Who was the Founder of Christianity? Jesus or Paul? Part 2

In Phoenix, Arizona. He's a professor having taught Greek, systematic theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics. He has authored or contributed to more than 20 books, including The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.

He's an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 120 modulated public debates around the world with leading proponents of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism, as well as critics such as Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Croissant, Mark Spock, and John Shelby Spock.

In recent years, James has debated in such locations as Sydney, Australia, as well as was in Toronto and London. He's an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and has been married to Kelly for more than 30 years.

He has two children. Help me welcome Dr. James to the podium, please.

Well, thank you very much. It's good to be here again. It was about a year ago that we had the opportunity of getting together and having a debate in this very room, so it's good to be back with you all.

I must compliment you all here at this particular mosque, because there's a lot of churches that don't have me back the second time, so that's pretty good. I'm definitely honored with that. This evening, we have, of course, a very important topic.

And by the way, I'm disappointed in your introduction, because I forgot to mention that I'm also a grandfather to come from. That's the important part at the end, so. Once you get that first grandchild, you realize that life is short, and that grandkids are a whole lot of fun, so that's a wonderful thing.

Paul, the Quran, and the New Testament Context

Our topic this evening is very, very important. It may be a little bit difficult, I think, for some to follow, especially if I take as probably a given that the vast majority of my Muslim friends in the audience are probably not at all familiar with Paul, probably have not read almost anything that Paul ever wrote, but you've probably heard a lot of bad things about Paul.

I find that interesting, because if you look back at your own history, it's always fascinated me that Ibn Kathir in his Tafsir on Surah 36, as I recall, on the story of the three messengers sent to a particular city, narrated an understanding of the identity of that city as Antioch, and that one of the three messengers sent to that city was Bullus, which was the Arabic form of Paul, the apostle.

Nothing negative was said about the apostle Paul whatsoever in Ibn Kathir's commentary. That's not the position he ended up taking, but he never said anything negative whatsoever about the apostle Paul, and the reality of this, if you look at the Quran, if you look at the Hadith, what is there about Paul?

Why is it that today, Muslims who engage in Dawah, who engage in a criticism of the subject of the Bible are so focused upon the apostle Paul? Well, I'd like to suggest something to you. I'd like you to think about something.

I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the author of the Quran knew anything about the content of the New Testament. Knew nothing about the content of the New Testament. Didn't know what was in it, didn't know what it said, doesn't quote from it, and as a result, assumed certain things that were untrue regarding what was the scriptures of the ology of the people of the gospel.

And then, many, many years later, as the borders of Islam after the great expansion century begin to firm up, and as Islamic scholarship begins to have to interact with Christian scholarship and Jewish scholarship and things like that, there's all of a sudden a discovery that, wow, there's a lot of stuff in this New Testament that is directly contradictory to the representations made of it in the Quran.

What are we gonna do about that? Well, Jesus is a prophet, so we can't blame him for that, so what we'll do is we'll blame the apostle Paul because his letters make up a large portion of the New Testament, but the reality is that if you're going to go after the apostle Paul, you're gonna have to do so non-Quranically because the Quran never interacts with the apostle Paul.

In fact, that's one of the questions I ask my Muslim friends is, when I look at the chain of scriptures that, according to Surah chapter five, were sent down by Allah, the Torah is sent down to Moses, which is like guidance, and the Jewish people are held accountable for judging by what is contained in the Torah, and then the Injil was sent down to Jesus, and it contains like guidance.

It's Nasal, it's sent down from Allah, it's divine revelation, and the Al-Injil, the people of the gospel, are held accountable for what is Fihi, in it, in the Injil, which means clearly in the days of Muhammad that the Injil continued to exist because you can't hold somebody accountable for something that doesn't exist anymore, but, be that as it may, and then that chain continues on with Muhammad and the Quran, and when I look at the relationship between the Injil and the Torah, my New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, knows the Old Testament, intimately interacts with it.

I mean, there is a living relationship of fulfillment and knowledge between the Old and New Testaments. When we come to Quran, which is supposedly the last revelation, there's no knowledge of what is contained, especially in the New Testament, there's a little bit about the Old Testament, but there's also all sorts of other stories that are said to be of these prophets that really weren't those prophets, and so there's this huge gap, and so if you're gonna say something about Paul, you can't go to your scriptures to do it.

You have to assume it, and to assume it, you have to do two things. You have to assume a certain interpretation of Jesus, and then you have to assume a certain interpretation of Paul, and the problem is, you're not interpreting Jesus in the context of the New Testament, and you're not interpreting Jesus and Paul in the context of the New Testament.

