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.
That's quite simple to disprove. Q.E.D.
The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself..
There is no such interpretation and never has been and never can be. Scripture is ink on paper without some entity reading, interpreting, deriving doctrine from it.
This is so obvious. The only way I can see a body trying to pass this as doctrine is in sheer desperate necessity; hoping no one says: "Ok, let's put the Holy Book on the stand and ask it then.."
If this story took place in any other context (within the Communist party, within Scientology, within Islam, anywhere else,) it would look like either a power play or madness. Therefore, that is most likely what it was.
I cannot put you in the Tardis and take you back there and prove anything, nor can you. We can neither of us prove whether Paul, Jesus, Mohammed, or any other of the dozens and dozens of people who have claimed to either talk to God or be descended from him were liars or deluded. I simply treat them all the same. You do too... unless they are of your pet religion.
I felt pretty certain that you could not. But you do, every human who manages to get out of bed in the morning does. It's what makes us different from non-humans.
Think of the logical tests you would put their claims to.
You would be using the wrong test. You have to apply the right tool to get the right result; and logic applied to religious knowledge is the wrong tool.
It's never productive to argue one religious view of truth versus another with someone who does not yet recognize that there is an area of human knowledge that is religious.
Religious does not necessarily mean a deity or any of the schools you've mentioned thus far. It can, and is, defined as that area of human knowledge which transcends formal logic/reason - is beyond the capability of reason/logic to know.
And, again, you know things in this area, or - at the least - you act as though you do.
I’m afraid you’ll have to give me an example of the religious beliefs you think I have, because I’m not aware of any.
Leave the thread.
Ok. Absolute values - unconditional values - are by definition not possible to prove using reason logic. The area of knowledge beyond reason/logic is religious. One needs to understand the terms here to continue; absolute = self-evident = inherent = intrinsic...
So these beliefs, in this example, beliefs about values, are beyond the sphere of reason/logic and in the sphere of religion.
Quick example: kindness is better than cruelty.
IF kindness has inherent value for you, has value all other things being equal, then this is a belief in the sphere of religion.
Perhaps kindness is not one of your religious beliefs. Maybe truth is. Or love. Or life.
Whatever you believe has intrinsic value, value all on its own, that is a religious belief.
It may even include why you get up in the morning. What your purpose in life is - as you believe it.
Yes, exactly. So arguments against any and all tradition are false in practice.
Accepted, except that all (for the purpose of this debate) Protestant traditions begin with the tradition of the 5 solas - That which preempts and prevents any tradition from trumping the actual mechanics of salvation. So innately, in the Protestant mind, no tradition can rise to the authority of the written Word. I believe your strawman derives from the wrong view that Protestants do not have traditions, and do not admit them. That is wholly inaccurate in any denomination which adheres to the 5 solas (or the 3), and necessarily inaccurate among any of the confessions.
[roamer_1:] the Bible is the only infallible authority, and not the 'ONLY authority'..
First, you still have the problem of scripture requiring a reader/interpreter - authority.
Accepted, but only to a degree - The liability is not removed from the individual, as noted by the Bereans, and the earlier commandment that the Torah be read before the assembly every seven years - One of the examples for that requirement is so that children born in the interim can hear the Word directly - That implies that the milk of the thing can be understood by a child. So I would reject that the message must be wholly passed through the church.
However, that does not preclude the teaching authority of the church. When it comes to the meat of the thing, learned men and elders are of a necessity, providing that their interpretations are true. If it has gone off the rails, like PCUSA (as our example) there can be no innate authority to be obeyed, as Yeshua plainly states in Mat 23:2-3... The authority of the Pharisees lies in Moses, not in their tradition. Follow them when they are speaking from Moses, but do not adhere to the things THEY say and do.
Likewise with Messiah - ANY authority within his discipleship comes from HIM - Not from Peter, or Paul, or the pope, or Luther or Calvin... do as HE bids us to do. There is no ability to change HIS WORDS... And that btw, is what is wrong with the wild interpretations of Paul...
