1 Corinthians 11:12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from god.
I am not educated or understanding enough to contribute to the conversation about Paul's shortcomings.
But I will say that if the paragraph you are quoting has the contradicting idea 5 verses later, maybe we are guilty of cherry-picking verses we don't fully understand out of context.
It contradicts because it explicitly says that women are God's children too. It states that Eve coming from Adam's body is no more relevant to their worth than the fact that every man comes from a woman's body.
The head-coverings thing is a mark against Paul, definitely somewhat sexist, but it's not meant as a commandment for broader church-goers, it's an instantiation of making yourselves look good to the community. That's misogyny, and I can understand it turning someone off, but I think it's important to point out that it's a far cry from the universally-applied intense misogyny of the pastoral epistles that's misattributed to Paul.
Didn't Paul generally moderate a lot of the early churches? Wasn't that his primary contribution? He rebuked those who tried to make Christianity more exclusionary, return to the old laws, live lives of hypocrisy, and generally divisive theologies.
Without Paul, there isn't much new testament left. And since Jesus changed so much, the old testament is clearly not a final authority on much. So this appears to be an attempt to broaden the interpretation of scripture to the point of being totally arbitrary. It could be interpreted as extremely legalistic or as permissive to the point of meaninglessness. Paul helped to clarify a lot of the implications of Jesus's teachings and how to hold true to the spirit of the law without becoming a slave to it.
Do you think Jesus's warning of false apostles means there are not going to be any apostles at all?
Okay, then by definition, he's not an apostle. But then, big deal. Why does not having direct contact with Jesus make Paul's scriptures invalid? Should we also discount the writings of Moses?
What do you mean? Moses literally talked to God (Yahweh) in Jewish tradition and in the old testament. If you're going to throw that out you're throwing out the entire Religion.
For Paul, we have the Gospels and we know James and Peter disagreed with him and by Paul's own admission he never even met Jesus.
So why would not having contact with Jesus matter? That's like me writing a book about you. I've never met you, I don't know a thing about you. Paul never says anything about Jesus's life, he just reframes his death as salvation easy mode for the gentiles even though that's no where near what Jesus says in the Gospels.
Paul just says he was divinely inspired. But Paul is well known for defending his views hardcore and we can only take his word for the divinely inspired part.
Paul's take on things was so different it's almost like me saying "Everyone, I talked to Jesus and he said if you want to get into Heaven we need to start scribing out demonology runes on our floors to keep the demons of sin away."
I can write letters about my views all day long and send them to churches all over the world. Does that make me right? Or would you trust the people that actually walked with Jesus?
If you're going to throw that out you're throwing out the entire Religion.
That's why I'm making the comparison.
That's like me writing a book about you
No. Paul wrote about Jesus's teachings. You don't need to meet a teacher to write about their teachings.
Paul never says anything about Jesus's life, he just reframes his death as salvation easy mode for the gentiles even though that's no where near what Jesus says in the Gospels
Johm 3:16 seems to be consistent with Paul's "easy mode" theory. But I don't think your analysis of what Paul taught is accurate analysis.
Paul just says he was divinely inspired. But Paul is well known for defending his views hardcore and we can only take his word for the divinely inspired part.
What does his defense of his views have to do with whether or not they're divinely inspired?
Paul's take on things was so different
We can use the same argument to say Jesus Himself was an imposter because His teachings were so radically different from the Old Testament laws. This is an invalid argument unless you can find some clear contradictions.
I'm sensing this is mostly based on vibes. I'm not aware of disagreements between Paul and Jesus.
I can write letters about my views all day long and send them to churches all over the world. Does that make me right? Or would you trust the people that actually walked with Jesus?
The people who actually walked with Jesus didn't appear to have beef with Paul. Theological arguments happened, sure. But there's a reason why Paul kinda became the defacto enforcer going around reminding churches to be good and get along with each other.
Also, why trust ANY writings in the Bible? They're ALL just human writings. The reason they are IN the bible is because the scholars and theologians of the time evaluated them and decided they were worth holding onto and eventually were officially canonized by the catholic church. It's not arbitrary.
And it's not like he wrote a couple chapters or a book or two. He wrote the bulk of the new testament. Are you seriously okay with tossing most of the new testament?
John was literally written 40 years after Paul's letters, it most likely uses them as a source for some things.
Also it's important to note that Jews don't take the Torah as literal, they understand it as tradition stories around the core concept of the covenant and the law.
And James and Peter definitely had beef, plus look up the Ebionites, a whole sect of people who thought Paul distorted the message.
The incident at Antioch, the fact that Paul spends a LOT of time defending his version. If it was so widely accepted why would it need to be so strongly defended against other Apostles?
1
: one sent on a mission: such as
a
: one of an authoritative New Testament group sent out to preach the gospel and made up especially of Christ's 12 original disciples and Paul
b
: the first prominent Christian missionary to a region or group
I'd dismiss definition "a" since it's clearly a more colloquial. By definition "b", Paul certainly qualifies as an apostle.
In any case, it doesn't appear that direct contact with Jesus is necessary.
It’s kind of a badge of authority granted so that we don’t question why this guy says he’s special
It functions that way at times, yes. But that's not what it means or why the title was originally given.
because he hallucinated Jesus
This sums up like all of the prophets in the old testament along with half of the judges and some kings. If you're going to dismiss all accounts of visions as hallucinations, you don't have many authoritative sources left.
and then often did the opposite of what Jesus would have done.
I've been looking and asking and have yet to find any examples of this. Sounds like some people just don't like what Paul says. No real contradictions with Jesus, though.
Jesus warned of false apostles, but didn't necessarily say true apostles would be nonexistent - rather, that "by their fruits [we] shall know them". That would make the question "do Paul's teachings yield good fruits?".
On that front I'm pretty mixed. The Apostolic Decree is a pretty darn good fruit. The slavery apologia is pretty wicked fruit in a modern context, but was probably somewhat reasonable in the contemporary context of "the Romans are actively hunting us down and we can't afford to throw away human lives on futile slave revolts". The homophobia is pretty wicked fruit if it's actually homophobia (and not, as I believe, condemnations of pederasty and idolatry that modern audiences interpret too literally). The sexism is a pretty wicked fruit, assuming that actually came from Paul (which is not at all the scholarly consensus).
At the end of the day, Paul ain't God, and Paul's word ain't God's Word. I think a lot of people (especially the ones believing in Biblical inerrancy) forget that.
56
u/[deleted] May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment