Did Paul distort Jesus?

It is commonplace to come upon derogations of Paul on the grounds that he distorts the simple teaching of Jesus (e.g., love of God and of the neighbour) and transforms the Christian message into a mystery religion with a supernatural deity who saves by the sacrifice of his son towards whom devotees are called to have faith.

However, I have finally come to think that on the level of existential understanding Paul has essentially got Jesus right. His resolute focus on the Gentile mission and the inclusions of the Gentiles in the people of God is the clue to his theological vision. The careers of Jesus and Paul are in parallel but lead to the same existential theological conclusion.

To start with Jesus. I see him as a prophetic reformer who challenges the sacerdotal and ritualistic developments increasingly becoming normative in Jewish tradition. Bart Ehrman has been clear about this. Jesus’ conflict is with the religious leaders of the Jewish people – the Scribes who preserve and articulate Torah and the Pharisees who build a fence around the written Torah by strict obedience to the details of the Oral Torah [after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE the pharisaic legacy was gathered up in the Mishnah, circa 225 CE and transmitted what came to be called rabbinic Judaism].

Grounding ourselves on the available textual evidence of the Gospels, Jesus had a different vision of the Jewish tradition. The debate, for example, with the Pharisees over marriage and divorce and the plucking and threshing of grain on the Sabbath disclose a different attitude towards the Torah by reducing its scope and by reinterpretation of its significance. His primary focus was on God’s love and forgiveness. In other words, salvation by grace appropriated through faith.

When we turn to Paul, we find basically the same theological orientation. His theology of the exalted resurrected Son of God should not obscure his enormous campaign to include the Gentiles in the people of God without their first becoming law-observant Jews. This missionary vocation to incorporate Gentiles without the requirement of first become Jews according to the law reveals and confirms Paul’s conviction that salvation is by divine grace. He writes, for example, “we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ Jesus, and not by doing works of the law” (Galatians 2:16).

The Gentile mission is, in effect, enacted theology.

Jesus and Paul end up with the same vision of God’s redemptive strategy. Jesus says, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

Jesus’ abridgement of the scope of Torah over against the detailed legal program of the Scribes and Pharisees amounts to salvation by God’s grace. Paul’s commitment to the Gentiles demonstrates his implicit grasp of justification by grace as originally articulated by Jesus. They agree on the fundamentals.