St. Paul'S Anglican Church - St. Paul'S Brighton: Fill & Download for Free

If only we knew that the early Christian church was as monolithic as is almost universally believed, then we could say that Paul was an overly pious Jew, keen to wipe out the upstart Christian religion. This is the scenario portrayed in Acts of the Apostles, but many scholars regard this as an entirely unreliable account.When Paul began his mission, he encountered opposition from those he variously called “false apostles” and (sarcastically) “super apostles”. In Galatians 1:7–8, Paul rejects “perverted gospels of Christ” and all gospels other than what he now teaches:Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.From Paul’s epistles and other sources, we know that Christianity was already fragmented during the time of Paul. We do know that from the second century onwards, there were competing gnostic sects, and it even seems that the Johannine community, from which we receive John’s Gospel and the Johannine epistles, was initially estranged from what was eventually to become the Catholic-Orthodox sect.This raises another possible scenario, in that Paul had belonged to a competing Christian sect that had commissioned Paul to eliminate the opposition.We have at least two possible reasons for Paul to persecute what he now calls “the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9). Even if we accept as more likely, the explanation that Paul was an overly pious Jew who sought to wipe out the upstart Christian religion, we must acknowledge that this was not necessarily the case. We can not be entirely sure why Paul persecuted the Christians whom he then supported.

To a large extent, yes, Paul did invent Christianity as we know it today. Although what he did was to put together elements that were already there. “In the atmosphere” you might say.Christianity of course does start with Jesus (Yeshua), or even earlier. Actually, it goes back to the first-century Jewish focus on Messianism, which was the belief that God would chose a Jewish man from the line of David to regain the Jewish kingship and overcome the Romans.What they imagined is very much like the plot of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and specifically Aragorn’s role in The Return of the King. Tolkien made Aragorn humble and made him a healer, perhaps to cast him more in the Jesus role, but basically Aragorn’s role in Tolkien was like the role first-century Jews imagined for the Messiah: a king who is not even recognized at first but helps save the world from evil.Jesus, the man, in my opinion, tried to recast the whole meaning of the future Messianic reign (Kingdom of God). The true Kingdom of God, he kept trying to say, will only happen when people live in a spirit of love, mercy, and compassion with all other human beings. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter whether you have a Jewish king or a Roman puppet. War won’t bring the true reign of God, Jesus wanted to say. Only love will.When Jesus died, something interesting happened. People started seeing him all over, much the way people saw Elvis for many years after Elvis died.The Jesus movement “should” have been over, but the Jesus sightings, much like the Elvis sightings 2000 years later, kept the thing going. Then they found passages in Isaiah that said “by his stripes we are healed,” and decided they had a scriptural basis to keep going.But Paul’s innovation was the thing that really made Christianity. As a well-educated Greek speaking Jew, he saw the parallels in an (apparently) risen Jesus with the mystery cults that had been popular around the Mediterranean for centuries. These cults had centered around a dying god who sacrifices himself so that his devotees might enjoy an exalted afterlife rather than the diminished afterlife in Hades that most people expected.Paul put 2 and 2 together and came up with Christianity. The advantage of the Risen-Jesus cult over the mystery cults is that the Jesus followers could point to a historical figure who actually did live and breathe on this earth. He was a healer who loved the poor, the sick, and the outcasts… which — far from hurting Jesus — would make him immensely popular (and rightly so) with all the masses, for many centuries to come.Paul had found his man.