Is Tithing an ancient Israelite law ALONE or is it a post-Easter law too?

Tithing is the issue.

I did a google search.

The fundi Christian Research Institute came up on my 1 page of google searches.

As a non Christian, who studies scripture, I have had a fair amount of experience with reading fundamentalist Protestant sites. I have come across the CRI before.

I find twisting of scripture to be common on this site (a typical feature of both fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholics who find the actual Jesus, Paul, and James to be irrelevant to their modern readings).

I expected to 100% disagree with everything I read.

But, the article actually had some independent thought, and didn't attempt to completely fit the New Testament scripture (through twisting selective scriptures while ignoring other scriptures) into popular doctrines.

http://www.equip.org/article/tithing/

(The article ignored the fact that Paul ONLY collected money to send to the Jerusalem Ebionites/Nazarenes, and the issue of private property/posessions being outlawed wasn't touched, BUT THAT IS EXPECTED, so I will try to get away from all of those pesky "1st century issues" that modern European Protestants find distasteful and disruptive to their post-modern scriptural interpretations)

Actually, I need to stay on 2 Corinthians 8:1-9:15 being FOR THE JERUSALEM JEWISH CHRISTIANS, but I wanted to stay away from the actual 1st century Paul.

Even Athur Peake knew the collection was for Jerusalem.

https://www.studylight.org/...aries/pfc/2-corinthians-8.html

"2 Corinthians collection for Jerusalem" was put into Bing and it seems like the knowledge of the donation being for James & Jerusalem is fairly common, though the CRI article ignored it.

But back to the 21st century fundamentalist Christian readings.

Are you a church attending Christian?

What is "the view" that tickles your preacher? I mean to understand, not to be sarcastic btw.

Do you have friends that attend church? What does their preacher teach about tithing?

The CRI article had the author author saying that he disagreed with the mighty Walter Martin (who was past leader of the CRI,while the current leader of the CRI has Martin's same view as well), who said the tithing was a post-Easter requirement of Christians, though there was a lot of nuance among the author in formulating his own position.

Do you have a view that differs - to any extent - with church authorities?

Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Thread copied here from the Is Tithing an ancient Israelite law ALONE or is it a post-Easter law too? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

LNA writes: As a non Christian, who studies scripture, I have had a fair amount of experience with reading fundamentalist Protestant sites. I have come across the CRI before. I find twisting of scripture to be common on this site (a typical feature of both fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholics who find the actual Jesus, Paul, and James to be irrelevant to their modern readings).

Just out of curiosity, do you even believe in God? What would you classify your belief as, if not Christian?

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Just out of curiosity, do you even believe in God? What would you classify your belief as, if not Christian?

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Here is a big problem.

I have no problem with a (belief of Christians) concept of every creature being raised to life, and everybody living together for 1000 years to be judged.

I have a problem when people claim that there was a collection of Biblical books ("Bible"), that the Apostle's immediate (younger) associates WERE AWARE OF , which included this teaching.

Here is what I have a problem with:

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Jaywill
Message 1459 of 1504 (840139)
09-24-2018 9:18 AM

So you are putting your trust in the book of Revelation being a lie ?

You roll across the floor in hilarity because the words out of the last book of the Bible simply are not to be taken seriously ?

http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=page&t=19701&mpp=1...

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I have a problem with people worshipping a Greek work which was simply unknown (so far as we know) until the mid-second century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation

Even the European Christians were divided over the claims of this book.

Consider:

It was the last book to be accepted into the canon.

Eusebius said it was accepted by some and rejected by others.

Martin Luther said that it is "neither apostolic nor prophetic".

(I don't have a problem with Eusebius, and I don't feel he was anything but a scholar and a gentleman who probably had no idea what a destructive force - burning books, killing Jewish Christian people, wiping out knowledge, etc. - the Christian Roman Empire would soon become)

So if Europeans Christians reject the Greek work called "Revelation", then no wonder all the Jewish Christians did.

It seems the big Persian (which includes many Aramaic Christians) church rejected it.

Nestorians perhaps did?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East

The Book of Revelation

How can we even come close to "God", if he exists, if you have a work of man being worshipped to the point that people are accused of being, nothing less than, the worst form of "evil" (thought) if they don't see Revlation's words as the "inspired word of Jesus" (and the 21st century Christians see Jesus as "God himself" though no effort is made to demonstrate what the author of Revelation felt about Jesus and his relation to God).

