Protestantism has utterly misread, misunderstood, and misinterpreted the writings of Paul. Fortunately, the New Perspectives on Paul is starting to unearth that reality within Protestantism.
@Birdie He also talks about works done "for boasting," which don't get us into heaven. If we think we can buy our way into heaven by doing lots of good works, we're badly mistaken. But for Paul's Jewish/Christian audience, it amounted to the same thing, because the works they did "for boasting" were generally being scrupulous observers of the finer points of the Law of Moses. Paul was a Pharisee. He knew all about it.
Paul's point was
not that you don't have to do good works to be saved. If it were, he could never have written what he did in
Romans 2:1-16.
@thedarkwanderer I'm old enough by now that I don't really have time for "respectful discussion" that implies that absolute falsehoods contrary to the plain and overwhelming teachings of the Bible are worthy of serious discussion as if these were just different "flavors" of Christianity.
I am very sorry that such darkness and falsity has taken over in Christianity over the centuries. But it has, and I'm not going to sugar coat it or pretend that all these beliefs are really A-OK when they represent the destruction of the Christianity that Jesus Christ and the entire Bible taught.
I have challenged Protestants (and some Catholics) for at least two decades now to show me any passage in the Bible that clearly, explicitly, teaches that God is a Trinity of Persons, or that we are justified by faith alone, or that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, or even provided some sort of legal "satisfaction" for our sins.
So far not a single person has ever been able to show me such a passage. This is not just a matter of "opinion" and "interpretation." It's a matter of wholesale inventing of doctrines that simply are not stated anywhere in the Bible. I'm not going to stand by and say, "Okay, fine by me if you do that!"
If those doctrines were considered to be incidental or peripheral to Christianity, it would be no big deal. But when the doctrines that are made central, essential, and fundamental to Christianity are nowhere stated in the Bible, that is more than I can stomach. At that point "Christianity" has become, as Swedenborg said, "Christian in name only, and not in reality and essence."
Is God really so incompetent that he can't even state plainly, in God's own Word, the key, essential teachings of Christianity? Does God really require human theologians to "steady the ark" as Uzzah did, presuming to teach us what the Bible "means"? Isn't God capable of telling us plainly what he means, in plain language, in his revelation of God's Word to humankind?
If you think something is essential to Christian faith, life, and salvation, show me where the Bible plainly teaches it. Both Catholic and Protestant doctrine abysmally fail that simple, biblical test.
I, on the other hand, can quote you passage after passage from the Bible that plainly, clearly, and explicitly teach what I believe to be essential to Christian faith and life, such that anyone with basic reading comprehension can understand it without the need for Acquinas, Luther, Calvin, Swedenborg, or anyone else to "interpret" it.
I know that there exist many Ecclesiastical Latin and Medieval translations kept by professors and most catholic churches, but I decided, just to test my vocabulary, to translate John 3:16 into Classical. I need an alternative point of view on my rough translation so that any more experienced lea...
In my opinion extra-biblical is different than apocrypha, but it's not the same as every-other-book, like books written about Mohamed in 700 AD. What defines a book as extra-biblical for the purposes of tagging questions? (it it even a necessarily a book? my shoes are extra-biblical).
The vast bulk of Christian denominations, representing the overwhelming majority of Christians, subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity, which, boiled down to its essence, is "one God in three Divine Persons."
Non-Christian monotheists such as Jews and Muslims sometimes charge Christians with b...
