Paul and Christianity

Israel

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Its a subject with no definitive answer. Going around and around is inevitable.
But lets not miss the fact that there can be a lot learned by the time you get back around to the starting point.


I think we could agree (is this me saying "so what you're saying is..."?) that in almost everything known...among men, by men, it all becomes "a wash"?

One says "I know this"...then another says "OK, but I know...that" (Not forgetting 10 billion flies)

Numbers add no "ooomph" to an argument, or position, do not further substantiate it...unless we are willing to agree it is all and only "about the numbers" especially if purported to be "about" truth...what is "true". But, for me, any case where numbers are resorted to to add oomph...kind of (in, and by their resort) already denies the singularity (if it be so?) of truth.

Even total agreement (if it could ever be reached) just among men...doesn't add or detract....does it? Doesn't it still...remain "a wash"?

I know there's so much more here in the assuming that must be established, really, before continuing.

Is truth transcendent? (we have not yet agreed) Not to what the truth is... we haven't even agreed as to its fundamental nature. Or whether it even has one.

Is it immune to the assault of, and being diminished by disagreement...and just as equally neither buttressed nor bolstered by agreement?

It's a great presumption then (to go on) if not rightly explored...whether something of that nature, if "real" then...could be known.

But there's a rub...do you see it? If the step by step pursuit includes the agreement to transcendence...how could what is "seeking" it...(if it is transcendent to "the itself")...ever even know it is making right exploration? How could "the itself"...know it is taking or making "legitimate steps"? Especially in pursuit?

And if in pursuit, isn't this also a de facto admission...if, or as truth is above...or therefore to be pursued it is therefore not mine (perhaps yet)...and...not "in me"? A man doesn't look for the keys he holds...or does he?


If that be so...if man can neither add to, nor detract from, truth precisely because it is "above" him, and that admission places him in plain also admission..."it is not in me"...another question forms. It also is a rub.

If I agree..."it is not me, and not in me (for what else could seeking it most plainly imply?) the rub is:

How will I know...if or when I find it? What in me (that I have already conceded is not in me...that is truth) would "respond" to let me know...this is it?

I know gold first by color (because it is in me to know the color of gold...but only by experience and learning of it)...and we would all readily admit to a time we knew nothing of it.

It was, if we could say it this way, a gift of learning what gold, at first, looks like. Where once we didn't care at all about it (of ourselves)...something came in, imparted by a someone to teach of its nature (color) and value. But if we are experienced "enough" we have also learned "all that glitters"...and so we may know of chemical assay, weight and substantiality..to aid...this thing outside concurs with what I know...inside, to at least...some semblance of saying "this is therefore gold".

But, might we still be wrong? Even...as to gold?

If I make no sense I will not continue. But I do think, especially in the matter of what we call "truth"...it's a thing slightly, if not very much removed, from the example of gold.

But then again...maybe not by much?
 
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1gr8bldr

Senior Member
What if somebody a few hundred years from now finds the writings of David Koresh and his believers or Ted Kazinsky and builds a religion around them? This could be the same scenario.
There is a notable difference.... Being that those mentioned stand alone. The story of Jesus is sort of.... an amendment to another story, the OT
 

Israel

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There is a notable difference.... Being that those mentioned stand alone. The story of Jesus is sort of.... an amendment to another story, the OT
And it does (if believed) perfectly "bookend it"...in that sense...doesn't it?
A man came from dirt and received a breath. It was discovered he didn't know what he was at all doing through a painful evidence (all spoken plainly in the accounts) through men who thought they knew what they were doing...all with more painful evidence.

"A people who tell on themselves"...warts and all. Pretty rare. Then the rarest of all appears...ordained to be, and the end of the "story". How freely he admits "of myself, I can do nothing"! So different than the man trying to do...and be "a" something. And by that, condemning all his own children to it. (God forbid I find fault with him, for I followed him as such a willing sycophant! If I condemn him, I condemn my own self)

A man who says "I can do nothing of myself"...sent to undo completely, all that came subsequent to the man who found in his will to be something...that he had to resort to illegitimacy in attempt...to be. Yeah. Oh, how I know...that guy.

But probbly not as I ought, cause I have not done, and cannot "do any better".

And maybe this is such a needful thing "I don't even know it". Like the "older" less preferred batteries, I too, work too much by "memory"...and a fault is revealed that only a new and memory "less" battery is more sufficient to. Actually, only suited to.
 
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