RE: Debunking atheists on christians not following the law of moses
October 27, 2014 at 10:14 pm
What's funny about the OP is that the supporting "evidence" cited that atheists are being unfair to Christians for their approach to scripture is exclusively Pauline. Well, no shit! Members here by now know that I never tire of railing against Paul and his ministry to the Gentiles -- and the damage he was willing to inflict on how the Hebrew scriptures were approached and mangled by his Gentile converts. Before there was a normative set of documents -- a New Testament -- there were many conflicting points of view as to what being a "Christian" meant. Modern Christians have so thoroughly swallowed Paul's spin that they never seem to step back and ask whether his version ought to be taken seriously. In spite of the gloss Acts tries to put on Paul's interactions with the original community of believers -- practicing Jews all -- there was a real rift between what is taught in his letters and, say, the Epistle of James. Paul won out because he was selling to a larger market and made it easy for his converts to embrace the faith because he was willing to gut everything that was distinctively Jewish about it. We can't really know what Jesus would have made of this spiritual used car salesman, but I doubt he would have been impressed, to say the least. When I question Christians about why they don't do more than pay lip service to the so-called Old Testament, it's because I refuse to concede that Paul ought to get a free pass and have the last word.
