Famous Quotes On Paul

FESTUS, 59 A.D.

"Paul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad." (Acts 26:24, Festus.)

CARLSTADT, co-founder in 1517 of Reformation with Luther (who later pushed him out)

"It is necessary in fact to preserve compliance to the Lord, and as the Spirit of the Apostles is not a guide equal or greater than the Lord, thus also the heart of Paul within his letters does not have as much authority as has Christ." (Carlstadt, Canonicis Scripturis (1520), quoted in Charles Beard's Martin Luther and the Reformation in Germany (1899) at 278, discussed in our page Carlstadt Research.

"Paul took [Timothy] and circumcised him, or ordered it to be done (Acts 16:1-3). This was strange. Had not Paul opposed those with all his might that were for imposing circumcision upon the Gentile converts? Had he not at this time the decrees of the council at Jerusalem with him, which witnessed against it? He had, and yet circumcised Timothy." (Matthew Henry, Exposition of the New Testament (1721) Vol. 3 at 833 - Ch. 16 #6.)

THOMAS MORGAN, 1740, used Paul to destroy both Original and New Testament

"I have proved that if the Apostles made any such claim [to infallibility], their differences and divisions among themselves, both in doctrine and practice, must have confuted and convicted them. Peter and Paul with respect to Jews and Gentiles preached two different Gospels...." (Thomas Morgan, Moral Philosopher (1740) at 325.) [Morgan used Paul's self-serving claim to being an apostle to undermine all of the OT and NT as fallible because Paul denigrated the Law and conflicted with Peter. For full discussion, see our webpage on Morgan.]

BOULANGER, 1746

"We should never finish, were we to relate all the contradictions which are to be found in the writings attributed to St. Paul.... Generally speaking it is St. Paul ... that ought to be regarded as the true founder of Christian theology,... which from its foundation has been incessantly agitated by quarrels [and] divisions." (Boulanger and Peter Annet, Critical Examination of the Life of St. Paul (letter to Gilbert West, 1746).) For discussion of this book, see this link.

"The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles of Paul." (Boulanger and Peter Annet, Critical Examination of the Life of St. Paul (reprint 1823) quoted in Paine, Age of Reason (1794) at 159.)

THOMAS PAINE, 1794

"That manufacturer of quibbles, St. Paul,... [wrote] a collection of letters under the name of epistles.... Out of the matters contained in those books,... the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty." (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794) at 24.)

THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1820

"Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." (Thomas Jefferson Letter of April 13, 1820 in Writings of Thomas Jefferson Vol. XV (1904) at 245, available at this link.)

WILLIAM PALEY, d. 1805, famous Christian preacher

"He, the Apostle, could not mean to say this [i.e., salvation is by faith alone]; because if he did, he would say what is expressly and positively contradicted by other texts of at least equal authority with his own; he would say what is contradicted by the very drift and design of the Christian constitution; and would say, lastly, what is expressly denied and contradicted by himself. ...[He also] would say what is contradicted by the very highest authority...Our Savior's own [words]." (William Paley, Sermon 209, The Works of William Paley (1825) Vol. 6 at 214 or Sermons (1830) at 44.)

JEREMY BENTHAM, 1826, philosopher and attorney

"One thorn still remain[s] to be plucked out of the side of this so much injured religion,—and that [is], the addition made to it by Saul of Tarsus: by that Saul, who, under the name of Paul, has—(as will be seen) without warrant from, and even in the teeth of, the history of Jesus, as delivered by his companions and biographers the four evangelists,—been dignified with the title of his apostle...." (Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul But Jesus (1826) at iv.)

"If, by the removal of an incongruous appendage [i.e., Paul], acceptance should be obtained for what is good in the religion commonly ascribed to Jesus;— obtained at the hands of any man, much more of many, to whom at present it is an object of aversion;—if, in any one of these several ways, much more if in all of them, the labours of the author should be crowned with success,—good service will, so far, and on all hands, be allowed to have been rendered to mankind." (Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul But Jesus (1826) at vii.)

