Christian Liberals & Progressive People of Faith

...with all the baggage that world-view entails. Actually, he was rather progressive for someone coming from such a background. Of course, nowadays, he seems extremely reactionary, but so would the vast majority of people from that time or place, if they happened to write down their thoughts and we could read them today.

(And, by the way, your statement that "people couldn't get married easily except by common churches" is completely incorrect. Marriage, at the time, was a civil contract, although Christians could follow it up with a church blessing if they desired. It didn't become required to be married in a church ceremony until later in the medieval period, long after Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman empire and, later on, all of Europe. For what it's worth, the requirement for a church wedding in those days was for record-keeping and enforcement purposes, to prevent men from traveling from town to town and marrying a new wife in each town.)

Now, having said all this, what can I say about your notion of following "only the books of Christ?" I'd reply that, unless you're part of a fundamentalist group that believes in Biblical inerrancy (that everything in the Bible is literally true and equally authoritative), which practically no mainstream branch of Christianity except the Southern Baptists does, you are not part of a "religion of the book." The "Word of God" is Jesus, not the Bible -- the latter is merely words about the Word of God. Vitally important words for us to learn of the Triune God, but still words written by humans, any of whom, Paul or anyone else, may have their own blind spots and their own personal and cultural misunderstandings of what promptings God was sending to their hearts and minds. For that matter, although it should hardly be necessary to point this out, the "Bible" isn't a single book, but a whole library of sacred writings of different voices and forms that first the Jewish and then the Christian communities found to be of importance to their faith and life.

Given that Jesus, not the Bible, is the Word of God, it is obvious that the primary focus of Christians should be in the accounts of his words and actions found in the Gospels. Anything beyond that, whether it be the Epistles or the Hebrew Scriptures (commonly called the "Old Testament&quot is really best thought of an appendix to the Gospels. And even the Gospels need to be seen as human accounts about Jesus rather than a video recording of his life.

You can learn a lot about God (including Jesus) through the Bible, but it should not be your only means of contact; Bible study needs to be supplemented by prayer, further study in theology (which can often give you vital insights into the meanings of things found in Scripture), and the fellowship of sharing in an appropriate Christian community to really come into its own.

By the way, when I look at Paul's writings, I look beyond the limitations of his cultural viewpoint and see the positive things he did. Primarily, by insisting that gentiles could become Christians without first having to convert to Judaism, he paved the way for Christianity to be a global faith, rather than merely a sect claiming to be, in essence, "Judaism 2.0." And keep in mind that at least some of the more strident misogynistic statements found in his epistles appear to actually have been added by a later editor, instead of being Paul's own thoughts, while his own words of Galatians 3:28 -- "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." -- speak of an inclusivity that took the world centuries to live up to.