What you're doing is you're taking a book written 600 years later, reading through that lens, and then interpreting Jesus and Paul in a way that, well, Paul never would've viewed himself that way. For example, Paul speaks of the law of God as just, as good.

The gospel establishes the law. He talks about the fact that we as Christians are to do good works. In fact, the classic text, when he writes the Ephesians, he says, for our God prays to us and saves through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works as any man should boast, and then what's the very next verse?

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus. What's the next phrase? Unto good works, which God's before ordaining that we should walk in them, and how do we know what those good works are? Because we know God's moral law.

We honor that law. Paul honored that law. If you ever hear anybody say that the apostle Paul disregarded the law of Moses, they don't know Paul. They've not read Paul. They've not read Paul plainly, or seriously, or honestly, because anyone who reads him will know that, for example, in all of his ethical and moral discussions, when he writes the Corinthians, what does he draw from?

Yes, he draws from the gospel of Jesus Christ. He draws from the teachings of Jesus Christ, but he also recognizes the absolute moral, binding character of the law of Moses. He doesn't throw it under a bus.

Really relevant today, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter six, when speaking about the various kinds of sins, he goes down an entire list of sins that all come from the law of Moses, including homosexuality.

And then he says, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were cleansed. In other words, he saw that that moral law that was a part of the law of Moses continued to be binding, and in no way did he throw it out.

In fact, all the texts that you've heard cited already are talking about the idea of keeping works of law as the means of gaining acceptance before God, not that the law of God does not reveal God's will, God's purpose.

It's a very simple category of error, and it comes from interpreting Paul, not on Paul's grounds, and not reading Paul on Paul's grounds, and in his own context, but on the basis of the conclusions that you have come to from a book that was written 600 years later by someone who had never read a single word of Paul, and had no idea what he said.

And that's a real problem, because if I were to apply those kind of standards to the Quran, then I could turn the Quran into a mishmash of contradiction, but that's not right, that's not how you do it.

You don't read the Quran in the context from some guy who lived in the 12th century, do you? And read it all through a lens that comes much later down the road, and that would be inappropriate. You need to allow, well, as my friend Shabir Ali has a TV show, let the Quran speak.

Well, how do you do that? You do it in its own context, not in the context way down the road. And so, really, this evening, what we're gonna have to do is deal with the fact that if you ask the question, who founded Christianity, Paul's answer is, this movement, this way as he described it, is the work of Jesus Christ by his spirit and those who follow him.

He is Paul's master. He is Paul's Lord. Everything that Paul does is under his lordship. He has simply been called. Look at the things this man suffered for the name of Jesus Christ, stonings and beatings and shipwrecks and imprisonments and all these things.

And now, hundreds of years later, all of a sudden, we're going to attack his motivations and say he was the starter of this religion, as if he was in contradiction to Jesus. No, my friends. Let's consider some of the things.

Jesus and Paul Preach the Same God

For example, did Jesus and Paul preach the same God? Well, of course they did. The problem is that because of certain teachings in the Quran, you look at Jesus and go, well, Jesus quoted the Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh our God.

He quoted the Shema. And Paul didn't. No, actually, Paul did. Paul lived his entire life. Paul is an absolute monotheist. But you see, he recognized what happened in the coming of Jesus Christ. And so in 1 Corinthians chapter eight, you have these words.

He's speaking about those people who worship idols and things like that. And he says, even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords. I mean, he had been in Corinth.

He had been in Rome. He had been in Athens. He had seen all these gods and the idols and things like that. Then he says, yet for us, the followers of the one true God, there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him.

And one Kurios, one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist for Him. Now, I'm saying that in English, and you may not catch the significance of it. But if you knew the Shema, both in English and in Greek, you would catch what Paul is doing.

Here, Israel, the Lord, our God, is one. You see the two terms? Lord and God are used there. That's the Greek term theos, for God, and kurios, for Lord. And then one is the Greek term hen. If you look at it in the Greek, in 1 Corinthians chapter six, to us there is one theos, heis, one, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him, and heis, kurios, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.

What has Paul done? Has he contradicted Jesus? No, because despite the frequent assertions that it is the contrary. Jesus said things that no mere prophet could ever say. He accepted the worship of men.

He did not repeat them. Upon his resurrection, when Thomas sees him, and he had asked for evidence of the resurrection, he doesn't actually follow through in demanding that once he sees Jesus, but Thomas' response to Jesus in seeing him is ha kurios mu, kai ha theos mu.

