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the concept of orthodoxy has a cruel history

Most Christians believe the New Testament Scriptures as we have received them, are one homogenous document, the infallible Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit.

• A document describing the Christian Community of the first century as largely homogenous in belief and practice, with just the odd minor personality conflict here and there.
• A document future proofing Christians against the heresies that will surface in the next centuries, chiefly Gnosticism.

And that is just what the orthodox Bishops who first mapped out the canon of the New testament Scriptures in the Second Century and ratified it in the Third Century wanted you to believe.

The trouble is, its just not true!

The trouble with paradigms

Paradigms actually tell you how to read a document, tell you how to understand it.  And for almost 2000 years Christianity has been controlled by orthodox Traditionalist Christian paradigms. 

If you read the New testament believing it to be one homogenous document, authored by the Holy Spirit, that is exactly what you will see.  The most glaring contradictions will be relegated to the status of 'difficult passages' or deep truths hidden in paradox.

After spending some time and effort reading and rereading the diverse Nag Hammadi corpus (that initially appeared to be utter rubbish, thanks to my own traditionalist wiring), I came to see the obvious.  Like the Nag Hammadi Corpus, The New Testament scriptures were not one homogenous book by one author, but a collection of different books by different authors.

I further came to see that like the Nag Hammadi Corpus, these different New Testament books by different authors sometimes contradicted each other in substantial and important ways.

I found the most glaring example to be the chasm between the Acts 14 account of the so called Jerusalem Council, and Pauls own account in Galatians 2.

This divergence is so profound, it demanded I take a closer look at everything within the New Testament purporting to be by Paul or about Paul.  The Epistles, the Pastorals, and the Acts of the Apostles.

The Pastorals and Acts are out of step with the Epistles.  The author(s) of the Pastorals and Acts, either did not understand Paul's position or the books were deliberate spin.  A deliberate attempt to water Paul down and smooth over the profound differences between Paul on one hand, and James and the Jerusalem Church, on the other.

I found that just as I would be stupid to make a judgement on the Nag Hammadi corpus as a whole, it was not only permissable but incumbant on me to make choices between divergant New Testament texts where the divergences were material.  Using a 'Kingdom of Heaven' paradigm I found less material divergences between the genuine Pauline corpus in the New Testanment and the Nag Hammadi Valentinian texts, than I found between the genuine Pauline corpus and the Acts and pastorals and James.

Criticisms such as the Bible cannot be treated as a smorgasbord to pick and choose from, would be valid only if divergences were peripheral.  But where there is a chasm, failing to rightly "divide the word of truth" (to borrow a phrase) was to embrace syncretism.

Traditionalist Christianity was a syncretism between Paul and James.  And the New testament, if treated as a homogenous whole, was a sychretistic document.

Which begged the Question - if the New Testament is not infallible, and is syncretistic - who is the New Testament God?