/christian/ - christian

Brother, calm down. Do not doubt the fundamentals of the faith.
>How do I know Paul wasn't some crazy weirdo who decided to throw in his own interpretation of Christianity?
Because Christianity is true, and that means the Holy Spirit would not have tolerated uninspired writings being universally received as scripture by the Church. He is the cause by which we come to recognize the books as the word of God, and I think they had the Spirit too.
>Even then, the authenticity of some of Paul's letters are heavily disputed and some even universally agreed as not consistent with his own writing. 
The reason why some of his epistles is because their content directly disproves some anti-Christian theories about the history of the Church, and secular scholarship decided that must mean the evidence is forged, rather than they be wrong. Some epistles may not have the very same writing style but that is easily explained by their historical context. 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians have wildly different audiences, and that tends to produce different writing styles from a single author.
>How do I know whether or not I should practice Judaic law or not? Christ said he is here to fulfill the law, but he also said he would not abolish it.
Nor did He abolish it. What makes you think Jewish rituals ever had anything to do with you? Even the rabbis will tell you a gentile is not expected to follow that part of the law, the nations were never bound to them. In order for us to be forbidden to eat pork or required to practice circumcision, we would need a clear command saying as much, because this would be a major change from the old covenant. 
>Should I practice the law to renew my faith? After all, it's what the early Jewish Christians still did anyway.
You should practice the law to obey God but circumcision is not the law. The law is the moral code of scripture, those things which are considered absolutely sacrosanct to which all men are bound, such as the Ten Commandments.
>How do I know the Roman church is the true church? 
The Roman church is not a true church.
>where as Protestant churches don't take anything seriously and are a breeding ground for cafeteria Christians and people who simply don't care to take Christianity home or let the Bible dictate anything about their lives.
Would these Protestants have been accepted by Martin Luther or John Calvin? They aren't Protestants, they're apostate liberals and lukewarm modernists. There are many bible believing churches which have maintained the faith and their zeal for the Lord.

>>24804
>Do not doubt the fundamentals of the faith.
The truth should have nothing to fear from skepticism.

>>24804
>The Holy Spirit would not have tolerated uninspired writings being received as scripture
Not only mentioning the Catholic and Orthodox churches have entirely different canons, the strict canon we know today was a subject of debate for hundreds of years after the death of Christ, and "canon" wildly differed with every century, even less. The church fathers, some under direct tutelage of some of the Apostles themselves (seriously, I can't emphasize this enough, this is our link between the events of the Bible and our theology. Early church fathers knew the guys who knew THE GUY. They were chosen and taught by THE savior of mankind), had various accounts of what comprised "scripture" to them.
I can't get over that. I don't know what to do or think about it.

>>24805
The truth has nothing to fear from anything. Doesn't change the fact that doubt is a serious error which begets more errors.
>>24806
This is false. They do not have "entirely different canons", the canon was not simply a "subject of debate" (the likes of Genesis or Matthew for example were doubted by none), and it absolutely did not "wildly differ with every century". You're also implying an anachronism when you mention the earliest fathers having different canons. Justin Martyr (to my knowledge) never quoted from Paul, does that mean he rejected Paul? No. They were not using the internet. The New Testament spread slowly. The books when they were originally written were sent to a specific individual church, Mark to Rome for example. They would remain there, but Christians coming and going would encounter these other books with which they were not personally familiar, and would recognizing it as the word of God would make a copy to take back to their own church. This took decades. It was a long time before every church possessed a complete canon. Spurious books were sometimes received in a region but never spread like the true books. The most commonly received spurious books, the apocrypha, were received largely because of the false assumption they had been part of the old Hebrew canon. However even these never achieved full acceptance because of their lack of inspiration and the greater knowledge of bible scholars that they had not been accepted by the Jews. In any discussion of the canon it is important to remember we are talking about the word of God. It is self-evident that God reveals Himself to man for a purpose, a purpose which would be destroyed if human books were placed alongside His words, and if men were ignorant that He had spoken. God has kept His word. Have faith.

I've been reading more biblical criticism, and honestly it's a little unnerving to experience what I took as plausible fact, completely unravel.
This (https://earlywritings.com/forum/) is where it comes from and although most of it to me is babble, there's a lot of disturbing stuff that really makes me thing. It's upsetting me to be quite honest. These people seem to know a lot more about scripture than most., and a lot of the topics that are brought up go so far beyond any apologetics I've ever heard or discuss issues that I've never heard acknowledged. 
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=171 is a topic that is completely new to me.
Supposedly, there are many people who think Paul's conversion comes from a neurological disorder associated with seizures (Temporal Lobe Epilepsy), which is also highly associated with religious experiences and conversions. The same people (Neuroscientists, there are a few medical papers on a potential, hypothetical number of diagnoses for Paul) continue to attribute a number of plausible mental afflictions onto the character of Paul through his style of writing (Mild schizophrenia, manic depression, etc)
There are a lot of seemingly intelligent and well-read people who conclude Paul as a Gnostic, or someone who entirely misinterpreted the Gospel/Christianity. If you Google it, it's also a pretty widespread belief in some circles that has some mainstream hold with non-Christians seemingly.
Another criticism I've seen is that Revelation in its entirety is a prior, non-Christian work later attributed to Christianity by adding specific mention of Jesus haphazardly.
Point being, there's so much stuff that sows doubt in my mind, and it all makes sense. That's the worst part. It isn't some edgy middle schooler mad at his parents for taking him to church, there are plenty of smart people offering sensible criticism.
I don't know what to think or do.

