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But how is it that Mark never once has Jesus saying, "You must believe in me in order to be saved" while in John, written some 40 years later, that's all Jesus is saying throughout the gospel. Frankly, this sounds like a propaganda campaign by the writers of John to scare pagans into converting to Christianity. That it is totally absent in Mark tells methis is not an original teaching of Jesus--that the command you must believe in Jesus for salvation is just a concoction by later Christian theologians like Tertullian, Augustine, and their ilk to threaten pagans with eternal torment if they don't accept Jesus, and by default accepting "Holy Mother Church" as their leaders.
You heretic Thrill
The salvation of God is not what we are told it is. God's salvation is God being an ever present help with his over abounding grace in time of need, and our need is salvation in this life of vanity we have been subjected too. To experience it requires faith in it.
The religious establishment muddied the waters of the whole salvation thing, turned the law from themselves and applied to those they condemned, and prevented others from entering in to it, Jesus came and set it all right, then the religious establishment repeated history again, but came back stronger against all the things that pertain to life and godliness by going beyond the previous systems distortion of the truth and it self righteousness and hypocrisy by introducing the threat of eternal hell upon all who do not accept their beliefs.
By misunderstanding what the jailer was being asked. He knew it was in the #### for know fault of his own and asked Paul and Silas how do i get out of this one and they basically told him Jesus Christ is an ever present help in times of trouble and abundantly available in times of need, have faith in him to save you in this situation.
In fact if this jailer needed proof he only had to see Paul's and Silas's salvation happen right before his very eyes, both of them had probably been singing of their savior and strong deliverer through the night.
The Jailer was there because he was the guard. Now salvation was not a Roman or Greek idea, so his questions show that Paul, who had been teaching there for a while, had been heard by the Jailer and he was impressed with it. When he saw they had not abandoned him, thus no need to be saved from execution do to a prisoner escape, he began to believe and wanted to know about salvation based on Jesus.
He was not asking about how to get out of the problem he had as a jailer after the earthquake at all.
All of these are beautiful thoughts, expecially repentance (from sin, I presume); belief is fine, but belief in what? Nowhere in Mark is "belief in" followed by "Me". So Mark is not really saying that Jesus went around preaching "Believe in me for your salvation", despite this being the central theme of his message according to John. Surely if John were teaching "Believe in Me" through a revelation of the Holy Spirit, that same Holy Spirit would have inspired or instructed Mark to say the exact same thing. In fact, if all four of the gospels were inspired by the Holy Spirit they'd all be saying the exact same thing, but they don't!
John was written later than the other Gospels, and John wrote in response to the Docetist heresy, which taught that Jesus was pure spirit and that his physical appearance was an illusion. Note that in John, Jesus eats and is crabby and complains of being tired and hungry. This was to demonstrate that Jesus was fully human, in addition to being fully divine (as expressed in the opening, with the Christian version of the logos.
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Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Concoction by corrupt churchmen to threaten pagans to become Christian or face eternal torment? Definitely a possibility.
I really dont buy the argument that corrupt churchmen deliberately crafted doctrines to threaten pagans (or anyone else, for that matter) At least not that early in Christian history. The early Christians were all about living the Christian life - love God, love your neighbor, do good works.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that as the faith spread, and as more and more heresies proliferated, the defenders of orthodoxy had to address all points of each heresy in greater and greater detail, and this led (IMHO) to the practice of searching hither and yon through the scriptures available, and constructing arguments from words and phrases taken from different sources written over different spans of time. As this practice became accepted, of course different doctrines evolved over time, and as the various sects obtained more temporal power then came the corruption we all know and love.
John was written later than the other Gospels, and John wrote in response to the Docetist heresy, which taught that Jesus was pure spirit and that his physical appearance was an illusion.
Wait, I was told he wrote to counter the Gnostic teaching?
Maybe he didn't write to counter anything, rather to continue teaching.
The Jailer was there because he was the guard. Now salvation was not a Roman or Greek idea, so his questions show that Paul, who had been teaching there for a while, had been heard by the Jailer and he was impressed with it. When he saw they had not abandoned him, thus no need to be saved from execution do to a prisoner escape, he began to believe and wanted to know about salvation based on Jesus.
He was not asking about how to get out of the problem he had as a jailer after the earthquake at all.
Paul and Silas were singing the praises of God, no doubt singing songs of salvation and deliverance and guess what salvation came to them too, for God is an ever present help in time of trouble and being in prison back then for being innocent wasn't much fun without TBN being broadcasted via cable tv and the luxury many rightly convicted today have.
