Was Paul a false apostle?

If you have not read a comment made on my previous post by a reader, let me summarize it for you. A blogger seemed to copy and paste much of a very long article entitled “Paul was a false apostle: Paul Vs. Jesus” where he makes the argument that scripture affirms that Paul was a false apostle because he didn’t qualify to be an apostle, his doctrine is proven false, he apparently lied about his conversion, Paul’s doctrine contradicts Christ’s, to name a few.

Normally, with a line of reasoning like this that would call Christ into question or that would call the Bible itself into question, I might use historical facts in my defense of the Bible or the conscience in my defense of the my Savior, but this attack upon Paul is a different animal all together. Honestly, this idea that Paul is a false apostle as well as arguing it from scripture seems dangerously similar to people who believe that Jesus was not a real person in history and that he was just concocted out of thin air.

I have not decided how or if I will respond to any, many, or all of the specific allegations that the blogger made, but I do want to respond quickly, at least. Also, I feel that this battle, over Paul and the doctrines that he articulates, is one that will be going on in the forefront of the “internal” battle in Christianity. Why? Well, you need not look farther than pro-homosexual lifestyle “Christian” groups when they say things like, “Jesus never condemned homosexuality, only Paul.” Jesus also never condemned rape, but do we think that he gave His stamp of approval to rape? Of course not, that would be absurd. The wolves among us will want to change the gospel, and why not start with the single most prolific writer in the New Testament. If you can discredit Paul, then it is easier to make Jesus’ sayings so esoteric that any conclusion drawn from them is ok.

Now that I have set the stage (somewhat)...where to begin. Leaving aside the fact that taking a stance like this, against the Pauline epistles and His apostleship, goes against everyone who has preached Christ from the beginning of the Christian faith, including the apostles themselves, if we are to throw out the Pauline scriptures, we must cast off Luke's gospel and Acts as well. It was because Luke was a student of Paul that he possessed the necessary “credentials” for even having his writings considered to be in the scriptures. Luke was not an apostle, nor do we know much about him from, but he seems to be inseparable from Paul (as evidenced by his descriptions of Paul’s journeys from a first hand standpoint). Also, Luke would have heard, many times, Paul’s claim to apostleship and if he was a disciple of Paul, and if Paul was a false apostle with false doctrine (as the blogger argues), then could we take the writings of an unbeliever or a believer who was duped by this man?

Not only would we need to call into question all of Luke’s writings if we didn’t just discard them right away, but because one of the writings of Peter specifically references the letters of Paul (with a clear hint of the validity of his writings), we then must call into question Peter's writings. And if Peter could be so flawed as to refer to Paul as "our beloved brother Paul" (2 Peter 3:15) instead of as the "false apostle Paul" as well as make the undeniable statement that Paul's writings were scripture (as the context demands in 2 Peter 3:16), then Peter's writings, if not the apostle himself, must be called into question and thrown out. For if Peter, in the very letter where he is addressing false teachers, doesn't mention that Paul is a false apostle but states that "letters" of Paul are scripture, then the Bible loses its stance as being inherent and infallible.

But it doesn't stop there. We'd not only through out Paul (of course, if he were a false apostle), the writings of Luke (Acts and the gospel of Luke), and now Peter because he was obviously flawed in his understanding of who and what Paul was...but we'd also have to through out the gospel of Mark. Because, again, Mark was not an apostle, but he was a disciple of Peter (I believe) and, in the same manner as Luke had authority/credibility because he was Paul’s student, Luke had credibility because he was Paul's disciple. And if Peter, being the teacher, was not coherent enough to denounce this false apostle, then his students were less likely to be able to do this or to be able to discern truth from error.¹

So now, we are left with the gospels of Matthew and John; James, the 3 Epistles of John, Jude, Revelation, and maybe Hebrews. I say “maybe” regarding Hebrews because we do not know who the author is. It is a common belief held that it was actually a writing by Paul, but it is not confirmed as a fact. So, do we dare leave this in the Bible if the content is so close and in seeming lock-step with Paul?

This attempt to discount and discredit Paul is not new. It seems that he had this thrown at him in his day and that is why he repeatedly makes his case for his apostleship (Romans 1:1; 11:13; 1 Corinthians 9:1,2; 15:6-9; Galatians 1:1; 1 Timothy 2:7). Let us not throw away the doctrines and the letters of Paul because some who are among us or who claim to be from us are spreading lies. Let us look to the words of Peter, “Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness,” (2 Peter 3:14-17)

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¹ See “Mark: Introduction, Argument, and Outline “ at http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1093 and refer to the section on external evidence for the authorship of Mark to see the connection between Peter and Mark.