Posted on 06/24/2014 2:13:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Recently, a friend emailed me with a very common claim, namely, that, “Paul hijacked Christianity with no personal connection with Jesus and filled his letters with personal opinions.” This could be rephrased in the more common claim: Paul invented Christianity.
This claim is especially common among Muslim apologists who use it in an attempt to explain why the Qur’an simultaneously affirms Jesus as a true prophet while also contradicting the Bible at every major point. However, since my friend is not a Muslim and is not coming at the issue from that angle, I will just deal with the question more broadly.
My friend alleges that some of the “personal opinions” of Paul that were interjected into the New Testament include: “slaves obey your masters; women not to have leadership roles in churches; homosexuality is a sin (though there is Old Testament authority for this last, Paul doesn’t seem to base his opinion on it).”
“None of [of the above] were said by Jesus and would perhaps be foreign to his teaching,” he wrote. “I think Paul has created a lot of mischief in Christianity, simply because he wrote a lot and his letters have survived.”
Let’s deal with this point-by-point.
No personal connection to Jesus
Paul, in fact, did have a personal connection to Jesus. This is revealed in the famous “Damascus road” accounts in Acts 9:3-9, Acts 22:6–11 and Acts 26:12–18. Paul refers back to this experience elsewhere in his letters, though it is only laid with this level of detail in Acts, written by Paul’s traveling companion Luke.
The only way one can maintain that Paul had no connection to Jesus is to rule out the conversion experience of Paul a priori based on a presupposition. Of course, I can argue that such a presupposition is untenable, but that would take an entire post to itself. For the sake of brevity, I would just point out that it is illogical to employ such reasoning. It would go something like, “It didn’t happen because it couldn’t happen because it can’t happen therefore it didn’t happen therefore Paul had no personal connection to Jesus.”
Personal opinions
Yes, Paul does interject his personal opinions into his writing! However, when he does, he clearly delineates what he is saying as his personal opinion as an Apostle.
For instance, in dealing with the issue of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul clearly distinguishes between his own statements and the Lord’s.
In 1 Corinthians 7:10, Paul says, “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord)…” and in 1 Corinthians 7:12, Paul says, “To the rest I say, (I, not the Lord)…” This example shows that Paul was not in the business of putting words in the mouth of Jesus. Paul had no problem showing when he was giving his own charge and when it was a statement made by the Lord Jesus, as it was in this case (Matthew 5:32).
Yet it is important to note that other Apostles recognized Paul’s writings as Scripture from the earliest days of Christianity, as seen the case of Peter (2 Peter 3:15–16).
Paul’s “personal opinions” and the Law
Out of the three examples, two are directly from the Mosaic Law. Obviously the Mosaic Law couldn’t have stated that women should not preach in the church because the Church did not yet exist and wouldn’t for over 1,000 years.
The claim that there is only Old Testament authority for the last of the examples is false. The same goes for the claim that Paul does not base his statements on the Law.
It is abundantly clear that Paul actually does derive his statements on homosexual activity from the Law.
For instance, in 1 Timothy 1, Paul mentions homosexuality in the context of the type of people the Law was laid down for (1 Timothy 1:9-11). This short list indicts all people, just as Paul does elsewhere (Romans 3:23), showing that all people require the forgiveness that can only be found through faith in Jesus Christ.
When Paul deals with it elsewhere, he mentions it in the context of other activities explicitly prohibited by the Law (1 Corinthians 6:9-11), again going back to the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ sets apart (sanctifies) His people and justifies them.
As for the command for slaves to obey their masters, this is regularly claimed to be objectionable by critics. By way of introduction, is important to distinguish between what we have in our mind about the institution of slavery as Americans and the institution of slavery as it existed in Paul’s day. After all, Paul explicitly listed “enslaverers” (or man-stealers) in the same list mentioned above (1 Tim 1:10). Since the entire institution of slavery in the United States was built upon the kidnapping of people, it is clearly radically different from what Paul spoke of. Furthermore, the stealing of a man was punishable by death under the Mosaic Law (Exodus 21:16). The practice of slavery in America would never have existed if the Bible was actually being followed.
Paul also exhorted his readers to buy their freedom if they could (1 Corinthians 7:21) and instructing the master of a runaway slave to treat him as “no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother” (Philemon 11). Paul grounded his statements in the defense of “the name of God and the teaching.” Paul said that bondservants should “regard their masters as worthy of all honor,” not just for the sake of doing so, but so there might be no chance to slander the name of God and the gospel.
