Seven doctrines: God, the cross and faith

Paul’s teaching can be summarized under seven heads.

1. Two gods in place of one #

Paul taught that God is two: God the Father and God the Son.¹ Jesus Christ is treated as the Son of God, nearly equal to him and nearly of one substance with him.

Paul made ʿĪsā ibn Maryam a figure who existed “in the form of God” before he was born, and before whose name “every knee should bow”.² The doctrine of the Trinity was defined three centuries later; Paul laid the foundation on which it was built.

Part of that foundation was language. Isma’il al Faruqi showed how ordinary Semitic idiom turned into metaphysics in Paul’s hands. The Aramaic barnash, “son of man”, “meant a well-bred and hence virtuous person.

But it acquired in St. Paul a mysterious metaphysical dimension.”³ A title of respect became a claim to divinity.⁴

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2. Crucifixion and resurrection as the price of sin #

According to mainstream Christian understanding, Jesus Christ was crucified, died and was laid in a tomb. He is then said to have risen on the third day and ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.⁵

The crucifixion is believed to have redeemed the sins of all humanity, because human beings are held to be born in sin through the Original Sin inherited from Ādam, without exception.⁶ Paul insisted that no one could be counted a true follower of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him unless he believed with all his heart that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was raised after the crucifixion.⁷

9ὅτι ἐὰν ὁμολογήσῃς ἐν τῷ στόματί σου κύριον Ἰησοῦν, καὶ πιστεύσῃς ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ σου ὅτι ὁ θεὸς αὐτὸν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν, σωθήσῃ·

9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.⁸

The Gospels do not carry the doctrine evenly. In Mark, ʿĪsā ibn Maryam says that the Son of man came “to give his life a ransom for many.”⁹ Luke, who wrote with Mark before him, tells the same quarrel among the disciples over which of them was the greatest, and ends the saying at service: “I am among you as he that serveth.”¹⁰

The ransom is gone. One Gospel writer, working from his source, kept the saying on service and set the ransom aside; the price of sin became the centre of the gospel in Paul’s letters.

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3. Faith in place of deeds #

Paul often promoted his own teaching, which in many respects contradicts the original commands of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. ʿĪsā ibn Maryam stressed helping the poor as the path to perfection of faith. In the Gospel according to Matthew he says:

21ἔφη αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Εἰ θέλεις τέλειος εἶναι, ὕπαγε πώλησόν σου τὰ ὑπάρχοντα καὶ δὸς πτωχοῖς, καὶ ἕξεις θησαυρὸν ἐν οὐρανοῖς, καὶ δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι.

21Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.¹¹

Paul instead made “faith” the chief condition of salvation, “not by the works of the law”, a doctrine examined in full under Justification by faith.¹²

Paul raises love as an important element, but the concept stays abstract and issues in none of the concrete charitable action ʿĪsā ibn Maryam stressed. Across his teaching, belief per se becomes the basis of salvation, and the works at the core of the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam fall away.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber drew the same line between the two men. In his reading, the faith of Jesus was emunah, the Hebrew trust in God’s continual presence, while Paul’s was pistis, belief that God exists in Jesus, joined to an original sin no one could escape and a law no one could keep.¹³

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1. 1 Corinthians 1:3. ↩
2. Philippians 2:6, 10 (KJV). ↩
3. Isma’il Raji al Faruqi, Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life, 2nd ed. (Herndon, Virginia: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1992), p. 22. ↩
4. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE established the doctrine that God the Son (Jesus Christ) possesses divinity equal to that of God the Father. ↩
5. Romans 8:34; Hebrews 12:2. ↩
6. Romans 3:10, 5:8; Galatians 1:4. ↩
7. Romans 10:9. ↩
8. Romans 10:9 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
9. Mark 10:45. ↩
10. Luke 22:24–27. ↩
11. Matthew 19:21 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
12. Galatians 2:16. ↩
13. Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith (1951), as summarised in “Martin Buber,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/martin-buber/ (accessed 29 September 2026). Scholars have questioned Buber’s philology; see “Martin Buber’s Two Types of Faith in Its Protestant Context,” The Journal of Religion 104, no. 1. ↩