(September 5, 2013 at 2:01 pm)Beta Ray Bill Wrote: Look, Drich and all you other Christians,
Pretend you're a car-salesman, and business is slow. One day some people come in wanting to buy a sports car. Excited, you take them out to your premium model, and show it to them. You know everything about this car, but for some reason, all you talk about it the body of the car, what color it is and how nice the tires are. The people want to know everything about the car, about the seats, about the engine, about what speed it gets, but all you push is the body, color and tires. The buyers leave in disappointment.
Where is the logic in that? Why would you not talk about the best part of the car? The engine! It has 600 horsepower and and do 0-60 in 4 seconds! With info like that, you could have nailed the sale! But you just talked about the outside of the car, not the inside.
And that's how I see the teachings of Paul. If he knew all about the meatiest parts of his new religion, why waste his time just talking about the fundamentals? Why not spread the stories of the birth and the miracles? Those were amazing, divinity-proving things to talk about it, but he just tried to sell Christianity by only scratching the surface?
Theology, methodology or whatever you want to talk about is irrelevant. Paul was trying to get converts by just spreading a few ideas. When the Gospel-writers saw that this wasn't enough, they spiced it up, with miracles and false prophecies. They sold the car. Paul merely raised the buyers' interest, but he just wasn't making the sale.
And that's how I see it.
If Paul was that bad then Christianity would have never spread as it did, like Drich said Paul established a following of believers in Gentile cities. So how do you think he did that, his writings were to the leaders of each church he established, instructing them how to teach the greater meaning of Christianity in a persons daily life. He preached the Gospel (life of Christ) of Christ to the people, he did not use what he wrote to bring people to the saving grace of Christ, Paul says his writings are a revelation from Christ and he addresses them to Church leaders. As your analogy would put it, Paul sold the inner workings of the car to the Church leaders, so they could pass it on to the Christian community.
GC
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
