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.
>> “More things xians will not hear on Sunday morning.” <<
Oh, they’ll hear them, but the nicolaitan churchians claim that somehow they’ll escape in a secret rapture.
Its so secret that Yehova doesn’t even know about it.
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I suggest anyone that spreads this vile nonsense called sola scriptura to get right with the Lord for the sake of their eternal soul. The teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ were around hundreds of years before ONE WORD was written down. The average person couldn’t read even if they had words to read. They were still taught Christianity. How? From others talking to them! It’s called TRADITION! Passing down from generation to the others what was passed down to them! I don’t know why some on here act like they just fell off the turnip truck.
That’s beautiful. Gotta love the argument that man’s interpretation of Scripture is all that’s required for The Payoff, but yeah, we can’t even agree on what two words mean. They are amusing, if nothing else.
Truly. It is also a sad commentary on a broken educational system, but I digress.
Digression or no; most certainly true
“Since Christ suffered for the Church and since the Church is the body of Christ, without doubt the person who divides the Church is convicted of lacerating the body of Christ.” – Council of Florence, Session 9 (23 March 1440)
Well, that's lovely, I'm delighted that you have grasped the truth about the grace of God, but, I hope you can appreciate the disconnect being made right here. We have Editor-surveyor and Verga, along with af_vet-1981 all contending for a salvation that IS based on our merits. They give lip service to the gospel of grace and the place of faith, but then turn around and qualify it, adding all the works/things one MUST do in order to some day have eternal life in heaven. Faith PLUS our works in order to be made righteous by grace is NOT the true gospel.
That sola ecclesia isn't working any better than how some here have falsely concluded sola Scriptura does. ALL truths of the Christian faith have their source in the Bible - it is God's specially revealed and preserved love letter to the body of Christ - which is what makes IT the authority over any humanly devised doctrines.
No one is denying that God has created us for good works and that the Holy Spirit within us leads us to desire to please God out of gratitude for His love and grace. Nobody is contending for a free-for-all, sin all you want Christian life because we have been saved by grace apart from our works. We readily acknowledge that there are consequences for disobedience and that God WILL deal with us as His children, disciplining us and conforming us into the image of Christ. But, all these things point out is that we are STILL saved by grace through faith and not by works - lest ANYONE should boast.
Paul said that ANY other gospel than the one he preached is an accursed gospel. It is solely by grace THROUGH faith that we are saved and grace PLUS something we add to it nullifies grace. It is NOT by our works of righteousness that we are saved but by the grace and mercy of Almighty God. THAT is the true gospel and is proved by God's sacred word over and over again.
So trusting in the Divinely-revealed Scripture is now "vile nonsense"??? Seriously? The teachings of Jesus Christ were being written down within the first ten or fifteen years after His ascension and the last book that was written was Revelation in 95 A.D.! Who is feeding you this garbage about "hundreds of years" going by before "ONE WORD" was written down? Why would they have even done THAT if, as you say, nobody could read? Is that what Roman Catholicism teaches these days?
All you are doing is disparaging and disrespecting the holy word of God and you will bring judgment on yourself for doing so. Everything the Apostles taught in that first century that is essential for salvation and Godliness was written down, copied, dispersed and preserved and those who refused to follow the written word were corrected. God did this for thousands of years BEFORE Christ came, why would He have stopped doing it after?
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
bingo
Not true. The Ryland fragment of John is believed to date to about 125 AD. This is within 35 years of the traditional date for the writing of the book by John himself, which is about 90 AD. There are also fragments of Matthew 26, more controversial, because while many Scholars assign it to a date of about 200AD, there is a minority report suggesting a possible date as early as 60AD, which would make it virtually contemporaneous with the Apostolic era.
The point is, if you think the absence of any written Scripture for hundreds of years is a good way to attack Sola Scriptura, then have at it. Just be aware that the archeologists are not helping you out much.
