Without the Gospels we have road maps but no destination.

Just when the Jesus Seminar was concluding its reporting of its deconstructive research on the person of Jesus, the Galilean, many of the same agenda-driven scholars turned their attention to the apostle Paul. The twenty-first century’s renewed interest in Paul is called ”the New Perspective.” New attention is being given to the person of Paul, his place in second-temple Judaism’s theology, what he thought of Jewish-Christian relations (especially as seen in Romans and Galatians), his position on women, and a possible misreading of him all along. The vastness of the material is staggering, and post-modern interpretations of the texts are intriguing. In these studies Paul does not look like anyone we learned about in Sunday school — or from the pulpit for that matter. We have a “new” Paul who fits the pluralistic culture of Western Christianity without offending any party at the table. And what little might continue as offensive we simply dismiss as the editorial fingerprints of redactors and copyists of successive centuries.

Enough of this.… It is time to look again at Paul in light of the Gospels, since Paul’s writings probably precede chronologically all four of the gospel accounts. And it is the chronology of the writings that I think we need to address if we are to get at the foundational issues of some of the questions being asked.

For centuries some scholars have believed that Paul invented the Christianity that began to flourish in the second and third centuries — that Paul’s writings created a “church” that was vastly different from the one intended by Jesus Christ. Others have taught that Peter definitively departs from Jesus because we often see him wanting to lead, win, or be first. Both of these scenarios are incorrect. They put the cart (Paul and Peter) before the horse (Jesus). The perceived problem arises because the canon of the New Testament has placed the Gospels first, seemingly giving them primacy, and then following them with the epistles, with the implication that they are secondary, as commentary and application. Historically, problems have stemmed from this sequence.

New Testament scholars will tell us that the majority of Paul’s writings were completed before the majority of the gospel writings were in circulation. It is, indeed, Paul who presents the church with its first written code of doctrine and polity — and though generally clear on “justification by faith,” his writings include much that must be interpreted as Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, with a theology that prescribes one’s meriting or earning one’s salvific state. Martin Luther was missing the mark when he pitted James and Paul against each other; if we look only at particular verses, both appear to put heavy weights on the followers of Jesus, making the church more of a burden than a blessing.

Looking at Paul’s multiple epistles, let us pretend for a moment that we are members of a Christian church in the second half of the first century. We have either heard Pauline letters read or have heard about readings of them. They are didactic and difficult. Certainly their correctives to conspicuous non-Christian lifestyles are justifiable, but these are difficult things to hear. They also are tending to become a canon, a code for the leaders of the church who are strongly inclined towards a hierarchy and a bureaucracy that is becoming top-heavy. Gifted foreigners and women are being put in their places, and even the gifts of the Holy Spirit are listed in hierarchical fashion. The focus seems to be moving from God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to the believer himself or herself. But since Paul has been recognized and declared a leader in the church, we had better listen.

But a few calmer heads begin to prevail. Accustomed to the weekly reading in the synagogue of some portion of the holy Torah, believers begin to ask if it might be time for a “Christian Torah.” Do we need some lens through which Paul himself should be interpreted? Could it possibly be that Luke and Mark and Matthew and finally John sit down with the counsel of the wisest among the early church and say in essence, “We have the rule book in Paul’s writings, but there is no history, no heritage, no hope. There is no record of the one whom we have committed ourselves to follow.” For them, there is no new-Genesis! There is no new-Torah! And at last they write.

Christians have long claimed that the Gospels were written under the divine inspiration of Holy Spirit, and we would not take away from this at all. Their immense synoptic parallels make such a claim obvious; their differences are coincidental and to be expected. But writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit does not do away with a human motivation to say something about Jesus the Christ and not only something about the church (as Paul predominantly does — oh, there are exceptions in Colossians and in Philippians, but Paul is obsessively focused on the church as virgin spiritual territory). Could it be that Luke and Mark and Matthew and John muse enough on these Pauline letters that they individually conclude (Spirit-led, no doubt) that it “seemed fitting for [them] as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order,” according to Luke 1:3? Could the Gospels and Acts actually be corrective in light of the heavily prescriptive Paul? Was there a loud and clarion call for grace, acceptance, welcome, and invitation in response to a perceived legalism, aloofness, distance, and warning? Now, I am not saying that Paul is all of this, but for 2,000 years he has been perceived as this — so why not in the first century?

Could there be a small kernel of truth in the thought that the early church longed for a parallel Torah that chronicled the beginning of the new just as Genesis chronicled the “old”? Might reading in the synagogue about Jesus as the “light of the world” somehow satisfyingly fulfill and complete the light of Genesis, chapter 1? Could it be possible that there was a need to hear with clarity that the “seed of woman,” from Genesis, chapter 3, was indeed the seed of Nazareth’s Mary?

Is it entirely or partially possible that Paul’s letters were so widely read, interpreted, reinterpreted, and misinterpreted that the Gospels became more and more necessary? That to hear Paul refer to the Gospel without knowing what the Gospel was drove four otherwise unknown and unimpressive men to write four (five, actually, when we include Acts) “books” to somehow say with certainty that “this is the Jesus whom Paul seeks to expound”? Is it possible that in a concerted effort to “re-Jesus” the burgeoning church, these four, either alone or at the bidding of others, took inspiration from the Holy Spirit and produced for us the distinctive histories of Jesus of Nazareth? For without these five records, we are left with road maps but no destination. Whether or not this is a possible scenario, we should be thankful for the Gospels. Without them we are left with letters of instruction but are still missing the foundation upon which the instruction is based.