That's correct. And Christians are commanded to do good works. Note that a person has to be a Christian first in order to fall under the command to do good works - salvation first, then good works.
Read the previously listed post. And I mean "read" as in understand the content. Private charity can clearly handle the problems of basic needs. Clearly there is a failure of communication here - and as you cannot comprehend the argument which contradicts your personal belief, there is no point in continuing.
LOL .. you have no argument so you try and demonize. I have read the Bible more times than I can count and have been debating the Bible for many decades - as I have close relatives who are ministers. When I post the contents of the Bible you run to the playground crying "NO NO NO .. and throwing out insults" prior to sicking head deep in the sandbox of denial. Your mind is about as open as a Nuns legs and your comments are anything but educated. You run from the actual contents of the Bible in favor of spoon fed man made dogma.
You have not read the Bible, not even once. You post passages out of context and with sophomoric arguments which have been refuted 2000 years ago. A few minutes on the internet and any person can refute your arguments - not only have you not read the Bible, you do not even do 5 minutes of objective reading on your own or you would have the answer to your uneducated claims.
LOL clearly you must be defeated to make such nonsensical and obviously unprovable accusations. You cry "any person can refute your arguments" but you have not even addressed my argument - never mind refute it. All you have done is go into shoot the messenger mode because you can not handle the scripture I posted. Do you have anything other than insults ? I really must have hit a nerve. Don't blame me that Paul says all authorities are put there by God and because of this we are to submit to these authorities and not rebel. It is not my fault that his words led to so much evil, persecution and oppression. It is not my fault that his words justify the evil deeds conducted by the likes of Stalin, Pol Pot and every other genocidal death squad dictator. You need to wake up and smell the flatus. Paul made things up as he went along and his words (at least not these ones) are not inspired. It is easy to understand why Paul wrote this. His intentions were good. He wanted to make Christianity more acceptable to the Romans .. a smart move IMO. The idea that these words are somehow "inspired - from God" is preposterous. Do you really think God would be that short sighted ? You must have a very low opinion of God to think God would inspire such short sighted nonsense.
It is unlikely that 1 Peter was written by the the apostle Peter. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/1peter.html
15. What's up with salvation? Yeshua said that he had been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In Luke 19:9-10 (NLV) = "9 Jesus said to him, “Today, a person has been saved in this house. This man is a Jew also. 10 For the Son of Man came to look for and to save from the punishment of sin those who are lost.” So why do Gentiles think that he's going to save them when he plainly said that he only cared about the Jews?
Great example of complete ignorance of the bible, of your google&cut&paste limited knowledge of the Bible, and of an academic argument (that Peter could not have written 1 Peter) that was resolved many decades ago. 1 Peter was written by Peter and Silas, it states so clearly in 1 Peter. Who was Silas? A very well educated Jew who was one of Paul's traveling companions. Peter was a simple fisherman and by himself could not have written 1 Peter in the flowing and sophisticated Greek that is 1 Peter - but Silas could and did. 1 Peter is clearly Peter's thoughts as dictated to Silas who put the thoughts in writing. 2 Peter was written by Peter alone, which is why it differs so significantly from 1 Peter. And that also debunks your previous claim that Peter and Paul were not acquainted, were not friends, and had contrary beliefs. Obviously Peter and Paul traveled in the same circles with the same people. Try reading the bible. Next time you think you have an issue with the Bible, do a little more research.
I did. It was not an answer to either of the points. You just can not address the issue to save your soul.
Good gracious you are lost. The Bible is not going to tell you that the apostle Peter was not the author of 1 Peter. It would be beyond ridiculously foolish to think that it would. You so desperate for a response that you just throw out insults without even thinking about what you are saying. What I presented you was what 3 academics had to say. Kummel for example was a NT scholar and Professor. Are you going to now claim that Kummel has not read the Bible or some other nonsensical statement ? This is desperation x 2. The estimated dating range for 1 Peter is (80-100AD) - according to "academics" (who you say supposedly resolved this issue - a claim that was demonstrated to be false in the post you are responding to). Peter had already been dead for over a decade. Do you have anything other than insults, false claims and stuff you make up ? Since you claim that "academia" has settle this issue, you should be able to provide a link showing that this claim is true.
You'll get nothing of substance from him. He is nothing but a Bible Borg. Facts, reason and rational thought do not compute with him. His only defense is constant offensive slander towards the messenger in order to evade the substance of ones argument.
I know .. been through that "battle" a few times. Denial is a strange phenom ... how one can sink to such depths of irrational and illogical thought is kind of scary.
Dear @maat the meaning of the Bible that is unchanging as the word or law of God is NOT the "letter of the law" but the general SPIRIT and the process of humanity achieving JUSTICE, from the beginning of self-awareness when man developed ego and selfish will, to the realization of spiritual maturity when all humanity is renewed in harmony for lasting peace on earth. You can haggle day and night over the letter and the law, and this does not change the universal meaning which transcends that level. As one person explained it, a scale that we use does not have to be perfect. It just has to be accurate enough to weigh the DIFFERENCE between what we are trying to measure or distinguish. Thus, the laws, principles and teachings in the Bible only have to be accurate enough to COMMUNICATE between people what truth we are trying to establish or what error we are trying to correct. Also, if you are not a follower of the Bible, but use science or natural/civil laws to determine right from wrong, then you would use THAT frame of reference as a scale for justice. With Buddhists, the Buddhist teachings might be used to communicate. With literal fundamentalists, if they judge others using the letter of the law, then they would be judged, rebuked and corrected using the same standards. So if you are "secular gentile" and not committed to follow the Bible, you would not use this anyway. Like I would use inches or dollars to communicate values in terms that have meaning to me, and not mess with units that other cultures use. These are not perfect, but as long as we agree they are good enough, we can still use them.