We even have to swallow many questionable 21st century interpretations of a book WHICH ITSELF was (clearly) never accepted (when it was written and a good while after) as the work of any prominent Jewish Christian - and especially not the work of an Apostle (!).

The whole history of its interpretation shows that it's origins and meaning was shrouded in a hazy fog.

WHAT DO I BELIEVE ABOUT GOD AS THE RELIGIONS TEACH?

What religion can I use as a template to even consider the question?

Not this popular European "Christianity" as jaywill loves to present as the be all and end all.

Read the EvC link, and see what jaywill says about the Book of Life ( all based on the Book of Revelation). It is Gospel to him (with ALL the required Greek, Latin, and English manuscripts ). That won't get anybody closer to any possible God. Why don't the genuine God-worshipping Christians demonstrate an honest desire to "know God", and reject this worship of man-made artifices?

It would give us ALL a chance to do the same.

Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Maybe if you stopped nitpicking over every little historical variation and every question raised by any likely or unlikely source, and just focused on a part of the Bible that you feel you can trust to tell you truth about the nature of God, spend time thinking and praying over it with the Bible closed, you might "have a chance to 'know God'" as you claim you'd like to do. Criticizing Christians for supposedly "worshiping" the Bible, which we don't, is just one of the ways you make it impossible to know God yourself. I had strong personal experience of God before I knew a lot about the Bible, which I attribute to His protection of me during my rather wild period of seeking. The Bible is necessary for correcting errors though so you can't dispense with it.

It helps to know enough about God to trust that He has the power and the will to oversee the canonicity of His word so that no matter how much dispute about this or that we can find in history we believe that the final product is in His will. (There is an exception to this in my opinion but I don't want to get into a side issue here)

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: It helps to know enough about God to trust that He has the power and the will to oversee the canonicity of His word so that no matter how much dispute about this or that we can find in history we believe that the final product is in His will.

How do you explain the fact that if it were God's will there is no single uniform or universal Christian Canon but rather a range that varies from just 5 books and excluding all of the New Testament as canonical to over 80 books?

Was God incapable of determining the final product as the evidence shows?

Faith writes: ... a part of the Bible that you feel you can trust to tell you truth about the nature of God....

The parts that we can trust are the parts that coincide with reality - for example, the parts that tell us to take care of each other. We know from reality that that makes life better.

Most of the "nitpicking" that's done around here is to show that the Bible is not one monolithic themed work. The fact that you have to make up non-Biblical garbage like "the Fall" and "original sin" to create the illusion of a theme does more damage to your cause than the nitpicking. (Ask Richard Nixon; the cover-up gets you into more trouble than the crime.)

ringo writes: The fact that you have to make up non-Biblical garbage like "the Fall" and "original sin" to create the illusion of a theme does more damage to your cause than the nitpicking.

We didn't make it up though. It has been part of dogma for centuries. What makes the vast body of apologists, preachers, teachers, and laymen willfully deluded? Are they in fact deluded or is it that you don't have an understanding of the necessity to know the messenger behind the basic message? Why is it that you avoid the leap of faith by continually asking how this is done?

Edited by Phat, :

After googling your link on the Church Of The East I found myself examining Nestorianism and Christology. Tangle may rightly claim that all of this was "made up" but I would argue that they had to have some belief and inner passion with which to fuel these debates...they certainly were not simply competing for marketing share, after all.

Some interesting quotes from the Wiki articles:

Christology writes: Most Christians identified Jesus as divine from a very early period, although holding a variety of competing views as to what exactly this implied.[49] Early Christian views tended to see Jesus as a unique agent of God;[50] by the Council of Nicaea in 325 he was identified as God in the fullest sense, being 'of the same substance, essence or being'.(...)A foremost contribution to the Christology of the Apostolic Age is that of Paul. The central Christology of Paul conveys the notion of Christ's pre-existence[30] and the identification of Christ as Kyrios.[6] The Pauline epistles use Kyrios to identify Jesus almost 230 times and express the theme that the true mark of a Christian is the confession of Jesus as the true Lord.[31] Paul viewed the superiority of the Christian revelation over all other divine manifestations as a consequence of the fact that Christ is the Son of God.[5] Nevertheless, the view that it was the apostle Paul who introduced the idea that Jesus was divine and thus distorted the actual Jesus has been rejected by some historians. Richard Bauckham argues that Paul was not so influential that he could have invented the central doctrine of Christianity. Before his active missionary work, there were already groups of Christians across the region. For example, a large group already existed in Rome even before Paul visited the place. The earliest centre of Christianity was the twelve apostles in Jerusalem. Paul himself consulted and sought guidance from the Christian leaders in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1-2; Acts 9:26-28, 15:2). “What was common to the whole Christian movement derived from Jerusalem, not from Paul, and Paul himself derived the central message he preached from the Jerusalem apostles.[32] These scholars argue that if Jesus himself did not claim and show himself to be truly divine (i.e. on the Creator side of the Creator–creature divide), the earliest Christian leaders who were devout ancient monotheistic Jews would not have come to a widespread agreement that he was truly divine, but would have regarded Jesus as merely a teacher or a prophet instead.[33]

Thus I can see that this whole debate over Jesus being "only human" while on earth or whether there was, in fact, a Hypostatic Union between the Divine and Human has been going on long before jar and I found EvC. If humans do simply make this stuff up they expend a lot of time, effort, livelihood and passion in so doing. Personally, I agree with Faith in that there is more to it that many skeptics and unbelievers simply refuse to see. For them, solid evidence will always guide them and leaps of faith are forbidden. For believers, something or someone must have sparked their passion...it is not simply a wishful fantasy.

jar writes: How do you explain the fact that if it were God's will there is no single uniform or universal Christian Canon but rather a range that varies from just 5 books and excluding all of the New Testament as canonical to over 80 books?

First we have to come to some consensus on whether God has an interest in the evolving activities of humans or whether He is so lofty and unknowable that we will forever be clueless of His outlook and perspective on creation in general.

I believe that He is aware of our efforts to know and define our beliefs, overarching purpose and destiny and that He allows us to freely express our beliefs and opinions of Him and of every other concept which we so invent.

I believe that He desires communion...communication with humanity. If you were an inventor and made a talking thinking robot in your shop, would you not have an interest in interacting with your creation?

There is no uniformity in our writings because there is no uniformity within our beliefs.

Was God incapable of determining the final product as the evidence shows?

Whether God is involved in determining the final product or not, we are ourselves contributing to that final product through our actions, behaviors, beliefs and will turn out to be a definite conclusion as a species someday. Whether God was involved in our decisions remains to be seen. Whether He cares about the outcome is also speculative...though I would argue that He has an interest.

Phat writes: Tangle may rightly claim that all of this was "made up" but I would argue that they had to have some belief and inner passion with which to fuel these debates..

Obviously people are making this stuff up - how else are there so many different opinions? If there was one truth there'd be one answer and we'd all know it.

The story was that god sent his son the earth to die to save us all. Despite that being utterly barking mad and obviously just the invention of primitive minds, the bloody prophesy described by the myth did not get fulfilled. How could it be any clearer? Not only is there no agreement on who, when and why we're supposed to be saved by this event we even know it didn't result in the predicted outcome.

Tangle writes: If there was one truth there'd be one answer and we'd all know it.

What makes you think we would all know it? There are many obvious truths in life that we *all* don't know.

Phat writes: What makes you think we would all know it?

Because this is supposed to be god we're talking about, not your great aunt. He sent hisson to earth to die so that we'd know this 'truth'. (Totally bonkers, but that's the story.) How come it didn't work?

A lot depends on your perspective. If I said to you "Tangle, why not contemplate the magic man in the sky?" you would laugh and scoff and brush me off as delusional...as well as the concept. But what if I said to you, "Tangle...have you ever considered the ground of all Being? Is there anything cohesive about this universe beyond mere science and physics and moon rocks and telescopes and radiometric dating? Is there the possibility of a universal consciousness and, if so, what consensus would we have ...with no evidence?" would you simply dismiss the possibility of such a concept since you had no evidence?

Phat writes: A lot depends on your perspective.

You're ignoring my questions and instead responding with magical blather.