How do they feel about the letters of Paul?
Many years ago, I met a devout Catholic woman who bragged—during out first meeting—that she had seen the Broadway musical, Phantom of the Opera, more than 200 times. She was obsessed with it, obviously. It was only many years later that it dawned on me that I should have asked her, “The last time I checked—am I right? —the Catholic church doesn’t classify Phantom of the Opera as sacred scripture.” Then the follow-up question would be, “Exactly what does the church classify as sacred scripture?” In other words, her massive time wasted on a musical could have been devoted instead to serious study of the four gospels—at least. But I doubt very much that she has read/studied the gospels. I suspect that very few priests—or Protestant ministers—give assignments from their pulpits during Sunday worship: “I want all of you to read Mark’s gospel this week, and hand in your book reports next Sunday.” Or the assignment could be to read Matthew, Luke, John, or the Book of Acts. With so many entertainment possibilities available—TV, movies, musical theatre, sports—reading books of the Bible will never be a popular option.
The gospels offer narratives about Jesus, and readers who study them with care, with critical thinking fully engaged, can identify the fantasy elements, superstitions, miracle folklore, and magical thinking. (See my article posted here last week, with a major statement by scholar Richard C. Miller, regarding the multiple sources the gospel writers used to create their Jesus stories.) Moreover, thoughtful readers can spot alarming, upsetting Jesus-script created by the gospel authors. They might ask themselves, “How could Jesus have said any such thing?” If they bother to study the gospels at any depth, they would discover that there is no episode, no Jesus quote, that can be verified by the methods used by historians.
But the major brick wall in understanding Christian origins is Paul.
I suspect that the letters of Paul in the New Testament get even less traffic than the gospels. Paul was writing about his theological understanding of the world—and he admits his beliefs are based on revelations—or what we could reasonably call hallucinations. He bragged about not getting any of his information about Jesus from people who had known him. He wrote this is his letter to the Galatians:
“For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11-12)
One of the reasons that thousands of different religions have been created in human history is that supposedly “spiritual” people have claimed special knowledge of gods—just as Paul does here.
It has not escaped the notice of devout scholars that, in all his letters, Paul does not mention the ministry and teaching of Jesus. Indeed, based on the opening verses of the 13th chapter of his letter to the Romans (13:1-7), it would seem that Paul wasn’t aware that Jesus had been crucified by Roman authorities. This is the crucial point to understand: when Paul was on his mission to spread the Jesus-cult, the gospels had not yet been written. The gospels authors had not yet created their fantasy narratives about Jesus.
We also find this statement in the first chapter of Galatians:
“…when God had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the gentiles, I did not confer with any human, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterward I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days, but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother…” (vv. 15-19)
Cephas in this text is another word for Peter, but it would be a big mistake to assume that the Peter we are familiar with from the gospels is a match for this Peter—who must have been an early leader in the Jesus-cult. The gospel fantasies about Peter cannot be considered reliable history. You would think that Cephas and Paul had a lot to talk about for fifteen days, but Paul came away with none of the details we find in the gospels.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wrote this about Jesus’ resurrection: “…he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time… (vv. 5-6) Paul fails to tell his readers the source of this information. How did he find this out? It’s about as credible as a character in a comic strip shouting, “Five hundred people saw Superman leap to the top of the Empire State Building in a single bound!”
If the devout do take up the challenge of reading Paul’s letters—but they should do their research, since some of the letters attributed to Paul are forgeries—they will find that he had his good days, and bad days.
We might say that he had taken his meds when he wrote:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (I Corinthians 13:4-7)
But he was grumpy and furious when he wrote this in the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans, vv. 28-32:
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind and to do things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of injustice, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.”
Really? Gossips and rebellious children deserve to die? I have sometimes called Paul a delusional cult fanatic—and this text is one of the reasons he deserves that label.
And, oh yes, please stop calling him a saint.
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:
• Guessing About God (2023)
• Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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