My new flat and I have a custom in which we discuss a book chapter, article, or some other reading on a monday night. This coming monday we will be discussing the article, "Did Paul Invent Christianity?", written by historian, Paul Barnett, in
The Briefing (an evangelical Christian magazine). (The
link goes to a website comment about the article, not the article itself.)
I'm going to be fairly blunt about my opinions of the article, as I think it is fairly poorly written and contains too many errors and assertions with not enough supporting evidence. It would not be fair to put all of my comments on it here as you, my blog readers, don't have access to the article to compare against. However, before I sat down to read the article I penned some initial thoughts on the question and I would appreciate any comments...
Did Paul invent Christianity?
Did Paul wholly invent Christianity?
Trivially, no. If we assume that Paul wrote all of the Epistles, you might roughly summarise the New Testament as comprising: the gospels, Acts, the pauline epistles, general epistles, and revelation. Each of these have distinct writers. We see that, prima facie, the strong claim that Paul “invented” Christianity is trivially wrong.
Is there any extra-biblical confirmation for the details of the life of Paul?
No. Paul’s own account of his background is in Galatians (a book that some believe was written and/or altered by Marcion or Marcionites), the book of Acts, with a primary source being his seven epistles.
Is the theology and Christology of Paul different to the Gospels?
Yes. If you had the Gospels alone you wouldn’t derive the message of the Epistles. Also, Paul never directly quotes Jesus nor does he tell any synoptic stories.
Did Paul have theological disagreements with other early Church founders?
Yes, such as Peter. As in Acts, they disagreed over what it meant to be a Christian.
Is Pauline Christianity different to any other early forms of Christianity?
Yes. There were many groups in the early church; among others, there was the (i) “Proto-orthodox” Paulinist Catholic Church, (ii) Petrine Christianity which was in the process of hellenising, (iii) the Ebionites rejected the virgin birth and the pre-existence of Jesus and stressed the humanity of Jesus and the essential oneness of God, (iv) the Docetists believed that Jesus was a heavenly being, (v) the Montanists practiced speaking in tongues, (vi) Marcionites appointed women as bishops and priests, (vii) Carpocratians enjoyed good food and wine and taught that Jesus had a normal parentage. Obviously, modern day orthodoxy says that some of those groups were not truly Christian at all, but this is really begging the question when we are critically discussing the actual foundation of the church and church doctrine itself.
Is the theology and Christology of Paul the same as the orthodox Creeds?
Yes, by a creedal interpretation of the Epistles (ironically/circularly), the Epistles and the creeds affirm the same thing about Christianity. However, the creeds and the creedal interpretation of the Epistles were affirmed afterwards meaning that their synchronicity tells us nothing about the original orthodoxy of the Epistles.
So, did Paul “invent Christianity?”
As mentioned earlier, we see that we have prima facie reasons to think that the strong claim that Paul “invented” Christianity is trivially wrong. However, this doesn’t disprove the more nuanced claim that Paul may have been the latest and greatest influence on the theology of the final New Testament canon. In fact, unless the Pauline epistles are redundant, Paul must provide an influence on NT theology. To explain this point:
(1) Imagine sorting and summarising all of the propositions taught by and about Jesus in the gospels.
(2) Now, imagine sorting and summarising all of the propositions mentioned in the Pauline epistles.
Are those two lists the same? No. In fact, there are a great many propositions in the Gospel list that don’t make it into Paul’s, and there are also plenty of additional propositions in Paul’s list. This means, by definition, that Paul introduced new ideas into the New Testament above and beyond the teachings of Jesus. If this weren’t true then we wouldn’t need the Pauline Epistles at all.
Of course, if you view the final biblical canon as an inspired whole then this isn’t a problem, but this only means that one cannot deny the role that Paul played in shaping the final theology of the New Testament. So did Paul invent Christianity? Not as such, but he was a significant architect.