You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.
John was written later than the other Gospels, and John wrote in response to the Docetist heresy, which taught that Jesus was pure spirit and that his physical appearance was an illusion. Note that in John, Jesus eats and is crabby and complains of being tired and hungry. This was to demonstrate that Jesus was fully human, in addition to being fully divine (as expressed in the opening, with the Christian version of the logos.
This was necessary primarily because our ignorant superstitious ancestors were DEATHLY afraid of Spirits! This is what made Christ's mission so difficult given the truth that WE are actually embryo Spirits inhabiting physical "wombs." The need for parables and other literary devices was unavoidable . . . not merely a preference of Christ's choosing. The resurrection narrative created the necessity to present the illusion of a physical body after His death. It was central to assuaging their fear of Spirits. The closed doors and walls were the clues left for us to find in later eras when the fear of Spirits was less of an issue. Not embracing these clues and revising the resurrection narrative to embrace the "born again" as Spirit theme Christ presented to Nicodemus is another of the many failings of Christian leadership.
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I really dont buy the argument that corrupt churchmen deliberately crafted doctrines to threaten pagans (or anyone else, for that matter) At least not that early in Christian history. The early Christians were all about living the Christian life - love God, love your neighbor, do good works.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that as the faith spread, and as more and more heresies proliferated, the defenders of orthodoxy had to address all points of each heresy in greater and greater detail, and this led (IMHO) to the practice of searching hither and yon through the scriptures available, and constructing arguments from words and phrases taken from different sources written over different spans of time. As this practice became accepted, of course different doctrines evolved over time, and as the various sects obtained more temporal power then came the corruption we all know and love.
I would agree with you for this reason . . . back then there was really no separation between what people believed and what they did. Professing one thing and doing another is a relatively recent (on a geological scale) evolution in human cognitive functioning. They were in many ways a much simpler and more direct people. The phrase pisteuo eis ("believe on/into") was more representative of their mindset than the modern "believe in" that has dominated modern thinking about beliefs.
Last edited by MysticPhD; 08-21-2014 at 01:54 PM..
Read Romans sometime. I challenge you to sit down and read it in one sitting. It'll take you about 45 minutes. Paul lays out the case, and he states as much in Romans 10.
Salvation by grace through faith (believing in Jesus) is not a concept which evolved. Apart from the gospel accounts, the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith, and not by works (Eph. 2:8-9). Ephesians was written somewhere around A.D. 60. So long before the apostle John wrote his gospel account the fact that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ Jesus was made clear by Paul.
Now, although the gospel of John was written probably between A.D 85-95, but possibly earlier, John was an apostle and recorded what Jesus said during His public ministry. What he wrote was under the superintendence of God the Holy Spirit and is therefore trustworthy.
According to the Bible Knowledge Commentary, the date usually accepted by conservative scholars for the dating of Acts is around A.D. 60-62. So again, the fact that salvation is by believing in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31) was recorded much earlier than the date that John wrote his gospel account.
Each of the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had a different emphasis in writing their gospel accounts. Matthew's purpose was to present Jesus as King. Mark emphasized Jesus as servant while Luke presented Jesus as the Son of Man. And John's emphasis was on the deity of Jesus. Therefore, the content of each gospel account reflected the intent of the gospel writers.
And the gospel of John, Acts, and Ephesians (and all of the New Testament) were written long before the time of Tertullian and Augustine, so how can you say as you did in post #3 that salvation though faith in Christ is a concoction by later theologians?
This is a really incendiary topic and it's probably not wise to raise it with you, Mike, however, I will do my best to be non-incendiary
Yes, Paul taught salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. Quoting Ephesians is problematic because it is a pseudoephigraphical epistle not generally attributed to Paul by most scholars. However, let's assume he did write it. Nowhere does Paul echo what Christ so explicitly stated in Mark
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15He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be damned.
Now note that Jesus made baptism, along with belief in him, prerequisites to achieving salvation, but apparently no baptism doesn't get you damned, which is why Paul might have denied the efficacy of baptism to salvation, putting him in direct contradiction to Jesus' command, but then Mark and Jesus' statement hadn't even been written yet so how could Paul have even known this?
Paul never says non-belief in Jesus lands you in hell far as I know. There are a few passages that lead one to believe that Paul concluded that if one didn't believe in Jesus one was dead in trespasses and sin and it was sin that that was the wages leading to eternal death.
