The Gospel Versus "God's Economy"

[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

What I see in the New Testament is, the church between Jesus and Paul being Jewish, and then with Paul gentile. And their Jesus's weren't the same.

Let me make an analogy here. Suppose I want to learn about Fred Smith, what he was like. Suppose I say, "Well, I surely want to interview his neighbour. They lived next door for years. But I won't ask his child, because the boy was young, and he's obviously biased." Does that make any sense?

Surely the neighbour and the boy have unique views, but of the same man.

Paul was clearly necessary; without Paul, you and I would not be writing about James, here. Christianity would have died when Jerusalem was destroyed.

And to simplify the Jerusalem/Jewish wing of the church as "James" oversimplifies to an extreme. As I said, Peter and John were law-keeping Jews. And I see no evidence that John ever stopped. And Paul said in Acts 22 that he was baptized by a law-keeping Jew.

If we want to simplify, let's say that, "Love fulfills the law"; beyond that, I think all voices should be heard. It's the sound of many waters. God did it, to His glory and honour. The spiritual crime of Lee is that he only wanted to hear his own voice. And he convinced us this was necessary. "To avoid confusion."