>>24881
i dont find the idea that christians were suffering from mass delusions or psychosis very plausible.
i also personally believe that the field of psychology is a very suspect science in general and that mental illness is mostly a recent phenomenon(its certainly been on a dramatic rise in the past century compared to before(one may note the corollary that atheism is also on the rise this past century))
i think psychoanalysing people from 2 millennia ago is unreliable anyway
>Paul as a Gnostic, or someone who entirely misinterpreted the Gospel/Christianity.
the other apostles didnt think so

if someone has gone through robbers and shipwrecks to get a message to me, im naturally going to take his message much more seriously and as being more sincere, its not "persecutory mania"
most of that post takes for granted that Pauls writings were either written by someone else, written later, dishonest or delusional which i dont accept
it seems like suppositions based on very little to me

>>24881
I have no idea why you are so troubled by this brother, after glancing at it it's clearly the same kind of circular, anti-evidential, speculative, anti-Christian drivel you expect of secularists. In fact, this combined with a single post from your idea has me a little suspicious that this is concern trolling. 

Maybe Paul and Jesus were lunatics. Maybe they were raving madmen and everything they were saying and believing was the product of a deranged mind. *Or*, maybe Christianity is true. I suppose to determine which it is we'll be needing the other side to present their evidence and make their case to establish their historical claims. Unfortunately this is always where the wheels fall off for them because they have no evidence and they have no case, consistently the only response I have ever encountered to this incredibly basic challenge to the secular history of early Christianity is "how dare you question us". That's it. Appeal to authority is all they have. Their fiction is derived from a method that starts by prejudicially assuming what Christians have always believed is false, coming up with excuses for why all the evidence which exists doesn't count, and finally deriving history on the basis of nothing but divination of their own farts. Learning to deal with appeals to academic authority are something which anyone getting into apologetics needs to do because it now stands as the foundation of atheistic apologetics in general (atheists are less "freethinking" than papists). Such appeals to "the Science" or "scholars say" are invalid because appeals to academic authority are 1. fallacious 2. elitist 3. obscurantist 4. arbitrary and 5. self-contradictory.

Now, this particular fiction (and all those like it) are dripping in the presupposition of naturalism. This is why, for example, they refer to the prophecies of Christ as "psychosis" and claim they were never fulfilled. Of course that *must* be the case because we know that supernatural things like prophecies just don't happen because we know God doesn't exist and we know nothing but matter exists. This is an obviously circular argument. Once again: maybe Paul and Jesus were madmen, *or* maybe Christianity is true. 

You also see the style of preaching typical of liberal heretics when they as good children of their father attempt with serpentine dishonesty to deceive believers into joining them in apostasy (the pervasive intellectual dishonesty of liberal theologians is likely a consequence of the moral bankruptcy of the godless worldview they have embraced). This comes out when he says "Over the years, I have become convinced that the issue need not be feared or disdained by people whose faith is strong and free of affect." By "the issue" he means the outright denial of the truth of the Christian religion and by "feared or disdained" he means disagreed with. The purpose of such rhetoric is to obfuscate the anti-Christian nature of what they are saying while also portraying their false claims as merely reasonable; if you disagree with them then you're just running away from the truth and being irrational and emotional, don't you want to be reasonable and scholarly, just deny the Lord. Liberalism is syncretism with the false religion of atheism. Liberal churchmen are priests of Baal, and enemies of the true faith. Machen was right, liberalism and Christianity are religions in contest.

>>24884
>a single post from your idea
Your ID*

>>24802 (OP) 
>How do I know whether or not I should practice Judaic law or not? Christ said he is here to fulfill the law, but he also said he would not abolish it.

the only aspects of the Old Law youre meant to follow as a Christian are the Moral Law and, if you want, the feasts and Saturday Sabbath.

>>24802 (OP) 
>How do I know everything written is scripture or not?
I presume you meant 'everything written in scripture is [legitimately Spirit-breathed, inspired] scripture'?

You might start by investigating the ICBI statements on that very topic Anon. [1]

>1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

>2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

>3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

>4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

>5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church

>sauce:
1. https://defendinginerrancy.com/chicago-statements/