{"id":8840,"date":"2024-02-08T09:13:24","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T03:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/08\/open-letter-to-the-apostle-paul-from-a-concerned-reader\/"},"modified":"2024-02-08T09:13:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T03:43:24","slug":"open-letter-to-the-apostle-paul-from-a-concerned-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/08\/open-letter-to-the-apostle-paul-from-a-concerned-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter to the Apostle Paul from a Concerned Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Dear Paul,<\/p>\n

First of all, thank you for writing so much of the New Testament.<\/p>\n

Thank you for also teaching inerrancy<\/a>, not only of the Bible you have (the Old Testament) but of your own letters and those other parts of the New Testament that hadn\u2019t\u00a0even been written yet, like the Gospels!<\/p>\n

The actual reason for my letter is to ask you to clear up some confusion for me. I\u2019m reading through Romans,\u00a0and I see that you quote the Old Testament on pretty much every page.<\/p>\n

[Which, by the way, is another thing I appreciate that about your work: you show that the Old Testament writers were already writing about the coming of Jesus, and you quote chapter and verse to prove it.]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But, getting to my question\u2014and if this is a minor point or I\u2019m missing something obvious, please feel free to ignore\u2014I\u2019m having some trouble in a few places where you quote the Old Testament.<\/p>\n

Now, I know you believe, as we all do, that the Bible, being God\u2019s word, is perfectly consistent all the way through, meaning it doesn\u2019t mean one thing in the Old Testament and another thing when you quote\u00a0it. It goes without saying that you respect the intention of the original author more than anyone, and you\u2019d never mistreat the Bible like that.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m reading along, a little more than halfway through (we call it Romans 9:25-26), where you are making your point about how God has called a people not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles.<\/p>\n

Here you quote from Hosea 2:23 and 1:10 to show that\u00a0this whole business of including the Gentiles was on God\u2019s mind all along<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Those who are not my people I will call \u201cmy people,\u201d and her who was not beloved I will call \u201cbeloved.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in the very place where it was said to them, \u201cyou are not my people,\u201d there they shall be called children of the living God.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It looks like you\u2019re saying \u201cthose who are not my people\u2026not beloved\u201d are the Gentiles<\/span> who are now included because of Jesus. I\u2019m happy for Gentile inclusion, being one myself, but I went back and read Hosea and I\u2019m confused.<\/p>\n

It seems pretty clear to me that the original meaning and intention of Hosea is that God is restoring\u00a0disobedient Israel<\/span>\u00a0after a period of rejection and punishment. I\u2019m not\u00a0seeing\u00a0anything there at all about Gentiles, and so I\u2019m not sure why you\u00a0would say \u201chere are two verses about Gentile inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u00a0have some Christian friends who\u00a0think that, because you\u2019re Jewish, you might actually be engaging in a little creative Jewish midrash here, but I\u2019ve told them that you are a Christian and would never play fast and loose with scripture!\u00a0You understand that the very doctrine of inerrancy that you teach\u2014maybe even the gospel that you preach\u2014hangs in the balance.<\/p>\n

I think you see my confusion, though.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m asking you to help me defend you better. Perhaps point me to other places in your letters where you don\u2019t do this sort of thing, which would really help to balance\u00a0things\u00a0out.<\/p>\n

Or maybe\u00a0slowly and clearly explain how your use of Hosea\u2019s words is aligned with what God<\/span>\u00a0actually intended, and why it\u2019s OK for God to intend something Hosea doesn\u2019t when it\u2019s not OK for us to do that.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0have\u00a0to say, too, this lingering uneasy feeling has been growing since I\u00a0began Romans. Please\u00a0help me see better what I know you\u2019re actually doing.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Your Fellow Soldier<\/p>\n

P.S. If you have some time, could you also clear up why you\u2019re not a zealous supporter of the \u201ceternal covenant\u201d of\u00a0circumcision\u00a0God gave Abraham and why all of a sudden the list of clean and unclean foods God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai is optional. Only if you have time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Dear Paul, First of all, thank you for writing so much of the New Testament. Thank you for also teaching inerrancy, not only of the Bible you have (the Old Testament) but of your own letters and those other parts of the New Testament that hadn\u2019t\u00a0even been written yet, like the Gospels! The actual reason […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}