One of the contentions of the ABC documentary is that Paul was the true founder of the Christian faith. The liberal scholar Marvin Meyer unequivocally states, "Paul is the founder of Christianity. " Even the evangelical scholar Paul Maier is quoted to say that Paul was "almost " a co-founder of Christianity. It is asserted that Christianity would have been very different without Paul, and that Paul effectively, >"founded a new religion./"
Admittedly, the importance of Paul to early Christianity and the formation of the New Testament can scarcely be exaggerated. Regardless, the ABC documentary makes some critical errors in its analysis. First it greatly underestimates the accomplishments of the rest of the church. Before we explore further, try answering the following questions:
"The use of Pauline Epistles as normative for Christian thought and practice can be traced back to very early times, and has been continuously ever since. Yet certain considerations have been urged on the other side as indicating that the influence of Paul has not been so great as might have been expected. For example, the Christianity of the Old Catholic Church at the close of the second century displays a strange lack of understanding for the deeper elements in the Pauline doctrine of salvation, and something of the same state of affairs may be detected in the scanty remains of the so-called
Christianity spread in many directions through the work of many apostles during the first and second centuries. Paul
