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.
John 21:24-25 This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
Iscool is correct. It does not say *also helpful*.
Why did you add that? I find it incredibly ironic that Luther is castigated for *adding* *alone* to faith and yet here we have a Catholic adding words to Scripture that the context doesn't even imply.
And as Elsie pointed out in post 422, you did not answer this question. Wanna try again?
What is so important that God left out of Scripture that someone feels they need to add later?
But that is not what I asked. Clearly, he was influential in his lifetime (otherwise, no one would have bothered imprisoning him and killing him.) Thus, like many, many other men, he sought glory despite great danger, and encountered them both. Common story, really.
In other words, you have none. Your anachronistic gymnastics is not evidence.
THIS WHOLE THREAD is about the power and influence Paul held and continues to hold over the development of Christianity. Perhaps you hadn't noticed...?
“As for the second, I don’t believe anyone who says God spoke to him.”
That is both an illogical and irrational prejudice.
On second thought, God just told me that you should give me all your money. I'll send my Paypal information shortly.
I absolutely believe Muhammad was used by an otherworldly entity. I just don’t believe it was God. I believe it was the devil.
Ah yes, I forget your world is full of invisible creatures who, like movie villains, like to tamper with their victims for millennia rather than simply win a decisive victory and be done with it.
Many a revolutionary started on the side of the established power. It's not uncommon at all.
Inquiring minds want to know.....
Context is the enemy of Catholicism.
Your interpretation of those verses add anything and everything else where it does not exist.
It doesn't say *Scripture and......*, *Scripture and tradition*, *Scripture and sacraments*, *Scripture and the magisterium*, *Scripture and (fill in the blank)*.
Again, you are in error. Read the letters. They wanted to be tolerant of other faiths, and primarily tolerant between the Protestant Christian faiths, but there is no question at all which God they served.
All it is, is a statement that it does NOT come from government (because if government giveth, then government taketh away, to paraphrase a quote.) It's just a line in the sand, saying "beyond this point I will not argue, I'll just start shooting."
No, again, Our jurist prudence is based upon the Christian Bible and the dictates of Blackstone's Law. The Judeo-Christian Ethic forms our moral code. I am afraid your position has been compromised by the modern view. Read the founders and you will find that I am right.
“Iscool is correct. It does not say *also helpful*.
Why did you add that? I find it incredibly ironic that Luther is castigated for *adding* *alone* to faith and yet here we have a Catholic adding words to Scripture that the context doesn’t even imply.”
See post 427.
“What is so important that God left out of Scripture that someone feels they need to add later?”
I missed where Elsie asked me that. I will answer here. Sorry, I guess I read it wrong.
The Assumption of Mary would be one answer to the question. Again, if all the miracles Jesus performed are not in Scripture it’s not too hard to see that this too might be omitted. Why?
Because the Scriptures are about Jesus. Their focus is on him. Not Mary.
Oh, I know that. But what they took pains to say was "Creator," not "God,". And in that, they were wise enough to cover all bases. Because at least one of them recognized that rights are not so much taken away as they are given up by those who don't feel they have the moral authority to fight for them. And of course, that is where we are now, losing rights by the leaps and bounds, because we do not fight for them. And no supernatural intervention halting the process, I notice.
No, again, Our jurist prudence is based upon the Christian Bible and the dictates of Blackstone's Law. The Judeo-Christian Ethic forms our moral code.
Yes, they based on what they knew. We excuse their views on slavery because we know they were constrained by the culture of their time and place. So we must understand that the same minds that accepted slavery would bow to some Middle Eastern religion.
But we today do not have to either condone slavery or bow toward Jerusalem or Mecca. It's a matter of choice.
“Thus, like many, many other men, he sought glory despite great danger, and encountered them both. Common story, really.”
He sought no earthly glory and received none.
“Perhaps you hadn’t noticed...?”
I keep asking you for evidence for your odd claims and you keep failing to produce it. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed...?
“On second thought, God just told me that you should give me all your money. I’ll send my Paypal information shortly.”
Mockery is not an argument. Do you know the difference?
“Ah yes, I forget your world is full of invisible creatures who, like movie villains, like to tamper with their victims for millennia rather than simply win a decisive victory and be done with it.”
They can’t win a decisive victory. It has already been won by God. That’s why Paul served Him.
