YokelRidesAgain said:Jesus of Nazareth was an itinerant Jewish preacher who traveled from town to town preaching about the kingdom of God. Whether you believe that his teachings were:k2aggie07 said:
False dichotomy.
Step 1. Define "Christlike"
Step 2. Define "Paullike"
Step 3. Demonstrate that the two are different.
Good luck.
A) Messianic revealings of himself as the literal Son of God, as fundamentalist Christians would hold
B) Elaborations of a moral nature on a "kingdom not of this world" that would forever transcend the depravities of Empire, as some liberal Christians would hold
or
C) Eschatological visions of a literal, apocalyptic end of the world expected within a generation or two, as some atheists (e.g., Bart Ehrmann) would hold
...there is nothing in the gospel accounts that suggest that Jesus ever had any concern about specifying how the churches that would be set up to worship him as a god would be directed.
That aspect of the New Testament is largely Pauline, with some contributions from other writers.
First, this isn't related to the question of discipline.
Second, your scope is so narrow as to be useless. You can't separate the gospel accounts from the rest of the NT or the entire working body of church tradition without mangling them beyond use. Just like you can't remove parts you don't like from the gospel without rendering it impotent (as did Jefferson).
The gospels were written by the same folks that either walked with a Christ or were disciples of those who did (see another thread for this discussion). The NT canon was set / formed / preserved by those same people. You either must take it all or reject it all -- or, make the (difficult to support) case that sometime in the first thirty years after Christ's death it all went to hell.