Hillel was Gamaliel's grandfather and most likely deceased by the time Paul was studying with Gamaliel.
How long have you been single?
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I can relate somehow. I, in perpetual singlehood, never having touched a woman, have this feeling of inferiority and insecurity is imposed by the boomers and Gen Xers on the younger generation. Born and raised in a prosperous, carefree bygone era, they'd never understand the absurdity and brokenness of the mating market today, how marriage model has shifted from "cornerstone model" to today's "capstone model".It's not your fault, @JohnDB just gets twitchy if he thinks someone mentioned divorce in a negative way. He is currently on his third marriage if I'm remembering correctly.
He would much prefer to target single people as unfit or inferior, it helps suppress his nagging feelings of inferiority. His mother had a lot of issues and did her best to pass them on to poor Johnny.
This is, of course, assuming that his claim of a happy marriage is accurate; judging from some of his comments you'd swear he was a 30- something incel who spends all day scrolling X and posting from his mother's basement.
I don't mean to be a sour grape, disparaging things unattainable to me, but after assiduous study on church history, marriage history, sexuality history and real biblical teachings - not church doctrines or traditions - on these sucjects, I have to conclude that marriage is neither an essential human experience nor a key to salvation, but a worldly blessing comparable to other blessings listed in Deut. 28, like fame, fortune, pleasure. King Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, yet life was still vanity to him. The yearning for the abstract concept of marriage with an imaginary partner is nothing but the result of envy and lust, and there'll always be a devil on my shoulder whispering this yearning by activating the primitive, animalistic part in my psyche.
No, this letter as a whole was to the Corinthian church congregation addressing various issues, not individual missionaries. Paul was not talking about his wife or Peter's wife or any apostle's wife in particular, but woman in GENERAl. It alludes to Gal. 3:28, "there's no male or female, all are one in Christ".
Please ask yourself, is Lord Jesus and his ministry a model to follow? Are we taught to confrom to His image? If this is different, that is different, then how is it possible? Doesn't such differences make him a hypocrite? I'm sorry for being a bit harsh, but I'm judging by historical precedence. If it was proper for Lord Jesus's minsitry, it was proper for Paul's. The only thing I'm reading in this verse is a fellow sister in Christ is on equal footing with "other apostles".
Good for you.
I think other people realised this without even having to study church history, marriage history or sexuality history.
They can just look to their own parents for examples of marriage or familial relationship dramas. Whatever your path in life, whether its with a partner, alone, or in a tribe or whatever, God sees you if you hunger and thirst for his righteousness.
The good thing about being single is...you don't have to divide your time to please the Lord.
Marriage is not a worldly blessing, nor the result of envy and lust, nor a primitive, animalistic part in the psyche.
Marriage is God’s divine plan for a man and a woman to unite and become one flesh, enjoying the grace of life as a team.
If your theories were valid, Jesus would never portray the church as His bride, nor invite us to His wedding banquet.
God said it is not good for a man to be alone, so He created Eve for Adam.
You keep missing the point in the context of the verse.
Jesus did not go on missionary journeys with one woman as a traveling companion.
Paul was talking about bringing a wife along and how the church should provide for their expenses.
5Have we no right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?
Lord Jesus's marriage is in HEAVEN, not on earth; not in this life, but in the afterlife; and all in all, not in the sense of carnal union, as in earthly marriage at all, but a spiritual union with God, like angels in heaven. That's how he really portrayed marriage. He himself as God, the creator of the universe, did he created an Eve for any Adam? Did he introduce any woman to any one of his disciples? God's ultimate plan was for him and his people to unite and become one, preaching earthly marriage as God's "divine plan" is at best distraction and at worst false advertising.
