Within scholarship there is quite an interesting discussion going on about whether the decision of the Jerusalem Council was a temporary compromise or a lasting ordinance for all Christians.
I support the latter view. People who read 1 Corinthians 8 often forget to also read chapter 10. Paul clearly prohibits eating meat sacrificed to idols, but leaves it a matter of consciense when such meat is later sold on the market. A good article on this is Food Offered to Idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10.
And the decision is repeated in Revelation 2:20,24.
2 Likes
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
62
I was under the impression that Greek mythology spoke of gods taking on human form. Is this not correct?
Also, Acts 14 has an interesting narrative where Paul (travelling with Barnabas) commands a lame man to stand, and the man is healed through faith. Then this happened:
The teaching of Jesus was that we can eat all foods. Therefore, my interpretation is that the guidelines about what we can eat in Acts 15 were to ensure harmony between Jewish and gentile believers - eating blood or something sacrificed to idols was an abomination to pious Jews. This is just an interpretation but would explain the difference between the guidelines given by Jesus and the Jerusalem council. Also Paul wrote that he could eat meat (in the Greek context, sacrificed to idols) but for the sake of other believers he abstains from eating such meat.
Despite (or because of) this interpretation I think that it is good to follow the guidelines given by the Jerusalem council. I avoid foods made of blood or anything offered to idols. If I would eat unwittingly such food, it would not bother my conscience but for the sake of others, I follow the ordinance.
If so then it must be highly subjective, because the objective evidence doesn’t show any such thing.
If so then He hasn’t done so in a way that provides any objective evidence of having done so.
This doesn’t bother me as a Christian, because the only value I see in such religious ideas is in dealing with the very real subjective aspect of our existence and experience. I think science gives us good evidence there is an objective aspect to reality but our immediate access to reality is subjective and the objective is very much of an abstraction. Furthermore, science requires objective observation but life requires subjective participation, and thus science is quite inadequate by itself for living our lives and anyone who claims otherwise is deluded.
Not so much, so the world is full of people who do not do so.
If what you mean is about some promise of otherworldly retribution, well this sounds like a con and a compete scam – something people have made up to make other people do what they want. This is an abysmal basis for anyone to see any truth in religion.
But you might notice as I have that some of these commandments are close to things which have considerable negative consequences all on their own. Thus instead of religion founded on imaginary commandments and retribution, it could instead be founded on the advice of a wiser source of understanding about what makes for a better life and then the idea of a better existence beyond life doesn’t sound so much like a trick.
Besides, while a “because I said so” might do for two year-olds, it really is a poor basis of morality for modern intelligent adults who have to decide what is right in circumstances the writers of the Bible never imagined. To do that we need reasons why some things are bad to do.
BTW authoritarian morality is a good example of one of those things which are far too convenient for those using religion for power over other people. If it is just about being obedient to divine commandments then those claiming to speak for God can use this to command people to do whatever they want.
That’s interesting. I have often wondered how to read Paul with respect to Rev 2:20.
1 Like
SkovandOfMitaze
(Intellectually Atheist Emotionally Christian )
66
I agree with the two points. Which is why I say I have faith, and it’s blind and not based on evidence.
I was answering their question about two fundamental things to my religious belief system. That’s two of them. Those are two core choices I am pulled to, and believe and those are the two reasons why I am not an atheist.
I think @St.Roymond is refering to Jesus’ birth. The Greek Gods could transform into both human and animal forms. But according to orthodoxy God became a human being in the womb, was born, grew up, and died. As far as I know, that doesn’t have a precedent in Greek mythology.
Of course there are demigods like Heracles (Hercules), but they didn’t preexist as gods before their conception.
You are referring to Mark 7:19 (NIV):
For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
I note two things:
Jesus didn’t directly say all foods are clean. If Papias is correct that Mark wrote down Peter’s memoirs, I think we can argue that the vision he receives in Acts 10 let hem reflect and reinterpret these earlier words of Jesus. So in the end, Jesus did indeed say all foods are clean.
