Paul v Jesus: Just who will judge what?

In our ongoing examination of the differences between Paul and Jesus up pops an incidental remark of Paul's which shows again just how far Paul is from the thought-world of the historical Jesus.

Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

-- I Corinthians 6:2

It shows that Paul knows nothing of The Twelve sitting on thrones and judging The Twelve Tribes of Israel. In fact he has completely replaced the idea by the logic of his missionary calling to make disciples of all nations, so that he can say to the Corinthians that they, the believers, will judge the world, the unbelievers. The Jewish apocalyptic nationalism of Jesus has been completely and utterly replaced, in keeping with Paul's idea that the church has replaced Israel. The church, the "Israel of God", is a "new creature" where nothing counts but being in Christ crucified (Galatians 6:14ff.). 

And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.  

-- Matthew 19:28

And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

-- Luke 22:29f.

The Corinthians in fact had gotten so high on the idea that they were kangs already that Paul must spill quite a bit of ink in I Corinthians 4 mocking their "reign".

Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.

-- I Corinthians 4:8

Now where'd they get that idea?

Cancel culture isn't so different from religion in that, sometimes, religion also offers no chance of reconciliation

 Cancel culture looks a lot like old-fashioned church discipline  

The story is good, as far as it goes, and makes many useful points. At the end the author discusses an interesting religious example of reconciliation where mutual listening and reconciliation occurs, but stops short of providing a secular example of same. 

Admittedly, it is difficult to think of any in these polarized times.

An astute commenter grasps the salient points:

The key difference is Southern Baptists only disciplined members…free to leave and join rest of society if you want…today’s cancel culture cancels you from society as a whole, not a small group which you are free to leave if you like. 

Exactly.

The true analogy from the secular side is e.g. to Greek ostracism and exile. But even there exile was temporary by law and carried no stigma on expiry, and required a significantly sized quorum to be legal.

Some Biblical examples seem downright Draconian by contrast:

And the LORD said unto Cain ... a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
 

-- Genesis 4:9ff.

Offenders against the Holy Ghost are irredeemable:

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

-- Matthew 12:31

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

-- Hebrews 6:4ff.

Paul, on the other hand, is all about reconciliation:

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

-- Galatians 6:1

But he recognizes that this is more of a vertical business than a horizontal one, dependent as it is on the divine action in Christ, not human initiative:

To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 

-- II Corinthians 5:19

And then we have Matthew's Jesus swinging back in the other direction again. Jesus is more sanguine about the appropriateness, necessity, and efficacy of human action in reconciliation than Paul is:

Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

-- Matthew 5:24

And why is that?

Because Jesus isn't planning on dying for anyone's sins, let alone rising from the dead. He's planning, instead, on the imminent end of everything and God's final judgment, and it's up to his hearers to repent.

The cancel culture warriors probably have more in common with this flinty Jesus than we'd like to admit, and are about as unpopular.

Even predators practice the virtue of nothing to excess: You won't find a fat cat in nature

But he was wary wise in all his way,

And well perceived his deceitful sleight;

Ne suffered lust his safety to betray;

So goodly did beguile the guiler of the prey.

-- Edmund Spenser

On the pre-existence of the soul

No man in his wits can seriously think that his own soul hath existed from all eternity.

-- Richard Bentley

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 

-- Matthew 10:28

The soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good and evil.

-- Plato, Republic, X, 621c

If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.

-- Second Council of Constantinople, A.D. 553

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

-- Jeremiah 1:5

Creepy connubial Christ talk at First Things and the Book of Revelation

Loving with Mary :

Mary, the Shulammite, turns around to Jesus. In his voice and face, she recognizes her husband, her Lord. Jesus is the groom; we ourselves are Mary, the Shulammite. Her grief is our grief, her tears our tears, and her despair our despair. ...

We, his bride, hold on to him, united to him in faith. Every Eighth Day, he comes to us in the preaching of the gospel; every Sunday morning in the breaking of the bread.

When we walk into church and the doors close behind us, we enter into heaven. Eastertide begins; time and space are reconfigured. It is the Eighth Day; we are in Paradise. Eve, the Shulammite, Mary Magdalene—we all join Jesus at the altar. Bread and wine show up. It’s a marriage supper. Our groom, our Lord, unites himself to us, his bride.

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to be clothed

with fine linen, bright and pure—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19:6–8)

And you thought gender confusion was so . . . fringe.

