Is the NT complete

mountainyman

Believers only please or at least no morons.

Do you believe the New Testament is complete. For example, it contains no condemnation of slavery.

Is it credible that Christ would not have condemned slavery. I believe it is not credible.

Therefore the New Testament is not complete.

MM

PDN

mountainyman wrote:

Believers only please or at least no morons.

Do you believe the New Testament is complete. For example, it contains no condemnation of slavery.

Is it credible that Christ would not have condemned slavery. I believe it is not credible.

Therefore the New Testament is not complete.

MM

If you mean, does the New Testament contain everything Christ ever taught, then the answer is no.

"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." (John 21:25)

"Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31)

If we are asking if the New Testament (together with the Old Testament) includes everything we need to know in order to be saved and to live as a disciple of Christ, the answer is yes.

robindch

mountainyman wrote:

Is it credible that Christ would not have condemned slavery.

You are correct. Jesus didn't condemn slavery because it was a normal part of life in first century Palestine and the Roman Empire in general of which he was a part. Luke 12:43-48 has Jesus comparing himself, without embarrassment, to a master, and his believers as servants or slaves:

The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

BTW, the original Greek text uses the word "doulos" which is usually translated as "slave" in Classical Greek and not the more neutral "servant" or "bondservant" which is used in most, but not all, English translations.

.

Fanny Cradock

There is no outright, unambiguous condemnation of slavery in the NT. I hear a collective atheist sigh at the following: but you must look at what was deemed acceptable in those times. As abhorrent a though it may be to us now, back then slavery was acceptable!

1 Timothy 1:10 does condemn the slave trade, but I don't think it was Jesus' or Paul's intention to start a revolution. Why? Well, I would have thought that this would have led to disastrous consequences for the slaves and for the Christians encouraging this. After all, the Romans would not have taken kindly to any kind of dissent.

If you read through Philemon you will see that he encourages the master (Philemon) of an escaped slave (Onesimus) to treat him no longer as a slave but as a brother in Christ. He personally vouches for Onesimus and describes him as - for want of a better term - a human. I think you would find that as Christianity spread and grew thought Roman Empire, slavery declined.

bonkey

Fanny Cradock wrote:

I hear a collective atheist sigh at the following: but you must look at what was deemed acceptable in those times. As abhorrent a though it may be to us now, back then slavery was acceptable!

I'll accept that if the theists will accept that the direct implication is that the lessons of the bible may, therefore, not be directly applicable to today, given that they are - as you point out - based on what was acceptable at the time, rather than what was, is and always will be acceptable.

As for the NT being complete...I guess its a question of what constitutes "completeness".

One could equally apply the same question to the entire bible, and ask (both OT and NT) about the various Apocrypha. Should they be considered part of the bible or not. For those who say they should, then clearly a bible without them must be incomplete. For those who believe they shouldn't, then a bible containing them may not be incomplete, but surely cannot be fully correct.

Fanny Cradock

bonkey wrote:

I'll accept that if the theists will accept that the direct implication is that the lessons of the bible may, therefore, not be directly applicable to today, given that they are - as you point out - based on what was acceptable at the time, rather than what was, is and always will be acceptable.

Absolutely not. For Christians, the Bible remains as relevant today as it always has. A committed Christian will not change their faith to suit the stipulations you lay down for your acceptance of an answer.

Out of interest, what specific 'lessons' are you talking about that should no longer be considered applicable?

BrianCalgary

mountainyman wrote:

Do you believe the New Testament is complete. For example, it contains no condemnation of slavery.

Is it credible that Christ would not have condemned slavery. I believe it is not credible.

Not necessarily, What the NT does is tell us how to be in proper realationship with our slave. I did a little exercise and wherever the Bible said slave I replaced it with employee and wherever it said master I replaced it with employer.

Then those passages became very relevant today as it talks about proper relationship in those situations.

mountainyman wrote:

Therefore the New Testament is not complete.

MM

I say it is complete, with prophecy yet to come.

To bonkey: the reason teh Apocrypha isn't accepted as part of teh Bible is that none of the books are qouted in the NT. The only book of the OT that is not quoted in the NT is Ruth. Ruth is included because she is mentioned ion the geneaology of Christ.

robindch

Fanny Cradock wrote:

I don't think it was Jesus' or Paul's intention to start a revolution. Why? Well, I would have thought that this would have led to disastrous consequences for the slaves and for the Christians encouraging this.

