As a Christian, could Paul's writings simply be thrown out?

[Superman]

Lots of people have argued that Christianity would be a better religion without the teachings of Paul. I think there might be something to this... If Jesus' teachings are the ultimate authority, are Paul's writings really needed? I always liked these verses:

Paul says:
Rom.13
[12] the night is far gone, the day is at hand.

Jesus says:
Luke.21
[8] Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name,
saying, . . . `The time is at hand!' Do not go after them.

In some ways it does seem that Paul has had more influence on Christianity (American evangelicalism, for sure) than Jesus. Was Paul in line with Jesus?

[Surlethe]

You know, it's been a project of mine to go through Paul and weed out the shit that's unnecessary or inconsistent with what Christ taught. I tend to think he's taken a lot more seriously than he should be; he shouldn't be given any more credence than any other religious leader. His writings definitely shouldn't be taken as the words of God because they aren't: they're the words of Paul, and Paul is not God.

For the record, though, his writings did do a lot to flesh out what it means to live in community, the sort of commune that's written about in Acts. That part of his writings, the stuff about the attributes of love, how people should behave toward one another (sans the male-centric, misogynistic bullshit) is pretty generally spot-on, although I can think of one or two exceptions off the top of my head.

[Superman]

If people didn't take his words as the words of god, I think what he said about social rules and whatnot could probably be forgiven. He lived in a time period in which things like that were the norm, but, in today's world, they just tend to keep progress from happening.

Sounds like you've really given this some thought... If you ever wrote any of this down, I'd love to read it.

[Ariphaos]

I would suggest looking into Gnostic, Ebionite, or other non-Pauline version of Christianity. Or perhaps research early Christian sects in general - there were a lot of them.

[Darth Raptor]

I know some Christians personally who disregard the entire Old Testament and the parts of the New Testament that aren't "red letter" (verbatim quotations of Christ). To them, Paul is the Roman-era equivalent of Pat Robertson who managed to get his own personal version of Christianity fanagled into the canon.

[General Zod]

Given the amount of cherry picking Christians do already, there's no reason you couldn't write out entire apostles if it didn't agree with your viewpoint.

[B5B7]

Isn't Paul basically the founder of Christianity, which therefore is really Paulianity?

[Patrick Degan]

Lots of people have argued that Christianity would be a better religion without the teachings of Paul. I think there might be something to this... If Jesus' teachings are the ultimate authority, are Paul's writings really needed?

That's just what Thomas Jefferson thought. In fact, he took things a big step further and produced his own bible which deleted in entirety the Old Testament, everything in the New Testament after the Gospels, at least one of the Gospels, all the miracles including the Resurrection, and combined what was left into a consistent Gospel focussed on Jesus' actual teachings. I think his idea was, that if religion was going to play any part of American life in the new republic, he was going to try to create a whole new form of Christianity centred entirely on philosophy and without reference to the supernatural or the half of the book which had been the driver for more and bloodier wars than anything else in human history up to that point and which he found intellectually offensive.

[Darth Wong]

Isn't Paul basically the founder of Christianity, which therefore is really Paulianity?

Paul was the L. Ron Hubbard of Christianity. Hell, one of his epistles even tells people to learn how to bullshit others and gain their confidence by pretending to be something they're not.

[Ariphaos]

Isn't Paul basically the founder of Christianity, which therefore is really Paulianity?

Paul is the founder of Pauline Christianity, which itself encompasses many heresies (non-traditional branches) of Christianity such as Unitarianism, which makes it quite large - you could nearly squeeze Islam into it. Modern Christians typically adhere to the Nicene Creed, which in addition affirms the divinity of Jesus as well as the Trinity.

That's why I suggested to look into non-Pauline versions. Gnosticism is perhaps the most popular of them.

[Lord Woodlouse]

Isn't Paul basically the founder of Christianity, which therefore is really Paulianity?

He was one of the first big time missionaries for Christianity. There's a strong argument that without him Christianity would never have become the massive faith it is today.

But yeah, I'm mostly with Surlethe with regard him.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The documentary The God Who Wasn't There makes a pretty convincing argument that without Paul, Christianity never would have even existed, because Jesus was a character that was invented by Paul.

[jegs2]

My understanding is that Paul wrote some things inspired by God, and others are his opinion, based on time, place and circumstance. In some instances he makes his opinion clear, as apart from what he says God intends:

1 COR
10To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

12To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

Others have yet a different interpretation.

[K. A. Pital]

I always thought that post-Jesus books embarass the Bible more than anything else in the New Testament. With shit like Paul and Revelations, you almost get close to the insane level of bigotry, genocide and destruction as in the Old Testament. Wiping them out would make a lot of good work for Christianity mainstream - even if I don't care the least as an atheist, I understand that softening anachronistic religious texts is a positive development.

[Surlethe]

Revelations is drugged-up shit, but if you toss out all of Paul's epistles, you're tossing out the baby with the bathwater. While Paul gave us misogyny, "women, obey your husbands", and "slaves, go back to Christian masters", he also wrote down the attributes of love, the fruits of the spirit (i.e., qualities that would be good to have in your life), the clarification that you should make no distinction based on race in how you treat someone, that sort of thing.

So you could throw away all of Paul's writings, but I think it would be better to excise the bad stuff and keep the good things, because at his best, Paul does have good advice to offer.

