Did Paul write Hebrews?

[sagelady]

Paul was accepted by the other apostles as one of them having a special mission to the Gentiles which Peter had already been shown by the Lord were who the gospel was to go to next, not just to the Jews. The earliest church fathers recognized Paul as being an apostle, led by the Lord Jesus Christ, having as much authority as Peter and the rest of them.

Paul was verified in other books in the NT where if they so chose, they could have said he was a fake, false prophet or worse. BUT, they didn't. A cursory read through the non-Pauline books in the post-resurrection timeline will show you that.

Implying or saying that Paul was the abomination of desolation is more than a stretch, it's pretty much blasphemous. Would you say the same of Peter, James or John? Paul nailed the theology down pat BECAUSE he was trained as a Jewish Pharisee. The other disciples were the equivalant of pew sitters in theological training. Paul had the unique contribution to sort out the word of Jesus and apply it to the early church, helping to establish tradition that continued for the next 1900 years or so.

As much as you hate to hear it, the early church was catholic (universal) and was governed by bishops in the major metropolitan areas. Those early bishops produced a lineage that is still with us today in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Each man can trace his ordination back to the apostles. Which leads me to the traditions established by the apostles and the early church.

The traditions are encompassed in our liturgies which follow a simple pattern. Man comes to church and stands before a holy God and admits his sinful nature. God comes to man in word and sacraments to forgive him of his sins and point his faith and face to the Lord Jesus Christ. Man then gives thanks to God for the unearned blessings he has received from God. That is the tradition of the church. It incorporates early Jewish synagogue/temple worship and the fulfillment of what that forshadowed.

Too many seek to destroy what the church catholic has practiced for all these years and twist scripture to their destruction. The only thing Paul preached was Christ and Him crucified for our sins. That is the sum and substance of the gospel message. No more, no less. We cannot become perfect, nor righteous in this lifetime. Only Jesus was able to do that. We were born sinful (King David said "in sin I was conceived"...etc..) and naturally hate God. The struggle, as Paul so aptly described is that we war with our sinful flesh daily, doing what we despise and never able to do what we aspire.

Who wrote Hebrews? Who knows, could be Apollo, Barnabas. The crux of this thread seems to be turning into Paul was a first century Benny Hin. I don't know about you, but I tend to take offense at the Lord's annointed being called a charlatain and demon.

["Capt. Midnight"]

HA HA! your my kind of people, Sage. Apostolic Christian here. The slings and arrows on a web board don't hurt a bit. ( Orthodox not the most popular kids! )

Saint Paul was a lesson on SO many levels.

I like what Grampster said, as in "Why?" as another asked in the Bible, what profit is in it for me?

EVEN after the first generation Apostles, walked, lived, ate and Prayed with the Son of Man, failed him in some ways, EVEN though they'd SEEN him perform Miracles, EVEN after Peter went with him to see The Father and Moses, most of them STILL lacked the Faith, and hid in the upper room, and when he came through the wall, held out his hands, and told them that Peace was with them, ONLY then, was it enough to light the fire of Faith and Passion in them to go out, do as he had told them, and Teach as he taught them.

To be a Christian was a risky thing, and back to Saint Paul, a man who KILLED Christians for a vocation, besides it being that he lost his status, IMAGINE that asked of the Church, to no only accept without question one who had pursued them, killed many of their Friends and Family, as a man reborn, but to quickly herald him as a Bishop! there was a LOT asked of them all.

Besides becoming a great Second Generation Apostle, and the builder of the Pauline structure, and being the universalist, the hand to the Gentile, he could summon the Holy Spirit at will, as some of his fellows could do, but he was able to do ALL of this, because he EMPTIED his vessel, all of his pride, all of his profit, all of his status, all of it, and SURRENDERED to the Christ, he didn't project his image, his will on the Divinity, he followed the will without question. When he would often be thrown into prison, beaten, scourged, he was known to accept it as HIS will, and was known to convert those who tormented him in the prisons.

