What the Romans saw, and the heirs of Paul

Non-Christian sources from the Roman era confirm that the early Christian movement grew on the belief that al-Masīḥ had risen and lived again after crucifixion. These sources lend the claim no support. The existence of outside records reporting the worship of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam as a “god” after his death shows how deeply the belief had rooted at an early stage, in line with Paul’s strategy of forming a new theology.

The Acts of the Apostles already records the new religion taking shape. Its believers take a new name, “Christians,” first given at Antioch; each congregation receives appointed elders; they gather to break bread on the first day of the week; and Jewish opponents call the movement a sect.¹

Dale B. Martin listed these marks as signs that in Acts the movement is becoming something more than an extension of Israel.² The Roman writers who follow saw the result from outside.

Tacitus (c. 56–120) writes, around 116 CE, that “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate,” and that the belief “broke out once more, not merely in Judaea … but in the capital itself.”³

Pliny the Younger (c. 61–113), governor of Bithynia, reports in his letter to the emperor Trajan (c. 112 CE) that adherents of the teaching sang “a hymn to Christ as to a god” (carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere) and refused to curse him under interrogation.⁴ That stubbornness, in Pliny’s words, sprang from superstitio prava et immodica, “a depraved and extravagant superstition.”⁵

Lucian of Samosata (c. 125–180), in his satire The Death of Peregrinus, written around 165–170 CE, mocks the Christians’ belief in a crucified man worshipped as God and thought to give eternal life.⁶

The loudest criticism comes from Celsus (active c. 175), a Platonist philosopher writing around 175–180 CE, who held that the resurrection story was the hallucination of “a half-frantic woman,” magnified by deluded followers.⁷

All these writers lived and wrote decades after Paul’s death (c. 68 CE). What they observed was a new religion, the movement of the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam after its theological transfiguration, a religion founded on the dogma of resurrection, the divinity of al-Masīḥ and the abolition of the law, the core of the doctrine founded by Paul of Tarsus.

From Augustine to Barth

Centuries later Paul’s influence grew pari passu with the institution that canonized him. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), among the greatest theologians of the Latin tradition, built a whole doctrinal system of grace, Original Sin and predestination on his reading of Paul’s letters, above all the letter to the Romans.

His thought is the turning point in the institutionalization of Paul’s teaching as the official theology of the Western church. The idea that human beings are sinful by nature and can be saved only by God’s grace, without any part played by law or personal effort, is a direct inheritance from Paul, reinforced by Augustine.⁸

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the chief figure of Catholic scholasticism, continued and extended that inheritance. Known for combining Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, Aquinas also inherited Augustine’s view of grace and justification, itself built on the interpretation of Paul.

In his frame the law is only a road to grace, and no divine command to be obeyed for ever. That further entrenched Paul’s doctrine as the mainstream of Catholic theology.⁹

In the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation, led by Martin Luther (1483–1546), read Romans 1 as the basis of the doctrine of sola fide, justification by faith. That teaching, rooted directly in Paul, rejected the part of works and law as a path to salvation.

John Calvin (1509–1564), the next figure of the Reformation, raised Paul’s letter to the Romans as the chief text for understanding all of scripture, and so placed Paul at the center of a new dogma.¹⁰ The Reformation rearranged Paul’s influence more systematically and more doctrinally.

That influence goes on dominating the thought of the chief figures of modern Christian theology, who keep a strong affinity for Paul. Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) affirmed the difference between “the religion of Jesus” and “the religion about Jesus,” in which Paul’s teaching became the basis for the form of Christianity that developed afterward. Von Harnack acknowledged the radical change Paul introduced and his influence in forming the institutional church.¹¹

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the father of modern liberal theology, stressed the human consciousness of absolute dependence on God. His concepts of sin and grace are closely bound to the interpretation of Paul’s teaching on faith and the relationship between humanity and God.¹² Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) asserted faith as paradox and rejected rationalism in religion.

