This is a continuation of our investigation into the New Testament theologies cited by Jesus, quoted by the Gospels, and how the Canonical Gospels view Jesus and salvation. In this article, we will explore Paul’s more complex theology and how it might be reconciled with the theologies of the Gospels.
Author's NoteThis essay on Paul the Apostle was contributed by my research partner and oldest son, William B. Orr. I hope that he will take over this column when I can no longer write.
Introduction: The Theological Problem
- Essentially, to be saved, one must follow the teachings of Jesus as outlined in the Canonical Gospels.
- This contrasts with how Paul views salvation. For Paul, belief in the death and resurrection is what is ultimately important.
But this is not just Paul writing theology. Paul, beginning to write just a decade after the death of Jesus, has a problem.
Jesus died.
Now, one might say, “of course he died, that’s the whole point. God gave his only begotten son, a final sacrifice for the salvation of humanity.”
But that is based on writings and traditions that came later. Paul, writing the earliest texts regarding Jesus that have survived, is, unlike the writers of the Gospels, explicitly an evangelist. He is establishing churches for the gentiles.
But he has a problem. One commonality between Paul and the Gospels is that Jesus is an apocalyptic preacher. The end is nigh, and Jesus is the Messiah. Now, before Jesus’s death, the Messiah was assumed to be a political and/or military leader who will be a king of the Judeans. But then, Jesus is arrested, tried, and executed as a political dissident.
How can the messiah be killed? Well, for Paul, it is time to reevaluate what it means to be the Messiah. If Paul reinterprets Jesus’s death, problem solved.
After all, Jesus is quoted as saying he will save believers from death. So, let’s redefine “death.”
Scholars of the historical Jesus, like Bart Ehrman, do not believe Jesus expected to die when he entered Jerusalem.
But he did.
Over time, as seen in the Gospels, the tradition began that he conquered death and was resurrected. It is beyond the scope of this essay to completely detail the accretion of the various aspects of the building of the Jesus story, but reading the Gospels, from Mark and its short ending, to Mark and the long ending, through Matthew, Luke, and John, this is apparent if one reads them as individual texts with specific goals and audiences over the course of around 30-40 years.
As word of the resurrection spread, so did the growth in followers. Paul, as detailed in his letters and Acts, is chosen for outreach to the gentiles and he establishes several churches in the Near East.
Now, how do you sell a dead messiah to followers? Answer: You write him as a man who died, not just for a political cause, for a specific people group (lots of people have done that), but a martyr for ALL of humanity to live in God’s Kingdom. The gospels, written after Paul, used the teaching of Jesus as the key to entering the Kingdom of God, but we know that they are built upon earlier oral tradition. It is said the earliest Christians preferred the “words of the living Jesus”,
Paul’s letters really do not give us much of the words of Jesus, just a few, and the only theologically important words are regarding the Last Supper. In light of what we know about how the “living words” were preferred, this seems important. If we assume that Paul’s churches would hear the words of Jesus preached aloud, and if we read Paul’s letter for what they are, letters of admonishment, to solve problems, etc., to congregations Paul himself founded, this makes sense.
Paul is also an apocalypticist. He does not care about preserving texts for later generations. Jesus is coming soon, and if we are to enter the Kingdom with Jesus, we need to know the most important point, Jesus died, rose again, entered the Kingdom first, and is coming back. Jesus’s death now has ultimate meaning.
This is the crux of Paul’s view of Jesus’s death. It is the single most important death in the history of humanity. Jesus is not important because he lived, but because he died and lived again. He turns what could have destroyed the early Jesus movement, into what gives it its ultimate strength, death is not the end, it is the beginning, but ONLY if we believe. Faith, faith is what make a Christian.
Lots of mythological heroes have entered the underworld and returned. But they did not die and conquer death, they visited and left, like Odysseus and Aneas, or, if they did die, and were rebuilt, they stayed, such as Osiris. who remained in the underworld as its king, not returning to an earthly life.
Paul has built the unconquerable, a spiritually living messiah. This tradition would continue to be built upon, argued about, and preached on, but Paul uses it early to establish the baseline for Christian Theology. A theology that was derided as being for women and slaves. But that makes sense. Who would be more apt to follow a dead, but spiritually alive messiah? The oppressed and beaten down.
Paul’s Problem and Innovation
But we are not quite finished. There is still the question of why would God allow this? Why would God allow Jesus to die?
Post hoc, the question is easy, Jesus had to die.
But if we consider Paul writing in the 40s CE, Paul, as far as we know, had little to go on. Paul never knew Jesus. Paul does not have the Gospels in front of him. Now, this is not to claim that Paul invented any aspects of the resurrection story. It is expected that after Paul met with Peter and James, Paul learned a great deal. Paul would have learned the basic tenets of The Way from them and was tasked with taking these teachings to the gentiles.
But to return to the question, Why would God allow this? Paul would be preaching, or at least teaching, groups who knew little of what Jesus said. Paul has the advantage of something of a clean slate. Teaching those who feel oppressed and are looking for comfort about a divine man, the minimal Christology up to that point, who died for us, and salvation that needs little beyond believing in Him so we can throw off this oppression and bask in divine light upon death, having a risen messiah, would be an advantage.
By retooling the narrative to incorporate the death and resurrection of a mediator figure, Paul turns Jesus into the ultimate symbol.
3 Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Jesus has achieved apotheosis, He has become divine. Jesus is now a multilayered symbol. The Sheppard, The Lamb, The Way, The Divine, The Son of God. By basing his theology on a dead Messiah, the potential greatest weakness, is now its greatest strength.
Death and Resurrection as the Mechanism of Salvation
For people surrounded by death and misery, what better than a God who shares in that death and shows us how to conquer it? Why fear the inevitable if by embracing it, like Jesus at the last supper, we get to share in his Glory?
Paul has given us a Jesus who blazed a trail. Jesus is The Way to a better life, not just in this life, but in the next.
By shifting the rhetoric from some sort of netherworld, or underworld, to a new life, Paul, through Jesus, gave his followers Hope.
Romans 6:8-9 New Revised Standard Version Updated Editio
8 But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
No longer do we need to find the right sacrifices, or travel to the right temples, we can meet in homes and share in fellowship. The Pauline communities thrive, partially because the churches in Jerusalem would be wiped out in 70 CE, during purges and uprisings, but also because Paul’s theology is expressly evangelizing and shares a message that is philosophy and mythology wrapped into one religion. But that’s a different essay. His message is summarized in 1 Corinthians 15:20–26
1 Corinthians 15:20-26 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
Conclusion: Salvation as Victory Over Death
To conclude, I will not argue that Paul creates Christianity, but that he does find a movement in potential crisis. The Way has lost its leader. Death could have killed what would become Christianity. Paul pivots way from Jesus’s life or at least focuses on Jesus’s death and resurrection narrative and makes it the strength of his argument. By focusing on Jesus’s death and resurrection, centralizing it, emphasizing Jesus’s victory over death, and preaching that we too can defeat death, Paul gave Christianity its biggest selling point. By being the first disciple who only knew Jesus AFTER his death and by sharing what we can do to join him and Jesus in the next life, Paul gave generations of Christians the hope that a better life to come could be found in embracing the death of Him who showed The Way.
In this article and the last, we explored the theology of Jesus as reported by the Gospel authors and by Paul the Apostle. In the next article, we will introduce and explore the surprisingly violent and bloody theology of John of Patmos in the book of Revelation.
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