- Sep 29, 2016
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No, I'm not saying " 'God' had it wrong in the beginning." The Apostles tried communal sharing of resources in Jerusalem, but as they began to spread the Gospel beyond Jerusalem and bringing in new converts, that system collapsed. It's the same reason why the Christians beyond Jerusalem stopped going to the Temple to worship, despite the fact that in Acts, the Apostles and Christians in Jerusalem clearly went there to worship.
The Apostles were not unilaterally achieving God's positive Will at all times and all places. This is evident when Saint Paul withstood Saint Peter to his face for supporting Judaizing Christians who were mandating circumcision.
Galatians 2:11-14
"11 When Cephas (Peter) came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"
It's evident that things changed given the lives of the Earliest Christian martyrs
(see
- Polycarp of Smyrna.
- Justin Martyr.
- Scillitan Martyrs.
- Perpetua and Felicity.
- Ptolemaeus and Lucius.
- Pothinus, bishop of Lyon, with Blandina and several others, the "Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne"
- Pope Fabian.
- Saint Sebastian.
were ordinary people living ordinary lives, and the writings of the New Testament Epistles themselves; for example, that Saint Peter was in Rome by the time of 2 Peter. ("Greetings from the Church at Babylon")
Also, if you think every single statement of the Bible in every single context is absolutely true to every other context, and should be seen as giving an intrinsic moral value, good luck explaining why it is that God commands adultresses to be stoned in Exodus, but God rejects the command in the New Testament, or explaining why God commands Israelite Armies to kill other armies yet God also says those who live by the sword die by the sword.
Also, if you are Catholic, this is explained in the Ecumenical Council of Florence in the Catholic Church's position on Kosher foods:
"It firmly believes, professes and teaches that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because according to the word of the Lord not what goes into the mouth defiles a person, and because the difference in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to ceremonial practices, which have passed away and lost their efficacy with the coming of the gospel. It also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs. This was so that the gentiles should have some observances in common with Jews, and occasion would be offered of coming together in one worship and faith of God and a cause of dissension might be removed, since by ancient custom blood and strangled things seemed abominable to Jews, and gentiles could be thought to be returning to idolatry if they ate sacrificial food. In places, however, where the Christian religion has been promulgated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased. It condemns, then, no kind of food that human society accepts and nobody at all neither man nor woman, should make a distinction between animals, no matter how they died; although for the health of the body, for the practice of virtue or for the sake of regular and ecclesiastical discipline many things that are not proscribed can and should be omitted, as the apostle says all things are lawful, but not all are helpful."
That implies I'm not Christian.
You're a liar.
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