Notice kurios and theos again. My Lord and my God, and according to the Greek language in which that was written, it is impossible to separate those two apart. They were both said by Thomas to Jesus. Now, let me ask every Muslim in the audience, if any Muslim said to Jesus, my Lord and my God, what would be the appropriate response on Jesus' part if he's merely a prophet?

A rebuke of the man's audacious activity in ascribing deity to him. What does Jesus do? Because you've seen me, Thomas, have you believed? Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed. Jesus identifies Thomas' response as an act of faith, and rather than rebuking it, he blesses it, identifying it as proper faith.

Men worshiped Jesus, he did not rebuke them for that worship. He said he was the I Am before Abraham was I Am in John 8, 58, and the Jews picked up stones to stone him. He didn't go, oh, no, no, you misunderstood.

No, they did understand. They knew perfectly well what he had said and what he was claiming. And so, Jesus affirms the Shema. Paul affirms the Shema. What does that mean? What it means is, if you interpret the monotheism of the Hebrew scriptures as Unitarianism, you're going against what, according to the Quran, was Nassaul, set down, which contains life guidance.

You see, monotheism and Unitarianism are not the same thing. We believe there's only one being of God, but we're not Unitarians. We allow God's revelation to reveal to us that that one being of God is shared by three distinct persons.

And they're not confused about them, too. Jesus never claims to be the Father. There are some people running around out there that will say Jesus is the Father, things like that. No, there is no confusion on that part.

Jesus accepts worship, teaches his own deity, and Paul does the exact same thing, and they do so as absolute monotheists, recognizing what has happened in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And so, there is no difference between Paul and his Lord, because Paul is functioning as a faithful apostle, one who has been sent by his Lord.

Jesus and Paul Preach the Same Message of Salvation

So, if they are preaching the same God, then they're also preaching the same message. Because one of the things that defended the Jews so much was the fact that Jesus pointed to himself as the very means of having eternal life with God.

And no prophet had ever done that. When had Isaiah ever said, come to me, all you who are weary of everything, and I will give you rest? Where did Moses ever put himself in the position of saying, I and the Father are one, in regards to the salvation of God's people?

So, to be in the hand of Moses was to be in the hand of the Father himself, and that they could never lose one that's been given to them. Where did any of the prophets ever speak as Jesus did in John chapter six, when he says, I am the living bread that has come down from heaven.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life within himself, and that a person who does not believe in Jesus Christ cannot have life within himself. Where did any mere prophet ever say that?

Jesus had put himself and faith in him at the center. In fact, in John chapter six, when people had asked Jesus, they said, what must we do that we might work the works of God? And what was Jesus' response?

This is the work of God, that you believe in him when he is sent. Is that not exactly what Paul taught? Of course it's exactly what Paul taught. He said that faith in Jesus Christ is the sole means of salvation.

Now, he identified that faith as the same faith, it's only the work of the Spirit of God, but that's exactly the same thing that you have in Jesus' teaching as well. If you allow all of Jesus' teaching into the debate and discussion, if you just pick and choose, well, Jesus told the rich young ruler to keep the commandments.

That's not the whole story, folks. That's not the whole story. You've missed the point of the rich young ruler's story. If what you think Jesus is saying is that we are capable of keeping the commandments, because the point's the exact opposite of that.

This young man had thought that he had kept the law of God, and the fact is he was an idolater. He loved his possessions more than he loved God, and Jesus' response to him exposed his idolatry. It was not an assertion that we possess the capacity in and of ourselves to perfectly keep the law of God and therefore earn something from God.

And so the question really, once again, is, will you allow Jesus' teachings to stand on their own and to be interpretive fully to everything that Jesus talked and brought into consideration, or will you insist on introducing contradiction?

Now, again, we can do that very easily in reverse in regards to the Quran. We can look at, for example, the progression that takes place in the Quran between the Medinan surahs and the Meccan surahs, and we can raise all sorts of questions like that by ignoring the original context of those documents.

But that doesn't get us anywhere. That doesn't advance the discussion. Folks, we need to be understanding each other far better. We need to, these discussions can't just be taking place between Bashir and myself, or between myself and Shabir Ali, or any of the other gentlemen that I'm having interactions with.

It can't stay up here. The real meaningful conversations will be taking place between you folks, believing Christians and believing Muslims. We're just trying to lay a foundation. We're just trying to get some of the facts out there.

But it's up to you, really, to bring these two communities together and to understand each other accurately. And I'm simply saying, tonight, if we use equal scales, and the Quran says we're to use equal scales, yes?

And I think it's appropriate. Okay, initially that meant, you know, when you weighed out certain stuff and lost certain stuff, you needed to use scales that were cheating so you could make extra money.

