A follower of Paul, or Christ?
Here is an interesting question, which will more than likely be posed to some of my students this semester: Is Christianity a religion of Paul, or a religion of Jesus?
Who do you follow, Paul or Christ?
You can answer this in a variety of ways. I assume that most of you will respond that there is no distinction between the teachings of Paul and those of Jesus. On the whole, you would be correct. What I am trying to get at here is an issue of primacy. Do you take the sayings and teachings of Jesus first and interpret Paul through them? Or do you start with Paul’s writings and view the teachings of Jesus through that prism? I know that I have been guilty of the latter most of my life. I’ll look to Romans or Hebrews (authorship issues excluded) for answers before seeing what Jesus was like or what exactly He said.
There is actually a historical basis for using Paul as the prism, his writings come first, as we have them, then come the gospels, where Jesus is recorded. However, I think that most here and even historians would agree that while the Gospels, as we have them, were written down after Paul’s letters, the content in the Gospels predates anything in Paul’s writings.
I do find that there are some distinctions between the two, at least in mindset.
I think we absolutely must start with Jesus and view the teachings of Paul “through that prism.”
Here in KC I am attending a church on Wednesday nights with some friends of mine. The new series is looking at Jesus and how the epistles interpret Jesus’ sayings. So they would start with Jesus and then go to Paul and Peter and John and James and Jude and the author of Hebrews. I am not certain which is the better but I think we should remember that the apostles’ teaching is to say what Jesus didn’t say. I think that they should interpret each other. This is very similar to the predicament of whether we read the OT in light of the NT or the NT in light of the OT. We do both. We should read Matthew in light of Peter and Peter in light of Matthew.
I understand that ultimately we need to do both. But at some point you have to put one interpretation over the other. The remaining interpretation enlightens the first, but one has to be the primary.
True. But to your students I would also suggest that Paul said to follow him because he follows Christ. To follow him is to follow Jesus. I’m still not certain which way to go though. Both are so necessary and I haver personally never bumped into that question. I tend to try to let Paul interpret Paul and let Matthew interpret Matthew, Mark interpret Mark etc.
“Who do you follow, Paul or Christ?”
False dichotomy. Christ of course is the head of the church and it is He who all Christians follow. Pauls was an inspired apostle teaching as the Spirit of Christ instructed him. So in following the teachings of Paul we are in reality indirectly following the teachings of Christ.
I do think this is a very good question though:
“Do you take the sayings and teachings of Jesus first and interpret Paul through them? Or do you start with Paul’s writings and view the teachings of Jesus through that prism?”
It is arresting because we naturally put the teachings of Jesus as higher than all the rest of the Bible. This isn’t right, simply because all the Bible is the inspired teaching of Jesus. All scripture must be weighed by other scripture.
It is not a false dictotimy, because it is possible for a person to follow Paul over Christ. That is the primary warning that I am giving. There are people (I used to be one of them) that looked to Paul first and almost ignored what Jesus had to say.
I think that the proper starting point for exegesis of the Bible is beginning with Jesus’ teaching and working outward. He is the primary source. You can still do this and maintain Biblical harmony. I think you need to.
Rereading the post, it seems the students are asking a different question than what Henry Michael is cautioning. Is the religion Paul’s or Jesus’ is not the same question as who do you follow or who do you read most.
Puritanbob makes an excellent observation that to read Paul is to read Jesus in an indirect manner. When we follow Paul we are following Christ.
However as Henry points out, we can forget the rest of the New Testament. I think it is important not to forget the theology of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and Jesus’ words found in them. We do get so encapsulated by Romans that we forget Mark. I think there is a danger in asking about primacy when it comes the New Testament, which books are more inspired. Now that is not an issue here as far as anyone doing that, but we should not say who’s words should be our starting point. There is one gospel, one faith, that each book is trying to exposit in their own distinct ways. If we read only one author or book of the NT, or even the Bible, we do not get the whole gospel. So either place is a good place to start, but we cannot stay in one place.
But the question whose religion is Christianity: Paul or Jesus? The question is always Jesus’ religion. Paul would say that. All of the biblical writers would say that. I think Paul gets a bad wrap from more liberal scholars and nonchristians by being the author of the majority of the New Testament. That is really where the whole question even comes from, Paul having written so much, he might be the founder of the Jesus movement and inspired others to follow him to follow this Jesus of his, at least that is what my atheist friend who I worked with at Sam’s thought.
While the Gospels record Jesus’s earthly ministry and Jesus did speak of things pertaining to the church, the “mystery of Christ” was given to Paul. In Ephesians 3:4, Paul states that the epistles were written so that we would be able to perceive his “intelligence” of the mystery.
I had been discussing this with an unbeliever, he says Christianity is from Paul, not Jesus.
But I agree with puritanbob, it’s both from the same God
peace, mercy
While I suspect that most would not disagree with the idea that myself, bob and mercy put forth, that they really are one theology, we have gotten the rap that we follow paul, not christ.
By framing the question in that way, it draws attention to the fact that people do view Christianity that way from the outside and creates a space for the person confronted with the question to examine to see if they see Jesus thru Paul, or Paul thru Jesus.
I think that it is an excellent hermeneutical question; one that goes unexamined because we uncritically assume from the inside that they are 1:1.