So I can't think that Paul was in agreement with Jesus about being condemned to hell for not believing in Jesus.
Now as to all the gospel writers taking a different perspective on Jesus' life, expatCA says about the same thing below and this is the standard rebuttal to the inconsistencies in the gospels about believing in Jesus for salvation being absent from Matthew, Mark and Luke.
My own perspective, which aligns with many liberal theologians, is that Mark simply didn't believe that believing in Jesus was necessary for salvation, otherwise he would have wrote Jesus saying it. After all, in the beginning (27 AD) we have Jesus saying
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"I am the way. No man comes to the Father but by me. Anyone who doesn't come by me is damned already because they haven't believed in me."
That's before John, before Luke before Mark before Paul---before everybody!
Paul picked it up somewhere in order to preach it, albeit in a different way from how Jesus via John preached it. So Matthew, Mark and Luke had to have known about this cornerstone teaching of Jesus. Let's admit it: "He who doesn't believe in me for salvation is damned" is so foundational to Christian theology that Christianity stands or falls on believing in this one command from Jesus.
Yet you and others are going to say that Matthew, Mark and Luke decided arbitrarily to completely bypass this foundational teaching so essential to salvation just to concentrate on giving different perspectives of Jesus life? I'm sorry. That just does not make any sense.
As to Tertullian and the rest, my statement goes to the fact that we don't get a complete copy of John and the verses in question until about 300-400 AD with a roughly 200th generation copy in the Codex Sinaiticus. All we can speculate is that the gospel was written around 100 AD but what it contained, theoretically, we haven't the vaguest clue because we can't read it. Those who want to accept on faith that our present-day gospel of John is an exact duplicate of the original written in 100 AD may do so, but most reputable scholars like Bart Ehrman do not accept this.
This is a really incendiary topic and it's probably not wise to raise it with you, Mike, however, I will do my best to be non-incendiary
Yes, Paul taught salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. Quoting Ephesians is problematic because it is a pseudoephigraphical epistle not generally attributed to Paul by most scholars. However, let's assume he did write it. Nowhere does Paul echo what Christ so explicitly stated in Mark
Now note that Jesus made baptism, along with belief in him, prerequisites to achieving salvation, but apparently no baptism doesn't get you damned, which is why Paul might have denied the efficacy of baptism to salvation, putting him in direct contradiction to Jesus' command, but then Mark and Jesus' statement hadn't even been written yet so how could Paul have even known this?
Paul never says non-belief in Jesus lands you in hell far as I know. There are a few passages that lead one to believe that Paul concluded that if one didn't believe in Jesus one was dead in trespasses and sin and it was sin that that was the wages leading to eternal death.
So I can't think that Paul was in agreement with Jesus about being condemned to hell for not believing in Jesus.
Now as to all the gospel writers taking a different perspective on Jesus' life, expatCA says about the same thing below and this is the standard rebuttal to the inconsistencies in the gospels about believing in Jesus for salvation being absent from Matthew, Mark and Luke.
My own perspective, which aligns with many liberal theologians, is that Mark simply didn't believe that believing in Jesus was necessary for salvation, otherwise he would have wrote Jesus saying it. After all, in the beginning (27 AD) we have Jesus saying
That's before John, before Luke before Mark before Paul---before everybody!
Paul picked it up somewhere in order to preach it, albeit in a different way from how Jesus via John preached it. So Matthew, Mark and Luke had to have known about this cornerstone teaching of Jesus. Let's admit it: "He who doesn't believe in me for salvation is damned" is so foundational to Christian theology that Christianity stands or falls on believing in this one command from Jesus.
Yet you and others are going to say that Matthew, Mark and Luke decided arbitrarily to completely bypass this foundational teaching so essential to salvation just to concentrate on giving different perspectives of Jesus life? I'm sorry. That just does not make any sense.
As to Tertullian and the rest, my statement goes to the fact that we don't get a complete copy of John and the verses in question until about 300-400 AD with a roughly 200th generation copy in the Codex Sinaiticus. All we can speculate is that the gospel was written around 100 AD but what it contained, theoretically, we haven't the vaguest clue because we can't read it. Those who want to accept on faith that our present-day gospel of John is an exact duplicate of the original written in 100 AD may do so, but most reputable scholars like Bart Ehrman do not accept this.
The opinions of liberal scholarship notwithstanding, Ephesians is not Pseudepigraphical. If it were it never would have been accepted into the canon. Conservative scholarship recognizes Ephesians as Pauline and dates it to around A.D. 60.
