jewish currency before they could be brought into the Temple. That is why there were money changers in the courtyard of the Temple in Jesus’ day.
Which brings me to the Susan B. Anthony dollar. When it first came out in 1978, it stirred up quite a controversy among fundamentalist congregations. Evangelist Colin Deal puts it this way:
Will this coin signal the end. … Will it also signal the beginning of a “new order of the ages” as predicted by John (Revelation 13)? Watch for the replacement of the American dollar and its symbolic meaning. Isn’t it odd that this new coin, minted in a God-fearing nation, has the bust of Susan B. Anthony, a renowned atheist and the instigator of the present unrest with women’s liberation?
It turns out that even feminism couldn’t bring the Antichrist out of hiding. Life goes on, even with an atheist “mark of the beast” on our coins.
Book Excerpt: John’s Gospel: The Way It Happened
“Our Christ is dead.” Matthew spat the words as four separate invectives.
“No, Matthew, our Christ lives,” said John. “How did Paul put it? ‘Christ has existed from the beginning, from before the creation of the world.’”
“Paul said no such thing! My father read to me all the letters of Paul! We know Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary.”
Ruth spoke next, hoping to thwart the tension that seemed to be bubbling up between these two turbulent men. “Another letter from Paul has recently surfaced, Matthew. This time, written to the city of Colossae.”
“And you really think Paul wrote it?” Matthew scoffed. “Paul died thirty years ago.”
“It bears not only his name, but his spirit. ‘He is the visible likeness of the invisible God’, this letter claims.”
“Who is? Paul?”
“No,” Ruth smiled. “Our Lord Jesus. ‘For through Christ, God created everything in heaven and on earth. God created the whole universe through him and for him. Christ existed before all things.’”
Matthew stood dumbfounded. This didn’t sound like Paul at all.
“‘For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.’”
“Ruth,” John interrupted. “Sing the hymn for Matthew.”
“Sing?” Ruth winced. Mud-plastered stone fenced the courtyard but didn’t do much for privacy, the wall being only about four feet tall. Neighboring homes, their dwellers audibly and visibly present, stood but a few feet beyond the wall in every direction. From an upper window to the south, Ruth could hear a family praying loudly to Zeus. To the west, a man stood to salute someone in the name of Domitian Caesar. A Roman visitor must have wandered by, outside Ruth’s line of vision. “Now? Must I?”
“Please. The hymn I taught you.”
Ruth ducked her head and cautiously began:
JOHN CHAPTER 1
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
–John’s Gospel: The Way It Happened, 2013, pp. 15-16, by Lee Harmon
The Miracle Free Gospel
by Gerhard Jason Geick
★★★★
Scholars have long speculated about the existence of an early, miracle-free version of the Gospel of John. It wasn’t until recently that a Palestinian discovery proved this speculation to be true. The miracles of Jesus were added to the text of the Gospel of John around 130 CE. What you’ll read in Geick’s book is the original Gospel, translated from Aramaic into English.
In this early rendition of Jesus’ life, everything remotely fantabulous no longer exists. No shocking miracles, no birth stories, no resurrection body. The real Jesus is so grey that one wonders how he could have possibly affected history the way he did. Jesus is merely a next-door-neighbor type, friendly, a little crude, quite powerless but likeable. He dies because rumors of miracles got out of hand.
It’s a parody, of course, or perhaps a wild guess. Why, Gerhard? Why did you do this to my Jesus? Disturbed, I read past the end of the book into the bonus material, where I found excerpts from prior books. Geick likes to call himself a Hopeful Theist, by which he implies that he rejects history’s various attempts to describe God, yet hopes there is more to life than meaningless grief. This is the Jesus he identifies with … one who tried to teach folks but wound up crucified for no good reason.
A cute read, but it probably reveals more about the author than the subject. Read it with a grain of salt to get to know Jason, because it’s a long way from anything any Jesus scholar I know would confirm! 
© 2014, Kindle Edition
ISBN: unknown
Purchase at: http://themiraclefreegospel.weebly.com/
Genesis 2:7, Easter and the New Eden
[T]he Lord God . . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
//If my message from Thursday, about the promise of peace on earth with the birth of our Messiah, seemed out of place for Easter week, let me bring it all together. In fact, let me bring the whole Bible together. Compare the beginning of the Bible with the end; the first age beginning with Adam with the new age inaugurated by the arrival of the Messiah. This comes from the Gospel of John:
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” –John 20:19-21
John opens and closes his gospel with Genesis, a new world. Here, his double emphasis on the gift of peace implies the age of the Messiah. Christ has returned as promised! His age-old greeting, “peace” or “shalom,” was a wish of well-being, but between believers it came to mean the deeper, worldwide peace that God would grant in the age to come. In Ezekiel’s famous dry-bones vision, a picture of the coming general resurrection, God says to the army he revives, I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.
The age of peace has begun. Are we living the Kingdom?
John 19:32-33, Good Friday and the River of Life
The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.
//While John’s Gospel has Jesus dying a day or two before Good Friday, today still seems like the most appropriate day to commemorate the death of Christ. Today’s verse has become very special to me in the last year. Here is what I wrote about this verse in my book about John’s Gospel:
Did blood and water really flow from Jesus’ side? Current medical study verifies the possibility. A substance that appears like water could flow from the pericardial sac around the heart. John insists that this really happened! He may have been so startled that it became, for him, another sign.
