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Eh, the fourth option is that Saul of Tarsus was the liar who corrupted the word of Jesus to further his own interests and strike the killing blow in his persecution of the nascent Christians by twisting the words of their Great Teacher until they became the antithesis of what Jesus truly wished to convey.
Remember, Saul never met the physical Jesus before his crucifixion. In fact in Matthew 24:27 Jesus warns his followers against believing anyone who says they saw Jesus in the wilderness or in a secluded place after he is crucified. And what did Darth Saul do to ingratiate himself with the Christians? Yep, he claimed to "miraculously" see Jesus first in the wilderness (road to Damascus) and then in a secluded place (the Jerusalem Jail where he was held captive).
In the end Saul was successful beyond his wildest dreams when he first set out to persecute the Christians. Not only did he manage to completely pervert the religion of Jesus but like a cuckoo bird he also successfully placed himself into the religion as one of the greatest "followers" of Christ with many billions of people venerating him in the two millennia since he died; he even had the gall to "correct" Peter (Galatians 2:11), the real true greatest follower of Jesus. And worst of all this veneration still continues to this day with no sign of stopping!
TLDR: Christianity got cucked by Saul and still isn't willing to accept what really happened.
The others on the road heard the voice of Saul.
This also does a pretty awful job trying to account for the enormous effort he put into spreading Christianity throughout the world. Not to mention undergoing imprisonments and a host of other ills, culminating, if the tradition is to be believed, in his martyrdom. I can't take this very seriously.
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Well, I mean, how did that work out for him? Did he laugh all the way to the bank? Retire in a villa overlooking Lake Albano?
Nah, he just successfully placed himself into the religion he had nothing do with until well after Christ's death as one of the most venerated saints with his legacy still going extremely strong today everywhere there is any Christianity. Sure he got executed for his beliefs but the long term remembrance he got with at least half of all humans alive today having heard of him (with most having a positive valence) far outweighs merely living out your life in some villa overlooking Lake Albano only to be forgotten by everyone by the year 250 AD.
The man died for his beliefs, and wrote about them extremely eloquently as he awaited his execution. The worst charge that could be leveled against Paul is that he was mistaken. And you know, generally speaking, I don't think he was.
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For sure. I bet he couldn't even feel the pain of suffocating to death under his own weight due to the warm feeling of satisfaction he got from a legacy he didn't have any inclination of at the time.
Now I've been under the impression he was beheaded (as he was a citizen) but yes your point stands.
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In what way did Paul twist Jesus' words or teachings? What is the actual perversion?
For example, the idea of salvation through grace isn't really something Jesus really talked much about himself, that's mostly a creation of post Gospel books.
When Jesus talked about getting into heaven, he was pretty consistently telling people to do specific things to make it in: sell all your possessions, give up your life to follow him, help the poor.
The idea that just believing in him would guarantee you a place in heaven regardless of your actions was basically all added after.
Are you sure? Jesus constantly recommends moral action, but I'd say that even in the synoptics, there seems to be an awareness that this by itself is insufficient? Take, for instance Matthew 19:16-27 (which is triple tradition, cf. Mark 10:17-31, Luke 17:18-30). It seems as though in those passages Jesus presents an impossibly difficult moral demand, the disciples wonder at how salvation may be possible, and Jesus says that it comes only through the action of God. He then goes on to reassure them that everyone who has followed him will be saved.
I find it hard to fit a passage like that into a model that says that Jesus was preaching salvation through good works. Jesus evidently thinks that good works are good, and that people should do them, but they do not seem to be sufficient for him. Some divine action seems to be necessary to bridge the gap between human moral effort and salvation.
See also passages like Luke 7:36-49, in which Jesus appears to suggest that a sinful woman has been forgiven on the basis of her great faith, rather than because of any meritorious work of righteousness in the world.
This story also seems reminiscent of the Anointing at Bethany (Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9), where the disciples protest at an extravagant sign of faith on the basis that the money could have been more efficiently allocated to the poor. Jesus chastises them and seems to approve of the woman's display of faith. (Take that, effective altruists?) Again it seems like for Jesus there is more to righteousness or salvation than the corporal works of mercy.
You may not count the epilogue to Mark as original to the gospel, and you may discount post-Resurrection appearances, but Mark 16:16 is also a statement directly attributed to Jesus saying that those who believe will be saved. You might also consider Matthew 10:8 ("You received without payment; give without payment") as relevant to Jesus' understanding of how divine favour operates?
It's true that in the synoptics Jesus never says in so many words "salvation is by grace", but there is enough, I think, to say that for Jesus salvation is something that involves both a kind of unilateral divine action, reaching out to sinful humankind, and the faithful human response to that action. The language of grace appears elsewhere. But I think it's plausible enough to see that language as an attempt to faithfully articulate a real feature of the teachings and actions of Jesus in his life.
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Perhaps you're excepting John, but it's pretty clear in John.
Jesus also forgives sins in the gospels.
I don't think Jesus actually intended every person to do every thing he spoke of. For example, he probably didn't intend for everyone to be gauging out their eyes.
I do think John deviates a bit from the other three to a suspicious extent, but what specifically are you talking about? I poked around in there but I didn't see anything that was particularly clear on salvation through grace.
Sure, but there's a big difference between "I forgive this particular act" and "mere belief in me automatically erases all acts"
Sure, maybe he's being metaphorical with some of this, but "he actually meant this unrelated and almost directly contradictory thing" should at least raise some eyebrows.
"And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell." probably doesn't mean "don't worry about it, your sins don't matter as long as you believe"
It's pretty clear that we're saved by the father drawing us (see e.g. John 6:46 and surrounding), and it's by belief (same area, also John 3:16).
