Questions About "The Church."

[Michael]

You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. Matthew 23:8-10 Message

I’m familliar with that passage, but I’m also famililar with these:

I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me. (1 Cor. 4:14-16.)

I write to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, Because you have overcome the wicked one. I write to you, little children, Because you have known the Father. I have written to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, And you have overcome the wicked one.(1 John 2:13-14.)

It doesn’t seem that God ever told Paul or John to take the words of Christ that you quoted in the way that He told you to take them.

Paul considered himself the spiritual father (in Christ) of the churches he planted (and refered to a plurality of teachers), and John refered to the elders of the church he wrote to as “fathers.”

But that passage in Matthew is interesting, and given the Greek text (and who Christ was speaking to), it seems (to me) to weigh heavily against the theory that Peter was the chief Apostle.

Christ seems to be telling the twelve (collectively) not to regard any single man on earth as their common father, and not to accept the title or position of a teacher above the rest.

If that’s what Christ meant here, there never was any primacy of Peter (and if he has any succesors, they wouldn’t have any primacy either.)

And these are some of the things that would have been worth discussing on this thread.

BTW: I knew the meaning of the word “Ekklessia” long before you posted anything here (and if you have young children, probably long before you were born.)

[Sherman]

Hey Michael, that’s a bunch of questions, each deserving of its own thread. Seperate them and you’ll likely get more responses and it’ll be organized better.

Blessings,
Sherman

[Michael]

Hey Michael, that’s a bunch of questions, each deserving of its own thread. Seperate them and you’ll likely get more responses and it’ll be organized better.

Blessings,
Sherman

Thank you Sherman.

I have a lot of questions about the Church, and I’ll try to do that latter (when I have more time to think.)

Blessings.

[lorenwhoy]

I guess this relates to “questions about the Church”
I was listening to one of the Skeptico" programs (at this website: skeptiko.com/226-acharya-s-e … istianity/) with Alex Tsakiris interviewing D.M. Murdoch, aka Acharya, who was debunking the credibility of the early history of the church. I was wondering if anyone here had some good rebuttals to her wild claims. Here’s a part of the transcript…

Acharya Sanning: Sure. I’ve been picking apart the Gospel story and its various components for decades now and I’ve pretty much taken every element of it, the vast majority of it anyway—there may be a few details here and there that are required to weave the story together—but I’ve shown that basically what the writers of the story have done is they have taken numerous elements from pre-Christian religion and mythology from Greece, the Romans, Egypt, India, and other parts of the known world at the time including the Mediterranean which had a large amount of cultural exchange going on for thousands of years.
In fact, one of the major ways of disseminating religious ideas was through the wine trade. That becomes a really huge factor in this. That’s a story for another subject but all those wine elements, Jesus’ blood as the blood of the grape, the Communion with drinking wine as His blood, all of that wine emphasis is traceable to Dionysian cult, which should not surprise us if anyone knows anything about Dionysus. In fact, it’s practically lifted right out of Dionysus worship.
That would be one aspect of looking at the elements of the Gospel story and finding a precedent in pre-Christian mythology. One of the reasons I like to do this also is part of this trimming of the pathological branches on the world’s great religions tree is that these earlier renditions actually had sensible reasons for a lot of these mythical motifs. Their culture has been basically usurped, dominated, destroyed, had its myths and religious traditions ripped off and re-packaged. Many people are completely oblivious to ancient religion and mythology because of the bias and bigotry of Christianity, if we’re going to speak about that.

Alex Tsakiris: Give us some examples that people could wrap their arms around.

Acharya Sanning: I was telling you about the business about wine. Wine, of course, was the blood of Dionysus before it became the blood of Jesus. So that’s pretty important. The main element, the blood of Christ, is not original to Christianity.
Then we have the pre-Christian god on the cross and this long study I’ve done, 35 or 40 pages of figures in cruciform meaning they’re either hung on a cross or in cross shape and in-between two thieves. In fact, this is a solar symbol. There are many impressions of a divine figure in the center between two other elements. They generally are humans or anthropomorphized so that there’s this trio of images.
That is a solar symbol. The image in the center, the cross in the middle, is the sun in its totality and on either side is the sun in the morning and the sun in the evening, also interpreted as the sun as it goes towards the winter solstice and the summer solstice. It could also be the equinoxes. It’s a very solar symbol, this cross with two crosses on either side. You can find this going back thousands of years in some form or another."

---- she had a lot more to say, including questions relating to the existence of a real apostle Paul. Anyone have a response or a source for rebuttal to this kind of argument?

[Paidion]

Michael quoted:

Mr 3:14 - And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,

Joh 15:16 - Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

Ac 1:22 - Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.

Michael, have you considered to use a translation other than the King James? In each of the verses above, three different Greek words are translated as “ordained”.

Mark 3:14 ποιεω — to make, to do, to make ready (prepare)
And he established twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach (JB2000)
And he made that twelve should be with him, and that he might send them to preach. (Douay)

John 15:16 τιθημι — to set, to place, to establish
Not, ye, chose, me, but, I, chose you, and placed you, that ye should go your way and bear, fruit,—and, your fruit, should abide: that, whatsoever ye should ask the father in my name, he might give unto you. (Rotherham)
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and have set you that ye should go and that ye should bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, that whatsoever ye shall ask the father in my name he may give you. (Darby)

Acts 1:22 γινομαι — to become
…beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection. (ESV)