Proto-orthodox Christianity, which is rooted in the first centuries of the history of Christianity, relies heavily on Pauline theology and beliefs and considers them to be amplifications and explanations of the teachings of Jesus. Since the 18th century, a number of scholars have proposed that Paul's writings contain teachings that are different from the original teachings of Jesus and those of the earliest Jewish Christians, as documented in the canonical gospels, early Acts, and the rest of the New Testament, such as the Epistle of James, [6] though there has been increasing acceptance of Paul as a fundamentally Jewish figure in line with the original disciples in Jerusalem over past misinterpretations, manifested though movements like "Paul Within Judaism".[7][8][9]
Definition and etymology
Definition
Pauline Christianity or Pauline theology, also called "Paulism" or "Paulanity",[2] is the theology and Christianity which developed from the beliefs and doctrines espoused by Paul the Apostle through his writings. Paul's beliefs were strongly rooted in the earliest Jewish Christianity, but they deviated from this Jewish Christianity in their emphasis on inclusion of the Gentiles into God's New Covenant and in his rejection of circumcision as an unnecessary token of upholding the Law.
Etymology
According to Hans Lietzmann, the term "Pauline Christianity" first came into use in the 20th century among scholars who proposed different strands of thought within Early Christianity, wherein Paul was a powerful influence.[10]
Marxist writer Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), who stressed the similarities between Primitive Christianity and Marxism, used the phrase 'Christo-Paulinism' not only to indicate Paul's greater importance but also to distinguish between theological and ideological beliefs and the organization of the institutional Church.[11]
The expression is also used by modern Christian scholars, such as John Ziesler[12] and Christopher Mount,[13] whose interest is in the recovery of Christian origins, and the importance of Paul for paleo-orthodoxy, Christian reconstructionism and restorationism.
The first Christians were Jews.[14] According to Paul and the author of the Acts of the Apostles, he initially persecuted those early Christians, but then converted, and, years later, was called to proselytise among Gentiles.
Inclusion of Gentiles
An early creed about Jesus' death and resurrection which Paul probably used was 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3–5 (plus possible additional verses). Probably originating from the Jerusalem apostolic community, the antiquity of the creed has been noted by many biblical scholars:[15]
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve,...
There has been widespread acknowledgement of the view of W. D. Davies that the essential Jewishness of Paul's Christian perspective has been underplayed.[citation needed] In Davies' view, Paul replaced the Torah, the Jewish law or Law of Moses, with Christ.[dubious – discuss].
In the view of Daniel Boyarin, Paula Fredriksen and other notable NT scholars cited by them, writing with lived experience of the Jewish context, Paul did not replace Torah or Halakha with Christ for Jewish believers, but simply taught gentiles that observing the noachide covenant as righteous among the nations was sufficient (along with faith in Christ), to merit a share in the world to come. This was a view shared by the Pharisees and taught in the Talmud and Maimonides (with the except of the element of faith in Christ), but denied by (mostly gentile born) Judaizers who taught conversion to Judaism as a requisite for salvation.[citation needed] For example, his epistle to the Romans 13 teaches the obligations of a righteous gentile under the Noachide covenant, with Romans 14-15 expansive commentary on dietary ethics.
According to Christopher Rowland, "the problems with which he wrestles in his letters were probably typical of many which were facing the Christian sect during this period".[16]
According to Krister Stendahl, the main concern of Paul's writings on Jesus' role, and salvation by faith, is the problem of the inclusion of gentile (Greek) Torah observers into God's covenant.[17][18][19][web 1] The inclusion of Gentiles into early Christianity posed a problem for the Jewish identity of the early Christians. Many of the Jewish Christians were fully faithful religious Jews, only differing in their acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. Observance of the Jewish commands, including circumcision, was regarded as a token of the membership of this covenant, and the early Jewish Christians insisted on keeping those observances.[20] The new converts did not follow all "Jewish Law" and refused to be circumcised,[21] as circumcision was considered repulsive during the period of Hellenization of the Eastern Mediterranean.[web 2][22]
Paul objected strongly to the insistence on keeping all of the Jewish commandments, considering it a great threat to his doctrine of salvation through faith in Jesus.[23] For Paul, Jesus' death and resurrection solved this problem of the exclusion of the gentiles from God's covenant.[24] 'Dying for our sins' refers to the problem of gentile Torah-observers, who, despite their faithfulness, cannot fully observe commandments, including circumcision, and are therefore 'sinners', excluded from God's covenant.[25] Jesus' death and resurrection solved this problem of the exclusion of the gentiles from God's covenant, as indicated by Rom 3:21-26.[24]
Paul insists that salvation is received by the grace of God; according to Sanders, this insistence is in line with Judaism of c. 200 BCE until 200 CE, which saw God's covenant with Israel as an act of grace of God. Observance of the Law is needed to maintain the covenant, but the covenant is not earned by observing the Law, but by the grace of God.[web 3]
There was a slowly growing schism between Christians and Jews, rather than a sudden split. Even though it is commonly thought that Paul established a Gentile church, it took centuries for a complete break to manifest.[26]
This article may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page.(November 2021)
Paul had a strong influence on early Christianity, transmuting Jesus the Jewish messiah into the universal[note 1]savior. This thesis is founded on differences between the views of Paul and the earliest Jewish Christianity, and also between the picture of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles and his own writings. In this view, Paul is to be taken as pro-Hellenization or Romanization.
