Biblical Christianity 101, a study of the book of Romans

[Drich]

Your expert is an idiot or hopes his followers are, in that they are not willing to look at the context in which he quotes.

What is bolded (by me) says more than enough about how Christians like you (which I used to be myself) think. There is that sort of arrogance whereby a Christian layman like Drich thinks he understands the Bible better than someone like Bart Ehrman who, very probably, has studied the Bible way more than Drich ever has, and he has words on paper to prove that he is an expert in the field.

Acts 17 shows a Paul that thinks in a different manner from the Paul of the Epistles (in this case, with regards to idolatry). Therein lies the contradiction. It's not about just this verse or that. According to Acts, pagans were ignorant of the true God. Romans 1 says otherwise: that they knew of the true God but actively rejected him in favor of other gods. Dismiss the contradiction all you want, but it's there. And it also isn't the only main difference anyway.

Also, you keep forgetting the majority of New Testament scholars disagree with you on your view regarding the date Acts was written and the comparisons between Acts' Paul and the Epistles' Paul. Bart Ehrman is just one number. You simply laughing them off does not wish them all of a sudden away.

Acts 17:
26 And He has made from one blood[c] every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

Romans 1:
18 God shows his anger from heaven against all the evil and wrong things that people do. Their evil lives hide the truth they have. 19 This makes God angry because they have been shown what he is like. Yes, God has made it clear to them.
20 There are things about God that people cannot see—his eternal power and all that makes him God. But since the beginning of the world, those things have been easy for people to understand. They are made clear in what God has made. So people have no excuse for the evil they do.
21 People knew God, but they did not honor him as God, and they did not thank him. Their ideas were all useless. There was not one good thought left in their foolish minds. 22 They said they were wise, but they became fools. 23 Instead of honoring the divine greatness of God, who lives forever, they traded it for the worship of idols—things made to look like humans, who get sick and die, or like birds, animals, and snakes.
24 People wanted only to do evil. So God left them and let them go their sinful way. And so they became completely immoral and used their bodies in shameful ways with each other. 25 They traded the truth of God for a lie. They bowed down and worshiped the things God made instead of worshiping the God who made those things. He is the one who should be praised forever. Amen.
26 Because people did those things, God left them and let them do the shameful things they wanted to do. Women stopped having natural sex with men and started having sex with other women. 27 In the same way, men stopped having natural sex with women and began wanting each other all the time. Men did shameful things with other men, and in their bodies they received the punishment for those wrongs.
28 People did not think it was important to have a true knowledge of God. So God left them and allowed them to have their own worthless thinking. And so they do what they should not do. 29 They are filled with every kind of sin, evil, greed, and hatred. They are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, lying, and thinking the worst things about each other. They gossip 30 and say evil things about each other. They hate God. They are rude, proud, and brag about themselves. They invent ways of doing evil. They don’t obey their parents, 31 they are foolish, they don’t keep their promises, and they show no kindness or mercy to others. 32 They know God’s law says that anyone who lives like that should die. But they not only continue to do these things themselves, but they also encourage others who do them.

In any event, the most famous exception is his speech to a group of philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens (chapter 17).  Here Paul explains that the Jewish God is in fact the God of all, pagan and Jew alike, even though the pagans have been ignorant of him.  Paul’s understanding of pagan polytheism is reasonably clear here: pagans have simply not known that there is only One God, the creator of all, and can thus not be held accountable for failing to worship the one whom they have not known.  That is to say, since they have been ignorant of the true God, rather than willfully disobedient to him, he has overlooked their false religions until now.  With the coming of Jesus, though, he is calling all people to repent in preparation for the coming judgment

Your guy identifies Act's 17 to Paul's thoughts on Pre-NT pagan worship to have been over looked until now where they are called to repent.

Verse romans where they have been given over to their sins? (I don't have his completed work infront of me.) But i assume this is his sticking point.

Two big things Paul in the book of romans is not speaking to Pagan worshipers. Paul is speaking to all who embrace their evil (Which I have already pointed out in my chapter one study)

So what is the difference? If you look at the bold face type in the Acts 17 passage I highlighted (above) Paul is pointing to the devout pagan trying to live a good life and simply does not know of the one true God. So for him their was mercy in OT days, where as now He is called to repent.

In the Bold face type of romans your 'expert' has forced the identification of "pagan" to those Paul is speaking about because of the worship of Idols. This is a common practice because a 'pagan' is anyone worshiping outside the main religion. But the critical flaw in your expert's assessment here is the dynamic of "EVIL" that the Roman's group embraces that the Group Paul speaks about in Acts does not embrace. Remember "Evil" and sin are two different things. Sin being a violation of the expressed will of God/God's law. while Evil is  the embracing of one's sin. Paul to the Roman's crowd defines them and their works as evil, while the 'Pagans'/Non Jews looking to worship God in the ignorance are NOT cut from that same cloth as the Romans Group.

In short the Acts' group uses the same 'knoweledge' the Roman's group is privy to and does the best they can to worship their pagan idols (out of ignorance) in the OT. (In other words they see the signs Paul describes in romans and attributes them to their pagan Gods because they do not know any better.)

However The roman's group see these same signs and rather than turn to whatever understanding God gave them and tried to worship them like the act's group did they turned to Evil and embraced it despite what God had given them.

Your 'guy' fails to make that distinction, he "blind guide" assumes both are 'evil' because the first group is pagan. When according to Christ and the parable of the talents God does not judge us by a strict religious standard, but in accordance to what he has given us. The jew were given much so much was expected. the pagans not as much, but they too honored and 'double' what was given, while the romans group were given little, and rather than honor the little they were given they did what they wanted (Embracing evil) and God punishes them for it.

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