See the above reference in John. But no, it wasn't individual acts, but statements in general. See, e.g. Matthew 9:2.
What unrelated and almost directly contradictory things are you thinking of?
Correct, it doesn't. Sin's an awfully serious thing. Antinomianism is far too prevalent in modern lay Protestantism. We should certainly not be sinning more that grace may abound.
Edit: Should be John 6:44.
This is a good point, and I'm a little annoyed at myself for forgetting arguably the most quoted bible verse.
I'll note that John kind of goes off in a very different direction than the rest of the Gospels and that casts some suspicion, but that inevitably descends into a haze of "what did Jesus actually say/do" that gets us nowhere. I'm not nearly a good enough theological scholar to usefully continue here, I'm afraid.
I appreciate the discussion!
Same, and merry Christmas!
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From what I understand, Christianity - at least what we understand now by it - more or less is what Saul created. It's like saying Homer has "cucked" the Iliad - if there were some version of Iliad that is so much better than Homer's and more "true", we certainly don't have it, so what choice is there?
But where do you think Saul got that Christianity from?
There were the apostles, who knew Jesus himself, and Saul confirmed with them that what he was saying was accurate. (See Galatians 2.)
Where Muhammad got Islam from? Where Siddhartha Gautama got Buddhism from?
I'm sure he did, otherwise we'd know nothing about him but instead would know about some other guy that did.
Do you really think that those three figures were gathering knowledge in the same way? That doesn't seem terribly likely to me. They seem pretty different in how they go about things.
I don't know what you're trying to get at there, but I don't see how it interacts with the purpose that I mentioned it for: to indicate that Christianity is not just Pauline, but accurately conforms to what the direct followers of Jesus believes.
No, probably not - each religion's foundation it a rare and complex event which surely has its own peculiarities. My point is rather that the founding of the religion traceable to a person is not some exceptional event - it happens and it's possible. My other point is that foundational concepts of Christianity - such as the sacrifice and the resurrection of Jesus - originated with Saul and thus essentially he couldn't "corrupt" the "true" Christianity any more than Homer could "corrupt" the "true" Iliad.
What do you think the early Christians were even doing, if they didn't think there was a resurrection?
If you look at the things say he received, it's clearly more than you're positing.
You have a framing here that feels like it's intended to allow you to be pretty dismissive, and it just doesn't feel very plausible to me.
The same thing other Jewish sects were doing, following their Rabbi. Surely, the earliest Christians - who probably haven't called themselves "Christians" yet - couldn't think there was a resurrection since Jesus was alive then. After his execution, the narrative of Jesus' resurrection (which is completely different from Jesus being Jewish Messiah who is not supposed to neither die - either for anybody's sins or at all - nor be resurrected) appeared and Saul of Tarsus was one of the people who endorsed and promoted it. Before those events, there could be early followers of Jesus, but there couldn't really be "Christianity" as we understand it now.
I'd just like to note that this is a step back from your earlier position that Jesus's resurrection originated with Saul.
Edit: I'd also add the qualification that the Messiah is not supposed to die, etc., per the standard Jewish interpretations.
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Correction: Saul says that Saul confirmed with them that what he was saying was accurate. Galatians was written by Saul if the accounts are to be believed.
And it is believed Pauline by basically all scholars. You think he was just being a devious liar in that?
Anyway, Acts also confirms contact with the disciples of Jesus.
No, I'm saying that Saul saying that Saul confirmed with James etc. that what he was teaching was correct doesn't tell us much because of course he would say that.
Only if you think him a devious liar, which, it seems, you do.
It's not about lying. People routinely interpret events the way that fits their convictions, and routinely dismiss things that may disagree with those convictions, often even without realizing it. That's why, for example, peer review in science exist. If somebody does some research which they believe is true, but then some reviewers point out the original researcher omitted or misinterpreted some facts and the conclusions are unwarranted, would it be correct to call the original researcher a "devious liar"? I don't think so.
I think we can safely assume Saul genuinely believed all he was preaching, and was convinced his Christianity is exactly what Jesus would want to happen. I can not know that for a fact, but I have no objection to assuming it. That does not contradict the fact that what we know as "Christianity" has been largely built by him and the veracity of all the claims ultimately goes back to him.
As a martial arts practitioner, I often encounter people claiming that they continue certain traditions - often claiming the same tradition coming from the same sources. Nevertheless, many of those people adopt radically different approaches and practices. How can that be? Are some of them - or all of them - liars to claim the traditional roots? I do not think so. Traditions are complex and changing with time, and different people take different things and develop them in different directions. Some directions flourish, some wither. Same tradition can be developed and embodied in many different ways.
Saul created his own embodiment of what he saw as a (quite young by then) Christian tradition, and that's largely what we know as "Christianity" now. For better or worse, there's no other. Even if there were, I think it'd be quite hard to claim one of them is more "true" than the other. But having none - at least none that is not traced back to Saul - what do we have to stand on comparing to Saul's Christianity?
I think you're right that that wasn't sufficiently warranted by what he said there (though it was clear that @BurdensomeCount thought that from elsewhere). Mea culpa.
That said, I think the chance of inauthentic development is substantially decreased by the continued contact with the apostles, and the approbation of the Pauline position, as seen in Acts 15 and Galatians 2. You may want to qualify that, but it's clearly the case that they agreed with at least elements of what he's doing, and it seems that they sent him on his journeys.
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Fair enough, yes I do that. I'm Muslim personally and we mostly lay the blame for the corruption of the word of God as given to Isa on Saul's feet.
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Eh, both Jesus and Saul believed that the end of days was supposed to happen soon. I wonder how those early Christians reacted when Jerusalem was razed to the ground and the world kept on ticking.
Presumably they felt pretty vindicated.
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