"Whosoever, putting aside all prepossessions, feels strong enough in mind, to look steadily at the originals, and from them to take his conceptions of the matter, not from the discourses of others,—whosoever has this command over himself, will recognise, if the author does not much deceive himself, that by the two persons in question, as represented in the two sources of information—the Gospels and Paul’s Epistles,— two quite different, if not opposite, religions are inculcated: and that, in the religion of Jesus may be found all the good that has ever been the result of the compound so incongruously and unhappily made,—in the religion of Paul, all the mischief, which, in such disastrous abundance, has so indisputably flowed from it." (Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul But Jesus (1826) at vii.)

KIERKEGAARD, 1855, independent theologian and philosopher

"Protestantism is altogether untenable. It is a revolution brought on by proclaiming 'the Apostle Paul' at the expense of the Master (Christ). If there is to be any question of retaining Protestantism...we confess that this teaching is a mitigation of Christianity which we humans have allowed ourselves, appealing to God to put up with it. And instead Protestantism is blazoned forth as an advance in Christianity! No, it is perhaps the most profound concession to the numerical...this numerality that wants to be Christian but wants rid of ideality or to have it downgraded, and insists upon being such and such a number." (Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals (1996)[orig. ca. 1855] at 629 -- books.google link to original.)

"[I]t is of great importance, especially in Protestantism, to correct the enormous confusion Luther caused by inverting the relation and actually criticizing Christ by means of Paul, the Master by means of a follower." (Kierkegaard, "My Task" (1855)," inThe Essential Kierkegaard (ed. Edward H. & Edna Hong)(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) at 446 fn.)

"As early as the Apostle [Paul], the scaling down process begins, and it seems as if the natural man gets off a little easier in becoming a Christian....[N]owadays whole countries and kingdoms are called Christian, and millions of natural men are disguised as Christians." (Kierkegaard, Journals [ca. 1855] 3:2921 quoted in David McCracken, The scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, story, and offense (1994) at 65 -books.google.)

"Only the God-man [i.e., Jesus] would be able to endure...the propogation of the doctrine by proclaimnig it, even if he did not gain one single follower. The apostle still has some selfish urge for the alleviation, aquiring adherents, become many, something the God-man does not have [to do]. He does not selfishly crave adherents and therefore has only the market price of eternity, not the market price [of the world which is cheap]." (Kierkegaard, "What Do I Want?" (1855)," inThe Essential Kierkegaard (ed. Edward H. & Edna Hong)(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) at 433.)

"Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ." (Kierkegaard, The Journals ca. 1855)

PAUL RENAN, 1869, independent theologian,

"It is vain for Paul to talk ; He is inferior to the other apostles. He has not seen Jesus ; He has not heard his word. The divine logia and the parables are scarcely known to him. The Christ who gives him personal revelations, is his own phantom, — it is himself he hears,while thinking he hears Jesus." (Paul Renan, Saint Paul (G.W. Carleton, 1869) or (1875) at 326.)

"True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospels, — not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, — the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology. Paul is the father of the subtle Augustine, of the unfruitful Thomas Aquinas, of the gloomy Calvinist, of the peevish Jansenist, of the fierce theology which damns and predestinates to damnation. Jesus is the father of all those who seek repose for their souls in dreams of the ideal. What makes Christianity live, is the little that we know of the word and person of Jesus. The ideal man, the divine poet, the great artist, alone defy time and revolutions. They alone are seated at the right hand of God the Father for ever more."  (Paul Renan, Saint Paul (G.W. Carleton, 1869) or (1875) at 329.)

LEO TOLSTOY, 1884, famous writer, Christian

"The separation between the doctrine of life and the explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul who knew not the ethical teachings set forth in the Gospel of Matthew, and who preached a metaphisico-cabalistic theory entirely foreign to Christ; and this separation was perfected in the time of Constantine, when it was found possible to clothe the whole pagan organization of life in a Christian dress, and without changing it to call it Christianity." (Leo Tolstoy, My Religion (1884) at 219.)

HANS WENDT, 1894 scholar

"We know it to be certain that the teachings of Jesus, if it is only grasped and preached in its original strength, can and will exert in a yet higher measure vital and ennobling influences upon the further development of Christendom than have proceeded so far from the teaching of Paul." (Hans Hinrich Wendt of Jena 1894 "Die Lehre des Paulus verglichen mit der Lehre Jesu," ZTK 4 1-78, at 78, quoted in Wedderburn: 20.)