1 Peter 5:12 "With the help of Silas,whom I regard as a faithful brother, I have written to you briefly..." You fail. You didn't even read 1 Peter, much less the Bible.
The only one who failed is you. Reading comprehension failure. What part of "The Bible is not going to tell you that Peter did not write 1 Peter" do you not understand ? Many of the epistles of Paul are considered pseudepigrapha - "falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past" - Epistle to the Ephesians, Epistle to the Colossians, Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, First and Second Epistle to Timothy and Epistle to Titus. This was a common practice from 300 BC to 300 AD so don't get your panties in a bunch and quit shooting the messenger (and insulting me) for telling you what academia has to say. Your ignorance and denial of academia is not my fault.
This is apologetics nonsense. If the bible is not the inerrant word of a higher being it is nothing more than manmade folklore/construct. I'm not concerned with the harmless cherry picked niceties. The book is filled with absurdities and claims to be divine. This is not healthy. The fact that most Christians willfully ignore reason and rational thought concerning hell and moral issues is disturbing. The book clearly degrades humanity, women, and common sense.
Dear @maat the universal meaning is divinely inspired. But the presentation is not universal for all people and thus not perfectly suited to all audiences. similar to the parables that may teach universal truths, but using talking foxes or snakes etc. is not universal representation that speaks to all people. The Bible makes it clear that the GENTILES who have not the law but by conscience do the things contained in the law become a law unto themselves. The gentiles follow natural laws by conscience. These are still given by God as universal but not all taught in the Bible. I find Buddhism and Constitutional law and science better for teaching natural laws. Just because the teachings in Buddhism and Constitutional laws are 'left out" of the Bible, that doesn't make the Bible untrue. It states that "Lord Jesus" or the "Law of Justice" govern the Gentiles as a SEPARATE fold of the same flock. so it REFERS to natural laws although it doesn't spell all these out. The message in the Bible is still universal in CAPTURING the history and future of humanity in SYMBOLS, even though it takes ADDITIONAL language to spell out all the knowledge it takes to fulfill this process. Both natural laws and scriptural laws come from the same "perfect God or Source of Collective Truth" and are two branches for expressing the SAME "universal laws" that apply to all. But people use different languages or laws for different contexts; the same way we can use science, including making mistakes, we use these methods to communicate and discover the true laws, but our language and symbolism is not always perfect. For example, in math, there are no way to express irrational numbers in perfect fractions. The decimal places don't always repeat in patterns we can capture. Yet the laws in math are considered set and unchanging; we just can't always express them perfectly using set variables, and constantly have to expand and improve the systems we already use, in order to express larger sets of relations.
There's another trying to convince ppl the earth is flat. Hard to believe grown adults can be so brainwashed.
Yeah !! not sure if it is the same person but I was in a discussion where someone was trying to tout the same loopy stuff. All those pics from space ? (and there are like thousands of them) .. Fake GPS .... a big ruse that this is done through Satellites ... I asked him ... how did they manage to keep this such a secret when the GPS industry is so massive. No good answer to that one. While on the topic of satellites .. I asked him what those things in the sky are that every human on the planet can see zipping across the sky at night ... crossing at exactly the same place at regular intervals. I asked, if the earth was flat .. then they should go to the edge.. reverse course and then come back again going the opposite direction. Of course this doesn't happen. I asked why there are different time zones. The attempts to explain this are nonsense to the point of humor.... they say the sun acts like a flashlight when you shine it on a flat surface. I asked why the stars rotate the opposite direction when viewed from the southern latitudes as opposed to north. If the earth was flat then all should see the same direction of rotation. Think this was when the poster stopped responding
Failed at what ? I did not claim that 1 Peter does not state it was written by Peter and Silas. If it did not state authorship it would not be Pseudepigrapha .. "falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past" What part of "texts who's claimed author is not the true author" are you having trouble understanding ?
I have an idea just toss out the teachings of Paul he was not a disciple of Jesus we all agree there and therefore didn't know the everyday teachings of Jesus directly from Jesus, so why use him at all as a source wouldn't it be better to focus on only books we know are as close to what he taught as possible or better find a book or book he wrote himself he has to have been reasonably educated being a Rabbi. Most I met are often fluent in three languages or more if serious scholars.
Interesting post but .. indeed Jesus does spell out natural law. In fact it is the rock on which Jesus bases his teachings.Matt 7:12 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7 "Do unto others as you would have done to you - Treat others as you would be treated" Jesus says that this rule "Sums up the Law and the Prophets" I am not sure how one could put any greater emphasis on something in context. Jesus restates this rule many times for emphasis and example: "Love neighbor as self", "Take log out of own eye before picking speck out of brothers", "Let ye who is without sin cast the first rock" "Judge not lest you be Judged". James 2 (James being brother of Jesus) referred to this rule as the "Royal Law". Now Jesus was not the first to come up with this rule. There was a famous Rabbi just prior to Jesus who said exactly the same thing. This rule is found as far back as Hammurabi's law code 1800 BC. Buddha cited this rule as did Confucius. None that I know of however put as much emphasis on this rule as Jesus did. This rule is the basis for the "Social Contract" and ideas of Classical Liberalism- the ideology on which the founding principles of the USA were derived as per the Declaration of Independence. The DOI gives two main principles 1) Individual rights and freedoms are put "Above" the legitimate authority of Gov't 2) Authority of Gov't comes from "we the people" (as a function of the social contract) rather than divine right/God as was the case in the past. I have skipped a few steps in my summary so feel free to ask for more specific clarification on how the Golden Rule is the basis for these principles.
