Propianotuner
Active Member
None of Christianity is Paul. Christianity is driven by God's dual gifts of theopnustos/God's-breath, which was given through divinely inspired literature, and His gift of the Holy Spirit as an extension of personal companionship between Him and each believer. That Paul happened to be an instrument of theopnustos more than others doesn't make Christianity itself necessarily reflect upon Paul. In fact Paul specifically instructs Christians against thinking otherwise:
1st Corinthians 1:9-17
9 God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
10 Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
11 For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.
12 Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.
13 Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?
14 I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;
15 Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name.
16 And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
Paul received the Gospel from the Apostles, and his theology is consonant with theirs. Actually it is necessary that their theology be consonant because when they wrote Holy Scripture they weren't thinking with their own capacity alone but were guided by the Holy Spirit to share theopnustos.
God would have chosen other instruments to communicate with us, according to His will.
Paul may have written a large number of NT books, but when it comes to the actual amount of content he didn't provide as significant of a portion as people tend to think. The largest books in the NT are the Gospels and they comprise a considerable chunk. Revelation is a sizeable epistle, and Hebrews is another sizeable epistle and the #1 reason it can't have been written by Paul is that it was in an Alexandrian dialect of Koine that he didn't write in.
If we take Paul at his word, he very stridently said that his teachings weren't inimical or contrary to Jesus' teachings. Were Paul to have some agenda not in keeping with unity with the Apostles, he would not have taken up a collection for the church in Jerusalem because of poverty in the area, reconciled with Peter, presented creeds to his audience within his epistles that he establishes as creeds from the Apostles by prefacing them with a rabbinic formula (I'll show the formula after this paragraph by underlining it), or have taken multiple trips during his ministry to Jerusalem to insure unity, even participating in the Synod/Council of Jerusalem.
1st Corinthians 15:1-9
Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
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