Paul: The Lost Epistles. Robert M. Price

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СКАЧАТЬ among us. Fearing that we shall presume upon your scarce leisure, and knowing that you are much taken up with your ministry of preaching and of the oversight of the churches, we venture to inquire concerning only a few things, hoping that you will be willing to share your opinions as one considered faithful by our common Lord Jesus Christ, both for our edification and for that of neighboring churches with whom we may share your reply, for surely what matters distress us are of interest to all sharing a common lot.

      Forgive us if these things seem too delicate for public speech, but answer as frankly as you will, and we shall use good judgment as to whether to read your letter to all or to those immediately concerned. For some among the brothers and sisters, accustomed to their former manner of life among the Gentiles who do not know God, upon their discovering that the wife is with child, seek out the dealer in poisons so as to abort that which grows inside. Others, fearing the attendant danger, are content to wait for the child to be delivered and then, if it is female, or if there are already more mouths in the family than the mother and father can provide for, they plan to expose the babe at the roadside, or it may be in the wilderness, even as Oedipus. Even the Law is silent upon the matter, so that those who scruple against these plans have little with which to persuade their fellows. What say you, O Paul?

      The Epistle of Paul to the Iconians

      1 ¹ Paul, an apostle by the will of God the Father, who calls his prophets from the wombs of their mothers, and the Lord Jesus Christ,

      ² To the saints who gather in Iconium,

      Grace and peace be multiplied to you through Christ Jesus our Lord and the Spirit of God.

      ³ I rejoice, brothers and sisters, that you are in no way slow to pursue righteousness in every respect, as you leave no stone unturned in your progress in Christ Jesus. ⁴ For many are they who are content to invoke the name of our Lord Jesus and then to wait for his coming from the heavens as the lazy man awaits his departure aboard a slow ship. ⁵ But you are not so, but are zealous in everything to know the will of the Lord, ⁶ that you may follow in his steps and so witness to the Gentiles of the glory he has shed upon us. ⁷ For as the prophet says, "I have made you a light to the nations." ⁸ And so you will be as you strive to know what the will of the Lord is.

      ⁹ Now concerning the matters about which you wrote, we know that even the least of the little ones in this world have their angels which attend upon their heavenly father night and day, ¹⁰ and that no harm may come to any without the will of God. ¹¹ And yet let us not become as those through whom stumbling blocks do come upon the innocent. ¹² Let another be fitted with the millstone and not you! ¹³ For we know that the Lord has declared himself to be the refuge of the widow and the orphan; how much more the newborn?

      ¹⁴ Someone will say that it was the will of God that Amram and Jochabel set the infant Moses adrift upon the Nile, and that when they could not with surety provide for their son, the hand of the Lord was with him, ¹⁵ and you see what great things God did through Moses so that he became the very hand of God. ¹⁶ Now if these things are recorded as examples for us, may it not be that the infant exposed by the roadside falls in the same way under the will of God, and that God will rescue him or not, as he wills? ¹⁷ God forbid! Do you not see that God wrought his plan through the hand of Pharaoh's daughter who, seeing the child's distress, had him fetched from the watery embrace of the Nile? ¹⁸ Let yours be the hands that snatch the hapless infant from the doom to which her parents have consigned her.

      ¹⁹ For how do you know, O father, O mother, that you shall not be able to provide for this child? ²⁰ Do you not suppose that your Father, who feeds the animals of the field and the winging birds can feed your own hatchlings in the nest? ²¹ I am persuaded that he can, for the Scripture says, "You open your hand, and they are fed." ²² Do not suppose that you are God, knowing the future, and that it is hopeless.

      ²³ Or do you think that, seeing the evil nature of the times we live in, that you do well to prevent a new life from coming to birth in a world of sin and suffering? ²⁴ Remember the plaint of suffering Job, who lamented,

      ²⁵ "Let the day perish wherein I was born,

      and the night which said,

      'a male child is conceived!'

      Let that dawn be dark!

      ²⁶ May God above not miss it,

      nor light intrude upon its shadows!

      Let gloom and deep darkness smother it,

      let clouds enshroud it;

      let the unyielding blackness terrify that day!

      ²⁷ Let it go missing from the chorus of the days,

      exclude it from the calendars!

      Because it did not slam shut

      the doors of my mother's womb!"

      ²⁸ Such was the cry of his despair. But do you not see? ²⁹ She who aborts the growing one, he who abandons the newborn, it is not their own ill-starred birth they prevent but that of another! ³⁰ And who can decide for another? If you rejoice that no one decided to prevent your own entrance into the world of light, then do you show the same mercy to others. ³¹ For what does our father David say of his little son whom the wife of Uriah bore him, whom he lost? "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." ³² Even so, the justice of God shall see to it that you are called to account by your own slain offspring on the day when all secrets are revealed. ³³ On that day, the slain child will ask the parent who slew her, "For what crime did you slay me, my mother? What evil did I do, O father?"

      2 ¹ But someone will say, "Indeed none may slay a child, but she who aborts has no child. Has she not the authority over her own body?" ² You hypocrite! The body, though one, has many members, each severally different in both form and function. ³ The eye by itself is not the body. Nor is the nose by itself to be called the body. It is only in their combination that the parts may be called a body. ⁴ But what if what is in you, in the womb, is itself a thing of many limbs and members? Is it not already a body unto itself? ⁵ For it is like the small sapling that grows in the shadow of the mighty tree above it. ⁶ And if you have power over your own body, has it not the same power over its body? And has not God created both alike? ⁷ Each one's life is given and each one's path is marked out by his or her creator. ⁸ O woman, O parents, you are but the stewards of the creation of God. ⁹ And be sure the day will come when your Lord will call you to account, to find out what you have made with that which he entrusted to you, first your own life, and then that which you were given to raise up unto him. ¹⁰ In that day, no one will be justified who says, "I knew that this world is hard, that it seeks to devour every soul that enters it, so I cast it by the roadside, or I slew it already in the womb."

      ¹¹ But is it not within the rights of the potter to make what vessels he will, and to unmake them as he pleases? ¹² Can he not break a vessel, the work of his hands, in pieces, with none to blame him? Indeed, none may gainsay him if he does. ¹³ But hold! You are not the potter, but only the clay. For what does the Scripture say? ¹⁴ "God made the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul." ¹⁵ So you see it is God who molds the clay according to his will, and it is mortal flesh that is the clay he molds. ¹⁶ Do СКАЧАТЬ