Another peer of Saint Paul, that gets over looked in the west, and most Protestant groups, in John Chrysotom, a peer of Paul, who's walk took him toward the farther reaches of the East. He was a great man of God as well. He has an Eastern Apostolic Rite in his name, and it is by far more appealing to me than the modern Latin one.

God can make the weakest the strongest, the flawed become better, and raise you up in your Faith to Glory in spite of your imperfections. Once you surrender EVERYTHING, and we all are trying to do so, to HIS will, and NOT project ours on the Divinity, its not "our personal," because WE are the creature, he want ALL of us, and to be INSIDE, AROUND, and ABOVE us, then we will be close to the Divine in all our daily lives, EVEN if it means we are persecuted in His name, we Rejoice in it, because WE know our Reward will be Great.

You can point out all of the flaws people overcame to me in the Bible ALL day, and I will REJOICE that almost all of them overcame their challenges, to HIS Glory, and became Saints, be it lessor, regional, or in Cannon.


If you look at the same victories over the flesh, and use it to tear pages out of the Bible in spirit?

I believe, in MY heart, that EVEN with the tamperings of men, the Bible is innerant in it's power, to speak to us in our Heart, to write the Law in our Heart, the SPIRIT of that law, and to comfort us, in our times of need, and that God HAS breathed life into it, and the tampering of men can't undo that.

God desires us ALL to be Saints, every Soul, and we ALL have that chance.

Praise Jesus.

[grampster]

Well said, Capt.

[grower]

To be a Christian was a risky thing, and back to Saint Paul, a man who KILLED Christians for a vocation, besides it being that he lost his status, IMAGINE that asked of the Church, to no only accept without question one who had pursued them, killed many of their Friends and Family, as a man reborn, but to quickly herald him as a Bishop! there was a LOT asked of them all.

Besides becoming a great Second Generation Apostle, and the builder of the Pauline structure, and being the universalist, the hand to the Gentile, he could summon the Holy Spirit at will,

A couple of things I disagree with you here, Capt. Midnight . . .

I never read in the New Testament where Paul killed any Christians. I don't think it made any difference in Paul's mind, because he considered persecuting Christians to be a horrific sin, making him the "least of all" Christ's men. But nowhere in scripture does it say he killed anyone. He was there when Stephen was stoned, but he held the garments of the ones who killed Stephen.

Second, Paul never "summoned" the Holy Spirit, as a medium would summon a demon. You don't "summon" the Holy Spirit. When a person is completely emptied of himself, his own ambition and desires, and lays down his life at Jesus' feet, seeking only the will of the Father, the Holy Spirit enters in and fills him up! This is what it means to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. It's the turning point in a person's life -- peace enters in, joy enters in, it becomes possible to truly love, and it becomes possible to hear God's voice and understand God's word. These things are not possible without the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is the indwelling presence of God himself, and is not "summoned" by anyone. He comes to a willing heart, and stays as long as that person eschews sin and seeks the face of God.

["Capt. Midnight"]

Yeah, I perhaps went a little too into some of that. "Summon," does sound like calling on an unclean spirit, if you care to take it that way, but at his Glory, shall perhaps I better say he was in communion with the Holy Spirit, or at least very close, good point.

In Sunday School as a lad, we were always told that Saul was just a right bstard to Christians, and perhaps they over did it a smidge? It was ALWAYS stressed that he was an ENEMY of not only the first Church groups, but of Christendom itself, as when he was struck on the road.

http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/...t-st-paul.html


begins with an especially ominous image of Saul (the future St. Paul), "breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples." It calls to mind something from a movie, where the villan is stampin' mad, ready to get revenge. And boy, does he ever have a plot in mind! He got permission from the high priest to take the Christians in Damascus prisoner, and drag them back to Jerusalem. Since Damascus was about 135 miles from Jerusalem, in present-day Syria, it was outside of the grasp of the opponents of Christianity, Jewish and Roman, based out of Jerusalem. By kidnapping the Christians and bringing them back, they could be tried by the Roman authorities. So Saul was something like a Boba Fett (or less gloriously, a Dog the Bounty Hunter).
And it is here, in this strangest of all places, that God calls Saul to conversion. With a flash of light heralding the Lord, Paul is knocked to the ground (whether from an animal or from his own feet, we're never told), closes his eyes, and hears the voice of God say, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Saul replies, "Who are you, Lord?" to which Jesus replies, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." (Acts 9:4-6). It's an incredible account.