The Roman Empire had already had trouble with a number of slave revolts about 100 years before Jesus arrived on the scene. I expect Jesus would have known this pretty well which is probably why his rather limited do-unto-others ideas explicitly did not include slaves.

Fanny Cradock wrote:

I think you would find that as Christianity spread and grew thought Roman Empire, slavery declined.

I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest this. In fact, the opposite appears to be true, what with (latterly) the belligerent christian nations of UK, Spain, Portugal, America, the Caribbean and elsewhere involved in a massive slave trade up until around 150 years ago, when the notion that individual humans had individual rights began to seep into the USA, and then elsewhere, after they'd gained prominence in France following the anti-religious French Revolution.

Fanny Cradock wrote:

The Bible remains as relevant today as it always has. A committed Christian will not change their faith to suit the stipulations you lay down for your acceptance of an answer.

Indeed; christians sincerely believe that they are not changing their beliefs. What christians are doing instead is changing their interpretations of the bible to suit their beliefs, as another thread is quite adequately showing at the moment. People's personal belief about what to accept as metaphorical, and what to accept as real, is down to personal preference now as much as it ever has been.

robindch

BrianCalgary wrote:

What the NT does is tell us how to be in proper realationship with our slave. I did a little exercise and wherever the Bible said slave I replaced it with employee and wherever it said master I replaced it with employer. Then those passages became very relevant today as it talks about proper relationship in those situations.

Hmmm... you may need to read that passage from Luke 12:43-48 above again:

The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

Employers chopping up employees into little bits and parking them in hell? Not with current legislation, I'm afraid.

BTW, I'm not sure if substituting something the bible says for something that the bible doesn't say is the best way to understand the bible. Doing it on Genesis 1:1 gave me "In the beginning the Big Bang and Evolution gave rise to the heavens and the earth" which probably isn't the most common reading of the text.

Fanny Cradock

robindch wrote:

Hmmm... you may need to read that passage from Luke 12:43-48 above again:Employers chopping up employees into little bits and parking them in hell? Not with current legislation, I'm afraid.

It's a parable

Fanny Cradock

robindch wrote:

Indeed; christians sincerely believe that they are not changing their beliefs. What christians are doing instead is changing their interpretations of the bible to suit their beliefs, as another thread is quite adequately showing at the moment.

I don't believe it is adequately showing that at all.

PDN

Fanny Cradock wrote:

It's a parable

Fanny, why even bother to argue? robindch and his ilk only ever read the Bible to find proof texts to bash believers with. They will ignore context, literary genre, and every accepted principle of literary interpretation in order to portray us as a bunch of moronic, rabid fundamentalists who pick & choose which parts of Scripture we like & ignore the rest.

Why spoil their fun?

robindch

> They will ignore context, literary genre, and every accepted principle of
> literary interpretation in order to portray us as a bunch of moronic, rabid
> fundamentalists who pick & choose which parts of Scripture we like &
> ignore the rest.

I must say that I'm sorry that you see it in this aggressive way.

What both of us are doing is selecting pieces of text from the bible to support our position, then developing interpretations based upon these texts.

What is different between you and I is that I accept that there are alternate interpretations and therefore alternate understandings, while you assert that your own specific interpretation is the only correct one. And, furthermore, that anybody who suggests that you're actually doing this selective interpretation is somehow portraying you as a moron. That perception of yours isn't something I really can help you with, but it might be worth you considering whether or not you might be bringing this upon yourself by implying that you can't be wrong or inaccurate about about something.

PDN

robindch wrote:

> They will ignore context, literary genre, and every accepted principle of
> literary interpretation in order to portray us as a bunch of moronic, rabid
> fundamentalists who pick & choose which parts of Scripture we like &
> ignore the rest.

I must say that I'm sorry that you see it in this aggressive way.

What both of us are doing is selecting pieces of text from the bible to support our position, then developing interpretations based upon these texts.