The fact is that Paul knew the Law quite well (Philippians 3:5-6) and the Law does deal with slavery.
Ultimately, the claim made by my friend requires more fleshing out on his end and some evidence on his part in order to be more fully dealt with.
Paul’s teachings foreign to Jesus’ teachings?
This is another common claim. First off, one must ask if this statement implies that Jesus would simply have to repeat everything Paul said and vice-versa or else they would remain foreign.
The fact is that there is nothing contradictory between Paul’s writings and Jesus’ teaching. One must wonder why Luke – a traveling companion of Paul and the author of Luke-Acts – would have no problem writing the gospel that bears his name if he perceived such a contradiction. Furthermore, one must wonder why this apparent conflict was lost on the earliest Christians, including the Apostle Peter, who viewed Paul’s letters as Scripture (see above).
In affirming the Law (Matthew 5:17), Jesus affirmed all that Paul that was clearly grounded in the Law. Furthermore, if there was a real contradiction between Paul’s writings and the teachings of Jesus, Paul would have been rejected, instead of accepted as he has always been.
The Christian community existed before Paul became a Christian, as is clearly seen by the fact that he was persecuting Christians (Acts 8:1,3), and he even met with the leaders of the early church. They did not reject Paul, but instead affirmed what he had been teaching (Galatians 2:2,9). This makes it even clearer that Paul could not have invented or hijacked Christianity.
As for the claim that Paul has had such a large impact “simply because he wrote a lot and his letters have survived,” all one has to do is look at the other early Christian writings that survived in order to see that is not a valid metric.
We have seen that the claim that “Paul hijacked Christianity” is without evidence. While I have taken the burden of proof upon myself in responding to this claim, in reality the burden of proof would be on the one making the claim in the first place. No such evidence has been presented and no substantive evidence can be presented since Paul did not invent Christianity or hijack Christianity or anything similar to it. Instead, Paul was an Apostle of Jesus Christ commissioned to spread the gospel, something that he clearly did by establishing churches and penning many letters under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that we can still read today.
When one reads the gospels and the other writings contained in the New Testament, the message is cohesive and clear: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Ro 3:23), God demands complete perfection (Mt 5:48) and all we have earned through our sin is death (Ro 6:23) and hell. Yet God offers the free gift of eternal life to all who repent and believe (Mk 1:15, Ro 10:9–11) in Jesus Christ, who died as a propitiation (Ro 3:25, Heb 2:17, 1 Jn 4:10) for all who would ever believe in Him (Jn 6:44) and rose from the grave three days later, forever defeating sin and death. Those who believe in Him can know (1 John 5:13) that they have passed from death to life (Jn 5:24) and will not be condemned (Jn 3:18), but will be given eternal life by Jesus Christ (Jn 6:39-40). Paul and Jesus in no way contradict each other on what the gospel is, in fact the four gospels and Paul’s letters (along with the rest of the New Testament) form one beautiful, cohesive truth.
I have to commend you for posting this article. You flushed out the Jeffersonian “gospel” red letter only types.
What amazes me is how the FRomans seem to not engage these folks and instead would rather take shots at Prots and Evangelicals who agree with them on the subject.
I mean Paul is a Roman Catholic ordained saint. Where is their defense of him? Well I guess they agree with the Jeffersonian types.
Everything Paul wrote that is part of the Bible was by Divine revelation and he, like all "holy men of God", spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Christianity exists because GOD willed it to exist. Neither Paul NOR Peter invented it. It is God's doing and marvelous in our sight!
What Jesus Christ DID is as important as what He SAID. Jefferson seems to miss the miracles and propitiary sacrifice.
Huge omissions. There was a reason the Gospel writers included these details.
King James. It says a bright light and a voice.
If Paul adhered to Rabbinical teachings he *never* would’ve thought to teach that the *new* way to Gd is through faith, not works.
If he were a rabbi, he would’ve understood that faith is the heart and soul of Judaism and would never had tried to make such a discernment. (habakkuk 2:2-4- “See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright— but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness”)
If Paul was taught by the rabbis, how on earth did he get the impression that the only way to salvation for Jews was through the following of Gd’s Law to perfection? He flat-out misinterpreted Deuteronomy as ‘abide by the law’ when the Hebrew translation is ‘uphold the law’ - to affirm that the law is Gd’s will. The rabbis have been very clear on this from the start.