After this, a man names Ananias (not the same one who is killed in Acts 5, obviously) comes and lays hands on Saul, filling him with the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:17). According to Paul's recounting of the event, Ananias then said to him: "The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name." (Acts 22:14-15). And so he does (Acts 9:18).

A few things strike me from this story. From a Catholic perspective, it shows that the valid laying on of hands does confer the Holy Spirit (which is important for such things as Confirmation, and is emphasized by Catholic Charismatics), and that Baptism does wash away your sins. It's interesting here that Paul has already converted, and is even filled with the Holy Spirit prior to Baptism, and Baptism is still deemed necessary to remove his sins. Additionally, like St. Peter, St. Paul got a name change, from Saul ("prayed for") to Paul ("small" or "humble"). While St. Peter's name change was tied to a covenant (just like Abram/Abraham; see Matthew 16:17-19, or my earlier post on this subject), Saul earned his like Jacob, by wrestling with God.* All the praying-for done for Saul's conversion worked, as God humbled him, and drew him into Himself. These are interesting things worth exploring, but not my focus today.

Rather, look to the fact that Paul's experience shows the futility of salvation through works of the Law. In Philippians 3:5-6, Paul says "in zeal I persecuted the Church, in righteousness based on the Law I was blameless." That Paul was able to persecute Christ while hewing to the letter of the Law shows the (massive) shortcomings of the Law. If Paul's salvation were something he earned, he would be doomed for "violently persecuting God's Church" (Galatians 1:13-14). He acknowledges that "I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." (1 Corinthians 15:9). God stepped into his life in an active way and saved him, even while Saul was zealously persecuting Him. There are many possibilities here - maybe God respected and rewarded Saul's misplaced zeal, maybe He saw something in Saul that no one else saw, or maybe He just wanted to use Saul's conversion as a powerful sign for the Jews (since Saul was well-regarded in their community).

In any case, this experience was the single most important event in Saul's life, and undoubtedly influenced how he understood justification. Certainly, humbly obeying God is necessary for salvation, and nowhere does Paul refute that (he even affirms it on numerous occasions). But his own life, his conversion, stood as a powerful testament to the futility of working one's way to Heaven, and the power and overflowing mercy of God. This is probably "the wisdom given" to which Peter refers. This justification by faith is tied to the idea of predestination: Paul says that God "set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace [...] to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles" (Galatians 1:15-16), and indeed, the role of predestination in salvation is emphasized more by Paul than the other NT writers (although Jesus speaks of it as well, a fact that John often noted).

A second unique bit of wisdom that the conversion would have earned St. Paul is a unique ecclesiological, as well as a theological, understanding of Christ's relation to His Church. When the glorifed Jesus Christ, in Heaven, says, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," He is saying something astonishing. How can a man persecute God in Heaven? Well, by persecuting any of "these least brothers of mine" (Matthew 25:40, 45), and by persecuting the Church. Perhaps we hear these verses so much that we gloss over them. We shouldn't. This is a radical and unusual statement. While we can wonder at what Jesus means by "these least brothers of mine" (whether that statement includes only His followers or all His human creations), the simple fact is that God is presenting Himself in a way which contrasts sharply with that "Zeus, sovereign god" image of what a God should look like. Certainly, God has the power to unleash some mighty fury, and He does at times, but the really unique part of His persona, the surprising part which sets Christianity apart, is the opposite. The humility of God, a term which seems inappropriate to even apply to a god, is what is so overwhelming. Fr. Cantalamessa discusses this issue (the humility of God, not its relation to Paul's conversion) in his book Sober Intoxication of the Spirit, a book of meditations that might be worth your checking out.

