It's almost as if the Apostle Paul predicted his own cancellation
It's almost as if Apostle Paul
predicted his own cancelation
For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Acts 20:29-30
There's a growing strain of Anti-Pauline sentiment among professing Christians.
You may have heard them yourself: "I just follow the words of Jesus, not the opinions of Paul." "Paul doesn't count as he wasn't one of the original apostles." "Paul preaches a legalistic gospel different to the gospel Jesus preached."
These are notions that point to the increasing discomfort with the call to sanctification, and an attempt to break the mirror that points out flaws instead of focusing on fixing the identified gaps.
Some think their contention with Paul is valid, but looking closely their real contention is with what the true gospel looks like, lived out. Because that was what Paul preached.
But the charges against Paul aren't vague. Let's examine them:
"He was a Pharisee - you can't really scrub that out of a man."
This one assumes Paul never reckoned with his own résumé. He did, in ink, long before anyone thought to weaponize it against him: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ... yea, I count them but dung, that I may win Christ" (Philippians 3:7-8). He didn't hide his Pharisaic credentials. He called them out, discarded them as refuse, and moved on.
And the biggest demonstration of his departure from his Pharisee origins was the spiritual fellowship with Gentiles and Gentile converts that led to the establishment of the Gentile churches (and subsequently the letters that form the New Testament). That move would have been taboo to a dyed-in-the-wool Pharisee. Even Apostle Peter struggled with God on the matter of association with Gentiles (who were considered unclean), and God had to send him the trance of the sheet of animals (3 times!) before he was convinced to preach the gospel to Cornelius - the first Gentile convert (Acts 10). Paul had all the indoctrination to have disregarded Gentiles but choose to follow what Christ asked him to do.
We can't keep labeling a man a Pharisee when his very life mission was a committed, intensive, peril-filled ministry to the people group considered inherently unclean by the Pharisees.
"Paul preached law. Jesus preached love."
This dichotomy gets repeated so often people stop checking it. Open Galatians and you'll find the most insistent anti-law voice in the entire New Testament:
"Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1)
"If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law" (5:18).
And while we're at it, let me ask a question: who do you believe talked the most about hellfire and eternal judgement in the whole Bible? I'll give you a hint: it was the One that told us about the lake of fire, the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the wide gate and the narrow one, Lazarus and the rich man, the sheep separated from the goats – yes, that's the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The true gospel reflects a perfect balance of love and truth, of the law and grace, of mercy and judgement. Jesus reflected the complete picture, and the Apostle Paul represented the standard.
VerdictPaul is actually the strongest voice in the New Tetament against returning to the system of the law. And Our Lord Jesus was arguably more "fire-and-brimstone" than the Apostle Paul.
"He was angry, and his anger got the best of him."
"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you" (Galatians 3:1) might sound harsh. But check what he was angry about: people pulling young converts back onto the treadmill of works-based salvation, the same treadmill he'd run himself as a Pharisee and already recognized its insufficiency in meeting the righteous standards of a holy God.
He knew first-hand where a system of religious observances was going to end up: exhaustion and spiritual burn-out. A people weighed down with the burden of paying a spiritual debt that had already been paid in full. And he knew that was far from the ideal for people that has already received the ultimate spiritual freedom in Christ. Hence the sharp call-out.
His intensity is the kind that yanks a child away from oncoming traffic, not someone losing their temper just for sport. And let's not forget that Jesus Himself condemned in very strong language (read Matthew 23!) the religious leaders of His day that focused on placing burdens on people they could not bear, calling them vipers and blind guides among other things. Jesus issued a whipping at the temple too!
VerdictAnger at the corruption of the gospel shows up in both Paul and the Lord Jesus. It is not a Paul-specific feature.
"He was obsessed with rules. He added instructions never mentioned by Jesus."
His letters have lots of instructions to the new believers and churches, but we must step back to understand their context. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles – people with no Torah background, no synagogues, no scaffolding for what holiness looked like. That's why it was important he articulated in tangible terms what salvation looked like lived out.
Also, notice his pattern: the indicative comes before the imperative. Explain what God already did for them, then exhort them on how to live because of it. "Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32). "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us" (5:2). Romans, his longest letter, doesn't issue behavioral instruction until chapter 12 – eleven chapters of laying the doctrinal foundation before one imperative arrives. Ephesians has 6 chapters - the first 3 outlining what God has done for us, the last 3 describing how we live in light of what God has done. His approach was relationship first, rules second.
VerdictThe rules weren't the foundation but the furniture of the building. Unfortunately furniture is more visible than foundation, and those that don't look close enough easily think Paul was all rules.
"He was a misogynist."
This one survives only by skipping Romans 16, where Paul names and commends a list of women in active ministry – Phoebe, a deacon of the church; Priscilla, named ahead of her husband Aquila as a teaching pair; Junia, called "of note among the apostles"; Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis.
It survives by skipping Philippians 4:2-3, where he personally appeals to two women in conflict, Euodias and Syntyche, addressing them directly as co-labourers, naming them as colleagues. The misogynist move would've been to silence them or address the men about controlling them.
The accusations on subjugating wives by asking them to "submit" neglect an even weightier instruction was given to husbands to "love sacrificially" (the kind of love that lays down its life). Or that he urged everyone to "submit themselves one to another in the fear of God" (Ephesians 5:21). The church-order passage gets quoted without the following verses that establish mutual interdependence.
VerdictTexts about order have been weaponized into texts about women's worth. That's not the fault of the Apostle, as he provided sufficient evidence in his writing to indicate the contrary: that women are a worthy, valued, cherished part of the body of Christ.
Paul made it clear he wanted to present his audience - the church - faultless and spotless back to his Master, and that goal, not popularity, set the terms of his approach. He chose truth over comfort and accurate direction over agreeable diplomacy every time the two came into conflict.
The charges above aren't really problems with Paul but a preference for the comfortable portrait over the convicting mirror. We must embrace the unease that comes with Paul's writings, because this is the type of discomfort that brings true spiritual growth.
...Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which some things are hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:14-16
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