For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. (Matt. 22:30)
Yes, he didn't travel with one woman, he went on missionary journeys with MORE than one woman as travelling companions. Not only that, when his own disciples had fled and forsaken him, it was these women who followed him and ministered to him all the way till his death, burial and resurrection, some married, some not. That's a biblical fact mentioned in all four gospels, and that fact bears historical precedence for Paul's point in 1 Cor. 9:5. I didn't make any of these up, all I did is interpreting the Scripture with the Scripture itself.
And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons. (Matt. 27:55-56)
There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem. (Mk. 15:40-41)
Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities—Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for Him from their substance. (Lk. 8:1-3)
And a great multitude of the people followed Him, and women who also mourned and lamented Him. (Lk. 23:27)
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. (Jn. 19:25)
Then you're insinuating Paul of being a hypocrite, should he have been married or even just betrothed, then he departed for his mission or due to his wife's unbelief. His own teaching on marriage has definitively and absolutely eliminated the possibilities of him ever being married.
But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am ... (1 Cor. 7:8)
Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: ... a husband is not to divorce his wife. (1 Cor. 7:10-11)
If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. (1 Cor. 7:12)
Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. (1 Cor. 7:27)
So... Educated guesswork.
Basically you are building an entire dinosaur skeleton out of three bone fragments.
Now that's the most insightful post I have seen from you yet.
I mean if it does happen, that's great! But if it doesn't happen, that does not invalidate your life. It doesn't make you not a real person.
Again I repeat my earlier statement....I don't judge you for being divorced, I don't know the situations surrounding them and might be 100% not your fault.
However, I DO judge many of your comments about singles and women in general. They are divisive and rude, very inappropriate behavior towards your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Your comments towards women are particularly concerning; happily married men simply do not feel the need to denigrate females the way you do. It's rare even among unbelievers and I have NEVER seen such behavior coming from a supposed church leader.
Seems to be getting a lot worse, too. Hope things are OK at home.
If only what you was saying was true at all.
In addition to resorting to ad hominem attacks because you have no valid argument.....also very revealing.
Time, place, audience....
All extremely important for hermeneutics....
PLUS
Cultural aspects....
Paul, knowing exactly how much he was going to suffer before he died....(because God showed him) knew that getting married was a bad choice and cruel to any woman he married. And it wasn't as if Paul was without "options" as many on this board.
Paul knew that the period of signs and wonders was coming to an end and was stressing the urgency and immediacy of the ending age/epoch/time period.....
That was the reason for the entire thing about restrictions of marriage.....
The Corinthians were a small church....in the suburbs. A little thick headed at times and slow to understand things....
Paul wrote them several letters. Not all made the Bible. The "missing" letters are a jumble of what Paul wrote to Thessalonians, Philippians, and Colossians....just bits and pieces all stated just a tad differently....enough so that the translation could be intentionally warped into saying the wrong things....
But....we have the other letters too....saying the exact same things a bit clearer....and even now we have people making them into things that just arent true and never been true.
Paul was looking 20 years into the future and seeing the end of the time of signs and wonders....
The destruction of the Temple....
And wanted everyone to work hard until that time....then relax a bit. (Paul was always a bit obnoxious)
I'm telling people now that in 20 years we WILL have a complete societal collapse if people do not start getting married and having children....a LOT of children.
We are heading to an apocalyptic event by not getting married and having children. And somehow even supposedly Christian singles are too caught up in their own heads to actually accomplish the 2nd oldest institution.....something done since the beginning of time?
We Christian's have 2 freaking imperatives.
Love God
Love our neighbor
They go together...cant do one and not the other or else you leave both undone.
And yet for whatever reason the growing contingent of single Christians cannot form long term relationships?
And its obvious that it's not "will not"....its definitely "can not".
But somehow its everyone else's fault except theirs?
Think God is going to buy that excuse?
No one snowflake feels responsible for the town destroyed by the avalanche....
But guess what? They are!
All this is senseless fearmongering. Societal collapse? Which society? Japan, Italy and many other european have gone through low birth rate, high medial age and population decline for decades, they have endured, they haven't collapsed, where's your faith? Yes, we ought to love God and out neighbors, but don't you know that love refers to the cherishing, honoring, caring kind of love, not the erotic kind?
