Sermonette: Was Paul a False Apostle?
#1746s
David C. Grabbe
Given 03-Feb-24; 18 minutes
description: One major aspect of walking the narrow way is to avoid extremes, polar opposites, and ditches on both sides of the road. C. S. Lewis warns us that Satan sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites, encouraging us to determine which is the worst and choose just the opposite. Protestant antinomian churches have done that with glomming on to grace and despising works. But the opposite tendency is just as much a heresy: believing Paul was not a real apostle, but an imposter, trying to seduce people to believe in opposite things for nefarious purposes, suggesting that his works were surreptitiously placed in the canon to destroy the incentive to keep God's laws. Some declare that Paul was never a personal acquaintance with Jesus Christ like the original twelve disciples and that he publicly attacked Peter, who found fault with his difficult writings. Yet Peter describes Paul as a "beloved brother," not exactly a synonym for a false apostle. Additionally, apostles were chosen and sent out long after the original twelve were chosen. Peter also included Paul's epistles among the scriptures. Jesus's half-brothers James and Jude, as well as the apostle John, identified false apostles, including Gnostics, Judaizers, but never identifies "Pauline epistles." For those who take issue with Paul's writings could just as well take issue with James' writings as Protestants have already done, but the opposite extreme of disparaging Paul's epistles or his apostleship is every bit as much of a heresy.