[General Zod]

Revelations is drugged-up shit, but if you toss out all of Paul's epistles, you're tossing out the baby with the bathwater. While Paul gave us misogyny, "women, obey your husbands", and "slaves, go back to Christian masters", he also wrote down the attributes of love, the fruits of the spirit (i.e., qualities that would be good to have in your life), the clarification that you should make no distinction based on race in how you treat someone, that sort of thing.

Didn't Jesus do all that sort of positive stuff already though?

[Darth Wong]

So you could throw away all of Paul's writings, but I think it would be better to excise the bad stuff and keep the good things, because at his best, Paul does have good advice to offer.

So? I'm sure that if you mined the writings of any psychopath in history like Hitler or Stalin, you could probably find some good nuggets in there too.

[K. A. Pital]

...the clarification that you should make no distinction based on race in how you treat someone, that sort of thing.

That is actually important. There are already Christian sects which closely align with the white-supremacist, racist factions - not that only but they invoke the Old Testament (Hamites "servants") as justification (the old Creationist claim).

Probably the possible destruction of Paul's writings by a major Christian denomination could have a "ripples on the water" effect - some would remain with the new line, while others might fall into the more extreme sects, anyway, some of those already discard Paul's race statements already.

[K. A. Pital]

So? I'm sure that if you mined the writings of any psychopath in history like Hitler or Stalin, you could probably find some good nuggets in there too.

Of course it would be nice if one day the entire Bible be banished like Mein Kampf, but the problem is that's not happening.

We're either looking at a slow dismantling of Christianity, or at it's radicalization and creation of another good counterpart to the most radical Islam factions.

So we need to assess this Paul problem from a secular viewpoint - would his abolition do more good or bad? More alienation of Christians, or more liberalization of Christianity itself?

[Darth Wong]

Paul never said you should not treat different people equally IIRC. He only said that you should try just as hard to convert people of different races. That's only a recommendation to treat them equally for ONE specific purpose, and that's pretty much the way the American slavers interpreted it.

So we need to assess this Paul problem from a secular viewpoint - would his abolition do more good or bad? More alienation of Christians, or more liberalization of Christianity itself?

It's a moot point because it wouldn't happen, but if you could excise the entire Old Testament, Pauline Epistles, and Revelations from the Bible, you could only be better off. The sheer amount of hatred and stupidity in those documents outweighs any possible benefit of the occasional positive statement.

[Surlethe]

So you could throw away all of Paul's writings, but I think it would be better to excise the bad stuff and keep the good things, because at his best, Paul does have good advice to offer.

So? I'm sure that if you mined the writings of any psychopath in history like Hitler or Stalin, you could probably find some good nuggets in there too.

Yes, that's true. So wouldn't it be better to keep the good stuff anyway, and throw out the bad stuff in Mein Kampf, for example? If you're looking for a good rule of thumb, then knock out pretty much everything after Acts, but that doesn't negate my point.

Didn't Jesus do all that sort of positive stuff already though?

Paul, in some instances, gives good clarification and expands on it. Example: Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Paul, however, gives the attributes of love: "Love is patient, kind, not envious, not rude, not self-seeking, not proud, not easily angered." That sort of thing.

[General Zod]

...the clarification that you should make no distinction based on race in how you treat someone, that sort of thing.

That is actually important. There are already Christian sects which closely align with the white-supremacist, racist factions - not that only but they invoke the Old Testament (Hamites "servants") as justification (the old Creationist claim).

Probably the possible destruction of Paul's writings by a major Christian denomination could have a "ripples on the water" effect - some would remain with the new line, while others might fall into the more extreme sects, anyway, some of those already discard Paul's race statements already.

No more so than it does already imo. Judaism's main holy book is effectively the Bible minus the new testament. Yet they're relatively moderate in comparison to some of the mainstream Christian religions out there.

[Surlethe]

Ach, you're right. I misremembered: Paul said that differences shouldn't matter between people who are already Christians. In my not-so-humble opinion, Christians shouldn't make a distinction in the way the treat people who are and aren't Christian, but that doesn't follow from a strict interpretation without a few gymnastics.

[Darth Wong]

So? I'm sure that if you mined the writings of any psychopath in history like Hitler or Stalin, you could probably find some good nuggets in there too.

Yes, that's true. So wouldn't it be better to keep the good stuff anyway, and throw out the bad stuff in Mein Kampf, for example?

Why bother? There are plenty of other places where you could find the few good sentiments in a horrible document like that, without the baggage of knowing you had to strain them out from a pile of shit. It's not as if people won't ask where this stuff came from and want to see the original unfiltered version.

[Surlethe]

So? I'm sure that if you mined the writings of any psychopath in history like Hitler or Stalin, you could probably find some good nuggets in there too.

Yes, that's true. So wouldn't it be better to keep the good stuff anyway, and throw out the bad stuff in Mein Kampf, for example?

Why bother? There are plenty of other places where you could find the few good sentiments in a horrible document like that, without the baggage of knowing you had to strain them out from a pile of shit. It's not as if people won't ask where this stuff came from and want to see the original unfiltered version.

I suppose it's the anal-retentive desire to always be precise and get as much as possible out of a given piece of text. In the case of Paul's epistles, it's simply a matter of getting as much use out of them before they're tossed because people, for some reason, hold tightly to them. And, of course, Mein Kampf isn't a basis for any religion, as far as I know.

But like I said, for a general rule of thumb, toss everything after Acts. That's close enough for government work, especially if you're looking for morality and not advice on living in Christian community.