Chapter 4 : Disputes

The famous context argument. It's another way of saying, " It's true that it sounds ridiculous, but if you try, you can find a way to make the sauce work ." Jesus didn't come to save scholars, but lost people. They may be lost scholars, but whatever the case, they must be lost. To claim that we must study historical contexts to understand a statement by Paul is to deny that the Word must be universal and timeless; it is to assert that something is suddenly no longer true because the context no longer exists. It is also to endorse the idea that history is always true, even though it is written by the victors and tends to change according to times and places. It is also to claim that the level of truth of the contexts presented to us is higher than the Word of God, since these contexts come to sanctify the Word which no longer obtains its holiness from God, but from man. It would therefore be unproven human events which would serve to understand the Word of God. Now it is the superior which sanctifies the inferior (Matthew 23.19 : Ye fools and blind : for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift  ?).

This is why a context that is specified to us in the Word has value. Whether it is the crowd, the time of day or night, and so on. If God wanted it to be specified, it has value. If he did not want it to be specified, it does not.

Furthermore, to claim that erudition is necessary is to forget the place of the simple-minded in the kingdom of God. Of course, we can say that if the kingdom of heaven belongs to them, it is because God has pity on their "disability" and saves them for that, but that is not the reality. In fact, if the kingdom of God belongs to them, it is only because they take things simply without trying to intellectualize them. When they read that "the woman will be saved by becoming a mother," they are not looking for an excuse to justify what they have just read, they believe it. If Jesus said that we must become like children, it is for this same reason, to believe with simplicity and not torture our minds and lead them into conjectures as crazy as they are hazardous in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

This argument does nothing more than add an adjustment variable to the truth of God's Word. It would be truer in certain cases, at certain times, for certain people. The Word is the truth or it is not, it cannot in any case be more or less so. Furthermore, for those who believe that a pseudo-context external to the Word of God must be taken into account, then their own argument disqualifies all the epistles, because each epistle is a letter that had an addressee. The argument from the external context therefore validates the fact that the Epistle to the Galatians, for example, is addressed to the Galatians. Personally, I am not a Galatian, so if I follow the context, this text is not for me...

But of course, I suspect that the only valid context will be the one that suits the discourse of those who try to defend the indefensible.

This teaching has the particularity of rarely arousing indifference, which in itself is a very good thing. On the one hand, we have those who accept it and on the other hand, those who refute it. Among the latter, the reactions to it are almost always the same.

For many, what has just been explained, although entirely based on the Bible as we currently know it, is close to abomination. They fail to find explanations for such inconsistencies in Paul's texts and blindly follow the contradictory doctrines found there, often preferring to avoid reflection, for fear of realizing that said inconsistencies can turn out to be tragic.

Others have always known there was a problem without understanding what it is, they feel that what you have just heard is true, but do not have the courage to sort through what they have been taught for so long or to take a position contradictory to the preaching in place in almost all assemblies. It is true that the control of certain "servants" of God over believers is more about control than pastorate, and positioning yourself elsewhere than where the latter authorize you to position yourself often represents a tension that not everyone can bear. They therefore prefer to move on and concentrate on something else.

Of course, I won't be talking about all those who only attend Sunday mornings, never reading their Bibles and therefore being unable to notice any errors. However, it should be noted that it is often these people who are the most vocal in their defense of the writings attributed to Paul.

A final caste has a disconcerting ease in setting fire to what it does not like, with all the more force because it feels incapable of demonstrating the opposite of what has just been said. The use here of the verb "please" is deliberate, since it was intended to characterize people seeking a means of controlling rather than making believers grow. Their arguments are almost always of the same order:

The impossibility of the Word of God not being cut. Argument based on the misunderstanding of two passages, the first of which tells us that "one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5.18) and the second that "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book : 19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book" (Revelation 22.18-19). The first of these two passages deals exclusively with the law, which happens to represent the books of Moses and, by extension, the whole of the old covenant. The second passage, for its part, only refers to the book that the apostle John had just written, namely the book of Revelation. Indeed, the detractors seem to forget that the Bible as such did not exist since the collection of the books that composed it over time only took place a good century after John completed his writings on the island of Patmos. He could therefore in no case be referring to a work that did not exist and whose fluctuation of content runs through history. For those who would claim that he was announcing the coming of the Bible as we still know it today, I remind them that John speaks of "the book of this prophecy", in other words he knew the text that was the subject of his warning and, as I have just said, the Bible did not exist at that time.

