Doug Shaver

How about it? I don't see how it is relevant to what I said.

Ben C Smith

For those interested in how Paul uses the term Lord in his epistles, I have just uploaded a new page to my site that deals with the raw data. The (long) list of references should be fairly exhaustive, within the bounds of textual variation and so forth. It was compiled by a simple search for κυριος@* in the Pauline epistles in BibleWorks 5; the five categories, of course, are my own doing.

I may eventually sift through the raw data a bit on that page and attempt to draw some conclusions. But not right now.

Ben.

Steven Avery

Spot-on John.

And obviously some of us do not even remotely take this idea "for granted".

And I would go a step further. If Paul did not write the letters that the NT have as penned in the name of Paul then the basic issue is over. The NT is unreliable, it is not scripture, not the word of God .. go out and party or weep and do whatever.

I for one strongly defend the authenticity of the Pastorals as Pauline and have discussed the details of this on forums, perhaps including this one. Sometimes I am rather amazed at how "soft" and weak are some of the arguments used against Pauline authorship of the Pastorals and Petrine authorship of 2 Peter. And in fact some of the arguments themselves require other skeptic hobby horses (such as a very late Acts) to have any pizazz. Those arguments have a built-in circularity of rejection.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Ben C Smith

So... if it turns out that Paul did not write, say, the epistle to Titus, all 66 books of the standard canon just melt into oblivion? Is there nothing at all that could be salvaged of Christian doctrine and theology? Is it really lights out, game over, go home?

Ben.

Steven Avery

In a basic sense.. yes, Ben.

The purity and integrity and perfection and consistency
of God is the issue.

Shalom,
Steven

PS.
(Yes, you could still try to be a 'good person' in the same way as following an ethical teaching .. this is not begrudged, however it is a shell of the Christian faith.)

Ben C Smith

What if something is being claimed of God that God himself is not actually claiming? It is one thing for God himself to descend from on high to tell me about his latest book. It is quite another for you or any other human being to tell me about the book.

IOW, if the integrity of God is at issue, then we must know already what God is claiming, right? The big question in my mind is: How do we know what God is claiming? (How do we know that God claims full responsibility for every mark in the Bible?)

Ben.

Gamera

I am aware of no compelling reason to assume in any of those instances that when Paul says "the lord," he means "Jesus.""

The fact that the terms clearly references Jesus in dozens of instances as used by Paul seem relevant to the meaning the term as used by Paul.

Steven Avery

Hi Ben, if God has his hand on the Bible, in any real sense, then He has placed His hand there in fullness. Else he is not the God of consistency, of integrity, of truth and each becomes right in their own eyes, there is no Final Authority. Once you have a viewpoint that He did not either inspire and preserve (and those two only have meaning symbiotically) His word you could just as well change to a philosophy of personal revelation, sans the plumbline of scripture.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spamandham

Based on your later clarrification, no. This is one of the points Doherty makes. It makes no sense for Paul to make proclomations as if they were his own, or appeal to the authority of the Jewish scriptures (which he does) rather than to appeal to the authority of Jesus' own words (which he doesn't), unless Paul knew nothing of the teachings of Jesus, particularly when the purported audience for his letters is fellow Christians!

GrandpaMithras

Oh wow! This is going to be easy...

Fossil! Genesis invalidated. Time for the weeping and gnashing of teeth.