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.
Neither.
Christianity/Catholicism was founded by Jesus Christ on the Apostles, the first Bishops.
It's nearly certain, though, that there would be no Christianity without Paul's efforts.
I thought Ron Paul invented AquaBuddha.
I agree, he did both.
Nope. Christ invented Christianity. Man invented the Roman Catholic Church.
RE: It’s nearly certain, though, that there would be no Christianity without Paul’s efforts.
I think God chooses is own vessel. If Paul were no available, somebody else would have been.
Of course; this is a “Did you stop beating your wife” type of question. Paul converted to Christianity and promoted it with unparalleled zeal; to denigrate or impugn his efforts and accomplishments is simply satanic.
“Nope. Christ invented Christianity. Man invented the Roman Catholic Church.”
No, actually Salvation was right. No man “invented” the Catholic Church. The Church was founded by Christ Himself.
The Apostles were not the first Bishops. You can say that all you want, but the Bible does not teach that.
Salvation(the poster) is wrong. The Catholic Church is a perversion, by men, of the One True Church.
God`s irony is that Paul was chosen for his mission....in spite of his past. A miracle.
Both.
Christianity as we know it today is largely the creation of Paul. At the same time, in the words of Thomas Jefferson in his ‘Letter to William Short’ of 13 April, 1820:
“Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and firm corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines led me to try to sift them apart.”
Or to quote Soren Kirkegaard,
“In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ The Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ.”
So yes, both. It would be an interesting “What If” of history if Paul hadn’t come along - what shape would Christianity have taken? Paul was certainly the great popularizer of Christianity, but if his own theological interpretations are removed wholesale from Christianity (the Pauline Epistles, etc.) we’d likely have something that looks a like Thomas Jefferson’s edit of the Bible.
Did Paul invent or hijack Christianity?
_______________________________________
I’m a deacon in my Church. Been a committed Christian for over 50 years. But only recently did I learn that some believe Paul did indeed “hijack” the Gospel.
For instance. The Great Commission instructing us to baptize?
Doesn’t apply any more since Paul’s commission over rode that.
I have long felt that the timing and location of Jesus’s coming, together with the missionary work into Gentile regions made perfect sense from historic and strategic points of view. He was sent into the dominion of the Roman Empire, one of the most powerful and extensive empires of all time. They had made travel easier with a system of roads. The early churches in Macedonia, Greece and Asia Minor were on the crossroads of major trade routes to and from the known world. God in His infinite wisdom had a good marketing plan.
BINGO
Is the Founder of the Christian Religion Paul of Tarsus or Jesus of Nazareth?
Evidence for God ^ | 02/24/2014 | Rich Deem
Posted on Monday, February 24, 2014 4:10:01 PM by SeekAndFind
The Rabbi Saul from Tarsus, having had his moment of Divine clarity handed to him in spades, did NOT ‘invent’ Christianity, nor did he ‘hijack’ that belief.
Before that moment, he was the zealot pursuer accuser of Christians, which means he had foreknowledge of their beliefs, activities, and demeanor, i.e., “he was previously exposed to it”.
His moment ‘on the road’, brought to mind, all that he had witnessed, and made it ‘his to own’, as we say, today.
Therefore, with his knowledge of the Talmud, the Ta’anach, the Torah, he was Divinely directed to bring those teachings that reinforce, and more deeply expound, ‘the teachings of the Master’. (ref: ‘I am but a slave’).
His ‘letters’ go to churches of future linkpins, in Revelations. His ‘letters’ go to those churches, that have formed from the local Pagan/Roman communities, and have had no ‘direct exposure to Jesus’, as well.
(How would YOU manage, were you to be set as a ‘remote office of one’, with no manuals or corporate directives, and only the ‘breakroom information brokers’ knowledge, to go on? No data systems, just a pen, ink, and paper, with an occasional speaking arrangement? And, as time went by, the DHS is after your head.)
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