What is different between you and I is that I accept that there are alternate interpretations and therefore alternate understandings, while you assert that your own specific interpretation is the only correct one. And, furthermore, that anybody who suggests that you're actually doing this selective interpretation is somehow portraying you as a moron. That perception of yours isn't something I really can help you with, but it might be worth you considering whether or not you might be bringing this upon yourself by implying that you can't be wrong or inaccurate about about something.

I apologise if my post seemed aggressive, I genuinely (but hastily) believed that you were deliberately playing the fool, pretending not to be able to tell the difference between a parable (an illustrative story designed to teach a spiritual truth) and a biblical command to behave in one way or another. I am sorry that I misunderstood you and failed to see that you were being sincere. Again, I am sorry.

Fanny Cradock

robindch wrote:

What is different between you and I is that I accept that there are alternate interpretations and therefore alternate understandings, while you assert that your own specific interpretation is the only correct one. And, furthermore, that anybody who suggests that you're actually doing this selective interpretation is somehow portraying you as a moron. That perception of yours isn't something I really can help you with, but it might be worth you considering whether or not you might be bringing this upon yourself by implying that you can't be wrong or inaccurate about about something.

I think we all accept that there are alternate interpretations out there. However, much like The Highlander, 'there can be only one' [true interpretation]. Something is either correct or it isn't. Jesus was saying one specific thing and nothing else.

PDN

mountainyman wrote:

Believers only please or at least no morons.

Mountainyman, maybe you should be more specific next time. Since none of us will admit to being morons your wording left this post open to everyone.

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

I apologise if my post seemed aggressive, I genuinely (but hastily) believed that you were deliberately playing the fool, pretending not to be able to tell the difference between a parable (an illustrative story designed to teach a spiritual truth) and a biblical command to behave in one way or another. I am sorry that I misunderstood you and failed to see that you were being sincere. Again, I am sorry.

The thing is that you are working under the assumption that Jesus would not have meant this parable literally, because you are under the assumption that Jesus would not have approved of slavery, or at least this harsh treatment of disrespectful slaves, because you don't approve of slavery.

Robin is working under no such assumption. He is reading the Bible as it is written with in the context of what is written and the context of the time it was written.

Slavery is perfectly fine in the Bible, it is regulated and approved, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is a reflection of the time, when again slavery was part of common existence.

Jesus being a man of his time and claiming to be the son of a god that taught about slavery in this manner, would have had no issues with slavery, just as Aristotle would have found slavery to be the natural order despite influencing modern ideas of ethics and morality that eventually outlawed slavery as immoral.

The link between a slave and master and a Christian and God is made in other places in the Bible -

Ephesians 6
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

Within the context of the Bible, and how it deals with slavery, there is no reason to believe that Jesus would not have considered this fitting punishment for a slave who showed so little "respect and fear" to his master.

The only reason we have to not take this parable literally is that today such action would be outrageous and considered the hight of immorality.

In fact a parable only works if the parable itself is true.

If the people of the day thought to themselves "But I would never treat my slave in such a manner, that would be terrible" how then does this parable work with relation to how one should regard a relationship with God?

If Jesus didn't think that this is a correct master/slave relationship then why use it as an example for the relationship between Christians and God? That would make no sense because everyone would simply go "Er, that isn't what I would do"

It would be like a priest today saying

"You know the way when your child is bold you hit him in the head with a plank of wood. Well that is how God is with us"

Anyone listening to this would simply say "Er, I would never hit my child with a plank of wood, no matter what they had done" The parable would make no sense because the parable itself is nonsense.

PDN

Wicknight wrote:

The thing is that you are working under the assumption that Jesus would not have meant this parable literally, because you are under the assumption that Jesus would not have approved of slavery, or at least this harsh treatment of disrespectful slaves, because you don't approve of slavery.

No, you are the one making assumptions - about me.

I am working on the basis (established by literary criticism & recognised by scholars in the field, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim or atheist) that the parable was a recognised literary form in 1st century literature, both Jewish and Gentile, biblical and non-biblical. Parables used all kinds of examples, including financial dishonesty, children running away from home, bandits, murderers & slaves - without necessarily endorsing or repudiating the morality of many of the actions in the parable. A parable generally taught one main point. It was only much later, in the fourth century, that people began interpreting parables in a way that tried to ascribe meaning to every little detail in a parable.

