To all those Christians who believe that the New Testament is a unified whole and complete message from God, with the words of Jesus Christ, recorded by His chosen Apostles, as inspired by the Holy Spirit:
1) that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, present the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
2) the Acts of the Apostles are a true historical narrative of the founding of the Christian church,
3) the Epistles, (thirteen of which were written by Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) explain the meaning and purpose of Jesus Christ’ life, death, His resurrection, and completed ministry, and its subsequent application for daily living, and
4) the purpose and the history of the church and the future resolution of our eternal destiny, are recorded in the Revelation of Jesus to John.
These books of the New Testament unite in perfect harmony, for example, the Gospel of Matthew 28, narrates the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, and the Epistle of 1 Corinthians 15, explains the significance of His resurrection. Mark 15:38 tells of the temple veil being torn in two when Jesus died; Hebrews 10:11-23 reveals the implication and importance of that event. The same Holy Spirit who inspired the Gospels also inspired the Epistles to give us a fuller understanding of God’s plan for our salvation.
Those who claim that there exists "another gospel," an apostate invention called "Pauline Christianity" or a "Pauline Doctrine," contradictory to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that it was devised and taught as such by Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, are perpetuating a lie.
So what is "Pauline Christianity" or "Pauline Doctrine?" - and who teaches it?
Answer: "Pauline Christianity" is a term that is being applied to the Biblical Epistles of the Apostle, Paul. The claim is being made by these enemies of the Gospel that there are religious teachings unique only to Paul’s writings that are totally distinct from the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is, they insist that Jesus taught one thing, and Paul taught something completely different.
Those who believe in a separate "Pauline Christianity" insist that the Christianity in existence today is not Jesus’ teachings; but that it is rather the product of Paul’s deliberate corruption of those original teachings.
However, those who theorize about a separate “Pauline Christianity,” another gospel, if you will, also teach "another Jesus":
Jesus, they conjecture, was a great teacher, who considered himself to be the long-awaited Messiah for the Jews. He believed that God would overthrow Rome and bring His kingdom to earth. In preparation for this, Jesus taught a message of unconditional love, tolerance, and non-judgmental acceptance of everyone. Alas, Jesus’ mission of inaugurating a new earthly age failed when the Romans crucified him.
In the greatest triumph for God, since His creation of the universe, when Jesus Christ successfully paid in full the debt owed by mankind for their respective sins, these false teachers see only failure, not understanding that in God's eyes, Biblical Judaism ended at the moment of Jesus' death upon the cross, at the very moment when the no longer needed Temple veil enclosing "The Holy of Holies" was symbolically torn asunder.
They teach: that Jesus’ followers, believing that God had raised their rabbi from the dead, continued to meet in Jerusalem under the leadership of James, Jesus’ brother.Their intention was to await the still-coming kingdom and continue observing Jesus’ brand of "enlightened Judaism..." But along came Saul of Tarsus, who faked a conversion in order to infiltrate the church. Peter and James and others who had actually known Jesus were suspicious of Saul, who had never met Jesus.
Then Saul, who started calling himself “Paul,” had a stroke of genius. He artfully combined traditional Hebrew ideas with those of pagan Greek philosophy, creating a new religion that could appeal to both Jews and Gentiles. He began preaching that Jesus was actually God, that Jesus’ death was linked to the Jewish system of sacrifice, that one could be saved by simply believing, and that the Mosaic law was obsolete. Paul’s zealous missionary activity and persuasive writings took his new “gospel” around the Roman Empire. The Jerusalem Church, including Peter and James, disowned Paul as a heretic and cult leader.
They further profess that after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Jewish Church lost authority, but the Gentile Church founded by Paul increased its influence. One of Paul’s fervent followers wrote the book of Acts, which gave Paul legendary status with its glowing portrayal of him as the hero of the church. Later, four unknown writers gathered scraps of information about Jesus and wrote books they called “Matthew,” “Mark,” Luke,” and “John”—but Paul’s theology, already dominant in the church, tainted the writers’ perspective. Thus, Paul’s religion won out over Jesus’ religion.
In short, they say, Paul was a charlatan, an evangelical huckster who succeeded in twisting Jesus’ message of love into something Jesus himself would never recognize. It was Paul, not Jesus, who originated the “Christianity” of today.
Commonly, those who hold to the above theory also believe the following:
1) Jesus was not divine. He never claimed to be God, and he never intended to start a new religion.
2) The Bible is not an inspired book and is riddled with contradictions. None of the Bible, except possibly the book of James, was written by anyone who knew Jesus. There are fragments of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels, but it is difficult to discern what he really said.
3) Paul was never a Pharisee and was not highly educated. His “conversion” was either a personal hallucinogenic experience or an outright fraud. His claims to be an apostle were attempts to further his own authority in the church.
4) Pauline theological “inventions” include a) the deity of Jesus; b) salvation by grace through faith; c) salvation through the blood of Jesus; d) the sinless nature of Jesus; e) the concept of original sin; and f) the Holy Spirit. None of these “new doctrines” were accepted by Jesus’ "true" followers.
5) The demonic Gnostic Gospels, they claim, are closer to the truth about Jesus than are the traditional four Gospels of the Bible.
The concept of “Pauline Christianity” represents an outright attack on the Bible as the Word of God. Adherents of the “Pauline Christianity” theory are truly misrepresenting Jesus’ teachings. They choose to believe His words on love but deny His teachings on judgment (such as Matthew 24). They insist on a human Jesus, denying His divinity, although Jesus plainly taught His equality with God in passages such as John 10:30.
They want a “loving” Jesus without having to accept Him as Lord and Savior.Any time a skeptic finds a “disagreeable” doctrine in the Bible, he is likely to say, “That passage has been corrupted,” or, “Paul wrote that, and we know he was a liar.” Where the Gospels teach a “Pauline” doctrine, such as Jesus’ atonement for sin in John 1:29, the skeptic dismisses it as “inserted by devotees of Paul.” In reality, the skeptic’s only basis for such a selective approach to Scripture is a personal bias against the idea of Jesus’ atonement.Interestingly, Paul’s credentials as an apostle were attacked, even in his own lifetime, by those Judaizers who desired to lead the church into legalism and other errant ideologies. Paul defends himself from the spurious attacks of false teachers in 1 Corinthians 9; 2 Corinthians 12; and Galatians 1.
Paul’s apostleship is attested to by the miracles he performed (Romans 15:19), the training he received (Galatians 1:15-20), and the testimony of the other apostles.
Peter, far from being Paul’s enemy, wrote this about him: “Our dear brother, Paul, also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15-16).
References:
Alfred Edersheim: The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Wikipedia
https://www.gotquestions.org/Pauline-Christianity.htmlWhen God Spoke Greek