Apostle Paul is quite the conundrum.
If non-existent and just made up conveniently for council of Nicea purposes, doesn't reflect well on history of the church.
If an actual Apostle Paul existed and used Jesus stuff as feed stock for his burgeoning ministry and he picked and chose and retconned his way around the middle east 'test marketing' various bits of dogma and creed and revising according to his 'marketing study' for maximum crowd draw (kaching!!) regardless of the violence he had to do to his 'feedstock' to come up with a message digestible to the masses and profitable for him to peddle, then we have the prototype for all the shyster TV preaches and traveling evangelists Christianity seems congested with even unto our era.
Current era 'Pauls' can cherry pick whatever scripture and verse their accountants deem best for the bottom line, and if need be, (like divorce and remarriage) even matters strictly forbidden can be 'retconned' into acceptability.
I kinda like that 'Adam Smith' version of Paul (for obvious reasons) but of the 2 versions of Paul in this post, neither seems like much of anything modern era 'sincere' Christians would want to acknowledge or embrace.
If non-existent and just made up conveniently for council of Nicea purposes, doesn't reflect well on history of the church.
If an actual Apostle Paul existed and used Jesus stuff as feed stock for his burgeoning ministry and he picked and chose and retconned his way around the middle east 'test marketing' various bits of dogma and creed and revising according to his 'marketing study' for maximum crowd draw (kaching!!) regardless of the violence he had to do to his 'feedstock' to come up with a message digestible to the masses and profitable for him to peddle, then we have the prototype for all the shyster TV preaches and traveling evangelists Christianity seems congested with even unto our era.
Current era 'Pauls' can cherry pick whatever scripture and verse their accountants deem best for the bottom line, and if need be, (like divorce and remarriage) even matters strictly forbidden can be 'retconned' into acceptability.
I kinda like that 'Adam Smith' version of Paul (for obvious reasons) but of the 2 versions of Paul in this post, neither seems like much of anything modern era 'sincere' Christians would want to acknowledge or embrace.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
