Toto

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a little less emotion, please.

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I am puzzled by this. Many of the references seem ambiguous - Lord could be God, could be Lord Jesus, but if you are a trinitarian, the two could be the same anyway. Was Paul a trinitarian? Would that make this more comprehensible?

Layman

Please regrain from implying profanity.

I understand what you are saying. I see no reason to believe it is true.

It does not qualify it. It just gives one title. Jesus is Lord. The Lord is good. Therefore Jesus is good.

Why did you split this up? To avoid the link in the contexts?

You are going to have to do more than just assert your conclusion. Paul throughout distinguishes between "Lord" and "God." Then he caps it off by noting just who the Jesus is the Lord. Why would Paul refer to the Lord in all the verses leading up to this one and then say that Jesus is the Lord if he meant God all throughout?

Your reasoning makes no sense. This stands as an example of 3, not that your distinctions mean much.

Why? That seems contrary to the text.

Paul is saying that slaves are free in Jesus and masters are slaves to Jesus. He is not making some distinction between being free to GOD and a slave to Jesus. What would such a distinction reasonably mean?

The better reading of this passage is that "Lord" = Jesus.

So you admit this one. What difference does it make that this is a specific gospel reference? What does that even mean? Please spare me from another baseless interpolation argument. Could it not be argued that "James the brother of the Lord" is yet another of those specific gospel references?

And your admission of this one makes your other arguments re: 1 Cor. untenable.

Ummm. This is also a reference to the Lord's Supper. Mal. is discussing a "defiled food" on the table. This is hardly a reference to the sacrifice of Jesus, which was a perfect sacrifice. Hab. is no more relevant.

Note: "Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?" 1 Cor. 10:16.

You cannot concede 1 Cor. 11:26-27 and deny this one. Not reasonably anyway.


It seems obvious that you are not even bothering to read these passages in their context. The reason that this verse is a clear ference to Jesus is that the reason "fear of the Lord" is mentioned is because of the "judgement seat of Christ." The fear is of the Judge. In this case. Christ. Lord. Further, it is through the fear of the Lord/Jesus that we are made manifest to God. This is the process of reconciling God to mean through Jesus the Lord.

You are going to have to do better than attempting to eliminate the entire belief in Paul's writings of the coming (second) of Jesus.

Again, instead of creatively searching the OT, why not pay head to what Paul thought? This is especially important given that Paul has appropriated OT scriptures that refer to God and applied them to Jesus Christ. This is a perfect example. Paul clearly thinks it is Christ that will be coming.

1 Cor. 15:23: "But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming."

1 Thess. 2:19: "For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?"

1 Thess. 3:13: "so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints."

1 Thess. 5:23: "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

2 Thess. 2:1: "Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him."

Note that three of these examples bracket your bizarre interpretation of 1 Thess. 4. You uthink that everyewhere else in Paul, including in 1 Thess., he refers to the coming of the Lord Jesus, but only in 1 Thess. 4 does he refer to the coming of GOD and NOT the Lord Jesus Christ?

This is so unreasonable I think I'm wasting my time with you. If you maintain this distinction you have zero credibility.

Another unreasonable dismissal on your part. In the same sentence Paul tells us that "Jesus our Lord direct our way to you" and then refers to the Lord and then again in the same sentence to the coming of our Lord Jesus."

There is no reason to read this a GOD and every reason to see it as Jesus Christ.

Funny how you rule out Hebrews but refer me to Ephesians. Do you think that Paul wrote Hebrews?

In any event, your reference is unavailing. The key to 1 Thess. 1:8 is that Paul is telling the church to imitate the Lord who "received the word in much tribulation." Paul, describing Jesus as having been crucified, would obviously think that the Lord Jesus Christ had suffered tribulation. On what basis would he argue that God has so suffered?

This is a reference to the Lord who was crucified, not GOD the Father who remained in heaven.

But likely written by someone in Paul's circle.

It is unreasonable to simply dismiss evidence of such proximate usages.

Whatever, Galatians opens by reference to the Lord Jesus Christ and goes on to refer to Jesus as Lord.

You're responses were nothing but conclusory assertions with a couple that referenced inapposite passages. Far from showing these verses to be referring to GOD, you revelead just how weak such an assertion is.

Layman

I think you've put your finger on Spin's confusion. Paul does speak of Jesus as having God's attributes, such as the the day of the "coming of the Lord Jesus." Or worshipping Jesus, which was usually referred to God. Spin assumes therefore that these must be reference to GOD. But Paul is clear that he often refers to Jesus as God or in ways that Jews normally talk about God or by reference to verses normally reserved to describe God.

To the issue at hand, I suppose Spin is arguing that Paul could not have meant James was the human brother of Jesus because it is a reference to GOD the Father. But given how often Paul uses "Lord" to refer to Jesus and that he introduces the same passage by reference to the "Lord Jesus Christ" the reasonable understanding of the phrase is that this is the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course, Doherty's argument would say that this did not mean iteral human brother of Jesus, but that's really another issue.

spin

I'm sorry you have difficulty understanding this simple set of distinctions.

The Lord said to my lord...

legei o kurios tw kuriw mou...

the Lord [use #1] Jesus Christ,
Jesus is lord [use #2]

Perhaps you could supply the Galatians reference you had in mind.

We have the full body of LXX for you to understand the use of kurios. Greek writers tend to use LXX. Why on earth should you believe that Paul isn't using kurios in the standard LXX manner?


spin

Layman

I did several times.

Umm, perhaps because the writers of the LXX did not believe Jesus was the "Lord Jesus Christ" who created the universe and was worthy of worship?

Furthermore, feeling free to dismiss Hebrews, whose author was likely in the Pauline sphere, but rushing to embrace the usage in a document written well before Christianity even occurred and therefore had no conception of a divine Lord Jesus Christ is unreasonable.

