#st. paul the apostle

[lionofchaeronea]

St. Paul Shipwrecked on Malta, Laurent de La Hyre, 1630

[hrsquotes]

In 1 Timothy 1:19, the Apostle Paul urges Timothy this: "Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked."

You may also recognize Luke 17:33, where Jesus give us a warning about holding on too tightly to our own lives. Here it is in the NLT: "If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it."

If we cling to ourselves, to the ways of this world, we inevitably will lose it. We cannot truly cling to Jesus unless we let go of any unholy, unrighteous things we were holding tightly to. By clinging to Him, we will be lead into a glorious future full of love, joy, peace, & health, & many, many other blessings. It doesn't matter how messed up, cracked, or even broken your past has been. Jesus wants to lead you to a glorious, victorious life. Clinging to Him is a choice we must make daily. His hand is always stretched out offering for us to cling.

[many-sparrows]

Martin Luther and Paul the Apostle would have either gotten along like a house fire or they wouldn't have been able to stand in the same room. It's about the self loathing.

[heresylog]

Hi, not a bible person myself but I was watching a video and I was curious about something in it and figured I would ask you. It’s a video where a man is illegally arrested for having a sign with what seems to be a pretty controversial message outside of a church as the congregation is all showing up.

I’ve only read the bible once when I was young and my bible study has been limited to a week of barely paying attention at summer camp so I have what I would generously call almost zero context for what this guy was trying to say.

The sign said “The apostle Paul taught the opposite of what Jesus taught.” I know who Paul was but don’t really remember what his teachings were and how they differed so much, and why everyone got so worked up (beyond it seeming like kind of a duck move and the general rivalry between different views of Christianity)

Hi there,

I am not qualified to go into depth, but basically this person is saying that Paul undid all the work of Jesus.

This is problematic in two ways

It implies Jesus made a mistake. Jesus gave Paul the keys to the kingdom and by saying Paul (who was hand picked by Jesus) was wrong in how he lead the early Church…you can see why people get upset.

It implies that Jesus lied. (Matthew 5:15) Jesus said he would not undo Jewish laws but to “fulfill them.” And Paul said that Gentiles would not be required to adhere to Jewish rules. This is the quote many people use when refuting that Jesus would have loved everyone despite xyz.

Obviously, this man should not have been arrested.

tl;dr

Jesus picked Paul to be the leader of Christianity. Some people think Paul did a bad job leading. Some people think that belief in Paul doing a bad job is heresy.

[gayleviticus]

i finished reading damascus by christos tsiolkias (his novel about the apostle paul and early christianity) and was very pleasantly surprised by how it manages to be such a nuanced and complex look at such a controversial figure without descending into the saccharine preachiness of Christian fiction (and in fact, being written by someone who is not a Christian and also filled with enough shits, fucks, cunts, and reference to arse-fucking to instantly kill the average Christian fiction writer)

he manages to balance contrasts very effectively; a cruel, profane world of crucifixion and rape with a genuinely subversive religion of love and solidarity; a Paul flowing with genuine kindness and faith but also struggles with streaks of pride and jealousy.

but what impresses me most of all is the way the novel holds both Paul's apocalyptic gospel of resurrection in a world to come and its radical rejection of the injustice of this world with Thomas' naturalistic gospel that the kingdom has come and is among us already in Jesus' teaching. especially the way Tsiolkias acknowledges that even as Paul's gospel sits awkwardly with our modern scepticism it has heirs in any revolutionary tradition that wishes to change the world; it is this gospel that stands in condemnation of the systems of the world as they stand, and that spread the teachings of Jesus to the entire world (notably Damascus takes the interpretation that none of the other apostles bar Paul would fellowship with Gentiles). it would have been very easy to tap into the zeitgeist of scepticism and write a novel where Paul is a charlatan or crazy fundamentalist, and the gospel of Thomas marginalised and ignored as heretical and Gnostic is rather the true faith buried by orthodoxy. Paul is a very acceptable scapegoat to bash; if we can blame all the uncomfortable bits of the Bible on him (or the bloodthirsty and primitive Old Testament) we can maintain an unsullied image of pure Christianity. [and i don't mean to say this is entirely unjustified, especially given the way evangelicalism in particular loves to deploy isolated verses rather than entire texts! When your primary mode of engagement with him is not actually reading his epistles as works of literature, but throwing Romans 1.27 at gay people to convince them to stop being gay 100 times, that is naturally going to deeply warp your perspective of how much of his corpus is actually problematic (which, imo, when we account for 1) cultural norms re homosexuality and pederasty 2) the fact about 3-6 'Pauline' epistles were probably not written by him and 3) some verses possibly being interpolations, is really not that much).] But such a novel purporting to expose Paul as a fundamentalist charlatan would be just as didactic and simplistic as pious Christian fiction where Paul can do no wrong and harbour no doubts and is a direct mouthpiece for 21st-century evangelical doctrine. And so I very much appreciate the thought and empathy Tsolkias puts into this novel to understand Paul, rather than taking a few soundbites as an excuse to dismiss the man entirely. His Paul is flawed - a man who falls victim to jealousy, who sometimes makes his heart stone to avoid doubt - but also a man who believes in friendship and love across barriers of male and female, slave and free, Jew and Greek, one who hopes that this world mired in empire and oppression and crucifixion need not be the only way. and also a man who has a homoerotic relationship with Timothy that also has v queer-coded parallels in him bringing home an uncircumcised Gentile to the apostles in Jerusalem who he fears will reject this pagan. which is cool imo

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

*someone hates paul*

If you need me I'll be crying-

[christliche-kunstwerke]

St. Jakobus der Apostel, ca. 1612-13 von Peter Paul Rubens (Öl auf Holz)

[fuckyeahvanhalen86-95]

December 8, 1980: Eddie proposes to Valerie Bertinelli with an $8,000 diamond ring.