The ecclesiological implications of this humility are profound as well, and Paul was quick to grasp them. In Paul's work we see a motif rarely seen elsewhere: the Church as the Body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 6:15, he asks, "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" and seems to compare this union with Christ with sexual union (where "the two become one flesh"; see Genesis 2:23-24). He does this more directly in his epistle to the Ephesians, where he calls the relationship between Christ and the Church a "profound mystery," (Ephesians 5:32) and says that "husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies [...] just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body." (Ephesians 5:28-30). This is something much more radical than membership in a group - this is a spiritual bonding of your soul to Christ.

Sometimes this "Church as the Body of Christ" motif is understood in a loose, metaphorical sense, in the way one might say that a "large body of people assembled for the March on Washington." This, as I understand it, is what people often mean by "body of believers," but it's certainly not what Paul meant. Paul meant nearer the opposite: he tells us in Romans 12:4-5, "For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually, parts of one another."

He says something similar in 1 Corinthians 12:27-30, where, after employing the same image of the Church as the Body of Christ (in v. 27), he says that "Some people God has designated in the church to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then, mighty deeds; then, gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues." (v. 2. Paul understands the rank and hierarchy within the Church to be ordained, because "as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the Body as He intended" (v. 1. Nevertheless, just because someone is called to a more prominent place in the Church, this doesn't make the rest of the Church more dispensible. On the contrary, he tells us that "the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary," (v. 22) and that each part needs the others (v. 21). This comports with what we learn of the role leaders in the Church should exercise elsewhere, such as the model of pastoral leadership which Jesus holds up (Himself) in John 10:11, and the washing of the feet in John 13:14-15. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that just because those in authority often fail to live up to (our understanding of) what Christ calls them to do, in the area of caring for others, they don't cease to be validly ordained. In other words, the bad popes (or bishops, or priests, or whatnot) were still popes (or bishops, or priests, or whatnot). Hands can't become eyes, just because they think they'd be better at being eyes than the eyes themselves are.

In other words, Paul's understanding of the Church as Body of Christ, it isn't just a mass of people. It's a structured, organic being which breathes and moves together, supporting one another in their calling, and each called to something different. Let these verses serve as a call to organized Christian unity, "so that there may be no division in the body" (1 Corinthians 12:25). This unity is found in two ways. First, in the Eucharist - "because there is one Loaf, we, who are many, are one Body, for we all partake of the one Loaf" (1 Corinthians 10:17). Note the cause-and-effect: we don't just share the Eucharist because we are one, we are one because we share the Eucharist. For this reason, I thank God for Can. 844 §3 of the Catholic Code of Canon Law: "Catholic ministers administer the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick licitly to members of Eastern Churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church if they seek such on their own accord and are properly disposed." If anything can draw the two halves of the Church back together, it's Christ, who says of the Eucharist as Paul says of the Church, "This is My Body" (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24; notice the way in 1 Corinthians that Paul weaves his Eucharistic and eclessiological discourses together in this way, particularly in chapters 10-12, where he uses the Eucharist and oneness of Christ's Body to curb the disunion festering in the church in Corinth). The second, and related, source of unity is through Christ's leadership. For Christ is the Head of the Body, the Church (Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 5:23). Faithfully humbling ourselves to Christ is a precursor to Christian unity.

Finally, Paul identifies the Church as the very purpose behind Christ's mission: "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." (Ephesians 5:25-27). What an incredible statement, and what a clear result from Paul's learning the hard way that persecuting the Church is persecuting Christ. If your understanding of your relationship to Christ isn't tied to your understanding of your relationship to the Church, perhaps you should meditate more on Paul's words on the Body.

It is for this Church that Christ prays His high-priestly prayer in John 17. I think He speaks for Himself quite well, so I will note only one thing briefly. There are those, particularly of the dispensationalist leaning, who acknowledge the Catholic Church as the original Church, but say that God willed to divide it later in history, as He did Israel. Draw your attention to the forward-looking nature of the prayer: Christ, God Himself, is praying against disunion, and not just for the present Apostolic age, but for "those who will believe in Me through their message," which I think includes all of us. That said, read what the Head wishes for His Body:"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message , that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23).