Steven Carr

Picture this scene in 37 AD. A group of Jews stand up in the centre of Jerusalem and say that a man in very recent history was God Incarnate.

How long would they have continued speaking before they were all stoned for heinous blasphemy?

Paul in Galatians 6 says Christians were persecuted on the issue of circumcision.

Isn't there a hidden elephant here? Why does Paul not record any controversy over the idea that God could be a material being?

Why indeed does Paul write in Romans 1:20 'Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, INVISIBLE though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made'

Pauln even goes on to say, and set your irony meters to high, that some people have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a *MORTAL HUMAN BEING*.....

Hello? Jesus died. He was mortal. He was never going to live for ever. He was *fully* human.

How can Paul say it is foolish to try to say that God could be found in the image of a mortal human being? Isn't that his central message? God became fully human?

No Robots

He is writing in Romans about the worship of graven images. That man can bear in his spirit the true image of God, Paul asserts elsewhere:

The man indeed ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God. 1Cor 11:7

Steven Carr

Presumably then, women cannot bear in his spirit the true image of God?

In Romans 1, Paul links human beings with birds or reptiles as things which obviously cannot reflect the glory of God. Admittedly, Paul does not say they were wrong to worship a human being, rather than wrong to worship the image of a human being, which does weaken my case somewhat.

Nevertheless , Paul writes that God's glory could be seen 'ever since the creation of the world', just as though nothing much had changed recently.

gstafleu

In addition to "say" how about "write"? Could Paul have written this in the time and place usually assumed, without having been acutely lynched?

Gerard Stafleu

No Robots

Apparently not, except via men.

He's railing against "the men that detain the truth of God in injustice", who have always ignored the evidence of God's presence. Presumably, their rejection of Christ is then just another episode in their history of spiritual blindness.

No Robots

Well, Paul does claim to have been beaten and stoned (2Cor 11:25).

Steven Carr

Why not put in their rejection of Christ in that passage? Or point out the wisdom of Christians in worshipping the real human God , as contrasted to the foolishness of those who worship a fake human God?

Apart from being declared to be the Son of God when he was resurrected, Jesus disappears from Romans 1 and 2, although the idea that God has revealed himself is something Paul wants to stress.

No Robots

It looks to me that he is trying to deal with some kind of Gentile/Jewish polarization within the community. His man point is that both Jews and Gentiles have been guilty of ignoring the evidence of God. He then goes on to show in chapter 3 how believers are united in Christ and freed from the errors of their parent communities.

Steven Carr

Well, Paul really is dealing with some kind of Gentile/Jewish polarization within the community.

But this is irrelevant to his claim that God can be seen by what he has created, and also irrelevant that Jews in Jerusalem would have been stoned for blasphemy for declaring a human being to have been God.

No Robots

And God said, Let us make man in our image--Gen. 1:26

Stephen and James were stoned in Jerusalem. Also, this whole "man-god" business was (and is) pretty ambiguous.