Saturday, November 24, 2007

GARY WILLS ON THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE APOSTLE PAUL

In an excellent and refreshing video that has Gary Wills speak with great felicity on the subject, "What Paul Meant," many hitherto held assumptions about the Bible, Christianity, the Church, and the Apostle Paul are discussed and questioned from someone whom I consider to be a first-rate Bible scholar. Although it's about 37 minutes into the video that Wills somewhat deals with Paul's view of homosexuality, his brief discussion of this subject, combined with his analysis of Paul, will make it worth your while to watch the whole video from beginning to end.

Wills talks about the error of legalism; the exclusion of women from the "priesthood"; the Church as an institution; being a "Christian" as opposed to being a "follower of Jesus"; the egalitarian nature of the early Church versus the institutional Church; Jesus' embracing what was considered by many in His day as people who were viewed as "unclean."

I think you will very much enjoy this video, and get a lot out of it, not the least being the distortion of what once was the "ecclesia," the called out ones, who formed Jesus' Church, held in people's homes by those who listened to the Spirit, into what is now the institutional Church.

Although Wills doesn't deal with this issue, I know that I'm not the only one who contends that the institutional Church does, indeed, include some of the ecclesia; many of the ecclesia do not go to "church," and many people who do go to church are not among the ecclesia!
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