As with the son of perdition, it’s fascinating to note the “piercing” theme’s progression through the scriptures. Psalm 22:16 tells of the wicked piercing “my” hands and feet. Zechariah 12:10 draws upon this verse, betraying its origin with its awkward first-person wording: “[T]hey shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and mourn for him” (emphasis added). Next, Revelation claims that every eye shall see Jesus when he returns, including “they also who pierced him.” There is, you will note, no reason yet to imagine that anything besides the hands and feet were pierced. But when John tells the story, he changes the piercing from the hands and feet to Jesus’ side! According to Bible scholar Raymond E. Brown, no other source within a hundred years of Jesus’ death mentions the wound in his side! Only John writes of this, and he swears it’s true. I cannot think of a single explanation for this reinterpretation except to say that the pierced side must have truly happened, and the flow of blood and water made an unforgettable impact.
This sign has become so real to me that I took the image as the title of my latest book: The River of Life. From the side of Jesus a river began to flow that day, which continues even into our age. This short little book (only about 80 pages) has found a different publisher, and hopefully will be available soon.
Luke 2:13-14, No Peace On Earth?
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
//This heavenly chorus is celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, which was to inaugurate a new age. An age of worldwide peace.
Somehow, we’ve lost sight of this. More common, today, is to hear in church that God promises no peace on earth until Jesus comes again. Wars and rumors of wars will continue until that glorious day, and there is nothing we can do about it.
But some extremists carry things even further. They actively preach against all who would strive for peace, thinking this is playing right into Satan’s hands. Peacemakers are thought not to be Christlike, but Antichrists! Peace, world preservation, social programs, life improvements through scientific discovery, all these things are satanic, not godly! What a turn of events! Consider this bizarre quotation by Eli Reece, in How Far Can a Premillennialist Pastor Cooperate with Social Service Programs:
Sociology, or social service as generally emphasized is, in its final outworking, a black winged angel of the pit. … Satan would have a reformed world, a beautiful world, a moral world, a world of great achievements. … He would have a universal brotherhood of man, he would eliminate by scientific method every human ill, and expel by human effort every unkindness; he would make all men good by law, education and social uplift; he would have a world without war. … But a premillennialist cannot cooperate with the plans of modern social service for these contemplate many years of gradual improvement through education as its main avenue for cooperation rather than the second coming of Christ.
Book review: Announcing the Scientific Discovery of God
by Eric Demaree
★★★
Can God’s existence be proven by logic? Demaree takes a shot at it, by providing a reasonable argument for the existence of a being who dispensed to us a moral law. Demaree calls this being “God” and assumes him to be our creator. He then takes a leap of logic:
“It is highly probable that the Biblical God is the God who wrote objective morality into our mind. Objective moral principles and the Biblical commandments written into our mind are similar, if not identical.”
From this foundation–that we have proven God exists, and is the God of the Bible–Demaree begins his discussion. But this argument is not convincing to anyone who is not already persuaded. For example, the issue of gay rights easily defeats his argument. Got no religion to taint your opinion? Then you typically have no moral problem with gays. Thus, any universal morality that exists today accepts gay relationships. Yet the “Biblical God,” in Leviticus, holds a different moral standard: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death.” I bring up this example not because Demaree shares any opinion about gay rights in his book (he doesn’t) but because this simple example disproves Demaree’s argument that objective moral principles agree with Biblical commandments. If there is a moral law inside us, it contradicts the Bible, so if a moral law does prove the existence of God, it simultaneously excludes the “Biblical God” as a candidate. Oops.
Unfortunately, the “scientific discovery” process promised by the book’s title ends after a few pages of this flawed argument. Demaree then turns a bit preachy and remains that way to the end. I scanned the rest, but could not get interested after the topic of the title was left behind. All in all it’s not a bad book, actually quite inspirational in places, as Demaree focuses on God’s attributes of love and mercy, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting to read.
Published by Eric Demaree, © 2014, Kindle Edition
ISBN: none
Fantasy Football, Anyone?
Put on the whole uniform of the Team, that ye may be able to stand against the blitz of oncoming linebackers. Don the hip pads of truth, the shoulder pads of righteousness, the cleats of preparation. Don’t forget the facemask of faith and the helmet of salvation. Then clutch the pigskin with much Spirit, for that is what the Play Book of your Coach in Heaven demands.The River of Life
Twice before Lee Harmon has written about Christian topics, once on the gospel of John and once on the book of Revelation. But the question people keep asking him is this: As a liberal Christian, why do you care so much about the Bible? Others wonder whether he is truly a Christian at all.
The Way It Happened
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| Revelation: A love story gone awry. | The Gospel: A love story set aright. |
What really happened 2,000 years ago? How did a persecuted minority of end-time believers known as Christians, with their dreams of Armageddon and a conquering Messiah named Jesus, evolve into the largest religion in the world? Author Lee Harmon explores the period in which the New Testament was written in his books about John's Gospel and Revelation.
(Bloggers: you may be eligible for a free review copy! Just contact us.)
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The God Show
Lee Harmon interviewed on The God Show about the History Channel's miniseries The Bible and Lee's latest book, John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.
About Lee
Hello! I'm an author, historical Jesus scholar, book reviewer, and liberal Christian, which means I appreciate and attempt to exercise the humanitarian teachings of Jesus without getting hung up on any particular supernatural or religious beliefs.
The Bible is a magnificent book that has inspired and spiritually fed generations for thousands of years, and each new century seems to bring a deeper understanding of life’s purpose. This is true of not only Christianity; through the years, our age-old religions are slowly transforming from superstitious rituals into humanitarian philosophies. In short, we are growing up, and I am thrilled to be riding the wave.
I avidly read all thought-provoking religion titles. New authors: I'd love to read and review your book!
Contact me here.
About Leslie
Hi! While Lee writes the articles and reviews the books, I edit, organize, and maintain the blog. The views expressed here are Lee's but I'm his biggest supporter! :-)
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