Pauline Christianity was essentially based on Rome and made use of the administrative skills which Rome had honed. Its system of organization with a single bishop for each town was, in Bart Ehrman's view, the means by which it obtained its hegemony.[30]
Michael Goulder wrote widely on a theory of Christian origins that sees a fundamental opposition between Paul the Apostle on one side and the Jerusalem Christians Peter and James, Jesus' brother, on the other.[31] This has been seen as reviving Baur's hypothesis.[32]
Distortion
Some literary critics of Christianity argue that Paul distorted the original and true doctrine, or claim that Christianity is largely his invention. The former include such secular commentators[33] as the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell. Nietzsche's criticisms are based upon his moral objections to Paul's thought. Other writers, such as Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou, also agree with this interpretation, but hold much more positive opinions about Paul's theological influence.[citation needed]
Christians themselves disagree as to how far there was tension between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. Roman Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, and conservative Protestants, contend that Paul's writings were a legitimate interpretation of the Gospel. The idea that Paul invented Christianity is disputed by numerous Christian writers.[36][37][38][39]
According to Christopher Rowland, Pauline Christianity is the development of thinking about Jesus in a gentile missionary context. Rowland contends that "the extent of his influence on Christian thought has been overestimated",[40] concluding that Paul did not materially alter Jesus' teachings.
Hurtado notes that Paul regarded his Christological views and the Jerusalem Church's as essentially similar. According to Hurtado, this "work[s] against the claims by some scholars that Pauline Christianity represents a sharp departure from the religiousness of Judean 'Jesus movements'."[9]
As a pejorative term
The pejorative use of the expressions "Pauline Christianity", "Paulism," or "Paulanity," refers to the idea that Paul's supporters, as a distinct group, had an undue influence on the formation of the canon of scripture.[41][42] It is also sometimes used to refer to the notion that certain bishops, especially the Bishop of Rome, influenced the debates which determined the dogma of early Christianity, thus elevating a Pauline interpretation of the Gospel, to the detriment of other interpretations (including those held by the Gnostics and Marcionites).[43][44][45][46]
^Among the most radical is G. A. Wells, a professor of German rather than of theology or history, whose view is that Jesus was a mythical figure and that Christianity was in good part invented by Paul.
^Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. pp. 316–320. Harris cites Galatians 6:11, Romans 16:22, Colossians 4:18, 2 Thessalonians 3:17, Philemon 19. Joseph Barber Lightfoot in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians writes: "At this point [Galatians 6:11] the apostle takes the pen from his amanuensis, and the concluding paragraph is written with his own hand. From the time when letters began to be forged in his name (2 Thessalonians 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 3:17) it seems to have been his practice to close with a few words in his own handwriting, as a precaution against such forgeries... In the present case he writes a whole paragraph, summing up the main lessons of the epistle in terse, eager, disjointed sentences. He writes it, too, in large, bold characters (Gr. pelikois grammasin), that his handwriting may reflect the energy and determination of his soul."
^Lietzmann, Hans, History of the Early Church Vol. 1 p. 206
^James Leslie Houlden, Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1, ABC–CLIO, 2003, p. 595
^Ziesler John, Pauline Christianity (OUP 2001) Zielsler comments "Pauline Christianity is the earliest for which we have direct documentary evidence..."
^Mount, Christopher, Pauline Christianity – Luke, Acts and the Legacy of Paul, Brill, 2002
^see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man translated Lewis Wilkins and Duane Pribe (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968) p. 90; Oscar Cullmann, The Early church: Studies in Early Christian History and Theology, ed. A. J. B. Higgins (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) p. 66; R. E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973) p. 81; Thomas Sheehan, First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (New York: Random House, 1986) pp. 110, 118; Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection translated A. M. Stewart (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew, 1977) p. 2; Hans Grass, Ostergeschen und Osterberichte, Second Edition (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962) p. 96; Grass favors the origin in Damascus.
^See, for example, St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions (London: SCM, 1994) and Paul and the Competing Mission in Corinth (Library of Pauline Studies; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001).
^Wilson, Stephen G. (1986). Anti-Judaism in early Christianity. Volume 2, Separation and polemic. Waterloo, Ont., Canada: Published for the Canadian Corp. for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN088920196X.
^Campbell, William (2005). "Perceptions of Compatibility Between Christianity and Judaism in Pauline Interpretation". Biblical Interpretation. 13 (3): 298–316. doi:10.1163/1568515054388137.
W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism 2d ed., London, 1965
Dunn, James D.G. (1982), The New Perspective on Paul. Manson Memorial Lecture, 4 November 1982
Dunn, James (1991), The Partings of the Ways
Eisenman, Robert (1997). James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Viking. ISBN0-670-86932-5.
Finlan, Stephen (2004), The Background and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors, Society of Biblical Literature
Hurtado, Larry (2005), Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, Eerdmans
Ide, Arthur Frederick (1993), Battered & Bruised: All the Women of the Old Testament, Monument Press
Mack, Burton L. (1997) [1995], Wie schreven het Nieuwe Testament werkelijk? Feiten, mythen en motieven. (Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth), Uitgeverij Ankh-Hermes bv
McGrath, Alister E. (2006), Christianity: An Introduction, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN1-4051-0899-1
Dunn, James D. G.The Apostle of the Heretics: Paul, Valentinus, and Marcion, in Porter, Stanley E.; Yoon, David, Paul and Gnosis BRILL 2016 ISBN9789004316690
Ehrman, Bart D.Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew 2003
Elsner, Jas. Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: Oxford History of Early Non-Pauline Christianity 1998 ISBN0-19-284201-3
Griffith-Jones, Robin. The Gospel According to Paul 2004.
Holland, Tom. Contours of Pauline Theology: A Radical New Survey on the Influences of Paul's Biblical Writings 2004 ISBN1-85792-469-X