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8-9
Please show where the apostles taught the assumption of Mary and that she was to be considered the “queen of heaven” and co-redemptrix with Christ. If you cannot we shall consider what the Catholic Church teaches to be “another gospel” and accursed as such.
The only source we know to be inspired by the Holy Spirit as to what the apostles taught is scripture.
Your considerations are duly noted.
If he wasn't influential, why do we even know his name? I don't even know what kind of game you're trying to play. If Paul had not become a leading figure in the development of Christianity, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
As for God having already won, he's drawing out the end game like a James Bond villain who has a trapdoor over a pool full of crocodiles just waiting. I think the hinges might need oiling at this point.
Of course it is. If one sincerely is seeking God’s truth asking the Holy Spirit to guide them He will get from scripture exactly what God wants that person to get. The problem with Catholics and those who follow a “church” is that they are not listening to the Holy Spirit but are listening to men.
“Vlad, was Paul or was Paul not an influential figure in the development of the church during his lifetime?”
That isn’t the question. The question is was he making everything up for the sake of earthly “power” and the answer is clearly NO.
“You tell me, you’re the expert.”
Compared to you, I apparently am.
“His letters were answered, saved, and published.”
Peter’s letters were saved. John’s letters were saved. Jude’s letter was saved. That doesn’t mean Paul made everything up for the sake of earthly “power”.
“His directives were followed.”
Sometimes, but not all time. Also, he gave advice, not just directives. And none of that shows that Paul made everything up for the sake of earthly “power”.
“Other church leaders met with him.”
And he met with other Church leaders. So? None of that shows that Paul made everything up for the sake of earthly “power”.
“He was apparently dangerous enough to imprison and kill.”
So totalitarian regimes only imprison and execute those who are “dangerous”? None of that shows that Paul made everything up for the sake of earthly “power”.
“If he wasn’t influential, why do we even know his name?”
Malchus was name of the man whose ear was cut off by Peter. I know his name because it’s in the gospel of John. Was he influential?
“I don’t even know what kind of game you’re trying to play.”
I’m not playing a game, but you sure are jumping around like you’re playing hopscotch.
“If Paul had not become a leading figure in the development of Christianity, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Sure we would - because your claim was that he did what he did to gain “power”.
“As for God having already won, he’s drawing out the end game like a James Bond villain who has a trapdoor over a pool full of crocodiles just waiting. I think the hinges might need oiling at this point.”
God has His own schedule.
Has nothing to do with that, does it??? It has to do with you adding words to scripture to try to justify your false theology...It's all about honesty...
If those things Jesus did were important for us to know the details, he would have told us...THEN...He certainly didn't tell anyone in your religion about them Centuries later...
Amazing!
Amazing??? Well did the disciples make that claim??? No they didn't and you know it...
How do you know your interpretation of Scripture is correct then? Are you one of the Apostles using a time machine?
Because Jesus told us that if we wanted to know how to get eternal life, to SEARCH the scriptures...
And again, this is the point of contention. You are certainly adding to Scripture when you clam it says anywhere that itself, is the ONLY source of Truth!
This is what you are not getting, or stubbornly refusing to admit. When you show me a Scripture that says, "Scripture ALONE is the source of ALL truth (about Christianity)" then we will talk further.
Until then, I'm not bound by your rule (and hence a man made rule) that says "If those things Jesus did were important for us to know the details, he would have told us...THEN..."
You see my FRiend, you keep wanting me to play your game by your rules. "Show me that in the Bible or else it's not true". You, and all the other anti-Catholic Christians may be able to sucker other Catholics into playing that silly game but NOT me. You will FIRST demonstrate sola scriptura from Scripture or will be ignored
Now, do you want to answer my final question to you? Because I think it will be helpful in this regard:
You cited John 5:39 & 46-47. Luke 24:27 & 44.
Would you agree that what is described in those passages is also what is described, at least in part, in Acts 17:1-11?
Yes or no please.
Joh_20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
1Jn_5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
Well that covers the material and formal sufficiency...What was the next question???
In order to prove sola scriptura a Protestant must prove the different and much stronger claim that Scripture is so clear that no outside information or authority is needed in order to interpret it.
2Pe_1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
God says his scripture is materially and formally sufficient and any outside interpretation is not acceptable...That's good enough for millions upon millions of Christians who read and believe God...But to put a cap on it,
Joh 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
That's where you learn of God...Not outside of the scriptures but inside...
So you can’t show where the apostles taught those things?
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