The very visceral and deep-seated defensiveness of Paul that statements like this provoke from some quarters are probably mystifying to people who aren't plugged into Christian theological politics, but I find them very revealing.
https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1467626521007325187
If you read the entire Christian Bible up to but not including Paul's letters, and that was your whole context for Christianity, you would never in a million years guess that the whole course of the religion and its modern form depends on the later opinions of some guy named Paul
One of Paul's letters (One Corinthians, as a much-revered US conservative Christian thinker would style it) contains a verse that translates as something like "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, for you are still in your sins."
It's a popular subject for sermons: if there is no resurrection of the dead, if it's all myth or metaphor, then it doesn't matter how we pray because we are all going to die and dead is dead is dead, and dang if that's not a bummer, right?
Yep. And it's inarguable *now* that he laid the foundation for the religion as it exists today. And if you believe the totality of the Bible including the choice of books to include in its canon is divinely inspired... well, it becomes a circular proof.
https://twitter.com/micamoan/status/1468445822044016641
They are doubtlessly important as part of a historical record of the emergence of the early church and its relationship to various powers of the day, but the idea that they should therefore be accepted as ~*Scripture*~, even over and above the gospels?
It's wacky. Paul was manifestly just some guy, playing at politics and prejudices through the church as an organ.
And this is why so many men who are much like Paul feel the need to defend him so ardently. Because he, the man Paul and not the divine Jesus, holds their faith.
And this is why so many men who are much like Paul feel the need to defend him so ardently. Because he, the man Paul and not the divine Jesus, holds their faith.
Paul's epistle to the modern Christian man is as follows: you can hate in Christ. You can politic in Christ. You can exert worldly power in Christ. You can position yourself in the spotlight and exult yourself in Christ.
Paul's epistle to the modern man is: you can literally just be some guy with a platform and a lot of opinions, and if you're loud enough and have leverage enough, you can make your opinions canon for everybody.
Of course they defend him.
Of course they defend him.
It's like the guy who prefers Batman to Superman because he thinks Batman is "realistic"; what he means is he can imagine he could have become Batman, somehow, but he knows he could never be Superman.
They know they can't be Jesus and probably wouldn't want to be.
They know they can't be Jesus and probably wouldn't want to be.
But any man with a pulpit or a platform can potentially be Paul. Any man with politics and prejudices can potentially be Paul. Any man with opinions and an urge to reach out and make them canon for the rest of the world to follow can potentially be Paul.
And when Paul is dismissed or questioned, then in a worldly inversion of I Corinthians, the Pauline defenders all tremble and ask themselves: if Paul is just some guy, what am I? If the epistles are not divine writ, what hope is there for my opinions?
These men who defend Paul aren't doing it on theological grounds. They might refer back to centuries of theological thought that upholds the importance of his positions, but it's not the theology they care about it, it's the investment of time.
If even Paul's opinions are not unassailable after so many centuries of being literally enshrined as literally canon... what hope is there for any man's opinions?
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