"it is far too easy for us to ignore the bits that we don't like." That was my own point really . . . I am not stating a liberal position. Far from it! [This thread is causing me some anxiety because, after reading your post first yesterday, I wondered if perhaps I was.] I woke up this morning worrying about this and I think the main problem is that blackstone has misunderstood my original point and sidetracked me into something slightly different.
All I can do now is to go back to the only point I intended to make which is that there are moments in Paul when he is not preaching the gospel but the Old Way and it can so easily trip us up when he does.
This three point plan that you end on strikes me as really interesting because isnt there here a sort of potential Death Knell? I know why you say it (the protestant/catholic/fundamentalist divide) but the more I think about it the more I see there one source of the problem. Isn't it more that the Church needs the Scripture; the Scripture needs the Individual (to read it);the Individual needs the Scripture as well as the Church, and the Church needs the Individual ad infinitum . . . . ?
none is complete without the other . . .a sort of Trinity actually.
the drive towards ecumenism is not a drive towards the old Catholicism: it cannot be. What I am beginning to realise is that God delights in Diversity above all: theologically as well as naturally!
Just a thought. I'm exhausted with this thread now so I will just shake you by the hand and thank you for the interesting conversation. (It's actually been a real source of grace for me over the last couple of days anyway so nothing wasted!)