You should also be aware that your position is a great way to make friends with liberal secular scholars, who apparently preach exactly the same thing as you with respect to the unavailability of manuscripts. Odd coincidence that. Whereas it's the Sola Scriptura conservatives who are arguing that John actually wrote John and Matthew actually wrote Matthew. Everybody else seems to they were written by latecomers who had no direct knowledge of the events of Christ's life. Liberals like that because they can argue the whole thing was made up, with no record from real eye witnesses. But John's Gospel was written by one who claims to be an eye witness:
Joh 21:20-24 Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? (21) Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? (22) Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. (23) Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? (24) This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.
So, is "John" lying? Or is he telling the truth about being both the "disciple whom Jesus loved" and the writer of the Gospel named after him?
Because if your theory is true, the writer is a liar. If the writer is telling the truth, your theory is necessarily wrong, and we do have direct eye witness testimony of the words and deeds of Jesus, and a physical fragment no more than 35 years older than the first copy issued by Apostle John himself. Which is it? You tell me.
The life and teachings of Christ were taught before ONE WORD was written down. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, too bad some many on FR seem to waste their’s with idle nonsense about that CATHOLIC DOCUMENT called the Bible.
“liberal secular scholars, who apparently preach exactly the same thing as you with respect to the unavailability of manuscripts”
CATHOLIC theologians are NOT LIBERAL SECULAR SCHOLARS. Try again partner.
The Catholic Church is the only reason you have a Bible to read. The only reason you are even aware of the teachings of Jesus Christ is because OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Let JAMES the JUST, blood brother of Jesus and leader of the followers after the Crucifixion - for about 30 years - killed in 62AD - explain it to YOU - :
KJV James 2:24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
That's NOT the argument, though. Instead, it is another example of misunderstanding what sola Scriptura even means. Nobody is advocating that anyone can believe whatever they want and it doesn't matter. If you look at your owner's manual for your car or washing machine, for example, it tells you what you need to know to get the best use of the product. If, instead, you decide to use vodka rather than gas in the car tank or wash your pots and pans in the clothes washer, you will NOT like what results. If the people who built the products take care to communicate to their customers how best to enjoy the use of their products, why wouldn't the God of all the world do that much and more to communicate to His creation how best to relate to Him and enjoy the existence He created?
The Bible is God's instruction manual, love letter and guide to humanity so that we could know Him, love and serve Him and spend eternity with Him. Everything we need to know is found in His word. As St. Peter said in his second epistle, chapter 1:
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.
For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
There is NOTHING fractally wrong about that!
And well enough He didn't say it that way. It would be passing strange to explicitly label an obvious metaphor so awkwardly and academically, and quite alien to Jesus' style of communication. Jesus didn't say "A door is a figure of me." Would have been totally weird, wouldn't it? Nobody talks that way. You just use the verb of being, "All the world's a stage," and presto, you have a direct metaphor. Google it. I'm not the one to blame for the existence of direct metaphors.
Hmmm...is this your way of admitting you misspoke earlier when you claimed "not ONE WORD was written for hundreds of years"? Nobody denies the books of the New Testament were written between 45 A.D. and 90 A.D. and the teaching of Jesus were spread orally prior to that AND after.
If, as you say, the mind is a terrible thing to waste on "idle nonsense" about the Bible, then why are YOU here at all??? I don't happen to think it's nonsense because, as is evident here, many people still don't get why we have the Bible and the benefits it provides to all those who would live Godly lives in Christ Jesus. I think it's a GOOD thing to help in that regard.
LOL! Cat got your tongue? No response on whether John was telling the truth about being an eye witness? Hmmm...
But the response you did offer is also off point. I didn’t say you were befriending Catholic scholars with your rejection of evidence for early NT manuscripts. I said you were befriending liberal secular scholars by your position, and you are. It is merely icing on the cake that you of your own accord extend that to Catholic scholarship.
As for whether we have the Bible thanks to the modern Roman church, poppycock. The modern Roman church didn’t exist when the Apostles wrote. By definition. Furthermore, if God wanted to raise Bibles “out of these rocks,” to paraphrase the Baptist, He would have no trouble doing so. You better go back and check your pedigree one more time. I don’t think it’s doing for you what you think it is.
And just as a gentle reminder, I am still waiting to hear whether you think “John” lied about being both the “disciple whom Jesus loved” and the writer of the Gospel. Was that writer lying? Or telling the truth?
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