I saw
@Stravinsk mentioning this in another thread and I'd like to discuss about it with him. I don't know much about it, but I do agree with the idea that some of the teachings from Paul's letters seem to contradict the teachings from the 4 Gospels. Do you guys think that Paul misunderstood the Gospel? Also, why do you think God allowed for several of his epistles to be lost?
This is a difficult question. Paul doesn’t normally directly contradict Jesus. You can also establish many correspondences between his teachings and Jesus’, even where terminology differs. But there are differences in overall approach and what I’d call their vision.
As I see it, Jesus says his mission was to establish the Kingdom of God. As we see in the Lord’s prayer, that means to establish it now, though of course being in the Kingdom is just the start of something that continues. We are expected to be his agents in doing this. He trained his disciples, and sent out a larger group. He talks about judgment, but being saved doesn’t seem like a goal in itself. It’s just that we’ll be held accountable to how we respond to his call.
Interestingly, he never calls any human either holy or pure. I think that’s because purity was really the Pharisees’ thing. I think there’s a subtle difference between being obedient and being holy. Holiness is an accomplishment. Obedience isn’t: As he points out, we expect that even from slaves.
He also doesn’t speak of sin very much, except its forgiveness and certainly not sexual sin except divorce and adultery, both of which are also violations of trust. Yes, you can find a couple of passages, but it's simply not the kind of central concern that it is for Paul. I suspect the reason is that he' more concerned about having us be useful than having us be pure.
Paul sees Jesus’ mission as something closer to personal salvation. For him Kingdom is primarily something we “inherit,” by which I understand he means after death. He obviously cares about the Church. In many ways that seems to be his equivalent of the present Kingdom. He is closer to the Pharisees in that holiness and purity are goals, and sexual sins are a priority for him. Salvation comes from faith in Christ, something not evident in quite the same way in Jesus’ teaching.
Some of the differences are no doubt due to the different perspective of helping Christian communities after Jesus’ death and resurrection. But it still seems to be the case that versions of Christianity that start with Jesus’ teaching and use Paul to illuminate questions not dealt with by Jesus look different from those that start with Paul and use Jesus to fill in the gaps. Of course Jesus-first Christianity is actually pretty rare.
There may also be differences in the relationship between Jesus and God in the Synoptics vs Paul and John. However that’s not a discussion we can have here or in other major forum because of forum rules.
In general I think we can use both. I certainly wouldn’t reject Paul as a source of insight. He dealt with critical questions that Jesus didn’t have to, because he had to deal with how to incorporate Gentile followers. A lot of theology is formulated in response to errors. He had to deal with justification by, not so much works, as cultic actions. Jesus certainly would have agreed with Paul, but he didn’t deal with the challenge, and so didn’t have occasion to formulate justification. But still, I start with the Synoptics, and that gives my Christianity a different flavor from the dominant one, a flavor many Christians consider heretical. (In fact even believing there's a difference is regarded by many as heretical.)