Furthermore, if the people using this argument were sincere, they should also read the Apocrypha found in the Catholic Bible, since John's statement was already in the Bible when the Protestants "seceded." So for those who want to take refuge behind this argument, I would like to offer a friendly recommendation for the version of the Bible called Tob, which is in fact the Catholic Bible and therefore contains the Apocrypha.

The second argument used is taken from the book of the prophet Daniel and the book of Revelation, saying that some things are encrypted and that understanding will be given later. The archangel told Daniel to "shut up the words", and to seal "the book, even to the time of the end : many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" (Daniel 12.4), while John, in the apocalypse, heard "a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not" (Revelation 10.4).

Interesting argument, but this teaching is not about areas of misunderstanding, but rather perfectly understandable data in total contradiction with the Word as a whole and even with each other, which makes this argument obsolete.

In the times we are living through, which, being those of Jesus' return, are the darkest ever, understanding of the Scriptures is particularly weak. We can comfort ourselves by pretending that we no longer have satisfactory access to the Word of God, but the reality is that we have the servants we chose to have. The weakness is such that "knowing" and "understanding" have ended up being conflated. Believers say they do not understand the Word, but the reality is that they do not know it. The Spirit of God cannot explain to us what we do not know. We must feed on the Word of God, and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal it to us. This is what the first chapter of the book of Revelation tells us about, which highlights the blessing of knowing the Word and not understanding it (Revelation 1.3 : Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand).

The normal pattern should therefore be:

1. know the Word of God,
2. receive the explanation of the Spirit,
3. apply the Word of God.

Unfortunately, the church has replaced knowing the Word with a facade of picking and choosing a few verses here and there. Then, it has replaced receiving the explanation from the Holy Spirit with emotions. If it feels something, then it considers itself to have understood. It doesn't matter if its emotional understanding disagrees with the rest of the Word. Ultimately, it puts into practice not what the Word says, but the perception its emotions have given it.

Reading is rarely based on the desire to approach the truth, but generally has the aim of having an argument to demonstrate what was already a certainty before opening the Word.

To return to one of the frequent subjects of dispute concerning the evidence that the 13 epistles attributed to Paul are not from God, consists in bringing forward a passage from the second epistle of Peter, a passage which tells us the following:

• 2 Peter 3.15-16 : And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you ; 16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

This is where the loop comes full circle with what I was saying earlier. The hijacking of a text to try to make it fit what the protesters think anyway. So the search for a verse that would be their ally, regardless of whether it undermines the truth and the very integrity of the Word.

I would therefore remind you that nothing in these two verses designates the 13 epistles attributed to Paul; it only designates writings of Paul which, to this day, are unknown. Then, Peter tells us that there is, in these letters unknown today, a certain complexity in the form taken by the man's speeches. It is therefore about this complexity that the disputes exist, cheerfully mixing simple and obvious errors for anyone who is truly interested in the Word of God, with supposed misunderstandings which would be due to a complexity totally absent from the texts concerned.

Embarrassed, these people claim that when the epistles attributed to Paul speak of 12 disciples when in any case there were only 11 at that time, this is due to the complexity of the assertion and not to error. They claim that when these same epistles repeatedly assert that the assertions made therein are not from God, this would in fact be "complicated to understand", and would in reality "mean" that it is God who is speaking, themselves twisting in the process, words that they claim come from God, and thus condemning themselves. They claim that every time the Word is openly contradicted by these epistles, whether it be the perfect faith of Abraham, the face of Moses, the widows who break their vows by remarrying, and therefore more generally the hundred or so points that I have just raised, it would in reality be a problem of understanding.

There's a difference between "turning a blind eye" and "a complicated text." The real problem lies more in the hypocrisy of some who struggle to justify the unjustifiable and dig in their heels in untenable positions. The errors are so obvious that those who love the truth will recognize them.