His interpretation of the cross and of faith is deeply shaped by Paul’s letters, above all the concepts of “absurd faith” and “absolute dependence.”¹³ Paul Tillich (1886–1965) built an existential theological frame that understands sin as existential estrangement and reads the cross as a symbol of salvation, rooted firmly in Paul’s teaching. He also regarded Paul as “the first Christian theologian.”¹⁴

Karl Barth (1886–1968), in his classic Der Römerbrief, read Paul’s letter to the Romans as divine judgment on every human effort to understand God through rationality or a moral system. For Barth the cross is the absolute rejection of every system founded by man. The interpretation still rests on Paul’s teaching, which makes human dependence on God’s grace the center.¹⁵

These figures, for all their differences of background and approach, all made Paul’s teaching the center of the theory and practice of modern Christian faith. From von Harnack studying the history of the church, Schleiermacher raising the experience of faith, Kierkegaard and Tillich exploring the existential dimension, to Barth’s radical reading of the cross, all acknowledge Paul’s dominant influence in forming Christian doctrine.¹⁶

The scholars of that same Protestant tradition drew the conclusion its theologians would not, as The hostile witnesses records.

The interpretation of Paul’s legacy did not develop uniformly across the Christian world. Among the churches rooted in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the approach to Paul’s teaching shows a different pattern. Where the West stressed judgment, Original Sin and justification, the East received the seeds of Paul’s thought in a more mystical and spiritual frame.¹⁷

There redemption is read as a process of healing and reunion with the divine nature. Paul’s legacy in that setting grew toward a theology focused on inner transformation, purification of character and participation in the divine life. The difference reflects distinct cultural and philosophical backgrounds, and spiritual environments that read the same message through different lenses.

That dominance never went uncriticized. While the mainstream church continued to defend Paul’s place as the pillar of its teaching, voices arose that dared to challenge the legacy, from outside the Christian tradition and from influential figures within Western thought itself.

1. Acts 11:26; 14:23; 20:7; 24:5, 14. ↩
2. Dale B. Martin, “‘Luke’ versus Paul,” unpublished notes toward a book, written 18 March 2019 and revised 31 May and 5 June 2019, sent to the author in early 2023, section “Signs in Acts that the Christian movement is becoming something more than an extension of “Israel”,” published on this site with his permission: “Luke” versus Paul: the notes of Dale B. Martin. ↩
3. Tacitus, Annals 15.44. The passage reads: “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate … the mischievous superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself.” ↩
4. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 10.96. ↩
5. ibid. ↩
6. Lucian of Samosata, The Death of Peregrinus. ↩
7. Celsus, quoted by Origen in Contra Celsum 2.55: “[They say] that he rose again and showed the marks of his punishment … Who saw this? A half-frantic woman, as you say …” ↩
8. Augustine, De Dono Perseverantiae; City of God; On the Trinity; On Original Sin. See also Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan (Boston: Little & Brown, 1901), vol. 5. ↩
9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, above all Part I–II on grace and the moral law. See also Isma’il R. al Faruqi, Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1967), p. 208. ↩
10. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. I (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Books II–III; and Commentary on Psalms. ↩
11. Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan (Boston: Little & Brown, 1901), vol. 5. ↩
12. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). ↩
13. Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944); see also The Sickness Unto Death and Fear and Trembling on dependence and the paradox of faith. ↩
14. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963); and Kegley and Bretall (eds.), The Theology of Paul Tillich (New York: Macmillan, 1952). ↩
15. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III, part 2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960); and Der Römerbrief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). ↩
16. cf. Isma’il R. al Faruqi, Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1967), pp. 223–236. Al Faruqi traces this continuity of thought from Paul to Barth as the basis of what he terms Christianism. ↩
17. The Eastern Orthodox tradition refers to the theology and liturgy that developed among the Greek-speaking churches of the eastern Mediterranean, above all in Antioch, Asia Minor (Cappadocia) and Constantinople. It stresses mystical experience, purification of the soul and participation in the divine life (theosis). Chief figures in this continuity include Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 395), who stressed unbounded spiritual progress (epektasis), and Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–c. 662), who developed a cosmic theology of the union of human will with the divine will through Christ. The approach differs from the Latin theology of the West, with its stress on legal systems, scholastic rationalism and inherited sin as developed by Augustine and Aquinas. ↩