Going Rogue

Paul’s writings reveals a very different “Jesus” than the one related to us by the other Apostles. Significant by their absence, we may note that “the words of Christ” are conspicuously absent from the thirteen Pauline epistles.

Albert Schweitzer, the German theologian and missionary notes:

“Where possible Paul avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and had taught His disciples the ‘Our Father’ [the Lord’s Prayer]. Even where they are specially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord.”

This issue indeed lends substantial merit and credence to the fact that Paul may have really known very little about the actual life and ministry and teachings of the historical Jesus compared to Jesus’ actual Disciples. Other renowned philosophers and theologians have also noted this about Paul, including the English politician and philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who wrote in 1823, Not Paul But Jesus,

“It rests with every professor of the religion of Jesus to settle with himself, to which of the two religions, that of Jesus or that of Paul, he will adhere.”

It is helpful to understand that there were a vast number of non-proto-orthodox (i.e. non early Roman Catholic) Christians who followed the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles that categorically rejected Paul’s NuGospel. The reason these early Christians abandoned Paul was because he wasn’t teaching the truth. He also wasn’t teaching with the Messianic authority of the Jerusalem Church!

To the uncritical eye, it indeed appears that Paul has been accepted as part of the “Jerusalem Church”. The book of Acts, written by Paul’s Gentile traveling companion, Luke, presents Christendom with exactly this carefully molded perspective.[1] Luke, the only known Gentile to have been canonized within the Bible, is careful not to write about Paul in any way that might show any controversy between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. He is light on the hard facts – in fact, he carefully omits them – where the true Judaic perspective might cast doubt onto his dear friend and traveling companion, Paul.

These issues with Paul and Luke have not gone unnoticed by mainstream Christian and secular scholars and historians:

“… the purposes of the book of Acts is to minimize the conflict between Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, James and Peter. Peter and Paul, in later Christian tradition, became twin saints, brothers in faith, and the idea that they were historically bitter opponents standing for irreconcilable religious standpoints would have been repudiated with horror. The work of the author of Acts was well done; he rescued Christianity from the imputation of being the individual creation of Paul, and instead gave it a respectable pedigree, as a doctrine with the authority of the so-called Jerusalem Church, conceived as continuous in spirit with the Pauline Gentile Church of Rome.”[2]

It is very important for Orthodox Christianity to have Paul seen as genuinely in complete agreement with Peter and James and the rest of the Apostles because without their esteemed and distinguished support, Paul’s NuGospel becomes a completely rogue one.

This issue becomes much more clear when we see Luke’s adroitly worded facts about when Paul visits the Apostles in Jerusalem. Luke frames the story this way:

[The Apostles] said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses… What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. … Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. [3]

 

While Luke indeed attempts to mitigate this “lawless” issue by showing that Paul underwent a Temple ritual showing him to be a Lawful Jew, the reports (accusations) that Paul is teaching contrary to the Law of God are quite serious and troubling to the Law-abiding Jewish Apostles. Despite what some in traditional Judaism have asserted, the Law of God is equally applicable for both Jew and Gentile alike. After all, why would God keep his instructions of obedience and righteousness for some of His children and not all of them whom He loves?

To make it even more remarkable, Paul admits that these so-called “super apostles” from the Jerusalem Church have been preaching a “Jesus” and a “spirit” and a “gospel” that is different than the one he originally delivered to the Corinthian churches. He says,

“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a ‘Jesus’ other than the ‘Jesus’ we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

I do not think I am in the least inferior to those ‘super apostles’.”[4]

Paul himself is most adamant that there are indeed two different gospels, two Jesus’, and two different spirits being preached here. Paul has one spirit, and the Chiefest Apostles (in Jerusalem) indeed have another! There is his patented NuGospel and then there is the other Gospel of the “Renowned Apostles’” (in Jerusalem)!

It is well known that the Apostles sent others to minister and teach the Gospel to other cities and regions. These emissaries carried letters of authority from the Apostles in Jerusalem. While Luke writes in Acts 15 and 21 that Paul had one of these letters, Paul’s own words tell a different story. In 2 Corinthians 3:1-6 Paul openly admits that he has no letter of authority from the Jerusalem Church. In fact, he postulates that “the letter kills” but that his “new covenant” of the spirit is what brings “life”.

It seems a bit underhanded for Paul to evade the security mechanism of the Jerusalem authority, by attempting to rest on his own credentials and reputation without a letter of apostolic (one sent by) authority of the Jerusalem Church!

Paul’s own words clearly illustrate that the people he was in dispute with, these “Chiefest Apostles” were by anyone’s honest definition James, Jude, Peter, John and the rest. The competing gospel that Paul is denouncing in 2 Corinthians is in fact the TRUE Gospel that Jesus the Messiah taught the Twelve—the Reformed Judaic/Hebraic TRUE Gospel of his own disciples and followers in Jerusalem.

Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth was written circa 55 AD, only four or five years after the Council of Jerusalem where  he himself was present, and when both Peter and James had spoken (according to Acts 15). The reputation of those Apostles who had indeed walked with Christ was indeed renowned at this period of time in history within this region. We have no historical nor Biblical record of any other competing “chiefest apostles” to substantiate that Paul was talking about anyone other than these most esteemed and very well known Apostles of Christ in Jerusalem.

To get a better understanding and corroboration of this issue of just who Paul is comparing himself with in 2 Corinthians, we can look at Paul’s other epistles to see that he himself indeed 1) has some big personal/religious problems with the Apostles in Jerusalem and that 2) he is continually comparing himself to them.

The first thing any student of human nature realizes is that anytime someone says “I am not in the least inferior to so-and-so”, that person is really feeling inferior to so-and-so and is speaking out of a deep-seated sense of insecurity! This is one thing that makes Paul’s statement here in Galatians so interesting – why is he acting so defensive when comparing himself to these “super apostles”?