But I think it's a proper application of that concept to mean that we need to be fair in all of our treatments of other people. And that includes being fair in the analysis of their written scriptures.

And so I try, I may fail, I'm open to correction, but I try to understand the Quran. You're looking at one of the, how many Muslims in this room have ever dialogued with a Christian who has read all of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim?

I have, I have. And I didn't just do it, I listened to all of them. Recorded all of them and listened to all of them. You know what that means? I couldn't skip the repetitions. I couldn't get past the fact that there are a bunch of those Hadith, you know what I'm talking about, those who have read it, that appear over and over and over again.

And there was the one story about the guy who didn't have any money. You know, this woman offered to sell the marriage to Muhammad, but he didn't accept. And this guy gets up and said, I'd like to marry her.

What do you have to give for the wedding gift? And they don't have anything. And you remember eventually, Muhammad asks him, did you, have you memorized any of the Quran? And he hadn't, so he gave her to him for the service that he had memorized.

Remember that particular Hadith? Man, I think that thing must have occurred about 45 times in the recordings of the Hadith. It's just over and over and over again. And I listened to it, that's why I remembered it.

Why do I do that? Why would I do that? Why am I reading through the Quran again, multiple times? Because I want to be accurate when I make comments in regards to your faith. So I'm simply asking you to do the same thing every verse.

If you're going to go, well Jesus taught this, then look at all that Jesus said. And if you want to say, well I don't think Jesus taught that, I don't think Jesus said that, then give us a basis for that.

Because if you're going to say that Jesus didn't say what he said in John 20, 28, then you're going to have to explain why you then turn around and quote John chapter 14 in the paraclete passage about Muhammad.

And if you're going to say the Old Testament text isn't accurate, then you're going to have to explain why you quote from, oh, the Song of Solomon, and say that that has to do with Muhammad. And you've got to have a consistent standard by which to say that's been corrupted, and this hasn't been corrupted, and I can accept this, and I'll accept that.

So when we look at the message of Jesus about who God is, about what salvation is, about what Jesus' purpose was, what does Jesus himself say? That the Son of Man has come to give his life as a ransom for many.

And he tells the disciples over and over again, we must go to Jerusalem. And I am going to be betrayed in the hands of the chief priests and elders, and they're going to discourage me and mock me, and I'm going to be crucified, and I'm going to be buried, and I'm going to rise again the third day.

This is found in all of the Gospels. And since it's found in all of the Gospels, then you have to accept that this is what Jesus taught. And he talked about being a ransom for many. He talked about eternal life coming through faith in him, and belief in him.

And so you have atonement, you have salvation by grace through faith, and what is Paul doing? Does Paul address a number of applications of this that Jesus doesn't? Of course he does. Does that mean it's different than Jesus' teaching?

No, because Jesus did not write all of the New Testament. In fact, how could he, in light of the fact that it was his intention to choose apostles who then were given the Holy Spirit to go out and take this message into all the world, Jesus didn't take his message into all the world.

He brought the Spirit of God into the disciples, and they brought the message into the whole world, and therefore you have the ministry of Paul and Peter and others. And so you have a tremendous consistency between all of what Paul says and what Jesus says.

Paul is explaining. Paul is telling the truth about what Jesus said. There is not contradiction. There may be expansion. For example, let me give you a good example of this. In 1 Corinthians, Paul has been asked particular questions.

Don't close the mall, because it may be cool out there, but it's warm up here, I assure you. But Paul has been asked a number of questions by the church of Corinth in regards to marriage. Remember that section?

If you haven't read it, I'll just explain it to you. He's been asked a number of questions. What should we do in this situation? What should we do in that situation? Well, these were questions that were coming up because the gospel is going into the pagan Greek lands.

Jesus had never been to Athens. The gospels would not record Jesus' teaching on things like that, so it's fascinating. When Paul is asked, for example, about divorce, he says, the Lord, not I, says, and then he quotes from the gospels.

Now, the gospels haven't even been written yet, but Paul knows the tradition upon which the gospels are based, and he accurately represents Jesus' teaching on the subject of marriage, when the question is about something that Jesus addressed, for example, Matthew chapter 19.

But then there were questions that were asked that Jesus did not address, and that's when Paul says, I, not the Lord, say. Paul was not saying, this is uninspired, I'm just making this up, that's not what Paul was saying.

Paul beforehand had quoted directly from Jesus in the gospel traditions. Now he's answering a question that Jesus never addressed, and the gospels exactly tell us that, even though they're written much later, they exactly tell us that Paul had absolutely accurate knowledge of what the gospel tradition was before they were ever written down.

