Paul reshaping the church

[athrock]

1 Corinthians 10:25-33
25 Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, 26 for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

27 If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience. 29 I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience?30 If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?

31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— 33 even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.

Paul is basicially saying, "Don't be legalistic about the meat that comes from the marketplace...give thanks to God for all that is good. HOWEVER, if you KNOW that the meat has been sacrificed, then do not eat it."

This instruction is in line with the letter from the Council of Jerusalem which read in part:

Acts 15:29
You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

Sorry, you're right I misquoted it. But the substance of my argument remains the same. Paul says explicitly in no uncertain terms not to bother abstaining from "meat containing blood", and "strangled meats". Yet he did not have the authority to make this direction to people. In fact no one single early church leader in c.51 AD has that authority, as evidenced from the fact that they held a Council to decide upon it.

All meat has blood in it, so that's a bit vague. Most commentaries focus on dishes which are primarily or obviously blood-laden...like blood pudding, for example. Beyond this, I will concede that Paul chafed against the legalistic rituals of the Old Covenant, but I also think we can agree that he had a temper and tended to speak his mind a little too freely on occasion. Maybe this was one of those moments.

I have to say (as a Catholic) that Peter did have the authority to establish doctrine by virtue of his position as the "vicar of Christ" (cf. Mt. 16:18-19). His decision with regard to the election of Matthew and the baptism of the household of Cornelius are two such examples. I also think that the Council ratified Peter's decision; it did not make the decision. We can discuss my reasoning if you're interested.

We know now that by the second century there were several different flavours of Christianity - not just Orthodox and Gnostic. Paul is one such splintering group, as is clearly evident from the fact that he does not follow the direction of what the Council decision was. I put it to you that unlike some of the other leaders of the time (James, Peter, etc) Paul went into the Council meeting with a clear state of mind about Circumcision and the Law of Moses, and that he left it without it having any effect over him whatsoever. Basically all he wanted from it was to convince the other leaders to do as he was doing.

Except that the Council went along with Peter who had come to the decision regarding the circumcision of Gentiles prior to the Council. Peter and Paul were saying the same things in this matter, and if Paul was going to ignore the Council, why bother going to Jerusalem in the first place? The big "loser" at the Council was clearly the judaizers who wanted the Gentiles to accept the Mosaic Law.

What Jesus taught and what Paul taught were very different to each other. Jesus defended the Law of Moses to the letter - yet Paul says it's not important.

I think this is overstated in the sense that Jesus did encourage people to obey the Mosaic Law in some matters (divorce, for example), but He had no problem with breaking the Sabbath by healing and allowing his disciples to pick grains of wheat - two examples of "working" on the Sabbath. More importantly, I think, is the fact that with Jesus' death, a New Covenant was established which surpassed the Old. So, Jesus was emphasizing those parts of the Old that would not pass away while Paul stressed the New in his writings.  

Paul's Christianity is a complete contradiction to the New Covenant that is prophesied by Jeremiah 31:31-34 (/Hebrews 8:8-12), in which it is made explicit that the New Covenant will be between Jehovah and the Judeans and the Isralites, and no one else, and that it will entirely replace the need for religious institution .

The OT prophets had a limited vision of how their prophecies would be fulfilled; the later prophets had more clarity about the Messiah than the earlier ones, for example. The Israelites did not conceive of a New Covenant that would include the Gentiles.

If Paul's branch of Christianity had died out we'd know very little about Paul just as we know precious little about James the Just. If Jame's Christianity had survived instead of Paul's it would today look very different. It'd be much more Jewish. The Gospel of John with its anti-Semitic tones would almost certainly not have survived, perhaps the Gospel of the Hebrews would have survived. Paul's letters would not have survived, in their place we would have Jame's letters.

I disagree that James and Paul represent two opposing groups in an either/or situation; they were members of one body (the Catholic Church, btw) with different emphases on various doctrines.

My point is that in the first century the Church was highly malleable. Paul taught complete contradictions to what Jesus taught, and yet today Christians follow a branch of Christianity that later developed from Pauline Christianity.

Perhaps you could share some of these "contradictions"?

I think that while the Church was "malleable" in the sense that the Apostles and their earliest followers were coming to grips with the implications of all that Jesus said and did, all of the Apostles and authors of the NT were generally of "one accord" and that attempts to find divisions among them amounts to picking at nits.
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