Jesus did not say we can eat all foods. He “declared all foods clean.” So unclean animals could now be eaten. How you slaughter an animal for consumption is unrelated to whether it is clean or unclean. The reason we let animals bleed out, is because that way we show respect for the life of the animal. It is directly connected to killing humans. An animal life can be accounted for by bleeding it out, but human life cannot be accounted for in such a way. (Genesis 9:4-6)
So that’s why I don’t see any difference between what Jesus said and what the council ordered.
The four prohibitions are based on Leviticus 17-18. These laws applied to both Israelites and foreigners. The clean / unclean laws only applied to Israelites. So that seems to indicate that the four prohibitions are moral laws.
Leviticus 17 starts with saying that animals can only be sacrificed to Yahweh. So that’s also the context of the prohibition of meat offered to idols in Acts 15 and 1 Corinthians 8-10.
That is why Paul writes in chapter 10 (NIV):
18 Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
But if after the ceremony and banquet the leftover meat is sold on the market, it has lost its religious significance.
For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols?
This refers to the simple act of eating in a temple
Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
That’s some pretty tight exegesis… I need to look at the commentaries to see who gets it
1 Like
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
69
That makes a lot more sense. The sons of gods from human mothers were demigods unto themselves separate from their father. Arianism (if I understand it correctly) leans more in that direction.
Consider that the Holy Spirit in Acts 15 reduce the entire Torah to just four items.
Yes – it’s in John:
This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
No, we have the Cross.
Jesus gave one new commandment, and it points to the Cross:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
It says exactly that in Acts 15 – to be specific, the Holy Spirit said exactly that! He reduced the entire Torah to just four items.
Read the Bible much? Paul discusses that.
ALL God’s covenants rest on faith, a point made in Hebrews.
Um, what? He was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, born to Jewish parents who got carried from Galilee to Tarsus as slaves. He was “Roman” only in that the children of manumitted slaves in Officially Roman cities were automatically Roman citizens.
Nope – see above; the Holy Spirit said the opposite. When some early Christians said the same thing you are saying the Holy Spirit reduced the entire Torah to just four items.
No, it’s been fulfilled, which means “filled up” – and once something is filled up, only an idiot keeps trying to add more!
I don’t see why there should be any discussion; the Holy Spirit was speaking to all Gentile Christians – “those of the Gentiles who turn to God” doesn’t have an expiration date.
And Yahweh appeared in human form in the Old Testament. That’s not the same thing as God being born a human child; no Greek god would have put up with such a thing!
Yes – there’s a vast difference between making a human form (that pleases you) to ‘wear’ around on Earth and stooping to being confined to an embryo – no self-respecting Mediterranean deity would have even contemplated something so degrading!
The interesting thing is that this was in line with Roman/Mediterranean temple practice: many temples got income from selling meat from sacrifices, and once it was sold it was no longer sacred (but the price paid was).
What exactly is Trinitarian about the 325 version of the Nicene creed? The essence of Trinitarian doctrine is that God exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Who are the contenders? Who else would be considered divine?
Nobody has to believe in Christianity. Nobody has to accept the Trinity. For example, Muslims don’t accept the deity of Christ. Neither do Unitarians.
I think it’s perfectly fine for a religious group to articulate what they accept/reject.
The point there is that while even the pagan temples didn’t consider the meat sold in the market to have any religious implications, the fact that someone mentions it shows that he sees some religious implications – so avoid any possible trap or any encouraging the offerer to think that Christians wanted anything to do with even the gods’ leftovers.
Ellicot is good on this point:
If the weak brother see you eat the flesh which he has just informed you was used as a sacrifice, he may be led by your example to eat it himself, though the very fact of his having called your attention to it showed that he thinks it wrong, and so his conscience is defiled.
Then a useful note about Paul’s choice of words:
The word (hierothuton) here used (according to the best MSS.) for “offered to an idol” is different from the condemnatory word (eidolothuton) elsewhere used; as natural courtesy would lead a Christian at the table of a heathen to use an epithet which would not be offensive to his host. A lesson in controversy—Don’t conceal your conscientious convictions, but don’t express them in language unnecessarily painful to your opponent.