Finally, so you are simply going to ignore the discussions of the above passages? I especially thought the 1 Cor. 10 and 1 Thess. references were deadly to your case.

spin

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Layman
[B]I did several times [cite the Galatians passage which use Lord...].

I'll assume then that you mean Gal 1:19 which is the case we are trying to investigate. Am I correct? You can't use what you need to clarify until clarified.

No, because LXX is a big corpus of Greek which uses kurios, so you can see how kurios is used.

We are dealing with Paul, and that's hard enough because of his preservation within xianity (and the scribal movement of marginalia into text), but you have no idea when Hebrews was written so it is useless to us. You may claim that it is "likely in the Pauline sphere", but then you're stuck with doing the epistemology.

You simply don't seem to acknowledge the Jewish eschaton writings for 2 Thes 4 and the Hebrew bible symbolism in 1 Cor 10.


spin

Layman

Yes. And I can see from Paul how he used the term. And from Hebrews how other early Christians in Paul's sphere used it.

Actually, I have good reason to believe Hebrews was written prior to the fall of the Temple in 70 CE. Doherty agrees. And because 1 Clement, written in the mid 90s CE knows of Hebrews, we can date it quite confiently earlier than that. At least early enough to gain some level of status within the church.

Rather, I've proved that 1 Cor. 10 is a referene to what you AGREE is the Lord's Supper, established by the Lord Jesus Christ. I repeat:

"Ummm. This is also a reference to the Lord's Supper. Mal. is discussing a "defiled food" on the table. This is hardly a reference to the sacrifice of Jesus, which was a perfect sacrifice. Hab. is no more relevant.

Note: "Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?" 1 Cor. 10:16.

You cannot concede 1 Cor. 11:26-27 and deny this one. Not reasonably anyway."

There is no 2 Thess. As for 1 Thess. 4, I demonstrated by references from 1 Thess. 2, 3, and 5 explicitly stating that the "coming of the Lord Jesus Christ" that Chapter 4's reference to the "coming of the Lord" was also a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I will repeat:

1 Thess. 2:19: "For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?"

1 Thess. 3:13: "so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints."

1 Thess. 5:23: "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

You also simply have ignored my discussion of each of the disputed texts.

It would appear that you have no on-point response to these.

spin

With regard to my reference to the LXX (septuagint) and how the LXX used the Greek word for lord ("kurios"), Layman wrote:

You need to show how he used it, differently from the LXX. You avoided my simple example, quoted by Mark, "the Lord said to my lord", which shows a possibly contemporary (or near contemporary within 100 years) use of the term kurios in two different ways in the one clause. You need to make cases.

You've got no contemporaries to Paul.

I'm not Doherty. I don't know much about him other than you and various others like to talk about him because of his version of MJ.

Yeah, well, if you say 1 Clement was written in the mid 90s CE than I have to believe you. How does the text tell you that?

You've proven nothing of the kind. You've just proven two parts of the text deal with a similar subject.

You'll note first that 1 Cor 10:20 makes the contrast between God and the demons, and Paul uses "God" to refer to "God the father". In v21 the contrast is between the cup of the demons and the cup of the Lord. This is a simple Hebrew literary device in which two different means of referring to the one thing are put in parallel with enough of the same linguistic material for you to see that they have the same reference. This is also the case in the next verse with the table of the Lord.

With the table (of the Lord) we are dealing with a Jewish ritual meal (of the first fruits, which incidentally has been defiled). With the cup of the Lord we are dealing with the Jewish ritual meal (which includes the first fruits of the vine).

No, plainly not. Verse 17 introduces an analogy: "Consider the people of Israel..."

[QUOTE][B]You cannot concede 1 Cor. 11:26-27 and deny this one.

"Deny"? Wrong word. I don't accept it, but I'm sure there are things in the synoptic gospels which are linked by theme and you will agree that are very close to one another. A non-gospel example comes to mind easily, the trinitarian insertion into 1 Jn 5.

I haven't seen you display that you can reasonably use the word.

Well my nt has one. Perhaps yours doesn't. But I think you might have wanted to say that it was a type. It was obviously a typo, wasn't it?

You seem to have shown something different, that "coming of the Lord" is obviously different in some sense from "coming of the lord Jesus Christ".

The coming of God is marked by the coming of Jesus. What is the problem?

The book of James can be analysed with the same division of the usage of kurios as I have with Paul. It makes it clear with 3:9 and its "the Lord and Father", what the reference of "the Lord" is. James mentions "the prophets who spoke the name of the Lord", hopefully a plain reference to God (ie for you, the Father). Yet this text talks twice of "the coming of the Lord". Does the writer suddenly change the reference of his kurios from God to Jesus?

You haven't really discussed them: you have merely cited them. I would like you to discuss them.


spin

Vorkosigan

LOL. You're way out in front of me. I am having some difficulty understanding spin's argument in the first place.

spin

LXX Greek uses an absolute reference kurios to refer to God, but kurios can refer to other figures as well, though not in the absolute. I tried to outline the three different uses of kurios as:

1) a title, eg the lord Jesus Christ ("our lord" is another example);

2) in defining statements such as "Jesus is lord"; and

3) as a complete reference to an entity, "the lord said..."

#3 is always used by the LXX to refer to God.

Looking at Paul's use of examples of #3 we find very few that can be guaranteed to refer to Jesus. In two of those cases we find other things to question the originality of the surrounding material, eg we get one of the very few gospel-like pericopes, or we get a phrase like "crucified the Lord of glory" when "glory" is almost exclusively an attribute of the father.

The argument leads to using those few examples where "the Lord" refers to Jesus as indicating later editing.

Does that clarify the argument?


spin