That brings me to the actual definition of 'tradition' - The Roman and Greek sense of the word is wholly misguided. You might research the restrictions and intention of the Tradition of a Rabbi in relation to his disciples in the Hebrew sense... Because THAT is the tradition being bandied about.
And finally, I would question the authority of any church which has lost it's prophets - The mechanics of interpretation fall under the jurisdiction of prophecy, not administration, teachers, or priests... It was always the rabbis and priests getting it wrong continually. It is the prophets who straighten out a matter. And in that I accuse all, not just y'all.
In addition, I see this as another example of false in practice. I don't know of any Confessional or Creedal statement by an authority that admits it's creed is fallible. The Westminster Confession, for example, does not end with "but we could be wrong, after all we're fallible."
Neither does "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Principles are declared. And since Westminster adheres to the 5 Solas, the point is moot, as under that egis, all traditions fall short of the infallibility of the Word as a matter of course - I see no falsity in that practice at all.
I'm exaggerating here, but I think you can see the point: those stating what they believe to be absolute truth do not condition it, Protestants included.
Yes, I see - but as I said, all principles are declarative - This is the ground upon which we stand... The same could be said for Conservatism, btw... It is the nature of standing upon principle.
So there is, in practice, the necessity for another authority other than scripture and that authority claims it's creed, doctrine, dogma to be absolutely true without fail.
No, I would say there is an allowance for another authority, not a necessity. If I am lost on a desert island with nothing but a KJV and the ability to read (and water, clothes, cheetos, and etc allowed), I can find salvation in it's pages, of that I have no doubt.
Objections that the Church does so are a double standard.
I don't object to your declarations... I just know them to be untrue... And the objection, as a technicality, is not that you hold traditions, it is that you hold them as equal to, or even above the infallible Word of YHWH. There's the rub.
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.
Paul was asserting his authority as part of the magisterium. The Magisterium is charged by Christ and through the power of the Holy Sprit of leading the Faithful into all Truth about the Faith. That Truth is found in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which comprise the Deposit of Faith.
As noted earlier the notion of doctrinal development is not alien to Christianity i.e, the Blessed Trinity. What is in dispute is where the authority rests to define doctrine. It is the fallacy of sola scriptura which says all of Divine Revelation and Truth must be explicitly spelled out in scripture.
I would counter that whatever is wrong is not Paul. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;
I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost
That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
I would counter that whatever is wrong is not Paul. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;
I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost
That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
They are absolutely incapable of grasping that. They cannot conceive of a direct relationship with Christ without going through a church.
They don't understand what the body of Christ really is.
af:I am not surprised by that attitude. It fits the model I expect where rebellion continually breeds more rebels and a chronic issues with authority.
Christians put their faith in Christ. The apostles can't and don't save anyone. They were men who God used to bring the gospel to the world and in some cases to write Scripture.
Christians don't have a problem with *legitimate* authority. They do have problems with those who try to impose their authority on others, like Catholicism has a history of doing.
Catholics do love their labels. They just LOVE to pigeon hole everybody and then sit in judgment on them for not measuring up.
This post is a PERFECT example of one of the main reasons so many Christians won't divulge their denominational affiliation.
So until they actually claim they're fallible in the words that Catholics want to hear, we are to presume they're INFALLIBLE?
Is that how it works?
Does the CCC claim in it that it is fallible? Therefore, are we to presume that the CCC is to be considered infallible until stated otherwise in it?
How do you know?
How do you know they’re from the apostles, Paul in particular?
How do you know they’ve been passed down faithfully?
What is your source for verifying all of the above?
Please provide the sources for verification purposes.
I would counter that whatever is wrong is not Paul.
You need not counter - I find nothing wrong with Paul. I find fault in those who interpret him wrongly. But to be fair, he's a complicated read, no matter who you are.
concur, hope to understand but love and believe nonetheless
I post mine, and then they slither away!
Go figger!
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