And so he gives his understanding as a sent one, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, and that's what becomes binding upon the Christian people. Now that's the role that Jesus himself chose for his apostles.

Peter fulfills that role primarily for Jewish believers, Paul primarily for Gentile believers. Paul is called and commissioned because he was the perfect man to bring the gospel into a world that was speaking a different language and was gonna be asking different questions than the scribes and Pharisees would be.

And here is a man who loved his Lord so much that he gave everything up for Him. He gave up all the pretenses of earthly fame and power and money and everything else, and he was willing to suffer, he was willing to be beaten, he was willing to be imprisoned, whipped, chained, all for the glory of Jesus Christ.

But to say that he was preaching something else requires that you misinterpret both what Jesus taught, as well as what Paul taught, as well as both of their attitudes toward the Old Testament text and the law that's founded.

For example, in regards to doctrines, it's been alleged that Paul taught something differently than Jesus did, and yet all Paul taught is summarized in Romans chapters one and three in long texts of what?

Old Testament citations, directly from the prophets and from the Psalms, and that's where he gets, there is none righteous, no not one. You think Jesus believed that? You better believe he did. Jesus did not have to repeat everything that the Old Testament prophets had said.

It is without question that he viewed the Old Testament scriptures as God speaking. In fact, he said to the Sadducees, have you not read what God spoke to you, saying He held men accountable for what had been written at least 1 ,200 years earlier, probably 1 ,400 years earlier, as if it had been spoken by God to them.

You don't think Jesus believed every single text that Paul cited in Romans one and three regarding the absolute depravity of the human heart? Of course he did, of course he did. So to say, well, he didn't repeat everything the prophets said, he didn't have to.

His teaching made it very clear that he held every man accountable to that text as the very speaking of God, and so when Paul expands upon that and explains, in light of the gospel going out into the Gentile world, what that means and why it is that the Judaizers were wrong in trying to add to faith in Christ, trying to make people Jews before they become Christians, he's not contradicting Jesus.

He is simply faithfully taking the message that had been entrusted to him, which was the same message that was entrusted to Peter and to John and to all the rest, but he's taking that and he is communicating it to those churches which are in the Gentile world.

He's the apostle of the Gentiles. He's the one who's been specifically given the capacity and the gifts to be able to express the gospel because Jesus had said and made it very clear that he was sending his apostles, his disciples into all the world, and to go into all the world means you have to interact with all those different perspectives that are out there.

You have to be able to understand their language. You have to be able to communicate to them in a meaningful fashion, and that's simply all that Paul is doing, and so if you will be fair with Paul, if you will allow everything he said, his high view of the law of Moses, his high discussion of the nature of God, if you will allow him to be interpreted in his own context and do the same with Jesus, not just bits and pieces, but put it all together, you will discover that Jesus Christ, found of the faith, once he was crucified, buried, rose again, he appears to his disciples, he opens their minds to understand the scriptures, and then he says, tarry until the Holy Spirit comes.

The Spirit comes, the church is founded, and then when it's time for that church to begin moving out of that cradle where it was born in, he brings in that one that he has prepared, the apostle Paul, and he converts him powerfully, and then he trains him, and he gives him that gospel, and he prepares him for the tremendous life of suffering that he is going to endure to be the apostle of the Gentiles, and so there is perfect harmony between them, if we will allow them to speak in their own context.

If you want us to do that with the car, if you want us to do that, then you can do the same thing in reverse and look at our scriptures as well. Thank you for being here this evening for this discussion.

Thank you, well done, James. I'm just going to give a camera man a minute or two, it seems that his camera is charged. Before I give the opportunity to take the podium once again, just a food for thought, I mean, if you have to consider now the conflict situation.

Between the two religions is quite simple.

It boils down to the fact that the apostle James, Paul was written 70 of the New Testament. Christians tell us that his message actually confirms that of Jesus Christ. And then from a Muslim perspective, we feel that the message actually contradicts the message of Jesus Christ.

So really, this is where the bone of contention comes on between the two. Okay.

Look, my brother James has brought up such an argument, I think that Christians generally do. Please, you have to quote accurately. What I have, I gave chapter and verse, and my brother did nothing to analyze the verses that I have quoted.

You know, this argument that you have to accept the whole of the Bible, I don't know what that means, really. I mean, every verse must mean something, otherwise it can be dismissed. You can't tell me, listen, you know, I don't accept that verse because there's another verse that is contradicting it.

It really doesn't make sense. So, this idea again, you know, that the Quran says nothing about a Pope. Well, why should the Quran say something about a Pope? The Quran says nothing about Hitler or Napoleon.

The Quran considers itself a forecast.