The Cult of Paul

“In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the
prototype and our task is to imitate him; to enliven his teachings and thereby
ourselves become his disciples. And yet then through Paul came a fundamental
alteration; with Paul drawing attention away from imitating Christ and fixing
that attention on the death & rebirth of Jesus. What Martin Luther failed to
realize is that even before Catholicism came along, Christianity had become
degenerate at the hands of Paul. By making it a religion about worshiping
Jesus instead of enlivening the internal Christ, Paul turned Christianity into the
religion of Paul. In essence, Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away and
completely turned it on its head, morphing it into a religion lauding the exact
opposite of the original proclamations of Jesus.” ~ via Soren Kierkegaard
“If Christianity needs an Anti-Christ, it needs look no farther than Paul … As
represented in the Gospels (of Jesus) on one hand and Paul's epistles on the
other, we find two quite different kinds of men, and two quite different – if not
fully opposing – spiritual traditions being inculcated. In the spirituality of Jesus
Christ we find all the good that has ever been the result of biblical application,
while in the religion of Paul we find all the disastrous mischief which has so
indisputably flowed from the same.” ~ via Jeremy Bentham
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