It lands somewhat between the two; Arius was trying to have his cake and eat it too – he wanted to call Jesus “God” but he – and this is actually guesswork since we have very little of his own work – didn’t want a human to be equal with God.
trivia: this tells us that Jewish influence in the church by the time of Arius was nil; a second-Temple Jew wouldn’t have been likely to balk at Jesus being fully God since he would have known that Yahweh often appeared in human form in the Old Testament writings; actually becoming human as Redeemer-Messiah was just a logical extension of the concept of the Kinsman-Redeemer. Plainly Arius had never encountered this.
Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
This has considerably more bite than I have ever read into it before.
Have you heard Keener teach on Revelation? I cannot recommend this more highly. Give the first 15 minutes a try. I love Keener’s tone, devotion, and encyclopedic learning all coming across at the same time.
The original doctrine of the Trinity is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons but only one God. This insertion of the number three (which is not in the Bible) is just Christians overestimating their understanding of God equating their understanding to the limits of reality and truth. This is frankly a disease which corrupts Christianity and turns it into a blight upon the world.
Every new religious group which comes along are more than ready to push their leader as a contender… Islam, Bahai, Moonies,…
Indeed and there are many versions of Christianity which are quite despicable and atheism is far better than those. And I will definitely not change what I believe just to call myself Christian. But the simple fact is that the FIRST decision of the FIRST meeting of Christians in Nicaea 325 AD is more than sufficient to distinguish Christianity as a religion distinct from other religions. So I see no reason to cater to the divisive people Paul warns against pushing a narrower definition of Christianity.
So for example, while I have no problem with the virgin birth myself, I will not agree with making the rejection of that idea a good reason to deny that someone is a Christian.
I can’t find where I read or listened it. But one scholar argued that in chapter 8 Paul is arguing from the standpoint from the “strong” Christians in Corinth. So in this verse Paul is saying:
“Alright, imagine there is nothing inherently wrong with eating sacrificial meat in a temple. Yet that would still have a negative influence on your other brothers and sisters. So it is better to not do it.”
And then in chapter 10 he explains why eating in a temple is inherently wrong. Just as we participate in Jesus’ sacrifice by eating the bread and drinking the wine, you participate in a pagan sacrifice by attending a banquet in a temple.
I also use that kind of reasoning when talking with non-believers: “Even if the Bible wouldn’t prohibit this, it wouldn’t be wise to do because xyz.”
Speaking about Dr. Keener:
“Whatever meat was left over from sacrifices was taken to the meat market in the large agora in Corinth (not far from where Paul had once worked – Acts 18:3). Not all meat in this market had been offered to idols, but some of it had. In comparatively large cities, Jewish people were often allowed to have their own markets so they could avoid such food (some scholars speculate that a recent wave of anti-Jewish prejudice could have recently closed the one in Corinth). In other cities, they would ask about the source of the meat.”
Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 481.
Then there is verse 27-28 (NIV):
27 If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience.
Dr. Keener again:
Most temples had their own dining halls, and people were invited to meals “at the table of Serapis” and other pagan gods. The meat at these meals would obviously have been offered to idols. But people were also invited to banquets in wealthy homes, where they could not be certain of the meat’s source. "
Thank you for sharing the quotes from Dr. Keener. He may be the one living theologian who if I met, I would want to hug. I had the privilege of a short correspondence with him a couple years ago. With emphasis on very short
Looking at his commentary on Corinthians he noted
Some Judean teachers later criticized Diaspora Jews for attending pagan banquets with their children, even though these Diaspora Jews often brought their own food.
I was also reminded there may have been some archeological evidence of early churches meeting in pagan temples.
While we are on the subject… I noticed a fantastic apologetic argument in Acts 2:14-36 which based the “therefore know for certain” on three types of evidence: the testimony of Scripture, eyewitness testimony, and a self-evident testimony of the Spirit.
Every once and awhile I would look at the commentaries on Acts and no one seemed to get it. Then one day, for whatever reason, I was determined to see if Keener got it. 600 pages on Acts 2, and I found it!!!
Peter makes an argument from Scripture that the risen one is the Lord (2:25–31, 34–35), an argument from the testimony of eyewitnesses and the Spirit’s present confirmation that Jesus has risen (2:32–33), with the resulting conclusion that Jesus is the Lord (2:36).