Hi Lovette, I would try to offer some words of comfort but I'm pretty sure you'd just argue with it.
So just know that I do agree with a lot of what you said, and I know how you feel
.
However, this "insight" could be traced back to St. Augustine's depressive view on sex, which was under the influence of Plato's gnosticism. To put it simply, body is a vessel for the soul, body is mortal, corrupt and carnal, soul is immortal, pure and spiritual; body ages and dies, soul refines and lives forever; body makes you animal, soul makes you human; and unfortunately you can find passages in the NT that seem to espouse this philosophy, especially Matt. 6 and Rom. 6-8 - the wages of sin is death. And from this St. Augustine developed the concept of original sin, that this entire life journey is an exile from Eden as a punishment for the original sin, and sexual desire, in particular, is the manifestation of original sin, it was a necessary evil to perpetuate human race.Now that's the most insightful post I have seen from you yet.
I mean if it does happen, that's great! But if it doesn't happen, that does not invalidate your life. It doesn't make you not a real person.
This antiquated teaching was somehow revived by the #MeToo movement, with a secular and righteous facade, and it has practically demonized all sexual behavior, that all men are preps, all sex is rape, any sexual arousal is your shameful desire to satisfy your own lust at the cost of another person's dignity and bodily autonomy. Any anything I read abotu sex, including church teachings and any bible passage about fornication, only seems to validate this view.
It's not fear mongering...
We are at the initial stages of societal collapse now.
This has been seen many times throughout history....it's following a prescribed path....
We, as a nation, have a low fertility rate for women. 100 women need to birth 210 babies for our population to remain constant. Currently those 100 women are only having 158 babies....and the trend indicators just took a nosedive off the cliff....looking at maybe 50 babies .
What this means is that there are no longer enough young people to fill roles and jobs they regularly do. The tax base crumbles due to a falling GDP....Which erodes purchasing power of our currency. (Hyperinflation) your retirement plan is destroyed as well. Makes our nation "easy pickins" for pariah nations.
Other European nations are also struggling as well as Far Eastern/Pacific Rim nations. Taiwan Currently has the lowest fertility rate below 1.
When the signs for help wanted evaporate from the grocery stores and fast food stands....we will be fine. But currently they are the warning sign we are in trouble.
Low fertility rates are exponential in effect. Our low fertility is recoverable for a very short window of time. China's issue is not. They will never recover from the results of their "One Child" policy.
Never.
They will cease to be a nation soon enough. They will splinter and fracture. No stopping it. And with all those nuclear weapons floating about....yeah that's gonna be more fun than when USSR did the same thing.
But let's not lose hope....Russian Federation is doing the collapse thing again...because they learned nothing from last time. They too have a proliferation of uclear weapons everywhere....except it's unclear how many will really work due to Tritium having a shorter half life. Fusion and fission are two different types of bombs.
So....there's the issue. Go ahead and Google. AI....whatever you want. The low fertility is going to cause a major problem in the world....there will be others going before the US. But if we wait until they collapse first it will be too late for the US.
Johnny likes to be an alarmist. It's popular.
I've been hearing that stuff about society is about to collapse ever since I was born. Also alarms about this or that ethnic group is going to outnumber whites by the year whatever.
I wish they would establish ranks about which ones we are supposed to be most scared of. They keep hollering about all these things we are supposed to worry about, but which ones are we supposed to prioritize?
Wait, if this is part of a cycle then it's all okay! There will be hard times, then there will be good times again, then there will be hard times again, etc.
About those help wanted signs, they have been abundant since I was born. Where have you been? Any place you stop for gas is likely to have a help wanted sign.
It is an essential human experience for those that have a desire to not live the rest of their lives alone, without physical intimacy and affection, and that special someone who can share and take part in their life's journey.