The fact that I don't approve of slavery has zero bearing on what I think Jesus taught about slavery. Obviously I'm not the only one who is too quick to make assumptions about others.

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

Parables used all kinds of examples, including financial dishonesty, children running away from home, bandits, murderers & slaves - without necessarily endorsing or repudiating the morality of many of the actions in the parable.

You are right, the teller doesn't have to necessarily endorse every action in a parable.

But a parable makes no sense if the teller does not endorse the element of the parable that corresponds to the moral lesson he is attempting to teach (assuming he is attempting to teach a moral lesson, which Jesus clearly was).

With Luke 12: 47-48 Jesus is describing the way things are with relation to treatment of slave to establish that this is correct, this is the way things should be.

This is done for the purpose of recognition. The audience listening to him are supposed to recognise that what Jesus is saying about master/slave relationships is correct. The morality of it is supposed to be self evident, it is the base of the parable.

Because of this base Jesus establishes the comparision between the correct master/slave relationship (which the audience is supposed to agree with) and the relationship between God and Christians, which the audience is now supposed to realise.

In seeing that what Jesus says about the punishment of the slave is correct the audience realises through the parable that the same moral lesson applies to relationship between them and God.

They are supposed to make the connection between the correctness of how the slave is treated to the correctness of how God treats them. They are put in the place of the slave, and as such the parable is a warning to them not to act as the slave acted lest they be justifiable punished as the slave was justifiable punished.

If Jesus believed that the actions in his story of the master towards his slave were in fact unjustified or wrong or immoral, then the moral lesson of the parable is completely lost because there is nothing for the audience to correlate to their relationship with God. If they did compare the two they would be comparing an unjustified action to how God treats them, and would conclude that Jesus is attempting to show that how God treats them is equally unjustified, which would be nonsense, Jesus would never attempt to teach that.

There would be no point to the parable at all.

PDN

Wicknight wrote:

You are right, the teller doesn't have to necessarily endorse every action in a parable.

But a parable makes no sense if the teller does not endorse the element of the parable that corresponds to the moral lesson he is attempting to teach (assuming he is attempting to teach a moral lesson, which Jesus clearly was).

Your assumptions are gettibng in the way once again. The problem is that you are forcing the Bible into the framework of morality that you superimpose on it.

The parable is simply warning people to be diligent in obeying God because, if they get slack or complacent, then they might get caught out - just like the slaves in the parable.

If we apply your method of interpretation to other similar parables, then we find Jesus advocating the morality of thieving from houses at night time (Matthew 24:42-44), and taking jars of oil to weddings (Matthew 25:1-13).

bonkey

Fanny Cradock wrote:

back then slavery was acceptable!

Fanny Cradock wrote:

Out of interest, what specific 'lessons' are you talking about that should no longer be considered applicable?

You tell me. Either Christ maintained that slavery was, or was not, acceptable.

You offered the first line I've quoted here as a reason that he didn't condemn it. Now you're telling me that his message is timeless...the implication of which is that slavery is no more worth condemning today then it was then.

Scofflaw

It's the scene from The Name of the Rose!

"Did Christ, or did he not, accept slavery?"

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN

Scofflaw wrote:

It's the scene from The Name of the Rose!

"Did Christ, or did he not, accept slavery?"

cordially,
Scofflaw

If Christ had condemned slavery then it would be very difficult to understand why the Gospel writers would leave out something so radical. My guess, for what it's worth, is that Jesus did not condemn slavery.

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

If we apply your method of interpretation to other similar parables, then we find Jesus advocating the morality of thieving from houses at night time (Matthew 24:42-44), and taking jars of oil to weddings (Matthew 25:1-13).

I'm not saying you have to apply this to other parables.

As I said the teller does not have to sanction every action in a parable. But Jesus is sanctioning this action though because he is linking it to the morality of what God does. It is the point of the story.

Not every parable is the same. You seem to be suggesting we read the parable as simply a string of words saying to ourselves "well if we apply one meaning to one parable we must apply them to all parables, and vice versa". It clearly doesn't work like that.

For example the parable of the frog in the boiling water doesn't require that the teller believes that placing a frog in slowly heating water is acceptable. That isn't the point of the story.

On the other hand there are plenty of parables, such as this one, where it is required that the audience accepts the moral action described in the parable.