FREDERICK WATSON, 1906, Christian scholar

"In particular, in the case of St. Paul's Epistles, we can also see that they all arose out of historical events which can never occur again. We observe in them not only his circumstances and the circumstances of the Church to which He was writing, but also himself— his personal feelings, human passions, zeal, indignation, love, sorrow, and the like. These are not always of the highest morality." (Watson, Inspiration (London: 1906) at 156.)

"Paul ... did not desire to know Christ after the flesh.... Those who want to find a way from the preaching of Jesus to early Christianity are conscious of the peculiar difficulties raised.... Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded by primary Christianity." (Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906) at 2.)

"The system of the Apostle of the Gentiles stands over against the teaching of Jesus as something of an entirely different character, and does not create the impression of having arisen out of it.... It is impossible for a Hellenized Paulinism to subsist alongside of a primitive Christianity which shared the Jewish eschatological expectations.... To the problem of Paulinism belong ... questions which have not yet found a solution:... the relation of the Apostle to the historical Jesus ... and towards the [Mosaic] Law.... He does not appeal to the Master even where it might seem inevitable to do so.... It is as though he held that between the present world-period and that in which Jesus lived and taught there exists no link of connection.... What Jesus thought about the matter is ... indifferent to him.... Critics [have] demanded of theology proof that the canonical Paul and his Epistles belonged to early Christianity; and the demand was justified." (Albert Schweitzer Paul and His Interpreters (1912) at 245.)

"The differences and oppositions...reveal themselves between the teaching of Jesus and that of Paul...."  (Albert Schweitzer Paul and His Interpreters (1912) at 154.

"[T]he rapid diffusion of Paul's ideas can be attributed to his belief that the death of Christ signified the end of the [Mosaic] Law. In the course of one or two generations this concept became the common property of the Christian faith, although it stood in contradiction to the tradition teaching represented by the Apostles at Jerusalem." (Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought (1931) at 121.)

"What is the significance for our faith and for our religious life, of the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus?... The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority.... The fateful thing is that the Greek, the Catholic and the Protestant theologies all contain the Gospel of Paul in a form which does not continue the Gospel of Jesus, but displaces it." (Albert Schweitzer The Mysticism of St. Paul (1931) at 391.)

JAMES ORR, 1915, Christian scholar

"It is the same fallacy which underlies the contrast frequently sought to be drawn between the religious standpoints of Christ and Paul. Paul never for an instant dreamt of putting himself on the same plane with Christ. Paul was sinner; Christ was Saviour. Paul was disciple; Christ was Lord. Paul was weak, struggling man; Christ was Son of God. Jesus achieved redemption; Paul appropriated it. These things involved the widest contrasts in attitude and speech." (James Orr, "Christianity, ISBE I (1915), at 625.)

H.G. WELLS, 1921, historian

"But it is equally a fact in history that St. Paul and his successors added to or completed orimposed upon or substituted another doctrine for—as you may prefer to think— the plain and profoundly revolutionary teachings of Jesus by expounding a subtle and complex theory of salvation, a salvation which could be attained very largely by belief and formalities, without any serious disturbance of the believer's ordinary habits and occupations, and that this Pauline teaching did involve very definite beliefs about the history of the world and man. It is not the business of the historian to controvert or explain these matters; the question of their ultimate significance depends upon the theologian; the historian's concern is merely with the fact that official Christianity throughout the world adopted St. Paul's view so plainly expressed in his epistiles [953] and so untraceable in the gospels, that the meaning of religion lay not in the future, but in the past, and that Jesus was not so much a teacher of wonderful new things, as a predestinate divine blood sacrifice of deep mystery and sacredness made in atonement of a particular historical act of disobedience to the Creator committed by our first parents, Adam and Eve, in response to the temptation of a serpent in the Garden of Eden. (H.G. Wells, The Outline of History (1921) at 952-953.)

THOMAS COSETTE, 2007, independent Christian

"This man Paul hijacked what is called the church....But he can only keep those who do not love the truth. Those who still have conscience and will compare his teaching and his testimony to Y'shva's and the prophets without granting Paul's testimony [is] the Word of God but [is] just another man's testimony in light of Jesus' teachings. Then they will discover that Paul usurps the truth...." (Thomas Cosette, Hebrew Prophecies of the Coming of Paul (2007) at 65-66.)

CREDITS

Partial credit for some of these quotes goes to Metalog.