F. F. Bruce writes,
The dates of the thirteen Pauline Epistles can be fixed partly by internal and partly by external evidence. The day has gone by when the authenticity of these letters could be denied wholesale. There are some writers today who would reject Ephesians; fewer would reject 2 Thessalonians; more would deny that the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) came in their present form from the hand of Paul. I accept them all as Pauline . . . [The New Testament Documents, are they Reliable?, F. F. Bruce, p. 8]
F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England.
In his article on Ephesians, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace presents the arguments both for and against the Pauline authorship of Ephesians and himself accepts the Epistle as Pauline, and quoting Werner Georg Kümmel (1905–1995) notes that “without question Ephesians was extraordinarily well attested in the early Church.” - https://bible.org/seriespage/ephesia...nt-and-outline
As for Mark 16:9-20 that does not seem to be original to Mark, but was added later. But even assuming for the sake of argument that is original, the Bible Knowledge Commentary states the following.
Though the New Testament writers generally assume that under normal circumstances each believer will be baptized, 16:16 does not mean that baptism is a necessary requirement for personal salvation. The second half of the verse indicates by contrast that one who does not believe the gospel will be condemned by God (implied) in the day of final judgment (cf. 9:43-48). The basis for condemnation is unbelief, not the lack of any ritual observance. Baptism is not mentioned because unbelief precludes one's giving a confession of faith while being baptized by water. Thus the only requirement for personally appropriating God's salvation is faith in Him (cf. Rom. 3:21-28; Eph. 2:8-10). [The Bible Knowledge Commentary, New Testament, An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty, p. 196]
Regarding your comment, ''Paul never says non-belief in Jesus lands you in hell far as I know.'', Paul wrote the following in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9.
2 Thess. 1:6 For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7] and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, 8] dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9] These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,
The reference to obeying the gospel refers to the command to believe in Jesus for eternal life. The command to believe in Christ is stated in Acts 16:31.
I've already stated that conservative scholars date the gospel of John to between A.D. 85-95, but possibly earlier.
Regarding what scholars, including Bart Ehrman say about being able to construct the original wording of the New Testament writings, here are some of their comments.[indent]F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England. He stated...
Fortunately, if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice. [The New Testament Documents; Are They Reliable?, F.F. Bruce, pgs. 14-15.]
Bruce Metzger (1914-2007) was one of the most highly regarded scholars of Greek, New Testament, and New Testament Textual Criticism. He served on the board of the American Bible Society and United Bible Societies and was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. He commented...
But the amount of evidence for the text of the New Testament , whether derived from manuscripts, early versions, or patristic quotations is so much greater than that available for any ancient classical author that the necessity of resorting to emendation is reduced to the smallest dimensions. [The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, Fourth Edition, Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, pg. 230]
Daniel B. Wallace (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament Studies. He is a member of the Society of New Testament Studies, the Institute for Biblical Research, and has consulted on several Bible translations. He made these comments...
To sum up the evidence on the number of variants, there are a lot of variants because there are a lot of manuscripts. Even in the early centuries, the text of the NT is found in a sufficient number of MSS, versions, and writings of the church fathers to give us the essentials of the original text. [Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament, Daniel B. Wallace, pg. 40]
Even Bart D. Ehrman who puts a skeptical spin on things when writing for the general public made the following statement in a college textbook as quoted by Dan Wallace in 'Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament' on pg. 24...
"In spite of these remarkable differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy."
Ehrman wrote that in a college textbook called 'The New Testament: A Historical Introduction To the Early Christian Writings', 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg. 481.
In an article by Dan Wallace, he wrote...
'Though textual criticism cannot yet produce certainty about the exact wording of the original, this uncertainty affects only about two percent of the text. And in that two percent support always exists for what the original said--never is one left with mere conjecture. In other words it is not that only 90 percent of the original text exists in the extant Greek manuscripts--rather, 110 percent exists. Textual criticism is not involved in reinventing the original; it is involved in discarding the spurious, in burning the dross to get to the gold.' [The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?
Study By: Daniel B. Wallace The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical? | Bible.org - Worlds Largest Bible Study Site
Whether you think it makes sense or not, the fact is that each gospel did in fact have a different emphasis. And as far as Luke goes, he wrote the book of Acts and so does address believing in Christ for salvation.
And aside from scholarship, whether conservative or liberal, the fact is that the Bible, all of it, is the Word of God and is truthful in all that it says. If you don't believe that then there really isn't anything more to say.
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I'm sorry. That just does not make any sense. 