To back up the Jewish understanding of our relationship with Gd, I offer you this. Psalms 103:10 says clearly: “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”
Gd is merciful. Every Jew knows this and they would’ve seen through Paul’s proclamation of Jewish roots in a minute.
The fact that *he* actually believed that the *Jewish people* believed that the only way to Salvation was through the perfect practice of Gd’s Law, prove that he didn’t understand Judaism at all. The man had no idea what he was talking about when it came to Judaism.
And, on top of that, he completely misunderstood the Jewish practice of the blood sacrifice. No. We can’t sacrifice an animal to make up for our deliberate sins. We were only to sacrifice animals when we made a inadvertent *mistake*. It was a teaching tool. You mess up, break a law by accident, and you lose a prize goat. You won’t do that again. You can’t offer Gd the blood of an innocent to repay *your* deliberate sins and you never could. (King David went to Gd ‘with a broken heart’ after he had that guy killed so he could marry is wife - he didn’t sacrifice a goat. And the death of his son wasn’t to punish him. It was to bring attention to the sin so David would stop making excuses and finally repent.)
If Paul was such a great rabbi, why didn’t he know these basic facts about the religion?
Your information is over 100 years old and was refuted early in the 20th Century. Before I pick apart your assertions or generalizations please cite the "scholars" who support your claims.
A lot of people kill their kids and blow themselves up in the name of Allah.
It truly was! It's hard to find a stronger testimony to the power of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ than a man who was hell-bent on destroying Christians and Christianity to become one of its greatest apologists.
Refuted doesn’t mean proven.
Are you siding with the Jeffersonian false gospel types here? Where is your defense of saint Paul?
Show us the verses. You assertions have no chronological coherence.
Show us the verses. You assertions have no chronological coherence.
Have you ever offered an animal sacrifice, much less at the Temple in Jerusalem, as Saul (and all the other Apostles and early Jewish Christians) did ? You are two thousand years and a tragic Galut removed from the facts, how could your testimony be better than Saul's ?
Oh, I most certainly believe that he said all that. Why do you think that the Jewish people were so mad at him? He was taking their religion in vain. His teachings show that he didn’t have even the most basic understanding of the faith.
Paul was an Apostle; that was his office. There were not two offices of Apostle to the Jews and Apostle to the Gentiles. There was one office. Paul was selected for a special mission for which he was evidently carefully prepared by God in a number of ways, both background (Roman citizenship was key;), education (to contend with the Greeks for the faith), and special revelation upon the road to Damascus and in Arabia. He was the Apostle to the Gentiles and yet Peter was the Apostle to first brought Gentiles into the holy catholic apostolic church. Furthermore, Peter went to Rome and and led the Church there with Paul in catholic unity, where both of them were holy martyrs for the faith.
Jews are not, and never have been, condemned if we don’t make a blood sacrifice or if we fail to follow the law to perfection. Talk to a rabbi about it. This is the truth.
Christ said this about the Apostle Paul.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+9%3A15&version=NASB
“But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel;”
I think all folks who try to pit Christ off against the apostle He Himself chose should remember this.
Mindreading? You make a pronouncement of “FACT” based on the false teachings of the Catholic church. I don’t know what you are thinking.
The Bible does not teach what you proclaim about the Catholic church.
Jesus prayed in Matthew 17:21 “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us:...”
I have a news flash for you; there are a lot of wrong people in the world because we are NOT all one. If you claim to be the “One True Church” then you had better line up your doctrine and practices with the scriptures. In that same prayer, just a few verses ealier, he said “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”
Truth is not what I say or what you say. It certainly isn’t what the Pope, or Cardinals or Arch-Bishops or Bishops say. It is what the scriptures say.
Go to the Bible, as Jesus instructed. Follow the Bible, not the word of men.
Paul/Saul was a well known and respected Pharisee and a Roman citizen. He was doing pretty well for himself by going after Christians and suppressing the "heresy" of Jesus as the Messiah. Becoming a Christian would have been the LAST thing a man seeking fame and power would have done in first century Jerusalem. He gave up EVERYTHING to follow after Christ as a believer and he suffered greatly, even to death, for doing so. If you are thinking of what a Pope experiences, that was far from anything Paul or Peter, for that matter, was looking for or ever experienced.
As for Paul's meeting of Jesus, I read HERE, that:
I was a little shocked by some of the responses. How can you call yourself a Christian and not know, and enjoy, Paul’s revelation?
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