by Tim | Mar 18, 2011 | God, Our Culture, The Church World, The Scriptures |
I believe there is a movement today that emphasizes the Gospels found in the Bible to the point that it minimizes the writings of the Apostles in the NT (which is mostly Paul) and the rest of Scripture (i.e. Old Testament). I think this movement has been around for awhile now in the “liberal” mainstream church, and is also in the emergent church. If you look at these movements, however, you will find that they really emphasize only certain portions of the Gospels (and completely avoid much of Jesus’ teachings in the synoptics and almost all of John). In my previous church, I definitely saw this. The attitude was, “Yeah, Paul did say that, but how does that line up with what Jesus said here about not judging, etc.?” While I find it silly to pit one against the other, I’d like to lay out a reasonable argument for trusting Paul more than the Gospels, rather than the other way around. Again, let me repeat, I don’t think we should trust one more than the other–I think they are equally trustworthy, but I am doing this to make a point. So here are the reasons for trusting Paul over the Gospels: The letters of Paul were written earlier than the Gospels. We should be aware that as time goes by, the possibility of something losing its truth becomes greater. The earliest views of Jesus should be trusted over the later views, which have more possibility of being invented ideas, rather than truths. Paul’s words are his own words. Jesus’ words in the Gospels were written down by other people,...