Hell is the disciple of death

 

καὶ εἶδον καὶ ἰδού, ἵππος χλωρός καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ ὄνομα αὐτῷ ὁ θάνατος καὶ ὁ ᾅδης ἀκολούθει μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ

And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death; and Hades followed with him.

Revelation 6:8

St. Francis of Assisi, child of privilege, is one of the few ever to take Matthew 10 seriously, but his followers watered that down, as they always do

St. Francis c. 1228

 Friars resort to farmers rich, and bless their halls,

 and exorcise the beds, and cross the walls.

 -- John Dryden

A sermon Francis heard in 1209 on Mt 10:9 made such an impression on him that he decided to devote himself wholly to a life of apostolic poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the Evangelical precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance.

Jesus, we hardly knew ye

If we owe it to him that we know so much,

it is perhaps long of his fond adorers

that we know so little more.

-- Joseph Glanville

Father Hans Küng of Tübingen was right about at least one thing

Swiss-born Father Hans Küng, theologian, dies at 93 :

Father Küng said, “The Roman Catholic Church survived for the first thousand years without celibacy.” He remained strongly in favor of allowing priests and bishops to marry.

The dead are wise, but they are taciturn

Silence; coeval with eternity,

Thou wert ere nature first began to be,

'Twas one vast nothing all, and all slept fast in thee.

-- Alexander Pope

All the tribes of the earth shall mourn

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn (καὶ τότε κόψονται πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς), and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 

-- Matthew 24:30

Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him (καὶ κόψονται ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς). Even so, Amen. 

-- Revelation 1:7

They say there's safety in numbers, but that's about it

 

I do not remember where ever God delivered his oracles by the multitude, or nature truth by the herd.

-- John Locke

John is the gospel of believing in Jesus, the Synoptics are the gospel of actually hitting the road with him

While the concepts of a personal call to "believe in me" and to "follow me" both appear in the Fourth Gospel, the Synoptics do not feature a Jesus who comes up to you and says "believe in me" like John does. In John the disciple is now one who believes, because Jesus in his resurrected glory is no longer possible to follow in the Synoptic sense.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 

-- John 14:1

Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

-- John 13:36

The Fourth Gospel in fact is replete with phrases involving personal "belief" in Jesus whereas the Synoptics contain relatively few involving belief, let alone commands by Jesus to "believe" in him. And we do not have in the Fourth Gospel either what could be called a robust memory of the tradition involving "following". This is because the eschatological urgency involved in the command to follow has disappeared for the Fourth Gospel. 

It is the Synoptics which feature a Jesus who calls people to come with him on the road as the distinctive feature of discipleship. The old world is imminently passing away in judgment. The few who answer his call to follow will be saved. But in John discipleship is now open to the many, to anyone in fact who reads the book and believes, which is the new meaning of following.

But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. 

-- John 20:31 

 

Filthy: 62% of men and 40% of women don't wash after using the loo

How perfect then is man? from head to foot

Defil'd with filth, and rotten at the root.

-- George Sandys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2971931/Do-wash-hands-going-loo-62-men-40-women-admit-don-t-bother.html

The day after Easter

 

Lies the secularists tell: "Secular people are more supportive of sex education, which reduces sexually transmitted diseases"

Phil Zuckerman in the failing Los Angeles Times, owned since 2018 by a biotech billionaire who invented Abraxane:

Op-Ed: Why America’s record godlessness is good news for the nation :

"Secularity is highly correlated with a host of moral orientations that will markedly improve our nation. ... Secular people are more supportive of sex education, which reduces sexually transmitted diseases".

The lie here isn't the support of sex education. It's that sex education has that effect.

Notice the "will" in the claim, however, anticipating anyone with the temerity to bring up the facts. You know, the science. Despite record STDs in now secular America they would doubtlessly respond that sex education still hasn't failed. Like Keynesian economics hasn't failed, we just haven't had enough sex education yet.

Progressives sell a this-worldly version of hopium no less fantastic than the promised imminently coming army of angelic legions appearing in the heavens lead by the Son of Man in ~ A.D. 30.

Just give it a little more time and a new age of dignity, liberty and well-being will dawn.

"Research shows that secular people are more likely to support women’s reproductive rights, universal healthcare, gay rights, environmental protections, death with dignity, gun safety legislation and treating drug abuse as a medical rather than criminal problem — all of which will serve to increase dignity, liberty and well-being in America." 

At least until the Muslims take over.

Sexually Transmitted Disease Cases Reach Record High In The U.S. [Infographic]

On having the mere form of antiquity, but lacking the sense thereof

Some by old words to fame have made pretence;

Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense !

-- Alexander Pope