There is a movement afoot to put Jesus above Paul, Abraham, Moses, and the Bible. This won’t fly at our University because the first article of our Statement of Faith puts the Bible above Jesus and God while the rest of the articles put Paul second to the Bible. However, this anti-Christian movement to put Jesus first is gaining traction elsewhere and I want to reveal the truth behind its evil “logic”.
Putting anyone pre-Paul above Moses or Abraham is an offense worthy of death by stoning. In fact, in John 8.56-59 the people did try to stone Jesus for claiming to be greater than Abraham. Also, in John 5.39-47, Jesus again raised the ire of the Bible-believers when he claimed to be that about which Moses was writing.
That the Bible is the supreme authority is a conclusion that goes before any argument. It’s not worth even trying to defend this one. It is an article of faith. The truth of the claim of its authority even transcends the Bible (if such a thing is possible) since the claim never even occurs in the Bible.
Paul defines Christ for us
Given that, it is easy to establish that we must see Jesus and the rest of the contents of the Bible through the lens of Paul. Please follow me as I follow Paul to I Cor. 11.1.
Some truth-haters try to translate I Cor. 11.1 as “Imitate me in as much as I imitate Christ.” But that’s not what it says. Literally, it says, “become followers of me as I am of Christ.” In other words, let Paul follow Christ and you folks follow him. Let Paul decide who Christ is for you. Let there be no mistake here. Paul is inviting, nay, commanding us to ignore everything else we know about Jesus (e.g., from the Gospels) and focus on Paul.
Some will say that this seems to be in conflict with what he says elsewhere (I Cor. 1 and 3) when he scolds people for saying, “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos” or “I follow Cephas” or “I follow Christ”. But, obviously, the problem he was addressing there was people following anybody but Christ as Paul defines Him.
In other places, Paul certainly does glorify Christ, but it is not the Christ of the Gospels that he was talking about. The churches to which he was writing his letters would never have made the mistake of thinking that the Christ he was talking about was the Jesus talked about in the Gospels. No. The Christ Paul glorifies is the Christ he defines in the parts of Paul’s letters that we conservative evangelicals focus on. His first readers would know that very well.
Some will object: “but doesn’t Paul say that Christ is greater than Abraham and Moses and even Paul himself?” I’m glad you’re paying semi-attention. But how many times do I have to explain this before you get it? Paul was not talking about the pre-resurrection Christ of the Gospels but rather about the post-resurrection Christ that we find defined in the parts of Paul’s letters that we conservative evangelicals focus on. Thus the people were right to try to stone the pre-resurrection Jesus for making that claim to greatness. Duane Litfin makes this very clear in his chapel teachings in Wheaton College. Listen particularly to his messages of August 29, 2007 and October 29, 2007. And stick around here. I plan to write about Litfin’s chapel sermons in my blog soon.
For the sake of argument, let’s see what happens if we let the liberal truth-haters get away with their mistranslation of I Cor. 11.1. The liberals try to translate it their way because they think that it follows that we should know Christ independently of Paul so that we can judge whether or not Paul is following Him. But if Paul really meant, “follow me in as much as I follow Christ” then how are we to understand that sentence? In order to understand that sentence, we must understand what Paul meant by the word “Christ”. It becomes more important than ever to study Paul’s use of the word without any reference to how the word “Christ” or the person of Jesus was understood by others at his time.
Truth haters will say that if you “know” who Jesus is before reading Paul (presumably by reading the Gospels) then Paul’s meanings change and become “deeper” and that the sections of Paul’s letters that we conservative evangelicals don’t read suddenly fit with the parts of his letters that we conservative evangelicals like to look at in isolation. Well, trust me on this. I tried doing that for several seconds, got frustrated and gave up. It doesn’t work.
Peter’s warning against the truth-haters
Peter even talks to these truth haters in II Pet. 3.15-18:
So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability.
Here we have, right there in the Bible, a warning to those who want to interpret Paul in the context of some non-Pauline literature describing Jesus. The consequence of ignoring the warning is destruction. The Bible itself tells us that parts of Paul’s letters are hard to understand, commonly twisted, and that this twisting leads to loss of stability and destruction.
This passage tells us how high the stakes are when dealing with Paul. Interpreting Paul is like messing with the Butterfly Effect. Make one mistake, which is easy to do with the confusing parts, and the results are utter destruction. The Bible says this! OK. This isn’t just me or Litfin saying it!
In light of this, how could anyone dare to presume to interpret Paul on their own without the help of the orthodox interpretation developed in the last hundred years by the conservative evangelical movement?
The confusing nature of Paul’s teachings is in contrast with most of the teachings of pre-resurrection Jesus in the Gospels which are really quite easy to understand. Peter is warning us that looking at those teachings without the correct Pauline lens can lead to destruction!
Conclusion
How much more Scriptural evidence can you ask for? I hope that’s enough otherwise I would have to look harder and I’m kind of worn out from looking right now.
What have we learned?
- Major premise: The Bible says that misunderstanding the letters of Paul (which the Bible calls “hard to understand”) leads to destruction and instability.
- Minor premise: While most of the teachings of Jesus seem pretty easy to understand without Paul, we must recall that Jesus was almost stoned for his doctrines and social activism. (In the end, Jesus was killed but that was not because of his teachings or activities but, as Paul teaches, to fulfill the loving God’s need for a blood sacrifice.)
- Conclusion: We must understand Paul first and define Jesus through the correct conservative evangelical understanding of Paul. Otherwise, we are putting ourselves in grave, grave danger.
July 22, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Jesus would no doubt be glad to have us allow Him to speak for Himself. Paul seems to be of the same opinion. 1 Corinthians 1:13 Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
July 23, 2008 at 2:16 pm
We actually agree as long as we don’t confuse the pre-resurrection Christ described in the Gospels with the post-resurrection Christ that matters today.
Let the post-resurrection Christ speak for himself. Through Paul.
I’ll be explaining this distinction in more detail in my reviews of Duane Litfin’s Wheaton College Chapel Sermons beginning August 29. Stay tuned!
Blessings