Adam, both Jesus and Paul expected an imminent end-time—and perhaps it would be truer to argue for the writers of the Pauline tradition, i.e. those influenced by Paul and writing the Pastoral Epistles, to be particularly down on women. But in the light of Jesus extraordinary inclusiveness of women this seems even stranger.
I probably cross all sorts of lines marked down in the sand because I was not aware that the nature of this forum was fully academic debate. On another forum, arguing against a fellow poster, who was a conservative evangelical, we got down to detailed discussion of Greek terms, word contexts, roots of words etc. etc. It was incredibly stimulating as we effectively going through major chunks of the Letter to the Romans, and at the time I was reading Pelagius’ commentary on it.
Effectively we reduced that discussion down to very few people and in the end we could not and did not agree.
It sharpened up my theology no end.
If I may say so, you made a wrong assumption about me and where I was coming from on a personal level. I think you were wrong to do this, because you then displayed the arrogance of someone further along the path of learning and knowledge. Now you may well be, if, as you say, you were at university from the age of thirteen and have been teaching for three years. But I have always taught people it does not matter how good an argument something is, you still need to go away and think about it for yourself. The argument may still hold up, but there’s something that just is not right for you. And that’s fine.
I remember disagreeing strongly with someone who was reduced to the argument of: I have studied this for three years and just written a dissertation on it. Fine, but all that work does not, in the end, make it right.
I sometimes go in like a bull in a china shop to get reactions: and I will fight my corner, but eventually go away and reflect on it. And I may well be changed by it, hopefully, probably, in some way.
At least there is an encounter rather than some sort of ordained and passed down knowledge—and I think that is how we grow, through experience. So I do not believe in divine automatic writing and I do not believe that a vision enables anyone to know the mind of Christ of have the ability to discover and translate mysterious gold tablets. Whatever Paul experienced, from his own words, it dealt with very little of Jesus as a man —the incarnation of God, whatever that might mean.