"I think he [Dave] was jealous that Ed had fallen in love and was happy. I feel Dave tended to keep Ed in a miserable place and liked him there because he could control him that way. But when Ed became happy and more independent, Dave couldn't control him anymore. Dave likes control."

- Valerie Bertinelli

"I think it pissed Dave off, because all of a sudden I got a whole other side of the limelight he wanted. The tabloids and People magazine kind of shit."

- Eddie Van Halen

April 11, 1981: Eddie Van Halen marries Valerie Bertinelli at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Westwood, California.

[portraitsofsaints]

The Conversion of Paul

Saint Paul the Apostle  5 -  67 Feast Days: January 25 

June 29 (Feasts of Saints Peter and Paul)

Patronage: Missions; Theologians; Gentile Christians

St. Paul has said of Heaven “Eye has not seen nor ear heard…what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). {website}

[etakeh]

I have friends in Vegas this weekend.

My prayer for them is that they not miss any of their scheduled activities, they eat good food, and they don't get testy with each other because they're tired and overstimulated.

[hrsquotes]

In Philippians 1:21-24, the Apostle Paul says in the New Living Translation: 21 For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better. 22 But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better. 23 I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me. 24 But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live.

The Message Bible says also says it quite well: 21 Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger; dead, I’m his prize. Life versus even more life! I can’t lose. 22 As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. Hard choice! 23 The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. 24 But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here.

When the Apostle Paul wrote the book of Philippians, as well as three other books (Ephesians, Colossians, & Philemon), he was serving his first imprisonment, which Acts 28 talks about. When he was writing the above passage, he knew very well that he could die a prisoner. Yet, he had faith that he would one day be free. So, he got to reflecting. If he were to die while in prison, he would get to experience the glories of Heaven, leaving the mess of this world behind. He also saw the vitality of staying alive because of the anointing God placed on his life - bringing the Gospel to the gentile (non-Jewish) world, helping them to become true disciples of Christ, thus having more souls getting to hear "well done, my good & faithful servant." It was a win-win scenario. As appealing as dying a prisoner was for Paul, he saw the vitality of remaining alive far more significant, not only for him, but for the entire world.

That is how it should be for us as Christians. We should be so firm, so on fire in our relationship with Jesus, letting that spill onto how we treat others, that we become 100% positive where we will spend our afterlife. Because of this, death is not to be feared, regardless of how young or old we die. If we are to remain alive, we get to live out more of The Great Commission in whatever field God has placed us in, helping bring more souls to Heaven. Again, it's a win-win scenario.

[pink-fiat003]

Can’t stop thinking about saints Priscilla and Aquila traveling with St. Paul, and him mentioning them with pure love in his writings 😭 I love the idea of St. Paul working on his writings while the couple work on their tents in the background

[tweedfrog]

I also can't believe St Paul was shipwrecked 3 seperate times like my god top 10 men in history you should not get on a ship with

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"It's not all that uncommon for healthy people-as well as those suffering from mental disorders-to hallucinate dead people talking to them.

So Paul provides no basis whatever for believing in the resurrection.

No matter how fervently, how passionately Paul believed that his visions of Jesus were the real thing, the stuff going on inside his head should be of little interest to anyone seeking to find out what actually happened."

-- David Madison

[thepastisalreadywritten]

The great apostle was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. 

He surpassed all his peers in zeal for the Jewish law and their traditions, which he thought to be the cause of God.

He became one of the most fierce enemies and persecutors of Christians. He was one of the conspirators in the martyrdom of St. Stephan.

After the martyrdom of the holy deacon, the priests and magistrates of the Jews raised a violent persecution against the church at Jerusalem in which Saul placed himself above the others.

In the fury of his zeal, he appealed to the high priest and Sanhedrin for a commission to take up all Jews at Damascus who confessed Jesus Christ and bring them bound to Jerusalem that they might serve as public examples to incite terror into others.

But God was pleased to show forth in Saul his patience and mercy.

Saul was almost at the end of his journey to Damascus, when, around noon, he and his company were surrounded by a great light from heaven and fell to the ground.

Then Saul heard a voice, which to him was articulate and distinct, but not understood by the rest:

"Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me? Christ said not: Why dost thou persecute my disciples, but me: for it is he, their head, who is chiefly persecuted in his servants."

Saul answered: "Who art thou, Lord?"

Christ said: "Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecute. It is hard for thee to kick against the goad: - to contend with one so much mightier than thyself."

There was a Christian of distinction in Damascus, Ananias, greatly respected by the Jews for his irreproachable life and great virtue.

Christ appeared to this holy disciple and commanded him to go to Saul who was, at that moment, in the house of Judas at prayer.

Ananias trembled at the name of Saul, being familiar with the misdeeds he had done in Jerusalem and the errand for which he set out to Damascus.

But our Redeemer overruled his fears and charged him a second time to go, saying:

"Go, for he is a vessel of election to carry my name before Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: and I will show him how much he has to suffer for my name. For tribulation is the test and portion of all the true servants of Christ."

Thus a blasphemer and a persecutor was made an apostle. He was chosen to be one of the principal instruments of God in the conversion of the world.

St. Paul never recalled his wonderful conversion, from which have poured forth many blessings, without raptures of gratitude and praise to the Divine and His mercy.

The Church, in thanksgiving to God for such a miracle of his grace, to commemorate so miraculous an instance of his almighty power and to propose a perfect model of a true conversion, has instituted this feast.

We find this mentioned in several calendars and missals of the eighth and ninth centuries, which Pope Innocent III commanded to be observed with great solemnity.

[poligraf]

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

— Paul of Tarsus